Articulation's Progress

Born so stuffed with words
all we do is laugh or cry.

Pulse a deviant metre,
resonance sculpts its
scales in the ear.

Whispers inside engrave worlds
to find shelter in or escape.

Ultimately we cede expression and accept
the eternal peace of Heaven's boundless prospect.

Il fait très chaud

Intime oui

Sweet Depths and Splendor

Inauspicious Summer's Face

"Un souffle vague émeut les sphères vagabondes/Mais nul esprit n'existe en ces immensités."

Ode to Button Noses

Piquant and fine, exquisitely it doth blow.
Cloaking within crude hair and buggers that grow.
Peak raised high to savor best heaven sent scent.
These are the noses that tweak mine eyes ardent.

A Hike

Blue above soft as cheek's down,
wake of her scent buoys each step.
Grass bends pliant underfoot,
giving way like lovers' limbs.
Dew decks skin in dazzling raiment.
We stride in time to sylphs chirping.

Vampire's Tango

(all quotes from "How to Quiet a Vampire" by Borislav Pekić---from Postscript 2 "Professor Konrad Rutkowski's Secret Testament, Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus" and "Editor's Notes")

III.I. a. "An intelligent man must rationalize his murder logically, with higher motives, he must spiritualize it with ideology, complicate it with precedents, in brief---he must give it a theoretical foundation."

IV.4. "Nihilism proceeds in two directions that converge only at the conclusion. On the one hand everything is declared to be an illusion. Naturally, in a world of illusion, not even betrayal can be real. It too is illusory. If the world does not exist, there can be no betrayal of that world either. On the other hand, everything is worthless, primarily because it is illusory, but beyond that it's worthless in and of itself. Everything is empty, repetitive, past....And in a world of no value, betrayal can even be good. Because if this world is evil and condemned to ruin, everything that hastens that ruination is good."

IV.5. "Soon even words will become superfluous.They'll be replaced by the initial letters of concepts and then by numbers. People, of course, will keep suffering and dying, but they'll endure it more easily, because misfortunes will lose their critical significance for life and become logical categories."

IV.6. "Need it be stressed that an intellectual can only scorn such a life? The fact that he himself is to blame for it, doesn't take away his right to scorn it. On the contrary. That right thus becomes even more justified. Because who can know the shortcomings of his work better than the creator himself? But, at the same time, he fears life as well. He hates the life he's betrayed, a life that now, of course, doesn't offer him anything but new betrayals and deeper falls."

V.3. "Alienated even from our sense of guilt and, because that's our sole unmistakable mark, alienated from the essence of the world, we begin to hate that world, as if it had been created not by our own hand but had always been here. We flee from it in disgust into a molehill of personal security. We finally feel relieved. We think that a way out has finally been found and that the dichotomy has been resolved to everyone's satisfaction: reality is happy and all our principles are present and accounted for. Or as the Greeks put it: "Just as the bread is good, the dog is sated."

VI.2. If such insanity is given the opportunity to gain a foothold in history and become one of its driving forces, the results are worldwide movements, religions, fanaticisms, or collective missions, But if, on the other hand, these individuals fail to grab hold of history, they write delusional books or rush through the streets bearing crosses on their backs, foaming at the mouth and brandishing knives. In the first case, the escalation of insanity sometimes even assumes the guise of civilization. Entire state machineries are placed at insanity's disposal so it can create a new world with their help and according to its own warped image of itself. In the second case, the story ends in an insane asylum. When all is said and done, I have to say I don't see any particular justice in that.

Editor's Notes

"In part VI, section 2 of his Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus, in one of his lucid moments, Professor Rutkowski discusses the escalation of insanity in history. This is a significant and bitter confession for a man who openly agreed with Freud that "our greatest hope for the future lies in the Intellect(the scientific spirit, reason) over time attaining a dictatorship in the inner life of mankind."(It has already almost reached this state, but nothing in our lives is any better.)"

My Imaginary European Friends II

An arrow shot into the Sun
above sky blue seas---
We swam and kissed clean
salty skin.
Méta's tan arms and face,
dark hair stroked by breeze,
hoop earrings swinging in time,
yellow floral top sans bra
foregrounding erect nipple...
Her eyes penetrated mine.
We eclipsed the Sun,
outstripping curtained worlds.
Our eyes always entwined
but aware of everything else,
a backdrop to being
inside each other.
Her image on dark glass
a better shade than Helen's---
never inspiring bloodbaths,
only carnal immersion.

