Books r Us

Father's Day

2011-06-19T17:08:00.003-05:00

My father lives in sawdust and solder,
he lives in the creaking
of my mother’s wooden floors.
My father lives
in lake tossed rowboats
and taut moorings,
in homemade lead sinkers
and the sharp-edged Tooth of the Pike.
My father lives
in the unforgiving canvas of a rain-soaked tent.

I sit in the park feeding pigeons,
thinking back on stories
of my father’s escapades,
while the pigeons of his city
nest at their ease under bridges,
currently undisturbed
by young men shimmying across trestles,
whose tender voices promise
only- God-knows-what.

2011-06-19T01:15:00.002-05:00

Fukushima---Postcards

2011-04-17T15:42:00.030-05:00

一
The leaves of the basho
lie curled and brown;
the laughter of the plum tree
is silenced.

二
Red sun rises on broken city,
tsunami swallows earth.
News of the death of the last geisha,
an omen--
songs of gaiety
no longer to be sung.

三
Black Crow weaves his tapestry
in pearl grey threads of mourning;
Black Crow weaves his tapestry
in threads of watery grief.

四
A pale dawn
and far in the distance
a lark sings the
memory of spring to come.

五
Hope is to be found
and lost
in the transience of
sakura.

Postcard

2011-03-28T20:15:00.002-05:00

(Image: Postcard, Laurie Hoffman)

The birth of beauty

2011-03-25T20:09:00.007-05:00

Butterflies emerge ~
molten gold
from a sapphire sea.
Creation draws
its breath in wonder.
God smiles.

(Image: In the Butterfly Garden; Laurie Hoffman)

In the end, it's Hopelessness that kills

2011-03-21T13:07:00.014-05:00

"And then we came out to see once more the stars." Dante

When we came at last to see the stars
we struggled in vain
to gain hope.
We tried to gaze in wonder,
pride-filled in the proof
that God held our civilization
above all others,
to read into radiance
the nod and wink of
Divine Approval,
acknowledgement of our status
as unique and favored sons.
We struggled to grasp at straws,
to cling to myth and
ancient superstition.
And then the stars began to fall and
we tried tried tried to read the promise
of wishes granted.
But in the end all that was left
was to cower under rocks
and primitive umbrellas,
weeping the dawn
of apocalypse.

Photograph

2011-02-04T15:13:00.002-06:00

I saw the end of Antiquity
in the faces of men
lying murdered in the street,
in the failed humanity
of leaders of state,
in fallen museums
and desecrated mosques.
I saw the end in a fallen red kite,
in the laughter of children
now silenced.
The eye is the shutter of discord
whose merest opening
elicits the entrance

of death.

2011-01-27T01:33:00.014-06:00

Edith

At night she sits by an open window,
waiting for a knock
that she prays will never come.
Footsteps approach, recede,
she covers her heart
remembers to breathe,
but even the shadows
have substance.

This one gone for a soldier
lies garroted in a field of wire;
this one gone for an airman
spun out in a sea of fire---
voices call, no answer
only the emptiness
of air.

(Image: Umberto Boccioni, The Noise of the Street Enters the House, 1911)

2010-10-04T12:18:00.010-05:00

The Ecclesiast

All that stands eventually falls.
The house my father
built basement to attic
bare-fisted --rough timber
hewn, sanded, nailed --
overtaken in the end
by the obstinance of ivy.
Vanity says the Preacher,
All is vanity.
My father was a fighter
and a giant of a man,
but nature is omnipotent.

(Image: Dave Leiker, Blue Door, http://www.prairiepathways.com/PrairieDust/)

2010-09-17T17:57:00.013-05:00

Time folds, a
fallen tapestry
whose layers hold
happy scenes from childhood,
camps pitched on pine green,
the endless blue of cornflowers.
Wheat fields overgrown
become newly mown,
feed kings and shepherds
whose kinship shouts
in the twinkle of an eye
or the unruliness of
an untamed brow.
Courting couples
whose clasped hands
form an unbroken chain
stretching ever into eternity
and all the possibilities held
in an empty universe
and an unformed star.

Image: Marc Chagall, Bride and Groom of the Eiffel Tower, 1938-39

2010-06-13T15:04:00.005-05:00

OIL!

Smoke moon on the rise
oil spill presages the fall
of the greatship earth.

The gods raise warnings
dire omens overruled by
dollar driven kings.

Black moon on the rise
and the gold of the sun slain
overcome by oil.

2010-05-12T01:23:00.013-05:00

Faith

The evening of her last day entered quietly,
soughing in on feet shod in silence and purple.
She listened for the rustling of the lilac branch,
the whisper of the breeze through the silver birch.
She listened in vain for the nightingale's call,
the shrill cry of the killdeer.
Hearing none she raised her voice--
sent up a song to the Father of Silence,
sent up a song in celebration
of the silence that was
and the silence that was to come,
and when she was finished
she listened--
to the slowing of breath
to the slowing of heart.
When it was finished
she listened and waited
in silence.

(Image: Jim Strong; Empty Chair)

2010-04-25T02:16:00.014-05:00

Rouge,
Detroit

We were a city built on war
a city built on ashes
stone statues hacked to pieces
mixed in a river that overflowed
spat blood fire and ash
spat sand brick and stone
and the gods of industry took it as tribute
built railways boatyards a bridge
built Highland Park Cadillac Piquette
The Rouge
and the gods of industry genuflected
at the altar of the De-troit dollar
but war reclaims her own
and ashes return to ash
the spirits of the statues prevailed
rose up shattered
sand brick stone
rose up and shattered
sinew and bone
but the soul of the city still burns.
We are a city built on war
a city built on ash
crushed automobiles
rust in heaps
dreams lay dead and dying
violence in the streets
but in the end
we have nothing left to do
but rise.

(Image: Andrew Moore, The Rouge, Detroit Disassembled)

2010-04-22T21:22:00.007-05:00

Cooper Elementary School
East Side

Nature wages war in empty halls
windborne erasure of blackboard
ghost voices echo
children long gone
Brick Book Stone Slate
Earth returns Earth
man’s work falls
conquered by crowns of daffodils
and the majesty of
Queen Anne’s lace.

(Image: Andrew Moore, Cooper Elementary School East Side; Detroit Dissassembled)

2010-04-18T19:08:00.006-05:00

Ballroom, Lee Plaza Hotel
Detroit

City of dilapidated ballrooms
Ancient pianos
Gutted of strings
Stripped of the songs
that gave life meaning
Stripped of voice mechanism tempo
Who will sing for this city?

(Photo: Andrew Moore; Detroit Disassembled)

2010-04-09T01:40:00.009-05:00

End Game

In the corner of the yard a raven coughed
echoing an old wives' tale
looming above
sky slate blue
sliver of outer space shining through
ominous cold.
Ice storm began
and I held out my hand
each crystal I caught disappeared
In the corner of the yard
a raven coughed
eyes of stone gray
refused to look away
I blinked and in that moment
you were gone.

(Image: Samuel Bak, Chess Piece, 1933)

2010-04-06T12:15:00.015-05:00

Castle

It seems you’ve crossed into a land
I’ve never been--
stepped over
the metaphysical line
where life reaches out
and shakes death’s hand,
back again how does the light look
after hours in the tunnel?
does it blind the soul?
how long before promises made
in moments of panic
loosen their hold
and drift unmet into the aether?

(Image:Dmitri Zajtsev, Chess)

2010-03-18T16:40:00.023-05:00

Opening Gambit

Atmospheric disturbance
almost electric,
inhale exhale
while Time holds her breath.
I stand in the gap--
between knowing - unknowing--
and All the while
the end of the world
is no more than
a heartbeat away.

(Image: Marcel Duchamps, Portrait of Chess Players)

2010-02-25T12:14:00.009-06:00

PURGATORY

Long gone dead
days spent stumbling
through the nether
sunrise deja vu
faces mere
recollection
ancient voices no more than
echoes - mistaken
illusion of solidity
strength of rock
fallen to shadow.
Somewhere in the in-between
a soul stands
naked
unarmed.

(Image: Francis Bacon, Self-Portrait, 1971)

2010-02-02T17:09:00.036-06:00

The Death of Culture

Midnight and the Minotaur's lost in the city,
circling the same neon walls passed
in the endless orbit hours
following dinner with Pablo.
He approaches random passersby,
dispassionate cocktail crowds
who offer shrugs of apathy.
Kong had it right--
once they force
you off the island-grab
a likely virgin-hightail it
up the Empire State--
film at eleven--
a face no one forgets.

Days were different in the labyrinth,
before he entered the mental maze
that led him to trade
fame for freedom.
The Minotaur in his prime
welcoming the flower of youth--
a fan club willing to pay any price
for nothing more than
the merest glimpse of glory.

