The Poetry of William Hammett

Lying with a Woman in a Boat under the Moon

2026-04-03T12:21:00.003-05:00

The world is at a standstill.
The seasons neither retreat nor advance
on this July evening at the lake
by the summer house that is ours
for the week, even the mosquitos
too lazy to get a good buzz on.
The sky rolls into dark blue, then black.
The boat drifts to the middle of microcosm,
my love cradled in the crook of my arm
as we lie prostrate and behold first the stars
and then the silver coin of moon
as it rises and paints the quiet water
with its version of mid-summer.
A small wind rises, rocks the boat by inches,
and she is on top of me, eyes closed,
naked as she moves in rhythm
to the waves, the breeze.
The moon has disappeared,
revealing the constellations, the stars.
And then we are face to face,
side by side before turning
to see that we are once again
beneath sensual Luna, who blesses
our silent joining and the kisses
that will remain when the lake is frozen
in the dark skies of December.

~William Hammett

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The Monday Morning Marathon Swimmer

2026-03-27T12:22:00.015-05:00

She is twenty-two going on a million,
diving into the Olympic pool at four a.m.
She is alone, evening and morning, the first day.
Goggle eyes pop from her head, then widen,
more frog than human, or so it seems.
She does the crawl, the breast, feet flippers
pushing her through the chlorine ocean
that becomes saltier with each lap.
Monday is moving on as the knife fish
turns its head left and right, gulping for air,
before it disappears into the green water,
lungs replaced by gills, skin with scales.
Why is it Tuesday? Where does the time go?
It lumbers onto the beach with arm fins,
drags itself across rock and earth into ferns,
lightning now carving the sky into zippers
above volcanoes seeding the primordial seas.
By Wednesday she will cross savannahs and climb trees,
and on Thursday walk upright with no prehensile tail.
Come Friday, she will trade stocks and ride the subway
before beholding ants from the glass skyscraper.

~William Hammett

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Axles and Bones

2026-03-20T11:58:00.002-05:00

The veteran sits in the glass waiting room,
his car undergoing surgery with solenoid sutures,
tires aligned and torqued and measured,
blood drained and replaced to lubricate
the valves of a piston heart and carburetor lungs.
“Gonna tighten up this gal,” the service guy says.
The old man watches the interstate twenty yards away,
cars sliding through arteries and headed for Texas,
but the sinus rhythm, like his own, is gone.
Traffic is erratic, not something to hang your hat on.
He scrolls through his phone, deletes contacts
that were dead and dying fifteen years ago.
Staring at the sky, eyes glazed,
he slips a little lower in the leather chair,
draws his shoulders closer to his ribs,
and the plaid shirt is suddenly two sizes too big.
His bones are compacting, shock absorbers
taking blows from sixty years ago.
He remembers the German he killed
with a bayonet on a beach in France,
and his memories are crowding in,
falling into a black hole because the cars
are moving too fast now, too fast,
and he doesn’t want to keep track anymore.
His vehicle is lowered on the rack, is compacted
by gravity and grease and hydraulic entropy.
The day is moving on, getting shorter,
and when the service guy comes looking
for the VFW hat here, there, and everywhere,
he finds a pile of clothes on the leather chair.

