The Poetry of William Hammett

Thursday, May 29, 2025

The Rose Between the Pages

The rose is dark red, almost maroon,
and flat after sleeping between pages
of a volume for most of a century.
Its blossom died before I was born,

two green leaves beneath their mistress’ cup

like angels holding up an idea

that still lives in musty, printed death.

There is a hint of perfume left,

unless it is nothing more

than molecules of imagination

that see a green stem and thorns

and the black clod of earth

from which they were born.

There is a love story here, to be sure.

The flower was tendered and received,

perhaps held close to a bosom breathing

with the hope of life after marriage vows.

The love affair lives on

between pages two-hundred-and-eighty

and two-hundred-and-eighty-one.

I can only wonder how many pages

were left to be read,

how many deeds were done.

Hopefully, it was a long story

filled with days and years

and all of the necessary things

that needed to be said

on rainy days, under the moon,

in the marriage bed,

or while walking down a country road,

where because of its winding path and view,

it was known that magical roses grew.

~William Hammett

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Saturday, May 24, 2025

I am the creator and the created,
that which mates and is mated.
The circle is eternal and perfect.
There is no conductor on the New Haven line
to announce your destination.
There is no terminal point.
There is no station.

I am the maker of circles.

I am the maker of time.

I am the New Haven conductor,

and my pocket watch always rhymes.

Time is a fisherman’s line

that catches the cleaning woman

in a Lower East Side house of cards,

that catches her son who’s dealing in the park

when he’s not traveling a line of cocaine

that has no terminal point, no station.

I am the fisher of pleasure and pain.

The circle is a line.

The black boy rolls the metal rim

down the hill with a stick.

Form and function are the same.

I am the boy and the rim and the stick.

I am the arrow of time.

Hamlet said he could live in a nutshell

and call himself king of infinite space.

An off-Broadway play opened in Elsinore town.

I was the understudy who slipped in for Hamlet,

melancholy king of infinite place

but otherwise detained by a gravedigging clown.

A psych inventory said I was paranoid.

I love everybody but to hell with the rest.

I have amyloid folded in my brain,

or so says the CAT scan, the Eye of Horus.

My pocket watch always rhymes.

He who is not against us is for us

when traveling the New Haven line.

I’m the psychologist who made the test.

~William Hammett

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Monday, May 19, 2025

Geometry's Paradox

What if we are
all standing
at a slant
like a line
of skinny pines
caught in the violent
breath of a hurricane,

the very horizon

cutting our eyes

at an angle,

stitching itself

into the pupil,

the entire world

askew and play it

on the fly?

One must wait

for the foaming

rabid dog of surf

to subside.

Then we may

stand upright,

the plumb restored

to the vertical,

and walk along

the shoreline,

our feet flirting

with kinder surf,

foreplay for making

love to the most

mysterious deep

which seduces us into

its feminine heart,

neither scalene nor

isosceles but

circumscribed by fluid

love.

~William Hammett

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Tuesday, May 13, 2025

Our Story Thus Far

Our story thus far:
we are lumbering through the void
trailing star stuff, dust, and gas.

Behind us is the dead-weight pain

of climbing out of the surly sea,

the long wait for solar system swirl,

gravity’s push on amniotic matter

and the one-cell boogie up the chain,

prehensile pirouette in arboreal trees

to turning the tables at a Manhattan diner.

It was all preface for a cosmic certificate to ride,

eighty billion years of the double helix grind.

Galaxies now collide and combine

before flying off into the lamasery’s mind.

The future is om, no what and no where,

the omega of the cosmic brain,

the invisible point of singularity light

before the Big Bounce starts it all over again.

Let it rain, let it rain.
There’s frost obscuring the windowpane.

This is all I can see from my cabin in the woods.

~William Hammett

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Tuesday, May 6, 2025

Spoiler Alerts

It’s no secret that the Sermon on the Mount
ended with shackles and nails.
Galaxies are flying away from each other
like bats out of Dante’s hell
and will die freeze-frame in the cold,
cosmic inflation at a bargain basement rate.