(Image: Pablo Picasso, The Minotaur and His Wife, 1937)

2010-01-25T12:27:00.019-06:00

Two poems by Paul Éluard

Max Ernst

Dans un coin l'inceste agile
tourne autour de la virginité d'une petite robe
Dans un coin le ciel délivré
Aux épines de l'orage laisse des boules blanches.

Dans un coin plus clair de tous les yeux
On attend des poissons d'angoisse,
Dans un coin la voiture de verdure de l'été
Immobile glorieuse et pour toujours.

A la louer de la jeunesse
Des lampes allumées très tard.
La première montre ses seins que tuent des insectes rouges.
--------------------------------------------------------------

Max Ernst

In one corner agile incest
pivots around the virginity of a little white dress
In one corner heaven sends forth
flashes of white in the thorns of a storm

In a corner bright with eyes
the anguish of fish,
the car of summer and greenery
now and always gloriously immobile

Her youth is rent,
lamps lit too late.
the first illuminates
the death of the red insect buried
beneath her breast.

(trans. Hoffman)

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Paul Éluard, Capitale de la Doleure (Capital of Pain) 1926.

Max Ernst and Paul Éluard were great friends, sharing living quarters in Paris and apparently a great deal more. Sometime in 1924, Max began an affair with Paul's wife Gala, perhaps inclusive of two, perhaps expanded to three...In any case, Paul became fed up with the whole mess and left the pair to their own devices. Eventually Paul and Gala reconciled, although the reconciliation was short-lived. Gala met and fell in love with Salvador Dali, eventually divorcing Paul to marry Salvador. For his part, Salvador considered Gala his muse and the love of his life.

Eluard was part of the surrealist movement in Paris in the early 1920's. The influence is seen in his Max Ernst...a dream like quality, strongly visual. The image of the fish is interesting. Is he expressing an affinity to a fish out of water, struggling for life and breath?

-----------------------------------------

La courbe de tes yeux

La courbe de tes yeux fait le tour de mon coeur,
Un rond de danse et de douceur,
Auréole du temps, berceau nocturne et sûr,
Et si je ne sais plus tout ce que j'ai vécu
C'est que tes yeux ne m'ont pas toujours vu.
Feuilles de jour et mousse de rosée,
Roseaux du vent, sourires parfumés,
Ailes couvrant le monde de lumière,
Bateaux chargés du ciel et de la mer,
Chasseurs des bruits et sources de couleurs,
Parfums éclos d'une couvée d'aurores
Qui gît toujours sur la paille des astres,
Comme le jour dépend de l'innocence
Le monde entier dépend de tes yeux purs
Et tout mon sang coule dans leurs regards.

------------------------------------------------

The Curve of Your Eyes

The curve of your eyes has encircled my heart
in a round of dance and tenderness.
Halo time, the comfort of the cradle song,
and if I know nothing about this life that I have lived,
I will know that your eyes did not always see me.
Leaves of day, foam of dew,
reeds of the wind, scented smiles,
wings covering the light of the world,
boats carrying sky and sea,
hunters of noise and the source of all colors,
Your perfume hatches a brood of dawns
lying stillborn on a straw of stars,
as the day depends on innocence
so my being depends on your eyes
and all my life flows under their sight.

(Trans. Hoffman)

----------------------------------------------

Beautiful and so very sad. The world continues on while the lover exists only in the vision of his beloved. Again, a surrealist influence, imbued over all with a synethesic confusion of the senses. I love Éluard's imagery of "halo time", referring to the moment of the head crowning at birth.

--------------------------------

(Image: Salvador Dali, "Geodesic" Portrait of Gala, 1936)

2009-12-06T20:28:00.017-06:00

Ulysses

In the end he answered the song of the ice blue sea
Brought low over endless nights spent
dreaming in the arms of the Sirens
dazzled by their songs and azure lies.
Hard fall each morning
to wake in his cold grey bed
a stone of hopelessness
lodged in his heart.
He took to the highway
searched for answers in billboards
and the faces of strangers
wise men with broken compasses
He came at last to the Atlantic shore
where once he had seen an eagle
descend on a dove
a strangely peaceful ending
nothing left but a pile of feathers
eventually washed to sea
And so he opted for
the clean and bloodless coup
On a starry night
he sang goodbye to the sirens
stripped off his clothes
laid them on the beach
along with the rest of his life’s baggage
and all the songs he had ever answered
save for the song of the ice blue sea.

(Image: Ulysses and the Sirens; Herbert James Draper, 1909)

End of Life Care

2009-08-15T14:36:00.015-05:00

When I am an old woman

I will wait for a morning in winter

a morning in winter

when the sun is shining

a morning in winter

when the temperature

falls below zero

and the wind sings

through winter sere branches

When I am an old woman

I will sit among skeletal trees

in sub zero weather

I'll sit until I fall asleep

dreaming perhaps of

a toasty fire

or a turkey feast

skin on cooked to the crackle

biscuits inhumed in butter

pumpkin pie with a ginger snap crust

and sugared pecans shrouded in cream.

(Image: Winter Trees; Guido Frizzoni)

2009-07-30T23:05:00.014-05:00

The night is still, the streets lie sleeping,
here is the house where my sweetheart lived;
long ago she left this town
yet here stands her house, on the same place.

And there stands a man, staring into the sky
who wrings his hands in violent grief.
I look into his face and shudder
as the moon reveals a reflection of my own.

You nemesis, my very double!
Why do you mimic the agony of a love
that lived in torment in this very house
so many nights, so long ago?
(Heinrich Heine, trans. Hoffman)

On the first night of the full moon, a man looks out of his window. The interplay between moonlight and moon shadow is so compelling he feels he must somehow become part of it. He steps out onto his porch, looks above him at the view through the leaves of an old maple. The broken light draws him in. He begins to walk, eyes on the moon, mind in contemplation of the exuberance he feels when he steps out of the fractured light peeking through leaves, buildings, alleyways, into the full face of the moon. As he walks he begins to feel invincible, larger than life. The moonlight infuses his veins, rays reach finger-like into his very core. He is become Nature and is filled with an overwhelming sense of luminescence and joy.

Time passes unheeded until some annoyance nags at the corner of his consciousness. He pushes it aside. Still it intrudes, overcomes the luminescence. Drawn out of his moon reverie, the man notices his surroundings. His old neighborhood…and across the rutted street, he sees the house of a former love. His infused light darkens; his feeling of elation dims; he realizes the presence of The Other.

The Other stands in the shadow of the house, baying at the moon. Out of curiosity, the man crosses over. He stands some distance from The Other and realizes that The Other is not baying at the moon, but rather sobbing, shouting, howling at empty windows, relating in his grief a tale of love and deceit.

The light of the moon is broken; its shards stab into the man’s own memories of this house. He turns to The Other. The eyes that greet him are his own; the keening voice, his own. The old brown suit he wore only because she had expressed admiration, the brown suit he had torn and thrown in the refuse bin when he realized her betrayal, here again in pristine newness.

And now the light has turned to anger, to rage, to revisited memories of deception, dreams broken, love betrayed. The man is overcome. He howls at the moon and the desolate house; he howls at the memory of lost love and still it is not enough. The rage bursts forth, renders him, splits him, emerges into an entity all its own…..

News Item: Early this morning another body was found in the Old River District. The police are quite perplexed as the body appears to have been mauled by a large animal. It is unlikely that such an animal is indigenous to this area. Police are advising avoidance of the area and are asking that anyone with information relating to this case step forward.
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Dietrich Fischer-Dieskau, Schubert's Der Doppelgänger
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fKVnL9JvuO8

(Image: Adam Pieniazek)

2009-07-29T22:58:00.006-05:00

The Coming of Winter

Day by day
a denser fog
envelops the core
edges overlap
outlines lack
acuity
meanwhile
the woman in the mirror
hides a shadow in her eyes
a reflection of the darkness
that lives within her mind.
She pricks her finger
I bleed.

(Image: John William Waterhouse; Boreas, 1902)

2009-07-12T19:27:00.044-05:00

On Mandelbrot's Fractal Geometry of Nature

Why is geometry always described as “cold” Wind blown clouds and “dry?" One reason lies in its Stretched into wisps inability to describe the shape of a Water filled cloud, a mountain, a coastline, or a tree. Clouds are not spheres, Sinking into mountains are not cones, coastlines are not circles, and bark is not smooth, Penetration of nor does lightning travel in a straight line. More generally I claim that Mountain peaks many patterns of Nature are so irregular Sacred rite and fragmented, that compared with Euclid--a term Shrouded in a used in this work to denote all of standard Veil of fog geometry--Nature exhibits not simply a higher degree but an altogether different level of complexity. The number of distinct Act of Nature scales and length of natural patterns is for all practical purposes infinite. The existence Climaxing in of these patterns challenges us to study these Lightning bolt patterns that Euclid leaves aside as being “formless,” to investigate Water birth the morphology of the Mountain streams “amorphous.” Mathematicians have disdained this challenge, however, Pines ferns and have increasingly chosen to Condensate waters warmed flee from nature by devising theories unrelated In sunlit glades to anything we can see or feel……at first glance such Evaporate rise misbehavior looks most bizarre and even terrifying….contrary to rumors Reborn in that analysis is a dry subject, these fractals Wind blown clouds tend to be astonishingly beautiful.

