The longer epic love poems don’t display well here; go to:
four unmatched as epic romance…
love poem for Kathy, written in honor of the Dalai’s visit, 1998
Tom Noonan
Fenian47Ronin Productions
Vow to Take Advantage of
All Idle Hours[ii]
[subtitle: In Praise
of Manjushri's Holy Name ]
by Tom Noonan, in homage to the Dalai, Pasadena, 1998
AT THE ZOO
I
Four windows of boisterous Yankees’ baseball fans–
mouths foaming beer andobscenities, swerve past
our own car, stalled
on the Long Island Expressway…
We’re on our way to the Zoo;
in the Bronx, too near to Yankee Stadium
for our driver’s liking:“God-damn these morons!”
He bangs the palm of his hands
against the leather steering pad
of his sleek, idling BMW.His girlfriend, passenger seated, comforts
him with a pat on the shoulder;
in the backseat, myself and my estranged girlfriend
look out opposing windows…As we did an hour earlier, eyes away
from each other, lying in bed,
dissipated from our love-making.
“We should shower,” I said,noting the time.
“No,” she replied,“I want
you to smell like sex;I’m sick of her
boasting about her boyfriend’s huge wang”…Now we sit in the plush rear seat
and listen to our host’s descriptions
of her hard-fought advertising wars
(false-lighted images as weapons…)My girlfriend’s torn
between her superior look
and rapt fascination–
she’s yet to finish Columbia’s Graduate Journalism ProgramII
Once through the zoo’s turnstile, creaking
with age, we queue along…Ahead on a boulder
sit a couple, arguing. The baby in the stroller
waves tiny hands and feetin unnoticed protest.
I smile, my friend looks away
with her patented visage of scorn.
At least they argue, I think…The big brown Kodiak bears
lie mange-ridden, eyes inert.
The monkeys chatter ferociously,
hurl feces.At the lion’s den
I can no longer bear
the crazed glint
in the big lithe Siberian tiger,pacing back and forth
like some mechanical wind-up.
“My God,” I blurt out,
“they’re killing these poor creatures.”Eyebrows raise, faces
look curiously at me…
Entering a house signed,
The World’s Most Dangerous Animalwe’re miffed
to find only a mirror…
Pretty birds
squawk dissonantly in the hot, thickAugust air, unbearably humid.
At the barred semi-circular enclosure
ahead people cluster. Inside
sit three lowland apes, backsto a stone outcropping. The largest,
in the middle, appears to look
to the one on his right, then claps
his huge hands a few times;as if on cue we all burst
into applause.
On all three simians
some timeless look of mirth dawns.Vow to Take Advantage of
All Idle Hours[ii][subtitle: In Praise
of Manjushri's Holy Name ]
by Tom Noonan, in homage to the Dalai, Pasadena, 1998An announcement
airport speakers
in the honeycomb overhead
–that my flight
was to be forty minutes delayed,
the voice practiced
though strained,made me think of you…
Our time we’d thought
might be nice
together
having been postponed
three times
running…
Breathless before me
you’d appeared,
in one hand
a valise, student paper stuffed,
in the other
a pair of tall-heeled platform shoes…
Here, looking out through the airport windows,
I see a
lone gull flap to the tarmac –
some mashed morsel
at which it pecks a long beak
before flying off –
away
from the vortex
of flashing silver blades
housed in gray aluminum,
the
whining engines of my jet…
Sitting over the massive turbine
with its incredible thrust, I feel
the low insistent mumbling of the wheels
gather the plane to its leap…
Years ago, I remember gazing through library glass
at the tall evergreens nearby –
high atop one, bending with peril,
was a squirrel, tail swishing
in pre-flight…
Then four limbs out reaching
for the other top
so high above…
Just days ago, another squirrel
merely a foot from earth
claws deeply dug into cedar bark –
though upside down, perpendicular
to the ground–the gap to the next
tree trunk, though merely two feet or so,
too far to go…
Eyes frozen (sometimes, like yours)?
The weekend before my trip we watched the sun dip
behind Mount Tamalpais, heard
the row of tall trees lining your marina pier
come alive with deep, gutteral wok, wok, wok’s
as this rookery of the black-crowned night herons
tucked necks into stocky bodies, and–
apparently not knowing they’re endangered–
flapped off in search of fish…
Earlier we were with your son and friends
putting in a small skiff, past a gull
sitting like a sentinel on an easeway pole
(the birdhouse beneath long abandoned).
Wide-eyed sea lions on the weathered dock–
rolled lethargic bulk into sudden grace, nimbly slipping
into the safety of the cool deep sea…
Choppy swells in the bay–
the big yachts nearly swamping us–
we watched the four Blue Angels jets,
precise in the bright sky above–
Later, alone, our lovemaking
as tender and delicate
as those inquisitive whiskers
on each sweet-faced seal…
some ancient power (like a bear’s?)
over my strong back…
As the sweetness of our orgasm
filled us with light,
grief like lightning
flashed across my dandien…
Or dandeenie as you call
that area so vital
to my martial arts–center
of powerful chi, between
navel and secret place,
poles of being (perhaps?),
umbilical cord
and penis…
Of itself my breath
caught) something
I know
I’m past hope of ever explaining to you…
–And manhood is called
foolery when it standsAgainst a falling
fabric…[iii]Cleopatra, already famed
for her enchanting ways,
met Marc Anthony in a chamber
redolent with 2,000 red rose petals…
Another legend has Aphrodite
torn by thorns in her haste
to comfort her lover Adonis–gored
by a rampaging cutty black boar…
her divine blood
adding the flush of beauty
to the roses
formerly just white.
