Silent Womb of Self

 

Hard moments, these,

Requiring faith in unyielding silence.

Yet I too know that need to be alone,

To gather into the cloak of one's being

All the trembling limbs

And Whitening finger tips.

Our joy is in uncovering each other's souls.

Carefully, reverently, we disrobe;

With tenderness born of deprivation

We help one another with the garments.

And the revelation is always unique,

Each with its own pomander secret.

We thrill like unfolding Day Lilies

In our brief rare mass.

But the consciousness of self regenerates;

Adamantine seeds that breed

A hunger to clothe with solitude;

Until caressing once again

Our opaque fetal capes,

We will confess, at last,

That the soul must nourish itself.

N.N.

 

 

Silence

 

Your silence drives me to madness.

I hear the blood rushing from my brain,

Draining 'til I am transformed, deranged.

A bug on its back in the summer sun

Must surely feel less helplessness

Than I who await your decision

While you test and probe, smiling delectably,

Pulling off appendages one by one,

Watching with fascination as my

Creative writhing assumes new configurations on crumbling baked pavement

And my discarded torso blisters and cracks

In the relentless silence of the sun.

N.N.

 

 

Spider Solitaire

(A game of Patience, played alone: two decks in rows of ten.)   Seeing the spider plunge from the ceiling I think of you: Delicate - dusty limbs climbing up the air scrambling on the cliff then running away - a scurried retreat from a giddy descent. Is it that I will crush you If I try to cradle you, My capture misunderstood? Or is the evanescence you weave Far too fragile, too profound a maze for me to comprehend?

I dance my mating dance Around you: roles ironically reversed flailing frantic spider legs - arachnid on its back - pray don't mistake me for a victim or for your foe. Sticky tendrils draw me toward you, Crocheting the net that locks me without; Working, it would seem first glimpse, Cross - purpose against themselves. But you build your home alone, as you must; I watch at a distance, mute with choked wonder.   Spider, Solitaire. (For one who loves spiders climbs rocks and parachutes from the sky.) N.N.

 

 

 

Paleozoic Paladin

Think twice of the tiny trilobite

This brave little crustacean sprite

Who explored the prehistoric night

Alone leading the perilous way

For man and those of later day

Oh for his small soul do pray

Hard favored by time alas was he

This mini-nomad so fancy free

To think that no longer can he be

But as a rare fossil of history

Yea weep for the tiny trilobite

Who came thoughtlessly out of night

To pave evolution's copyright.

P.N.

 

 

Split Infinity

 

She splits into two and must find it fun,

For splitting she's been since time has begun;

Her mother she is, her grandmother too,

All of her ancestors she has been through.

From two into four, from four to eight more,

On she will split 'til she's millions galore;

Her daughter she'll be and in her she'll grow,

Forever she'll split, eternally so;

Immortal amoeba, protozoan,

A spinster content, no need of a man.

P.N.

 

 

A Weather Complaint

 

I'm telling you,

The sun of my youth was brighter,

The winds softer,

And the rains fell more seldom.

Then I, I would sing

Through the day

With hope in my heart,

I'm telling you,

Things are different under this new sun.

P.N.

 

 

Hospital Death

 

In the hospital the smell

of urine always bites through

the cracks in floors lacquered with

antiseptic to mask death.

More than whiteness, there is metal

everywhere: a vault in a morgue.

The suck of doors, heavy

in long hallways, exhales

as drawers slide in that

file cabinet of cadavers.

Gum soles whisper quietly

down the canyoned corridors

like angels of mercy

softly suffocating

with the feathered pillows

of their wings those pallid

vestibular bodies

who have been selected.

But they know who they are,

the chosen, even before

the ritual begins; they

know that some receive sponge baths

while others are anointed.

When brought there she knew too

and stopped pretending, even for us.

I could not understand her calm

since she'd been called for overtime,

the stacks of burdens piled high

like corpses in a plague pit,

some not even dead yet--

(should one be aghast at that?).

So I listened carefully to

her oracular commands

and did not pretend either.

Her hands prepared her own

laying out as with the

compact she gravely streaked

her yellowed face with pink until

she was a faded winter sunset

surrounded by

thinning, melting snow.

And the banshees keened all

night long or so I was told

for I did not stay; I

was frightened away by

the gulping elevators

at the end of the hall,

hurtling obliviously,

without buttons, through penthouse

skylights and seldom coming down.

They rolled them there on stretcher

wagons 'til the wheels filled my ears.

N.N.

 

 

Mementos

 

I am brooding,

Brooding on the beauty

Of the rose

Pressed

Among the Pages

Of the book

Where the love words,

With the rose,

Wait to be read again.