(Text: Mandelbrot; The Fractal Geometry of Nature)

2009-07-09T12:17:00.031-05:00

Minuet

angels dancing
on the head of a pin
one step
forces another
silver surface
delicate feet
we watch
eyes held by amazement or
hope of mischance

toe dance shoes
add instability
probability unknown
and now the angels
take their bow
will it be final
or end in an arc of glory?

look there on the left
a bit of a wobble
and we wonder
which will be
the first to fall.

(Image: Fractals, julia set)

2009-06-22T19:24:00.010-05:00

The Trickster of Seville

Quand Don Juan descendit vers l'onde souterraine

Et lorsqu'il eut donné son obole à Charon,

Un sombre mendiant, l'oeil fier comme Antisthène,

D'un bras vengeur et fort saisit chaque aviron....

(Baudelaire)

At his passing
Don Juan proffered
a subway token--
fare for the boatman
on the River Archeron.
The boatman accepted
with an enigmatic smile
and served the Don
no more than he had bought--
a bottle of cheap red
instead

of the glass

of Forgetting.
Don Juan offered thanks
and closed his eyes ---
willing the
the embrace of the fog.

Don Juan's hell
was a fine old wine
made bitter by the
reminiscence of
past loves discarded

the rue and regret
of too many roads taken

the realization that his life
held less substance than
the alchemic cloy
of a funerary rose.

Eternity to pay
for the passionate sadness
in Doña Ines' eyes
and a token given in jest
to the boatman
on the River Archeron.

(image: La Barca de Caronte, Eric Martin Contreras)

2009-05-30T11:02:00.014-05:00

The Red Wheelbarrow--
William Carlos Williams

so much depends
upon

a red wheel
barrow

glazed with rain
water

beside the white
chickens

Gone

nothing much depends
on a red wheelbarrow
fallen to rust in
the dust blown field

one thousand acres
of unsown wheat

abandoned barn
home to none but
the dry rattle of barn swallows
and the ghosts of American Gothic.

(Image: Steve Fitch, Gone: Photographs of Abandonment on the High Plains, University of New Mexico Press, 2003)

2009-05-25T22:46:00.027-05:00

Solitaire

Cell phone rings
nobody there
everyone's talking
I talk to dead air--
an urgent to-do list
loud quarrel with a friend--
better than standing alone.
Society sees matched pairs
makes invisible
losers and loners
who clutter public squares
chatting up the birds,
who dare to occupy park benches
that would be put to better use
by lovers.

(Image: Therese Flanagan on Flickr)

2009-05-15T00:28:00.009-05:00

Tempting Fate

Always there were stones--

the wrath of the gods

unheeded--

the crowds thought we were golden,

the crowds thought we could fly.

Tossing aside the lessons of Icarus

we leapt--invitation accepted,

destiny opened

her great grinding maw

and took us down,

an easy task--

heavy as we were

with the weight of stones.

(Image: Georgio di Chirico, Ariadne, 1913)

2009-05-05T12:53:00.008-05:00

The Kindness of Strangers

There it is again

the white spot

on the window glass.

I turn quickly--

nothing--

a flash of sunlight,

a falling leaf

descent slowed

by a cushioning breeze,

the glimpsed underbelly of a sparrow--

or She

who walked here before,

pausing in her travels

to greet overgrown dahlias

or perhaps to clear the weeds

from the base of an old rose

given by her daughter

on a distant mother's day.

(Image: Jules Joseph Lefebvre, Ophelia; 1890)

2009-05-02T21:46:00.030-05:00

Medusa

I saw you this morning in the corner of my mirror--
I've learned not to turn too quickly.

Long ago we set the rules--
play the game in peripheral--

friendship maintained

through the custody of the eyes--

First visit I was a child of two

no buried memories or pots to stir--

perhaps faint echoes of a time before

when orphaned in the aether of souls.

Side by side we sat on my cot

four eyes focused on dimity curtained windows--
or was our focus the light shining through?
Later years we flew kites in mud-sogged fields---

eyes always up

as if the sky held the answer

to the question formed

in the crushed heads

of the snake grass underfoot.

Was it fear sent your
focus to heaven?
deferral of death?
This morning I saw you in the corner of my mirror
and I wanted nothing so much as to peer
into your ash grey eyes---
to know you as I have been known.
This morning I saw you and I wondered---
but as ever I've learned
not to look.

(Image: Fiery Medusa, Mimi Yoon)

Identity

2009-04-16T21:19:00.025-05:00

It seems I've spent another day
dreaming of the middle distance
distracted by images
of souls end-stopped in stone.
Yesterday in the grocer's
some Galatea lost it over a bag of frozen peas,
her white aura lay shattered
on the floor about her feet. Marble shards
promptly Swept up and
Hidden in her Handbag,
Marble shards presumably ceded
to the sculptor
who sat comfortably at home
like some ancient god
enthroned in an easy chair.

(Philip Scott Johnson;500 Years of Female Portraits in Western Art. Music: Bach's Sarabande from Suite for Solo Cello No. 1 in G Major, BWV 1007 performed by Yo-Yo Ma)

2009-03-28T10:54:00.023-05:00

Sylvia

They thought death was worth it, but I
Have a self to recover, a queen.
Is she dead, is she sleeping?
Where has she been,
With her lion-red body, her wings of glass?
(Sylvia Plath, Stings)

The beehive is quiet.
Counterintuitive--you'd
think the thrum and hum
would overwhelm
but each hexagon
has become a realm
of immaculate silence.
The queen lies sleeping,
her drones at her feet,
workers gone off to sip honey
in the hive of the consort.
In the distance a nightingale sings.
The queen almost stirs,
sinks back into lethargy;
sinks back into the counterintuitive quiet
of the hive.

(Image: Maggie Taylor, Girl in a Bee Dress)

2009-03-15T01:17:00.020-05:00

Ophelia

Cover her face
let her lie in peace.
When she sleeps let her sleep be
undisturbed by
the lure of memory
or the pull of those ties that
held her to this earth.
If she walks let her walk
unbound by the shadow
of her mourners’ callous tears.

Strew the path to her grave with
rosebuds and lilies,
the endless anticipation
of forsythia.
Lay for her a bed of irony,
lady's mantle, morning glory,
the vanity of narcissus.

Cover her face with mulberry silk
leave her to lie in peace.
When she rises let her rise
unfettered by the promise of an apple seed,
unmoved by the anxiety of ants.
Cover her face Requiescat.
Requiescat in pace.

(Image: Antoine-Auguste-Ernest Hebert, Ophelia. One of the most beautiful Ophelias I have seen. The sorrow in Ophelia's eyes is compelling...where can such sorrow lead but to madness?)

2009-02-27T23:26:00.012-06:00

Gacela de la muerte oscura
(Frederico Garcia Lorca)

Quiero dormir el sueño de las manzanas,
alejarme del tumulto de los cementerios.
Quiero dormir el sueño de aquel niño
que quería cortarse el corazón en alta mar.

No quiero que me repitan que los muertos no pierden la sangre:
que la boca podrida sigue pidiendo agua.
No quiero enterarme de los martirios que da la hierba,
ni de la luna con boca de serpiente
que trabaja antes del amanecer.

Quiero dormir un rato,
un rato, un minuto, un siglo;
pero que todos sepan que no he muerto;
que haya un establo de oro en mis labios;
que soy un pequeño amigo del viento Oeste;
que soy la sombra inmensa de mis lágrimas.

Cúbreme por la aurora con un velo,
porque me arrojará puñados de hormigas,
y moja con agua dura mis zapatos
para que resbale la pinza de su alacrán.
Porque quiero dormir el sueño de las manzanas
para aprender un llanto que me limpie de tierra;
porque quiero vivir con aquel niño oscuro
que quería cortarse el corazón en alta mar.

Gacela of the Dark Death

I want to sleep the sleep of apples,
to escape the anxiety of the grave.
I want to sleep the sleep of that boy
who desired nothing
but to thrust his bleeding heart
into the open sea.

Don’t tell me that the dead lose no blood
or that their thirst seeks no respite;
don’t tell me of the torments of the grass
or the doings of the serpentine moon
in the hours before dawn.

I sleep for a while,
a while, a minute, a century;
but you must know
that I am not dead;
that my lips are a stable of gold;
that I am a friend of the west wind
and have been more than the shadow of my tears.

