Happily never after

There are a few exceptions, a few provisos and a couple of quid pro quos.
   -The Genie (impersonating somebody else in Disney's Aladdin)

Don't get me wrong, dear
If I were to make somebody else's pancakes
every morning and afternoon and every morning
and afternoon and again every morning
I would consider myself a slave
(plus, I'm all for a healthier, diversified diet)

I do love going to creperies
and bakeries, and pizzeries
and taqueries
Though I suspect you're not the
we're-dining-out-tonight kind of guy,
hansdome boy

I also love summertime and moonlight
and winter and sunlight
much too much
to be bothered with grief

I would just like to know
all a jazz artists knows about jazz
Maybe play some Django chords
or sing when you're near
there's such an air of spring about it

Still, there is one art
I have come to master - that of losing
(even losing you, the joking voice,
a gesture I love, I shan't have lied)

Variations on Angela Ball's Jazz and Elizabeth Bishop's One Art

Magic Lantern

È già spezzato il fiatto
e ricomincio a respirare
senza sforzo e senza affanno
-Carmen Consoli, Perturbazione Atlantica

A magic lantern could throw the nerves in patterns
on a screen:
of the evenings, mornings, afternoons,
of the sunsets, the dooryards, and the sprinkled
streets
of the novels and the skirts that trailed along the floor
of perfumes from dresses and restless nights
in one-night cheap hotels
and of half-desserted streets
that follow like a tedious argument
of insidious intent

the nerves of braceleted arms and arms in short-sleeves
of windows and tables and shawls
and cups, marmalade, tea
and cakes and tea and ices
of porcelain, teacups, toast

the patterns of the nerves within eyes that
fix all in formulated phrases
of the nerves of formulated men and women
pinned and wriggling and sprawling on walls
and this, and so mucho more!

All to make it possible to say just what I mean:
in short, that I was afraid.

For perhaps we're all meant to be both
Prince Hamlet and an attendant lord.
To somehow both drown,
and not.

There are old thoughts in your head, my reader, and let them die

Kissing the bankteller outside his stairs

In Brighton, MA I cannot lie. I felt the hope

That we once felt, if only for an instant

O the lovely bankteller, like a moose he

Rode my spirit quite outside my clothes

And chrysanthemums sprouted I assure you

Out my nipples when he kissed them.

And the pureness of not knowing him at all

Was really what we all feel when we enter this earth.

There is a newness to the best things that cannot

Be excelled and old things like old love die and rot.

There are old ideas in the world that should be forgotten

There are old ideas and old phrases that should at least

Be recycled for others

There are old plans now that should be new.

There are old thoughts in your head, my reader, and let them die.

Follow me, I am the crusader of the new

My spirit is a plastic rod that channels all our births.

And in the mouths of the little beasts, we shall find the great

Ocean that spits up black bugs all glittering on its shores.

You know there is an anthem to the ages.

There is an anthem of the ages.

This is that anthem

This is that anthem

Dorothea Lasky, "On Old Ideas"

Mock Moon

I like the sun
when the sun
is seen through clouds
and disguises itself
as the moon

Hurto

Guardava quella casa, davanti a sé, e pensava alla misteriosa permanenza delle cose nella corrente mai ferma della vita. Stava pensando che ogni volta, vivendo con loro, si finisce per lasciare su di loro come una mano leggera di vernice, la tinta di certe emozioni destinate a scolorare, sotto il sole, in ricordi. 

- Tre volte all'alba, Alessandro Baricco

Sunset shines
A gift
ineffable
and bright

One must watch it almost
with devotion
for it won't last long

It's colors will become pale
and fade
diminishing
into the growing darkness

'Tis true

Living beside a tree top, as I do, I can say that it's true what they say about spring: birds are chasing each other, in pairs, showing otherwise hidden red and terracotta colors in their feathers, widening their wings out, or narrowing them up; some forcing others to bear their weight and stand still. Bees have begun visiting too, but, alas! No flowers have sprung yet.

En busca del tiempo perdido XVII

Algunas veces se busca en el cielo, en los símbolos que se estiman perennes o en las fotografías póstumas que antecedieron a la devastación. Para constatar que ya no existe.

Otras es preferible remover la tierra, lanzarle los corazones roídos de las manzanas y celebrar la lluvia.

Oxytocin

Or, all that is felt and lived and said is just both too complex and unpretentious to be spelled out.

To help us comprehend the magnitude of absence

What thou lov’st well shall not be reft from thee; 
What thou lov’st well is thy true heritage.        
          Ezra Pound

You’ll find labels describing what is gone:

an empress’s bones, a stolen painting

of a man in a feathered helmet

holding a flag-draped spear.

A vellum gospel, hidden somewhere long ago

forgotten, would have sat on that pedestal;

this glass cabinet could have kept the first

salts carried back from the Levant.

To help us comprehend the magnitude

of absence, huge rooms

lie empty of their wonders—the Colossus,

Babylon’s Hanging Gardens and

in this gallery, empty shelves enough to hold

all the scrolls of Alexandria.

My love, I’ve petitioned the curator

who has acquired an empty chest

representing all the poems you will

now never write. It will be kept with others

in the poet’s gallery. Next door,

a vacant room echoes with the spill

of jewels buried by a pirate who died

before disclosing their whereabouts.

I hope you don’t mind, but I have kept

a few of your pieces

for my private collection. I think

you know the ones I mean.

"In the Museum of Lost Objects" by Rebecca Lindenberg

Prologue, and epilogue, to a moment

The cinema is a specific language.

           — Christian Metz

What the body might guess,

what the hand requests,

what language assumes

becomes amulet,

which is to say

I am carrying your face

in a locket in a box

to a virtual location

guarded by kestrels,

suggesting the scene’s

geography of love and dirt,

trees ripe with darkness

and bones’ white luster.

In the moonlit blue house,

where snow won’t fall

unless called upon,

grace enters as requested,

lands next to you, grasped,

as if love were a reflex

simple as weather.

Scene, by Maxine Chernoff

Night walking

Above all things
your voice
which I struggle to remember

or one of its vehicles
your lips
the kiss you placed
on my head

an unexpected gift
wishing
to speak for you