Past Lovers

open doors to watch me with folded arms

appearing in corners, the image enlarges and I see my lovers from the past

looming over me bodies of thought

Lucido

Flat lucid light… summer sweet

carries the tide

and the sand

….turn around and look at me so I can tell you the story…

freeze

ice blue

doesn’t move because it is mutant freeze

no one clutches it and nothing grows on it almost a Martian venue

 

If we could move backward we could see why and pick up some valuable relics from the base material

 

present stable conditions

like unfinished thoughts

are caught in the wheel

summer down

cracked or wilted the season is here

flawed and eternally perfect we awe at nature

summer rolls over and we applaud

perhaps

we

should be

angry

since we are so hot

dry

and empty in this sauna

we are helpless creatures

victims of our world….

 

 

JUNES

soft hot days you me

sting some times in a winter we wish

to make the world go

down side up

and have some June.

some bird that fly north to sing

and other to peck

Make

it sun

we say

shine

me

now

remnants of old souls

Morning offers birds and sometimes sun.

Music climbs out of its hovel

released like perfume

and fire ignites in dust.

.

Few words are spoken

like remnants of last week,

a presence that lulls.

the clouds cover the sky

high and low

yet all the hours continue until daybreak.

I mentally repeat the presence of dead souls

listening to old sounds and anticipating travelled movements

but the spirits are so quiet

non-spoken, that I am left bitter,  awaiting.

.

I put on my old clothes

that appear ill-fitting discolored

I don’t recognise myself

and my name is odd.

I console my empty hours

smiling for them but they sit heavily in my chair staring at me

all morning as I seek afternoon.

Wires are strung around a terrace fence

only birds are in view

I avoid the street of confusion

searching old books and sounds to define.

The familiar heart beat penetrates tradition and guides me.

.

The remnants of old souls still surround me.

Three Metaphysical Ironies

I.  The Lessons

Infinite smiles passed me before I learned to smile. 

Solitude, my guest,

spoke a foreign language.

I stroked his head

fingers through hair

I wrote him letters

and spread myself before him in surrender.

I wanted to obey the truth

but I just avoided it

and my solitude grew

in depth along my house

into which children peered

until they fell asleep

never to awaken

uttering oaths to their dreams.

I would find them cold 

and boneless on days

when smiling people recovered me.

My unspoken guest, in grief,

would clean accumulated dust from his person

and breathe as if it were his last one.

I wrote poems to the children 

but they flew away in the wind

unread.

I remembered my childhood

many small steps

regarding the big  ones.

I passed my black cloak and grave

throwing to them

my solitude’s dust

I didn’t want to finish my poem and I knew

I would learn to smile one day.

II.  Ahmad

I’ve said your name

many times which has

no significance

It’s hard and large

and doesn’t fit.

I’ve stroked your head

but your tiny hairs

stand up like pointed pines

and cut my hands.

I’ve tasted your blood and 

sweat which smell of turpentine.

Many pages I read

from back to front

interpreting my evilness yet

day and night I

let my shadow free,

I have no other.

You warmly sing to me of

the past

I listen to the birds.

We only meet in making love

It’s useless to hold your hand

which would escape

Although I carry pieces of  you 

in my pockets,

I don’t know why.

III.  Repeat

I saved my words in

tiny jars and spoke in moans.

I wound my hair around my 

waist and sat before the mirror.

Repetition dissolved itself

in air revolving

around my head in masses.

The mirror broke

I had no image

of myself.

Piano Sonata in E minor

a poem in my mouth

swift and metallic,

wretched words - irregular notes.

I run fall as if charged by explosives

clouds cross my way and I drift through the trees hitting branches

I tumble through – hands out to catch

my breath….chewing on branches, spitting vaporous rain drops

and falling.

Then sleepy

blue and orange like a smile

cover me in continuity.

sent

under the light it appears

abnormally and bees swarm to its surface in decaying corners

entrusted to nature.

Virtual Lover

his lovers step through doors of separate chambers

I caress their faces they

pass from room to room – empty corpses that vibrate…

*     *     *     *

in real time he approaches me and smiles

I am nineteen again

his picture is in my virtual soul

eyes that will forever gaze

before

circuits have been broken, rusting cables are left in the dust.

San Francisco Poem

August 2005

Catman’s 2 cats harnessed and sleeping
in a supermarket cart atop covers
on Market and Powel in San Francisco.
(they’ve got)
100 feet of cord says he
their master, toothless and ponytailed
as he checks to find my quarter
in his tin box.
Sleeping and still
move-less orange beings
healthier than he, it seems to be.
The homeless man in San Franciso on Market Street.

 

The Dressed Bird



These are the images that carry my thoughts
and the lights that line the course of our voyage
still life memoirs to our tongues or
messages carried until renewal thwarts…

watch…. the dressed bird leaning on a pole, pale and dark tonight is the 4th of July
we walk in herds toward the lake like crusaders to witness i fuochi d’artifico

haunted by secrets, the old paths are burnished and cobble stoned – releasing an air and awe…we return to monuments of Chicago
which have sunken into Lake Michigan during a terrible snow storm
all that remains is Starbucks che finge a fare i cappuccini

July in a silt sky… sun shining through the city buzz, a hazy Chicago on Rush Street
at midday
compare the crisp Italian sun so bright and the one that smacks down in Miami…

We have walked down dreamer’s streets, have dared to kiss the men’s lips
passer-byes & transient clouds we listened to a dressed Algerianmago near la Notre Dames who made us laugh at disappearing cigarettes…where are you tonight my magic cat?

our coffee cools in the summer breath of the city…in any city: enter the gates to a myriad of burnished paths, cobble stoned and lost beneath time and history…
Open the doors of any home to witness love and maintenance while
underground tunnels of people get flushed by trains d’avanti e dietro in
une nuit Parisien s’il vous plait!

Dust in January

The swollen air spirals through January

thickening time

as if kneaded

dough

rising…

flattened then broken, baked and served.

*       *       *       *       *       *

Your laughter splits the silence

fizzy ice sound

on a brittle morning cold

travelling to Florence by train.

Mystery lingers  in a corner of this day

that I kick like an empty can on the road

swish….Arrival!

Abandon

I lived in the boat with the others

a transparent film protecting us –  identically wrapped beings

they reached for me, too

with hands and tongues a visage a message

was I the autistic blind child?  a pearl in the field?

was I no one’s child?  or the child of everyone?

the fugitive child who treads in cold mud with needy arms?

She

she now steps into the golden circle

and they know

entrusting her, my daughter, with the glory I shed

that was torn from my gut

a crazed woman child

caste to the wolves?

She is the keeper of the custom

she drinks the sweet wine.

The branding is done

there are flowers in our path when we seek them

August summer

the sun weakens early perhaps I am more present than past

I lay in the bright midday

vacation are ice packs of leisure to wrap around

sleep covers my face in sleepless nights