Reprise: “True Enough, the Politicians Sigh”

Reprise:

“True Enough, the Politicians Sigh”

True enough, the politicians sigh, elections foil
Attempts to rectify the situation leaving choices
Fit for fools and all solutions moot, their voices
Shrill, and rarely if at all do waters yield and boil
At temperatures that formerly marked
The limits of glory’s shores. Even as we speak the seas
Have rushed the gates where now the rivers bleed,
And Arctic glaciers once so permanent, so parked
Reveal the reason for which Greenland was sired
And in the time of ancient Viking sagas so aptly named.
Nothing’s new that was not there before the present maimed
And mauled, reframed, and rearranged, frayed and admired
Its tasteless tableaus in conspicuous waste
to the end that no one breathes
A word who is not cursed or blessed while all the azure planet grieves.
The deed is done and Caesar’s death beside the point;
Of course, some several trinkets to collect
And box and some there are who promise to reflect
On what’s been said or what is grist and grit for future newscasts to anoint.
But we’re finished here, and all too often turn our eyes
To months and years ahead–the present promises unfulfilled–
For movements gentler to decide, some new tryst for someone’s will,
And we’ll be at the thing with something less disguised
Than we were wont to wear to mask the gnarled face
Of bigotry that’s always there; a place
To some younger soul’s reported win, perhaps a show; the race
Is on but nothing less than more will do and competition’s traced
The route for them, of course, but not for us who seem so satisfied
If in the end we stumble on across the line with nothing left but pride.

“So You Want to See King Kong”

So you want to see King Kong duke
It out with bi-planes and kamikaze pilots
In a blaze of satisfaction for the zealots
Or the proposition that motivates the fluke
That holds its own and centre stage, the chorus moot
And so’s the audience, by the way connecting dots
And pulling all Pinocchio’s strings until they’re taut
With hearts and diamonds opening following suite.
But yes, of course, spades and clubs the poet’s corner
With a Mercedes straining at the hectare’s plough,
Leaving all the world to wonder just what’s a luxury for
And how the fields end and highway’ mourners’
Thumbs have disappeared on the horizon of the here and now.

“And the World Went On”

And the world went on; their griefs were ours
Yet the world was lit. Came the pyre on the mountain,
The torch the valleys, and all who stood were stilled, the fountain’s
Camphor waters drained, Bathesda no longer troubled. The hour
Comes, the pilgrims flee the oceans, seas, the rainbow’s power.
Carmel has seen Sharon: “Stare at me as you would the sun!”
Know the inevitable is come!” Agonies and consternation
Must bear the weight of ecstasy’s revision, the flower
Of circumspection, precision, and beyond the natural eye spawns blindness
In the infallible shroud of never-ending light, the blight of every saint,
The goal of every sinner. Œdipus and his Ȇblis rehearse
The first catharsis, the Sphinx the last, the triad guards the city’s curse
And Adam’s children well before his own were dreamt in tenderness
Of strange wisdoms in the mind, blessed unction in stars grown faint.

“In the Meantime”

And, in the meantime, what?
If the requirement is the sun
And in the hour, none;
If patience swells but in the rutting cuts
No clearance, no escape from paths
To howling destinations; if the moon
Must hide behind the earth, the cry of loons
Is heard no more for lack
Of seasons in the ether;
If the house depends on creosote,
And vessels pine for tides; the coat,
The autumn’s lack of warmth and wintry blasts recuse nor
Will they join demand to orderly confusion, what then?
The egg exacerbates the vigil not within the cock but in the hen.

“Who Tolerates the Touch”

Who tolerates the touch of palm and fingers
Triggers of the tympanum’s lover’s voice,
The involuntary arch of eyebrows, that choice
Of recognition dresses doubt that lingers
Yes a while on what once was until it reconfigures
Long enough to serve the summons, reaction’s invoice,
Undesired but necessarily what is required; a void
Is not an option to the unbelieving mind. Ligatures
Every particle seeks are sealed with audience, weight,
And purpose in immortal cycles that begin and end
In memory, its regeneration suspends
Its own belief and use within its measured time.
For him who wills cannot resist nor hesitate.

