A Strange Crucifix - Missive To Low Upon My Receiving A Charles Bukowski Book Once Read Decades Ago, A Paean To Lorca, A Peripatetic Poetics Of Sorts Poem by Warren Falcon

‟'I'm afraid this supreme consciousness is at least not one we could possess.

Inasmuch as it exists, we do not exist. - C. G. Jung, letter to V. Subrahmanya Iyer,1938

[NOTE: an asterisk * after a word followed by a number designates a FOOTNOTE

Lines by Lorca will be followed by his initials (FGL)

'Buke' is what friends called Bukowski - 'rhymes with puke' he sed to a stranger in an L.A. skid row liquor store]


'So I kept writing poems. We drank with the roaches, the place was small, and pages 5,6,7 and 8 were stacked in the bathtub, nobody could bathe, and pages 1,2,3 and 4 were in a large trunk, and soon there wasn't any place to put anything... So Jon built a little loft out of discarded lumber. Plus a stairway. And Jon and Louise slept up there on a mattress and the bed was given away. There was more floor space to stack the pages. 'Bukowski, Bukowski everywhere! I am going crazy! ' said Louise. The roaches circled and we drank and the press gulped my poems. A very strange time, and that was Crucifix**…'
- from the Introduction to 'Burning In Water, Drowning In Flame' by Charles Bukowski

'this land punched-in, cuffed-out, divided,
held like a crucifix in a deathhand...
the Spaniards all the way back in Spain
down in the thimble again...' - Charles Bukowski, from Crucifix in a Deathhand**

'True

one of Lorca's best lines
is,
'agony, always
agony...'
- Charles Bukowski

*

'The ellipse of a cry
travels from mountain
to mountain.

From the olive trees
it appears as a black
rainbow upon the blue night.

Ay! Ay!
- Federico Garcia Lorca' *1


July 2021
East Village
New York City

'...Shut the sea to His sad complaints...' - Ruth Valadares Correa

This, of a sudden -

woke up w/
teeth hurting,

too much salt in
last night's flung
together meal,

my careless
Sodom hand,

a.m. face
swollen from
two things,

looking back,

and molars that
quit years ago
but forced them
to endure promi-
sing only softness
pliant upon slow
bites and easy slices.

Sufficed for awhile.

Now Oxycontin
dawn droops lids,
dunks face and
what can of my
head in cold water's
trickle spigot the
super's yet to fix
so wet's nixed
months now

but drips'er shock
enough, baptism
enough, and coffee,
then see what day
might bring sprung
from whatever wills
this cyber thing, its
anti-viruses auto-
immune can't tell me
from bugs and I pay
out extra bucks big
but both bugs and
defenses work against
me such are cyber
graces' incautious
in flagrante worms.

Can't help but take it personal but, dear Low, to continue,
all is not lost despite dys-mordant molars, narkosis/narcissus meanders late of dawn but oriented again by Villa-Lobos*6 song...so, to recover this narrative of dawns:

Awakened to this this morning, Bachianas Brasileiras No.1.*6

I remember the first time I heard it - in college, thanks to Elaine, a library copy and a suspended moment at the dorm window watching fog pour up from a deep Tennessee valley, socked in again, which often happened on Lookout Mountain, weeks of thick late Autumn fog, gray white-out cloud-light leaning into the un-lit quarter, philosophy books stacked, Pre-Socratics, Church History, Clement, Polycarp, bitter Gnostic wind, our destiny pre-ordained, howling just beyond the pane, the un-modulated whistle of said insistent storm playing the Castle In The Clouds in fierce Sinai song, Bachianas Brasileiras, No.1*6, conducted by Villa Lobos*6 himself, nothing short of revelation that my too young to be so weary self had no idea existed but upon hearing within pinnacled gale, then, nothing could prevail against my landing oriented-at-last by mostly cellos and fog spinning in the Brazilian folk rhythms I would spend my entire life descending toward, stumbling forward, misstepping after, 'my kingdom for a macaw, ' become a slack-jawed shamanista entranced by dirt, green overhang in forest din, daily feathered by birds all kinds in twining limbs above.

No romance involved with all that now, I am an almost old man more rapidly untangling string by string, out-cello-ed in the end, and yet again, by an innate longing to land, go under, dwell within, peaking out, over strung, finally done with Polycarp and company, at one with my Hopkins*3 book still, sufficed -

from Terrible Sonnets*3 to accidental Grace.

