"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.