Expostulations Of The Child-Man, The Pope In Italian Miniatures - A Mystery
The pope in Italian
exclaims, 'Bring me! '
and the echoes bring to him
his bounded wants.
The pope in Italian
twirls his fake mustache, hides behind curtains layered
thick, plots the Blessed Virgin tied upon the tracks, his
dramatic rescue of Her, the imagined headline, Greatest Of Popes.
The pope in Italian
embraces a Statue of St. Micheal when the
guards are not looking, whispers the hour of
the deed, pleads for advancement of the plot.
The pope in Italian
blesses conspiring shadows in mirrored tiles reflecting back, the
guards pretend not to notice his continual muttering, the halting gait,
the concealed silk handkerchief purposefully dropped, they wink at each other.
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poem by Warren Falcon
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History Of A Place, A Bombast, A Psalm In Voices Several
'What thou lovest well remains.'
- Ezra Pound, Canto 181
'Let him not be another's who can be his own.
- Paracelsus
1
'All this our South stinks peace.' - Ezra Pound
In exile, by whose hand unsure - mine, or those hammers of
The ill-starred fathers. Unsure yet on fire I fled their dredged,
God-flooded cotton plains, those self-appointed lords over
They who were deemed lesser dirt or worse. Those who did
Not sing self-praising songs belonged to lordly minds in Hell
So there to I fled and still make a bed there more content to
Be among the bastards for whom the Bard* pleads,
'Gods! stand up for! ' Ay. If the gods will not, and they do, I stand
Up and bray, a fool certain, but in the neighing take deity's cause
Upon Myself - Justice, Beauty, Mercurial Love's Sublimity
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poem by Warren Falcon
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Misiva Para La Oscuridad Como Una Vocación, William Hawkins En Mente
-¿Cómo lo representan, a su gran
dolor ahora,
incluso un rincón de ella?
Tal vez
que se forja en adelante, encontrar una
foto, un caballo
a la pintura, como en la película,
luego a sí mismo ocupado con la realización
de ella, entonces ver cómo la barriga es demasiado,
tiene que ser diluido, una pata de nuevo
recortada a la medida,
una convulsión breve de los ojos y la pintura
depende de las manos,
un problema monumental que hace que corregir,
o por lo menos, las perspectivas de sufrimiento de uno mismo
en medio, en contra,
o, en el
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poem by Warren Falcon
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Midnight in Dostoevsky
Beginning with lines by Frank O'Hara,
for Frank, & Elaine Stritch,
Good Company All The Way From
'The Theatre of the Seven Rungs'
'I am the least difficult of men. All I want is boundless love.'
And a perfect day, drab Saturn's day, dark, stormy, muggy wet to skin, pretend one's at brunch though it is now 6 pm and one has just boiled the only egg in the house, fried one leathery strip of bacon (apple wood smoked and ice-box withered) ...I have managed to offend, I forget that I still have a few left around, Christian friends, the only two who've hung in there through my many theophrenic forays either cashing in my genitals at the 'admit one' desk or camping out at the 'Complaints' window finally getting my chance to ask the white haired deity, 'Any chance I can get my testicles back? ' THWACK! back to the back of the line.
In time I have learned to pick pockets there such as are theologies. Those standing anxiously eager to rush forward to the Admit One desk are too careless and unvigilant to notice I've reach easily in and stolen what spare change that may be of any real 'good' in their cracked and glued back together 'god-banks' pink a the piggy ones but not as cute. Mine own refuses tape, glue, plaster of paris but is always in need of gaffers...and I DO get the pun. Still, it pains me to have afflicted the Fundy Two with theological blues and warts, they who seek to thwart where they think I am bound but truth be told where I already am, with Dante, with Virgil, a host of others boiling their egg and sizzling their pork (not from the piggy or god bank, mind) trying to barter a few pocket stolen coins for a slice of bread.