Cover my face at dawn with a veil,
for Dawn will throw handfuls of ants.
Pour living water over my feet
that the scorpion sting of death will pass.
Because I want to sleep the sleep of apples,
to learn the sad song that will free me from this earth.
I want to live like that dark child who desired nothing
but to cut out his heart
and thrust it into the sea.

Some difficulties posed in the translation of this work:
Lines 1-4: "the sleep of apples. Relates to both life and death. Mirrored later in the poem images of the serpent (line 8) and of the nativity (line 13).
"the tumult of cemetaries"....usually perceived as places of calm and quiet.
"the dark boy who wants to cut his heart on the sea"...image of death in the death of the boy balanced by the sea as symbolic of the womb and life.

Line 14: picture of the west wind as a regenerator of life; vernal.

Lines 16-19: How might a veil protect from the ravages of ants? What is the meaning of pouring hard water over shoes?

2009-02-25T23:10:00.009-06:00

El llanto
(Frederico Garcia Lorca)

He cerrado mi balcón
porque no quiero oír el llanto
pero por detrás de los grises muros
no se oye otra cosa pero el llanto.

Hay muy pocos ángeles que canten,
hay muy pocos perros que ladren,
mil violines caben en la palma de mi mano.

Pero el llanto es un perro inmenso,
el llanto es un ángel inmenso,
el llanto es un violín inmenso,
las lágrimas amordazan al viento,
y no se oye otra cosa que el llanto.
--------------------------------------------------------------
I close my window.
I do not want to hear the weeping.
But behind these grey walls
Nothing is heard
For the weeping.

It dampens the voices of angels;
it dampens the barking of dogs.
A thousand violins rest
in the palm of my hand,
their song muted by the weeping.

The weeping is an immense dog,
the weeping is a disgraced angel,
an untuned violin,
a flood of tears that drowns the wind.
Nothing is heard but the weeping.

(Trans. Hoffman)

(Image: Pablo Picasso, Weeping Woman, 1937)

2009-02-18T19:55:00.021-06:00

Qoheleth

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vnRqYMTpXHc

"The thing that has been,
Is that which will be
And that which is done
Is that which will be done
There is no new thing Under the sun--"

So speaks the son of David but
at midnight the moon rises on Rommel in Africa,
basking in the sandy cool, painting his camel’s nails blue.
The camel for his part is grateful--
a feeling acknowledged
in the act of turning its head to spit.

The dreamer wakes at four/wanders the house
sore back/ creaky ankles--condition
not greatly improved when he trips
on his copy of the Dead Sea Scrolls.
Back to bed

While over in Africa
Rommel’s camel investigates the turret
of a captured Model E.
The gunner mismeasures the weight of the moment,
unloads his arsenal---
bubble gum.
Gentleman Rommel cleans the stickum
from his camel’s whiskers,
reaches up, adjusts its hat,
having always subscribed to the notion
that a man’s tale is told in
the demeanor of his camel.
And so the night hours pass on the pair
as they sit in subdued silence
meditating on the stickiness and meaning
to be found in a popped bubble.

(Image: Rene Magritte, The Age of Enlightenment)

2009-02-15T18:42:00.016-06:00

The Siege

On the day we accepted
your declaration of war,
Helen threw flowers
into the arena--
blood red poppies,
anemones of palest yellow,
one white rose,
flawless save for a slight tinge

of decay impinging

at petal’s edge.
You had already drawn your bow
awaiting the order to fire at will,
never once questioning
whose will held the power
to negate your own,
never once questioning
until Helen threw flowers.

(Image: Almond Blossoms; Van Gogh, 1890)

2009-02-11T11:48:00.007-06:00

The last time I saw him......

(for Bolano and the others)

Night falls in silence
in a stillness of shadows
and muffled fumblings
overhead the faintest light
sets sail in a sea of ink.

Night falls on the neighbors in 2B
on loud recriminations
and batterings followed by
guilt-laden love
Night falls on the sound of a door slammed shut
and an ancient Ford misfiring.

Night falls on sirens
and barking dogs
broken down doors
shattered glass
untrue confessions elicited
in blood stained basements
the very words a knife of ice
interrogación de la policía.

Night falls on the cry of an owl
having realized that
wisdom is illusion
Night falls and
overhead
even the brightest light
is all too quickly
Extinguished.

2009-02-08T00:15:00.015-06:00

Rescued

Come, let us build a city and a tower, whose top may reach unto heaven; and let us make us a name, lest we be scattered abroad upon the face of the whole earth.

By the waters of Babylon
barehanded we built
with bricks and sand we built,
by the waters of Babylon
we built a gateway to the gods.

By the waters of Babylon
barehanded we built
with stones from the river
ground and glued,
by the waters of Babylon
we gloried in the power
of blood, veins, viscera
we gloried in human strength, size
and in our deep despising
of the gods.

By the waters of Babylon
barehanded we built--
three and forty years of
unending struggle
earnest grasping toward the upper world,
by the waters of Babylon
we built until we reached the stars
and were called home

by a fist swaddled
in lambswool.

(Image: Tower of Babel, Pieter Bruegel)

2009-01-16T12:13:00.012-06:00

By the rivers of Babylon, there we sat down.
Yes, we wept, when we remembered Zion.
----Psalm 137

Adrift

By the waters of Babylon we wept.
For the deaths of our daughters,
for the impotence of sons,
By the waters of Babylon we wept.
We wept the coal seared lips of the prophets,
the silent harps hanging in trees.

Sitting on the riverbank

Bereft bereft

we wept the very dust of Sion.

In remembrance remembrance
Bereft in remembrance
By the waters of Babylon
We wept.

2009-01-14T14:37:00.024-06:00

Eos

Dark is the morning
we cannot see,
fingers search disturb

dead air;
a blind man seeks
any portal,
any blessed
ray of light.

Dawn wakes to clatter,
to boot heels and cannon,
her pale hair rent

by rockets' red fire;
Dawn wakes to shattered dreams of silence,
the sound of a swan in the distance

weeping the demise of her mate.

Dark is the mourning

we do not hope to see,

the blind man seeks

the deepest portal

reaches for even a cursed

ray of light.

(Image: Dawn, BK Levi)

2008-12-07T10:34:00.020-06:00

Eris

Beneath the branches
of an ancient apple tree,
we wept for the passing of time.
We made our bed on fallen fruit,
breathed bittersweet foment.

Core revealed Cosmos--
one small worm

nibbled at seeds of discontent,

eating his wizened way

through blood and decay
into the hope of history.

(Image: Joachim Wtewael, The Judgment of Paris, 1602)

2008-11-23T23:41:00.008-06:00

On Sappho Choral Fragment 2

Come to me from Crete
And make of me a holy temple,
An apple grove
Nourished by a murmuring brook.
Make of me a fecund meadow
Where horses feed on sweet grass
And slake their thirsts on
The dew of myrtle.
Come to me from Crete
And make of me
Incense of roses
Wafted about
Softly in the wind.

(Image: Gustave Klimt; The Kiss; 1907-08)

2008-11-20T19:29:00.010-06:00

Economics at Eden

"Lisbon is destroyed, and they dance in Paris!"

(Voltaire on the Lisbon Earthquake, 1755)

Did Eve know
in that moment
in that moment did she know
when she walked with
head hanging toward the gate
toward the keepers of despair---
Did Eve know
in that moment
in that moment did she know
that she was condemned
to birth death?
Did Eve know
in that moment
in that moment did she know
of the long line headed lemming-like
toward the precipice
Did Eve know
in that moment
or did she smile shyly over her shoulder
tossing Adam a come-hither stare
Did Eve know
in that moment
in that moment did she know
did the tree of knowledge
impart wisdom that referenced in any way
the cost adjusted price
of an apple?

(Image: Jakob Porat, The Apple, 1988)

2008-11-11T21:39:00.024-06:00

The Farewells

The following day, no one died. This fact, being absolutely contrary to life's rules, provoked enormous and, in the circumstances, perfectly justifiable anxiety in people's minds......

(Jose Saramago, Death With Interruptions)

Those Who Go

I

Death bides her time on the doorstep
chewing a mouthful of stones,
bones harboring rebellion.
Times of sickness and need
God walks down the street
unshunned
greeted in households and hospitals
by those gathered to
offer prayers and platitudes
pleadings/empty talk
Only Death remains faithful,
Will remain faithful.
But in this small moment,
she bides her time---
a brief adjournment,
a small respite
while she steels her heart and
swallows stones.

---------------------------------------------

Those Who Stay

II

Time waits
grows impatient
the soul scheduled
for departure
should certainly
have departed
and yet
here stands
Death
in grave stubbornness
ignoring the tap on her shoulder
the not-so-gentle shove
Death unyielding,
sifts through a pocket full of stones
Time waits
mourning an old man’s soul
in a second story window
who knocks on the glass
as if to call attention
Death loiters on his doorstep
Time waits.