~William Hammett

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Lady Godiva Blue Eyes

2026-03-13T11:30:00.013-05:00

Golden hair wrapping and overlapping
full breasts on the white steed, polishing
her stomach and thighs, the lady doth protest,
but not too much, the taxes of Coventry
as she, smiling and nude and tripping on sun,
sweeps the town bare of a husband’s small gun.
But why stop there, she thinks, as she squirms
with delight of the loping left and the lilting right.
Leofric’s an ass, and not one she can ride,
so she cantors into Max’s upstate meadow
goin’ up the country where water tastes like wine,
where canned heat is a long time coming
and fig leaves are unnecessary while people smoke the vine.
This is a town where the men can be appeased.
No one turns a head, and yet everyone is pleased.
Handsome Johnny is stamping on the stage,
and Country Joe follows the sweet blue eyes of Judy.
In tall grass the lady lays with lanky, ropey, hips,
ballin’ the jack and jackin’ the ball.
She’s tripping on orange sunshine again,
and there’s no tax because the promoters are taking a bath.
What’s that spell? What’s that spell?
She has lost the head count after three days of lovers
and the Fender bass beating back helicopter blades.
After a year and some days making candles and things,
she becomes some guy’s old lady with butterfly wings.
If you see her, say hello, but beware of the sassafras tea.
It can take from here to there, which is fine if you’re looking
for a one-way ticket to Wordsworth’s pleasant lea.

~William Hammett

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Saint Basil's Harmonica

2026-03-04T11:55:00.007-06:00

Sitting on the bench in Central Park,
Basil blows blue notes into dusk,
serenades, wails, wanders over the stops
with a tongue that goddamns the damned.
Pigeons, robins, sparrows—all become
blackbirds in the jangle of metal jungle—
scatter like gunships shaving a tree line
at the sound of Saint Basil’s harmonica,
skimming rice paddies with evening-violet napalm.
His hands cup the organ with tremolo trim
polluting the air with staccato music,
bullets from a bandolier feeding the M60 Pig
to mow down joggers and the Cong.
Before long, the day dies.
Behind aviator lenses and olive drab shirt,
the shuffles to the Catholic church,
lights a candle to Our Lady of the Buddha,
whose temples ruled the heart of darkness
in Asia land, in Asia land.
He curls up on the last pew and sleeps,
and in his dream there is weeping
before crickets calm the convolutions of his brain.
A candle sputters, goes dark.
Hollow bamboo shoots, reeds to blow
a dirge or Mekong Delta blues,
grow in the night by the stained-glass window
on which Christ feeds a lamb not long for this world.

~William Hammett

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Playing Chess with Confucius

2026-02-25T11:54:00.002-06:00

I do not understand his moves.
They are random, his queen
traipsing across the board
like a streetwalker looking for tricks
with a lusty bishop or a knight
behaving like a Calaveras jumping frog.
He throws the I Ching before every move,
looking at the random yarrow sticks
before pushing a pawn into slave labor.
He smiles a lot and says he can’t lose.
“It is what it is,” he says with a sigh.
“Be good, be kind. Drink rice wine
and make love in moderation.
Study art, politics, and religion.”
I move a rook two squares to the left.
“You’re a stereotype,” I say. “Checkmate.”
He scratches a whiskered chin.
“Ah,” he says. “Just as it should be.
The Mandate of Heaven prevails."
He is full of wind and words,
a puffy cloud with too many followers.
He puts a stick in each of his nostrils
and twitches his erudite nose.
“I am a walrus,” he laughs.
“Ah, just as it should be,” I say.
“The laughing toad gathers no moss.
A stitch in time saves nine. Etcetera.”
He snores while I sneak away
with his college coed courtesan.

~William Hammett

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Praying to the Gods and Saints for Good Weather and Gold

2026-02-16T12:13:00.002-06:00

Fishermen cast wide nets for mackerel
and trout, the wide-eyed captives
flipping and smacking in the mesh,
silver and gold coins reflecting
sun scales, rainbow tarnished
and plucked from the novenas and votives
at the four a.m. fisherman’s mass.
Mumbled words disappear in the flames.
Multiplied wafers no longer offer the balm.
Let there be fair weather and calm,
no thunderheads or Satan spawn
to tilt the sea or rock the sailor’s brain.
Let market and monger be paid in full,
the gods appeased, the papal bull
from Peter’s boat absolving the sky of rain.
Let drachmas in the fish’s mouth
pay the temple tax and bribe old Triton
to blow his conch and the anchor weigh.
Are we even now? Am I free to go?
It is time to cast off with spinnaker spin.
The mariners are shrived, the widows grieved
because husbands are lost in the Galilee.
Let us be done with canonized feet
that walk upon the rumpled sheet.
It’s over, gone, and done, this hope
for cloud and coin and copper tin.
The wide-eyed fish and flock are the ones
who are always nailed with the Savior’s sin.

