Elise

None of mine are ever finished, but here are a few in various stages of modification. All suggestions are welcomed; most are ignored. Some of my loyal (and doubtlessly dozing) readers know the topics, but to the ignorant masses (if two can be called a mass): Gizmo is a tortoise-shell kitten that shall eternally be a kitten, no matter how old she gets. Elise I shall not explain: if you know, good; if not, better.

Most of my poems read best if you're slightly drunk (or have your eyes closed), but feel free to endure these, should you so desire.



Gizmo's Eve

A boneless, purring Pollock in a cooling pool of light;
marcescent day, marasmic sun, Undomiel Evenstar within
the guarded, growing dark. Beneath, vino del mar
has dauncing myrfolk drunk: dream through the dawn of night.



Engraving Hearts and Stone

“I know not why, why lovers, lovers die.”
Thus, Lewis’ angel, spying mortals, longs
to taste the cup (caressed by envious eye)
of pain, while we? We’re screaming mordant songs
of loves undone to never be regained,
“That long disease, our life”—a damned blockade
of raging death, affections merely feigned—
yes, gladly with the angel we would trade.
Yet, what means water to a sated earth?
And what, to those who cannot die, is life?
The brightest buds are those that bloom in dearth.
Thus, joy and pain, conjoined within my wife—
who sweetly smiled while ragged on the rack—
wrought more on earth than just her granite plaque.




Elise

12.20.10

Her eyes were as leaves in the late autumn air;
her eyes sank with sun to the sea
as the maiden, she watched with a watchmaker’s care
and God gave to her no one but me.

Alone of the world the wood-maiden’s thrall.
“The rose had the look of a flower”
but a flower unlooked, the wall
high-built about her bower.

“The world around has little ruth,”
too well her soul now knows,
a lovely maid who has not youth:
a sea of unspoiled snow.

Yet love has grown and has not died
through birth and death and birth—
bodies, seeds and loves denied
she’s planted in the earth.

Her eyes are as leaves in the late April air,
her love is a seed under snow,
and the girl will not watch with a gardener’s care,
for God shall make it grow.