(Images: Boccioni; The Farewells, Those Who Go, Those Who Stay, 1911)

2008-11-01T12:30:00.014-05:00

Vivem em nós inúmeros;
Se penso ou sinto, ignoro
Quem é que pensa ou sente.
Sou somente o lugar
Onde se sente ou pensa. *

(Ricardo Reis: Fernando Pessoa)

The Other

Insanity lies waiting
i open the door
voices from the tunnel
call me home
beckon me to join
the collective I AM
a convivial chorus
useless to deny
and so i embrace
voices whose embrace
recalls me to the mother womb
where i float helplessly
among waters of words.
------------------------
*Endless selves live within us.
When I think or feel I question
Who it is that thinks or feels.
I am nothing more than the place
Where things are thought or felt.

"Indeed, Pessoa's grip on his own self was so tenuous that at one point he took to writing to his old teachers and schoolmates in Durban, posing as the psychiatrist Faustino Antunes, asking for their opinion on the mental state of his patient, Fernando Pessoa who, depending on the letter, had either committed suicide or was under restraint at an asylum. Having no idea who he was, Pessoa hoped to gain some insight from those who knew him."

http://www.nthposition.com/themagicalworldof.php

(Image: Kurt Schwitters, Spring Picture)

kandinsky

2008-10-14T02:23:00.002-05:00

Seeing like Kandinsky

How to—discuss
Talk about—something
Anything—“non-linear”
Like—Simultaneity?

Multiple—POV’s?
Les Demoiselles—d’Avignon?
African masks—classic nudes?
Cubist—Barcelona boyfriends?

Kandinsky’s—paintings?
Mysterious—Composition #7?
All the—improvisations?
Leading up—to it?

Parataxis—parallel views?
Instead of—perspectives?
Narrative—without closure?
Cleavage—three ways?

http://www.snarke.com/2008/10/man-with-x-ray-eyes.html

2008-10-13T10:14:00.034-05:00

The fog creeps
on little cat feet.

It sits looking
over harbor and city
on silent haunches
and then moves on.

Carl Sandburg

The Fog Creeps
---while Loneliness breaks down the door
with bludgeons in both hands
powers a two-fisted punch to the gut
Loneliness locks himself inside
leaves his junkyard dog
to man the door
no fog of love here
only an empty rage
at those who would enter quietly
slinking about with a soft touch.

Sandberg waits at the docks
embracing the wet gray
weeping as she dissipates
creeping silent and away
---on little cat feet.

(Photo: Stranger in Fog, Daniel Seguin, 2005)

2008-10-13T01:03:00.009-05:00

PANIC

Autumn---kerfuffle

birds---in the yard

scuffle---over desiccated corn.

(Photo, October 1929, New York Stock Exchange)

Kandinsky-Gris Paris 1906

2008-10-12T15:23:00.019-05:00

The previous post led me to spend quite an enjoyable day exploring the works of Kandinsky and Gris. There is a natural progression that leads from the works of Monet up through Van Gogh, Matisse, Picasso.

Kandinsky knew Picasso. He was in Paris in 1906-1907 and later was instrumental in arranging an exhibit of Picasso's work in Munich. Gris moved to Paris in 1906. I don't find that they knew each other, but back when we were reading Stein, it seemed to me that the circle was fairly small. It seems they must have met.

Kandinsky's art tells a lot about his journey. The early works are reminiscent of Russian folk art. In works beginning around 1909, after Paris, there is a shift in Kandinsky's use of color. (View with Railway and Castle, 1909) At this time, he begins to use color independent of subject. His palette seems to be influenced by the ideas of the Fauvists...which brings us back to Gris and Picasso.

The next three images are interesting for me from a compare and speculate point of view.

First, Kandinsky's 1909 Grunggasse in Murnau.

Next is his Improvisation 10, 1910, which seems to revisit the Grungasse, at least in regards to the blue house motif.

And now for the speculation. Here is Gris' Landscape at Ceret, 1913.

kandinsky

2008-10-12T09:06:00.003-05:00

kandinsky

overhead—yours

underhead—mine

in-between—ours

I was reading a poem in
Books r us and looking
At Hoffman’s Kandinsky*
painting when all of a
sudden the flat surface
of the painting went 3-D
on me and it turned into
a “room” with lots of
action going on—blurring
motions, squiggling little
nervous movements of
color, all sorts of things
going on—it was like
Juan Gris’ cubist Table
except it was a huge
cubist room full of stuff
that just wouldn’t quit!!!

*Wassily Kandinsky:
Komposition VII

www.snarke.com

2008-10-11T10:37:00.058-05:00

HEROES AREN'T BORN---

Looking for a hero--
Man of Iron

with a steel-plated heart

More-Than-Man

Messiah

Calmer of all fears

Wiper of all tears

Leader of sheep.

Alpha man

Omega man
Maker of planets

Mover of Stars.

Looking for a Hero
Man of Iron

Forged in fire
Refined and built on Tragedy

Looking for a Hero

with an indestructible heart--
Humanity evidenced only
in the conflicting shards of
hope and despair
doing battle
in the corners of his

steel blue eyes.

THEY'RE BUILT.

www.youtube.com/watch?v=UhbeHjOxVk8&feature=related

("Heroes aren't born, they're built"..tagline "Ironman" 2008)

2008-09-27T22:29:00.002-05:00

black panther

the black—panther
sleeps—beneath
the black—jungle sky
blackness—everywhere
except for—his dark green
eyes—eyes
opening—closing

A cleave from Pound’s Personae (1925)

http://cleavepoetry.wordpress.com/2008/09/24/submission-dennis-kelly/

2008-09-22T00:56:00.026-05:00

love song

winter dawn descends

in a flurry of gray

a mourning dove woos his mate

he struts/coos she

looks on through beyond

ruffled feathers to

a shadowed soul

where a dismal tale is told

in the stance of a low-slung cat.

(photograph: Charles Lentz, Winter Scene-Mourning Doves, 2008)

2008-09-13T02:00:00.033-05:00

Journey to No

We walked the dunes under a pale September moon
and marveled at nature’s tenacity.
Reeds and grass
rooted on shifting morass
nourished by wet green air---
trees grounded only on wind.
We kissed on the shell of a sycamore
who had given up the fight then

stumbled to the beach where
you picked up a single stone
and cast it without thought to the sea.
I wondered at the aeons
that had gone into his journey
I wondered at history---
at his story and ours.
Later you picked a daisy,
looked into my eyes
and smiled.

I almost said yes.

2008-08-30T18:02:00.014-05:00

How It Will Be

Hard and fast
we ran through the woods,
dancing on the corpses
of rotting trees,

on to the beach beyond
where we hunted fossils and
smiled as we watched a living pair

hold hands.
But when we came home
we took off our shoes--
best not to track in the debris
of dead civilization.
Eliot lost in his wasteland
understood beyond all
the real meaning
of the death of the gods,

but youth will always discount astronomy
with its shifting of stars
and its gravitational pull
on the gears of clocks.

(Image: David Sidwell, The Wasteland)

2008-08-27T23:50:00.008-05:00

On Reading Tea Leaves

in a Bottomless Glass

They laughed at our wineglasses---

ancient stems that carried us

through corduroy bell-bottoms

and campouts on the beach---

past the sound of the corner phonograph

playing Beetles forty-fives.

We flew on faith--

white lace sells cheap

when the glass is full.

Harder to cling

to the promise of an empty glass

where nothing remains

but the dregs of dime store wine

and the endless busyness of despair.

(Image: Van Gogh: The Night Cafe 1888.)

2008-08-05T23:30:00.059-05:00

9:16

This morning she left home to buy lemons
--- six for a dollar ninety-eight ---
but down at the corner while
a yellow light

blinks caution

she thinks

on the bitterness

of unbroken silence--

the taste of acid irony
proposed to fill the

empty air and still--

she longs for

the translucence of lemons.

Farther down the road
a bouquet of yellow balloons

battles hard against the wind

--- How much will you take for resiliency ---

The balloon man only smiles.

(Image: Wassily Kandinsky: Komposition VII)

2008-07-26T21:55:00.006-05:00

White Space I

Make a poem/unmake a poem
sometimes the words flow
others ice dams
jamming the drop
and the page below
remains lucidly clear
uncluttered
the page remains
tranquil/white
troubled only by the shadow
of the maker's empty soul.
------------------------

White Space II

Breath/apostrophe/unconscious
Breath
Apostrophe
Unconscious
to focus is to fear
to focus is to fall---
when the word comes
cold hands cover the mouth
the word is the enemy
the when/the where/the how
what you don’t hear didn't happen and
tragedy bypasses the deaf
it lurks in dark corners
waiting to crush the unsuspecting
a word and a whistle
unheeded/life proceeds
Unconscious of function
Unconscious of the inrush of air
word ceases and
tragedy bypasses the deaf
Breath/Apostrophe/Unconscious
Breath/apostrophe/unconscious
Breath
Apostrophe
Unconscious

2008-07-26T09:05:00.015-05:00

el dia de los muertos

the dead don’t dream
but lie sleepless in tombs
meditating on the nature of flesh

and the fortitude of the

insomniate soul

the dead take no meat
but pass the time
in hungry contemplation
(or dreadful anticipation)
of the feast to come

the dead take no drink
but sip the dregs

of roads not taken
of opportunity passed
or grabbed up by the lapels
and shaken the dead don’t dance

until they rise.

