The Poetry of William Hammett

Monday, January 13, 2025

Synchronicity

What are the chances
of you reading this?
What are the chances
of anything happening at all?

The quiet man sits on the park bench

that he dreamed about.

A woman sits on the bench,

the very same one,

next to the quiet man

that she dreamt about,

both drawn to time, place, and soul

by strange winding rivers

driven by eddies and currents

too deep to fathom.

Life is a dream,

and the dream is life

when we notice the random

billboard, song, painting,

the chance encounter,

the conspiracy of coincidence

for which we are finely-tuned

when we notice the noticing.

A petal falls in Argentina,

stirring the air into a ripple

becoming a breeze that causes

the wind to move an ocean

and bring forth rain in Burma

on a man who needs cleansing

from the grief of a buried wife.

I have met you,

and you have met me.

Is that not wondrous

in such a far-flung galaxy?

~William Hammett

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Tuesday, January 7, 2025

Pulp Fiction

It lives in a paperback,
the older the better,
with yellowed pages
brown at the edge.

It’s there that Mason,

Marlowe, and Spade

throw on trench coats

in the middle of the night

to track down a lead,

put a tail on a snitch.

A gunshot rings out

in the night, a lick

of hot yellow flame

disappearing into an alley.

There are cocktails

in a fancy lounge,

a conversation

with a fat man,

maybe a tryst

with the dame

after she’s given over

the stolen goods.

I look up from the page,

hoping the curious case

will never end.

That’s the nature

of deep-down sleuthing,

of solving a mystery.

That’s life.

~William Hammett

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Tuesday, December 31, 2024

New Year's Serenade

Bethlehem recedes from memory.
The supernova that exploded
above serene nativity silence
has mysteriously disappeared.

Only familiar constellations

now wheel the black savior sky.

The birth of peace and love

on a bed of dry yellow straw

is about to become yesterday’s news.

Knees bent in adoration

at hidden midnight mass,

heads tilted upwards in longing

to hear the highest hosanna,

have fled the candlelight,

the holly, the choir, the pews.

The manger has been replaced

by a carnival canvas tent,

faded red letters on the smelly dun.

Wild Bob’s Fireworks

is open for a limited run.

Cherry bombs, rockets, and red ringers,

supernovas wrapped in plastic,

can be ignited by striking a match

on a streetwalkers sandpaper face.

An open bar sits on every corner.

Sparkling wine and bourbon flow into gutters,

the Nile red with a baby’s blood,

the Fertile Crescent just a patch of weeds.

The ball drops ten, the ball drops nine.

The crowd in Times Square

freezes like an amoeba caught on a slide,

a cold crazy sea, a screaming mob.

The ball drops two, the ball drops one.

Christmas tree lots have disappeared.

The gunpowder revolt has begun.

~William Hammett

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Friday, December 27, 2024

The Sapling

When I was a sapling,
I knew nothing of the ways
of heaven and earth.

I thought the sun

would rise and set forever.

Time was a river with no beginning

and no end and would water my roots

until the very stars grew dim.

Now that I am a tree,

wide in the trunk,

the days are short,

the seasons compressed.

My leaves grow and fall,

grow and fall,

and my shadow

is always

chasing me down.

Children hang

from my branches

like ripe fruit

and then are gone,

rushing to find

some occupation in the dusk

that moments before

had been dawn.

And I think to myself,

winds rushing

through my mind

like a sieve,

wasn’t it only yesterday

that I was a sapling?

~William Hammett

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Monday, December 23, 2024

Lover Julie

I do not know what to call it,
this transcendence of pi,
the unending double-helix,

the rain that becomes stream

that becomes sea and cloud

and then rain again,

the sorceress who appears

randomly in technicolor dreams

in robes of royal blue,

the tantalizing twist,

the asymmetry and abandon

of Tantric sex.

But sometimes, oftentimes,

it takes upon itself a voice,

whispers, cajoles, moves me

from here to everywhere.

I call it Lover Julie

because it speaks to me

in numbers and rain,

in incantations bright,

erotic dance, sensual desire.

She’s fond of hiding

around the corner

in the hallway of an old school

of mahogany and stairwells.

“Come, come,” she says.

She is an angled beam

of yellow morning sun

streaming through the window,

and I am a dust mote

floating in her ecstasy.

~William Hammett

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Tuesday, December 10, 2024

Wrestling with an Angel

There are so many misconceptions
about what happened on the mountain.
So many.

The specter, a diabolical heat shimmer,

pushed and rolled me up the incline,

made my hands move like those of a puppet

to build the craggy stone altar.

It placed a knife in my hand,

curled my fingers and raised my arm

but I’d had quite enough and fought back.

I cursed and spat at this shadow of light,

this messenger of so-called meaning,

until it fell back, a twisting dust devil

racing into the desert from which it came.

I cut the cords, dropped the knife.

Isaac rose from the rocks and was free.

We stumbled down the mountain,

and I never looked back.

I still converse with grass, rivers, and trees,

but I no longer speak to the sky.

If it should happen to send words my way,
I do not listen, do not try

to translate messages into my native tongue.

It may converse with the dung for all I care.

It’s song will go unsung.

There will be no more sacrifices

to the how and the where and the when,

nor will I give up my allegiance to why.

~William Hammett

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Wednesday, December 4, 2024

New Beatitudes

Blessed are they who bless
the whores and the junkies
living on hard pavement
next to the empty warehouse
with the spray-painted graffiti
on the wrong side of town
as they trade rubber tubing,
needles, spoons and sex.

I tell you truly,

they have had their pint

of punishment already,

have tasted the bitter root

in ice and heat and rain

under the midnight moon

where even shadows

have the cloak of shadows.

They are the little ones

who will one day be planted

in fertile soil and fed

and clothed and kissed

upon their cherub cheeks,

given royal robes of blue,

rings on their fingers,

sandals on their feet,

for they never intended,

these wandering prodigals,

any harm to their father’s farm.

~William Hammett

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Friday, November 29, 2024

Lessons in Humility

I suppose it is good and wise
to focus on the nature of God
and the universe and the brain,
the prowess of the lion
and the thunder of large herds,
the tectonic shift of plates
aligning jigsaw pieces of Earth.

But I think it more valuable

to think of the ticking of a clock,

the slow movement of its second hand,

the ebb and flow of the tide

because the slow moon

pulls by degrees on the sea.

Perhaps there is more to be learned

watching the fly crawl on the windowpane,

the monk at prayer in his cell,

the mower clipping the grass just so

or observing a single blade

push through dark soil

and find humility in a small world

floating in star-rich cosmic expanse.

~William Hammett

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