ROMANTICISM
Only twelve
when words
unlock the dust
making faces
against a raging night
Six hours
of a lyric answer
a touch of strangeness
from vagabond dreams
rolls over the bed
A bright moon
dances in the shade
and my Keats
has fallen asleep
on the whitest sheet
of a burning ode
from the starry Muse
breathing in the unknown
waking from
disappearing vistas
and Medusa's stone.
Tuesday, December 31, 2013
LAMENTATIONS
Let's blame Aphrodite
when summer surprises
your echoes settle
from breast to breast
The moon is feverish
to lock light in
hoodwinked by fate
the flesh tears at love
Indebted goddess
to an unarmed power
where fruit and music
jumble up paradise
among sleepless blankets
rinds, words ,gardens
tasting elixirs
of good fortune.
Let's blame Aphrodite
when summer surprises
your echoes settle
from breast to breast
The moon is feverish
to lock light in
hoodwinked by fate
the flesh tears at love
Indebted goddess
to an unarmed power
where fruit and music
jumble up paradise
among sleepless blankets
rinds, words ,gardens
tasting elixirs
of good fortune.
EXPECTATIONS
(for Tomas Transtromer)
The trees cold as footsteps
alive as phantoms
of early music
when in amazement
March sky covers dawn
from pale first light
covering lichen and moss fields
after the snow kisses
ungloved hands
once frozen in the sun
and open tundra
of omen and memory
fooling no one
in a vertical dare
near the green sea
between fjords
where house boats tremble
from off the islands
to surface in the thaw
of landscapes
and life jackets
swaying gingerly
in the low crevices
of now forgotten
love notes
since climbing,
tree, caverns, mountains
in woolen socks
pushing your weight
to host beach friends
who visit and play
under the galaxy
of harmonic undertones
of experimental spheres.
(for Tomas Transtromer)
The trees cold as footsteps
alive as phantoms
of early music
when in amazement
March sky covers dawn
from pale first light
covering lichen and moss fields
after the snow kisses
ungloved hands
once frozen in the sun
and open tundra
of omen and memory
fooling no one
in a vertical dare
near the green sea
between fjords
where house boats tremble
from off the islands
to surface in the thaw
of landscapes
and life jackets
swaying gingerly
in the low crevices
of now forgotten
love notes
since climbing,
tree, caverns, mountains
in woolen socks
pushing your weight
to host beach friends
who visit and play
under the galaxy
of harmonic undertones
of experimental spheres.
We tolerate what we cannot speak of.
An expression of love is always a hidden confession of much more.
Some hope to purchase a bed, a sofa to read on or a pew without paying
the upholstery costs to service it or forgetting the time to sleep on it.
We return to the faith of childhood with a childhood's faith.
Prosperity first signals tourism, a wish to get away.
Liberals enjoy the morning headlines, conservatives the evening news,
believers already have the good news.
Going to the opera is always an aesthetic excuse to head for the stage.
Art tries to rescue the already drawn lover.
Politics is always a sickly mediocre way to power followed by a lover's
excuse to take cover when persuasion deflowers.
Politics, sex and religion manipulate each other.
When the last lover cannot face the music a new lover improvises
on how to score.
Americans are eternal optimists, the Jewish people with their history
of worldly success yet will not turn to pessimism, hence their dilemma.
Today Europe's Jews are caught between the definitive and dhimintude.
Every writer always has a great aunt and dilettante in his life.
Poets are rebels taking up arms even against themselves.
A few men love to worship in truth, a few women worship the truth
to love.
America is dominated by the middle class, the middle -aged and middle
brows.
The formerly religious feel like lost souls.
Disappointed lovers and poets were neither either.
Artists make the zaniest statements on politics, politicians do like-wise
about art.
Opera is for those who combine melodrama of the queen the act of
betrayal of a king, and the vocal music of the Royal courtiers.
Those obsessed with pedigree are close to dogs.
Poets with a handwriting problem, invariably write well.
Epistles are for seekers of truths, lovers compose letters for others, poets
write for themselves.
Oh that novel look of a first lover-take cover!
If life is an accidental birth, no wonder predestination is by faith.
The economic world is divided by those who lose things, and those who
lose everything.
A chin speaks volumes.
Since everyone applied, everyone lost.
Those who usually demand reform, refuse the lessons of their own
reformation.
Some who spill their seed have forgotten the cool of the garden
Those who constantly sing lyrics about love must learn to refrain and
rehearse with automatic intonation.
It takes only small arms to fire.
Atheists found their own religion.
Religion is divided between Saducees and its seducers.
A middle aged darkness when the church and state ruled in a universal hell.
Some souls find the cross obtrusive, they prefer a to live crosswise.
Music idols are image-bound to their imitative worshippers.
Fascism is an idolatry of pretense, a carnival only to the invited.
A Jewish identity is folly to the nations.
