SCRIABIN

   Chimes of Christmas day heard
   at the dawn when curled in blankets
  you were born into mysticism
    Tolstoy called you a genius
influenced by Chopin's lyrical sonatas
     jolted by symbolism-romanticism
your student the emerging poet
     Pasternak gleaned musical
wisdom from the dissonance
      at your piano music
covering your a tonality
of knowledge over the earth
until you passed over at Easter.

TOLSTOY

You express in giant snows
from old droskys
       spin drifts of stories
  off the Russian heartland
           from great novels we bless
your century's achievement
   on a silent road to progress
and  experience  the freshness
     of young pure  seedless  souls                                                      
channeling characters
  of a new splendor
breathing the genius for passion
  of planted fulfillment
  to honor and honor.

BILLIE HOLIDAY

from all our prejudice
whose mouth tastes
solitude clamors
at art's fevered aroma
day and night survives
for conscience.

MOSHE BENARROCH

A great anti poet
   transliterates,man and woman
does Moshe dream
in Arabic, Spanish, Ladino
Hebrew,Esperanto, Berber
as he appreciates Neruda, Jabes
 Bukowski, Ginsberg
in his packed folio,
his open shirted
 language transforms us
in his own unique tongue,
a special oracle gift
not quite greatly telling us
what a small exiled world
it is for the poet
private as a laundry
for the Emperor's clothes
public as a lady in waiting
to take off her hose
a special poet of art
with an initialed quarrel
on a prophet's office space
occupying no territory
between two copy writes
open to partnership
with a covenant sustaining us
since David's composed in Zion
at Dante's paradise,Virgil's Rome
or Homer's Greece sang out
in the nameless depths
he is Moshe Benarroch
of several continents
and consonants
as aromas of divinities
distance this exile's presence
bequeathing his fresh love
to rise in a cloud of centuries
from his age's graffiti
as this generation's satiety
with insights his vision awaits
as memory lost in oratories
from romance's lore
wondering what animators
and the glories prophets are for
among their rabbinic visions
who repent of breathless furies
dance over graves still warm
and tell us their stories
in cross civilization's storms.

JOSEPH BRODSKY


you tried
  to imbibe

English as your own

but rarely does a poet

dream in his own tongue

in a foreign land

BOBCATS


Cougars hiding out

    in the cave

and we camp out

  as the rains open
 
mouths in a Montana sky

soaked my sneakers

and could not sleep.


     

MARQUEZ

You passed by clouds
  of silence
 in your shroud
   knowing betrayal
as a visionary birth marked
death on earth
by 20 century lyrical lines
on body bags
    of the hounded, wounded
he who incubates
   a magical  realism
in language waiting
from echoes of feathers
  has musical drum rolls,

 a legacy.

TWO LOVES

Had as a dorm mate 

this twink had two loves

 sinatra & cleopatra

all day or all night

one on radio, the other video

  

and two hates

insects and his fear

of oedipus rex

after seeing a shrink

he began to think

of being anonymous.

SEA TURTLES

A body born
    from the   sea
      collects turtles

 and returns them
in his closed palms
  to the glassy new wave

 feeling sad
to witness a tortoise
all painted up in tear jars
for being six in a pet store

like a lone violin
  in a Brooklyn pawn shop
with no one playing
Sarasate.

SOMNAMBULIST POET


Leveled by a stranger's

    night who merely

had the solitude

 of walking on the deck

 wakened the bass

by my sofa bed

playing smooth jazz
 
the wind blew her  away

as she roams
                the home harbor
the   waves inviting her

to visionary fields

as jazz combed her back

MINGUS MINGUS MINGUS

Mingus, you are with us

at your b flat at
   5 Great Jones street

Hentoff knew a genius best
never lost a Beat

and how you dressed

at every rehearsal

of illusion and dream
   jazz fusion third stream

Ginsberg gave you away
in marriage's '66 retreat

you carried so many women
off their feet.

JOYCE IN TRIESTE


Trying to earn a living

by tutoring in Trieste

or Dalmatia

no impairment
to his new Irish clothed
sunday    best
 arrangement:
suit, tie
vest
near a mirror, a reading light
in his train compartment
   takes notes and offering
    brief news quotes
 not sleeping in the brain's aphasia

KIEV

Cry out Ukraine
 
 Russia,

against the old refrain,

even the last poor Jews

after pogroms
     massacres. exiled, expelled
       are not to blame,
 who are refuseniks to violence,

Keep not silence, children of Chelm,

you who rebelled,  yelled
or whispered against them

not to forget Babi Yar,
the murders under the czar
the doctors of the commisar

oh grandmother
Oh grandfather,


you too were exiled


Oh risen red star
over Bethlehem,
   send out  wise men

bless and restore
no more persecution
no more retaliation

no more war

MEMORIAL DAY

Scribes
      cannot describe
 the ten tribes
   after the war
scattered   as ash to die
and ask X Y.

