“Idyll of the Notes”

“Idyll of the Notes”

Idyll of the notes: strike the first, then close the second; together,
Hail propinquity, call a third to birth a melody:
From nothing more, strange grace.  Thoughts become celebrity
In congress with emotion in the progress—tethered,
Binding doubled, redoubled—repeated over time,
A saturated affair, approbation
With solemnities, an aspiration
Quickened within a rhyme
Of mere coincidence and proclivities; a leaning
Toward an accidental brilliance, plaudits gleaned
From union and fresh existence and what seem
At first but three streaks’ slight in plaited harmony gleaming,
Potential fugues’ intrinsic affinities drawn from thin air.
Purity of heart inspires the masterpiece and who bears its weight?
At once in lieu of action words foolishly assure themselves it’s not too late.
Without the chill of intellect, there can be no intensity, no heat;
Without emptiness, what, then, is required,
Nothing lacking; nothing is inspired,
Nothing dreamt if in the night there is no sleep.
No path; no looming future present if there is no past,
No memory, no hint of satisfaction where discomfort
Is not found; no unity displaces discord
Where envy or the trial of jealousy cannot last.
Where the comely courage of Perseus if
No Medusa, no Tiresias, no hindsight sorely missed;
No hint of blush in virgins, whose innocence is kissed
And gone for evermore. Richer the magnitude of precious gifts
If lovers prove untrue; the straight line lies and light will bend
Where eternities cannot be seen beyond the beginning and the end.

…art work at top by Paul Pinkman…

“As Summer Gains”

“As Summer Gains”

As summer gains, Ophelia’s hours heighten in the weeds
Of something special strolling in the halls as her sweet prince recalls
The love they might have had and what conceals the serpent in the walls.
In daily season’s advents loyally are born fresh notions, spring’s sweet wheats,
Reminders of promissory notes to the many for whom they strive.
Given such gratuities, these comings’ true returns exact a toll where Piping Fates
Shed seeds of future cares and carelessness that takes
Exception to themselves. What they are is mirrored in the rising suns as trials,
Lethargy, fatigue, the burdens and annual fruits of winter fade. These fresh disks
Do not forget the coming harvests to be gathered, first in sudden growing sleeves
On gracious grateful trees, then in planted bounty crops that nothing grieves,
Their season’s fruits secured, their lofts restocked, and to these ends their bliss.
When Ophelia’s gown grows grappling heavy as it must, desire melds to peace:
In time she’ll choose an autumn’s leave, the end of love and Hamlet on his knees.

“She Suspects He Knows”

“She Suspects He Knows”

She suspects he knows the truth, sows it openly before
His eyes. “It’s thoughts,” she says, “that are the enemies
And ideas that spin the winning remedies
For now, for ever and all my yesterdays. So more’s
The search for leaves of print and fresher mantras soaked in peace
And love, and marinated in the blessing of a sage
Albeit the `carrot’ seems to curry rage
And disappears down the rabbit hole to please
The bleachers, the preachers and those who `know’ the age!”
She bought the book, retired to read, and strove
To keep the incense burning on the stove,
Or is it called an altar, now, or is it time to disengage?
The lonely trap to truth is through the mind;
From mind to heart’s the bridge to what she’ll never find.

…painting at bottom by Egon Schiele…

“Place My Signs”

“Place My Signs”

Place my signs as moons and satellites you’ve only heard of,
Midday’s virtual languishing luminaries; someone’s burden,
I’ll be here briefly seen where I’m observed,
What’s seen but once or long ago was and is no longer with no word of
What’s to become of me. These melodies waft, whispers from across the hall.
Many happen by and many more will read these sonnets written
In the night—never published—freely proffered; turn the page, more is written
In the surge the pen enjoys to pacify some hidden postponed call
From yesterdays to reassure tomorrows. I sense a slight joy in the thought
That twos and threes that sit so patiently, perplexed, perhaps a little willingly
At home in softer beliefs or worse, may move the lips while reading
Wonder in the content lightly stymied by the midnight magic, meters caught
About the margins of some momentary gladness in the stream, heart refined,
Their eyes reveal the stars in shards and sparks I’ve left behind.

