NapoMo

Yeah

Hi.  If you happen to be reading ... if not, well it is always good to talk to yourself,  I have been writing and posting in my NaPoMo group but haven't had the energy/time to bring them here these last few days.    I will though.  Eventually.

April 20 & 21

Haven't had time to post these days here barely time to write -- 

and not sure

they are even worthy of posting them

but since I said I was going to do that, I must.  

4/21

Becoming Uncoupled at the base of South Mountain One Early Spring Evening When Fog Hangs in the Air 


After love, we listen in the dark
to rain make a song on the thin roof
-- a cat meowing at the door sounds 
like an untuned lute. 
He says "I love your voice" 

why is it this way --
too much passion brings such affliction. 

4/20

Confronting Helen 

For Beauty's nothing
but beginning of Terror we're still just able to bear,
and why we adore it so is because it serenely
disdains to destroy us. Every angel is terrible.

Rilke, the First Elegy




Fuck Rilke and his mysterious angels 
the terrible angels -- his limpid, lapis eyed 
mysterious creatures who hold up the blood of Imam Hosayn, 
Prince of Martyrs so the world doesn't fold.

I birthed a baby boy whose eyes revealed
the answers to the pyramids 
and a daughter whose face
iswaswillbe torment the minds of poets
for eternity. 

I am not afraid of you, Helen, who sent 
legions of men smiling 
into the mouth of death --the promise
of you on their lips 

"Love made ME such that I live in fire 
like the Phoenix, who dies and rises 
at the same time." *



* from Gaspara Stampa's Rime 208

Day 18 -- late and rushed thoughts of about Love

Euphorion, again 



You, not a boy, not a man but something
forever in between, Magician. 

When I say "Beauty must be broken 
for the sake of this poem"

it doesn't surprise you -- 
"In everything I've encountered 

a dark-side exists but She is the promise
we can be something more 

than animal." I know your eyes 
and, the sadness their color holds 

wounds me. I keep mining for more.
The devil forever heating the space between us. 

Day 16 Out of Order

Helen in San Fran



I saw a photograph of her
in a San Francisco crack house 
or maybe she's just a runaway

a naked mattress-- 

a blonde boy next to her
a modern day Paris

her face either California suntan 
or dirty, I couldn't tell. 
That face always wearing

the perfect ratio. 

Day 17 (Day 16 will have to wait)

Day 17 "Meshes of the Afternoon" “.......time is built into her body in the sense of becomingness.”                    Maya Deren  Helen, we must talk directly now -- do you understand  at all  what you are?  Your slender footed beauty  and perfect face, the pearl luster of your cheeks  you are unnecessary, not essential  at all  to human survival --  like Love itself how I have fallen.  This cruelty I speak is not meant to bring you pain but freedom – can you feel it?   “becomingness”  my Helen who has lived too long  ensconced in white stone. Come with me now to the slums of the Kathputli Colony  allow your hair to be infused with the smell of curry  and slaughtered cow.  Laugh with me  at the sword swallowers  and stilt walkers  take off your ivory dress and forget that the ocean is pretty it is only its immensity that makes it so  its depth a deathly mystery  “I feel your closeness like a shot gun”  Helen of my own soul, slay the beast, let the wrinkles come.

April 14 & 15

Struggling - too mentally busy last few days to have time to find poems -- only fragments

and dusty pieces of stories ...

my apologies 

April 15

hieroglyph 3




A Berber of Kabylie 
her head wrapped in linen 
blew in with the Sirocco 

They call her "tribeswoman"
she seems more a girl --

doll lashes
like black sun spray fringe
wet riverstone eyes 
set in a Helen's face. 

after Emile Frechon 

April 14

hieroglyph 2



Thetis, in a pink bikini,
pedaling her purple bike 
on the Atlantic City Boardwalk,
thump thump the wheels on the wood.

Just up from the sea, her skin in the sun
sprinkled with diamonds. 

Day 13

Day 13 

Hieroglyphs 1.

the seasons revolve around a pause in the infinite rhythm of the heart and of heaven.

Helen of Egypt, H.D. 



In a stand of trees 
branch tips tumefy 

with buds 
oblivious to the mechanics 
of the ticking clock. 

Days 11 & 12

Day 12

For Childhood, an elegy

"The imagination spans beyond despair

Outpacing bargain, vocable and prayer."

from For the Marriage of Faustus and Helen, Hart Crane

Our castle, built of white sheets strung

on mother's laundry line smelled

of sunshine and dandelion,

a limp stemmed flower tucked behind my ear.