ROSSELLINI

forever
     citta aperta
outside   of stack holds
 combing   a day's death toll

scenting the child's
  survival of a hair
in strongholds
    of faces

ANDREI WAJDA


you kept
  our watches
  in blank horror
     every hour
of the fascist offensive

  silent bird wings
in Warsaw sewer
  squalor.

HOLLAND

Water logged

      bunkers  spies

dead eyes unknown
   now under Occupation

sidereal   nightmares
  for a thousand damns
near the Holland of our house

Rotterdam
 
Amsterdam, in the attic
  cries of the damned

    bogged down

      in summary

action loses miles

in boots of high command
 

POZNAN

Fascist tanks
   in small forest trees
of obliterating darkness

    winds of blazing cries
         horses  high
over     stones moving
to what war saw
of   a     thousand breaths.

NAGASAKI

So we expect

   but it never occurs

       but we suspect

    daylight, somewhere

outside the realm

 death times its nightfall

  its confluence of wings

   in orange  at Nagasaki.

 

AWAKE

Awake, Awake
O William Blake

Sons of Albion
Byron,Shelley

England, Zion
Ireland's Derry,

Macdiarmid's
Scotland,

From African-
Americans

In Harlem's Renaissance
Countee Cullen


In Russian the poet
novelist Pushkin


Poets, be lions
of freedom.

JOSEPH BROD


Joseph Brod
hunchback to crowds
of his young proud world
as a child of Czechs
with the misfortune
of men, crime and god
in a time of fascist vermin
a great author,mentor
wrote in beautiful German,
aided life sustaining Werfel,
the satirist disdaining Krauss
and laughing Hasek
of Good Soldier Sverjk,
encouraged musical Janacek
in his lyrical operas
saved books of Kafka
escaped to Israel.

KAFKA

Kafka
your novels survive
the fascist laughter
of burning books
and the final
solution of dirty looks
after a knee jerk kick
without absolution
a time thoroughly flawed
yet with satisfaction
of your executor
Joseph Brod
who gave you
an author's nod
saved your notes
as a trust by God
you are still alive from dust
of scintilla's motes.

RIMBAUD

Hold off exile
and let me live
a deserted silence
and not on trial
on beds denied
for a year of drink
release me
or at least a smile
to be gambling
and winning
not being buried alive
at least let me think
to be grinning
give me a day
of a new beginning
a respite to survive,
nor stink of sinning.

THE BARD

Without a peer
or Oxford chair
in history or drama
words his only grammar

We have a tiny folio
that presumes to know you
in plays of braggadocio
from your Globe days bio,

We love Lear and Othello
and meditate with Hamlet
but above all we memorize
with Vendler your sonnets*

Enough of didactic verse
that we nurse or fear
and the critic's curse
my Will Shakespeare.


*BZ attended Helen Vendler's courses.
She liked his poems, especially on Auden.
If BZ wasn't so shy he would have kept
up a friendship.

KIERKEGAARD

Kierkegaard desired

to be a servant of Jesus

a religious bard whom God
preserved as a serious genius,

Like a poet and critic of art 

in today's avant garde 

where is faith to play a part 

or dictate from any party card,

None in Germany since Nietzsche
and Hegel appeared in spirit
history creates a materialism
for Schlegel or Che with it,

It is the indologist of the age
with a philologist's language
who is the sage or on stage
with outrage,not the religious.

RECOLLECTION

Memory only sustains
in Search of Lost Time
Marcel Proust in Combray
he crossed by a church
listening to the bell's chime.

THE GREAT MASTERS


At a Paris dinner in '22
they were all asked there
Proust, Picasso, Joyce
masked Stravinsky's voice

Few had any conversation
passed up novel words
to embarrass each master
I wish to be wall birds

LIFE

When life demeans
and we are perplexed
the Lord intervenes
by text and dreams
He has a vision
that redeems
in revelations lips
from Genesis
to the Apocalypse.

MOSES AND COMPANY

Lifted from bull rushes
brushes by Nile river

Ten Commandments
from Moses the law giver

life not overrated, it is said
already from mother Jochebed

Esau in a rift by a carob
was not lifted up like Jacob

no promised son of Hagar created
Sarah's kissed one, the other hated

following the star of Bethlehem
a King's hem on an Empire

a man forsaken God
taken with St. John's bread

desired by Satan to the prison
at dawn the dead Son is risen.

ST. PAUL OF TARSUS

A Tarsus Saul would not fail
studied Torah with Gamliel
enchanted Jewish rabbis
with learning of the wise

Received a new revelation
of Isreal's Jesus off a horse
Paul reaching all nations
to believe Emmanuel of course.