“His Images Are Greys”

“His Images Are Greys”

…dedicated to and about a friend I once knew on Stumbleupon before they shot themselves in the foot and went commercial…

His images are greys of unspent charcoal,
dusts of lazuli in the exercise;
Blunted, instrumental, honed
Precisely, giving edge to sentiments disowned
From what it were as if it were what it is. Surmised
In so few years; distilled, a tincture of cobalt and youth
To fill a shot glass darkly; a promising seed
In bold production; meaning not cast or kneaded
In probities of certitude, nothing seized, of no moment, his truth,
Consistency of salacious dough, is his endgame
Not of doughnuts but their holes. Regardez! So zealously
He will not compromise his eyes; he adjudicates judiciously
Both ends and means of Edna’s candles; Millay’s humanity without a name.
And if I had a decade or a fortnight more of years, perhaps a minor thirst
To join him in the century,…but, no, not so. I am of the Twentieth;
he the Twenty-First.

Edna St. Vincent Millay [1892—1950]

…charcoal at top by Oliver Florez…

“So Easily They Cast Their Doubts”

“So Easily They Cast Their Doubts”

So easily they cast their doubts before
Adoring crowds for those who rush to view
The corpses and the thousand shocks, reviewed,
That press is heir to; judicial natures jaw and serve the gore
In increments that would gratify the seasonal guests
Of any least forbidding Midwest bowling league
Whose teams compete for spares; relieved
By strikes and periodic gutter balls, they trade in tests
Of righteous indignation from the pulpit as villages and lives
Are lost to cartels in Chihuahua. Their milk must be delivered but even
the waxen moon becomes a thin blade through redundant sales. Knives
With patents pending served with pancakes rule here while votes extend
The bulging bogus budgets penned without a dime to spend.

“Oh! the Second Dawn”

“Oh! the Second Dawn”

Oh! the second dawn, this same vision violates the door.
I would enter were I not aware
Of what Millay in ghostly truth declared
Concerning what should be a warning—more,
Perhaps than I am worthy of, but still
Is mine to feel if so I should desire
To drown a fond desire as dew within a fire—
That long ago reduced itself to fill
A sometime jewelry box in turquoise, copper, gold,
The open hearths along these four walls ignored
These years, and crumbling with disuse. Restored,
But healed in time as thoughts and memories will unfold,
She gives a broad remembrance in her thought
Expressed in some small tome of poetry forgot.

“And Who, She Asks, Are You?”

“And Who, She Asks, Are You?”

And who, she asks, are you on such a night,
The midnight here but half consumed, the fix,
A maze in those eyes by now near stone, transfixed
And no word yet upon the page to spare a light?
She knows, he thinks, yes, she sees the power.
His vote was cast at eventide, but now
The dawn approaches; matins’ clouds allow
But faint applause but to a budding flower
Dim but hopeful in the tidal rise
Of energies of starlight solidly betrayed
That turn her dewdrops presently to days
And etched upon the gaze of unwanted watchful eyes,
She cries, “Oh please allow the ascent in the dawn and watch me fly!”
But, no. The Risen Sun evaporates the dews and all such hope must die.

“Slightness”

“Slightness”

But what can be the food of slightness blown
Against the wind with little ness’s high
For them and nothing’s for the lightning sky
But isms in the prisms of a nano-second; better seeds atone
For size in what they surely will become:
Some sweet germ, some potent  yeast, some  erstwhile thought
Which in itself must come to naught,
Which is to say its universal kiss, and in that bliss run
Riot in  creation’s store. Ought
May be but what is created in vain save through
The fine and binding union born of living interim’s glue.
This man’s or that, his vanity is his thought though not
Within his own or in his lover’s bower-nest of tiny spies:
It’s in her skies the beauty of his opinion flies.

“That Message Comes Too Late”

“That Message Comes Too Late”

That message comes too late; the box long placed in escrow rusted
From disuse, and I with lungs too aged to bear perfumes and polish;
Meretricious meddling as grace notes in the prism admonish
All the senses, blur the lines of intuition but with gears so rarely dusted
The damn thing keeps on running just the same–behold! it
Must devour distraction, shed its excess in deflected rhyme
And, while the lotus blossom blooms but once, for a time
No one’s close enough to close in for the kill. I know it’s
Hour has come. I prefer to walk and leave the seasons
on the broken highway line.
The forced march rides blisters here and there
But these are welcome and with the sea breeze on the stairs,
The fields, the feel of billowing folds of shirt and pantaloons with brine
Scent heavy in the air, I follow sentinels, ambers of my memory like rocks
Strewn about the stream until I reach the shore I see. I pray
I cannot hear you now and as the Ocean lies before me friends,
I’ve little more to say.

…paintings by Andy Denzler…