[poet's note to the reader:
read the 'x's' as the word
'times' as in multiplication]
This
just to
reintroduce some
levity
for we (loves)
were many day-ed
x merry
we merrily played
harming no one,
not even the
mouse unmoved
perhaps, watching
perhaps, still,
still, from beneath
the god you insisted
be excluded from
all our nakedness
x 1 too many breaths
exchanged, groped
x many ropes all our
wanting
I stand behind
them the curtained
dancer entranced
entered into/
upon a mystery
how one could
be so, well,
swell, so
marvelous &
so cruel upon
one silver stem
hangs the metal
tin top jags
tears at
memory edge
opens facts
now you, love
are new memory
hands emptier
sensitive finger-
tips filigreed
prints your
body hairs
sifted imprinted
touching softly
x all the x's
here accounted
for, listed,
besos as kisses
scribbles, notes,
letters,
no matter
the black or
blue tide
of thee
O lover
what
slips out
ebbs black
back into lapis
lapses into what
self is
uttered/poured,
scored trans-
parent upon
surfaces
faces which are
even eyes which
now glaze with
love/loss
beside the flue
glaze upon the
pane
black
mouse remains
stays,
is many,
a multitude
of petals
x 3
the jasmine
unspurned
at last
at last/least
O return
soft Junes
the lips of
which are
sometimes
pink, of
lavender
swollen, as if
to kiss
x memory
x 3
the antinomies
a string
of pearls
anemones
& thee O lover
bring all them
back, so many,
to me now
memory
torques
into soft
teas
June
steeps
turns
steaming
said window
(and torsos)
said prints
views obscured
of nothing
in particular
or special,
but
troubles,
troubles only
of passing birds
enamored-of
(their lighter
bones)
or
are they
cloud and shadow,
merely the steep
sun declining ashen
into New Jersey?
occluded
silhouettes
contrails
glyphs &
Maxwell House sign
'Good To The Last Drop'
familiar
cup for decades
tipped
tips &
one
(out-spilled)
drop
x 0 suspends
O suspends trembling
reflected in the water
river made of the many
countless drops
x (again) infinity
x (surprised) my
father there
(memento mori)
opening the
can all blue with
the same cup tilted
spilling that dark
brown dropp imprinted
x (the
dove,
to recall,
brown, shaped like
said drop, now
flown, or)
finally
spilled into water,
river currents
downward, to bottom
pulled sort/sift
my father always
complaining of grift,
a weather man by trade,
a cloud man once a
pilotWW2 drifting
often since enough
into sky
he turns
the silver opener
butterflied
round and round
with effort his
arthritic com-
plaints upon the
ridged silver top
of the can blue
with coffee
'course grind'
the better to drip
with within that
satisfying hiss
compacted air
hissing out
from compression
now released
the smell
then of coffee
fresh not yet
brewed in the
kitchen
the twist of
the edge jagged
silver metal
carefully turned
with fingers to
break the remain-
ing stem of metal
holding the round
to the can entire
unsealed now try
without spilling
the grounds
out
x at least 100 thousand
to guess having no
acumen with numbers
and math but father's
over
there in the cup tilted
over
spilling into
o endlessly
it's seams,
it seems from
river bank
into memory
which is,
already
over-said
overheard
redundantly
as river
and time,
this one
now recalled
to mind,
dad
dad
the cloud drift
and the flows
the tides beside
the city
(both sides)
is as ancient
as it always was
& is
as 'in the beginning
was darkness over deep
water & a word, '
any word really
would do it,
form
something
out of deep,
of dark,
of water
which shapes
itself only
by outer
circumstance
in this case
a word
leading up to
this -
Palisades cliffs
above bridge
allude perhaps
to river at
city's start
up from water
the silver bay
capped, remembering
centuries' frigates
x countless
ferries torn
and Tories be-
tween seas
wars
vast to
the east
x duplicating
waves, stretches
the narrows
the necks with
rocks strewn,
the lonely buoyless
waves over depths
their vespers
intone
once was laughter
spent
seeking out
between bodies
continents
valleys eternally
shifting eluding
rapture
x 1 whisper
contraction
of sentinel
bells against
each of each
reaching
x 2,
the clappers
x 20,000
(of bells
anatomy there
is much to
say
(of the
elements,
zinc, copper,
tin, & more
while not for-
getting brass
more commonly
used)
of infusion
into cuppolas
the beating
the shaping
heat also to
be given account
amounts much into
bells conformed
gracefully out
in the end,
but only
as metal,
sharp tongues
blunted can of
bells then speak
tonally only
overtones inviolate
in violent swings
side to side the
hard knock shocks
into quakes into
belfry beyond
dance of iron
bronze overtaking
& annunciate
round of hammers)
so many dawns
x so many goings
down of the sun
x fortune the lips
x myriad ones gone
before of murmurers
O lover
of thee
I adore
in timbre
thru the
window rings
(the bells)
the arms
of which
too
wring out
breath to
breath
x no more
embraces
into indolence
This
(yet)
again
(late
offering)
just to
reintroduce some
levity
for we
(loves)
were many day-ed
x merry we
merrily played
harming no one,
not even the
mouse unmoved
perhaps, watching
perhaps, still,
still, from beneath
the god you insisted
be excluded from
all our nakedness
I find the long-winded lack of objective to be troublesome-nevertheless I enjoyed the LANGUAGE aesthetic idea of this poem nearly to the last drop.
This poem has not been translated into any other language yet.
I would like to translate this poem
Thanks for the patient read through, Dave. I've been dicking and dickering with this unwieldy poem for over a year now and have published variations of it, butchered, remembered, dismembered, chunks placed hither and yon as the damned unwieldy thing falls iiritatingly down down cascades down the damned screen-page (who would wanna work that hard to read the damned thing?) ...but it still rings out to me, taps me on the shoulder and says, Yo...Wassup with me n you? and then I'm back at it charmed then throwing it all in the waste can/coffee can of effortful memory/folder/file for later or never...this is the latest attempt...I don't know if you know New York City at all or remember the large Maxwell House Coffee Sign on the Jersey side of the Hudson River as seen from Riverside Drive or Park (Manhattan side of the river) at night one big cup tilting and spilling one red/brown dropp of coffee into the black and shining water silently rushing toward the Verrazano Narrows Bridge, under it and into the Atlantic Ocean? ...in 1980 when I moved here (NYC) from the Blue Ridge Mountains to Harlem, West 142nd Street, I'd sit on the old stone wall by the river and see the Coffee Sign bright against backdrops of Hoboken lights and surface river reflections of discolored city sky...now all memory by the by....and one poem as restless and current-driven as the Hudson...but such is memory which is never, or rarely, linear but associative thus the associative (Freud would say loose associations) cadence of the poem... Again, thanx for the patience to scroll down down down and spill one hopes out into grand Atlantics of mind and muse. Warren Falcon