“Une Cause Célèbre”

“Une Cause Célèbre“

Une cause célèbre is safe from harm and free
From all love’s pleasures earned, enjoined,
Apprised; he treasures peace purloined,
And surgically removed from hosts’ relief
From aristocracy’s hypocrisies through deft
And public disclosure in the motive; sophists sigh
That virgin sensibilities, blatant lies
And all that wisdom drained  (effects of theft)
No longer fools the wise, nor warns the fool:
He simply walks away, displays no sympathy;
For wounded pride, antithesis, antipathy
For suckers born each day. His embers cool
Within the semblance of truth: dismay,
Reaction realized, the catalyst will steel away.

…painting by Honoré Daumier…

“She Left for Paradise”

“She Left for Paradise”

She left for paradise just the yesterday
Admitted freely through an unlocked door,
A chance escape from where she was to just above the second floor,
Or possibly to the attic or the basement, at any rate away
Thank God, from where she thought she was while nothing gleaned
From nothing’s not that different and labelling’s all the same–
Even heaven must have names.
She stops by some disaffected spa, a coffee bar
To reconnoitre–cats do this. Something
Cold or hot, it makes no difference in the clutch
Of notions chosen wisely for the subway; nothing much,
But once arrived, the touch to give the right appearance–rings
And bracelets, no, but, yes, an i-Phone–finds a vacant chair within the class.
And while she sits, her thoughts are peach fuzz, powdered, smooth.
She’s posed a thousand questions placing each
Within a different light, a different wrap,
Disguises subtle as the traps
Devised for God-knows-why, and meant to reach
The station of a star not unlike her own; to hit the spot,
Delight, to actuate the possibilities:
An infinite momentum in the finite plausibilities,
Intransitive infinitives on the screen and incense lit with tiny candles hot
To touch, but only in the instant. Or while she waits perhaps
A second gilded thought is clearly written on the pristine ceiling
To make a wash of brackish classroom backgrounds, bleed
The many colours on the furthest wall to one when what is apt
To run is total loss of memory, samsara gleaned from evening pains,
And canvases measured not in strokes, but languid drops of rain.

“Hatchling”

“Hatchling”

The implication here is from the ancient; flee, then, hatchling, see to it
In some sweeter novice, some slight discretion, some light elective. Festoon’t,
Then, the nowly constructed, bought in haste, a fine young cocoon,
In binding shrouds’ thrice millions iron-silken chits
That glitter, blind those bloodless tones with proper milk, drawn through
Finely fashioned sleuce and straw arranged beyond your knowledge long before
You ever had a name. I knew you well before you were. I, myself, have worn
The vice-connecting tethers and gaudy ribbons flowing loose—
A wandering, breathing hydra gorging—presaged fate, itself. Without your eyes
You’ll discover soon enough your middle and latter twenty doubled, twice
Again! and thoughts of me will be distant memories’ banquets summoned by
Exclusions festering in mirrored eyes of fond admirers (sound advice)
From your graceless passion-grasping salad days. Their winking votive candles
Fire all in be-all Vegas chapels with or without witnesses and guests
amid all those clinking glasses and clacking sandals

“Sonnet in Honour of the Feast of `Azamat or “Grandeur’”

Bahá’ís throughout the world gather this evening after sunset or tomorrow before sunset within the First Day of the Month of `Azamat [Grandeur] to celebrate the first day of the Bahá’í Month of `Azamat.

As if we can not be denied nor satisfied, we never quite say enough.
Spoils, the pain of living fêted, foils in which we grope and grow
As serious as honeybees, as laborious as ladybugs indifferent as they know
Their daily bread and signs depend not on commerce but industry. Rough
Terrain, yes! but praise no matter what may be the trappings.
The cause is paramount, practitioners partition tracks of land
And sacrifice themselves in the finding—as do mountains inevitably to sand
Or are simply swept away in time along the delta seashores lapping.
Random landings shoulder makeshift homes with open arms
Along the scores of symphonies, a little high amid the treble, alarming
All that’s bass—too many notes, perhaps—but not for the proud volcano.
Gifts in memory or dreams, men now somehow reign in stars and haloes.
Even so, it’s not so much the harvest in files but humanity sheds a light
On God’s humility in grandeur’s breath that gives all that blossoms life.

“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.