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 fantastic preoccupation,
Moira who would knit us together with
the fabric of celestial bodies that once
illuminated the hyaline in splendor.
—
I war upon your ignorance, feints
of intellect concealed. Why do you
eclipse the worlds inside? My sword
will pierce the convoluted hysteria
that you proudly display.
—
You, of the cumulus, hanging above
my sentiment as nor’eastern wind
guides the wave crashing planks
of bifurcated lumber, discerning fresh
splinter from the barren driftwood.
—
I remember the earthen vessel,
cloven recollection of things
that were and echoes of things
that might have been in the
warm fecund soil beneath my feet.

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 fruits of knowledge under
the shade of olive tree and acacia.
This ambrosia that sullied Him
before Caiaphas, liquid in rivulets
from mouth across naked breast.

III. Terce
His face had shined with transcendent
breath alighting upon temporal body,
culpable to the great evils of pride
and disbelief. But still he stands
before his people veiled with bright
periphery and the happenstance
to have touched the face of God.

IV. Sext
How base is the one who mocks the
Son of God and spits in His face,
drinks of wine poured into the Messiah
stripped of His eminence, broken of
flesh whose viscera hangs from festering
wounds, ceaseless scarring
of hands that created eternity.

V. Nones
Cloistered in the darkness,
salvation waits for dawn.

VI. Vespers
Light of the sun is seen through
a glass darkly in theophanous
reverie that had encountered all
men, for He is for all men and
was made for all men to illuminate
the embodiment of the esoteric
and to lay hold of the provincial.

VII. Compline
This eschatology, to which all are
subscribed, will separate the chaff
from the hay, the goats from the
sheep, and will bring all men to the
great precipice that divides humanity
and Trinity. And it is designed that all
shall succumb to this immutable evanescence.

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.

Upon receiving an inclination to begin walking

The man before him on the dust-filled path
whose figure (creviced in the sun-light splayed)
soft approached, withal seeming words he hath
intended for our hero to have ta’en.
“You wander, my good man, with no regrets?
I could not do as you do, I confess,
for I have much in wealth I could not leave.
Why travel you in such despondency?
Great beauty lights this path we must travail.”
But fate had moved our hero silently
and then, alone, he walked across the vale.

But two days past and yet again was met
by three bold troubadors in raiment fine,
who, on their way to pass their trade in Kent,
had found them on the road to Derbyshire.
The first was young and full of innocence
and second, aged and fraught with arrogance.
But third was he who had but filled his mind
with things of pleasance and of other kinds
of fineries and flowers of the dale.
And none of them with our man were designed.
So then, alone, he walked across the vale.

A voice from farther up the road implored
(its timbre crystalline and beckoning)
to cease the sojourn; he had been forewarned,
though soon dismissed as dismal reckoning.
He journeyed further in his self-made way
and passed by all the flora and the fey
that now lined either side of insolence,
the voice in earnest bleat took great offense,
and thus proceeded ‘gainst our man to rail
and shouting, pleading urge to “get thee hence!”
And yet, alone, he walked across the vale.

Our hero trod with haste—with nameless aim—
towards a place with which to bind his claim,
a place in which all myst’ries are unveiled,
Yet every mile that passes is but same.
So still, alone, he walks across the vale.

Braille

Your fingertips glide
across plastered walls,
sinking into each
indentation, every crevice,
cracked milieu shapes
a world of neglect,
though the light
permeates the room
and your vision
should not necessitate
such stumbling.

Cries echo in
the darkness that
you constructed
with forceful trepidation—
liberation is
yours to choose,
but remains untouched,
for you embrace
he who would betray you
and you renounce your
victor.

So I admonish you,
if the eyes no longer work,
pluck them out.

Waiting

Reticent glances
(across the table
lift hidden smiles
against the thrumming
of hearts
and the murmur
of low voices)
hold eternity
in them
as he and she
fulfill lives
together
in silent reverie
that neither
should ever discover—
the secret devotion
that each has
for the other.

Mneme

Percipience-hung
                 words

                dangle precariously
from the precipice
of my intellection
and crumble.

Ah, Venezia!

I can still
picture your
purple-paned lamps,
the grotesqe masks
hanging in windows,
your pompous pigeons,
and silent gondolas.
I sigh at your Bridge
and sea-faded frescoes.
Your canals flow through me.

Your Escher Words

Borges, your Escher-words
excite me!  Walk with
me through your
gardens of waning gauchos
and dream-gemini.
The yesterday, today,
and tomorrow me
will follow your
labyrinthine guile
and touch the
universe.

Undone

If I were but
Seventeenth-century fare
and sweet, I
would not mind your
worn conceit, for I
would love you.  More
than she, dare I entreat?