Cameos
(I)
Simone labors in her garden,
crouched in dirt with a blue
rag the only gypsy between her
brain and the grinning sun.
The rocks remind her of block
apartments, the sandy furrows
transformed into the alleyways of
Atlantis. She stubs with the handle,
and dirt slides back into the hole,
like Sisyphus or that pernicious
allegory of the cave. A shine
of glass and pain ghosts up
around her, a blister to stand
for Marsyas’ flayed skin,
her cooling breath the winds,
beating down Calypso’s door.
(II)
On her gilded conch
the goddess flees,
her image returned
by the adoring seas,
as the skies wheel
beneath the cloak of Iris.
Sophie’s notebooks scatter
on the cinnamon parquet.
Cribs of Blake, Pessoa,
Pasternak and Job,
her surgical quill
let momentarily drop.
(III)
Natalia drums at her weeping willow
desk, following the non sequitur
of the bleeding ox, the rooftstones
gleaming with perched birds.
She draws a spell around the sea’s
wide arc and carnival,
wondering which way to turn
in order to return. Clipped wings
portend the singer’s thud.
Meaning: a swimmer, not a bird.
(IV)
Tonight, Casola is a tired man.
Investor in a plagued system
that has failed him (the bee-
keeper, his unhorsed daughter,
those others who despise him,
his lost promise).
Like vexed water his soul
upholds the essence of death:
he lifts his royal hand
and proceeds to a cliché
of quenched tapers.
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Medallions
(I)
Near fields lying fallow,
in the politeness of betrayed
authority she hugged him,
leaning from the stairs
to hold him to his saddle.
And in the courtyard
a girl selling lavender
looked her in the eyes.
From such a window
over a garden of foxfire
and lavender white pennants
were seen, returning.
(II)
For the hours embowered
in the tenderness of his arms
she would forgive him his trespass
to another’s flowering bed.
Unaccomplished lover, she fed him
the honey of her mouth, her
girl’s breasts nourished him
like falling apples.
(III)
Pendant bloat of pale steel,
the strangling moon crawls
through a melee of clouds,
caught in the parenthesis of ocean’s
net. The body of a drowned swimmer
lounges in a shallow pool, blue flesh
grossly marbled, entrailed in an orgy
of seaweed. The moon strangles
in the chador of clouds and the
swimmer’s body undulates like
breath, pleasure, nightmare,
blind open eyes pulsing as with
a wink, a tic, death’s little joke.
(IV)
Gleam of moon on chain,
bright hooves stamp,
pounding the wet sand.
Pounding down the rainwet knoll,
the ghost horde spurs its mounts,
its white body through the glided trees,
the thunder of its going roars riverrun,
the sleeve of weeds betrays the riders’
wounded pull.
Horsemen infest the lower corner,
within a panic of the ruined outer wall.
They turn aimlessly, waiting.
Mouths as grim as a memory of desire,
nebulae skinned for trophy,
the throat hooks down its cry,
beaten to death in darkness.
So silent, the beast-rich forest.
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Glyptics
(I)
In the gloom-rich grove
she harbored faint hunger
for the white floor.
In the shadowless room, to sleep
in sun’s eye, no man’s mistress.
No man’s bride, dark night
come courting.
(II)
A mother’s furious lights:
fat Erik’s wasteland,
Queen Margot’s spinet,
woolen lamb and gruff
straw bear.
The sick rose hemmed,
eaten tunic of sepalled
worms.
(III)
That twenty thousand days
from now, desiring, burning
with it, I will cast out doubt
and gladly, hopelessly sin
(while my children dream
of something almost perfect,
almost theirs to keep).
Spin closer to my ear.
Horn disrobes a shadow
on the wolfkind eyes.
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Badges
(I)
Do you hint Poseidon malicious
in these half-said things?
Deeped unanchored under a sky
bright with sheltering stars:
to be unchained, freed upon the
green whale world in a foam
of salt and June sea.
(II)
Unhorsed humpbacked god.
Heaven’s ritual, mare’s womb
open to a human king.
Mind, book-bright kabbala.
Flesh in inquisition’s grip,
each thrust tabulated with
a birch across the buttocks,
till seed spatters the freaking mare.
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Tokens
(I)
Peregrine or Proserpine?
Proper gossip this Aurora
speaks, malice trailing light.
Traced from a high window
the hair of blue flame below,
the smoking blue sparks
of a lightning-struck tree.
In a forest of language
pure words guide.
The stink is crematory
with past and coming rain.
(II)
It is a dark year,
vain, and ending,
sculpted in the
stillness of snow.
In the mid-dream
the kings arrive:
one in turncoat silver,
one in winter gold,
the last as black
as Herod’s maw,
in the mid-night,
still as snow,
the dark vain year
at its ending.
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Devices
(I)
What season? Winter.
It is run together, with
one less father in the world.
Gripped and spandreled
to his urge of shadows and
meandered hurt, pallet of dust
and soiled beard his hunt’s end.
But blade and pilgrimage are privilege,
the shouldered oar and walkway inland.
Death the fragmenter of all things,
while a drowned decaying prince
seeps ashore to mummy’s pleasant
lap, her foamy gown of dreams.
(II)
Blood flecked at random,
the wood’s smooth plane
restraightened.
Rack and wrong, seam
shaken with imperial gaiety.
Aureole of fear, paradise
to the stone eyes turned seaward,
the hurtle from deep shining sea.
(III)
The heart of a defiled house,
reeking of bile and bad faith.
The font is a thug’s vomitorium,
wafers shredded in deliberate urine.
Furred with ashes, a cat scrawls
the helpless rood-screen.
Constantine’s wife had me done.
Gilded, gelded, silvered.
Her world’s single season
of frigid, polished glory.
Holy, I am hated.