LIONEL OR SAMUEL JOHNSON

Lionel and Samuel
suffered for their craft
though the world
considers genius daft,

Poetry sums up the life
of Lionel the sickly aesthete
fell from an alcoholic bar
as cups fall on his feet,

while Samuel suffered
on a melancholic rack
writing his daily maxims
like hymns of a hypochondriac,

Both adored the Lord Jesus
rewarded in their own way
who is more greatly
awed or odd,who can say.

ELIOT'S PHILOSOPHER



Charming Montaigne
has feigned praise from Eliot

only Pascal's wager gained
a grateful philosopher sought

for Blaise is never disarmed
or contained as T. S was not.

ART AND MADNESS

Cowper, Collins and Smart
chose poetry for their art
in minimalism's thin prism
you see my aphorism's part

All in masks of madness
in a lack of control
is it a sin to ask a la carte
what sadness racks a soul.

LAWRENCE OF ARABIA

In the Sahara
of your mind
T.E .Lawrence
dons the double
minded winds
of desert dances
moves your English kind
or do you sense
a chance meeting
by a lamb bleating
for all mankind.

COLOR FIELD PAINTERS

Noland,Olitiski,Louis,

all influenced and framed

by Turner's romanticism

the great unamed visionary.

AD REINHARDT

In his black squares
Ad Reinhardt was cool
helped create bare prisms
for his new school's beliefs
like art's Red Square
in marginal minimalism
as a dual mystical heart
in prisms of vertical reliefs.

AT CONCORD

At Concord,
a beautiful friendly
downtown,vulnerable
to quiet,effusive souls
knowing the value
of independent knowledge
as birds rise over the bridge
toward their spring arrival
and on the marsh grass
at this Patriot's Day
near a streaming boat
a runaway poet
on a silent towel
in a soft walk
waits by tall moments
engraved by monuments
hears a calling of Thoreau
becomes alive,
as your spirit words
in transcendence survives
another calm walk,
now reading Emerson
feels a self reliance of sort,
gnawing at my conscience
by the thickets grazing me
while eating strawberries
at a farm court
that we bought
near a family memory
of Louisa Alcott.

GEORGE

Saint George
dragon slayer
King George
Lloyd George
Georgie Girl
Boy George
Baby George.

TURNER'S SLAVE SHIP

Ruskin knew a masterpiece
now in Boston at the Fine Arts
it says more about injustice
than the Abolitionists charts.

GLENN GOULD

When I am fooled
by my own solo fears
I turn to Glenn Gould
playing Bach on the piano.

NIN

(We write that we may taste life twice)
Anais Nin

   

While reading in France
about the Alexandrian Thais,
in a library's discovery
chanced to Anais Nin diaries

What a chance time to grow
in the mad Thirties under cover
meeting your lovers Durrell
Henry Miller and Artaud,

You own seduced influences
of Proust,Gide and Valery
in a shelf's gallery of Cocteau,
Lawrence and Rimbaud,

The guest for today's menu
your shrink Dr. Otto Rank
drinking in your words

in Delta of Venus,Little Birds.

SAMIZDAT

When wrongly writing
was a crime
considered for this or that
time to recall the samizdat.

BABEL
January 20, 1940

Caught in an old
wheel in the soviet
just to reveal a cog,
shot as a useful idiot.

WEIL'S SORROW

Weil's sorrows reach
to close windows like mine
charitably open for tomorrow
to another wick of sunshine

we paper our sufferings
when our classic mind aches
as our teacher- critic finds
even our own words forsake.

ROUALT

Roualt a musical creator
no fault from his saints
art has a greater prosperity
crisscrossing paints

Clowns have a heart
of secular rumor
sounds partner
in a lyrical humor.

MINIMALISM

Just a word
   for Judd
about a stud
     or Stella
'' a fella"
    Reich,a composer
Eich,a photographer
 Adams,
no mdm's
    Carver,story teller
Beckett,
a trash collector
      character/ or no
waiting for Godot

KAFKA OWN TRIAL

Every motivation
in a writer's second
revival, in relation
to his psychic survival
of unconnected guilt
built into the subject
of object d'art
at Kafka's own trial
while fulfilling his recreation
of primal imagery
in repentant sentences
of his own commitment
to a space of imagination,
though extraordinary energy
into his own shaky relations
as kaleidoscopic novels
emerge in fragments
at a measure of propitious
complexion of suffering
trying to make panegyric sense
as in any oedipal son's confiding
from his diary's reading
in a fulfilling nexus of culture
living every day by dying
to his own sculpture.

