The Empress Of Contrails Writes Upon Darkness - Anxiety Of Influence Poem by Warren Falcon

for Anthros Del Mar

'the labyrinths
that time creates
vanish.

(only desert
remains.)

the heart,
fountain of desire,
vanishes.

(only desert
remains.) ' - from 'And After' by Federico Garcia Lorca



I, on the other hand,

have lain down with

countless thousands.

My tent is worn out.

Stains mark love-cries,

some blood where tongues

are ground down to root

words, utterance hard

pounded, soft tissue

torn letter by letter,

tender verbs opened to

pain, that which is paid

for more than alabaster

embraces and this strangling

of waists


My tent has drained more

of love's body than a mortuary.

Spikenard scented oils taint

fabric folds and flesh. Rote,

worn pillows are daily, sometimes

hourly turned where I half expect

to find teeth or coins hoping

still for one true word for

love without name else it flies,

moths repelled instead by flame,

pillows revealing nothing.


But I turn them still.


Oasis and cloaca,

love birds parched,

now moves caravansary

toward heart's always

winking horizons.

There are many before

the sun rises.


Perhaps my name goes

before me, my press,

Empress of Contrails,

peacocks in tow,

trailing tallies, scores,

arrivals, departures,

ejaculations, rejections,

all faces hands have held,

and yearning beyond possibility

hesitant dawn's mourning doves.


Have I not spoken of tears

subtle parentheses of blame,

brine outlines punctuated,

thinly silked, easily taken

for wing-laced salt maps,

tongue lick sighs grown

weary with enunciating.

Nightly misspoken, the

flagons are tossed down.


Recall how hot winds blow loudly

as do I, billowing the tent. Men

cry, mad for my return yet burns

no desert impervious to heat of

all kinds, even human, excepting

the heart, its capacities to startle,

its dunes in vast stretches beat,

beat for what moonlight can only

suggest to scorpions in silver

shadows, pitying serpents coiled

smug in their ability to shed skin,

unlike the veiled men.


Hide what cannot be unwritten

though this trail of brocaded

skulls in time returns to sand.

One cannot see this hand

waving goodbyes, the other

concealing tint and quill.


Through ages, upon human vellum,

through cycles unending and same,

what heart heat bids, I write best

upon darkness, eyes closed, tent

open to all who may, supplicant,

come wandering in.