Warren Falcon Poems

1

Hair of soap and head of tears
rinse mine eyes of Christmas stars
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For Lowery McClendon

Dear Low,
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Awakened to this this morning, Bachianas Brasileiras No.1**

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, Gnostic wind 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, conducted by Villa Lobos 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.
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I dunno. Nothingness, as a certain pleasantly odiferous 'je ne sais quoi' as I get older (am now officially old) , is good to settle on (rather, it, that no thing, settles at least ~nyet-me~; Whys (wise?) neither here nor there cuz (cue now trite redundant Gertrude Stein quote) ...but/and, both conjunctions (including dis- and Dys-) Nothingness (the sudden absurdity of a capital 'N') is liberating depending on what it means in various world quarters - I cozy mozy mostly these days, off and on, in previous decades, to ZEN.

Nothing to lose, this rag of selves.
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As with love
also the bellows

Strophe 1
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for Karthik

'...descend, and of the curveship lend a myth to God.' - Hart Crane
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for Andy Linton & Philip Whalen


...arrived via email this morning while I was reading Madly Singing In The Mountains, An Appreciation and Anthology of Arthur Waley. Waley did more than any other single man to introduce Chinese and Japanese literature to the Western reader.
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'Genuine knowing begins when sentimentality no longer bars the way.' - Eugene Monick
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