FLAUBERT'S anti-Bildungsroman


uncovering secrets
traits, fetishes,
statistics,
in linguistics,
the fate
of impersonal mystics
in St. Antony's confessions
on a  deserted retreat
mad as in a ballistic state
of critical escalations
multiplying impressions
digressions
theatrical intentions
incantations,spelled out
in a literary dictionary
all incandescent jells
of alchemy's retribution
alien retention calls out
in a resurfaced dimension
arbitrary conjunctions,
spiritual injunctions
retributory functions
of eye, nose,ear, throat,
in retroaction, all words
without satisfaction.

FRAGONARD

Sometimes
after devouring
the avant garde
we need a confection
on the menu
invite Mme. du Barry
to a fine French desert
of a pink caked
Fragonard.

JOYCE IN TRIESTE

Svevo
by the Adriatic
in your Irish soul
you met a Jewish friend
and encouraged him
in his Confessions of Zeno
for language was
your both companion
and all you need.

THE BATHERS

What a scandal
for Courbet
that Delacroix
could barely handle
waved on his way.

THE DEATH OF MARQUEZ
 APRIL 18, 2014

Hunted by words
to express a barefoot
of time,
rest in peace
as the dust shines
in solitude's sleep
enduring history
on nature's labors
Garcia,in a Mexican sun
sustaining the horizon.

UNEASY SUFFERING


Kept away
in the field of green
when we hide under
a plum tree
searching for mushrooms
or reading Rilke
suddenly it rains
over vast hills
unlike a country bird
trying to sustain
some memory of the past
we with uneasy suffering
among fate's windmills
in such fruitless diction
with a song without words
on a discretionary May.

CHOPIN

When days continue
to be entangled
in craggy human spaces
of fitful winds
cradling what seems
almost perishable
having known absence
and first hand exile
in aberrant chambers
yet avid for ceaseless life.

EDITH SITWELL'S WORLD

Hapless as chasms

in the wind

not cautious

for telling it as is
over London skies

on breathless nights

of the intense blitz,

children buried alive

on garden doorsteps
in the murmuring rain

of bestiality's power

then the enemy returns

home with flowers
and listening to Liszt.

IN THE BRATTLE BOOKSHOP

Letter A
ASH,John
spending time reading
not feeling estranged
or confounded
at your travels
whirled by your world.
ASHBERRY, John
it's exciting in the lines
and floating adventures
you have confided in us.
B.

REVERDY'S PASSAGE

Celebrating words
and hidden
in a sabbatical
starry wake
of sleeplessness
philosophy branches out
its rootlessness speaks
winding nature's refuge
among a rock of season
indifferent to trivia
except for the butterfly
at an appearance in vines.

RENE CHAR'S VISIT

Briefly the river flowers
are collected in Provence
the restless voice
of cosmic intensity
luminous as the sun
on this ridiculous earth
bound by necessities
while existence hovers
in grove hours of voices
from ashes in separation
of a future past done.

PESSOA'S REASON

For going on
in maxims,poetry,prose
like wise the petals
of a rose gesture
in the garden clusters
who know happiness
or measures justice
when fame is unnamed
and in a shadow
forgotten.

KAFKA AT THE BREACH

In a dream sequence
you survived
this shipwrecked life
at earth's submission
beginning to hope
back in your eyelids
a novel occupied your days
under a sky persuasion
forsaking revisions
in a collapsing universe.

MONTALE

Two glances
passes an hour
leaning on sight
trembling like the wind
on Aventine hill
lightening oscillates
between weary trees
carrying oranges
even under venerable rains
as noon day echoes
on the Ides of March
feeling love's desolation
needing an embrace
from Dora Marcus
who passes over
on a park bench.

BORGES

Your absence in shadows

will not leave us
bandaged up
wounded through groves

by jacaranda trees

with alpha secrets

entangled in nettles

named by imagination

transfigured by time

ibises in solitary skies

are blindly drawn

from a landscape painter

on the swampy roads

among all exiles

even of the disappeared
in Patagonia

who turn up unexpectedly
on streets and the pampas

as sealed gold dust
parachutes from clouds

to succor every generation.

BLAISE CENDRARS

Your portrait
drawn by Modigliani
with the silent face
of a first modernist
often scorned in pain
deeply thinking of art
in a three person unity
for a film's accent
capturing language
shadowed by ink dreams
on paper lanterns
from a spirit rose
as intimacy of frequent
tenderness among thorns.

BOSTON SIXTIES POETS

Who will forget Jack Powers
never lacked a saturnine smile
called me Aeneas or Jesus
depending on his clever style

Those Sixties Latin days
conjured ideas, no novenas
Susskind, Starbuck, Davison
and injured John Weiners.

