CONTINENTAL BREAKFAST
He started with orange juice
to wash down fear in him,
being fearful of earth with each awakening.
You see,
beside him on the mattress
wasted his companion
or perhaps took his bath
with another companion – it makes no difference.
In the yellow of the yokes he saw again
that he existed
and he cut a bit
of the bacon’s double spiral
while on the floor convulsed
the red horse.
He took a sip of the hot brown god
with the prospect of maintaining his erection
until he clocked in.
Radio and percolator
whistled the same morning song.
Today
he was through with understanding
so
when the child took the yellow bus
to prolong the Joke,
all at once
he stuck his divan
with butter
on the ceiling.
VISION
I came to love a fountain
of recent …
I planted cacti, as well: one is growing quite
amazingly
others take a lifetime.
This too is a series of vistas …
For instance: a man gets off the bus
crosses the tar’s sheen
and comes home
only to find the cradle full of sacrifices,
a jacket and a skirt shedding ashes
on the bed.
I see him trying in vain to suckle
his mother’s shrunken breasts,
to explain
why the milk has dried up,
and what that creaking on the roof augured
each day.
I can’t make out if it’s a man or a woman.
To my surprise
I see him plucking out his eyes
and putting them in his pocket,
bolting himself into the night,
whistling …
drinking from my fountain
and smelling my cacti.
PATISSERIE * CONFISERIE
All at once he felt the need
to confess.
A huge ceiling fan circled
in the confectionery
and that take-off sound
again prevented me from explaining
why some people eat chocolate pastries
while others
feed death.
LAKE TITICACA
O Titicaca,
the roles of a lifetime lie dormant
in your deep waters.
As a child I threw food
and nurtured memory
that monster
dossed down deep in our existence
which you, a seemly lake, glossed over.
O Titicaca,
the droning insect that I was
I hovered over the commotion.
Was my life a mistake?
Even the guttersnipe’s cap
went to the bottom
in dream bubbles
pages of Les Miserables were soaked
and the palm of foundered youth
a dry, empty hand
waves goodbye to laughter’s name
Titicaca, Titicaca
how funny.
We giggled through geography class
and the space became time
and time became Cronus
devouring altitude, area
and washing ashore
spiritual masks
and illusion.
From the boating only passion,
a white brolly, stays buoyant.
O Titicaca,
my friends and I are Chekhov’s sisters
florets pressed dry between pages of a book.
Was my life a mistake?
She dipped her soft breast
into the lake at night
to suckle memory …
THE FITTING
A white cat had an eye on my parasol.
The latter, also white, I held before the mirror
– open –
when I was being fitted
for ascension’s vestments.
At the time when
canaries got tangled up in my hair,
the white cat purred her entreaties
on my lap. “Don’t, don’t become the only begotten;
take me, take me with you
that we may wallow
in immaculate blazes of yellow.”
IN THE MIRROR
The neck alone shone in the room.
The rest of the body had quietly
disappeared behind the quicksilver,
long fingers moving
and decay shedding its pollen on the glow.
“The swan is mine,”
raved my strangler, thick
drops of sweat on his brow.
In the mirror, dear heart,
as if not implicated in the crime
you had engineered,
you smiled at my divine
swan song.
THE DRESSER
He loved me because I sowed wings
on his velvet suit
each night when he undressed in his dressing room
he kissed my needle-sore fingers
and left thirsty
for the dark,
my perverted angel.
VISIONS international (USA), No. 18, 1995
BILIETO (Peania) No. 1
BROTHEL
But
whence came so much white:
feathers, jasmine
so many shiny fingernails, starfish
snowflakes and melted kisses
around the azure cry,
whirlpools of my plunge into the watery chaos,
in this my guilt’s empty cage
what wind blew at the hour of wings
which seeks its angel?
DEATH CANNOT BE PHOTOGRAPHED
We were never photographed together.
You’re not to be seen in any photo.
Only on the negative, all the negatives
kept in desolation’s files.
Your wink exists
the shutter’s click
motion recorded in the silence
the warmth of a kiss
the colour of leaves
sea’s murmur
jasmine’s whimper
and a burst of laughter
printed
on your published face.
We were never photographed together.
Yet you exist:
the silent background
in every photo.
As we leaf through desolation’s album
looking at our illustrious moments
the glossy image we touch
is the fiery tattoo
marked by light
on your cold skin.
VISIONS international (USA), No. 18, 1995
THE DREAM
The dream,
you must summon it from the abyss
call it
name it what you like –
strawberry, papaw, nougat, macaroon –
baptize it
even in your blood.
Blow it up in a balloon
and let it go never to return.
