In the night

I see soldiers without guns
A thousand priests without suns
A hundred hands without fingers
The smell of hatred still lingers
There was a dart sticking to the back
Of a broken post
Behind a ghost
As the night came flashing

I heard the children lose their youth
A million eyes looked past the truth
Cacophonies of beggars battling
A pontiff's jewels were rattling
Smoke sticking to its great iron stack
In the empty sky
Behind a lie
As the night came crashing

I felt the slip of a rose's thorn
As wreaths of horror soon were torn
From the scalps of princes and of queens
Actors preaching loud without their scenes
It was then that we held both our hands
To the golden calf
Just for a laugh
As the night came rumbling

I knew that history had its friends
That tyranny had further ends
Strangers lurked within the silent mass
Candles burned so that God might trespass
Upon the filth of mud-coated lands
Of forgotten past
If it could last
As the night fell, crumbling

Sonnet for the sparrow and its broken wing; Sonnet for the duchess and her entourage; Sonnet for the songbird yet entombed

Would that my hunger could be far removed
So that my love could stay beside my hand,
She takes a flight betwixt our heat behooved
Where light is buried 'neath the summer's sand.
We stood still in dread as Night broke her bread,
Her dreamy shawl that slithers on my floor;
Her head, resting quiet, lit on a bed
As a child is knocking upon her door.
I wonder, I fly in the fog-worn sky
As distance becomes the plot of the sun
I reach and I gasp to grasp and to sigh
For still my penance had not yet been won!
I loved her, a friend, eternal, we end
All of remembrance on which I depend.

Oslo's doorsteps

Oh, the Siren with her aqua tongue,
her shimmered tears that swirl and sink,
weeping for Atlantic triumph
as her sailor drifts away; she says,
"I lost my only love to London's river"

Psychedelic blossom smoke, Hieronymus, disguised!
Plugging dissonance into wire-rats and odysseys
little cages, rotting sages, burning pages through the ages
tripping hard across the rocks of Yeats and yesterday
he wipes the mist from his teeth as he slowly says:
" I lost my only love to Beijing's sorrow"

Tapioca miner with an ear for lupine calls
howl as the strings to Stravinsky, oh God
I can't believe they cut my heart and
gave it to the Aztecs! loathing in her
banquet ties, all too clear, too prescient,
to live is to love is to leer is to leave, so cry!
"I lost my only love to L.A.'s highways"

Minerva, wisdom, logic falls around you like a skirt
Minerva, endless, mighty tower, perhaps of Babel?
Minerva, corporate, incorporation of irreverence
Minerva, long expired and lost among a flock
What say you now? The time is near!
And what is that I hear?
" I lost my only love to New York madness"

Empty-headed plastic people praying to their plastic god
basket-walking malcontent with sieves inside her underwear
she is the product of modernity, she buys herself a pill
the cure-all to her endless breathing bully box of bastards
and I! and I! and me! and mine! The glutton, she must harvest more!
And I hear a tragic violin that sings her final dirge;
"I lost my only love to Cairo trinkets"

When Known

Velvet-gloved peasants
scrape their
endless throats
across the
broken desert

Stranger cowls
that sphinxes
riddle swirl
in storms
alluring her

We stand in perfect
silence as the flag
is draped upon the
crooked pyramid

Lunging at the
balcony of history
is destiny's own
innocence

Who are we,
the prison guards,
to question wishes
of the iron barrister?

Cloyed in disgust,
trembling leaves
are buried in
the snow

Tap a rhythm on
your skull if you
wish to marinate

Strap yourself in
reverence to love
if you are radiant

by the way I am sorry and you are free to wax poetic in the future

The crimson shawl draped
upon the shoulders of the
grey work-dreary-day city
shall be lifted,
revealing
mystery,
its folds and billowed vellum
fluttering above the seething
nocturne diamonds