December 18, 2008

Where There is no War, There is Only Sleep




I find myself walking through wet streets
Moving slightly here and there
Whilst glancing longingly at the full grey sky.
It is a soft pillowing breast of sky
Weeping out "The sun is gone!",
In great mourning.
I may choose to thank one of many Gods
For this perfectly solemn day as it
Plays effortlessly my inner concerto.

You see, I am numb in tattered boots,
Laces dragging niggardly through
Wrinkles on the ground.
I am numb in tussled worry
Caressing my frame from the space
Between my eyes to the twirling
Innards of intestines large and small.
I am numb sucking dopplebock
Through the soft mouth of an amber bottle
Pedagogically speaking to the Mother inside.

O' great worry, I feel it on my brain.
Like an old girl playing hide and seek
With children, I will avoid the cupboard
That echoes their graceful breathing.
Can you believe it sky?
I am numb and your sun is gone.

To focus on my sentiments I must
First fold the paper crepe-like
And start so very small.
For a poet, the horizon may seem
Overwhelming as it lives and breathes
On a monotonous plane.
Then there is sunset and colors
Go suffocating the Goliath that
Lives in all things conquerable.
I am most hesitant that I should
Write these words, yet I know
The following to be unfeigned;

Where there is no war,
There is only sleep.

The indolence of my years
Binds me in sheer torpor.
I am numb in virginity
Holding precedence over
A panting soul.
In the midst of this pain, so shallow.
And pleasure, so hollow,
I find the most petrified middle-road.
I liken myself to the listless few
Who walk away freely from murder.
Do they cry out to God or sit
Quietly in the many lurid
Rooms of Purgatory?

In the distance I see legs of horses
Plucking puddles on the ground.
I think of the burnished strings of
Violins, where there is no sound.
I wait here with nagging patience
As I remember the darling liquid
In my body warming bones and,
Like a curse, working its way out.
Tears slide on my neck and then die
And the space between my eyes
And their watery graves is also numb.

A doughty knight rides his horse
Underneath the same full grey sky
And laments "The sun is gone!"
He sees a young woman dying
And weeping of a numbness
Spreading like the plague.
He pierces his sword deep into her
Heart, and this she feels like the sun's
Return to the morning sky.

December 7, 2008

Ouroboros, Crown of Cronos




Here, a chancy thought
Of rolling sweet 'bacco on the palm
Before a window anointed with the beasts of today.
And respectfully, I shall not smoke this brute stick.
Tis' but a mere trifecta of the hands,
The direct manifestation of my soul.
And to you, most indelible reader, my pleasure.
Slow death will not impress,
That there remains the deepest space in my mind
Until I am whitewashed with lone reason.
And why reach out to answer its cardinal vexes?
Let it ring and taunt with rouge wings.
Such is not a youthful guise
That I should call for arms, or carry on the merry wings.
It is my mind that coils itself like a snake,
Then again, then again.
I speak to its inertia; Adieu, be with God.
My etiquette for you, Cartesian crown of body
Enunciates thine tempestuous calling.

A young boy's flauto dolce stirs a song
That should implore you to your knees
And still, you suffer ages of iron and bronze.
Still, scanty madness goes exalting the sound.
Peace is shy of season about my intimate brain.
Let us not forget of divine fatality!
Whilst a gentle question rests among
The ashes of a flickered flame,
Why does the feathered fowl mock in vain?
Does it not know we are but one in the same?

I observe humanity as a glim row
Of peckish birds lined on a string
And unbeknownst to them, their smiles
Are the masks of frowns underneath.
Tremulous beings, they undulate in flocks
And will my improvement with backless reason.
For there exists no finite impotence
Save the seeds of Gaea, immovable Titans
That were cursed to the earth with indulgence.
In fountains of gold they cupped their futile
Hands and insatiety bore witness.

And so, I will my eyes to be engraved
At the top of my skull so as to stare
Into the depths of a distant Father.
As now, I endure life spine to the
sheet
Nearest the breast of a reticent Mother.
Who, but a female that filled me with
Intoxicating drink and quenched my soul
And mused the attainments of many men,
Filling their chalices with saccharine certainty.
She, the darkly saint with a heart pumping sweet wine.
Yet Father, bearer of good thought,
Logic, and truth, who betrothed me with
A substantive carcass in the head,
Remains the infallible protector of all that is written.
In passing sapience, I look to thee.

There must be a way to know
The mind without losing it.
The earth quakes exquisitely in hamlets
Of the world and opens its abyss-like
Mouth to breathe new lust.
Its core longs for the familiar caress
Of the sun that muses its craters with
A transparent skein.
This lovemaking ebbs through the veins of time.
It is homage to the wind that gives birth
To serpentine waves, homage to the butterfly
That catalyzes the experimental feet of a child,
Homage to the nocturnal sounds of my
Somberly sleeping soul-

In these moments, I am shrouded by
A cloak of madness, however inglorious,
Imperviously deep in thoughts, monads, vestiges
Of mercy, apocryphalic wondering,
Believing in reality dictated by preeminent
Dreaming, and of chancing upon water
From a foot bridge and knowing why it
Reflects the sky, why in Father there
Is Mother, and why the act of discourse
Is but another patch on the charlatan's disguise.

Humans are made of varying shades of
Water, the most pellucid reflect more candor
Of the world, akin to those ancient lovers
Who birthed poetic thought against
The vast indifference of each waning day,
Each benumbed star!
I see those peckish birds on the line,
Do you not see?
I am but one in the same.
I hear their calls and virile singing.
Yet they do not call my name.

I suffer,
As I have not known God.

And I will die,
As I come to know
That which is thee.