Now as the lightning strikes about my place, to save face I play choral music, 'O sacred head, ' but like an itch demanding to be scratched till raw, I claw my way toward Palestrina in order to arrive at sulpheric, vodka-soaked bliss, dear dear hardcore Stritch on the turntable pleasing all indigents dwelling at least in the imaginary balcony, upon my frayed carpet, my frayed end, of the 'The Theatre of the Seven Rungs' grinding out, The Ladies Who Lunch, two versions, one from her prime and one from the 'return to the back of the line' place but having by now toward the end more than a hunch, Elaine alone, pockets full, old and grand, standing solo and proclaiming, Everybody rise! I stand and grandly bow. 'Old Cow! ' I shout above vodka drenched ice in a glass. Lightning strikes. The window lights up a skyline. I sit on my childhood Bible for good measure, Pascal's wager made with my arse. Parsing sins rosary I reach, hands shaking for Smirnoff reading O'Hara for comfort:
'St. Serapion, I wrap myself in the robes of your
whiteness which is like midnight in Dostoevsky. How am
I to become a legend, my dear? I've tried love, but
that holds you in the bosom of another and I'm always
springing forth from it like the lotus-the ecstasy of
always bursting forth! (but one must not be distracted
by it!) or like a hyacinth, 'to keep the filth of life
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poem by Warren Falcon
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Two Poems, Remembering Barnardsville Days, Blue Ridge Mountains, North Carolina
1
Uses For Wings - Variations From 'We Can Be Broken' & Other Discarded Poems
'It means so much that we can be broken.' - from an early poem,1978
for Tien Ho, departed,
and Michael carving
the empty space
of her leaving still
*
Here is a Presence beyond
illicit fires bearing witness
to evidence, remains of flight,
contrived escapes blocked by panes,
walls striped in ramming panic,
of ritual and a broken neck,
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poem by Warren Falcon
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Po Chu-i, Ancient Governor - 772-846 CE, From Far Away Thinks On His Angry Wife
Of Po Chu-i: 'As one of his poems explains,
he suffered from paralysis at the end of his
life, one leg becoming useless.'
'A well-fed contentment...
is there no greater achievement in life? '
Her heavy face displaces among
clouds, is swollen with hard tears,
her sorrowful gaze calls for the
always hungry child that was lost
when they were poor, without work
and down on luck. The frozen ground
reluctantly yields these many years
to slowly make his little grave,
too long unmarked.
It now wears a monument tall, of finest jade.
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poem by Warren Falcon
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As Dew On Grass Sleeves No Longer Stiffening In The Wind - Moments From The Orange World - After Reading Kenneth Patchen
.
for Bruce and Patti
happily singing in their chains by the sea...
'...do not grieve, therefore, those who are lost to you;
they were ever so to themselves...'
- Kenneth Patchen - from 'There Is One Who Watches'
I've lost my way and wait for signs.
Distant signal fires indicate 'wait here'.
No gate ahead. The iron dogs hungrily await
all who approach edges of the orange world.
Best to settle in, grin at stinking Death who is
sinking into the ground winking at me as if to say,
You will soon sink. You will soon sink.
Who do you think you are or were?
Step forward if you dare.
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poem by Warren Falcon
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Transparencies: Lovers Sing To Each, Death The Veil Between Them, After Japanese Noh Theater
.for Father William Rowell
Act 1
Each stanza is a scene or theatrical screen in which the drama is eternally unfolding...
O each eye holds a temple.
Each eye curves away from each.
Each knee contains a hidden country -
paddies are green now and ready for gleaning.
Green now and ready for gleaning,
each breath moves in rhythm.
Other's hands burn the thick rushes-
Go ghostly to ashes.
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poem by Warren Falcon
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What Pablo Saw In His Final Dream - Una Cancion Por Pablo Neruda
for Jose - 'now he is with the Lamb'
translated from the Spanish of Raul Voz
'The fact is that until I fall asleep,
in some magnetic way I move in
the university of the waves.' - Pablo Neruda
'Power at its best is love seeking justice.' - a radical priest
When love
finally came
two birds
one near
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poem by Warren Falcon
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Dante In The Laundromat Journeys Further Into Hell Beginning With Two Lines From The Book
At some false semblance in the twilight gloom
that from this terror you may free yourself
posthaste, gracelessly cast out, the closing
hour now come, caught in 'spin cycle' after
'hard rinse, ' an entire bottle of fabric softener
cannot unstiffen mythic threads,
the ancient weaves fray,
displace, are 'undone, so many'
beneath the winnowing rotors
that beat, beat with hope,
slosh, wash all sins away.
Yet gathers the dirt,
there's more sin ahead
heady in floral scents.
After midnight, beneath
bright florescence I read
Dante, his Inferno, of Hell's
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poem by Warren Falcon
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