The dream,
a lost ring,
you must look for it
among life’s seaweed,
become engaged to it,
disguise it as a stamen
and you a bee,
fish for it
in time’s river.
And should it slip out of your hands
let it leap into the light of night.
Should it shed scales of ruthless silence
pick them up as slivers
and reassemble the mirror
in which the game of fate will be played.
The dream,
a child’s ball, squeeze it
press it on your pillow at night.
A parched tree in the waste of decay
hang fruit on its branches
that you may bite into an apple in the morn,
that you and the dream may wake up together.
Feel pain for it as you would for yourself
screw in its amputated leg
stick breasts on it
plant seeds in its impaired mind
substitute its blind eye
for a glass one
shape love’s footfall
with its watery flesh,
heard only in the lost garden of innocence …
Summon it as you are breathing your last.
It’ll come.
It’s life,
the fruit
of death’s dream,
the nightmare of decay.
DON’T SHOOT THE PIANIST
Who played the piano
when, where was he?
A white tunnel,
sleep went streaking through it.
The shot in the head
was first heard
in a suburb
a square
an ancient house;
the barrel smoked
the game
fought a duel
with the dream
the tarnished house of cards
collapsed,
people’s hands were crushed.
Without touch and colours
my ear laments
the haunted keyboard,
the queen
and the jack
cuddled
under satin sheets;
without touch and colours
without fingers
who plays the piano
where, when did he play
who waits
when the music stops
for the applause?
VISIONS international (USA), No. 18, 1995
CHRISTMAS, 1990
Toy soldiers
dangle from the tree
red and blue balls
bounce on the branches
bombs explode around
the stiff wings
of angels.
So many years
and still you’re born
in slush,
a babe in swaddling clothes
with silvery festoons
of barbed wire.
POESIE EUROPE (Germany), 1993
BILIETO (Peania) No. 1
AWAKENING
When sweethearts
wake up to rain
a moist shadow seeps through their clay.
The lockup of souls leaks
but pulsing blood will not be contaminated.
When lovers
wake up to snow
and the mist in the vales of touch
gives forth tangible kisses
the bodies about to shiver
are swaddled
with wings of memory.
When those truly loved in the night
wake up to the darkness of this world
they sling their brightness, voice-cum-rope,
over the axis of their sun
and, strung up, they shine.
POESIE EUROPE (Germany), 1994
THROUGH THE FINGERS
Whatever you think you have in your grasp
love denies you.
It slips through the fingers
a closely-woven taffeta
a frilly bit tears off
the brassiere
and only a swish remains
to teach the harp
to feelings.
The eagle-self
with a sparrow’s beak
taps on other’s windows.
POESIE EUROPE (Germany), 1993
TO FEEL IS NOT A VERB Iris download
In this poem
the piano is a pause
between black and white,
grey,
perfection’s colour of submission
betrayed by good and evil.
In this poem
the piano is wafting
silence causing why to flicker.
soundless rustling of time
driving me from stance to distance,
and on the body’s candelabrum
fingers kindle
casting shadows on the wall
enlarged by absence.
Nonexistent profiles shine.
In this poem
words are mangled by the keys.
Listen:
black, white, white, white, black,
grey.
I can still feel
the outline of lips, the shape of the nose;
kisses, wounded sparrows
fill the house …
I’ll bury them all in this poem
blood will dry in parentheses
let me be …
I’ll explain in my next poem
why feeling is self-sufficiency’s first victim
why each instinct ends in music.
Come next poem
and they’ll have faded out: fingers, body, profiles
and sonata.
The title:
“Feeling is dead, long live hearing!”
DON’T PIN BUTTERFLIES
When brightness becomes distorted
because the naked eye cannot bear
the light
and sunglasses
transmute the face into a spy’s mask,
whoever the glare has worn out
arms himself with what sharp object he can find,
comes on duty, and snoops on
groups of females,
feigning that he’s been hauled by women
who wound the earth by picking bitter-tasting greens.
He finds his prey
among burning rocks
on calvaries
in waste lands
stagnant waters
well, whatever incubates wings,
finds a deaf-mute woman
making agonizing signs of birth
in cortices of darkness
sprinkled with the coloured sperm of lust;
and so
into this fluff of fondness
which rendered his life’s wet dream ineffable
he sticks what sharp object he can find
and declares himself collector,
thereby collecting
audacity in the desert
motion that assaults chaos
colours
and the blood of freedom which his pallor
does not contain.
NOT YOU
Often I fall in love
with what will leave me
without nostalgic feeling.
Often I fall in love
with what vaporizes me
that it may smell exquisitely,
a pungent perfume,
behind life’s little ear
that hears me not.
