Poems of Experience: White Goddess as Love, Loss & Lust
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.