Do you remember the span of grass

between the swing-set and the sandbox

we called the Groundless sea?

Your ship the latest cardboard box we fished

from my father's trash.  Your cargo, provisions

of pebbles and sticks.  

I loved the choppy blonde ocean

of your hair and never tired of trying to decode

the secrets stamped in the map of your eyes

those two, ragged petaled irises.  

These stories still draw themselves 

in stringy clouds set

inside fiery sunsets, in the open and close of spiral shells 

in the sparrow's mottled wing

what is real we didn't imagine -- 

but if I look too close,

I see wrinkles in my hands and wonder how we manage 

to live with ruined Troy 

burnt and smoking 

inside our human hearts.

Day 11

Day 10 but poem written on Day 11

this is, i suppose, day 10 but really day 11 but poets don't care about chronological time 

anyway.  but i'm not a poet so i suppose i have no excuse.  

the elegy continues -- sort of, I guess,  Faust the fucker is everywhere. 

Anton Webern probably because of my

murdered Austrian Grandfather

"Doomed to a total failure in a deaf world of ignorance and indifference

he inexorably kept cutting out his dazzling diamonds, the mines 

of which he had such a perfect knowledge."  

Stravinsky

It happens like this

-- what do I know about the twelve tone technique?

I quit piano

at 13.  

Long before my teacher

allowed me the honor of Schoenberg. 

Goethe's Faust

I put it down -- remember?  We went 

to find Robinson and that piano;

those red socks and the cat called Lonesome,

curled and sleeping through the endless ringing phone.

A small beat up book of immortal poems

Hart Crane, page 267 

"For the marriage of Helen and Faustus" 

and this isn't meant to be didactic 

put it down.

"A Little History of Modern Music" 

by William H. Gass -- last in the book

bought for 25 cents at the Hospital Thrift 

Shop on a steel rain Holy Saturday.  

I thought 

about the women who guarded

Christ's tomb, about Jesus' decent to Hell

and Gilgamesh.  I tried for something 

else -- Cochise, Arizona, a ghost town 

Doc Holliday and Big Nose Kate 

hot desert, prostitutes 

killing a copperhead in a far off canyon--

but even notes are not random 

-- each one like a star thrown from a fist

to form a constellation

then 

you clear your throat very close to my ear. 

April 9th -- really.

And it has come back to you ... 

Robinson I should have known

the rabbit that slid through my tires

that dark night

on Iyanough Road 

would eventually lead me to you.

I've grown weary wrestling the two halves

of Goethe's brain 

give me your indestructible shoulder 

my head needs a rest where it is always quiet

or play on your piano 

a song written in the language of God.

*Weldon Kees Robinson. 

Day 7 & 8 --- struggling.

vii.  Stop the flowers

Gretchen, her soft blouse open, rubs pussy willows

against her cheek.  Frank, watching from the garden fence

wants to touch her.  

He plucks a yellow rose from the twisted vine.  A dot 

of blood blooms on his finger.  

A small interlude the devil will perhaps miss

Let this moment last a while -- 

the butterfly alight on the milkweed

a blue-black raven stitching doubt to the sky

Hazel Dickens singing about West Virginia 

the same melancholy as knowing about the execution

of Camila O'Gorman, her baby baptized in bullets.

It is endless -- the beauty of sadness;

the dusty Sphinx losing its face, wild sweet violets 

young girls in white Easter dresses praying to Jesus. 

Catching up on Day 5 too.  

SheTrickster 

V. Elegy for Euphorion 

I hold night in my hands

turn the sea with my finger

Sapphira, Helena, Jezebel

my sister.  Die Mutter, the Witches.

Do I dare disturb the Universe?

Bring David to his marbled knees

open a carpet of crocus across the once barren lawn

and set the baby birds' throats to wailing O's?

Gather up my amulets, my book of sigils, summon

the sirens, the symbols and Sybil

I hear a new boy has tired of his searching 

the time is now to revel at the sign of the Brocken spectre. 

Day 6

The Lover 

IV.  Elegy for Euphorion 

//say "Nades, Suradis, Maniner"

and a dijinn will appear; tell the dijinn "Sader, Prostas, Solaster,"

and the dijinn will bring you your true love."//

from the Black Pullet Grimoire

The Lover binds the heart

like a Chinese mountain mother binds

her daughter's small feet --

spancelled, an animal hobbled by each days glossy thread.