~William Hammett

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The Titty Bar

2026-02-05T11:50:00.003-06:00

The stripes and spots and speckles
of lions, leopards, and tigers
rise and spin and fold under the disco ball,
turn upside down, legs splayed,
delayed by fingers stroking chrome
as the roving lights lick the carousel
with beams on seams of skin-tight silk,
of tawdry fur and feather boas
constricting the neck and nexus
of the gyre, the gyration well-lubricated
with gin and rose oil rhymed, timed
to make the fluid hemispheres revolve
around the son of man who has come
to call this flock to savannah’s trial
in a kingdom where the many mansions
are in the back, red velvet and black lights
ushering in a rapture of Midwest conventioneers
walking the midway between the breast of dawn,
between the gasp and lickety leers
and twilight’s last suckle of a naked gleam.
The ups and downs exist but in a dream.
All are actors, and all who enter here are sprites
who may have given you to slumber for a while.
Stuff the greenbacks into the collection plates,
the order of the garter and the snakes,
and you shall find yourselves at home again,
the wife and kids, asleep, bringing the ship to rights.

~William Hammett

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Fish and Birds and Other Things

2026-01-30T12:01:00.002-06:00

The black and white prince
behind the kitschy shrine,
incense and thurible in hand,
falls down the sanctuary steps
and slumps in the red confessional
to hear and absolve his hidden sins.
Lighting candles on the very top shelf,
the physician never seems to heal himself.

It is all well and good

if he's drunk as hell on altar wine,

for no one offends the universe.

Everyone has thrown the first stone.

Everyone has delivered the gut punch

and colored outside of the lines.

Everyone has picked up the serrated blade

and cut the here and now

far too close to the bone.

Let there be saints,

but not ones with robes

or halos or praying hands.

Let them be fish and birds

and other wondrous things

that pirouette like the sun and moon

and grace the air like insect wings.

Let the sacred and the profane

lie in the marriage bed.

Let them become great with child

who revels and dances and always sings

to the wizards and witches who live in the wild.

Let the world stumble its way into holiness

without canon law firing its rumble and roar.

Let there be fish and birds and other things.

~William Hammett

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Hanging from the Belt of Orion

2026-01-23T12:32:00.009-06:00

Orion marches through December,
the bear always in front of him
despite a thousand years of pursuit.
It is the way he navigates the years.
I live alone in a cabin in the woods
with a fire, a bed, a stack of books,
and a long oak table and chairs.
It is the way I navigate life.
With a shotgun, I chased away naked St. Francis
because I dislike holy men lacking self-esteem.
The red cardinal speaks to me of philosophy.
He has no theology to speak of
and says God is the tree, the wind, the stream,
only that and no more,
though we have made him in our image
and pursued him for a thousand years.
I am an apprentice of Orion,
hanging from his jeweled belt
while tramping through the snow
in the long, cold, dark night
searching for a scripture only I can write.
It is the way I navigate the stars.

~William Hammett

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The Wind

2026-01-16T12:15:00.011-06:00

The wind is everything and nothing.
It blows brown bags down the street
to keep the idea of carrying things
beyond the grasp of an already frazzled woman,
whips the hats off beggars who can ill afford
an affront from the Invisible man, of all people.
It knocks down perfectly good trees,
the schoolyard bully who taunts because he can.
It slams rain into windows like buckshot,
sends floodwater gushing into small towns
filled with Raggedy Ann and Andy people
now too limp to file the insurance forms.

But then, but then . . .

it tousles the hair of a scorned woman

who decides that her lover is an ass after all.

It drives clouds that look like sailing ships

over the schoolyard to fire imaginations

of little men and women who seek the sea

and dreams too tall for their present reach.

