Sehnsucht

The sun breathes its dying aura
onto the cathedral, pink and soft
at the twenty-first toll before
lapsing into its gothic birth
now liminal, lightening
the guilt of eight hundred fifty years
engraved in the first names
I scan in our lady’s square
to find that which is my siren song
but it has only been five nights
since we wasted life on my back
in the latin quarter,
archaic tongues drawn and quartered
between faith and knowledge
desire and fact.
Across the street they sell books on esotorecism
and it’s spring at last.

A friend sent me a (tele)phonic message
to say I was in one of his dreams.
I am sorry for the nightmare.
Another morning, contiguous and contingent,
next to one another, his voice wanders into a different dream,
of him and a third self. He stops. It was private.
He guards it greedily, so I had to invent a story.
I am sorry I gave him two nightmares.

I dispatch my ghosts to parties the world ever.
Sometimes, they tell me about them.
Oh yes, That’s nice, that’s nice
but they can’t drink wine in bed
because it looks like they pissed holy blood.

(Bringing back an oldie (poem), but hopefully a goodie).

In the Summer I saw death on the old continent.

Across a village window
behind white sheets
a wall separates
us from the grave
over and upwards
steeples, crosses, headstones
strain for freedom
from the skies they pierce,
from this life
stamped on a flag
among them
futilely trying to dominate
mocking itself
proclaiming that no state
no ideology
no king, nor queen from my hometown
has right and rule
of the tomb.

In sweltering july
within the enclosure
lions swallowed legions
who dreamed of an afterlife
unlike ours
when heaven and hell were one
and the river of forgetfulness
wound around the underworld
granting oblivion palatable to the shades.
Then, the beasts swallowed those who imitated the son,
martyrs who fabricated guilt
to rescue us from our sins.

I never asked to be saved.

Fall wandered in
and it was unfair.
It’s early days warm
in the sun delectable
we played and danced
climbed waterfalls
wrote beginnings
and we hid in libraries
deceiving ourselves
believing loss
would not touch us.

Winter was the only one
who kept its promise.
I was bereft,
emaciated arms
that once bore fruit
pointed to absence
never to be recuperated.

The wind in the evergreens laughed at us.

It’s Spring now.
It should be Spring now.
We slept through the diluvium
and slow snow made
a crystalline mausoleum
of those first blooms
which I had longed to claim
as my bed.
The cherry trees exploded
in pink, the petals fall
just as quickly as they emerged
but we were too preoccupied
and we missed the renewal.

Will I be resurrected?

Today

Tomorrow

at the confines of summer
when I must choose
here or there. 

Siren song
syringe snare
to singular sin
ostentatious
ostensibly
st st st st
“stonato”—Italian, adjective, unsatisfying unsoundly
syllables aspirated
sth sth sth sth sth sth
snake, slither schnell (german, quick), on snow,
snit, snit, snit, snit,
snap, snap my snark
soon I should suspend my supersaturation
of ssssssss, sausseraen symbol and sign
because my snack dinner boileth over
and I may have snatched this up
sneering swallowing simultaneously
scarlet (s)wine from the bottle.

Film criticism dictates
that Paris is the womb,
the Eiffel Tower the phallus,
and little Antoine lacks both.
Oh, mother and father
had you never found one another.
I cannot find you
You cannot save me.
You will not save me
the way I need to be
but only as you desire—
oh mother and father had you never desired—
to bring me close to you, again primordial.
I replied that’s suicide
and indeed mother and father
why did you create me so
just so that one day I may die?
Oh mother and father
analyses of wombs and pricks
may survive centuries
but oh mother and father
children do die
Mother and father.

I looked for  you in  the dictionary,
“ friend of horses”.
A horse once tenderly crushed you
without the strength to kill you,
but galloped away with your courage.
Your name is your fear.
You contemplated my name,
but could not find it,
your mouth could not grasp it,
my name was your insecurity
and you vowed to never say it again.

I was right in not speaking
in the shadow of your scent.
You only hinted at my sadness
but you did not care to know its genesis.
His eyes. I forget their color
lying next to him. It’s raining.
He laughed in his sleep
Once. Twice. Three, four times.
My god, those eyes!
I could fix myself upon them for hours
and still never remember their look.
Mostly, I watched them close.

