GALACTIC ORCHESTRA
My notes are part of your orbit’s song
decibels of swing and undulation
deleted, rewritten, crossed out again
and again back and forth across the sky
faint harness between wagon and wheel
written for no eyes
no eyes a part of them
they inch their way
to distant audiences
Looped by invisible threads
we circumscribe each other’s trajectories
decaying slowly into each other
millenniums of variations
light and chime
crystal and dog star
themes once forgotten
now taken up
vibrations carefully adjusted
strings tightening
wires of light
lips moistening silver bells
thin reeds blowing
sharp and flat columns
into airless spaces
All whirls
as cloud haze discovers
a myriad roads of light connecting,
singing out across sky arms
clear, shimmering,
sounding in auditoriums of mind,
the quiet, white music of the milky way
a celestial harp strung
from horizon to horizon’s end
THE GOLDEN LOCKET
Playing to herself
she plucks music from a bowl of flowers
floating water lily fragrances,
rose water, jasmine, turkish delight,
pink, white and scented with pollen.
‘Listen’, she says, dropping notes
from her fingertips, splashing into the bowl,
each note a ballad, a flower of youth,
under trees, scent of passion, hidden
fragrance of lost love, broken promises
deep blood red roses of artillery shells
spilling from the sky, staining soil
with fragments of regret.
‘Look’, she sings, plucking a daisy
petal-by-petal, I loved him, I loved him not.
A wind blew over the bowl causing
the leaves to rustle from the trees
and dance around her hands
rusting into ochre.
‘Once there was a young officer’, she
plucked him from her book,
golden buttons dripping from his uniform
golden notes into the bowl
‘He went to war, fought bravely, never
returned’.
‘See’, she said,
‘he’s still here, my first love’.
She opened a golden locket, inside was
a tiny music box turning
an old refrain under the moon,
a bed of grass and leaves between trees
and not far away, a small hill,
a row of graves, each grave an album
of memories played less frequently
over the years
through sunlight, through moonlight.
I looked, the water was clear, the roses white,
the petals white, translucent,
her hair white, her music reflected
in the snow.
Sometimes in winter, I revisit her,
frozen by the pond, her fingers white
to the moon, white as snowflakes and icicles
silvering from her touch to the frozen
mirror of the pond. Once I heard her music
in the air and beheld a young girl in white
riding a bicycle, singing up a hill
disappearing into her own song.
THE AUTOPSY
So wasteful these suicides
no consideration for society
did you enjoy the concert
the quintet was quite delicious
look at these breasts, absolutely perfect
what a waste, hello dear
dinner at eight, I hadn’t forgotten
an incision from here to here
should suffice, here they are
esophagus, trachea, stomach, liver
perfect what a waste
look at this pubic hair
it’s the fashion these days
and the tattoo, no he didn’t use
the Stradivarius couldn’t get
insurance or something but
the cellist, quite remarkable
did you see her legs
and her tone, perfect, rigor mortis
it changes the tone of the skin
makes it look like a statue
here it is, yes I think
this is it, yes dear pick
up caviar from the delicatessen
and pate, sure, truffles, Roquefort
Chardonnay, Stravinsky’s on the
twenty sixth see you then
the cause of all the tragedy
what dear, I love you too
what a waste, all that money
on food, clothing, education
love’s labours lost
yes I guess love has something to do with it
WORDS OF FIRE
O earthbound Zar and bouldergeists
hearken now to smouldering forests
where Trist the westwind furled its gates
in Jade and Amethyst estates
to harness Phyrr the underflamed
whose powers heaven and hell reclaimed
and glazed now from the pinnacled range
came forth an armored Hierwal strange
that snorting fire and consequent jewels
millennium’s distant worlds now rules
But scant now from these frowning skies
the real message Drysten lies
where hearkened into conchlike probis
a mystery from its deep discloses
that rears and phrenzies from the boulders
with flame and flander geists shoulders
and head of swords and lances smitten
the words of fire enflamed are written
to smoulder down millennium’s rivers
and light the way to jeweled evers
Hark O Zar the Phyrr is one
Hark the Hierwal’s words be done
ELEVATOR LAND
Elevators chime softly in soul station
banks of chrome going up, going down
button-less they wait in patient rows
stretching silver ghosts, adjusting
new-old costumes
they have no control over destinations
new immigrants, their turnstiles click
in turn, every two seconds a baby is born
in Africa; in an uptown maternity home
Funerals in the rain, they wait
mourners huddling under umbrellas, knocked
down by cars, in rockers knitting to the end
felled by famines, hurricanes, earthquakes
all waiting patiently, going up, going down
swish, click, chime, the rows stretch
round the block, patient faceless
each in his own capsule, like
pneumatic tubes in last centuries
department stores, swish and you’re gone
swish, your change – bright new pennies
FLYING INTO THE WIND
Who understood her?
