Holiday Bubble

Galley

    INRI on the calyx of
   our cumbrous garlands,

   if we could skip
       and gush:

                    "Smiles open for
                      mirth gathering
                         les abeilles..."
      (light tongues hum floating cadences).

Breach in the plank
    you prettily
      translate
  Phoebe's beam

         We laugh
       at the bonds
        of restraint

 And wonder below raiment
       of stolen heavens.

Celestial Lute

Cold light trickles
  down shoulders.

Eve's breath tickles
   burning ears.

Stars weep crystal in
  Luna's tilted basin.

                         Under heaven,

with rusty cups
and hollow eyes,

                        we pray teardrops
                        kiss brittle strings.

The Do Undone

She emerged from clouds of hairspray,
gold of her hair in radiant array
as jeune Deneuve midst parapluies,
a Lucrezia d'Este parting rough seas.


Time's coarse hand dulls lively sheen
and pans such splendor to the iron mean.
So cruel the curl unwinds to limp tangles
mournful skies rain tears of Angels.

Señor Verde

"My poor spark had for its source, the Moon"

Blinding Light, Abundant Haze, and Silence

Smell the Columbine

Moon Dog

Artemis Tree

Memorial Spleen

Why should memorials to security failures that fueled wars on nations that had nothing to do with it and, to this day, are still being bombed be built? Making 9/11 "Patriot Day" is masochism that begs more sadism. It's not a day to celebrate or for us to bask in nationalist ignorance. It should be a day to reflect on why it happened and what this nation, in our name, has done since: visited thousands of 9/11's on people who were not responsible. Mining a massacre for nationalism is the lowest form of propaganda which promotes much greater massacres. 9/11 Memorials themselves are a symptom of a greater problem. Tear them all down and you'd see less people abroad getting killed daily for no reason and "terrorism" evaporate. You'd also see less military spending and more money for people--like healthcare, education, and pensions. But some people are addicted to a nationalism that views war/violence(cops) as the only solution. Any person who resists this view is a nail to be hammered. It's a sickness that afflicts this nation. Makes people praise and uphold evil as something to take pride in and hate anyone who disagrees to the point of wanting them dead.

Ruse of the Infinitesimal

Though touching, space is infinitely divisible, haunted by phantom digits.

Feeling is approximation, the ubiquitous suggestion of energy. Waves of heat tender emptiness to felt plenitude.

Words cast a bridge of blanketing waves to console.

Starspill

Panes keep me from night skies.
Stars spill through my hands.

There wishes drain,
stars venerated in name.

Questions summon craving
and drag down the moon
'til it shines full inside.

The vertigo of saints
held so long from clay
wherewith we all come
my dreams crave.

Endless night
of stars and
sovereign light
nothing eclipses.

To eternally love in articulate time:
Split infinity, the circle squared by rhyme.

"...Pray it makes a crack"

The Mendacity of Oracular Pride

Start at 52:55 until the end. "America is Back!" "Gaddafi is dead, Assad is on the way, Al Qaeda is on the run in Yemen and elsewhere, and we got Bin Laden!"

Jellyfish and Crustacean on a Sea-Bed of Sky

"No More Peripheral Vision"

L'Amour peintre

Saloniki

        I

At Saloniki
 the Empress lacks
Corybantes to
    obscure her purple.

Chlorus comes but

her head must go.

Harsh light
   shoves her down
 saltless hills.

          II

We lost five weeks and
 columned a dread span,
 heads lost in 

 Wednesday's van.

 White horses stride past.
       

In shade they cast sight

to grim alloyed light.

Île de la Cité

Barricades glitter like shrapnel of fallen stars.
Bayonets flash Basilisk grins in the square.

A hidden arc of love stretches across metallic rubble.
Pink scarf clouds drift above unseen by clerks.

A mother's sigh hovers noiseless over the jet Seine.
Two gamin scatter as heaven shakes their reflections on dark water.

Thieves treasure daylight when sons slight mothers.
On it goes, silent as shushed sighs, to La Santé.

Sister Amalie cries.
The rope is taut.
No bead, no hosanna,
can loose Justitia's collar.