P.N.

 

 

???

 

Once these flowers were pressed in a volume

Treasures from momentous days

Of laughter, tears and cupped love.

Now a woman brinking ripeness,

Like a rose in its hour of heartbreaking beauty,

Before its velvet petals shrivel of life,

Frowns, wondering what was the occasion

That moved her to save them this way.

N.N.

 

 

One Leaf

 

Holy Thou,

One leaf upon the bough

A faded wing

Clinging

Still now,

Spring bringing

Strength

One leaf

Lingering

Winter's length.

P.N.

 

 

Summer Love

 

Barely perceptible, these changes.

More imminent than real,

This faint burnt smell of Autumn

On a surprisingly chill

September morn.

Still, one

Shivers and draws the sash.

 

Does the leaf expect as much

I wonder? Does its one small life want

Such perfection, even

Immortality? In its green

Unfolding hubris can

It ever imagine

Its own red November bonfires,

Air breaking with cold, flames cracking,

And the quiet snap from branch?

N.N.

 

 

Indian Summer Sonnet

 

Fall light, slanting and oblique

Betrays this Indian Summer Day.

Harvesting my past with full

Acceptance now, I feel the

Tug of earth that's cooling fast.

Though blooming Mays and Junes

Have underscored this global ellipse,

All the knowledge and the grace

Has not taught me to face or

To assuage new sorrow;

And more mordant grow the

Miserly rains of Autumn

Under the large cold eye

Of each waning October moon.

N.N.

Forgot

 

Pale in the past

I loved you a full year

It didn't last;

And now all

To remember is a

Floating tune

A mistlike moon

A faded flower, a

Summer shower;

and you, where are you?

P.N.

 

 

Promise

 

Soon, soon you'll see

Before night

Snow blossoms

Hanging on dead tree.

P.N.

 

 

HAIKU VISION OF HEAVEN

 

I KNOW IN HEAVEN

DAY IS NIGHT . . .

I SEE SUCH LIGHT

SHINE THROUGH GOD'S PINPRICKS.

N.N.

 

 

Out of the Subway

 

On the subway stair I saw him

His eyes oblivious to mine;

His walk was wilt and weaving;

For he was light with daytime wine.

 

His features were red and bloaten,

His coat of mold of tatter,

His hat was mottled and muddy,

But of these he held no matter.

 

Out of the darkness he was mounting,

At sight of sun he fell,

'Twas then I saw the flower,

A pure white on his lapel.

 

Today I cannot forget him,

That wreck of a man in Hell,

All of a pure white flower,

That he wore on a torn lapel.

P.N.

 

 

Ringmaster (Director of Public Relations)

 

Along the Hudson River

Where the Michigan Mammoths

(Usually extinct in ten years)

Are herded into the bottleneck

Of the West Side Highway,

A wire Puerto Rican

Frenetically jumping

Like a cardboard stick puppet

From window to window,

His cold night breath hanging

In the air like a Sky-

Writer's message or a

Just flung dandelion muff,

Peddles frostbitten chrysanthemums

To Wall Street executives

In haste to cover the

Indiscretions of their rumpled

Pinstripes and three hour lunches.

Ubiquitous energy,

Tap dancing into the

Horizon of rearview mirrors

To fetch another frothy

Batch of salutations,

He is the consummate P.R. man.

N.N.

 

 

To The Sun

 

I shall seek you at dawn;

I shall seek you at noon,

And at night I shall seek

Beyond the pale moon.

 

You will shine in my heart,

You will warm with your rays;

You will dry up the dark

With your wondrous ways.

 

I shall lift up my head,

I shall lift up my eyes,

I shall bathe in your light

As you stretch across skies.

 

And when the time comes

To spin from the earth,

I shall know where my home is

And who gave me birth.

P.N.

 

 

High Noon

 

I thought you would love me forever;

I thought you would be my courtly lover,

Imprisoned always in my Charterhouse of Parma,

Waiting to gaze at my through the chink in the brick,

Making me beautiful, Hellenic and immortal

Through the life-giving light in your eyes, ever-longing.

Imagine my dismay as I watched you turn, Rhett-Butler-like,

In the heat of a June High Noon,

The auburn curls a toppling heap of copper coins,

Burning with the cold white glare of truth,

And say: I am leaving and

I do not love you anymore.

N.N.

 

 

The Magician

 

The Magician must be very insecure

Aware of the secrets he knows.

With cunning craft

His hands slip over illusions

Whispering seductively

Only the Cagliostro* counts.