It spins the mind of a poet into a sonnet

about zephyrs and sprites and inspiration

blowing off Olympus with power too great

to be tamed by the hands of mortal men

who wish the air to cool fevered brows

and evaporate sweat worked up in the field.

It is a mystery.

It is nowhere to be seen and everywhere to be felt.

It is mistress, god, and sledgehammer

that can slam bones into powder and dust

or caress cheeks and make love to naked skin

bathing in a stream or daring to stand

in a garden like Adam minus sin.

I blink, turn my head, open my mouth,

and my head is full of rushing ether,

all my doors and windows open.

I do not know what soul this might be

or what it does except claim the right

to circle and swirl and hold the world

in its grasp or decide that it should go free.

~William Hammett

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Half-Lives

2026-01-08T13:06:00.003-06:00

The half moon still governs the tides,
still washes the sand and evens the score.

A wink with one eye of two still lures the stranger

on the suburban train, a Venus on the half-shell.

Half a heart still attracts the soulmate

assuming the other half is waiting in the wings.

Half a song from the red breast in the tree

still sings of life and many wanton things.

We live by halves, never grasping the whole.

Long ago, the sons of Adam were instructed to slow the roll.

~William Hammett

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Dark Leaves

2025-12-31T12:17:00.009-06:00

Dark leaves fly through December air,
a flock of birds startled from rest
by buckshot or the backfire of a car,
the horde of cold immigrants huddled by a fire
and driven to the hills by the season of ice.

They are dressed in the brown garb of monks,

spines all too visible from fasting in the fall,

who fly towards God or away from his wind.

We are the dry, dark leaves, a desperate flock

running away from entropy, the year, the clock.

We are the dry leaves.
We are the brown leaves.

We are the leaves rushing for safe haven.

We are the leaves.

~William Hammett

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Winter Dream

2025-12-24T11:53:00.009-06:00

The woods are still.
Branches are brown, bare
arms, fingers, and twigs.
The ice shows no signs of thaw,
the land sleeping, dreaming
of shapes, forms, colors, times,
access to which is denied.
Or perhaps it is thinking
of epochs, the grand design
that winter plays close to the vest.
I do not know, I do not know.
I tramp through snow,
my head lowered, my thoughts quiet.
I am allowed to pass across a frozen stream,
though it is possible, I suppose,
that I am merely part of the dream.

~William Hammett

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Dissolving the Buddha

2025-12-16T13:30:00.003-06:00

He sits serenely beneath the bodhi tree,
detaching himself from electrons
and the ocean’s endless rhythm roll,
from yoni and lingam and pleasure
squeezed like juice from a plum
lest longing nest in his soul like a lovebird
living in a constant state of desire.
Give me satin skin and a wine-flavored kiss.
Grant me the world, its hardness,
the here and now of its clawing roots
that break rich sod with the audacity of sin.
I’ll dine with courtesans and eat ripe fruit,
consort with astronomers who crave entire galaxies
though they be a billion light years away,
though they tease the eye with wanton light
beyond the grasp of all but refractory ways.
My eye is lusty for forbidden sights.
I would have more grain, bigger barns
and then eat, drink, and be merry for more.
Do not die to the self or extinguish the flame.
Rather, let it burn the bodhi tree,
erase the Buddha’s subtle, slippery smile.
The Sirens call, and I will not be chained to the mast.
Let them torment me with their island arts
until I moan, drunk with a life that was born to last.

~William Hammett

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Tell It to Coltrane

2025-12-04T11:35:00.012-06:00

Spill your woes to Coltrane.
Let jazz put troubles into the funky fugue
and turn them into incense
rising from cigarettes in the club
where only the shadows of dead men play.
Give your grief to Beethoven.
His ninth is broad and bold enough
to swallow your rants and raves,
sound rising and pulsing rhythm
in an orgasm of strings and brass
hung on a score with a thousand staves.
Hang your bitching out to dry
with Shakespeare’s iambic play it on the fly.
After deliberation, Hamlet will stab your heartache,
Prince Escalus restore the butchered peace
to Verona after the star-crossed lovers die.
Bury your pain with the brush or pen,
with the saxophone playing the midnight den.
Scream like Edvard on the Oslo bridge
and let the Jumblies go to sea in a sieve.
Let canvas, page, and lute absorb your pain,
the fever pitch, your last damn nerve,
the witch-wife that mixes up the migraine.
Then sit by the pasture’s unnamed brook.
The world is not to die for, but to live.

