“Preparations”

Preparations in the weary weather worn,
Fine deliberations in thought grown not in common sod but sewn,
Embroidered yesterday’s or last night in the bedclothes, their messages thrown
About the rooms as socks and remnants of the breath at play—torn
Perhaps, and tattered—a little worse for wear but not abandoned,
Not quite graced with station how much  less with purpose on the floors.
As spring pronounces vowels broadly, its consonants are doors
Left not quite closed in hopes that random
Sunbeams, some michievous breeze, or better still, the damp sweet scent
Of trees and odd forgotten hedges stir in later afternoons.
Winter yawns as the tree-veins wake to find within their hour and soon
Upon the arbour, knobs form thence to buds whose walls will rent
In time at last as pilgrim blossoms urging declaration in bulk and natural rhyme
With hope at last while promises expire, replaced by living witnesses to time.

“The Peace, That Is

“The Peace, That Is”

The peace that is, some sense of fortune, love
Of life, that is, the promises that dwell in hearts
Whose beacon is the present.  Darts
And shafts, phantoms’ arrows, doves
Of superstition and the flights of eagles not yet dreamed
Become the weights of weariness, embellished chains of thoughts,
Of past and distant memories; all these are. The nought’s
Outweigh the should’s, the clarion chorus of what seems
Will drown the melody of what is as patently, the past
Is nothing more than magnification of future’s cold deception.
Certainly, who’s to know but that at conception
What was sure to be could never really last
And what endures is petrified in quicksands of false alarms
Because we dwell so near the morning’s light and yet so far.

“Mirage”

“Mirage”

The mirage moves comfort
When truths in volumes fail,
As winds in doldrums seduce forgotten sails,
The mousse, the whipped cream of the sort
That fattens the appetite in consumption
But flattens with rapidity in use
As its natural abuse argues justification and excuse
To to reign but seconds only while crude absorption
Reconnoiters seamless swift returns to the predetermined mark
The very limit of experience hat fickle fascination claims
Is wisdom albeit relentless common sense and reason wanes
And interests drain as the catalyst of desire departs.
What more do fools expect from denial and delusion
Than that instincts greed define what spirits call illusion?
Their mouths are never closed, their policies and words
Like noxious clouds forever block internal securities
In external declarations of truths whose missions are  insecurities.
These, the foam and refuse, the gathering curds
Of failures gleaned from mother’s milk, exacerbate  the many coloured quilt
Of blessed existence, provide the nourishment for fellows
In the hydræ of ancient deadly causes, a bellows
For pernicious anaemia, the fires of self-destruction, deceptive silks
In Chinese red and imperial yellow glory in what otherwise is so easily tainted.
Eyes though sightless, ears though blocked,
Rudiments and remnants, plaque and pittance locked
Away for timed released by those whose painted
Images rehearsed by those who know no peace,
Whose appetites are not satisfied will never cease.

Yes, of course, there were the mysteries and questions in the mind, if not, the heart of Cain.  In those few seconds of lucidity with his brother before his passing, Cain was asked, “Why?”  And Cain replied, “what was so precious about your sacrifice to Him.  Was it so different from my own?”  Abel whispered. “There was no difference, my brother; why are you so wroth?”  “He asked the same of me.  How was I to bear the weight?  What would you have done?” Abel whispered, I would have asked what I could do to make my sacrifice acceptable.”  Cain’s reaction was the first premise of history;  it was Abel’s last.

“It Takes a While”

“It Takes a While”

It takes a while, time enough,
Perhaps an added mile, but for now the matter of a sunrise,
Dawn to sunset, twilight dusk beyond the present thoughtful sky.
The season moans discovering its last and latest secrets, indelicate and rough
Suggesting mitigating circumstance but flawless calculation.
“Rest,” he tells himself;  he suspects he must, but, “Wait.
The matter of an hour or two  is nothing new.”
But in the meantime, what do simple organs do
Who know the cycles of their own estate,
The proper cadence and the rhyme
That replicate the many-storied ancient answers so impotent
And noxious in the impasse, so strident, so redolent
Of passions’ pasts? Traced in outline
With no purpose nor need for measurement or rectitude of vision
In but weak and ritual circumcision keen to reconnoitre produce
from the residue, smoking shards of constant change and indecision.

