LOVE ON A MOUNTAIN TOP

A thousand stones

in the sky-

diadem, unidentified,

strobing, errant superego 

parts the cumulonimbus

like a curtain of hair.

Long ago, we gave

these bodies to them.

Skies throbbed

ecstatic.  Nothing but

barbed wire to helix

this coil now.   

The Caduceus

shoots a flame

for purgation.

Serpents squeeze 

the barrel, the herm 

squirts petroleum

& lucre.

That which cannot be owned

abhorred.  Skin soft &

smooth for encoding,

the name branded, the price

too.  The oldest trick

a lame duck

bookless until the universal

language can only say

check please.

HANG UP YOUR HANG UPS

 

A nation

of trouble

erroneous

genesis

censors

censure

in the stocks

& on the lawns

terrible

arpeggio

in the dreaming

a bad bone

flexes

its narrative

what they knew

would be

all along

the awful

seminal

crooks

lay down

in worsted

grey hair

the old speech

still holding

oceans

the feet

of braves

over sickly

flames

WHAT'S IT GONNA BE?

A landscape unrolls

A knot of roads

A basement, a telescope

7 flowers of the prism

Gap-toothed compass rose

Constellations wheel above

Roots gather below

Vintage in the cellar

Ghosts in the furnace

Skeins of tragedy, motes

Of comedy, so long

Since we gave names to homes

Or lived in them

HOLD ON

Though another imagined end,
     a row of nosegays
erupt from the buried
     clavicle, debris
dances to fill
     a vacuum, water to fill
the hollowed-out
     temple.  8 or 9
clouds to fill
     the droopy head.
No rope
     trick, just a yellow
balloon.  Microorganisms'
     parthenogenesis, a lifetime
of 2-minute songs
     stacked end to end
to end the dance
     of Maya, illusion is
as hands must be
     hands
to get the record flipped.

ANGEL BABY

A crystal comma
       in a silo, voice
like tinkling glass.
                    Dendrites
a thousand pins,
       verdant cloud mycelium,
its shadow
                   on Earth
       describes a map
of ill-omen.  All our thousand
       cherished nightmares
boiled to gleaming--
       chromium flames
in the central eye;
           the eye of the lion
                  in the agate,
the aperture opens
       like a double axe;

       redacted pages
                  coagulate
        as punishing wings,

pinions up against
        the heavens'
autumnal orange
                   scratch commands

on the retina,
                   dilating time,
the rise of the apocrypha
                   as margins begin to

      overwhelm the page.

PARIS BLUES

Ghost Braille 

of rain

on sfumato smear

of tram windows. 

Sun staccato 

through same.

Angled shadows, 

fallen brows.   

Time is the gun

of gravity.  

Everyone on Earth 

is a stranger

on the train, 

in the end

everyone leaves. 

Everyone

gets off.  

At the same stop,

though destinations

differ,  I don’t

think you’re 

my neighbor,

know you 

from anywhere,

wonder where

you’ve gone. 

All the eye 

sees, closes,

forgets.

SISTER LEE

The pages gilt

only in the shut

book, the ground

the speech

of objects. 

Analog bilateral,

the volume of the

metalspot,

the pawed moon

in the lazy creek.

Stand-alone

tomes slough

off, a hunter

in a boar-husk.

In leaving behind

the boom of the beat

skin, the ghost

of the animal

is gone, the sweat

streaked serif.

A shroud

of zeroes drops

a flanged cube,

each thing disintegrating

into data.  The lay

of the land snatched

out too slowly,

the flasks shatter

& sway.  I am going

away into the sleeve,

the shelf, the tire-

marks all the day

long, the long day

with no sun or moon

that hovers, a bottle-

fly above

a wound.

PANIC

Bola of the mind,

bola of the body,

o to drive a pile

in the chronology

still the roots climb

up to the limbs

of the banyan;

the armored seed

drops on the bog

& the eaters

in the silt.

It’s a tale of water

& sand, what goes on

in & around these walls.

Stuck fast,

make a wish

on your own bone,

or knit the clavicles

of the genii.

I guess that’s it:

escaping

the house on fire,

the tumbling train,

now that fetching

carbuncle will have

to wait

until the knife

is loosed

from the vertebra.

September 26, 1182

Like Jesus Christ in the garden, the Church

is in anguish, stumbling, deflowered:

the moors strip her from the south 

and a savage bear claws her from the north.

            By cruel hands her sons are snatched from port,

while winds blow all of the heresy 

and vice and sin the world creates

as rats begin to devour the dead.

            God halts all with lightning from his left hand,

observe the wounds of his sacred Son,

from which flow four fonts of paradise,

which can still replenish the world:

from on high He sees

Saint Francis born in the city of Assisi.

Barcelona, May 29^th 1895.

Jacint Verdaguer, from Sant Fransech: Poema

AT SAINT BONAVENTURE

 

To write well of the angel embodied

would need another angel;

oh You in whom Francis seems revived,

            return & in my self dwell.

Once again, please, beat your heart

            once again strike your lyre

and light the angelic spark, 

Assisian sun, that inspires your songs

and I’ll lift my winged love to fly.

 

fron Sant Francesch: Poema by Jacint Verdaguer