~William Hammett

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In Your Heart

2025-11-28T14:09:00.006-06:00

Forgive me for drifting away,
dark-haired lady of legend,
for leaving the clear running water
of your voice and its music
that sang of love and kisses
despite the demands of any given day.
I left for the mountains,
trudging through snow
in search of a lamasery
that would unpack all secrets,
bind up wounds that had been carved
before our eyes ever engaged
and danced what only we could dance
and see through long hours
of lounging in serendipity.
The only answer I needed was
in your heart,
in your heart.

~William Hammett

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Magi

2025-11-21T12:31:00.004-06:00

The black man with the gold tooth
and the silver pocket watch he found
in a dumpster dive in Midtown Manhattan
smiles and exclaims, “Lordy, Lordy!
It’s a time for a change, ain’t it?
The Age of Aquarius—shit, that’s what time it is!”

In Philly, the hobo smells of Chanel and Charlie,
free spritzes from the glass altar at Bloomie’s.
He’s the dandy in red and blue silk scarves
shoplifted from the caravan cakewalk
through Central City where he fashions himself
King Candy, the magisterial leader of the mooks.

On the South Side of Chicago, Lou takes a hit
from the bong that blesses the sliding slum
with incense that vagabonds tending their flocks
inhale deep into browning bellows
before exhaling the plume to an unnamed god.

The spire and mooring mast, pulsing starbright
atop the Empire State Building, leads the trio
to Central Park, the Big Apple moldy with Eve.
Heavy with wine, they slumber in Claremont Arch
before taking the abandoned babe to the firehouse
for a five-alarm life with foster dudes.

It’s time to leave, to slip the long invisible leash
before Herod’s cops roust the teachers three.
They board the dog, the El, the boxcar rolling free.
It’s done and done. Go down, Moses and wake up Job.
There’s something happening here, something new—
for what it’s worth—on the goddamn dizzy globe.

~William Hammett

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Monkeys in the Temple

2025-11-13T12:53:00.003-06:00

Cambodia breathes.
The jungle is dark green and hot,
thin yellow prison bars falling
through the canopy of Strangler Figs,
Mai-Sak, palms, Silk-Cottons.
The monsoons are a month away,
and the stone Buddha spikes a fever.
Ferns and bamboo choke the temple,
prana and kundalini strangled
below the crumbling sandstone and bricks.
A hundred yards away,
a fighter jet screaming Vietnam
hangs in the trees, a metal skeleton
with broken and rusted chakras
sacrificed to Charlie, G. I. Joe, the Cong.

Macaques climb the vines

twisting around the filigreed chedis,

clamber over the Buddha,

eyes closed as he ponders in peace

the fact that his left ear is gone

from rot or riotous cluster bombs.

The monkeys are inquisitive, demanding.

Who is the sandstone god?

Who is the prophet, the maker of worlds

consumed by artillery and missile strikes?

Where are the avatars dressed in olive drab,

in cone hats and black pajamas?

What is the mystery of the shrine

tended only by the python and cobra king?

The blue marble breathes.

The ad men on Madison Avenue pitch their tags.

They fornicate and ride the shafts to Shangri-La

while their wives bake and smoke

and make love to the cabana boys out back.

Priests and whores clamber over rocks,

pavement, and pews to worship the sun and the moon.

Who is the sandstone god?

Who is the prophet, the maker of worlds?

Monkeys swing from New York to L.A.,

smoking ganja in tweed and conical hats,

inquisitive and demanding as they try

and try again to decipher hieroglyphics

from a race of apes in swaddling clothes

and black pajamas and wooly mammoth skins.