SEXTON'S SUNSHINE

The confessional avant garde
have gone like Anne Sextant
on Acheron's rented swan boats
under Boston Common's sunshine,

Chance days of party bacchanals
with vocal exaggerated nights
on Marlborough and Charles
are faded by an awning light,

The lyrical Lowell and Bishop
celebrated at the Esplanade
unfold poems on arty napkins
by blankets on Beacon's boulevard

No longer ice on Frog pond
we skate on memory's friends
yet why do mated song birds
make flights as our descendants.

MEMORY
(for Elizabeth Bishop)

A flight of sea bird noises
from an airy window sill
accompanies my words
whirl and winded in Brazil

Untangled by a lover's eye
in a mermaid dream
strangled by the bed cover
orchestrated on the fly

A letter here from Lowell
on his reflected lips
better than from hell
in his history's apocalypse

Shadowed by memory
the clock fulfilling hours
say a good word for me
by the rocks jonquil flowers.

BAUDELAIRE

Baudelaire,pariah poet
expressing the garish
in Satan's selfish garden
gods messiah pardon,

With a succulent
flair for words
among the condemned
hemmed in as caged birds,

Clothed and spent in Paris
as a dandy for cover
well to do, embarrassed,
in a handy oath for lovers,

The gents and passerby
do not know your tears
conservative critics in arrears
suspect your furtive ideas,

In dawn's despair
you realize that exiles
are like a swan
wishing to rise in the air,

Captivated hypochondriac
with earth-wise rage
creative hysteric
spent on every page,

Close your doors
a genius to be fair
eyes his correspondences
from a sonorous Baudelaire.

JOHN DONNE

John Donne
always in a search
for a way out
and a church

Closer to home
in his history
Rome once in his
consistory,

found a middle way
in Purgatory's breath,
as an intellectual divine
to convey in poetry, death.

BURROUGHS

On a soft typewriter
the keys of paradox
misrules ignite her
in the loft,
seizes paper flames
to throw epiphanies
into blank spaces
life is not soft games.

DOSTOYEVSKY

Ears sealed for freedom
In "The Possessed"
as Russia's history revealed

toward a prophetic apocalypse
songs from an Orthodox church
by long lines in confession

Fyodor, pray the wisdom
from voices in your characters
for a century of transgression

lips search an age's indiscretion
to enlighten political choice
for any threatened generation.

HART CRANE

The sea hurls
you into waves
the cloud cover
over the wind
speeds
no more nights
excommunicated
without sleep
no more shadows
to ice your time
of art.

E.E.CUMMINGS

Your morning
untangles butterfly words
lets go in neon spaces
without sleep
named by waiting
calls of imaginations
from magnetic pupils
turning out
for a generation
retracing on
hallowed voices
and cornered into islands
over the waves
there are loose stones
like unattached poems
of yours
resemblances together
on tiny breaths of speech
praising a flowing earth
in visible spring rain
showers rolling readily
by ocean marshes
into recollections
revealed in infinity.

NIKOLAI GUMILEV

Between red stars
and whitened radar
in turbulence of winds
from a vagabond earth
and a flame from orbits
clouds rush on
opening your mind's
sensorium
into a silhouette sky
reciting your clear poem
to Anna Akhmatova
sealed by the secret
of a wife's words in love
enlightened without blame
from tormented rumors
of silent snow in Siberia
driven in exile
to unfamiliar landscapes
between untangled visits
at the Sorbonne
later animated to live
for your son Lev
once on a travelogue
to study Abyssinia
in a time inspired
by a bitter consciousness
recoiled by violence
silence has no limbs
by the Urals fir
as if only God
may comfort her.

CENTRAL PARK

Loneliness on
Central Park
sons of alcohol
walk their dogs
between their eyes
insomnia rises
unrolls its small light
in the sun's geometry
unveiled in silence
to the assured memory
of shadowy times.

ROBERT LOWELL'S BLOCKS

Even the first blocks
of pink, black and blue
made us mad and frightened
thinking it was unorthodox

The school shrinks
think we are April fools
because we obey
our own enlightened rules

"This one is not coordinated
still another in despair
is fated to be bi-polar
creative at the electric chair"

Such is Robert Lowell's condition
they once called mental health
a hell's hurt life of perdition
as a poet's lyrical stealth.

VIRGINIA WOOLF

Today the waves jettison
along the cape
the north winds
seem to threaten
for Mrs.Dalloway
jagged out of shape
on the ocean silhouettes
from perpetual motion
like egg omelets
or crepe suzettes
like your warm secretive
unbehaving characters
braving her storms
yet longing for regrets.

DYLAN THOMAS

What a serious blue cover

I found in a used book stall

in delirious adolescence

a present of Dylan Thomas

with a sleepy breath

of a runners promise

You are not put on a shelf

to be withdrawn like sails

or spent as wealth in Wales

nor taken by law

in a draw's eminent domain

or written for in vain.