                                Let us pray for the grace
                                of every gutted chest's hollow. 

                                Light a candle of mercy
                                to hush the amputee's bellow.
                                                 
     

Sensibility

 
     It dawns slowly. Claudia wished her sense and the world were more harmonious. 

   She grew tired of the wait. Wishes without constellar aid equal overreach or, put

   poetically, a fall. Like meteors they consume themselves before touching ground. 

   Claudia never touched for groping. Never spoke for shouting. Her ears were cupped 

   by the din of her own bell. The bell rings and, sadly, dinner's never served.

   
                     A sensibility that starves makes hours of seconds.

Cloud Mirror

Lisbon

In her eyes
      narrow streets open
       
     From her mouth
            sultry air blows

        over Estremadura

    Dark Amphioness,
           Lisbon remembers
   
  Her beauty,
      crafted in song,
        stands

       The Tejo
  slips through open
         hands.

                         
                         

   

Revelation

"Just as technology is always revealing nature from a new perspective, so also, as it impinges on human beings, it constantly makes for variations in their most primordial passions, fears, and images of longing."  Benjamin, The Arcades Project, K.

Word

      What is told
         another takes,

Spirited away
   by reckoned steps.


Anoint tongues
in endless night

  and teach
   Godless
    rhetoric.

A Vigil

                  I

It matters not the Sun rose
  above measured breath.
Will morrow bring the same?
   Will her body cast
    its winsome frame?
This bed, a familiar shell,
       purls my name.

               II

What foam did she rise from,
           Poseidon?
   Suppose gold locks
obscured Phoebus' eyes
        as she shored...
  The Gods' smiles set
     'neath her pillow,
lost in futile approximation.

             III

Thro' unbroken night,
   still hours centuries,
    stroking her hair...
   Overlooking dream
            deceive
between world and world.
   

Else

Heavy fog swathes the pallid cone of Helicon.
 No longer touched
   by paternal light,
 Maidens scatter
    to lower lying vales.


A thread was lost.
  The boughs hush
     their plaintive hymns.


Mother's arms awkwardly crown this wearisome head.
No longer touched
   by maternal light,
my face descends
     to her lenient breast.


A thread was found.
   The cloth stills
     my plaintive sobs.

Counterpane

Paula draws the counterpane gently
and settles in sleep's misty close.

Lazily I drift to the largo of her inspiration.

At the desk lies a book
unevenly parted by
my left hand,
I read the legend:

           "Absolute Freedom and Terror"

                     A nimbus parts the son's hair.
                     His head settles a copse's lassitude.
                     Mother is the soft moss he rests upon.
                     The counterpane, a softer lid, covers eyes.
                     A shadow show murmurs 'til Father stirs.

Carmen

Song shines in those eyes.

Claw them out,
Heave them up
skies.

Night, like heavy fragrance,
sated with love's scent

Strangles the sweet breath
       of paradise in
          melody.

Imagining Holly

                  I

         Blue thread
          hung from trousers,
        vestigial hems calling
              for shears.

    Mother stilled me
       and fell the errant
          cloth.

   White sheets cover
       the desk my brow
     shed its first
         dew.

             II

 Ash fell
   from a cigarette
 on an empty page.

 Her finger
   pressed it flush,
      smearing a dark trail
     sinuously down...

   A lock of Holly's hair,
   like Christ's face in clouds,
     was the word made.
                                                                      She wants
                                                                       clear windowed silence.
                                                                      She, rendered still.

      III

 She sent the sun.     
  On its face                                                She is under the sign,
translated                                                         an order:
Michelangelo:                                              Please
"I blame the mistress                                        remember nothing.
   I was born to serve."                                    Simulacra, the Dead's liturgy,

Postmarked "Siena, 2013".                             Passed by sleeved
                                                                              hands.
Siena eclipsed Lisbon.
The ships, dismasted,
    off shore.

     IV

Paula blew
  smoke from pursed lips
as we walked narrow streets
    stretching to shore

Where listless
    crafts
gently rock
on sun-dipped
    blue.

