Grave Solace

The Dead know our hearts.
They can list every
insult and lie calmly.
This is their Heaven and Hell.

Still, liberation is theirs.
No longer must they live with us.

Take solace.
The day comes when we'll know
living hearts just like them.

"Where are the Bichons of Yesteryear?"

Oracle

Blue skies and blades of grass,
Rising seas and red leaves,
Exquisite the scaffold
and tyrant's severed head
as flames lick armories.

The Hulks

  I'm never the shipwreck,
    but ever the wreckage
     
    Lyre like lungs sails
       plucked by tides
       and sea monsters

    Bones rotting wood
      dismantled by the
        circumambient
     vale of briny tears
     
  From these depths
  the Sun wanes pale
   as an unreachable
     pill promising
           peace.



   

Australia is on Fire

Saturn

Shackled in shame behind the Sun,
thoughts ripened
by everlasting night
and set on vengeance,
He returns from exile.

Ravenous,
He craves
all living flesh
that mocks Him.

His hunger never sated.
No rest until,
belly bursting,
splitting a grin,
everything taken,
proudly He leans back
pruning the masticated.

Holidaze

"En ce temps que j'ay dit devant/Sur le Noel, morte saison,/Que les loups se vivent de vent/Et qu'on se tient en sa maison" François Villon, Le Lais.

Nyxed

Dusk unadorned
                             (shade figures
                              all bodies in
                              brooding relief)
awaits opulent Nyx.


She lets her hair down
                                      (festooned with diamonds
                                       sometimes dimmed by
                                       a large pearl brooch)
and untangles splendor.

Cradle Moon

"...and in the soft, pale brilliance of the night she sensed a preternatural stirring, the tremor of impossible hopes, as though bliss were on the breeze."

Limbs Read

"I have witnessed the wood's insomnia/And the fields at rest."
Milestones, #65, Marina Tsvetaeva.

At the Protest

At the protest with the committee approved placard and appropriately colored
hat you showed respect for authority. You thanked the police for their service
as they arrested you. If their fellow officers roughed up some of your comrades,
maybe they deserved it. When you were quickly bailed out the pride of accomplishing
a civic duty filled you. You rushed home and told family and friends about your
adventure. How you behaved with strength and dignity! Alone you managed to spare
                a thought for your less fortunate friends still locked up.

Cannae

Fond gold of full summer Moon kisses skin like smitten Sun.
Under heaven's favor en route to the crowded concourse
my heart was pure, no expectation polluted
blood flooding my body with tenderness.

Doors opened and there she stood
exquisite as a deposed Queen.
Never so stunning in white
that bound and abashed.

Kings long passed slaughtered thousands
for a woman's favor and I understood.

To dishevel her hair I threw the top down.
The stereo blasted to nix small talk.
Inhuman to look so captivating.
Incensed, I punctuated a terse "goodnight"
with violent embrace.

Home,
spirit and sense snuffed,
I curled like smoke
under red sheets
and dreamt massacre.

My Little Angel

"Dogs read the world through their noses."--J.R. Ackerley. (Angel's expressive eyes tell a different story.)

September

Tumble of buds when leaves blush hues.
Summer brides and grooms imbue
Harvest Sun's mantle.

Rain dampens tender
as maternity's kiss,
life dishevels hair.

The crisp scent of bark,
carried by clement wind,
assents air's clarity.

Fire This Time

The crab's girdle fastens tight and the fire this time stops breath.
Wheezing poets cough up spiritless ash not verse.

Amazon's crown fires glow infernal
as composed blue blood flows formal.
Abattoir sans souci douses alarm in tranquil
appeal to the practical grace of technology.

The Amazon still burns.
Buy Oxygen tank shares
and profit off the prescribed
sharecropping of fresh air.

In every holocaust there's opportunity.
Let it burn, strangle billions to death,
to rake up greener leaves with impunity.

Yes, darling, the Amazon is burning,
but will our world ever stop turning?

Tiny Bird Bows Under Chalk Mark Moon

Every Limb Stretches to Sun

We're All Watermarks

The Sky and Bonfires

Atrocity Camp

Poetastrophe

Breathless and garrulous vendors of spirit,
ambassadors of banquet table homage,
itinerant apostles of eternal swindles!
Ten thousand mirrors in space
capture it all!
Paeans for every matricide and rapist,
the glories of war and rapine,
how sweet to sing famine
gorged to the chins!
Laying waste forests
and naming it a piece
for a negotiated percent
from the publishing house of
Penbuzzard and Accidental Hovel!
The Muses sold Helicon avant crash and reside,
luxuriously enough to make Sallust blush,
at a Château just south of Perpignan.
Naive, Inc drains the Hippocrene
to make energy drinks
for fitness club Dandies
                                         as Poetasters cram reams and screens
                                         while Poets in urbane garrets die of thirst.

