Book9Book 9


Hibernian thought

thawing overbrimming

ice dams

emerging from

limbo fog as

swans from

the mind's magician hat

effervescing from

harbored springs

into mist


The dog shaded

the rose silver

of fog at dawn

hounds the swans


Lavender's palindrome

scent and hue

both bouquets of

the blue of vain blood

viand, veined


My thoughts mandelbrot

noveling over

In the rain

I watch the swollen river

rise

through my tears


The Me

wants the We

and bends the limbs

of conception

open to the

missed perceptions

that keep us two hearted

and that twain pain

must merge

and move toward

unpartitioned love

where unpartitioned and un

equals not a negative two

not an imaginary number

but the nonplussed duo

a congruent untwo

of equals


I am no longer

afraid of age

and need no aid

to face the wrinkles in time

only the wish to slip unremarked

under the bridge

of last sighs

a silent disembodied escape

from dignity's inlaid

wooden barque

a slight acknowlegding nod

from the point of no return

the only appearance of change

All the while watching the new

Atlantes and Caryatids

carrying their catafalques

bent under the

unbearable burden

of awareness lost

unable to find

an earthly purchase here

and at what cost

at last to rest and

reprise their

former paradise


The votress and her pantaloon

giggle at the indignant gigolo's

eunique falsetto

whose swan's song

of groaning false notes

issues from

the empty grotto

where that earthy fellow

Punchinello grabs

the gargoyles groin

with the biblical hail

of gideon's instrument

fashioned from swan's bones

trumpeting the grail


Outriding

in the robot derby

through a mist

of media midges and gadflies

under the bright paparazzi confetti

the jocular jockies

with mock suprise

race to parade rest

while I practice

sleight handing

idiom to image


If I possessed Will's power

to play with words

I would aspire

toward an ever higher

apogee of human empathy

encompassing

with passion

every emotion

until each voice

was understood

to speak for common good


Autumn's axe

breaks butterflies back

frost cataracts

frog's ponds

frissee, frisson


Green man of

the greenwood

straw man of withy wood

both bois blanc from

Jack Frost, cum

spring-heeled, cum

Knapes come Learing

all mumming to the Annual parade

seers allseeing what the jackdaw secrets away

The old guiser beribboned rides

his norse hobby horse, Old Tup,

up the Maypole

where Jack's in the box on top

popping cherry red maidensheads

to placate the horn mad equine ox

Scapegoats cuckold old menhirs

morris dancing on dolmen

chancing the son's return

chanting "blood for the stone"

tying the sword knot

round the nape of the knaves neck

wedding by beheading

virgins to bridesheads

separating hearts

from sanguine valentines