The Whispered Stain — a poem

“One scarlet flower is cast on the blanch-white stone.”

— Ezra Pound, Canto IV

 

 

The stain, the stain, a whispered —
no, a creatured thought that crawled
from the blanketed chambers.

Too easy to follow its rhythmic flow,
                                                                       ignore
questions of source, of purity, of alloy,
of intent; to trip the meanders, wave
at others oxbowed, becalmed in static
utterance — atonal life along a silent shore.

But what then?

Paddle, portage, prospect the driven
stream of unconsciousness.  Seek
golden answers to unexamined
life while the stain, the strain,
the whispered petals remain.

* * *

What comes of reading Pound!

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Wrung Out: the Marine Layer of My Frontal Lobes — a poem

Is it that
the Sun has absented
its office, or did
“blanket coverage”
we were offered mean
perpetually overcast skies — damn
the unended,
unending
summer of gray!

Into the coracle — a poem

Ezra Pound

“In the green deep of an eye… (XCI).”

— Pound, from the Cantos

Into the coracle I bundle my tormented
night-sweated revelations, memorized
mea-culpas of dreamed delirium,
and row, row, row my fat arsed self
across Acheron — the wind’s unsailable.

Waveless glass, though more like oil,
the bastarded vessel, bent in the making —
never true — slogs and dies, slogs anew.

What seafaring lay makes the task
more a bliss?  “I shall never this way
travel again,” comes to mind.  Is it?

Is it a veritable song, or more fevered
my brain’s fantasy?  It signifies not if…
if the laborer throws unction under 
the tongue!  The craft is heavy laden,
and I am ready to drop them over
into the swirling orb of the green deep.

* * *

One never knows what will come from gazing into the Pound Cantos.

The Crash Scene of My Brain Contemplating Modern Art and a Pound Canto In the Same Day — a poem

Gene Davis — Apricot Ripple

…and the lines and the lines
and the lines making squares
making waves naked waves
unmasked waves slippery
when wet the rivers wet
the streets wet the rain sifts
the rain sifts the drain slips
wet lines draining waves wet
drains lining drains wet waves
squares slipping slippery wet
runs together straight lines
together lines trees dripping
waves breaching their frames
echoed lines wave wetly drains
repeated lines wetly wave rain
squares wave as I drain —
and the lines and the lines
       …ah, the lines

Landmarked Life

Pinterest

Per legend,
Napoleon’s cannoneers used
the Sphinx for target practice.

I know how he felt.

The Sphinx; not Napoleon.

Part of me has been
shot away,
pocked
by the dread cannoneers of life.

 

 

Silent Sunday (mostly)

“…and then he said, ‘Fetch!'”

Silent Sunday

Publication

Brian Geiger at Vita Brevis picked up one of my poems.

Pruning Wrath

Thank you, Brian and Vita Brevis!

Our Lady On a Bed of Flames — a poem

en.parisinfo.com

Paris has irrevocably changed;
it’s very clear.
With their heart broken,
a hole scorched in its center.
Stone edifices will tumble,
in time they will crumble —
but wasn’t this more than clay?
Lives were changed,
were taken,
were damaged,
were transformed…

No one leaves
Paris — Paris that weeps
now — no one leaves
Paris without an impression
of the lady.

The Intrinsic We — a poem

“The joy that isn’t shared dies young.”

— Anne Sexton

Silence makes me gasp.
Not the quietude of two shared,
but the hollow of one…

and one.

When we must be apart,
life smolders; bears
little heat.

I must look away from you to lie,
or tell you in your eyes how I suffer
in the silence, the silence,
the awful echoless still —
one here.

One there.

* * *

For NaPoWriMo 2019, day 2.

For my beloved.