------------------

2008-06-30T06:50:00.019-05:00

Onion Tears

Lugete, o Veneres Cupidinesque,

et quantum est hominum venustiorum:

passer mortuus est meae puellae,

passer, deliciae meae puellae,

quem plus illa oculis suis amabat.

(Catullus 3)

Long did we mourn

poor Lesbia's sparrow

who sang without care

in that sweet lady's lap;

Long do we mourn poor Quintus.

Bird/man the pair unwit players

in four acts of love

whose final chorus

a killing most foul

Curtain rises on Sparrow

as he sips from Love's hand,

and falls in the fading light

of her husband's eyes Long Do

We Mourn poor Quintus

while Lesbia merely laughs,

the motives of the male

too easily understood.

Quintus never saw it coming

and so to Catullus...

(Image: Turner, Ancient Rome, Aggripina landing with the ashes of Germanius)

2008-06-23T12:52:00.067-05:00

Ein - Sof

I have no story
only a word to tell.
It tumbles from my mouth
in a harsh and raspy whisper
The word becomes the story.
The word becomes planet,
bird and beast of the field;
The word becomes man.

I have no story
only a word to tell.
It tumbles from my mouth
in a bellow, in a roar
The word becomes the story.
The word becomes Moses
shouting "Let My People Go,"
The word becomes flesh.

I have no story
only a word to tell.
It tumbles from my mouth
in a blaze of light and glory
and the word becomes the story.
The word becomes barriers broken
and the sound of tombstones burst;
The word becomes.

(Image: Hubble Space Telescope, Composite of the Eagle Nebula)

2008-06-05T23:24:00.027-05:00

Transition

We should have had an inkling
when the geese refused to fly.
Saturdays we’d trudge through newfell snow,
we'd skate across the frozen lake
listening in the distance for the sound of
plaintive cries and the sense of

shadow overheard.

October November
on into December
they cried until the solstice
and an early morning call,
they cried until a cold voice.
We spent the day in bed
hiding under quilts and covers.
We spent the day in silence
because if you don’t say,
it isn’t so.

Next day we struggled into
worn flannels boots and down.
We trudged through a field
of untouched snow
stepped out onto the lake,
ears accosted by an empty wind
accompanied only by the sound
of silence.

(Image: Picasso, Blue Nude)

Fearless

2008-05-27T01:45:00.032-05:00

One of these days
I'll walk across the wire--
I'll dance across the wire

in misfitted toeshoes while

singing at the top of my

voice no care

for whether it cracks

no thought for whether

it's sharp or flat.

I'll dance across the wire

juggling balls and balloons

and when I fall
I'll jump back up
dust the dirt off my butt
and bow to the crowd
with a flourish.

(Image: Joan Miro, Singing Fish)

2008-05-05T22:45:00.047-05:00

Deus ex machina

It’s about coherence
take away coherence and
it all falls apart
Falls apart flies apart
flies into fragments bits pieces
as it flew in the bang before
God gave us gravity
Take away gravity
Subtract us to the sum
of our molecules but some
of our molecules
will hold to the glue
will hold to gravity
and gravity
is the glue that

holds our bodies to the earth holds
our feet into the dirt holds
our minds until the mind
makes its own rules meanders
Meanders flies
Flies into tangents
Tangents rants
Rants rages until
coherence pullsitbacktogether
and it keeps.

It’s about
coherence
take away
coherence and

it

ALL

F
A
L
L
S

A P A R T

(Image: Francisco Toledo, Self Portrait, Masks)

2008-05-03T20:24:00.022-05:00

Yellow Elephant

My father never had much
give for government
God knows if he paid his taxes but
he never completed the count and he
burnt his draft card and he
danced on its remains in a

robust salute to our dear Uncle Victor

most ironically lost in the war.

My father a digger At Woodlawn,
a white man with roses in his cheeks
until he turned Yellow.
Weeks on end he’d filled jugs
with jaundiced water
and on it went…
Uncle Sam stepped in and
shut the place down.
Social service stepped in with
endless questions
answers paid for with
surplus cheese and
oily peanut butter and
powdered milk that mixed
into the consistency of a gluey gruel.
My father a digger At Woodlawn until
Yellow reared its ugly head and
nearly broke the man
with no give for government
who was given no choice now
but to take.

(Illustration: Julie Paschkis, Yellow Elephant, A Bright Bestiary)

2008-04-17T13:16:00.017-05:00

Frozen

Sitting on the

front porch swing
between the men I loved
I'd hold their gnarled
workman’s hands and
listen to tales of

hardscrabble lives spent
laying railroad ties
logging on the River
interring last remains.

I’d hold their
watches to my ears
attuned to the passing of time
one tick followed another

hard upon
I held my breath
baited for synchronicity but
somehow Time never seemed to mesh
any tighter than the colors

of their

heterochromial eyes.

2008-04-04T13:14:00.047-05:00

Epiphany

My father dug graves
six days a week
Sun up/sun down
minimum wage money
housed and fed
seven children two grandmas
wife self
Once when a plane crashed
he was called to work on the Lord's Day.
Looking into the eyes
of the families of the dead
with expectations of
guilt or dread
instead---
Double Overtime---
a man digs graves
to feed his family
and sooner or later
Solomon comes to see
that the empty belly
surpasses the empty eye---
even on the Sabbath.

2008-03-27T11:05:00.022-05:00

Soul Hunger

My mother never fed us the song and dance
about starving children in China.
She’d serve up supper
and we’d have at it...
If not she took comfort
in knowing there would be
food for table tomorrow.

But one summer night
friends and cousins came
And the August air
Was heavy with the smell of roast pork
We sat ate laughed
and while the grown-ups
recalled and reminisced
we loaded our plates
with ribs redolent
of smoke and sauce
Outdoors we ran
while we feasted
children’s games

tag mother-may-I
pushing jostling
our grubby fingers clutching
the ribs as we savored them back to the bone
Just one more
and one small bite
was one bite too much
Pure satisfaction to fling
the meat laden bone
under the mulberry tree
to be found by my

mother next morning when
she walked the dogs.

(Photo: Al Clayton)

2008-03-09T21:27:00.043-05:00

Moved by Love

Love lies at rest in cool marble,
she sleeps in the silence of stone.
The artist moulds sculpts
her curves form under his fingers and
each caress becomes a prayer
a hymn to his longing for love.
At last she wakes moves speaks
in murmurs and whispers
words that have the power
to make strong men weep.
The artist takes her hand
as she Descends the pedestal
and in some dusty corner
Aphrodite laughs.

(Image: Jean-Leon Gerome, Pygmalion and Galatea.)

2008-03-05T23:51:00.024-06:00

Red Priest Among Gods
(Vivaldi's Autumn Sonnet)

Plentiful harvest and
the ploughmen
make merry,
carousing in song and dance.
The wine god smiles,
pours out his blessing
with a liberality that
speeds away all care.

At length
Bacchus and the autumn air
beckon conspire
the mirth of the grape dissolves
into peaceful languor.
Song and dance are cast aside
as the ploughmen surrender
to sleep.

---------------------

Early morning and
hunters burst forth

greet the November dawn with
guns dogs the call of a horn such

noise a lone stag

flies in terror furious chase

beast run to ground--
He attempts a
half-hearted escape.
At last overcome,
the oppressed embraces death.

(Image: Valazquez: The Feast of Bacchus [The Drunkards] )

2008-02-25T19:11:00.020-06:00

I am beginning to understand why these sonnets are not translated with much aesthetic sense in concert and liner notes. This one provided quite the wrestling match.

Il prete rosso

nell'estate

(Vivaldi's Summer Sonnet)

Under the merciless sun
shepherds languish
and so too, their flocks;
the pine tree burns.

A cuckoo raises her voice in song,
turtledove and finch form trio,
their warbling accompanied by the whisper
of an affable west wind.
But sweet-tempered Zephyr
is soon overtaken;

Boreas sweeps in
armed for battle.
A small shepherd weeps,
frightened by the winds
and by what lies ahead.
His limbs tremble
in fear of the oncoming storm
and of a furious swarm
of gnats and flies.

Ah, but his trembling is just,
a summer squall,
fearsome and fulminate,
cuts across the sky.
Spears of wheat fall
as hailstones reap
the proud fruit of

a poor farmer's labor.