As a man I share too
the fretted fortunes that made
Marc Antony, by turn, valiant
and dejected…giving him hope and fear
of what he has, and has not…[iv]
I too have faced
the inevitable prosecution
of disgrace and horror,
the unmaking of oneself
into mere scuttlebutt
for the imperial bureaucrats
like the boy tyrant Augustus,
left by default
to describe for all history
a scene of foolery–
though a painful warrior
famoused for fight, though no
fool for fancy, nonetheless
from the books of honour razed quite,
and all the rest forgot for which he toiled .[v]
So, did you plant the bomb?
I turn to see
some schmarmy-faced Chinese man–
little boy giggling, with squinty beads of eyes
pounding the back
of a pony-tailed, aging hippie
who, vacant-eyed,
shit-eats his grin.
We’re on break from my conference–
in the cool tiled lobby,
my thoughts are with the Dalai Lama’s remark,
earlier–about some dwellers of Hell Bardos
being afflicted with jackass ears. Though he laughed
when discussing, special diplomatic security
stand all about, looking nervous
(rumors of a bomb threat).
I find myself scowling,
admonishing, You shouldn?t
joke around
that way…
Not ten feet away,
An irate woman has hunch-shouldered
a breach through the velvet event robes
and is arguing with the diplomatic security.
This woman’s mumbling condescension
making her, too, look more pig-headed by the moment;
Groovy Baby and Schmarmy Face remark,
“Ooo-ooh, how heavy!”
With a faint smile
I find myself defending
the safeguarding,
because of terrorism.
“Hey, it’s all karma, man”
chimes Groovy Baby–his pal
Schmarmy Face, little beads of spittle flying, adds,
“Yeah, just takes time to ripen.”
that afternoon–my mind meditatively
wanders through deep-seated fatigue.
When we wrap, I pass the sun-cystalline`d fountain
and board a bus for downtown L.A.
Copper-hued, chromed windows
of the cooling canyons about me deepen;
I’m awaiting the Big Blue Santa Monica.
Brooks Brother grey, an
armor-plated Humvee
skids squealing around the corner.
Greasy food wrappers swirl, resettle.
At the Getty Center
my fascination with the blue and green hues
of Vincent Van Gogh’s Irises
is interrupted by my remembering
sent in a box, by brigands,
to a seemingly unconcerned
Getty patriarch…
On another level
is a painting once commissioned
by a Renaissance Italian judge
to hang behind him in court:
Titled Divine Retribution, the work features
sweetly-souled large-eyed
Divine Vengeance, holding a blazing torch,
and Divine Justice, brandishing sword and scales–
below a man, caught in moonlit surprise,
eyes choked with the cold pale swirls of betrayal,
frozen muscles unable to flee
from the lifeless form of a fallen brethren…
The next morning I walk a city park–
back in Pasadena, before my flight;
in its center a massive oak,
beneath are branches
knotted and encrusted, upwards
entangling (dark as Buddha’s hair)
into open space–
leaves having dropped as an autumn blanket
lambent, still,
with last night’s
big round
harvest moon…
Red, gold, aureate, now
sun-bleached ochre and mocha-tan–
the leaves dried sweetness
rustling softly as breeze…
Again the jet turbines power up to speed–
yet for this, my return, the deep sonorous
rumbling is like the Dalai,
chanting sutras…
We nose up
into a dunnish mass
of early morning fog,
water-pregnant and thick…
Later, as we bank
over a sea scalloped
and glistening
like molten lava
I will gaze down
at the foothills below,
saffron mountains, basking
in the immutable sunlight;
jack pines and cypress dotting just
the weatherly slope (like the mold coming to rest
on the hollow concrete platforms
giving rise to your marina’s houseboats).
At 33,000 feet, the flight’s arc
a mere dot gliding over
the low mountains, those
rugged convolutions of time–
like ridges I made for you–
tracing my fingers in your sand tray
to form a mandala, placing sail boats,
feathers, crystals, the books you gave me,
one of erotic poetry,
the other glockenspiel in Munich,
the Dachau concentration camp
in the sands, too, around a smiling Buddha…
But for now the fog streaks like tears
down my window; finally
like that gull, we break free
into the stillness of flight…
The bright orange globe
of an awakening sun
appears: a universal monarch
ruling over the fog bank–whorled, ridged,
convoluted as a conch shell,
milky-white, combed as flaxen wool
so gentle…
So far below.
written for Kathy and her love, Samhain of 1998,
Tom NoonanFOOTNOTES
[i] after Pope
John Paul II’s millennium meditation (Tertio Millennio Adveniente) on
St. Paul?s phrase as used in Galatians 4:1 et seq. and Ephesians 1:10,
i.e., ?to redeem those who were under the law…? and ?to bind up the
brokenhearted, to proclaim liberty to the captives? the latter Luke 4:16-30,
7:22, in which th eChrist is reading from the book of the Prophet Isaiah)[ii] As William
Shakespeare once did for his patron, the Earl of Southhampton(other Shakespeare citings in italics)
[iv] Italicized
words here and following are from Shaekspeare?s Antony and Cleopatra, Act
4, sc. 12 and sc. 14[v] Sonnet xxv,
previous stanza, Love’s Labour’s Lost, Act 4, sc. 3, and Much Ado About
Nothing, Act 3, sc. 2
DRAFT CUTS:
love?s tenderness the
whiskers on those wide-eyed sealsduring their outstretched
(on the woodenpier) sunbathing?lethargy
turning to sudden flapping into the safety of thecool deep sea/ astounded
at our sudden apparition?(My thoughts are of the
Dalai?s remark that morning?about some dwellers of
Hell Bardos having jackass ears?and too how she bears an
eerie resemblanceto that infamous wannabe
assassin Sara Jane Moore?)an honourable man
to command
ourselves to end
ourselves…And when one’s true
friendsrefuse?