Curtain Fall Oak

       Limbs rise
     to open palm
         leaves.

   The sinister wrist,
shattered then broken,
     never touches
         ground.

Gold curtain heavens
    overhead tempt
  like beauty's shade
  behind translucent
          blinds.

Angler

Seize strains
  of Sun sweetly
 falling string.

Dive deep
  with temptation
 impaled
  shiny hook.

I've cast deep into blue.
Impression dilates
in concentric spheres.

The fatal moment
  when mouths close.
  My stick bends
 to the sad weight
  depths hold dear.

               In the clear,
                  twist tail, gasp on thin air--
                          find breath in a bucket.

         Your vanquished eyes
               never close.

Tares

We bend to abstruse meandering but
  poets sup on wishes to be written.

      We shun the inexorable end,
 while poets sing want's incantation.

     Essence true unthinkable
         with so much plastic
                   within
             this hunger for
      the captivating twilight
                of covered
                  mirrors.

Sebald's Lust (A Death Machine Farce)

                   Sometimes devastation is like being carpet bombed with pleasure(Written by me as a line Sebald would have composed after inspecting rubble of Raqqa).



(No surprise W.G. Sebald tirelessly labored to bury ruins under fine phrases like Pentagon/NATO spokespeople gallantly regret leveling cities far from their "homeland".)

Calypso's Tears

He was false,
  but dawn rested
 on his word.

No Adonis,
    but he snared
 with net surer
   than Hephaestus'.

His arms warmly
    received me.

  With words sweet
as curséd pomegranates
   his cool breath
    stole into me.

This song
  runs aground
damp cheeks.

To him it was.
In me a sunken whisper remains,

 
         As the white mote grows fainter
                on monotonous blue.





 

Hairfall

One "t" bends knees, a plaintive close of eyes--canticle of delicate gestures. 

Bright Acre

All eyes heliotropes

Birth of a Rose in Monochromatic Bliss

Eyes dazzled by daylight's blast.

Belle Chair

Asymmetry is the croisée of seduction.

From a Terrace (Aosta)

Sleek hair spills cursive on skin,
hue cinnabar scent hyacinth,
spells forms pliant.


                                     Bise kiss gusting
                                     as light tucks wing
                                     to brisk evening.

"...in this great convict-settlement"

     "Wealth and despotism easily know how to engage those laws as the coadjutors of their oppression, which were first intended for the safeguards of the poor."

                      --- Caleb Williams, William Godwin, Vol. 1, Ch. IX.

"...quick to capture the fleeting apparition of spirit?"

Je suis le saint, en prière sur la terrasse...

Miscarriage

Miscarry,
broken berth,
nothing's mooring.

Pregnant absence
lifelong for the
lifeless silence

That breaks earth in
the heart beating
solely for two.

Tryst/Triste

     Smiles faint
          watermarks,

     tears glint coy
          as morning dew.

     Threshold leaves
of tight lipped goodbyes
   and chaste lullabies
            shed.

Regina coeli, laetare

Corpus Domini Jesu Christi proficiat tibi in vitam aeternam

"Et voici dans l'air bleu..."

assis au bord du ciel splendide

Dallage

             

Hovelescense

             Behold
      broken windows
        toothless grin.

   Beams climb above
      crooked floors
   like fractured bone.
                           
                                      Death hails
                                      vigilant life
                                  with green blades
                                pricking floorboards.

 
       

Fall

Blue light
  eddies above,
soft, invoking.


         Ichor empties hearts,

                          making ground
                           we alight upon
                                  shine.


     Like a love's
       departure
 with close winged
         goodbye,

   
                             Angel take wing.


                      Austere skin pales wanting
                           warmth's velvet kiss       

Wake

            Gasp of sunlight strikes eyes.

                   No leg to stand on,
                  but everyone walks
                           to drive.

               Dawn,
short grass thirsts for light
         to accite dew
         as day shouts
  from more mouths than
                Set.

Americana, A Series of Invectives #1

  Alternative hair color 101:
Best a birthstone shade,
    the cheapest transcendental;
you're almost there.
 Rustic ingénue stripper,
  come with canned laughter
and praise chorus
   of aspiring masturbators.

Slake

to Rabi


      The scent, passion overcomes senses.
      Abandon grasps the reins of tresses.
 
                               
                      Inspired flesh
                   exhales lush musk
                      as lips imbibe
                        cola kisses.
       