(Image: Van Gogh, Wheatfield with a lark)

2008-02-18T11:04:00.046-06:00

In the Garden of the Red Priest
(Vivaldi's Spring Sonnet)

Spring arrives in exultation;
small birds greet her with song
and the brooks, kissed by the breath of Zephyr,
flow and murmur in sweet response.

Dark clouds appear,
announced by lightning and the
reverberation of thunder.
The sky is shrouded in black.

At last, sweet silence
broken by birdsong;
the meadow replies
in a dulcet rustle of leaves and grass.

The goatherd sleeps with
trusted dog by his side;
Nymphs and Shepherds

dance in delight,
led by by the drone of
a double reed pipe
Such is the rejoicing
at the radiant arrival
of Spring.

(Image: Georgia O'Keefe, Red Canna)

2008-02-12T20:37:00.024-06:00

Red Priest at Winter

(Vivaldi's Winter Sonnet)

Frozen,

shivering amid

the silvery snow,
we run from the wind’s cutting breath;
we batter and stomp our feet while
our teeth chatter in the bite of the wind.

Later we sit,

contented by the fire,

while rain falls with fury
on one hundred souls outside.

Outside again, we step gently,
cautious lest we fall to the ground.

We dash across the frozen pond
romping and racing
we fall jump up run
until the ice splits.
Inside, we hear the rushing winds
feel them course through the house
in spite of bolted windows
in spite of the locks on our doors.
Sirocco and Boreas,
the wind gods play at war.
This is winter,
but even in winter

we find joy.

(Image: New York Times....Justin's park.)

2008-02-04T00:04:00.002-06:00

"Meandering— what branches grow out of this stony rubbish?"

Early spring and
I stumbled upon
the palest pink blossom
bent near
breathed its pristine sweetness
a small bee intruded
a great buzzing and busywork
more bees
a muzzle
amuzzabuzz of bees
a droning over pink

One pale pink blossom
Such optimists…

(Quote: Dennis Kelly)

(Image: Jing Ling)

2008-02-03T22:54:00.000-06:00

Doxology for Ares

Have you been to Jesus for the cleansing power?
Are you washed in the blood of the Lamb?
Are you fully trusting in His grace this hour?
Are you washed in the blood of the Lamb?

They married beneath the linden tree
In the lower south forty-four,
She stood a stoic in her second day dress
As her soldier went off to the war.

O Yes she was washed but he was
bathed and baptized
bathed as he lay in the blood of his comrades
baptized in the blood of his brothers at arms
white blood black blood blue blood grey
no distinction
corpuscles mingled in fearful miscegenation
rivulets flowed into rivers
He was Washed in the Blood of the Lamb.

They laid him beneath the linden tree
In the lower south forty-four,
She stood dry-eyed as she bid him good-bye
Her soldier come home from the war.

Twenty years gone and
a thousand Sunday mornings spent
musing on the meaning of his life
questioning his death
days were her mind would revisit
the conflagration and the green
of the overgrown grass would jeer at her barren heart
while cornflowers mocked the memory
of his blue eyes.

He pledged her his life and days when
the worst came upon her
she envied the ancient Baucis
standing guard beside her groom
her linden roots enfolding bones and blood
absorbing death creating life
So two Shall be One.

She should have found her rest there
Beneath the linden tree,
When they buried her heart in a plain pine box
Gettysburg ‘63.

When the Bridegroom cometh will your robes be white?
Are you washed in the blood of the Lamb?
Will your soul be ready for the mansions bright?
Are you washed in the blood of the Lamb?

(Are You Washed In the Blood, c. Elisha A. Hoffman 1878)
(Image: Geneviève de Nangis-Regnault, published in Paris, 1774 - 1780 as "La Botanique")

2008-02-02T20:27:00.002-06:00

The Subversive
1953

"To Whom It May Concern: The white paintings came first; my silent piece came later." - John Cage

October onlookers
discomfited by white--
by shadows rising from white,
by the intrinsic recognition
that the shades of this life
are overtaken too soon
and conquered by those of the After.
Onlookers with Expectations of Beauty
or of an Afternoon’s Escape
instead greet Seven Specters
with fingers pointing
the predictable path to the grave
Seven Specters address
the inevitability of death.
Seven specters and
who understood this primal disquietude?
Fire and ice are so very nice
But oh to be pursued by shadows,
to give into temptation,
surrender to cool white.
The critics shook their heads
only Cage had an answer...
4’33 minutes
of silence.

A most interesting perspective the work of Rauschenberg:

http://www.tate.org.uk/tateetc/issue8/erasuregenteel.htm

Leaves of Grass

2008-01-27T00:02:00.000-06:00

I’ve seen the ghosts at Gettysburg,
spirits of heroes mown down in their youth
in sacrifice celebrated by Whitman,
the poet prescient in his vision of
atoms and blood-fed grass.

I’ve seen the ghosts at Gettysburg,
young men swept away
by love of country
or love of God,
ghosts whose father mother sister brother
comb the fields in attitudes of desperation,
whose wives and sweethearts
weep away their beauty
as they wander the graves
in search of truth.

I’ve seen the ghosts at Gettysburg
Rebel and Fed
called forth by tears.
They rise through the miasma
greet one another in the haze,
greet one another in blades of grass
atoms mingling,
greet one another as kindred spirits,

as confraternal souls

destined forever to walk

as ghosts at Gettysburg.

(Image: The Battle of Gettysburg, 1884, Paul Dominic Philippoteaux.)

Gettysburg, July 5, 1863

2008-01-16T22:43:00.001-06:00

And still they come
mothers and daughters
disconsolate sisters
lovers condemned by moira
to lives of
unbroken spinsterhood

Still they come
carrying armloads of lilacs

burying grief-ravaged faces
in bouquets of hyacinth and fading rosebuds
breathing deeply
as if to obliterate
the stench of death
while the image remains
indelible
Still they come
weeping weaving
sleepwalkers in shock

their dreams
lie dead upon the field

yesterday's bride looks on her beloved

covers her womb

hands unconsciously protecting

her unborn son

from the monstrosity

that would have been his father

can even heaven rejoin

this unholy mess?
Still they come
ears attuned only to the wind
listening for last words
scattered unheard
blistered hands dig through
pockets and dirt
search for memento mori
a blood-stained letter, “My Dearest”

a comb
a scrap of a hymn “Are You Ready?“
desperate hands

dig into hecatomb

seeking only assurance
that their heroes have died
a good death.

(Image: Confederate dead gathered at the edge of Rose Woods for burial, Gettysburg battlefield, July 5, 1863, by Timothy H. O'Sullivan)

2008-01-01T00:55:00.002-06:00

Negative Capability

I have given up Hyperion
Thus Keats washed his hands
of identity and certainty,
of the Niggling Encumbrances
that gnaw at the psyches
of Small Minded Men.
Enlightened Hyperion,
A GOD WHO KNEW...
but to what purpose?
Fear of death and darkness,
Endless brooding
on the fall of Saturn.

Meanwhile the Titan thumbed his nose
at the hapless Englishman
and thought back to own celebrity
in the days when the sun and stars
adorned the wrists of the gods.
He might have dabbled in dreams--
far better to become
a pillar than a poet,
to raise the universe
with brute force purchased
at the cost of his father's manhood.

I have given up Hyperion
Keats closed his eyes to the sun,

found lurking in shadow
the substance of Truth,
the weight of Beauty,
a universe free
of that which bound the masses.
Keats celebrated UNKNOWING,
bid adieu to self,
Became.

(Image: M.C. Escher, Three Worlds)

2007-12-20T11:17:00.000-06:00

The most common
form of suicide
is committed by Everyman
done in by
neverending performance
of social niceties…

Shallow Conversations
Liberally Peppered
with WonderfulMarvelous
OhHowNice.
the distressed soul,
AllIsWelled to death
One too many
Forays into
Congeniality
and it’s a Willing Plunge
into a grave dug deep
by Platitude.

(Image: Joseph Cornell, Inkblot)

Graduation Day

2007-12-08T20:40:00.000-06:00

Put on your silver dancing shoes
and waltz across the floor
the rabble grows impatient
but Life will wait
while you steel your soul.

Stars on the wall
take one with for luck.
Beyond the door
a dark abyss--
a what's-next crossed with wires,
foreboding but in the distance
Life shines.

Philip Larkin

2007-11-30T19:30:00.000-06:00

Train Wreck*

Who knows when you lost the muse--
maybe it started to go

back in nineteen-sixty-three,
along with your virginity
and the scratched up
Beatles album.
Maybe the first time
you heard Bechet’s stick…
Was the voice that fell like love
the inception of your silence?
Pure bliss to give birth to such noise
but the closest you came
was the poetry of the gutbucket
and so those evenings spent
with Kingsley
Ginned up at the pub
Staggering back to Monica
and the House on Hull…
Trampling the frail cut grass
Dreaming of the Bayou

while baying at the moon

over the imminent white hours of death.