why, the Captain?s falling
on his sword…a
bridegroomin my death…run
into?t
as to a lover?s bed…
Still, like Antony, I
haveimmortal longings in me?
towards unpathed
waters,undreamed shores?[v]
*** [Samhain section]
??nothing left remarkable/Beneath the visiting moon?[v]Got Game
Casanova once said
a woman would give
a tell-tale gesture
indicating to himwhether or not
his conquest
would succeed…
(At least so claimedan apologist author–
a woman, most curiously–
prefacing some anthology
of “love poetry”…Last week, in court,
instead of finalizing my presentation,
I watched the red-painted toes
held in curved wooden clogsof a Chinese-American woman-
a prosecuting attorney, i.e.,
allegedly of the other camp…
Beneath creamy tan slacks,highlighting her sweetly-peared moon,
her toes curled like a princess
as she turned to and fro-catching
my eyes in glimpses…Yesterday, I mentioned
to a woman I know
that Asian females have
the most beautiful feet…Perhaps Heaven’s way
of making up
for all those centuries
of feet bound in thoughtless cruelty…Before the knowing
of that matter (some years back)
I was just another arrogant 19-year old
cruising Daytona Beach, Florida-spring-break-on my new, California-license-plated superbike.
Light-greened-eyes luminous
in my sun-burned face,
like Casanova I played the rake…And she just walked up to me,
my eyes lost over the sea’s trembling color
(Dante’s trembling color
sparkling like Eurasian sapphire).She said, Hey weren’t you dancing
at the beach disco last night?
Sweet, bright eyes of a Southern belle,
sun-bleached skin-peach fuzz stirring in the breeze…Later, in my motel room,
I mixed the lime margaritas for us-
the too-expensive room equipped
with a blender and mini-fridge…(Just three days later, running low
on my traveling money, I’d throw
my saddlebags out the bathroom window, into the
predawn alley…The motorcycle’s gears whining, sans engine, as I pushed away…)That night we drank and talked-
over the rattlings of the air conditioner,
spewing chemically-induced cold from the window-
how back in Corpus Christi, Texas, nobody understood her…She’d never met anyone from California before-
especially not a man as road-rugged and handsome as me…
I played my role to the hilt, putting every male move
I’d ever garnered upon her wistful presence…Then she looked up, saw the time
and gave a little breathless gasp…
(as she was a bit tipsy, I thought, Well
end of the night…)What she wanted was to watch
The Johnny Carson Show…
I always go to sleep watching him-
he’s like my father…Afterwards, when we made love,
she was almost roughly eager…
Then she came, quickly, her cunt grew dry.
Keeping the chest her lithe hands had been caressingfrom crushing her, I thought I heard her
softly cry…Some time later, her fine, blonde hair
silken upon my chest, she started awake,
cried out in large-eyed fear…Will you turn it down,
I can’t feel you…
(Peregrine) AUGURINGHop, skip, jump to flight–
from the meadow grass
a seemly raiment of feathers
burst-great-hearted Mars
lifting large talons,
sinews pulling wings,
arcing (oddly, like an angel s)
falcon visage still…
Dark eyes fixed
ahead.Tom Noonan
Easter 2000
—in homage of Willie Yeats
Late last night, my dreaming
was interrupted (Spiritus Mundi?)
by that lank, long-coated figure
who came and went as he pleased…The whirling
of his deeply-intuitive, ordered
mind still present
from my long evening’s reading of him
(Saturday night—post
Good Friday…)
Now in my sleep,
his dream does come:
As Christ climbing
the worn stone stairs
to issue forth his Great Refusal
of Pontius Pilate’s “relativity”;
top of The Tower, the door opens
on a room full of ragged claws—
pedantically dissembling T.S. Eliot—
hollow echoes all ascuttle
on The University’s waxen, wooden
floor…
Too long a sacrifice
Can make a stone of the heart
as by rote we repeat
the polite meaningless words of the herd
until you have dried the marrow
from the bone.
Easter Sunday morning, I sat outdoors
talking to a friend after Mass—
in the courtyard ran children,
through the spring-bright air, full of candied treats.For some reason I was telling my friend
the Native American Wisdom Tale
of that archetypal trickster, Coyote—
(perhaps lanky as Yeats) being spotted
off in the distance; loosed off the leash
are some kennel-bred John Bull’s, all eager
with misbegotten Decorum of Duty…
Looking scrawny by confere, old Coyote
doesn’t seem to have a prayer…
Yet as if effortless, along he lopes, buffer-zoned
as these pudgy mastiffs, one-by-one, drop…
(the sun’s heat on the parched earth too much)Now my friend and I, having lived
where motley is born, speculate—
What wounds, What bloody press
Dragged into being
This loveliness…Before us,
beneath the sensual music
of birds in the trees, a woman
who stands young and beautiful—
perhaps the Nobel Prize Muse
of whom an accepting Yeats once spoke,
with a great Lyre in her hand…
loveliness raised into being…
Yes, and in her eyes I see
that Promethean fire
sparkling right
still…
(Shakespeare on my mind now—
the conversation having swung
to that Sweet Bard Will,
whose birth and death day,
‘twixt Good Friday and Easter Sunday,
was marked by player’s performing
’fore children whose soul clap of hands
confute those who traffic in mockery…)
Before us, this tall Celtic lass, her human love
nobly protecting the wee child in hand, talks, too,
with a friend (as us, bitter crust…forgotten by youth?)
