Neither complete reason or revelation
But falling in love again when we can’t help it
Ambient composite blue transparent to the stars
Between dawn and sunrise sunset and dusk
Constellations swirl in blue-ringed octopus spheres
Between cerulean and cobalt a painted sky
Something levels like the height of waters
Cityscapes hang in Krishna heavens
A mirror’s blue velvet tumbles to the floor
Night sways in the white sheers of a blue room
Unfinished wine drinks the rose of night
Music trickles the ether of afterglow
The blue hour ebbs from the earth’s shadow
We are strangers in the space of a window
Poetry
Snail Recipe
As a boy I dreamt snails,
Dreamt my mother was mother of snails
Who nursed them with milk and honey,
Cooked pastina, sage and basil,
To cleanse and sweeten the flesh.
I dreamt snails and cringed.
At dinner, I slowly picked snails from their shells,
Savoring dark morsels, eating my dream.
Haunted Hearing
in memory of Henrietta Epstein
Abruptly Henrietta remembered it was January 7th…,
Synchronicity is a bridge over time,
Talking about John Berryman the day he died.
One minute life’s a dream, the next a song…
Henrietta was such a poetry lover
She plucked a candle from her Hanukkah menorah
To commemorate the Oklahoma-born poet.
She told of John wildly drunk in Michigan
Shouting frenzied needing her naked and now
At a party held by patrons in upscale Birmingham,
Even flinging the glass that was shrieking to marble,
Articulating an imperfect present,
Redemption is at war with time.
If eternity is freedom why suffer for life?
“The Mississippi will have its way.” John jumped in,
“More bourbon please, more Baudelaire.”
“I could use one myself,” said Henry.
“Mr. Bones got a powerful thirst.” Henry laughed.
We shivered to the otherworldly recitations,
Our tribute to a poet turned séance to his voices.
Ellis Island
Passenger ships slip time in fog,
Their displacement forever in motion.
At Ellis Island multitudes materialize
In sackcloth and ashes.
As they pass, our ancestors
Smile at us in pity and in wonder.
Some Lost Writings of Hugo Falcandus
Poets are interested in events “que circa curiam gesta sunt,” meaning they are concerned only with what happens in the court and among the elite.
When the tyrant Kings of Sicily wanted to vent their rage, they had poets executed, beginning with the most celebrated. This was to the credit of the Kings.
It’s true that poets suffer “Theutonicus furor,” which is the pillaging of their sensibilities through other styles.
Poets who are miserly at giving praise are generally gluttonous about receiving it.
A poem is a golden honeycomb.
The critic is he whose “culus tibi purior salillo est/ whose ass is purer than a saltcellar… (The rest has been lost).
The only way to be a poet is to kick poetry to death (or “to kick a poet to death.”) The original text has been destroyed).
Poets who publish other poets have a sense of entitlement.
It was said that at the court of William the Wicked, a Muslim poet read poetry of such beauty and depth that all eyes glistened with tears, though not a word of praise was spoken.
Haircut and Shave
When a man in a hospital bed
Needs a haircut and shave,
The barber with his black bag
Goes humbly through the wards.
In shadow and in light,
The barber and his patient,
Seen through an open door,
A smile on the sick man’s face.
The Barber has No Place to Cry
Cutting hair at the nursing home,
My father was afraid of growing old.
The old have so few hairs
And to shave a lonely face can break your heart:
You never shave the same face twice.
Alone and sick, sickness a blessing,
There were some old people, my father said,
No one ever visited, only the barber.
Barbers
The child I was sits trembling in a barber chair.
‘Make me a barber, ‘ I asked my father,
Barbers are men who smell like rose water,
Who gather sea foam in their hands.
In my family, scissors fly like swallows,
Straight razors never bleed.
Now mirrors have tears in their eyes,
Combs and brushes are buried in coffins.
My father is inside a mirror,
Walking in his white salon shirt,
Carrying his sad combs and scissors
Along an endless seashore
Arab Woman
I saw a young Arab woman,
A spring wind was blowing her pale blue burqa
So that her body rippled through it like water
And the veil made her face appear.
Covered, she was transparent,
Diaphanous wavering reflection of blue iris,
Seashell in a glass pitcher,
Flower emerging from the sword,
Naked light under a lampshade.
Gracefully, her every step disrobed her,
Like a shadow on a mirror,
A palm leaf swaying at a window
Where sheer curtains are blowing.
Cryptozoology
Our research points to terrifying conclusions,
Cryptids don’t exist but we believe in them.
We spawn marine reptiles in our minds.
We descend like Andean wolves, into the lower forests.
It might as well be that skunk-ape migrants of global warming
Indicate their degrees in theology.
It might as well be that being is bizarre,
Monsters of the lector unsolved in the sermon.
It might as well be that Chupacabras
Are devil dogs stirring the furnace of souls.
Perhaps a pharmaceutical apocalypse
Creates the condition for a mutant menagerie.
All we can say beyond a reasonable doubt:
They are the varmint of the malcontent
Who have peopled else, and are on the move.
Cryptids don’t exist but we believe in them.
We spawn marine reptiles in our minds.
We descend like Andean wolves, into the lower forests.
It might as well be that skunk-ape migrants of global warming
Indicate their degrees in theology.
It might as well be that being is bizarre,
Monsters of the lector unsolved in the sermon.
It might as well be that Chupacabras
Are devil dogs stirring the furnace of souls.
Perhaps a pharmaceutical apocalypse
Creates the condition for a mutant menagerie.
All we can say beyond a reasonable doubt:
They are the varmint of the malcontent
Who have peopled else, and are on the move.
Salvatore Ala 