No one is neutral to the history of the Jews.
The artificial are invariably profane.
Maxims are miniscule, aphorisms are life size.
An expression of love is always a hidden confession of much more.
Some hope to purchase a bed, a sofa to read on or a pew without paying
the upholstery costs to service it or forgetting the time to sleep on it.
We return to the faith of childhood with a childhood's faith.
Prosperity first signals tourism, a wish to get away.
Liberals enjoy the morning headlines, conservatives the evening news,
believers already have the good news.
Going to the opera is always an aesthetic excuse to head for the stage.
Art tries to rescue the already drawn lover.
Politics is always a sickly mediocre way to power followed by a lover's
excuse to take cover when persuasion deflowers.
Politics, sex and religion manipulate each other.
When the last lover cannot face the music a new lover improvises
on how to score.
Americans are eternal optimists, the Jewish people with their history
of worldly success yet will not turn to pessimism, hence their dilemma.
Today Europe's Jews are caught between the definitive and dhimintude.
Every writer always has a great aunt and dilettante in his life.
Poets are rebels taking up arms even against themselves.
A few men love to worship in truth, a few women worship the truth
to love.
America is dominated by the middle class, the middle -aged and middle
brows.
The formerly religious feel like lost souls.
Disappointed lovers and poets were neither either.
Artists make the zaniest statements on politics, politicians do like-wise
about art.
Opera is for those who combine melodrama of the queen the act of
betrayal of a king, and the vocal music of the Royal courtiers.
Those obsessed with pedigree are close to dogs.
Poets with a handwriting problem, invariably write well.
Epistles are for seekers of truths, lovers compose letters for others, poets
write for themselves.
Oh that novel look of a first lover-take cover!
If life is an accidental birth, no wonder predestination is by faith.
The economic world is divided by those who lose things, and those who
lose everything.
A chin speaks volumes.
Since everyone applied, everyone lost.
Those who usually demand reform, refuse the lessons of their own
reformation.
Some who spill their seed have forgotten the cool of the garden
Those who constantly sing lyrics about love must learn to refrain and
rehearse with automatic intonation.
It takes only small arms to fire.
Atheists found their own religion.
Religion is divided between Saducees and its seducers.
A middle aged darkness when the church and state ruled in a universal hell.
Some souls find the cross obtrusive, they prefer a to live crosswise.
Music idols are image-bound to their imitative worshippers.
Fascism is an idolatry of pretense, a carnival only to the invited.
A Jewish identity is folly to the nations.
No one is neutral to the history of the Jews.
The artificial are invariably profane.
Maxims are miniscule, aphorisms are life size.
Monday, December 30, 2013
SOIREE
Off Tremont Street
in Jamesian fashion
you hid Remy de Gourmont
in the yellow book
over the veiled portico
as twin cremona's
played Bach's
"Double Concerto"
gents and ladies
eyed Boston
on the card table
Mrs. Gardiner shined
with the Berenson boy
passionate for Ucello, Vermeer
a Venetian ring
hands in her newest sable
and parodying Edward Lear.
You carried a bundle
of expatriate belle lettres,
wine by your elbow
of cold connoisseurs
enjoying the Japanese china
along the bric-a brac wall
admiring the past Whistler
Firbank's last novella,
Pater's Studies,
and a script of Wilde,
you remember the soirees
and last November's teas
where you read "Child Harold"
in Byronic company
now it's another Fall to Rome
by way of Greece and then home.
Off Tremont Street
in Jamesian fashion
you hid Remy de Gourmont
in the yellow book
over the veiled portico
as twin cremona's
played Bach's
"Double Concerto"
gents and ladies
eyed Boston
on the card table
Mrs. Gardiner shined
with the Berenson boy
passionate for Ucello, Vermeer
a Venetian ring
hands in her newest sable
and parodying Edward Lear.
You carried a bundle
of expatriate belle lettres,
wine by your elbow
of cold connoisseurs
enjoying the Japanese china
along the bric-a brac wall
admiring the past Whistler
Firbank's last novella,
Pater's Studies,
and a script of Wilde,
you remember the soirees
and last November's teas
where you read "Child Harold"
in Byronic company
now it's another Fall to Rome
by way of Greece and then home.
MARCEL PROUST'S NIGHT
The snow cannot sleep
outside your lantern windows
as it covers the dusty memory
in the cold sensation
of buried absence
the egg whiteness of your notes
silent along the hedge groves
that amputates all phantasms
until tomorrow's landscape
in your window's eyelids
bandaged with frost
will rekindle daylight.
The snow cannot sleep
outside your lantern windows
as it covers the dusty memory
in the cold sensation
of buried absence
the egg whiteness of your notes
silent along the hedge groves
that amputates all phantasms
until tomorrow's landscape
in your window's eyelids
bandaged with frost
will rekindle daylight.
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