Bored, her son breaks free to play.
In a flash he’s back, with a small cart
used to coil water hose for the garden;
crossbar grip just the right size
for his three-year-ish bodily form, his tyke legs
propel the cart mightily towards that invulnerable tide—
the edge of an empty fountain pool…
Back he draws…another run!…
Apollonian hair Helios-radiant…
Yet the crackling of hard plastic wheels
over the concrete courtyard
draws the danger-tuned awareness
of his mother made anxious…
“Coo-hoo-linn, mum, ” he protests,
“He’s all battle-weary
with fatigue and he thinks
the sea waves his enemy.”
She—not impressed, not thinking as me,
Willie, it was for this that ‘the wild geese spread
the grey wing upon every tide’—
demanded he stop and return…Yet the young man—some mournful
wonder nobling his visage, mirroring
a still sky—yet he
would not surrender his wee Irish war chariot.Tom Noonan has freelance’d from the Manhattan glass-officed canyons of “in-flight magazines” to the toe-up, sometimes mean streets of cabdriving “Oaktown” (Oakland, East Bay Area, California). Currently his “great ambition” is to escape the medieval wage-scale given those audacious enough to “shake-a-lance” for the shimmering-sand beaches of Maui…
White Crane
Looped neck straightening
tall, the ruffle-edged egret
stops beside
the algae’d pool.
(Not chlorined,
but minnow-stocked-
for urban mosquito
abatement…)
Breath taken aback,
I keep still.
The bird tips head,
elegantly, awaiting…
A Hawk from a Handsaw
–with all due courtesy, for Zina, a most beauteous Muse
(Eccles. 9:7-9 “a woman you love…
to repay your toil here under the sun”)
Is it the pitch,
the timbre, the echo
reverberating amongst the concrete
that transports me to years gone by?…
Sitting in the driver’s place
of one of the taxicabs
queued up
at the Rockridge BART station…
Massive 3 foot by 5 foot pillars
shaped like a Menorah
holding corrugated steel and huge I-beams
on which the commuter trains rumble in…
When I behold the stunning depth
and beauteous play of your eyes,
I’m transported
the same way…
“The endless depth
of your eyes has emboldened me,
strengthened my heart”
(Isaiah 35:3)
Some place
long ago, only remotely
familiar—field of verdant green
by the brook, beneath majestic cedars,
meadows of myrrh and spikenard
sweetening the flowering henna,
tiny pearls of morning dew, iridescent
in each blade of grass…
Such delicate petals
of wildflowers gently opening—
as in the Old Testament, blossoming
from an arid desert
into a house of wine…
The sight of you
makes my lips wet
with honey; I long to breathe
upon your garden,
tingling with spice,
taste your sweet fruit,
drink from your cistern…
My mouth and tongue
solid in the stream
flowing from your well.
I’m drunk with your love…
Part Two
Big, wide College Avenue—
With a spacious waiting area
Bounded each side by thick gray concrete slabs—
Dispassionately magnifying
the harrumphing diesel bus,
all those ruby-glowing fire chariots
impatiently edging one way
and the other…
Another train arrives—
a hollow sound,
building, cavernously
to an almost shrieking intensity
(like a wintry blast
absent the wind, whipping
around stinging cheeks)…
Childhood memories—
too, as a boy, I once wrote
the NASA Aeronautics Center,
searching for a “Soap Box Derby” design
to smoothly enclose my already tall form.
An engineer actually replied—
wondering how a 13-year old
from upstate New York
knew of his facility?
(I’d found the info through the patient help
of our little town’s librarian)…
After explaining that his wind tunnel facility
generated hurricane gales
for supersonic jet wing design
and testing, he nonetheless
was kind enough to cite for me
the basic reference materials I needed:
at subsonic speeds the least drag coefficient
was obtained by the teardrop—
one quarter of the length as greatest width,
one quarter of the length deep.
(Though given my size
I would have to “tailor”
that shape
around my hips and shoulders).
Which I did.
Secretly borrowing my old man’s
plastic engineering curves
and finely-gridded architect’s paper.
For my 80-inch racer (the maximum
length the rules allowed), at one-quarter deep
the width would have to be 26-inches…
At the library, again, were books
on boat-building that showed me how
to bend narrow pine squared strips
in a snug fit over plywood bulkheads—
L-angle bracket mounted on a plywood base
that I’d already strung with the pulleys and guy wire
supplied with my sponsor’s kit
for brake and steering
(heating with our gas torch
the standard-issue wheel
to a shape
better suiting
my long arms and legs).
Then the hard work.
The chinking of gaps
and rounding the nosepiece
with Bondo, an auto-body-worker’s
magic putty fix-all—clayish goo
that, when mixed with epoxy, hardened
like a rock…(becoming almost as difficult as one
to smooth out, wearing out sheet after sheet of sandpaper
I’d cut to fit the orbital sander).
Many weeks after school
I passed this way;
one day finally delighted
when I finished spray painting—
as my sponsor was a local bank
I’d chosen conservatively for color, gray,
but customized with Candy-Apple-Aluminum (sparkling lacquer)…
Wet-sanded to a high sheen,
my Goodyear blimp ( as it became known)
got a lot of race day attention—
the faces of some “neighbors”
breaking into sneers…
Our race-course steadily dropped
then leveled out into a slight uphill grade;
I won heat after heat—
my co-efficient factor
coming into play
on that homestretch,
gliding me like magic to victory…
In the final, though,
I lost to a small 11-year old kid
in a design favored at “The Nationals,”
a narrow (foot-wide) “layback”
(convex with the shoulders wide point rearwards).