   Her ash fell to sand
  covering our wreathed path.                               She is the sign.
                                                                                  The world's chant:
                                                                                She, she, she, she, she
                V
                                                                                      Passed by naked
      The lamp burned                                                                hands.
    low upon
        arrival.

Locks fade to ash.

     Like Holly's face
   in the creased photo
     adorning a staircase,
    accompanied by
       Sun.

             VI

Paula smothered the lamp
     and curled sinuous
      beneath sheets.

Lisbon mounted Siena,
     Our bodies, displaced,
   at Sea.


         VII

Smoke shot from
   creased lips
as I discard
  these pages.


       
                                                                           

     

A Hush

"Old Adorno"

"You have said my fortune shall be forty thousand crowns; this you would not scruple to pay down upon the nail to any old curmudgeon, deformed, abject monster that shall hit my mother's foible. For if she says it must be done, there's no remedy. We must both consent, though my eternal quiet is sacrificed to her capriccio. Such a one I'm informed she is in treaty with -- old Adorno, you know him, my dear papa -- but what are his large possessions to me? I shall ever hate him."

                         
                       
                        --- The New Atalantis, Volume Two, Delarivier Manley, 1709.

Nice

P.R.N., IM

    

Was he good for you?
          Was he what you wanted him to be?






Annis MCMLVIII-MMXVI
    

Nice Plumage

Irish Rain

Rainfall casts constellations of drops
                    on panes.

The limp face of a lone daffodil droops
                    in rain.

Melancholy and dry a writer dreams
                   of mains.

Overhears boatswain's curse as craft drifts
                 off plane.
               
               
               
               

Au Revoir Rose

Rose swallowed the globe and paints kitchen walls
with a fingernail polish brush,
arabesques of cherubs every three inches.
Her son chokes from a case of thrush
as she hums a fugue never written.

There is a place,
  a tropic bay,
 where cherubs
    fly away
as, at sixteen,
  her boy
  opens his veins
and pales
   like a pagan martyr.

The day when Rose whispers to a love,
     "You're so much like my son"
             as cherubs weep
            down dirty walls.

Merle Haggard, Pre-Jingo Years

Touch to Flank, Limp Away from Struggle

Fragment on Geek Culture

Geek Culture is a technocratic cult.

It produces and distributes everything in the most efficient and stylish fashion possible(slave labor it relies on remains obscene--in every sense), at hand for all to enjoy. Here it echoes Heidegger's dream of an "at hand" culture in unity and totally mobilized. From the banal pretensions of a Joanna Newsom album, an Uber ride, to tearing down "slums" to provide "upscale" housing for young "tech savvy" professionals, it incessantly boasts this relation to product as the summit of free human experience. It is the gentrification of all cultural production/consumption.

The Geek is a well heeled and efficient navigator of the "global culture", an Uber Flâneur.

Sunset II

At the Concourse

They speak bloodless portmanteau.
Nothing they'd own,
but assume is their own.

No talk of morals.
No prison camp cadavers
or tear gas tears,
pass over obscenities.

With bold hued cloth dicks
and flag pins bright as Sun
they have grave matters to run.
Please keep the lines moving.

Nuance

Real Fascists

Wannabe Fascist

Pretty Dissolution

Bruised Heel

A Cut

Locks fell like one hundred lock-pickers broke into my head. Cat was gently solemn, an accomplice.

Eye is the First Eaten

Where to Put It

Head Lost in Representation

       Bizzarie di Varie Figure, Bracelli.

She Bakes Kicks in the Wall

She bakes kicks in the wall.
She briskly climbs to fall
from atavistic monkey bars,
and bumps her head 'gainst spiked stars.

She augurs holes in dark skies
where furnaces sear raw eyes.
She charts a hidden home
above that all, alone.

Selene

    Amber eyes rise
    warm rays stroking cheek.

Dew kisses as
fragrant heavens speak:

         "A million needs to tend."

 Numbers arbitrary, sleep is certain.

Turn back cheek's eccentric measure
and serenely net surveyed pleasure.

La bonne donnant remerciements

Thetis

Obsolete Edit of Old Slogan

                 

                       "Globalism is the last refuge of imperial scoundrels."