The Blue Accident Of Love, Yes, Backing In - A Serial Poem To A Black Mouse Poem by Warren Falcon

[NOTE: dear reader, when you see the "x" in the text below
know that it designates the word "times" as in math multiplication,
so when you see "x" think/hear the word "times"]

for Karthik


Love, yes,
backing in

the floor where we
lay our cluttered
clothes deposed

x at least 3

take me
again once

x infinity

into your arms

x 2

and leave me when
you/we are done doing

x 0

a mere cypher flown
sheer up the flue
into the blue ash
which now the sky

is

where

(there is
only one
sky)

a dove flies
into some
possibility
of memory
or not

x thousands

x the time it

takes for you to exit
shedding skins shells
(I am a shell)

x infinity into

the one drain in-
to ocean reflecting
blue sky

ash of what remains
of you on the beach
bathing soft Junes

tunes the organ
grinder smiling
sings

'te amo, amor
fati'

mellifluously
from the boardwalk
cotton candy
Coney Island dis-
posed in gales
from breaking
waves tumbles,
smears speared
on the weathered
wood

x planks from

many trees

x ants in the

roots lumber-
ing their end-
less burdens
black or red
carapaces as
if shining
sand or sugar
unspun

x grains untold

as hairs, their
bodies follicles
delicate, when
under the June
glass espied
magnified count-
less, collected,
caught upon the
webbed threads
of your large
soft towel with
the palm tree
sewn upon

that I have burned
in the old grate,
a first fire
long awaited

x 30 years since

the last,
undisturbed by
carbon dates

x all times

x hands touching

delicate as trespass
what is allowed lace
of vision

x want

= at last a sum

= a remorse felt


memory
torques into
soft teas

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 the Jersey side?

occluded
silhouettes
contrails
glyphs &

Maxwell House
'Good To The Last Drop'
sign,

the 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

(momento mori)

opening the
can all blue with
the same cup tilted
spilling that dark
brown drop 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 pilot
WW2 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 of compacted
air hissing out
from within
compressed 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 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 it-
self only by outer
circumstance,
in this case
a word
leading up to
this -

Palisades cliffs
above bridge tilt
toward, always,
currents, the river
over-
flows north-
wards
tides rare defy-
ing the moon
that other pull,
you
live the other
side of
sand
the palm sewn
swaying adhered
to Mind

x 1

still, to pass the
time now

x 1

the sooty hand

x 1

over black
'mouth'
or word 'mouse'
allude perhaps
to river at
city's start
up from water

the silver bay
capped, remembering
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
depths their vespers

intone

I am, unkindly,
left remembering
once was laughter
spent

seeking out
between bodies
valleys eternally
shifting eluding
rapture

x 1

whisper
hand over 'mouse'
or 'mouth' conjured

x 1 more

contraction
of sentinel
bells against
each of each
reaching

x 2, the legs

x 4, the lips

x myriad ones gone

before, of murmurers

O lover

of thee

I adore

the arms

x no more
embraces

This, just to
reintroduce some
levity

for we
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

wantings' reverie

returned -

father loves
with his cup
his pipe songs
of love
of love will
he dance between
the violent fasts
from love,
our mother, with,
fast around around
& around the danced
living room
phonograph brass
loud plays
where June
curtains sway
me and Mr. Miller
(Glenn)

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

FACT

that there was love,
there was love after
all

I can see
it smell it
feel it there
dancing round
the livingness

one drop Mr.
Maxwell holds,
hold on to &
upon goodness
brown pulled
from below down
& dark into deep
such this is
the riddle it is
all now become
since you
departed, love
since you
departed
I shall count
backward by
3's then by 4's
the

door which once
embraced you now
never lets you

go

x brooms

or releases

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
the black
mouse remains
stays,
is many,
a multitude
of petals

x 3

the jasmine
unspurned
at last

at last/least
return
soft June
the lips of
which are
sometimes
pink, of
lavender
swollen, as if
to kiss

x memory

x Maxwell the
house the cup
O Mr. Miller
an O'Day serenade
plays close
...'Hi ho trailus
boot whip
boo boo daddy
floy floy'...

the late night
suppers of chops
the peeled onions
the laughter the
potatoes boil
& bubble in the
kettle then
father
to dance
the butter in
the sizzle in
the cast iron
pan

their vespers
now descant,
descend
...'How high
the moon...

x 1 black 'mouth'

hungry
the
dish it has
all become
feast for
black 'mouth'

& mouse makes again

x 3 the antinomies

a string

of pearls

anemones

& thee O lover

all of them

bring/return,

to me so many

now

x Pennsylvania 6-500.