I graft snippets of her wanderings on to my page,
so many faces, all the same, all nothing.
’I touch you and you’re gone’, she said
unbuttoning my pajamas, taking me in
’Are you going home tonight? Yes. Never mind’
she wiped the words carefully away,
next moment she was gone again. She floated away
as I kissed the back of her neck, popped
a tiny piece of crystallized ginger into her mouth.
’It’s difficult to swallow. You’re gone again’, she
said into my eyes, seeing a startled world, so
many pieces of blank floating there. ‘You are
in pain’, she said, ‘I will heal you’. I laughed
at the way she mispronounced the words,
it was her pain.
She rubbed almond oil into my warmth, starting
to dissolve. ‘I had a dream’, she said with her
fingers. ‘I was on a ship, sailing home to nowhere.
I stowed away. Two sailors were looking for me
but I was naked, invisible. I touched their legs.
They did not move. Then I heard a tune in the wind.
as I rubbed, they disappeared, but the tune
remained. The ship turned into a gull, spread its
wings and flew to the horizon. I watched it sink’.
‘What do you think?’ She opened her eyes at me.
I looked into her irises but she was gone, flying
into the wind.
‘Close my page when you go’, I said. She did not
hear me. Flying into the wind.
THE FATAL MALADY OF MR. H
We’re worried about Mr. H, he seems
to be drifting away downstream
the rains of millennium three have thrust
him far, but distances deceptive are
and like a leaf rusting on a heap
he moulds between nostalgia and sleep
Oh for a cup of bitter medicine to sip
a blow to the vitals, a financial slip
the funeral of a lifelong held belief
a small love recalled, lost beyond relief
to revive Mr. H before we lose him in the rain
that obliterates all writing in the sand
all land, all joy, all pain
The hourglass trembles, oh Mr. H please wake
the sand grains drip an insistent morbid snake
and all the vitamins and rain forests can’t reverse the creep
or halt the planet’s slow brown suicidal leap
But no,
Mr. H is blinkered, dreams his lotus dream
and like a falling star, he leaves but fragile gleam
THE FINAL CREATION
She leafs through the tinsel colors of her portfolio
on grasshopper wings, snapping from stalk to stem
in quick serrations
the colors she sees are olive, pine, needlegrass,
mixed ochre tints, curling leafcrunch
over moist soil-fragrant places where moss grows.
She sways between the parted curtains of her thighs
and under the soft weave of her fishnet stockings.
As she dances, her colors become clearer:
paper streamers, strings of bauble lamps hang
between the branches. On easels, her paintings and poems,
luminous faces in moonmist. Guests stroll between displays
champagne glasses in hands, pointing out discoveries,
reading lines aloud, little groups. She sails between them,
silk and net, an exquisite butterfly, winging,
pausing, accepting compliments.
The camera homes in on a central composition,
a white haired woman sits alone in her wisdom
at century edge, under a tall skylight of stars.
Carefully she adds the final touch of brilliant hue,
adds the curving calligraphy of her fishnet signature,
slides the completed work into the final leaf of
her portfolio, turns off the light, pulls the satin
sheet up to her neck, drifts into sleep.
One- by-one the bauble lamps go out under the trees,
crowds thin away, a cool breeze begins to blow,
butterfly settles down besides resting brasshopper,
shivers and freezes motionless
as entropy sets in.
Nina stands on the surface of time
mind swollen with waves
little fish dance in reflections of clouds
in a grotto eating into the cliff eroding
decades, centuries turning the deep
blue water dark and pregnant
Nina dives in like a slim blade
a slicing of silver, now underwater
thinking out into plunging ocean shores
where liquid molecules carry messages
Nina recognizes: kettle drums – tuna and swordfish,
mooing from a lost whale child,
flute and piccolo blips, hieroglyphics
from a school of sporting dolphins
and – from far in the deep, a faint Morse
message repeated in a pattern of waning despair
Nina listens through time, echoes break up in the swell
whale child finds its mother, moos turn to suckling
Nina thrusts down into the years, looking for
she knows not what, a survivor perhaps
someone to talk to
The skies above roil purple, atomic fires still
smolder in city ruins, no voices in the crackles
even the crows have deserted here
highways stretch dark directions, no traffic, no carrion
Only the deeps contain life, groping and squirming
Nina dives again thinking wishing hoping
so she dives and listens, dives and listens,
he must be out there somewhere
listening too for an unseen new beginning
the echo of a message
breaking up in the deep
only the fish remain
THE MOTH AND THE CANDLE
1.