I don't know if I like this amber-eyed inamorato thieving my freedom 

I don't know if the knots you make are tight enough -- I don't know 

tell me, are you in service to the devil?

April 4 -NaPoMo

Victorine's Saddest Eyes

iii. Elegy for Euphorion

"All things do change: All things do love: All things are locked in ate:

Whoever fully thinks his through/holds the key to Man's estate"*

He left her a the railway station, gave her the puppy and a few coins.  

She's reading Quirinus Kuhlmann's "Himmlische Libes-Kuess" for the

thousandth time.  The face-less child, the chubby hand gripping 

the iron fence, watches his body dissipate into smoke. 

* Love Kiss XLI translated by Richard Sieburth 

NaPoMo

Well it is National Poetry Month and like last year I have pledged to write a poem a day for the 30 days of April.  

I have decided to post them here as well as post them online with the group I'm doing NaPoMo with --- 

They aren't polished and some will be very bad.  The object of the exercise is to write something everyday -- which for many is standard practice but for me -- not.  I write only when the muse strikes and so during April I do everything I can to entice her to me for at least 15 minutes a day.  Sometimes she's a real bitch.  :)

And so .. 

Day 1

An Elegy for Euphorion, Part 1

Helen couldn't keep the boy

from cutting paper wings, taping them--

crooked and tattered to the back of his Superman t-shirt

or from jumping from the highest rung of the metal slide

in their backyard -- though

she never really tried

lacking herself, a decent sense of sin.

And when the boy found Mallarme and Heinlein

and took his guitar

         to the edge of the northern cliff

his nose stuck in pages rattled by grass-spiced wind

his toes dug into the rain softened dirt

pulling the curl drooped on his forehead -- straight to spring --- straight to spring

no one

not even his father

recognized the disease.

note:  Faust 

Day 2

II  that unnamed girl talks about Euphorion

My mother knew his father

I have heard together

they sang the Song of Solomon.

I met Euphorion after humanities

a copy of Steppenwolf tucked

in the back pocked of his knee-patched Levis

he smelled of good weed and a bit of baby shampoo

his face was

his face was

his face was

a Caravaggio angel 

though it is not fashionable

to say that -- here

-- this audience disappointed by cliche

I still have the gold bracelet he took from his jacket

and clasped on my wrist. 

Day 3

"My real name is Mephistopheles, but you can call me baby..."

III. Elegy for Euphorion

His plane touches down

in Manhattan

fresh out of the Amazonian 

jungle -- alpaca jacket

blow gun

poison darts -- soft brown hair

resting on his shoulders

Murphy has run out of cigarettes

stops and empties out his pockets

on the top of a metal trash can outside the men's room

sweeps together the pile of lint

cat hair and what's left

of the Nino Korin tobacco -- a few strands stolen from a shaman's bag in Bolivia

His slender fingers peel a rolling paper out of the pack with a familiar

crinkle -- the Fashionable, the vagabonds 

don't seem to notice

security cops walk right by

He lights up and leans -- one long leg bent

leather booted foot pressed against the white wall

inhales, smiles --and coughs with the harsh first suck.

Poems

The mind is a fallen angel

on April 14.  © All rights reserved 

A sun-fucked sea
its chalky soda crackling a slow saraband
steady there
at the shoreline, where the waves beat themselves dead
only to begin again in the pull and tinkle of shells

but you know this ...

so what can I tell you about the soul of the grass?
Green exalted to gold, green breathing green
dew, an abdication of moisture,
a blessing on morning feet. Grass, a servant apostle.

What wizard cants “All is connected,” 
is that you Basho?
from inside the white pine, your voice
the dry “chek” of the red-shouldered blackbird?
The marsh awakens to the fox

hungry for breakfast, a small murder
duly accepted. Brown field mouse,
a communion wafer to assuage night's hunger.

Bend your body down, sniff
where the loam breaks open with cruel birth. Dare
to touch its bitterness to your tongue.

Every idea must be picked up, run between fingers,
weighed, tasted, and finally crucified,
nailed to the splintered wood.

---

2. "Withness"

on April 16.  © All rights reserved 

“Withness”

The Quiet Animal of Thought 




How tender the pads of your paws 
and your eyes, teal pebbles,  
your beating heart breaks rhythm against mine.

Nocturnal beast with no burden 
save the fugue sung by the black dog's chorus and the poor monkey ripping 
at the buttons of its jacket trying 
to break free.  

