“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

“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.

“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…

“Then Again”

“Then Again”

Then again, we’ll meet in time. Paths that wind
Through years connect, diverge and merge, and we’ll drink
To one last dénouement and all it took to get there. Think
These annum as seconds, waves, moments as the tide rescinds,
And decay’s collected neatly in a single wooden box.
No wonder, then, that ancients seem
To worship gods above the One and only; they dream
In mantras of devotion to trees and rocks while tending flocks
Whispering insecurities behind contorted masks and gilded fans.
Recollection swallows voids and fills the blanks; the fetid page
Records both curse and antidotes, the withered whine of sages
Mourning lost superfluous ciphers spread broadcast as the sands.
What shame, what loss, what wanton waste these precious lines
That honour phantoms, worship mortality as delicacies in ancient rhymes.

…paintings by Jose Roosevelt…

“A Pyrrhic Victory”

“A Pyrrhic Victory”

A Pyrrhic victory at best, hours after yet another year’s
Bitter cold before the coming estates of sweat, insurmountability’s
Surmised but never publicly revealed. Accountability’s
Moot when age transmutes abundant copper into gold, drowns tears
With astringents of patent patience, maintenance, and losses dear
But ever too late for death to gloat no matter the audience. Flexibility
Of course is needed, reticence too calm for promiscuity
And not a whole lot larger than regret and nothing left to fear.
What then, comes next; what must? What highway markers point the way
To some fresh spring or more than nocturnal notches at the oasis?
Longevity rests its case while youth is lost in grasping straws
And twigs of self-control with nothing guaranteed to thaw
In time for dinner. Long since the urge to worship heady homeostasis
Yields mere noise, the debris of mindless predators at work or play
Whose highest aspiration is passion’s demand and supply of endless prey.

…paintings by Jeanette Bessette…

“It Has Always Been”

“It Has Always Been”

It has always been a stretch between the litigants,
the overweening permanence of existence in this world
collective notwithstanding its apparent docking at the end;
the coming to port, the arrival at the point of destination,

the fallacy in any journey, the absurdity of certainty
that would it were not so whether for the curse of hubris
in despair or consummate glory in humility,
arrivals and departures cannot avoid one another,

and if not pronounced in every hour even if extended
blissfully to days and weeks, possibly to months
and to what is deemed to be a lifetime,
still, natural siblings must hold conscious council

with one another no matter what the gravity
or length of either sojourn or the journey home.
All despair is intoxicated with this wine;
all joy suffocates if the cup is drained.

…painting at bottom by Michael Zeno Diemer…

“Let It Be”

Let it be now that I am and was not, that I opened the scar,
The wound a door, at first from within; I apprised.
A scintilla of light, I walked away from what it was, my eyes
Set forward. Confirmations heavy lay within my heart and far
Above me in the wondrous lapis air a quire of eternal strife,
Droplets in the golden mists of  risible irresistible pain; still, the trope
In millions reach me; similes; interlopers,
What I took to be myself
walk away no more but stumble. The surgeon’s knife
Presumes (as I once did) a strange adjustment, a windless gale of altercations,
And while caveats and codicils have paused, witnesses to alterations,
Yes, even they might smile to see an ominous elation
In the earth and worlds I see, though my eyes have failed. Agitation,
Addressed in the unseen Agora, histories, sciences and arts
So easily desolve in the waters of weightlessness at the quickening of hearts.

…paintings by Remedios Varos…