A woman walks alone outside.
Not solitary, a step always meets its double
the other foot, falling behind,
the walk is its own companion,
a singular duplicity
first echo, second echo
resolving itself, but not answering to me
too distant, in memory.

It’s raining, it’s pouring,
though it’s a young man this time, lightly snoring.
How parallel are our bodies
and parallel in themselves.
Note the two feet and the eyes.
Now consider nostrils, ears, lips
lugs and their protective rib cage,
arms, legs with equal bones on each side,
kidneys, intestines small and large,
teeth in two rows, two holes for expulsion
though women outrank men with two to be filled.
Or is that a loss? No, even in its gaps
is womanly flesh double.
I arrive at the heart, one
like the brain, their functions misaligned,
its not the heart that feels,
but without the brain it would not be a metaphor.

In the sun, bodies resume their individual geometries
the lines touch, now perpendicular.

You had a dream, but you will not tell me what it is.

-FS

Natural History

In sleep
I wake
in line with
feline eyes, waste
amber drops
american whiskey,
next to he, the ghost
and I say
isn’t it nice to be in the old house
when he kisses me,
expires through me
as he had used to embrace me, vacuously
declaring he missed me
before he realized
I had not yet
left.

In my dreams
I don’t wake up
next to he, palpitating
who sheltered me through the night,
till shifting in mind
I move toward him
haptic arising
and he pushes my hand
flickering against skin
on the border between innocence
and that contact
from which there is no return.
He wonders what act is to follow
but it is easier to retreat
into unconscious silence.

Across the street
an unkempt building
holds together skeletons
of extinct species
though through its windows
we spy upon living creatures
and it makes him angry
sometimes, he says
he would prefer to see the animals, unobstructed
but I prefer the carvings macabre
the traces of death,
the bones of the past,
to the flesh, now.

-FS

(An old piece, from January/February 2012)

A benign presence draws my curtains
told me I should nourish myself.
Still empty
I now see
the death bearing branch
grazing at my neighbor’s window.
another bare limb, its equal
pushes upon my glass pane, with a dull fall
and I imagined it to be some unfortunate creature
thrusting against the fracture of its bones.

The wind had frenzied the behemoth evergreen
howling deep it was the ocean
the noise of the unfathomable
where memories drowned
but not the aching soul.
That is still here, listening.

Now, the water is beneath me
and I am on the swaying bridge
paralyzed, by the snakes and fears
my mind materializes
but that have no place in the real.
I am crossing to seek society
“Talk, it will do you good” they instruct.
What do I say?
What can I say?
I lie.
Our faces are colored in
and we will laugh…and laugh…
and laugh… and laugh…
Ha, stab
Ha, pierce
Ha, bleed

Tear/Tear are spelled in the same manner, but mouthed differently when a tear produces a tear.

The sky is purple.

Falter…Fal   teh      R        inng      

-FS

This morning, 7:30 am

Translucent curtains shimmer
in imitation of scratched out stars
against the sky
turning from blue to blue to blue,
with the opera below
listening to the moaning of cars
like those of love’s tragedies
inhaled and exhaled by its gilded walls

-FS

I gave time
and I gave space
as though they were mine to give,
like scarlet baubles
my summer hands feigned to have sown, lusting for
and owning the fruits of another’s labor.
I never did an honest day’s work.

I gave of myself
though I believed I had nothing of worth.
But oh what words I can find
to exchange for one more kiss,
never learning to examine promises
for counterfeits.

I went to a museum yesterday,
and saw Forms of orgiastic suffering
carved and drawn by someone sharing your name.
They understood suffering, the artists and subjects both
but the statues most of all, chiseled and chewed
from impassible, impenitent stone into contorted martyrs.

You have such a holy name,
the same as he who lost his head
all for a dance.
We danced when we met.
You have a name traditional of this land,
such as that of its first and last kings,
one a saint, the other a profligate waste.
Later, they tore down the cult of the first
and made a spectacle of the other’s decapitation.
They demand that you give up your head in this country,
don’t they?

A possible ending to the poem I just posted:

(I will love you
even when you are as ancient
as the everlasting trees
surrounding your birth place).