My Imaginary European Friends I

First place must be given to the State Dept
funded scholar in Madrid, gracious as she's severe.
Stern and glorious face, so beautiful it's
terrifying. Says everything and still shushes
with the mystery of all beauty.
Her mother of ancient Prussian Nobility,
father a wealthy Mediterranean merchant.
She picked up chain smoking and
self doubt from him, hauteur and
spontaneous grace from her. We fell
out taking opposing sides
when a celebrity mocked
the Fascist granddaughter
of a dead Fascist.
She had the misfortune of knowing
everything(Faith) and valuing nothing(God)---
including herself who, she'd always say,
"Fell short."
Her mother adored Rilke. His precious
letters to Prussian Noblewomen, redolent
with flattery and polished sentiments, gave
her immense pleasure. Every time I
eliminated or passed gas, regardless of
what orifice issued from, I knew our
tenuous bond would sunder. 
She rarely talked about her father. Save
for reservations about smoking, which
she shrugged off as a "Catholic thing".
I thought of my habits and...
I miss her more than I fear 

her disapproval.

De Natura Kirsten

To Mnemosyne

Hair blonde April sunshine,
neck's down velvet lamb's-ear...
Eyes clear Aegean noon,
laughter blessed birdsong...
Smile a Parian quarry.

Her kiss a pleasant Sirocco,
sweet as pink Moscato.

Verbose but verbless strokes...

Clauses and similitude mount
feral as her thighs grip.

In starry shade

Raysun d'Être

In this Duchy of Downpours
the Sun is an ideal.
It shines bright when we close eyes,
blinds keen as a kiss.

The well lit streets shine up
and shade damp clothes dull.
The sky's frown is shunned
as crowds seek shelter
in dry oases of gold light
and white décor.

Close to Close

"We lost you there", the nurse whispered.
Took his bite then his breath,
as rain buries sunshine.

Crystal lauded in exalted tones
of mystics describing transports
of bodies flooded with Holy Spirit.
Daybreak hunting mushrooms in wet grass
and the soft musk of soaked leaves...

Fair is fair, like ecstasy and death.
He touched both and knew mysteries.
Poets plying wordsmithies never
sing sweet as birds at sunset.

Close to close,
they cut off his clothes
before they burned
him to powder
fine as Crystal.

Helen Unshaded

Every ray of Sun strokes me
with the lustful warmth
of a sharp stylus' prick.
Flame gushes from heaven,
anointing my form in fire.

I am the world, idol of all.
Unwritten name on
every book's cover,
idolatry be damned.

Leash Life

The Snow Maiden

To freeze or bleed to death is the same.
One welcomes warmth as life wanes.

The Snow Maiden
culls gelid hearts.

Her touch intoxicates,

a pitiless elation.

She does not believe in tears.

They, like breath, turn to ice

which breaks on heartless earth.

Ovid at Sea

My step wise to every rise
in the cobblestones of Rome.
I stumbled at Julia's backdoor
and Rumor whispered
my name in August ears.

Careful to hush His Ganymedes
and legacies He forced
  His offspring to suffer,
Augustus hurled thunderbolts
   from Olympus.

Verses my fame, now my Lake Trasimene!

Women of Rome,
How can I live without you?
Your tales, smiles,
tails, and scents Mnemosyne
cannot resuscitate.

Inauspicious undulation of the Sea...
my gut sinks, but not so low
as my heart.

Death is Noble, Dying Ignoble

Life abhors the dying
and honors death.
The living hasten
their span of breath
into ground or urn
and call it rest.

Dying lust,
feral and unseemly,
honors life in greedily
rasping its last gust.

Proud life scorns to draw a breath
and welcomes the firm grip of death.

Quarantine

Orange cones, barbwire, and signs mark the terminus,
streets barren as salted earth.
No rustle of footsteps, murmur of voices, or crisp flutter
of birds in flight. The drone of electricity and motors gone.
The hollow city stretches like skeletal remains of a mythical giant
for miles. Haven't touched another hand or face for months.

When the contagion spread black wings over the city
it disdained to take me. My wife and two children lasted two months.
I still have pictures. I've built palaces for them in dream.

When the military came to cordon off the city they didn't
bother rescuing survivors because, I imagine, they suspected
we carried contagion or were in league with it.
Probably made up a name for us like "Viral Terrorists".

Run into others at least twice a week. I keep my distance, avoid
eye contact, and dare not speak. I resent other survivors more than my
own survival.
Down to three cans of soup, two boxes of cereal, and five water bottles.
Each day brings fainter whispers of miracle.

I hate this life. I fear losing myself and memories of those I love more.

Sobriety Cruise Lines

The boats are all sober.
Passengers drink sweet cocktails
on disinfected decks,
Redskins dead or fronting Casinos
for Western Capital.
Endless green seas stretch
under gray heaven.

The cash boxes and
prison ships have won.
Arthur hails from
the virgin page,
"Smash them!"
Nobody hears
over the calm drone
of gray-green
above and below.

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.