Rendered, I yield.

I am peeled layer by layer to pomes-penny-each
glottal stops of 'soul, self, come, poor Jackself, '
be advised once more, 'jaded, let be' -

while not forgetting to go with Lobos rhythms,
leave 'comfort root room' finally escaping
John Calvin's dire and doom -

'let joy size At God knows when to God knows what;
whose smile's not wrung, see you'

and raise you One.


Now to the actual point -

DAMN good this book, Buke's, first of his I bought
in Chattanooga, post-christian barely, just 24, then,
but now here it is in the a.m. inbox.

Had plans to begin the morning with
'once was valid prayer', T. S.'s*4 Quartet
phrase, w/ a choral work positively medieval
on the player equal to his monotone but
I read stead 'Burning's' first sentence and
was surprised, taken, discovering

three things,

pain subsiding,

coffee good enough
but Buke better,

and sudden happiness.

Only read the Intro though.
Not sure I'll read the poems
through yet as work starts
soon so don't want to break
this sudden skid row joy
dropt in from vast chasms,
mid-70's, displaced, meander
me after music-god infusions;

stray deities meander too
lending a stench of reality,
some inchoate 'thing' clinched,
cinched, that might could
make/extend some meaning
beyond morning soprano's*5
mellifluous surmises in High C
exaggerating vaunted Corot*6
skies for all us creatures
bellowing here below.

Launched I guess it's called.

Bukowski veers

still all these years

but for how long
dunno dunno.

I'll go with him though,
even if only till noon when
the first client shows.

Till then will strain to hear the radio soprano*5 from the
bathroom as I ablute, ablate/scrape, arrange face-enough

around the swollen jaw, saline eyelids puffed and sacks,
push the few hairs in place - scratches on a surface now -

and still plead grace from those strays, the love for words,
the envy of their sounds, see if can find a way to continue

after-pursuits of what was born mid-field of a mid-
summer night beneath Carolina stars new groin-sparks,

some phrases suddenly come from other-where
not sure but there so blindly sat writing in the dark
in squint demiurge wrote my first 'serious' poem.

To recall this fresh feels good, radio's good too
while Bidu Sayao*5 sings Villa Lobos*6 aria*5,
a dove at window inching me into the day now more
than a toothache and hypertension for which I medicate
waiting for trembling hands to still enough to hold a pen.
I am fond of hands, these, for pleasure, measure and
reach, tho aging. That's at least the quotidian wager.

So, Low, no need to respond.
Go be in your cocoon or 'whatever' time.

So let us now praise

infamous weather,

high heat, plead

pleasing inclement

graces bestow

merciful cold

and dark blessings.


Let's meet up post-doldrums.

Meanwhile 'light a cigar and smoke away the bad world'
- Bukowski


2

'Soft moonlight awakens now
The cruel longing that laughs and cries! '*2
- Ruth Valadares Correa


Post Script next day....

Noting the themes, Low, as I read over what's writ ayer, words extending after meaning, or before, aging on all fronts, meaning and hands - hands extend too (should let them speak, explain themselves the conditions of arrivals for the last PUNTO) , they recall (a revelation - seems hands think on their own independent of an 'I' or 'me') , they reach, but years of such surrender, of hard grasping-after, literally fade while the metaphorical ones, the 'subtles', DO grasp though these now crabs-what-once-were-hands crawl, fall short to lap or nap nod toward tides moon wash, a heap of scraps up to the swollen ankles.

But all's a prayer in the layers -

Like the bow of a viola
the cry has made the long
strings of the wind vibrate.

Ay!
- [FGL*1


so here you go, Low, more news, views, to catch you up...

to be caught up! what writing's good for, at least that!


...meanwhile Lorca and I
quarrel much about doldrums
and the 'duende'*8, he wins
of course by singing or, better,
plays a few bars on the dusty
upright*9 about your girl the
Moon, ones about bull fights,
the usual gore but always
a surprise for beauties and
children flinging hearts and
unstrung rosaries into the
clotting ring...

