Escalating like/yesterday’s bills

piled on the
kitchen table with
good intentions
never realized
but thought of
often in vain
attempts to make
good promises
shattered with
the realities that
life offers the
naive who would give
of themselves
without disdain or
dissatisfaction
if only to create
some kind of
impression on the
landmass.

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Wilde Times

Your portrait hangs on my papered wall,
framed pretentiousness
with cape around your shoulders
and hat tipped to one side
as though you divine
that you are a superfluous man
and do not care, and
furthermore, embrace the
distinction. Your eyes inform
against you, however, and betray
the ennui that has become your
life from too many dalliances.
And yet, you do not seem to
care, as I [...]

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Lingering

Timidity gives rise to
anxious dissonance,
thousands of tone-fractals
clustered, dissipate,
subvert the ear to
belligerent response,
freely flowing from
severe pizzicato to the
strains of music at once
performed many years ago:
one can never return
without consequence of
missed musicality of
young virtuosity.

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Of the Pre-Raphaelites

Sanctity of the
written word—
art rendered in
stroke of brush,
insight, set down
in permanence
with drops of
zeitgeist blackened
on the gold-blue
horizon of Art
for Art’s Sake,
while Rossetti-women
cry out pious
platitudes from
reverent poses, classical
glimpses of a
fraternity long tied
with Nature’s artifice
and her sympathies.

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Night is Most Beautiful

when musty dew collects on
grass beneath bare toes;
when stars eclipse the crisp air,
sentinels of private acts;
when voids are filled with silent
understanding between friends;
when purple hues glow tender
over warm gusts of wind.
Night is most beautiful.

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Anatomy of Love

Mingled fluid-blight should taint,
clouding mind from reasoned act
as aching sores and cankers pull
at breast in vital force to rapture,
rupture desire from the inner-depths
of cavity in the deeper things
and corpulence affecting; in fevered
conduct, you ravage me to submission
because I can do no more than succumb
to your noxious will and live out my
days in anemic reserve, flaccid [...]

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Sapienta

“The story about Thales is a good illustration, Theodorus: how he was looking upwards in the course of his astronomical investigations, and fell into a pothole….” —Plato
Wisdom,
it is said,
is a
symbiosis
between
genius and
insanity.
I do not
know by
whom it
was said,
but that does
not negate
the quality
of the
afore-
mentioned,
do you not
agree?
For one
who is so
entranced
by a thing
that he
disregards
the common
to which all
subscribe
and believe,
he remains
oblivious
to the
normalities
that [...]

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On the Mythology of Wit

“The five senses [wits]; also, sometimes, the five qualities or faculties,
common wit, imagination, fantasy, estimation, and memory.” —Geoffrey Chaucer
—
I diminish into the practicality of
pence and sterling when I envision
the imminent, oppressed by a sense
of responsibility such as with the
rule of soundness that is within us all.
—
You arrest the constellation of my wits
with wraiths of [...]

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Intimations on the Liturgical Hours

“Seven times a day I will praise Thee…” —Psalm 118:164
I. Matins
All is meet at the advent of sun
who rises after death but three
spans beyond the place in which
terrene invokes the firmament
and settles at the right hand
of the Creator who reigns
strong-fisted over all principalities.
II. Prime
Cleaved unto each other with asps
at betrayers’ feet who have feasted
on the [...]

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You give your/words to me

as would books
tucked anonymously
in overcoat
pockets, oft
unsheathed from
bohemian-folds
of corduroy—striated
cotton read quiet
utterance—
with great acumen.
Thoughts that
mystify, bemuse,
trouble, endear
your being to
mine in antiquated
two-step, halting
startled beauty,
ransom bits
of my soul.
I carry your
words with
slight brush
of hand against
supple spine
and take you
with me.

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