The photo-finish showed his car’s wedge-nose
peeking an inch past
the balloonish curves of mine.
Next year I took first place
(a 500-dollar U.S. Savings Bond, not the 250 dollar runner’s-up
one I’d already garnered); my opponent in the finals
was my own kid brother—
my foster father had built
him a molded fiberglass “layback”
(one technological step up
from the kid the year before);
his involvement broke the rules
(but at “The Nationals” all the dads did,
so what the hell…).
The yokels all grumbled that
the fix was in.
One kid I’d beaten in an earlier heat
said he’d swear upon a stack of Holy Bibles
that he saw me slip my brother a 20-dollar bill,
top of the hill
after the race
slick as a weasel…
Though greatly insulted by this untruth
(my brother’s difficulty was his
being already too big and wide
for that layback design),
I managed to get over it—
the sting of blood
hot in my cheeks—
when I arrived in Akron, Ohio,
for “The Nationals,”
and was given a rose and a kiss
(for a “photo-op”) on that aggrieved cheek
by the sweetest girl of sparkling countenance
I’d ever seen…
Each kid’s home town newspaper
getting some such glossy
as part of the public relations packet,
Race Day News…
Funny what we choose to remember…
Part Three
That night, sitting in my cab, fiddling
with the radio dial, electrically adjusting the position
of my crushed felt seat (I drove the nicest one in the fleet)
even powering the windows up and down—
just like the bored commuters, trapped
like their exhaust
under the massive concrete—
I check off the dispatch radio for a coffee break
and walk to the corner deli.
College Avenue is mostly old brick single stories—
antique furniture stores,
upscale fern bars, chi-chi restaurants,
Inside the large plate-glass
lobby windows,
at each table sit faces
drawn weary
with the week’s worries and woes—
silence falls pregnant
across the spacious, sterile
ceramic table tops…
I turn and head back
to hustle up some rent money…
At the corner
stand four tall cedars,
rising stately
from beds
of deep-green ivy.
The rough hewn
fur of the bark
time-worn soft,
light as a breeze
to the fingers’ touch…
Much like the long damp waves
of my lover’s freshly washed hair—
sweet with herbal essence, henna,
springing about her glowing face,
on the bedroom pillow, closed-eyed,
raptly in tune with me—inside and gently behind her…
Bright sun of morning (post-cab-shift) breaking
through open window…
Later, at her friend’s wedding,
we’ll fight and drink too much champagne
(after I note that the bride and groom are acting corny).
But for now sweet tender bliss…
As if an ancient
veil of braided hair
parting, your face, eyes lift to mine—
doves flying free of shame…
Part Four
The throne of King Solomon
was made majestic
with ivory—the inlaid pearl
rosy with health;
his place of sanctuary—
layers
of purification
to reach the inner…
“Wisdom
has built her house,
has hewn
her seven pillars”
(Proverbs 9:1)
Part Five
Inside Solomon’s Temple
were apples of gold
in a setting of silver—
finely ornamented filigree…
Yet your fully beautiful twin fawns
if they could leap
the distance
between your full-blooded nipples
and my mouth made
good wine
by the whirling
of our ecstasy
would be just as challenging an act of faith…
Part Six
Solomon’s woman, all sun-bronzed,
tawny-fronted with beauty, never laid claim
to the Ark in his Temple—to her, God’s Covenant
lay with his pink-marbled thighs
seating us in the chariot of the most noble
of our people,
the rounds of your thighs
made slippery by our smoothing…
his height
as Mount Lebanon—
a man upright
and tall as a cedar…
Women are the flesh
without which we remain
as dry as desert-bleached bones…
How can such graceful pleasure
be maligned as such sin?…
How could such courtesy
have fallen
into such disrepute?…
Part Seven
Years back, at Durnstein along the Danube,
atop a hill overlooking the little Austrian town,
the gentle sweep of river,
I stood among the ruins—
the castle where Leopold V held
Richard the Lion-Heart`d hostage
(1192-1193)…Blondel, a minnesinger
and the most trusted of Eleanor’s Poiters Court,
found the returning Crusader King
by singing the call of a song
dearly held; Richard, in turn,
responding from within the walls…
Together they sang the close:
(call) “Always remembering, always reminding me”
(response) “To listen for the sound of the true light
of my twin queens’…”
(close) “Shimmering purity
of my beautiful
soul-mates…”
Chateau Gaillard,
the “Saucy Castle,”
he then built in gratitude—
architecturally a marvel, years in the making…
His little brother John, after Richard’s demise, then let it fall…
Further down the Danube,
at the ancient Celtic lake at Halstatt
I do “ecstasy” with my Euro-lassie—in the morning
swirling mist luminously radiant with pure colors…
Part Eight
Still and yet, now,
I have no saucy castle
(pillared like the Temple of Solomon)
to offer you, le-susati
You a mare, a spirited
filly whose mouth
is too delicate
for bit and bridle…
I encircle
as a stallion—
our movements twinning
like two sparrow hawks.
Our skins melting
in the cooling breeze;
no chafe
of thick leather harnesses—
the iron war-chariots, bedecked
with wheel blades, tearing nails—
some grim, creaking cavalry
stirring the dust of death…
Part Nine
Was it Maecenas, the patron
of Propertius—friend to Marc Antony
that knew the secret
of that famous warrior
pained for fighting (let loose in Elegies,
Propertius to Maecenas):
“Love and the fair were of his life the pride;
He lived, while she was kind; and when she frown’d, he died.”