Overwhelmed she stared at the candle
dripping flickering grease drops
bats flew overhead into the mirror
a mole on cheek in glass
budded gray tufts into parchment
waning eyes glazed into cracks.
With a final gulp she wished into space.
The rodents sardonified, lacquered tongues
leered in dust-choked mirth. Fatigue spun
into a winding cocoon, strand by strand
and into the fatigue a hard chrysalis
of pain jutted, a scab of glued wings.
Moth stasis crept in, winding around
the wing skin, the darkening eyes
bulging no more into day, into night.
Now there was no pain, no light,
naught but the invisible candle flame.
Nothing descended on candle blood.
Black ice.
2.
A pipe stirred in the house of roots,
stirred and stirred again
two notes played on the lowest register.
Windfall fingers plucked
at the rust,
dim and true
swallowed into the mist
dim and true,
dim and true.
A wingtip ached, scratched
and trembled,
two pipes in the slumbering rust.
A flake of dust fell on
soundless fingers; slowly
an ancient instruction
began to gnaw. On the old strands
a single A-string sounded to be tuned.
Other notes joined in, tightening
loosening, gnawing at the rusty shell
all flaking, shivering into
an insistent phrase; breaking
through into the light.
The candle burst!
Melted, oozed away, discarded
into shards. She trembled,
stretched her white white wings
and flew into a
single day of brilliance.
The candle flame beckoned,
crooked its golden finger.
She flew into it
and was consumed,
—reborn!
THE STREETS OF TIME
Last night you came to me Johan Sebastian
this is not the first time I have dreamed of you is it?
Do they remember me a little you whispered
just a little your eyes beseeched.
Oh Johan my dear come to the window
look out on these towers, their spires
piercing the clouds. the transports
flitting like fireflies between them.
See this wall of buttons press this one
and again and this one and this
ah yes that’s right now
How could I describe how you lit up
like a laser torch glowing, pulsing, listening
your feet beginning to tap in wonder of
alien voices and instruments beating out strangely
familiar notes and rhythms and then your eyes glistening
with first recognition you dared to mouth the question
What is that?
Press this button Johan
that is jazz, that is rock, that is improvisation
funk, heavy metal, trance, different dances.
Swingle’s there too sweet and true
dream, fusion, integrative blue complexity
do you hear emotions, romatic intrusions
words woven in between the notes to and fro
the tapestry of modern music
can you hear them Johan? I see you do
begin to understand they are all you
Press here and here
colorful long tailed birds, tadpoles, pitcher bearers
climbing busily then tumbling
helter skelter through nimble snakes and ladders
up and down the rungs of Sol and Fa.
Rhythms notes counterpoint
all coming clear now, yes they are your children
and there you are striding head and shoulders
above them all down the streets of time.
Open the window Johan and float
out to meet them in the scents of the night
you, they and their children and
great grandchildren will be back.
I know it eternally
TOUCH OF WONDER
the understander will understand
he who has touched sleeping quills
with the craning glimmer of his hand
just a breath away from paradise
a face on the pillow
a soft good night dream
a wish for health
a sigh
a gleam
a windswept corridor between the hills
a road that winds over the horizon’s skies
to an undisclosed land
a pot of gold that never dies
the understander will understand
QUESTIONS
Three years after being
temporarily attached to the wall
with a piece of adhesive plaster
Jeremiah’s washing machine broke
loose from its mooring and sailed
into the living room on a river
of suds surprising Mrs. J who was
knitting a jumper for the dog
His daughter, moving her feet out of the rising
tide, looked up from her periodical
and remarked; how marvellous
disposable panties are in individual flavors
this season and yes they do have
Palestinian Passion
It was superbowl week, there were
beers and pretzels to be bought and
the remote on the TV needed fixing
Mrs. J set down her needles and put
a family sized pizza in the microwave
The little one looked up from her homework
sniffed the air,
alien thoughts crossed her mind
injected by some thought messaging friend
her search mechanism crossed the globe…
outside a tsunami was raging
a dictator had died
and the planet rushed on
to a collision with a moon-sized asteroid
Who wants pepperoni?
asked Mrs. J.
WHERE THE COUNTING ENDS
Ants grow on paths by leaves
who can count them save the flung mist of stars?
