poem: the fading rise

take a page from the black furnace

simmer down the folkways
autumnal blues
the midnight gavels descend
query post niggles the distant
prime: cudgel justice
a beating of monstrous
proportions, lather's
crown asks the fondest
questions: i ask for pardon
she bends the rules
the castaways linger
in the wings
outrageous a plunder
the whimsy of which
tastes as sweet as the darkest
roots, portions splayed
the black wells
vaulting the pommeled
sequence, the three
the fear of Havana
the aquablue mystique
cobbling the weary,
the lost,
the converging
galleons,
the last crimes
withering the heights
of your facile deceptions:
find the key
answer the prayer
cast the spell
& order loses her
sainted ways,
the skullportions
of the night's coastline:
call the wild blue
tangle the moon's feeble
intent. this whim of yours
fades in inverse
mockery,
the gingerbaby gingery
calculations moot, a fading
collision, as you stand & rise
a shell of stellar
evacuation,
dripdry steampunk-driven
foggery: only in the last
fading moment will i ask
your tenderest
of pardons.

poem: beyond the miracle

for the black rose

I initially balked,
the cumulative watts
bearing down on
the fusky nuts,
the amber prime,
the neverending plenty
of dewy decimaled
oscillations: you calve
your glaciers,
I'll calve mine, halving
the distance between
pleasure &
double entry,
bookkeeping the side bets
till wuthering claims
its spiritual climes:
venture into deepest space
and the vigorous
anonymity
extends beyond
the miracle-gro
tendencies of downright
signal virtue:
sunflowered virtue
hangs her head for
no good reason:
this tarry shall
merry in dew time,
a marrying conflagration,
tassel-beamed sentries,
organic play pens,
carousel capillaries,
a righteous finn:
sing into leopard night's
rusty truths,
partnered with simple
calibrations,
hands covering the gaze
as she sees her rain
in the halcyon bayous
of empyrean blue.

poems revisited: blue cafe

(Listening to cuts from Patricia Barber's CD Cafe Blue last night put me in mind of Jackson's wondrous and much too short-lived Blue Cafe and these poems again.)

An acrostic suite from 2001...

BLUE CAFE

heron meditations

i.

good fellow: strange vision exhilarates the nest.
rarely have i known the direction of your mist. until now.
enviable, is it not, your race
across time to
this moment of mississippi, shore

bought from what
legacy of pasts only you can
utter. they come, floating, fishlike -
elegant waste of piney ocean depth

ii.

glass eye, i think from my distance, so like esche-
r’s orb, a world turned in, turned under:
eternal sleep, a pearl in wait. spillway
a mighty punctuation to our dreams:
therein lies the irony of your long comma.

bridewell, hale fellow, get my drift?
lunacy’s sunken treasure
unfurled, the gar that ate jackson mississippi -
evolution’s finest hour.

iii.

gargoyle at seaside: can death be more still?
read this palm i lay before you.
eat of it. taste if fate is
altered in the fractions we have left.
taste if time cuts as a rule,

bereft of moorings
line for line
uranographer as mighty walls crumble
epigraphist of the gathering mists.

poem: these wanting few

if I were blue
as I frequently am,
dawn of a remnant wind,
pregnant ocean rump
in my lungs, son
of estuary,
orphaned, lost,
found, this stew
a miserable
sequestration,
an amber
gift to the vagrant night.
she asked after you,
found wanting
desire most blessed, these
wanting few,
wanting less
wanting the last note
down the line:
a single digit,
plea to gather
the blue you
carry, the blue
you mine,
the blue that begs
the question
in each & every
wine.

poem: rest your names

simple rays
Mary's tears cry
whispers
these foolish fools
calibans
tribal waifs in the blue
margins, calling:
answer the rest,
your names
are drowning
the violent dreams
parting ways,
cast of busybees
heralding
the nothings
sequestered in
your natural wells
blue holes
singing the silent
gospels,
the wildflowers
of your rendered
face, castaway
we forget the rinsing
parlor, the first
time, the very time,
the tingle in the alleyways,
seven times seven times
& the nights are falling,
the flying fish
of a thousand memories
fragrant
dropping through
rhyming space
I knew it then
I crave it now
I pray the wonders
never cease.