Part Ten
Under the gray mottled
firmament this morning (that word
so often meant to be nobly Homeric
to me now heavy as concrete).
I’m struck
by how so many steel-reinforced bars
from the construction before me
jut up into this gloomy space…
(The new basketball arena
for the college)—
all the criss-crossing
scaffolding and nylon-cord netting
like some bizarrely over-tangled
spider’s web,
or perhaps like that scene
from that documentary
on Edison I saw at a friend’s…
the inventor’s “better idea”
of electrical lighting
having been promulgated
into some sprawling disarray
of black power cords
threatening to blot out
the urban sky…
Somewhere behind this maze now confronting me
is the bright shining inlaid wood
of the court
on which I played hoop
for so many years…
Now hard-hatted workmen walk high-up
swaying planks—
I remember, too, my Grandfather
as a child riding with him
up the elevator
at the staid Tower Building
in downtown Cleveland
where he worked as a patent attorney.
Without fail he’d have the operator
stop the lift near the top—
where the rear freight door
could be opened to a plaque
commemorating the lives
of three workmen who’d died
in the great rush
to get the then world’s largest edifice built.
“Crucified the poor bastards
then dumped the bodies
right here, into the wet cement,”
Grandfather’d bemusedly remark,
“Remember lad
that was the reward your Irish and Lakota
forebearers got
for their lack of fear of the heights…”
Part Eleven
Tonight, through the clear sky, a meteor streaks
downward—a brief flash amidst my workout…
(my feet hooked under running track bleachers,
I’m pumping chi-building sit-ups…)
Through Orion—two rows of three stars:
Rigel, Bellatrix and Betelgeuse forming the torso—
the edge of his glittering sword is “The Great Nebula,”
an enormous luminous cloud
said to be an invisible crack
from which shines
the Empyreal Heavens
in the ancient days before telescopes…
Brahma, Vishnu and Shiva
are said to have churned
this Milky Way of stars
into the sweet butter of Immortality…
A Cosmic Egg, sacreonic Creation Myth—
through which poured fluid into oceans,
the veins becoming rivers,
the inner membrane clouds and mist,
the outer membrane mountains…
One half of the shell silver
crumbling into earth, the other half
gold, doming the sky…
Part Twelve
Ginseng hunters of Asia are said to look
for the manlike roots shaped like and named after “Orion”—
famed for curative powers, it yelps like a human
when uprooted from the hardened soil…
Long ago an ancient master
said: As if hidden in the earth,
as if all-viewing and remote as farthest space,
as if suddenly emerging from nothing—
then you have become
inscrutable,
master of warfare,
the way of the celestial dragon.
Part Thirteen
Matters I never even dreamed
existed—as a child, peering
into my Bausch-and-Lomb-mirrored telescope
(my prize for biking-out a Christmas Card sales route)
The kindly twinkling stars
reflected to my eyepiece,
giving rise to wonder…
Is there somebody alive out there?
Part Fourteen
Walking late along my path,
to my place of exile I call home—
moon-ghosts of ripples, rising
through the pure sweet grassland
spread up the hill to my left.
To my right long, sagging eucalyptus leaves—
as if a childhood weeping willow, riverbank
rooted, in the night glow, heavily swaying low…
Beyond, twenty-degrees off-horizon,
the pale red fire of Mars,
cold scythe of Moon—
sterile, vacant, sharp-edged…
One night, soundless
save for crickets and frogs,
a squirrel made big-eyed and blinking-tailed
(scratch of claws leaping
suddenly to an adjacent trunk—
perpendicular landing then scrambling
up to safety…)—the radar-dish ears
of a mule deer rose into view…
One day, years ago, near
the Mendocino Redwoods, a huge rattlesnake
sunning itself, stretched across the dusty road,
barred my way…
I was behind the wheel
of our health resort’s four-wheel-drive,
returning from the weekly town trip,
with a truck-bed full of groceries …
I honked the horn,
the snake didn’t budge.
Daddy, the big German Shepherd dog,
cowered in the seat behind me
(sensing, perhaps, some ancient fear…)
I got out, walked towards the head—
a safe distance at the edge
of the baked dry road.
Suddenly the eyes
in the mammoth skull
came to life—
to this day I swear it said:
we’ve been waiting for you
before it slowly slid
off the road, right under my eyes
made mesmerized by the serpentine rippling
clearing my path…
One night, having ingested magic
mushrooms, I hiked from my resort hotel-room
to an ancient Ohlone burial ground—
sun-bleached chalk
still warm beneath the empty sky,
clear moon…
Sitting amidst all the snake-holes—
behind me rattlers all pitch and hue…
Part Fifteen
Winter chill warmed
blazing blue—
as if an Homeric firmament—
I’m dazzled into awe…
I cross the pot-holed street
and replace my now-empty
tea-mug in my rucksack.
Looking up
my eyes meet the smooth full
Chinese eyes of the sweet woman
I’d noticed behind me
now turning into her door stop…
“Hello” silken her eyes
(to a man
above me,
emerging from her door stop)…
Not fifty feet further I stop
again; pink cherry blossoms—
like Zen Master Dogen’s plum
blossoms, the eyeballs of Gautama Buddha …
Part Sixteen
Petals, boughed with rain,
fragile skins flushed so clean…
the satiny petals shine out
like a visitation—
smooth and silken as vulvas,
drooping the branches with ancient
cares, toward the rich loam
and sprouting grass…
At night,
the numinous beauty still unsullied,
back-lit by the full moon,
the tiny stamata as fragile antenna…
Ta Mo’s five petals opening of themselves…
Springtime light
swelling
in the bosom
of a young woman.