         

The Breaks

 
A beautiful air is never content to bend blades of grass to breaking.
                      They give way, rhythmically,
                                   to the heart
           beating hooves that kick up cobblestones.

 Blades shine in the heart's vale.
           They are my own,
 Hard and sweet as cherries bit to the pit
                  on tongues.


Savor bit tongues.
Embrace crushed limbs.
Love choked breath.

       
            The shipwreck breaks beautiful on beholding eyes.

On Mistakes

               Give space,
                       indulge,
                  and know
                  effacement
                    must be
                   ruthless.

Woke Antic

Eclogue II

                             

                                     Klonopin Sun steeps exurbia in muted Gold

Legend

                                      Maps are flat out novels.

Mirror Proteus

City Limits

Unlimited light, billboards, and warehouses line highways. 

Skyline's beacons rise like sentinels. 

Its halo stretches overground and crowns skies. 

Suburban coquettes, organelles of the city,

Jena logic dissemination...

thesis of a billion endless syntheses. 

Progression allows no antithesis, no negation. 
Annulling frontiers as lit towers prop heaven.

Woolf, Women and War

"How else can we explain that amazing outburst in August 1914, when the daughters of educated  men...rushed into hospitals, some still attended by their maids, drove lorries, worked in fields and munition factories, and used all their immense stores of charm, of sympathy, to persuade young men that to fight was heroic, and that the wounded in battle deserved all her care and all her praise? The reason lies in that same education[for marriage]. So profound was her unconscious loathing for the education of the private house with its cruelty, its poverty, its hypocrisy, its immorality, its inanity that she would undertake any task however menial, exercise any fascination however fatal that enabled her to escape. Thus consciously she desired 'our splendid Empire'; unconsciously she desired our splendid war."

                                     
                          Virginia Woolf, Three Guineas.

A Glimmer Leaps the Thicket

"The Strange Hell of Beauty"

Light Descends

Virescens

Sunlight forges
white gold.
                          All colors imbued,
                              save green,
                               with lust.

Green grows bold
ripe blades cut
by forged blade
to ripen.


Green is life outlasting
pale bones broken by root.
Green is death escaping
leaves shed for greener shoots.

Angel at the Crossroads

Trakl Tree's Sky Kissed Leaves

Morocco Became Cloud

Trakl's Tree

Winds solicit limbs of this tree, shedding leaves of Trakl's poetry.

Who Faults Skyclad Eyes?

Limb and Leaf

       

"Put forth thy leaf, thou lofty plane,
East wind and frost are safely gone;
With zephyrs mild and balmy rain
The summer comes serenely on"
In stratis viarum IV, lns 1-4,  Arthur Hugh Clough.

Summer in Romagna

      In castles of endless afternoon
            eyes shine like Suns

Fascism and Terror

 

    "There is a widely held opinion that the fascist terror was just an ephemeral episode in modern history, now happily behind us. That opinion I cannot share. I believe that it is deeply rooted in the trends of modern civilization, and especially in the pattern of modern economy.
   "Indeed the reluctance to face squarely and explore fully the phenomena of terror and their implications is itself a lingering phenomena of the terror."

                        ----"Terror's Atomization of Man", Leo Lowenthal


    "Unless you are prepared to be pitiless, you will get nowhere...Domination is never founded on humanity, but, regarded from the narrow civilian angle, on crime. Terrorism is absolutely indispensable in every case of the founding of power...Even more important than terrorism is the systematic modification of the ideas and feelings of the masses. We have to control those."

                       ---- Adolf Hitler in recorded meeting w/ Hermann Rauschning, quote from same work

               

Fragrance

 

     Lips brushing your warm neck,
       Nostrils flare to flame
           breath of pores

  Sacred murder of
       flowers and Hellfire
         forging desire


Pungent Baubo
  sways limbs
 
We lie left
    of golden apples

Scent swathes dream

Senses capitulate
to vertiginous sensation

       
It never leaves----
remembering when
       breath deepens

squall

bruised clouds
cover the sun

streets blush black from grey

a lightning strike
cracks God's jaw

                                    as mortals seek shelter
                                       from heavenly ire.

Life/Light

                   

Cholera

     The baser pole voids wisdom,
these fouled sheets a generation's labor.

Life so acutely sensed in youth's searing summer,

               when words served me.

Time consumed chasing after absolutes...
Friedrich, Christiane. Alas, there is no relief.

         Ashen twilight shrouds
           all forms ascending
             immutable dusk.

Nanette, a kiss before

  breath's task ceases.

Petals of the Sun (Phaëthon's Ashes)

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.