BERRYMAN'S LETTERS

Junk mail
lost for years
Dear John in a funk
and suicide letters
in the old trunk
of his betters
lost forever.

Life sweet cheated you
capturing and arranging
cameo things
clumsily spaced
and frosted in a music box
by narratives
in your poetry's paradox
of sickness unto guilt
he talks and talks
from mind racing tapes
as snow pills detox
while waves from a legend
erased by Styx and stones
from Berryman
to Cape Girardeau spill
on now effaced shore rocks.

CONFESSIONAL POETS

No more drugs or pills
from many hours, seven hills

on inner high rise heaven
in uneven phrases and phases

in a sinner's age of Eisenhower
and dull T.V dinners

being traumatized
and self-analyzed

like steeples' mocking birds
people are talking words,

everything is at our feet
living like in a Dutch treat

giving out baby hugs
and indigo flowers.

ALWAYS THE OUTSIDER

In the school hallways

always an outsider

hiding from crowds

reading Hardy or Borges

in my homeless study room

closing the closet door

not chosen to belong,

as a spider in webbed hay

we manage to get through

you too, you too.

PLATH

I called out to you
Plath, Plath

you were doing
your craft

Plath, Plath
in a graphic laugh

taking out the chaff
from the extraneous wheat

in a superlative paragraph
letting you live in words

standing on math's sheeets
calculating stick and staff

writing out your draft
of your summed up epitaph

Plath, Plath
what a pretending world

of magic lantern tricks
sight reading your manuscripts

a numbed age
will not stop or upstage you

stressing a stealth pop
culture of an outraged view

confessing our loathing
and what is ribald or sick

for much comedy shtick
turns a N.Y. minute loose

a time of self abuse
the 'crime of Lenny Bruce'

as you master the language
away from Ted Hughes

reading every news day
death's page by page

I still recalled on you
Plath,Plath.

DECISIONS

Some make decisions
without constraint
others create divisions
yet expect complaint

Our compliant secrets
dull sentimental souls
such may become giants
in a self reliant whole

Emerson,Thoreau,Milton
in a philosophical view
changed even the Puritan
into a lyrical "we can do."

ROBERT LOWELL

After his last tryst
voices sent Lowell
to a Boston
psychiatrist,


Better than the hell
and narrow window
of his sinful ancestors
as choice Arthur Winslow.

PARAKEETS

Combative words
that prosecute
like live caged birds
voices repeat
wanting to leave
the paper sheets
others wish to buy
the cute parakeets
and give them friends
budgies settling so high
fly as if with human feet.

CHRISTOPHER MARLOWE

When suffering is king
and there is no queen
to be found
we dream of a reckoning
or another kingdom's crown
and conspire with another force
who has aspired has fallen
upon Shakespeare's horse.

PABLO SABORIO

A time of being anonymous
in one's own nihilism
when so much is superfluous
is without credence

A poet on trial
in an age of science
so verse makes an alliance
for what is ambiguous
and shut out in silence

anything contentious
or in a proximity
to be contiguous,
in a denial that life
is a vile monster to us
some souls turn to disguise
or wise Jesus or Socrates


what wisdom as words
all freedom lies
from our view of intelligence
to where its resistance dies


we continue our existence
and reason for persistence
living in conspiracies denial
of any season of forgiving.

WORDS BREAKDOWN


Words tumble
like upon seven hills
makes us humble
one asks to be still

Mind racing thoughts
as in John Clare
just ought
to clear the air

Let them disappear
as far from home
taking with it fear
further than Rome

In the asylum
Clare rested his head
masking the past
request what he said.

LIFE AND DEATH

Lives spent
in  a shared convention
wives too repent
for their husband's invention

in death columns
an honorable mention
in one solemn breath
summed up in a pension.

TEMPERAMENTS

What temperaments
in Ravel
conducted
by Ambravanel,

As the sea symphony
moves us as the tide
music soothes us,
boats on a sailing ride.

REMORSE

Rebuffed by a century  
of historical sea logs
and casualties of the past
where bones are uncovered
in a vast treasury
the morning waves over
passed our home harbor
but do not last
but are rebuffed
as they glide
on the silvery ocean
a bird watches the shore
at high tide
by remorseless gales
motioning East wind
in such bluffs
we do not sail
but mourn by gulls
webbed over the shore
as the fisher's bride
chooses her words
for the lost mermen
of the sea crossed over.

DILEMMA (for Emily)


Some have the air
of the world
with savoir faire
in all behavior
are care free
others call on a savoir.

what about Emily
her poetry leaves us only
believing in a mystery
in a small town drama
to tell the first at tea
a critic's thirsting dilemma,
hearing the belle of Amherst
in the music of eternity.

TO BE

To be in a chorus
aims for a choir as one
none is to be superfluous
knotted as an anonymous sun

When one or plays solo
as in a chaconne
the violin intones with us
we are alone.