…“ambrosial nectars
of the Three Heavenly Times
washing away the stains
of delusion, the grasping after appearance…”
Part Seventeen
Queuing up along the hot, tall
stucco church wall, my shoulders and back snug,
squatting with hands clasped around feet—
asphalt baking in the sun—
I think of the Dalai Lama
(as a monk allowed to have only seventeen items)
as I wait for my free meal
with those forlorn, rough-hewn…
Food-paste all pale-blue, starchy, redolent
of special wing-nut additives…
(the “get a bigger hammer”
school of Sick-EYE-oh-tree
wherein “mo must be better”;
these pharmaka, as the ancients
called these sorcerer’s poisons,
dimming my sensory input
seemingly to the point of autism…
(as my Irish ear canals, past infected
during an allergic spell, are already
hard of hearing…)
Inscrutable as an old Asian gentleman,
I eat quickly… Finished, I clear remains
from the banged-up base-metal tray
by striking it to the green plastic garbage can rim…
Dogen’s tintinnabulation,
the ringing of the ringing…
Clear as a bell—not one other
can do what I can do…
End:
As the Zen master once said: I am
on the road without having left home;
I have left home without being on the road…
My house has no neighbors…
Wind howling
through mountain pines;
you can never forget
the meaning of sadness…
(written after the ancient King Solomon’s
Song of Songs; Ariel and Chana Bloch’s translation—a wonderful
version bringing to light much of the subtle allusiveness of the language play…
most certainly the “trademark” of that noble Semite;
other Old Testament quotes/allusions engraved)
THE SILENCE OF PAUSES
Flecks in the stream—
a flickering
Net of Indra, perhaps,
or maybe scales
chipped from some ancient
dragon, one lurking beneath
the stonewort
in the grey-green bedrock…
Tonight magic
hangs in the air.
Work has ended
for the day,
and the creases
of our six serious faces
soften
in the moonlight.
We place bare soles
smooth against
the warm dusty road.
Beside us hills rise
to faint ridges.
Whorls of grass
like dreams
from deer the night before.
At one crest
juts a gangling tree
with coarse dark
branches…
Some odd fork
framing
the beaming moon’s
full bright face.
StarGazer (for Nonthaybo)
You, of all people,
should have known better
than to try and lasso
one like me…
You, a Khosian,
ancient wayfarers—
as were my Celts
or Hunkpapa Sioux…
Mustangs too wild
to be broken—powerful necks,
noble heads reared high, disdainful
of bit and bridle…Stargazers…
Caged Venus,
slavenamed
Hottentot…Cagey
Irish warrior righ
Vercingteroix, made
a slave, in exchange
or his besieged people…
For two years Caesar’s might
of Empire’d encircled—spiders
in a military web…Taken
to Rome, in a cage, paraded
about as the once ferocious
barbarian brought low, poked
at with sticks by the easily amused
bread & blood crowd. To commemorate
one of “Caesar’s” triumphs,
cut open and ropes of bowels
draped on the alter
of the demons
their statecraft claimed God…
You with your Biko
should have known better
than to love one
as banned as me…
Still I must tell you
that when you and your young man
came into my life,
magic ruled my moments
once again…
No matter how tough
and gruff I might get
your smile was always easy…
Even when you’d scold me—
my grandfather always…or
my father never had to…I’d smile,
in some unspoken bond we seem to share…
As mine own grandfather would say—
remember, lad, someday one of these
fools with sticks is going to discover
the cage door’s no longer latched…
And then the lion will roar…
My Life Now
My Life Now
Hundred year-old wrought iron,
handholds for so many,
the black enamel chipped
by rust and corrosion,
revealing old layer upon layer
of more colorful paint…
The conifers behind
stand upon the stream’s bank—
guardians themselves, in gentle
contrast waving tiny green sprigs.
Some have browned from the season.
Up red brick steps first one foot,
then the other…
This ritual one done
countless times over my increasing years.
Heavy ochre of clay lined into squares
giving way to the parabolic curves
of the sandy Florentine ceiling atop–
my relief, my brief respite,
my quick breath of awe in the hallway
before the somber mottled grey bulk
of the Campenile. Beneath those huge
Roman-numeral`d clock hands and face
is a sundial. From the Class of 1877.
1996′s Class burnished the bronze plate beneath,
smoothing it of time’s accretion of green corrosion.
Nonetheless the cracks and grooves rough-hewn
to my fingertips’ touch…
I look up, and in the chilly mist before me
gloomy old Abe’s bronze bust peers down sourly—
a fitting repose this President’s Day,
his visage run ghoulishly green and grim.
I turn and walk down the gentle grade
towards the most beautiful room on campus.
Beneath its majestic ceiling—well-aged golden gilt
patterned inblossoming flowers, deep-ridged
crosses in mandalas, the expanse highlit by an entire wall
of stacked window panes—
is where I do my best work…
Before me now, off in one last distant glimpse
before I pass through the library’s portal,
stands one solitary arch of the Golden GateBridge—
the other lost in the uncertain fog of horizon.
This life is mine now.
With uncanny certainty,
bemusement at the years having never realized it,
this life, now, is mine.