“Seeking Solace”

“Seeking Solace”

Seeking solace in the subway’s plastic platitudes, I surmise
An early death and probabilities that all there is is timely. Signs are rife
With squawking cell phones,  stifling squadrons of flies and gnats consigned to fill the gaps, to circumscribe the flock; their unsuspecting victims arrive in time
To read the endless blur of burrow walls that pause for stations only; rumours then, of course, but certain and solidified as petrels fly
By aimlessly along the Green Line markiing obsolescent ends
In the beginnings of the day. They gather, confirmed and reassured
Here and there that no one rides to measure
Worth and distances in terms of métro signs and buskers’ stipends
Yet I clearly heard today the sound of earphones braying,
“Gather and surmise,
Repent! The End is nigh, and all pneumatic trails point to promises that do not die but lead all living mothers here to wail”
Had I loitered one more mile along that lethal middle rail,
I surely would have witnessed what I sometime knew, that clouds
Of youth and smoke of elders’ ozone cannot read the billboard omens
scribbled randomly across the métro seats and tiles,
That here below all testimony fades before the printer’s ink has dried.

“If Breathing”

“If Breathing”

 

If breathing, there is a need;

If need, then comes the question never spoke

By either brother, an initial rift that broke

When in that moment, Adam’s seed

Made more than one, their difference breeds

A natural shift from peace to war; the smoke

Alone had been enough, but weighted, a stroke

Of genius, and from the stench might no longer heed

The sign of truth.  “Ask what may be done,” is Abel’s

Cry; “What may not be undone nor forever won,” from God’s domain

Replies, and neither will survive that summer’s day

Within the Garden wherein truth no longer grows and envy blocks the rays

Of sun and moon and stars where once their steeds were stabled—

And what may not be undone in sinews deep within the heart of Cain?

“He’s Come So Far”

“He’s Come So Far”

He’s come so far through the conduits of  years;
Serenity and illness come with breath and no repose
In motion, no subtle acetate in commerce. In the rose
No greater beauty manifest but phantoms, fears
And random souvenirs that collect within some hidden inner eye.
Rapacious subtle surplus calcified similitudes that mystify
Decision based on faulty memory and revision applied to compromise,
What’s left behind, the terse astringents and styptics to  cauterised
The flow of what is just beneath the lids or perhaps was never there―”Gracious,
Me,” he says, “such perfection!”― Purity, the declination of certitude
Within a fixed and lethal pattern and perspective; sans turpitude,
Matters’ wastes return to energies of action distilling  jaded beads of credence
Dote on stems and leaves just as aphids dine on daily crops of specious
Doubt, drawn easily through the needle’s eye. He stares in disbelief at  gratuities,
The simple harlot quires of doubts’ vague remembrances of Sophocles. He sees now pedestrian lusts so clearly and sharply the  sanctuaries of ever-early buds,
Within the inevitable quietus  of pernicious  cares looming in the coming spring.
Here there is an  arrogance leached within the Grail’s mass, philandering
Of prowess in the night as in the cud
Of gentle herbivores, the velvet blood
that form a martyr’s antlers, mitred Pharisees that bring
The softest touch to what is in fact terrifying
To limbs that strain to overcome the flood
Of what was yesterday delivered.  he hesitates to hold what’s been revealed
In genomes, formulæ, gratuitous cosmic patterns in the race
To recall the sun within a solar wind, to rerecord
The accents of its voice, a sworn accord,
An ironic smile, a nod, a genuflection to the zodiac in  place
Of revelation of what energy and matter leave both manifest and concealed.

“Suppose It To Be”

“Suppose It To Be”

Suppose it to be or not to be the end; so, too,
There may or may not be a beginning. If so,
Too, there is yet another in that hue
And shades of everything in between the two.
Suppose these to be the same but from another view
Of what and whom all things take shape;  the new
And boastful old, it’s true, but recreated in the nuance
Either of the seers each or what is seen in flocks. True
Enough, the hour arrives for consternation in Déscartes
To overcome volitions of the vocative
To overwhelm his definition of the infinitive
And halt all processes long enough for the definitive
To take seat there between the sciences and arts
And remnants of antiquities blessed within the interrogative.