Even when you rub your clover ears at the back of my neck, 
I never think of skinning you for your downy pelt 
despite the fine Love poem it might make.  

---

4. "Withness"

on April 17.  © All rights reserved 

“Withness" 

The Animal of Magic Gives Lessons to Students  



translate the language of bird feet stamped 
in wet sand.  
Understand the impressions of trampled grass 
where the silver arrow called Coyote puts itself down  
to rest,  read bleached fish bones and owl pellets for spells -- 

when necessary breathe through ruffled gills that resemble  
the frilly underside of the deadly mushroom.  Save your easily crumbled 
symmetrical, powdered wings for emergencies,  yes, opening them is painful  
but necessary  
when speaking of the dying child.  

We are responsible for the centaur and sphinx.  In clouds  
you must uncover music,  
adagio a rainbow born in an aria, a thundercrack opera.  Pocket  
the tumbling hair of sunshine for a garland and stash away  
the sweetness, the iron-scented snow still far off ringing the moon  

and of the moon ---  

you must be silent until your eyes witness its unseen side where  
the mystery of Love is revealed.    

Jump through all five fire hoops to discourse with angels,  
to sup with the gods.    And bow when you meet Buddha, curved  
like an almond playing his cello.  Then rest yourself on Basho's silk pillows, 
close your eyes, this will take a while --- 
  
more than yesterday's  blue curve of morning  
well past the fugue and the ever-pecking robin.  
Feel in sympathy,      you must 
for the still bound and dancing monkey.

With Robinson at the Fairgrounds after Hours

With Robinson at the Fairground after hours

Robinson, your harrowing, gray-felt seclusion
the cat named Lonesome 
and red socks left in the sink,

come, let's walk arm in arm 
on trampled grass through the deserted stalls 
and stale smells of the workers' fires,
to a field of tents 
strung with a necklace of lanterns.  

The jewel stuck in my throat, dear Robinson 
I wish it was a pearl 
swirled from Aphrodite's mantle 
something to soothe, 

alas
it may only be this, 
a worthless bauble, a cabochon of fear.  

I say, “How hushed the gilded calliope 
parked under the massive oak and yet 
in the distance, I hear music.” 

“Something about gold, it sings to blackness.”

The smoke from the cigarette wreathes his head. 
Pigeons on the bridge fluff, 
pick fleas, coo,
our steps in unison, these dust covered shoes.  





after Mallarme 

release of burst! issue 3

Our little ezine burst! has made issue 3 live.  It is the first issue on our own website.  Please have a look:

www.burstwherethoart.com

Thanks.

Lisa 

Poem

March

If I thought of you,
I only thought of something that endured,
that might endure...

H.D.





A muscling light strains against
morning collapsing black to gray,

slowly the December star drains
to nourish the lily and tuber rose;

Ophelia's bones undrowned and bursting
into snow crocus and Nausicaa,

the ship burner, slips closer to shore
bearing heat to burn the sleety

sea. In rough bellsong, birds chime
the way home to still bare oaks,

Jesus alight on the sparrow's wing,
Apollo's horses lugging cruel April.

Poem

Theater of the Absurd, The Epilogue

Their end is all we have left to begin with 

The Children without Histories sit in the empty theater seats
their faces perfectly sanitized of memory 
the Humanities Director rehearses 
inside their minds 
his verses 
pristine,  manufactured 

A red wheelbarrow shot up
on the room-size screen begs 
to bleed rain  
  but it is not to be so 

The Soul now excavated 
is mute to the songless echoes 
and the hack of tears stuck 
in dry eyes  

a beat up volkswagen with a bust of Beethoven 
glued to the dashboard 
where Jesus once sat 
is coming over the hilly horizon 
Tarot cards and ancient books flap a musical rhythm in the wind  

and the artists are being called in 
on an emergency 
to paint the children some portraits.  

Poem

Theater of the Absurd, the absent cast, Part 1

half the story of Little Johnny Shakspar.


but don't mention his name 
where the angry river rises
each morning
leaves a pock marked pestilence
the fresh stench of breathing letters 
cleansed of death
sanitized and safe for the masses to embrace 

the Director fears Johnny's history 
the boy and his words are too dangerous 
since the bourgeois enacted 
their Perfect scene 

a knife on the screen scrapes the wheelbarrow's red paint
the flakes windmill and slice
“Tommy can you hear me?” 
Johnny cries from the balcony 