His mendacity is solely exceeded

By the stunning honesty

With which he announces his intentions.

Why does the Magician always fool us?

The astonished child will ask;

The Wise Man, perhaps, would answer:

He imitates life so much better than art.

N.N.

 

* "There is a little Casanova and a little Cagliostro in every Italian."

Luigi Barzini

THE ITALIANS

 

The "Cagliostro" is one who, at all costs, maintains an illusion--for himself and for others.

 

 

 

The Wizard

 

Only the dreamer can see

The everlasting flower

Growing

Where weeds used to be.

 

Only the dreamer can hear

The Persian love bird

Singing

Near and note clear.

 

Only the dreamer can know

The magic of vision

Revealing

Splendors of long ago.

 

Only the dreamer can take

Tomorrow and tomorrow

Shaking

The future awake.

P.N.

 

 

Beware

 

Take heed how you handle my heart,

It loves;

Fiery is the passion it flames,

It burns;

Smoldering the pride it feeds,

It seethes;

Take care,

For you are hidden there.

P.N.

 

 

Tonight, the Cat

 

Tonight there is no answer.

Over and over the phone

Burrs, uninterrupted,

Like a softly puffing cat,

Fat furred . . . complacent . . . serene.

And I drink brandy

That already bursts my head

With tomorrow's hangover

To muffle the voices of

Betrayal that howl above

The unconnected wires.

N.N.

 

 

An Existential Moment

 

For months before you left

We were angry with one another.

But tightly compressed lips

And separate careful schedules

Had kept us together.

Then one early morning,

Weeks between the unbreached

Matterhorns of our bedsheets,

We made love again, and smiled.

Later, on the stair landing,

I reached out for your hand

And pulled you back to me.

Your eyes glazed with the lacy

Net of your love and you asked,

"Does this mean you've changed your mind?"

All time stretched as fate hung

Like a spider above the stairs:

The moment hovered, then dove; I looked

Away as I shook my head "No".

N.N.

 

 

A Little Death

Part of me has grown numb

As though a child had died in my womb

I feel nothing now

The pain of its death throes

A deep cramp in the bowel

Stilled

And with the pain gone the joy

The flutter of hands across the body

The stirring of headwaters

In the dark.

My Love

Your absence is a black quiet

That envelopes me in its tunnel

Swelling

My own flowering turns

To loss and swallows

Involution.

N.N.

 

 

On Park Avenue

She sold her soul for a single pebble,

A stone of the lonely night.

She gave her love for a dazzling dream

And lived forlorn in a diamond's light.

P.N.

 

 

Love for Love

Two Billion years ago we made this pact,

Two billion years ago we pledged the act.

The stars looked on and laughed to see

The rehearsal of what was to be.

I loved you then as now I do,

You not the same as if you knew.

But growing through those centuries,

I forgive you for your blasphemies.

And in an another billion years or so

It will by my turn to teach you woe.

P.N.

 

 

Nymphs of the Night

Frail Sister of the Night

Sad Compassion weeps for your sin

For the beauty that will never be your sight

For the trap that has lured you in.

Paid Sister of the Stars

Reason stutters at your plight

For the home you bartered over bare

For your son who will never see the light.

Foolish Sister of the Street

Life played you a false tune

May a sweeter song stir your feet

When Time opens her locked room.

P.N.

 

 

Disease

 

On wheat and paper

You can find

Sick kind,

A stinking smut.

P.N.

 

 

MOTHER

 

WHAT SHALL YOU SAY

WHEN YOU SEE

MY POETRY

RIPE WITH PORNOGRAPHY?

N.N.

 

 

Half Moon

 

All Summer you hugged

My bottom's luminous crescent

As though it were a pillow.

 

Then Autumn night hung

A monstrous Harvest Moon on

The silhouette of its stage set.

 

And now with dark hands

The Winter Moon covers its chest

This breast half eaten with cancer.

N.N.

 

 

Outside

 

Where sleep does set her drifting dreams,

And silence softly sings to sound,

The Seven Sisters send their smiles

To soothe the soul earthbound.

 

When rhythm rules in measured law,

And thought creates all action,

Hidden hands spill streams of joy

For spirits seeking sanction.

 

Where light has overshadowed darkness,

And night knows only sun,

Wisdom waits to work her wiles

On truth but half begun.

P.N.

 

 

The Man in the Moon

 

The Man is in the Moon tonight

Loving her roundly, soundly.

Only his two horns peek

Out from under the black

Sequin strewn gown she has

Adorned for the ceremony,

And where he now buries

Another horn soundlessly.

N.N.

 

 

 

• P.N. and the Moon