3 New Poems, "The Unthinkable", "Pagan Light, "never Again never Again"

 

  The Unthinkable

       for Charles Whittaker

 Created on the spot

the agent

in withdrawal

makes no past

logically

emerge

even the face,

hers, yours,

the cat named Ted

or Chicken

Little, donuts,

go ahead, pick your

poison, yet

carefully -- for

the mega-blur

cavitates.

Blessure, eventually,

cysts, like

it or not, one's

fragments

gather lichen

liken it

or not

I didn't mean

 to get all Creeley

about it

but thought

engages

a fist, always this

"grappling"

with causes

so vastly pre-

distributed.

But there you

have it & here

we are, I, or

some other

wreck of the Osiris,

Edmund Fitzgerald, 

or Fitzcarraldo,

who gather

reeds to weave

the barque

lest the dog's

byte rate

quicken

Only to be scattered

scat-sung, war-

bled

Blended

with the barfly

wind of

 the unknown

gold

Dig

Ipseity

casts doubt

about origins

but silence

breathes. Being

unable to

"sign off"

nor leave

"dead air,"

I hum, some-

thing un-

thinkable.

There came to be

too many Cassandras,

Medeas, advancing 

Clytemnestra's

excuse agenda

Wanting thrones

no sapiens

man owns

by law

Every animal

in the dark

ark or arc of

another chirality

omniverse, makes verse

despite the

truthless

innuendo

knowing some-

how any house

made of material,

divided, will fall, I

gather, to pieces,

literally

 

 Pagan Light

Many years ago

in the free open Basilica

Santa Croce in Firenze, Toscan-Italia

I knelt for an hour in prayer

before an icon or altar

which may in fact still be there

When a convent fratello

came to suggest I leave

I said, Padre, preferisco d'essere

not knowing I owed him

my life for going away

A look of surprise, a bit of fear

In his eyes, as he withdrew

And yet what I was thinking of

In that moment, I cannot say

And I, of what I knew,

myself a pagan,

yet head bowed

before the mixed up man

--with his mother --

hung upon the tree

reading the world foundation

in sacrificial alms --

my dreads, beggar's jeans,

my Gitane-stained palms & pick-

pocket book of poems

open to the one Francesco penned

in the grotto, the ghetto of stigmata

skies yielding to skies,

  in the orphan shells of everything

as through the aperture of the Blue Mosque

some years later

  I saw the subtle signature

light never lost from God

 

 

 never Again never Again

 

never again begins
now when so many of yesterday's friends
can no longer gather themselves
nor even be found

never again begins now
when minds lost
forever under rubble

souls scattered into elsewhere
murmur only

in mourners memories

staggered syllables

never never happened
so again as this time

never did never

again so happen

against all logic

and reason

never has never again

been so denuded

yet again

when again the means of dispensing
some other unwanted other
differs in technology alone
& the dehumanized end
changes in name, place
& yet again it happens
what they said would never
& somebody agained it
some robotniks

rebooted the ever

of again

 once more

never again & not in my name

may it never happen

or... did we mean never again

to be put in the same position
while never again

again however

becomes first in line
as death presenter, shooter

drone gun gamer

smooth operator

make it not happen, again

make it never happen

(may you have no means

in your heart to do so)

not even collateral so-called
the damage the targets
being the whole of the populace

sent running here and there

while they search for the mysterious

cause of it all & wonder

why do they hate us

why do they resist

losing everything

hugging olive trees

branches on fire

never again & not in my name
& since there is no way to be clever
no smarter, more direct way to say
please stop the killing, stop the killing

please stop the killing, it's murder
& it can only be repeated

again and again