Still Life With Coffee Can, Father, River, Bell, Mouse, Lover Fled Poem by Warren Falcon

[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