Design-Fabricate-Install: A Carol On The Difficulty Of Communion With The Ineffable In An Age Of Disbelief, Solitude, & Anxiety - Reprise Version Poem by Warren Falcon

'Poetry, alas, grows more and more distant. What commonly goes by the name of 'culture' forgets the poem [or distorts it into 'popular' dissemblances]. This is because poetry does not easily suffer the demand for clarity, the passive audience, the simple message. The poem is an intransigent exercise. It is devoid of mediation and hostile to media.' - Alain Badiou, 'Language, Thought, Poetry'

'How much longer will I be able to inhabit the divine? ' - John Ashberry


the subject matter
is not new

& not the sorrow

old as the first cave
bearing first fire in
human hand the
expiring artist torn
from blank sky to
expectant wall a

herd there
a declaration

one day we too will
fill the earth as
hooves have done
capture sun & be
doneover/overdone
& so come to such
an edge of ruin


Heavy let me pass
this Way of Peace

take my usual place

settle rattled by
icon by pewter

by vision of what
is not any longer
there the wear of
a half century not
to compare that of
20 centuries past

what can last or
come from all that
so sit me hard down
upon the wood get
to the book at hand
the known & the new
mystery which emerges
from the white plastic
sheath carefully packed
in bubble wrap which is
a double Christmas any day


orphanspeak from
orphanmouth tries

1961
sorting shattered
ornaments each
Christmas season
before the tree
is trimmed the
grim task to sort
each broken globe

the glinting shards
from the survivors
(I AM ONE) so
sad a mystery still
remains how they
do break in darkness
stored in attic high

untouched
by light or

my hand its
suppleness

hold of
green limbs
everly yet

cannot toss them
away (pretty all the
more because pity)

so take/return
them to woods
where the tree
is yearly cut &
so scatter them
upon the needles
brown fallen
down a year
where such
sharded
changelings
mourn
into sparks

resembling those
the welder makes
just out the door
kneeling now as I
have knelled (once
& do still) a fat
boy betaken by
mysteries' broken
& safe return
heard in his
head far away
chimes him
refuge to pines
though hard on
supposes &
orphaned spheres

I adhere to a bard or
two the good few of
words & what of them
of absence be made
though presenting
sleight-of-palms even
handsome welder
[Rodriquez 13]
kneeling before
fire/light

DESIGN - FABRICATE - INSTALL

I think the history of
religions is this just,
only the sign reads
MODERN STEEL
not POSTMODERN
as it now should to
be precise true to
an age bereft on
Stagg Street thrust

once again into Christmas
- deer & such - though
Celtic too - Cernunnos
snorts from forests rough
deeply onto a green where
sits beside a silver stream
an orphaned god abandoned
carved upon stone with
bronze (before steel) but
still (the god is) stone
fearing it is no longer
real yet sentinel to
'an archaic authority'
- (Julia Kristeva)

Let me then work
my poem (all of
them) around in
furtherance of
what can be said
without such drama
of centuries past
& to come

lines ending in Stillness
a suggested Vastness from
which each comes/returns:

Cave - Image - Sky - Expanse - Singular Branch & Many

Plenty Are Stillness's Advances Even In The Rot The

Dissolve From Clot Toward What It Is Or Was & Always

Proper-Name-Enough-For-Me ------------> STILLNESS

I am taken with such
at which I stare which
holds my gaze with
shades of It and of Itself

that is is a death

or like unto it -

Stillness unbreathed

or in need of It

(Breath)

now having been only
once

(Rilke)

who

(it seems)

becomes

(relents)

known form
though

(It is)

returned
or re-rested

to Itself

beyond Christmas

and yet and yet

the kneeling boy
in the evergreen

the shattered orn-
aments ever gleam

the needles' net
a permanence enough

gold-leafed & trumpeting

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footnote for [Rodriguez 13] at the end of the poem:

'The welder in the poem, anonymous, 'everyman', wears this jersey as he works, eats his lunch, etc. I use brackets around the name [Rodriguez 13] (Alex Rodriguez's number for the Yankees) to denote a 'mystery in plain clothes, ' a popular athlete's name and number worn by 'no man' to denote the 'cypher' of the individual in mass humanity reduced to anonymous consumerism. I could have used the name 'Odysseus' which can also be interpreted from the ancient Greek as 'No Man' but I want the contemporary reference to a sports superman to convey the same reduction. Of course, the 'I' in the poem is the writer of the poem who, too, is 'everyman' 'No Man' and mystery.'