.....while trumpets
salut the Matador plots
Severed Ears' Chosen
One, the Bull Bride dreamed
of once in a wedding dress
white, prim in a window
luminous in full moonlight,
intricate veil with horns
protruding, conspicuous,

curving calcium shyly
up-turning a rainbow silvering
above a young man on his
knees in the dust serenading
'su corazón en la manga'

'his heart on his sleeve',

dapper hat bereaved in hand
labored months to buy for
now's pledge to begged Bride,
unmoved, committed only to
portend a blue moment below

the sill, suspended suitor, pale,

dirges scarlet in eucalyptus,

nearby olive grove shadows
after mournful ellipses scattered
songless without their stanzas
'por el fin de crianzas'*9, sad,

sad, the lamentable time of
lactation has come to an end

so begins

los llantos,

the cries -

'agony,
always agony' (FGL)


Can't beat that animal rag*10
even though I was a boy
soprano once pure in front
of an Altar sure where Sacrifice
became Word, or surd*11, bread,
or semblance,

credence's Lenten*12 hint

since has all speech
reached for That
somewhere-somehow's
self-containing hover

between

voice and vein.

Or is it vain try to
obtain That which
utterance alludes?

Useless. Useless.

And not now, not with this
present face, these fingers
memory strained, just so
much knotted twine at the
end of deathhands clasped.

Hope/yearn to find then
the scope of inevitable
twists, the predictable
flights, what comes of
the inexorable
unwinding of

the Plot,
the Plumbline True.

Or not.

Dunno. Dunno -

again

'the ellipse of a cry
travels from mountain
to mountain.' (FGL)

One thumb dithers over thinned
carpet here unstringing another
verse, 'vineyard of the curse'*13
kind of thing, a secret rebuttal

perhaps,

or is it rewinding Lorca's
last song's hands tied be-
hind of his back, without
blindfold, that one might
hear when a Los Angeles*14
simun*15 blows

east or

similar wind

(el viento
es viento)

(the wind
is wind)

West to my near Atlantic
pont*16 in appointed City
a few miles from shore
where heavy cables begin,
descend, where the dead
Poet's music rests content
in his poems continual
inebriant supplication -

'strings of the wind' (FGL)


Dark my window flaunts orange
street light by neon night, by
devotion bound, ceding victory
to the Spaniard's brow now a
swarm of bees at grave's edge
mourning every victory because

of the way his ended

the worst for a Legend's bargain,

bones for his songs


Low, I'll still root for that fine Bull
by lead quieted, that only one with
carnations green where once were
ears, shots unheard but felt, pivoting

backwards, hooves

sudden beseeching ground

splaying to

sky,

scars,

clouds,

green

green

cries beneath cedars

Ay! Ay!


With such, Buke and the others,
a new day hums near high noon

where I am remaindered to
silence, still an easy sucker
for a song so sing with my
fingers or try but not to worry.

While kids bounce basketballs
in the street below I'll beat my
pensioner's drum remembering
red clock hands on the local spire
tilting God - shirts and skins*17 -
between Fathom Street and St. Marks*18.

Hasta,

until the Vision comes,

Nightingale

___________

** Crucifix In A Deathhand by Charles Bukowski, one of his many books of poetry...lines from the book's title poem:

this land punched-in, cuffed-out, divided,
held like a crucifix in a deathhand...
this land bought, resold, bought again and
sold again, the wars long over,
the Spaniards all the way back in Spain
down in the thimble again

'light a cigar and smoke away the bad world'

___________

*1 Federico Garcia Lorca - '(born June 5,1898, Fuente Vaqueros, Granada province, Spain—died August 18 or 19,1936, between Víznar and Alfacar, Granada province) , Spanish poet and playwright who, in a career that spanned just 19 years, resurrected and revitalized the most basic strains of Spanish poetry and theatre.' - from Encyclopedia Brittanica (online)

*2 Ruth V. Correa - Brazilian lyricist, most noted for having written the words for the Ária of Heitor Villa-Lobos' Bachianas Brasileiras No.5 (1938) . Her lyrics in No.5:

About space, dreamy and beautiful!
The moon appears in infinity sweetly,
Decorating the afternoon, like a sweet maiden
Who gets ready and dreamily beautiful,
In the soul's yearning to be beautiful
Screams to heaven and earth all of Nature!
Shut the bird to its sad complaints
And the sea reflects all His wealth...
Soft moonlight awakens now
The cruel longing that laughs and cries!
Afternoon a slow and transparent pink cloud
About space, dreamy and beautiful!

