Fast Day 299 February 24 2013 Death and Sequester

Death and Sequester

Into this world we are born,
not of blood
nor the will of the flesh
from the peace and quiet torn

Is Satan bruised under feet?
no more life,
nor of the love which nurtures,
but keen pain of this quick retreat

we count them happy which endure;
now alone,
we count our ills and meds;
O, blessed are the poor!

warmed by fire of dog star:
we lucky ones
corrected by the Lord
whose bailiwick our world bell jar.

money! power! jump!... ricochet:
the living
envy those who stop to smell
the funeral bouquet.

This was not the world for me;
the ash heaps
at the corners of the globe:
delusions of paternity!


-----
notes

late with this, as I was at my mother's.
I used to say "my parent's".
I am unhappy with just about everything under the sun.

ricochet   -   refers to the infinity of guns and weaponry
ash heaps  -   The Great Gatsby
bell jar   -    refers to Plath;  now we think of the world as a computer simulation or living in the Matrix; sometimes people used to think of the world as a simulacrum within a bell jar of a god who did not care about the creatures in his laboratory.

Fast Day 298 February 17 2013 Lord Cancer and Baron Samedi

Lord Cancer and Baron Samedi

Death - take us to the bone !
Death, head cop in Jar City;
formaldehyde jars -
city of copper,
city of bronze,
metropolis of urns.

Gun -  take us to the blood !
Gun, principal of Slab School;
midnight prom morgue -
school of marble,
school of steel,
stainless of the scalpels.

O, King Cemetery !
columbary smiles and
dance a sarabande
of Baron Samedi,
of Madame Brigitte.

Dantó  - open my eyes !
Elizi, let me danzón !
and hear jazz euphonium !
I read the drum beat signs
that conspire to sap
Lord Cancer’s arpeggio !
--

peinture par Gerard Fortune

Fast Day 297 February 10 2013 Mother of Patmos

Mother of Patmos

με την χαριν τησ παναγιασ
"Thanks to the Holy Virgin"

As the Greeks often say,
now and in the past,
along the blue Aegean where
sails the ship of John,
the island Patmos,
within the Icarian Sea
with its wax-concreted wings
that droop like shrouds -
the halyards of the artemon.

The name "panagia"
does not mean "virgin",
but "all holy".

As the ancient used to say,
before the birth of History,
when they sought the plumaged bird -
as one doth pursue and hunt
a partridge in the mountains -
the mother of Icarus,
son of wooden Daedalus;
holy land maritime...
O, navicula autem sum.


--
notes

με την χαριν τησ παναγιασ     =     Thanks to the Holy Virgin


navicula autem sum     =     I am but a small boat

Fast Day 296 February 2 2013 Beulah Land

Beulah Land

You are strange and beautiful lands,
newly discovered;
Trees espalier upon the winds;
flower flame that pierce the dark
axillae of the musky night;
mysterious mountain cabal,
sinister and skulking afar;
aromatic canyons temblor
of unresistant spires!
Let us love, my beauteous,
bodies uncovered !


----
notes:

Late again / in a computer-less environment
axillae  =  better known as "armpit"