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May
2007
F. Keith Wahle
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F.
Keith Wahle is a Cincinnati, Ohio native. Wahle’s
poems have appeared in a diverse array of literary
journals including “The Paris Review”, “Ellipsis” and
the “Cornfield Review”; this feature represents
the first collection of Wahle’s writings and
performances presented in the web medium. Off the page,
Wahle worked in the mid 1990's to help develop the
now annual Cincinnati “Performance and Time Arts
Series”, Wahle is also a three time Ohio Arts
Council Fellow, first, in 1984, in 1990 and again in
2003. On stage, Wahle is known for his memorable collaborations
with dancers Judith Mikita, Cheryl Wallace, any many
others, to bring physical form to his incisive use
of vernacular. Seven books of poetry in all, Wahle's
last three books, “A Choice of Killers” (1998), “Farewell
to Happytown” (2004) and "The Invitations" (2006),
feature photographs by Brad Austin Smith and Amberlyn
Nelson. Feature
includes work from "A Choice of Killers", "Farewell
to Happytown" and includes video perfomance of "Secrets",
and an exclusive "Secrets" broadside poster.
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| f.
keith wahle, cincinnati, ohio, poet, performance artist, performance
and time art series, dancing to poetry, iowa writers workshop,
secrets, paris review, ohio arts council fellow |
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Poets
of the Sixties
Ou
sont les poe`ms d’antan? In the leaves you search for your lost bones.
These are your dream bones, the ones you hang
in your poems.
Your real bones rest like cursed under your ten
thousand layers
of skin.
Your bones are like old men shaking hands.
Your criminal bones hold you at the end of your
temptation.
Your bones of soft candy open like crickets in the
sun.
These are your bones, bones like women standing
around a grave,
Bones on speeding trains,
Bones with no ambition, sad reminders of a world
half lost
in the sleeve of a one armed
wrestler.
In the forest of souvenirs, your bones are dying of
love.
You disappear into your shadow.
You close your bones into hands; you use them for
ladders.
Your bones crawl like spiders on the mirror.
Your bones of angels poison the clocks.
Your bones of wind attack the moon with
forgiveness.
Your bones are like a house too old to live in.
These are your childless bones, walking into
shadows, making
friends with the dead.
You find your identity in a lost face.
The night fills up with rain.
You dream of endless changes;
You dream of men with no bones, a signal, an
empty gesture.
You walk on your bones,
Bones that fill the space between birth and death,
The myth of beards, a space of separate bones.
You are alone in the dark, eating your shadow.
You make a history of your life, agreeable,
but lacking humility.
You borrow the bones of the cold.
You open your bones like an old gate leading to a
field of
salt.
At birth you have only your bones.
Later you will be a skeleton, hanging on someone’s
shelf.
Your bones are like needles, like stars moving closer
through
the canyons of air.
You comfort your bones in their clarity.
In return, they point a constant, painful north.
Your bones rest like ladders under the skin.
These are the bones crying “Father.”
As the moon burns in the sleeper’s arm, the aimless
bones
arrive in mirrors.
You are the lucky ones with your bones.
They begin for the first time to support you.
from "A
Choice of Killers" (Morgan Press, 1998) |
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