*3 Gerard Manley Hopkins - '(28 July 1844 - 8 June 1889) was an English poet and Jesuit priest, whose posthumous fame placed him among the leading Victorian poets. His manipulation of prosody - particularly his concept of sprung rhythm - established him as an innovative writer of verse, as did his technique of praising God through vivid use of imagery and nature. Only after his death did Robert Bridges begin to publish a few of Hopkins's mature poems in anthologies, hoping to prepare the way for wider acceptance of his style. By 1930 his work was recognised as one of the most original literary accomplishments of his century. It had a marked influence on such leading 20th-century poets as T. S. Eliot, Dylan Thomas, W. H. Auden, Stephen Spender and Cecil Day-Lewis.'

Terrible Sonnets - 'Toward the end of his life, Hopkins suffered several long bouts of depression. His 'terrible sonnets' struggle with problems of religious doubt. He described them to Bridges as 'the thin gleanings of a long weary while.'
- from wiki pedia

*4 T.S. Eliot's 'Four Quartets'

*5 'the radio's soprano' is the luminous Bidu Sayao, Brazilien opera singer. Sayao's singing of Villa-Lobos' Bachianas Brasileiras No.5 is considered the definitive rendering of this aria. The reader may hear it on youtube. The cello rivals her voice and both together evoke such depth of feeling that one should not miss hearing this performance so very much a definition in sound of the 'duende' (see footnote 7) .

*6 Corot - Jean-Baptiste-Camile Corot, a Parisian Renaissance painter, a pivotal figure in landscape painting, painted over 3000 canvases. Skies in Corot's paintings are strikingly beautiful in tone and affect.

*7 Heitor Villa-Lobos, Brazilien classical music composer who features Bidu Sayu in his masterpiece, Bachianas Brasilieres that weaves Brazilian folk music in a Carl P. E. Bachian tapestry, a veritable miracle. There are so very many exquisite moments for the ear's heart to take in in all of the movements of the Bachianas Brasileiras....do not deny yourself of such experience for one second after reading this poem.

The reader may gloriously hear Villa-Lobos' masterpiece on youtube...type or copy and paste this in that site's subject line:

Bachianas Brasileiras Heitor Villa-Lobos (1887-1959) Complete recordings by Villa-Lobos

*8 duende - 'The word duende refers to a spirit in Spanish, Portuguese, and Filipino folklore and literally means 'ghost' or 'goblin' in Spanish. It is believed to derive from the phrase 'dueño de casa, ' which means 'owner of a house.' The term is traditionally used in flamenco music or other art forms to refer to the mystical or powerful force given off by a performer to draw in the audience. The Spanish poet Lorca wrote in his essay 'Teoria y Juego del Duende' ('Play and Theory of the Duende') that duende 'is a power and not a behavior... a struggle and not a concept.' - Mirriam and Webster Dictionary

Lorca was killed before a fascist firing squad in the Spanish Civil War. His burial place is unknown. His poetry is though.

*9 upright - an upright piano

*10 crianza - Spanish feminine noun. It is a term referred to as the action and result of raising, nursing and nurturing, especially a mother or nurse while it lasts in the lactation stage. Time or season that breastfeeding lasts.

*11 rag - as in ragtime, a musical style that enjoyed its peak popularity between 1895 and 1919. Its cardinal trait is its syncopated or 'ragged' rhythm

*12 surd - in phonetics the word denotes
(of a speech sound) uttered with the breath and not the voice (e.g. f, k, p, s, t) .

*13 Lenten - suggesting Lent, as in austerity, frugality, or rigorousness; meager.

Lent is the forty-day liturgical season of fasting, special prayer and almsgiving in preparation for Easter.

*14 a line from 'In Memory of William Butler Yeats' by W. H. Auden

*15 Los Angeles, California where Charles Bukowski lived and wrote out his life.

*16 simun - From French simoun, from dialectal Arabic smūm, from Classic Arabic samūm 'pestilent wind'.

*17 pont - a river ferry, especially one that is guided by a cable from one bank to the other.

*18 'shirts and skins' - references opposing teams in pick-up (amateur) basketball games, one team is shirtless, the other is not thus 'skins' meaning bare chested.

*19 Saint Marks Church in the East Village of NYC, 'it's spire tilts' with God and a recalcitrant Age. The church is at the end of the block this poet (a tilter too) lives on for over 30 years. The church hosts poetry readings and workshops, hosted Beat poets and later ones to the present.