TO BE A GO BETWEEN

To be a go between
as two lovers
is not to take sides
under the covers
of a bed
not to be discovered
by games
of checkers or politics
black or red
by getting a check
in our spirit instead,
or letting in our licks
as a didactic poet,
or playing tricks,
betting, even cheating
or forgetting
the unchecked panegyrics
of those between their sex,
built without guilt
in different curves
like concave or convex
in life they may emerge
and eventually manage
to converge or merge
like serving doubles
it may be not easy
knotted in dual troubles
to make any activity
or react with doubt
as we learn to pout
almost psychologically,
or to superficially boast
from the over reach
in our discerned proclivities,
or to be too queasy
at our official abilities
when all ways
seem at an end
we act crazy or pretend
that nothing is real
in an attempt not to feel
or reveal,
others may
equally share
their artistic specialties
yet beware
in what we are ourselves
are initially missing
to be aware
of being dissed
by other critics
or raising up
any artificial
prosthetic difficulties
by leaning over
to reflect
at our own city journey
with no effect
having on our minds
to be restored to more
than one meaning.

CONFORMITY

Everyone must choose
today to conform
whether at the prom
dot com or in the dorm

To interview a youth
gives us no clues
to new ideas or truth
only packaged smears

They hear on radio and T.V.
all the same slogans
few refuse to feel free
to choose another station

It's the media's fault
you say which controls
an encyclopedia's discernment
in children's contented souls,

There was one Socrates
Jesus or St. John of the Cross
as hemlocks of persecution
when crucifixion counts as loss,

Today it's all for chits and gain
maybe on Main or Wall Street,
for attaining is a fit in lesson
this generation may guess on.

LIGHTEN UP

Lighten up,
when the sailor said
to a young teenager
fishing for trout
on the ocean floor,
"I wager on peace,"
with some humor-
kid, forget doubtful rumors
on radio and T.V.
only makes life a misery
of strife
enjoy your life -
as it ought to be,
and the boy had his wish
and caught a fish
wrapped it around
the damned newspaper
with 'Nam casualties
listed in the obituary.

EMPIRE'S FAILURE

If you were considered
a failure to the Empire
it was off to Australia
and another culture

It was no easier support
under the tsar or Kaisar
in Russia or Prussia
there is a war or to deport

Yet the poor followed
as exiles of state
slowly and surely to endure
through miles of real estate

No chance of being demure
or waiting on chance
for a sharp traveler's venture
to remake their lives secure.

LOVE LIFE AND DEATH

Life today is outlined as a friend
in news snippets or movie clips
you may play games, lose
or pretend with poker chips,

When your breath pants at soaps
love releases its romance
obituary's death has defined hopes
in war or in pieces by chance,

Who cares about timely order
when they only bring on fears
lets free our muscled minds
to embody unraveling ideas,

Whatever station at birth
we always miss the bus
even with clever imagination
about this earth-wise fuss

Some stay at home and read
or travel above and abroad
to find any tome to lead us
on a lonely roadway to god.

WHEN YOU LOVE

When you love or at love
discover what matters
planting seeds, watering rain
below or above still scatters

Just enjoy this verse
on this immersed day for you
a twig or branch in the sun
emerging as two then one.

TURNING

Where does one turn forward
in a reasoned time of unbelief
toward yourself,nature, God
as sunshine encircles a leaf,

Resting on the hammock
immersed in halting rhyme
when seasons change the clock
will your verses alter the time,

Seeking doubts for answers
questioning in adolescence
as you watch the Russian ballet
without a dancer's consequence,

For it is difficult for him and her
to match up with every step
with a pirouette or pas de deux
you catch up and then demur.

OPERA BUFFA

She sang
opera buffa
then Rigoletto
she in stilettos

what a voice
in an aria for a soprano
there was no choice
for a tenor or alto.

BELONGING

Where does a poet
belong in a world
turned grey
without rights
yet wrong
an earth-wise time
of cold injustice
as burdens of the day
over sold,

does he/she turn to nature
with a mature philosophy
in a nest of birdsong
or to religious piety,
if so what variety
when all have truth
in their society's time
yet scandalized arrests
from petty crime
which charms our youth
as it disarms in music
with grand words
from a mystic's chest.

TALENT

They play tennis
without a word's relief
as in Isis or Firebird ballets

performed by an ageless
St. Dennis or Tallchief
on an unveiled stage

They chance talent in sport
where aesthetics shines
stretching their valiant feet

a benign poet in silence
watches from the audience
the retching dance or at court.

CONVERSATION

When men speak
constantly like birds
they do not think
just to be favored
nor do women drink
in their words
for fine table wine
must be ably savored
the taste increased
then flavored to dine.

