Robin Wyatt Dunn - Poems

​Robin Wyatt Dunn writes and teaches in Los Angeles.

​​pend right rain my bough
pend in beneath my sadness rests under my shoe
for you:

these hours
mark days and weeks 
since I've known these small new things
does it matter?

who stamps about
tramping their headlights into the breemy glim
ranching and routing their stars
through my eyes
who clams courts and shrowders my pale house
in my evening
who knows these meanings
kept forward and strange
howling?

not god, for it's not in the sky
but in liquid time
bend time
howdered time
meant full and thrilling
menacing
hateful
loving and bright:

bend my time for me
break my hour for me
I am chanting
with my fingers
to try to catch the rope
in:
 



now shout
after I'm over
after I've loved.

now begin
my ending's here
inside the meaning of my hour
my truth
my love:

wait here for me
by the music

don't catch the fall
I can't hear it

I can't hear it:
(I'm falling)
 



the bed the bone the birth roaming my shoulder ruins and slow:
and now what have you for me
inside the brunt crust of the gravel
the shadows thick and wise
all ghosts are cousins to me
in these hours
days and years.

I will bend nothing for you
I will break open for you
I will listen
and in listening, I will break you open too
with my speech.

lead me to the water
and I'll mess
I'll rest
I'll catch my words, years
who caught me too
 

​
what have you now
tigers and beaters and antwerps
no one to love
no one to beat
no one to swallow
no one to earn or whip or hollow
no one to meet and grasp and chuckle
no one who's your ruin
your worth
your mask
your heart
no one who heard you
when we were dancing
when I loved you.

no one was worth it but you
before you stopped
and now I insist you look at who you have become
in the last light
in the first hour
in the beastly repast of your million excuses
in your ardor 
ardor for the truth
that you never wanted:

I kill you sounds and owls and bracelets!
I break your fast on my mouth!
I build everything that you are!
I break knowingness into a fog
and thrill you through it!
I am chanting your name!
I am killing your thoughts!
They have always been so useless!
Ever since you came away.

Now:

Break bread with me
On your white rest
and I’ll show you
what it means to be beautiful
 
regret nothing
but the truth