Save sand grains blown by desert evenings
molding shapes of dunes in fading melodies
Save spume of breakers stretching to dawn rolling
in accelerando diminuendo to shell-littered shores
Yet count we must, in our pulse, in our blood lust
to capture, own, categorize all that crawls, creeps
All voices in rainbows, all fish in clouds, silver
grey and amber patterns of lacquered scales
All strength of rainfall from placid or angry skies
sleeting to horizons and back flooding flowing
Out of boundaries, carrying all lexicons, leaves
post-mortem ants, sand bars breaking up and reforming
Eroding sculptures, seaweed infested with crabs and shell
all laid out to dry in iodine days of whitening sun,
Crumbling into encyclopedia and dictionary leaves
each tubule, each tiny carcass fossilized behind glass
Each star each nebula numbered with hexadecimal
Greek and Latin notation laid out to dry in the heavens
Only sand grains in their symphony of sculptures
escape our blood, our net, our collector’s lust
Where we, the sand, the fossils, the waves
mix and blend, quieting back beyond questions, beyond lust
counting ends where waters merge
TO BOLDLY GO
and in the morning
when the suns came up
for the thirteenth time
they dug for clinkers,
blue gold
their reptilian arms
revolving swoop
after scoop
to enrich the lords
of Perzelcort
faucet eyes,
blue mother of pearl
extensors, gripping
split rock of violet
methane coal,
they dig, while from
the spires of Perzelcort
comes music-
kordi bells, xi reed pipes
all lilting incensed greed
as purple suns ascend
for the thirteenth time
who among these clinker
slaves, would have lifted
to listen between
the bauble stars that
glittered unknown, unsensed
on Perzelcort, tentacled,
waving to greet
a trace of pearl dust
in the sky?
as Enterprise flew past
oblivious and blinkered,
first contact forgotten
between the injunctions
of breakfast time and
news beamed up from home
unintervened in blue gold,
Perzelcort, parsecs later
is left to languor lost
in slavery, swooping
in violet darkness
through a billion years
HUBBLE VIEWS
It’s like looking through a void in your palm
one eye glued to a floating tube
the other, a left handed aperture
into a black framed universe, where
suddenly everything becomes clear
stark as the star-notched slow-whirl heavens
We see an ant crawling up a wall of glass
white suit, concertina arms, toolpod proboscis
swiveling a bolt, a cover, some wires
Through another eye, an underwater playback
crab formations, coral floaters twisting
across the screen where hours before
a voice crackled ‘we’ve got liftoff’ and watched
How flaming first stage drifted and fell away
Ants crawling up a wall of glass
we from our screens watch and gasp
their submarine-like ballet, pipes and tubes—
return to ship, begin the long descent
As from the children’s corner — a questioning tone
Daddy why don’t they just beam up, beam down?
THE UNEXPECTED AND THE ANGEL
It doesn’t matter whether you are jumping
through a hoop of fire or dancing over
whirling rapiers, swinging by your teeth from
a trapeze or swallowing a sword, someday he
will catch you
Or if you are simply admiring the view,
coveting your neighbor’s wife, shouting at
your children to turn the television down,
doing the weekend crossword, checking
the lottery results, dreaming of a shiny
car, someday he will jump out
He’s there, just around some corner, unnoticed
in the gloom, abdomen rising and falling
hunger never satisfied. Or perhaps he’s
disguised as your long forgotten cousin who
persuaded you to invest in a business venture
all those years ago
and then disappeared
But be assured he’s there, lying in wait,
breathing in the shadows, sooner or later
he will pounce on each of us, roaring, flashing
teeth of black or gold, now predator, now
benefactor
The Angel in the other corner smiles his
toothless smile. In a way they’re opponents
dividing up the spoils, sometimes conspirators,
or collaborators, eyeing each other across
the squares, the chess boards of our lives
And each time, before lights flicker and dim
in the tent, before spectators put on coats,
file out into the drizzle, they play their final
end game moves where in every single
performance without fail
the Unexpected resigns
SVITHJOD
after the book The Story of Mankind by Hendrik van Loon
Far north, out across the remotest ocean
(wrote the Dutch-American storyteller, pen of wonder)
sits a rock alone and granite in its hugeness
no visitor save for a razor sharp ancient bird who
once every thousand years sharpens its beak here
and departs
When by force of such erosion and persistence
this granite monument is worn away to sand
a single minute of eternity will have passed
And that child who reads these words still deep inside me
goes out into the desert’s awful night
lifts his eyes to distant starry oceans
and gasps armada at the spreading fleet
that casts its light on sand grains at my feet
And thinks about things graspable, the sun, the moon
and pages written by Hendrik Willem van Loon
and how many years remain remote, unseen, unheard
and where it goes, that ancient little bird?