MOOD MUSIC

Such melancholy of mood
on a cloudy dawn
it takes my folly
to spy a fawn from the wood

Make it dazzlingly understood
to brood is not to remember
to create out of good
spring wakes from December

What musicals we hear
from the songbirds forest
let me nest by the trees
these lyrical words confessed.

TALK SHOWS

I put on the morning radio
to hear a Haydn string quartet
and here is a talk show
instead of a musical minute

These talking heads argue
the news as commentators
bringing us what to review
while we take bread as waiters.

WRITE ON

Write on in precision
in an accomplished hand
there is always a revision
sight reading will command

Whether Proust or Flaubert
returning to a page of ink
a mind is unloosed to dare
for all of mankind to think.

CELEBRITY

Manet or Monet recalled
before an aged master of arts

La Fargue or La Forgue partner
as surrealism's language poets

What reportage here of celebrity
uncovering Poe's alabaster morgue

who stay and argue to show it
over a century ago.

SHOW TRIAL

How sad to be a victim
of a show trial
sentenced for conviction
by pen,ink and exile

The list is very long
Socrates and Jesus
missed by a few who don't
belong in god's chorus,

Others were hanged
by the Inquisitor's fire
the doors always open
to any Torquemada's ire,

Dreyfus in Paris
church and state defile
won't embarrass the mobs
his fate robbed on Devil's Isle,

Russia in the mad Thirties
samisdat reports on style
Sinyavsky and Daniel
tried by 1966 KGB guile,

But we will not curse
though our hearts break
until we hear the verse
in the art of William Blake.

THE NOVELIST

The novelist
had the Empire's earth
as his cloister,
inherited a fortune
from a Parisian cousin
twice removed
having a dozen paintings
in the Louvre,
walked in white flannels
between two channels
on the bedecked sea
as a home harbor oyster
but was no Tory,

With Nietzchean gloom
as a dwarfish niebelung
with Mannichean doom
in a rough language tongue,
without much desired hope
even when young
barely holding onto humanity
with a bridle on his horse
to be swashbuckling writer
in the 19th century,
could not naturally abide
in Dickension penury
back benches
or the bourse
and any Popery of course,

a bit mad from nihilism
and ancient furies
preferred his own
mystery stories,
needed glasses
chose a pince-nez
forgot to shave
yet had a mop
grew a mustache
then muttonchops
and a fez
once discovered
by a director to be cast
in a musical play
with rare reviews
and told to appear brave
yet refused to be
anyone's stage slave
according to the Daily News

chose not to volunteer
for the Great war,
took his own journey
without a Forbes-Burney
became a club reporter
from London and Mecca
where he had a son
who was quite a masher
named after Glubb Pasha
who moved to America
in New York's Tribeca
and created a misunderstood
personal memoir
of his father in Hollywood.

THE POET

Exiled
in an hour
put on trial
without the power
except of words
making all authorities
even most discerning
think of you
rather as a bother
in every school
not bowing your knees
to academic rules
given their third degrees
you are too cool
for their pathetic A.B.C's

yet catch their smile
with crocodile tears
in churlish laughter
suspecting you are
a public enemy
number one
of the state,
even Plato
wishing you were
not a citizen
without much weight
or even clout or fun
not deserving of support
but part of another
brotherhood
they were after or about,

even those who have
not even heard
or read you as a fool
or a good sport
always misunderstood you,
rounded up for cages
found in every nation
through all the ages
or in unlighted hallways
at the train station
for no court crime
nor adept
at the bourse
except the time
when language
will exchange course,

sounding as
wondrous birds
even of paradise
who stare
with enlarged eyes
making their way
at freedom
as if we were wise
with certain wisdom
as learned rabbis,

Traveling with
a guitar or incognito
alone as a beaming planet
in a sun's glorious sky
by an unknown star
making its orbit way
grateful for a heavenly
mountain pass
or a tiny mouthful
slice of bread
to fill a drinking
red wine glass
rarely honored
by any exhibited class
unlike a king or queen
until they are dead.

PRACTICING

Skates on ice
over Frog Pond
all ages
take practice
or advice
from teachers
some dark or blonde
who reach us
before we fall
in different states
we crawl out of ice
to our dudes or mates
who stall
as we play for time
and are rescued
by our call.

WHO ARE MY MATES

Who are my mates

let's start with Keats

in my youth

searching for beauty

and truth,

Then adolescence awakes

and all is well

for William Blake,

a marriage

of heaven and Hell,

All those sirens

of ancient Odyssey's hero

in David's environs

languages of miracles

never ages

from Zion until Nero,

Who are my mates

with lyrical creation

Byron, Pushkin, Yeats

no one has forgotten
the Russians

or Eliot and Auden
with musical meditation

they taught us a modern

yet still life sought vocation.