TRAVELOGUE(BLUES CHORUS#32)
Pale red sun rising
waterly–an eastern expanse
of purple sage and scrub pine
starting to shimmer in the desert morning…
Fresh yellow and green buds, still moist
from the cool night, on the pine
betray the desolation beyond–an “Indian” reservation,
sun-scorched shanties, bleachedbones of graveyard cars and trucks…
A small untidy blight
lodged between the highway billboards
for turquoise and onyx trading posts
just ahead…
A nation in motion–
the past Sunday the sleek cabined semis
were lined up a dozen deep
at the “Love’s” truck stop…
On the four Interstate lanes of new asphalt
RV’s whiz by in tinted glass
and air-conditioned isolation.
In the neat rows ofpumps, our Volvo–
its rear cross-hatched with feminist bumper stickers–
seems quaint…
Earlier we rolled past
casino after casino–
monuments to possibility–
however long shot it may be.
Semis and RV’s filled the parking lots
(like worker bees around an artificial honeycomb)…
Dropping down through Nevada,
the sun danced along
the straight line of tarmac
stretched to the horizon…
Not much on either side
except square-holed, weed-filled ghosts,
vacant reminders
of Westward Ho!
Las Vegas itself
resplendent with sprawling new
subdivision after subdivision.
Plenty of newly prosperous–
perhaps our country’s “non-believers”
paying homage
at the alter
of that roulette Wheel of Fortuna…
A t Santa Fe we skipped
the merchant’s Canyon, with its
exquisitely crafted turquoise and silver,
in favor of the Georgia O’Keefe museum. Inside
the time-wrinkled sandstone hills about us–
dottedwith green pine, log and peach-tintedadobe houses–
were transformed by the soft blends of her colorful vision
into vulvas, a desert abloom with delicate wildflowers…
Winding along the Rio Grande,
amongst sun-darkened boulders and skree,
we arrive in magical Taos.
Sitting in the legendary Rainbow Room–
in overstuffed chairs beneath a crooked bamboo ceiling,
the one timeliterary sanctuary
cool and still inside the huge, hogan-like walls,
still pregnant with philosophical conversation, I wonder
Where have all the Mabel Dodge’s gone?…
D owntown, the galleries full of knock-off O’Keefe’s,
the cute stores full of expensive curios,
the over-priced atmospheric restaurants
fail to garner our attention.
So we drive out the legendary roustabout
Kit Carson’s Way–on the steep hills around us
tall jack pines, poplars beginning to blaze
with early gold…
Here and there, amidst the big modern
art and pottery studios–
and the “Moon Valley” RV Park
(a broad flat patch of crushed granite
next to the new golf course)
sit rusted-yellow school buses
tucked into nooks and crannies
of someone’s notion of a homestead…
In the rear window of one
hangs tattered
rainbow shards
of a shade…
Deep in the National Forest
we camp for the night
at a trailhead
beneath a dark expanse breathtaking with stars.
In the morning, walking the frost-glazed trail,
I see three huge black crows take flight–one turning
in the mountain-blue air above.As if arcing
protective wings, towards the mist of the valley below…
S
where we all go dancing
like all the time…
He’s tall–a total hunk–and handsome,
He’s got these eyes that just pierce
right through
And he finds out
everything about you…
We’re all afraid to go near him,
it’s all, he walks through the doorway
and we all say, “like, of course, he’s here.”
And then watch the way he walks with that just
barely side-to-side swagger of his shoulders.
He wears these I’m a killer double-breasted
wide lapel blazers and a black felt fedora;
I mean…we’re all sick of this
rap all the club d.j.’s used to playbefore we complained so much they finally stopped,
but if there ever were a gangsta I’d go out with it’s be him…You should see the way he dances,
he’s got these total pecsand a skinny little butt
that just won’t quit
N
and we’ve been to clubs in the City, too, you knowHe’s so heavenly, God the way he can tap out hard
rhythms-different ones with different parts of his body-
all at the same time…
Or then slip into smooth ones
so that you get hypnotized
at how he’s all one movement…
And he’s a white dude,
you know, he even slips in these kung fu moves,
high kicks and everything.
I mean, you should see what happens
when they finally play Madonna’s Voguefor us–they clear the floor for him–
cause that song, like, really makes him put outAnd no way any of us can keep up with him,
so we pretend to dance with him and
just watch,He doesn’t ever seem to mind being looked at,
he just closes his eyes and dances to the music…
But when the song ends
he just goes back to the bar
and sips his wine
all by himself,
and even if you go up to him
and ask him to dance his eyes are all misty
like they’re not even totally there or something
So like everybody’s saying
that he must have had a thing with Madonna
I’ve seen one of her videos on MTV
and at one place she’s dancing
just like him…
And he looks like he’s her age
and everything (he’s older than us)
But there’s just no way, I mean
we live in such a small town…
A
and like he came in,
I mean, it was a little late
in the evening
but I just got all excited
because he was sitting at the bar all by himself
and looking around, so I waited
’till one of his favorite songs was playing-
you know, the one he really cuts loose on
then I walked up to him and gave him the look-
like, he could take me home
afterwards and do anything
’cause I’ve been watching him for the whole month
he’s been here-
and, I mean, like I was telling Lorraine afterwards,
I’m sure I was sexy,
and I said, “Hey, would you like to dance?”
and then I almost died,
I mean, he just gave me this look-
he’s got these eyes like I said before
that I’ve just never seen-
they’re these brown-green
swirling pools that suddenly get so bright,
crystallizing like a diamond,
then they go back to being so warmand soft that I was just standing there,
I mean, I must have looked like a jerk
or something, ’cause he just said,
real softly, No, but thank you…
I
I mean, Lorraine had to bring me my purse and everything,she asked me what happenedand I was crying and I said, “I don’t know,I mean he looked at mereal sweetly but his gaze
went right through me or something…
Oh I don’t know,
I mean, Who does he think he is, anyway?”