Theater of the Absurd, excerpt of an interview with Allusion Ferlinghetti

I remember chicken white hair 

and visiting Denise Foti's Grandma Zayack 
in the Polish section of Paterson 
after her allergy shots 
Denise couldn't drink milk or eat chocolate 
and her Grandmother's eyes shot blue lasers 
that cut right through my brain
and read my thoughts 
about how dirty the streets looked there 
compared to home

Those eyes made me embarrassed for thinking 

We weren't born when the Doctor became a poet
but Denise had an operation in his hospital 

On that rain-glazed Florida road 
thirty years later 
not even his wheelbarrow couldn't save her 

Triviality Dada, Theater of the Absurd, cast of the Present

Yesterday, it rained 
and because it rained, I thought of you

truthfully
I was thinking about you 
thinking about me 

because I'm beautiful.  And smart.  

I don't shit 
I don't even fart.  And if I did
it would smell like the most exotic dew drenched yellow flower. 

Do my perky breasts keep you in 
a feverish state?
O poor soggy middle aged mothers
whose tits have been sucked
unto despair
I understand
that you desire

to be me.

I understand because I'm intelligent.  
and beautiful. 

        yesterday
during the cold 
rain that pissed on the world 
in between licking envelopes 
for the most successful candidate
and after a few risky fucks with a stranger 

I thought about 
you 

Theater of the Absurd: a season of crossovers and spin-offs

Black spirits and white, red spirits and gray;
  Mingle, mingle, mingle, you that mingle may.

        Thomas Middleton, The Witch via Macbeth, William Shakespeare



"the tinkerers are bothersome"


the Hag brushes away the swarm
the buzzing flies
and in the center of Her eyes 
two burning candles bore holes 
into the ice at Wintersea 

Immanuel Guzzle waits to sign autographs at the theater exit
he has completed his night of impressions: 

the hatted James Joyce playing golf with Keats 
H.D. fucking Bryher in a boat on the way home from Greece 
Pacino as Hamlet in Philadelphia
encore Archie Bunker bellying up the bar at Cheers 

alas poor Betty Vaudeville just didn't get it 
asks her mommy to buy her a take home book and t-shirt

o' "finger of birth strangled babe"

Immanuel smiles for the camera snapping his back flap photograph
"we're all made of exploded stars and a bit of mud" the quote read

the Hag drags the wheelbarrow across the blackboard 
the students trapped in the mirror gag and cough up yellow fog

Wintersea, 2

In Wintersea when the winter heat 
drifts ashore 
the Degas in the Main Hall?

its white tutu thaws into a soft, milky froth

but the citizens must not ever speak of this 
for the newborns are always and still 
fast asleep
and jealousy creeps and devours 
in every corner 
drip 
    
drip 
dripping a metallic water 

“and thou art dead, as young and fair”
Lord Byron shouted into the fog but no one wanted to hear 
over the buzzing of flies vomiting on rotted meat 
the screaming pile of foul smelling letters 
the discordant noise in the shattering reflections 

“Do you finally see?” the Hag pleads 
bearing her gray teeth through blackened lips 
her silver gown glistening on the synthetic sea 
the froth and foam bathes the Furies and The Crone. 

Wintersea 3: Dismal, Virginia

The squirrel's nervous tail 
twitches 
twirls jumpy circles 
readying for a leap
from the sturdy oak 
to the blowing pine

“in Wintersea, thou must bend 
to meet the winds of time
with thy open hand,” the wizard whispers
“be ready to catch all noises
waiting 
between the slimmest of branches.” 

the Minister and his wife are leaving 
the swamps of Dismal
hymn books in their suitcases 
they're heading to New York City 
for the Macy's Day Parade
their overblue eyes spilling Hope 
on the cock-eyed path 

on the broken roadside 
the ugly Madonna's Vogue 
waving in perfect squares that frame their faces 

the Hag bubbles a hate potion in her blackpot mouth
the wicked little girls steal some 
and spit the yellow acid 
burning holes in the Book 

the squirrel jumps 

dried pine needles jingle 
a dainty cadence

Wintersea

Wintersea

for a reader not yet born


My always approaching Proserpina
follow the fragile wren tracks
newly stamped
into a thin blotter
of cold, white paper

see the message
left for you. Move past
the column of limb heavy
leyland cypress and berry clotted
pointed illex, follow

the skirting bone sound
the brown song
in the dead leaves

forgo the artificial heat of the orangery

and come to fatal Wintersea
where oceans bloom in fields
of white-capped flowers
preparing to ride us under

on this waiting fruit
bite down.