“The Balm of Blame”

…painting by Kyle Ragsdale…

The balm of blame relies on shame
While fools amass in cloisters; clowns, their terrors
Grouped in choirs as with fires sired in hell. Errors
Come as natural as breathing, while their eternal flame
Afflicts the every man, and cannot be concealed.

How, then, does the crown not fit
As when in the thick of smoke and mirrors bells peeling
Not from above or from the side but fulgent, sealing
Heaven’s signs in record time, the eyes, the gait, the every gesture
Bold prophetic witness as the Eastern Prophets’ Word is echoed in the West,
Their lights snuffed out in increments that underline the tortured tests
Of wills and structures of the Occident in bulging bank accounts–sequestered,
Belching fallacies–metered by the hour that all but scream for want of closure?
Yet, the line is long and longer for ambient mists of deft exposure.

They will not hear the key left limp at latch–the entrance
Or the exit; they cannot see the rising
Or the setting of the complaisant star, its restive analysing
Of the land and sea at midnight, the telling glance
Of creatures who stalk their prey in the foyer of the edifice;
The temporary seating exceeds the number of the tombs is evidence
Enough that in all creation few defy the mirage; the fence
That must divide the space above a phantom’s presence
Of this planet from the gaping hungry star-filled void
Of all that passes for imagination.
Connoisseurs of matter taste
Nothing but the venom of the fang in hours of self-defeating waste:
That posits purpose in pursuit of the outrageous, they speak of decoys
And photographs in place of simple memory and obsolescent joy.

Weep for they whose righteousness consists of lawlessness and celluloid.
The sardonic moon signs mayhem and havoc to the eyes
At rising, a potent rift between what is and what only seems
To be; and we, its tools allow for fancy as it deems
Fitting to be in the mystical early patterns of the evening skies.
How meet and seemly even for the dedicated mind
To allow such flights of visual savagery to arrest
All logic, moving as it does to attest
What truly isn’t there at all. How like denial, refined
Anticipation in the night of our modernity
To grant such majesty, so great an urgency
As the behemoth moon of our imagination cedes
Nothing to the truth but flaunts its strange lucidity
In increments that must eventually crown itself the liar.
Fully risen, there it is what begun must in turn expire
shedding neither light nor fire.

“Solace in the Courtesies”

…just a note to say that about a year ago, I posted the following sonnet induced by having seen the Moon and Jupiter in their full glory together; they’re both back, and contrary to public opinion, so am I; for the mind, “the thousand natural shocks that flesh is heir to:; for the heart, time is conquered, thank God… —Once, 23 July 2011

Solace in the courtesies of the constellations, Jupiter
Surely there at sunrise, the brightest star,
Visible while the jealous moon, scarred,
The closest audience; apt, significant. The irony. Her
Dwarf, yet here in circumstance; the bond a quiet perpetuity.
The mighty planet rests for moments in the night,
And we regard the larger aegis the greater light
And think so little of her smaller celebrant; so great an inequity
In vision we’re wont to dote upon from such a station as this.
It is just so with all luminaries of perspicuous wisdom and guidance in the night
That they are worshipped in coal black skies, but preludes to the dawning light
Because it pleases the eye see none but them and rest awhile in ignorant bliss.
Yet with the rising of the sun, all former brilliance must surely fade,
Withdrawn by force to honour greater virtues than the night has made.

I wonder why it is that knowing consciously the identity of what that star is that shone this morning just before the sunrise and has been shining every morning so significantly in the southeastern skies makes so much difference. Tonight it was joined beautifully by proximity to the moon.