*Train wreck: Event during the playing of a tune when the musicians "disagree" on where they are in the form (i.e. someone gets lost), so the chord changes and the melody may get confused for several bars, but depending on the abilities of the musicians (it happens to the best of them), there are usually no fatalities and the journey continues.

Charles Bukowski

2007-11-25T22:10:00.000-06:00

"Throughout his life, Bukowski held a series of low-paying jobs so dismal that they are unbearable to list, though he did keep a position as a mail carrier for many years...." (King of Pain, Jim Harrison, NYT 11-25-07)

Day after day
you carried my mail
and the days when you rang
I hid behind the door
until you gave it up,
hiding my packages
behind the rhododendron,
sticky note tacked to my door--
you've got mail...
How does one greet
such monstrous visage?
Lovely weather we've having?
You're looking well, Mr. B?
And one day I read
how the words had gone
how you’d waited to die
while Linda vacuumed
Nothing to declare…
If only I'd known of your love
for that godforsaken cat,

if only I’d asked Esmeralda.

2007-11-18T20:07:00.001-06:00

Cardboard Boat

The thing to remember
about Hope
is that she is
always elusive,
will o the wisp,
a wily little imp
who asks you to dance
and smiles sardonically
as she steps on
your toes.

In an unguarded moment
Is/Will Be
dissolves into
Was..
Separated as if by a hedge
grown high--
no passage through.
Voices on the other side
Whisper Taunt
What if /Would have
and should some oh so clever mind
Invent a machine,
a transport through time--
we would only
despair at the moon
howling over opportunity twice missed.

(Image: Odilon Redon, Bateau Rouge)

Beautiful

2007-11-09T17:57:00.000-06:00

He saw her bright hair waving on her neck;-- “How beautiful if properly arranged! ”
(Daphne and Apollo, Ovid)

Daphne my dear
you’re beautiful but
that curl would be far more
compelling tossed
casually over the shoulder.
Beautiful but
my dear that dimple
--precious, overstated--
subtlety rules
except when it comes to
The Twins...
Daphne my dear perhaps a tighter tee
would afford a lovelier view,
and those dainty little feet
--delicate shoes--
before we know it
Daphne New Improved.

I know you've dreamed
of days on the lea
spent hunting the prize of the herd
My Dear you've snared
a magnificent catch
--immortals die before me
sacrificial demeanor
breathless with desire
their loss your gain--
Dearest Daphne, I choose you
Delightful in every way
Dare I say "Perfect"

well perhaps...

Twilight of the Ice Nymphs

2007-11-04T18:05:00.000-06:00

They met in Mandragora
in the unfading light of the sun
and fell ever constant

until

obsession crept in--
hunger for the unhaveable--
they longed to kiss
in soft candlelight,
to wade hand-in-hand
in a gelid blue sea,
conceal love
in some dark corner
far removed from curious eyes.
But the eye of the sun
burned endless.

In moonless Mandragora
love is only a game,
satyrs at play
in sunpressed skin.
Love holds no mystery--
vision transparent
nothing unknown--

every flawed soul revealed
in the light, in the light,
no secret concealed
in the merciless light
of sunsurfeit Mandragora.

(Image: Dawn at Maggiore, Turner)

2007-10-23T22:55:00.011-05:00

Rejected

Questions unanswered
unasked for advice
so Succulent so Sweet
one bite..

The core
tossed carelessly to the ground
buried under a bush
foreshadowing rot
the dawn of decay.

Succulent
Sweet...
somehow she's forgotten the taste.
All that remains is
an angry bitterness
congealed to the roof of her mouth
and a memory of the day
she stood at the gate
watching sorrow
inhabit the eyes
of her Father.

(Image: He Qi, Losing Paradise)

Chosen

2007-10-16T22:11:00.002-05:00

Out of Bethlehem
I Call
out of faith
out of fear
she ran
while mothers wept
unconsoled.
Out of Egypt
I Call
out of faith
out of fear
(blind obedience)
she returned.
The wonder is
the women didn't stone her
or look askance
from the corners of their Eyes
comforting their daughters with
one day she'll get hers--
human nature.
Out of the depths
I call
out of faith
out of fear
thirty years later
she would come to understand
the ineffable liberation
of grief.

(Image: Flight Into Egypt, He Qi, 2001)

2007-10-12T17:56:00.004-05:00

Sonora Webster Carver, horse diver, Buffalo Bill's Wild West Show, Atlantic City. 1904-2003.

Notes on a Death at Ninety-nine

Sonora walks through
the tackroom,
looking back on a life well-lived,
considering the nature of miracles.
Blind men see
paralytics walk,
Answered prayer--
what purpose when
the masses applaud the ordinary
and the sacred becomes a circus.
Most open their eyes
to greet the new day
but take for granted
the wonder of a sunrise or
a single yellow flower
bending in the breeze.

Sonora Sees with her heart--
Seizes the moment
when the horse runs by.
Grabs onto life
with bare hands
Riding high whole unstoppable,
Sonora looks over her shoulder
and winks at the wind.

Sacrifice

2007-10-08T00:01:00.000-05:00

Asleep on her bed of roses
does she dream of better days
or look back on
the unseemliness
of secret assignations--
foes hiding behind curtains?

Her boy,
conflicted--
father issues
give it time.
But Empty Dreams
of Undiscovered Countries
stretch endlessly before.
No respite,
and so
to the flowers…

He could have erected a monument
to sadness and beauty,
or to her childlike trust in the world at large;
he could have honored
her simplicity…

Instead, Eidolon--
construct of sentiment--
Shadow of self.
She wakes and asks,
“Who is Ophelia?”
The pedestal falls.
He leaves her to fate
and holds fast to his dream of the girl
she might have been.

(Image: Ophelia Among the Flowers, Odilon Redon)

2007-10-02T13:27:00.000-05:00

AliceOphelia

fell into the mirror
escape is easy---

on paper.

Alice's questions
run off with her head
too big too small
the world's gone mad

and time is all

that matters.

Alice regrets her intrusion SEARCHES

frenetically for an exit FINDS
she's lost the key to the ladies' room

while the rabbit rushes on...

Sweet Ophelia goes gently,
the silken surface of the pond
mistaken for glass,
wades in
and the whisper of watergrass

lulls her softly to sleep.

2007-09-25T00:24:00.000-05:00

THEATRE OF THE ABSURD
(for Kevin)

Dear Mr. Barnum:

Please excuse Sisyphus. He is temporarily unable to fulfill his contractual obligations. I fear he is quite unwell.....

Sneering demons who'd look on and laugh,
Simpering imps who'd pat him on the back,
Half-hearted roars--tepid applause
Well-meaning patrons moved only by flaws---
Sisyphus phoned in sick.

Tired of the nothing--tents up tents down,
The sadness of peg-holes left in the ground,
A ton-and-a-half of elephant shit
High expectations--always unmet---
Sisyphus phoned in sick.

Haiku on Bruegel's Eyes

2007-09-24T14:52:00.000-05:00

The fisherman on

the pier wouldn't have dreamed of

gazing at the sun

while the ploughman sat

for lunch and longed for golden

days...no one looked up.

Pursuing life, none

saw Icarus fall, none grasped

the true weight of death.

All approached life with

a base mundanity that

belied its meaning.

(Thank you Dennis.)

Nietszche Loses his Mind

2007-09-24T01:40:00.000-05:00

Portrait of Sisyphus

in his personal hell;

does he lie back

and die in the fire?

does he sweatstrugglehope

pushthestoneupthehill

Sisyphus opts for

absurdity---

what better answer

to a world without god?

(Image: Frank Williams, Sisyphus)

2007-09-07T14:22:00.000-05:00

I've begun a study of Greek, and along with my readings in Ovid, this makes for some very strange dreams.

Conventional
(for Kristen)

Last night I dreamed
An all-girl bouzouki band
Came to my house…
They didn’t actually play the bouzouki
They stood at the end of my hall
and sang
The conductor was
Plato and
Demeter played diva
The chorus was sublime
I wanted to sing along
But in the end
I found their skirts
Entirely too short.

(apologies for the inside comment: But somehow I'm reminded of the genius we once knew who was impressed by the fact that his musical idol had never taken a lesson....I,IV,V7 HIKE!)

2007-09-07T00:00:00.001-05:00

MICRO/
MACRO:
Life as an Ant

Who wept first,
Niobe or Job?
Same story/different boats/
drifters on a
river of time;
not much to do
when the gods call the shots.
One day they're angry,
next day they're bored;
Lassitude creeps in--
the urge to toss the dice...

Men cry for justice
(as if we ever gave a thought
to the families
of the ants we squash)
Men question/shed tears/
dress themselves in pity/turn to prayer.
The immortals shrug and walk away
--- better things to do---
Eternity looms large,
even in the mind of a god.

Image ~ Oldřich Kulhánek /Job/ lithograph2002