It’s all a matter of inertia until things become inert.

The job of the wizard is to provide the spoiler alert.

But is there any doubt that the Statue of Liberty

will one day wade in the water?

What a prophecy! What a tune!

God’s gonna trouble the water, children,

or maybe just his surrogate, but either way, ya know?

The weatherman busted a move

and gave us inconvenient truth.

As sure as the fairy leaves cash for a tooth,

the sea is going to rise and boil

and toss around unmultiplied fish.

It’s got its eyes on June.

Speaking of apocalypse, I must interject

that no one’s coming back to tidy up the store.

Ain’t no rapture, rubble, or rub

gonna bring down the curtain to satisfy the lore.

The shoeshine boy at the corner

knows it’s all about wine in a brown paper bag,

the cheap stuff to help the world get by

with its walkin’ blues.

All this scat is no longer on a strictly need-to-know.

We won’t make the turnaround jump shot

before the buzzer drowns the court.

If you want to know how the whole thing goes down,

a spoiler alert as to who’s left wearing the crown,

consult the stars or read your horoscope.

Six down is a four letter word for hope.

Doo-wop and well, well, well.

~William Hammett

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Tuesday, April 29, 2025

Hookers and Dimes

Hookers and dimes.
Hookers and dimes.
Both are found in the cheap seats
or struggling in sidewalk cracks
to claim some virgin real estate
to beat the cops, the pimps, and the heat.

Both are found in gutters and drains,

metal poetry slams with extemporaneous rhymes,

hanging out in sheets of city rain

or cozied up to the neon gas of night

for the sake of camouflage,

hiding in plain sight their vocations

to be hookers and dimes,

hookers and dimes.

The best laid plans of men and mice

break the dollar into silver shards of Roosevelt

that on any given night catch the moon,

break the leg bone that hits the pavement running,

streetwalkers stamping for hustle and glory.

The oldest profession lies above the fold:

“Rahab caught in Gotham subway story.”

Painted lips and powdered cheeks

hover like balloons above an angled hip

on which to hang a john or snatch a glance.

Everything is glitter and strobe,

sequins of red satin gambled for a ten-cent chance.

Perhaps collect these forsaken treasures

and bury them in a potter’s field

without so much as a marking stone.

It is the best laid plan of men and mice

to raid the dive bar, round up the herd,

then purchase the field for a silver dime—

purchase the lost and forbidden lot.

Go all in for the pearl of great price.

In God we trust.

~William Hammett

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Tuesday, April 22, 2025

The Syntax of Solitude

There are moments of stillness, silence,
when the only thing happening is myself.
The sound of a distant wheeling hawk
is a comma separating nothing from nothing.
The empty syntax of solitude
is as easy as light rain falling,
as morning sun painting leaves,
patches of summer grass
with no sound at all.
I am a moment of naked now,
untroubled by the frivolous companions
of before and after, why or how.
I am an atom
in some vast expanding universe
moving towards something or other—
I don’t know what.
If my presence is ever demanded on stage,
I will slowly rise and say,
“My lord, he has arrived,”
and then return to sit in the wings
and be one of many varied things.

~William Hammett

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Tuesday, April 15, 2025

Just a Coincidence

Was it just a coincidence
that the cardinal sat on a branch
outside my morning window
to bring me news of the day?

Was it just a coincidence

that the full moon rose

and sat on the same branch

to brighten the night with its shine?

And is it just a coincidence

that there is a tree there at all

with branches to hold

the bird and the moon

and a thousand leaves

upon which are written

the everyday scriptures

of sun and wind and rain?

And is it just a coincidence

that the id of the universe,

so infinitely small

and so wonderfully wide,

allows you to sit here now

and read this simple poem?

Is it just a coincidence

that there is anything at all?

~William Hammett

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