A few weeks ago, I learned from a friend that that bright, unusually vivid star was in fact the planet Jupiter. Not that the news was astounding, but in some quiet way it was comforting because as I looked out from my balcony in the early morning hours always just before sunrise, when the skies were clear I had seen that star and wondered just what it was. Somehow I wanted some confirmation as to just what that thing was. I wrote to my friend who was kind enough to confirm its identity for me that it is true that it’s Jupiter and it is very visible in the skies during the whole of June into July. Now, then, this silent delight in knowing consciously that I have seen with my own eyes this “other world” that shares our solar system in some subtle way pleases my soul. These are the signsof God, my friend, as if the moon and sun, the inevitable revival of the earth at spring, and countless spectacles of greater and lesser significance were not. Did I need another confirmation of the majesty of this Creation? These days, for me at least, even breathing is a sign of God and becomes more obviously so with every passing day at my age. —Once, July 2010

“So Soothing”

So soothing the finger in the ice cream,
Cubes against the cheek, and we are satisfied.
Linchpins in a thought beatified
By leprechauns splicing memories from a thousand tactile dreams.
Revisit sidewalks here and there you’ll find so much to see.
Comes the furniture of the streets,
The crew, the caste, the long lost host of Oz; cleats
Raise sparks along the busied golden feed.
Some one of them, perhaps the dandelion, a deliberate violet
Transits the crosswalk, but one of them will seed
A nation raised on nations, the former garden—a stubborn breed,
A sprig of clover, something over there among the side effects
Of nowhere here today. It’s true but someone there, the one in plain
Song whispers something–baby slippers—and knows the reason for the rain.

“Just Another Evening’s Fast”

Just another evening’s fast,
By chance, a simple dinner, happenstance within the seams
And lining of sidling sibling intercourse that satisfies or possibly redeems
The thing that leaves its fossils free for future scavengers, no past
To contemplate, a coroner’s delight from the proceeds of a centrifuge.
Cleverness of movement mounts in moments somehow cleft
And processed as lesions in the lard of what’s been left
To marinate or age. Discharge, wastes from the deluge
Along the banquet boards, but dammed provide
A watershed, the simple servant to all cardinal sins
To celebrate with sufficient zeal a subtrahend
That will not be outgrown nor decompose and cannot break its stride
With backdoor vipers or ill-used garden snakes. At harm’s length
Visitations of the witnesses can only grow in strength.
And in the wake of rampant spending never-ending apostrophes
Display en masse in parliaments and congresses the celebrants
Of leisure indiscretion and rhymed
across the continents to vindicate the sycophants
That feed on chaff and tares and festering entropic
Taste. The eyes and ears devour content until the alloys
Reduce the whole by more than mere attrition: cues, inordinate;
Views, the outrageous comedy of news of Abel’s subordinate
To Cain’s disorderly conduct. Ephemeral sensations void
All issues in the ideology; the syncope
Will do while conflict sounds so much more human,
Don’t you think, or do you really trust a politician, man or woman
Whose distinction lies in dropping g’s? Possibly, or maybe
Not, but give us rolled up sleeves and no tie, please!
The tissues, lies, of course!but please. No more peace.

“The Pilot’s Flame”

The pilot’s flame and ambergris, fire and smoke, these privy orizons
As dews appear upon the sight of buds along an early midsummer’s talk
In the blind behind the backfields; still there is the chill,
a brief Nebraska morning’s walk
Through the shadows’ tides abiding shallows
in the breath of dawn; the garden
Path because we share so little
of the masters’ growth in blossoms’ bargains’
Fruits within us both and share with none, no idle chatter,
indeed a pittance of a fee for angels; pillars, cornstalks,
Arm in arm—so much can lead the way to joy within a cosmic room—locked
To one to yet another and another in the repetitious staid negotiation
of noxious clouds and dark but sterile clods, the venal vain
Attempt to mask indignity in stride until desire’s destination’s
Reached—we know by stealth to find a symmetry in solutions,
Solace in respite from the others at the solstice
of that brief but potent spot,
The proper pole to pierce the continent,
a place we’ve never seen and always sought.
I need nothing more to see your face, to read your book,
to savour proctors for procrastination
For the sake of pleasures found in greater prisms
for a lighter thought than pure imagination.