What is the mystery of the shrine?

It is a primitive world missing the Buddha’s ear

that pirouettes in space and spins, spins, spins.

~William Hammett

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Wild Blossoms

2025-11-05T11:30:00.003-06:00

I picked flowers for you today
in the countryside in the green field
with wild blossoms of every size
and the color of Solomon’s regalia.

I put them in water

from the pure, clear stream

that still runs through my heart

and, I hope, yours as well.

~William Hammett

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Links in the Merlin Double Helix Chain

2025-10-29T11:28:00.003-05:00

The Flying Bellinis, hand to wrist
above the big tent sawdust,
know the continuum of daredevil “ahhh!”
from night to night, from father to son.
The daisy chain’s endless green and white
tied together with matrimonial bands
stop and start, dip and chart
the Billboard hippie fest—can you dig the light,
man and wife spawning the generational heart?
Watch Whitman stitch the leaves of grass,
crossing Brooklyn Ferry before the lilacs bloom
in the dooryard when Lincoln heaves the torch.
Most of all, Joyce riverrun past Eve and Adam's,
and the first shall be last and the last
shall be first—oh I’m talking syntax and pages
that loop like gyres, and to every season,
there is pern, pern, pern, Seeger and Yeats
says Qoheleth: live, die, plant, reap,
laugh, weep, and dance under Scottish Skye
to the music of the spheres still spinning
despite Galileo’s culling of cepheid stars.
Uther Pendragon begets, and the once and future
marries Guinevere again and again and again,
while Lancelot, the queen’s joyous guard,
finds a way to split the round, pierce her mound
every time. Place your bets on the neon ground.
Which brings us to Merlin, the master hook and wheel
who pivots and joins the constellations nine
with magic born of Barnum and Igraine.
To every sex and seed there is a reason,
a time and purpose under heaven for lay, laid, and lain.
It’s coffeehouse beat, a Ferlinghetti and Ginsberg howl.
I am, you are, he she it is the Walrus
disguised by the mystery tour’s Franciscan cowl.
Be off now. Get with child a mandrake root.
All the stones are one. All the stones are one.
Let us start when everything’s begun.

~William Hammett

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The Spitting Image of Joan Baez

2025-10-22T11:24:00.002-05:00

She was the spitting image of Joan Baez,
and I knew her and I loved her.
The sound of the redbird was sweeter,
the sky was bluer, and water
and my thoughts were as clear
as the music in which we lived.
And oh, the grass was dark green
and a bed upon which we lay our thoughts
beneath three-masted sailing clouds
or the quiet gaze of the moon.
It made all the difference,
like a red wheelbarrow glazed with rain.
Do you know what I mean?
Can you possibly understand
what I mean?

~William Hammett

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Two Ways to Dance

2025-10-15T12:22:00.012-05:00

Let them sing and chant,
the ones hooded in widow’s black,
of serendipity and pain,
of blood and wood
and a world of perpetual rain.
Incense from the virgins
clouds the nave and the swinging brain.
Let them dance a jig on angel wings
from Eden to the harlot and the beast,
to the catastrophic end of things.

I shall not moan for the Sky Father

but will search for the coquette

at the outdoor Parisian café.

The City of Lights is a moon,

and I shall dance a jig that sings

for Monique or Marie or whomever

she may turn out to be.

I shall drink an aperitif

to the juice running from the pulp of life

and the beginning of all living things.

~William Hammett

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Tidal Surge

2025-10-06T11:39:00.003-05:00

The waves wash over welcome sand,
the Oversoul such a wide and ponderous thing.
There is freedom on the land
for legs and claws, feathers and wings
and a simple life of quotidian things
and me.

The tide rolls out to the deep

and carries away the steps on the path,

the settling of accounts by cabin’s light.

It is a relief to once again roll into the sea,

the home where there is only a present tense

of to be.

~William Hammett

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