Like a stroke of genius,
of just plain blind luck
rising from the jungle floor,
the majestic rubble of the Maya calls,
at once the founder and judge of all Time.

First as the serpent whose plumes turn to wings,
then as the eagle boldly eyeing its prey,
and en fin! as the jaguar, sinewy and sleek,
El Castillo looms
against the hardened, sun-baked sky --
the shifting citadel of Kukulcan,
its shadow splayed across my days.

All of them numbered,
all of them too short,
all of them fading
in the cold, hard light of distant failure...

Perenially
built and rebuilt,
like the Church,
El Castillo stands
to meet the need of holy obligation,
to meet my need for initiation,
bounded only by the firmament and the underworld,
final triumph of the dead.

And so I stand,
alone upon the sacred causeway --
enervated, unenlightened,
the bitter taste of dust in my mouth.

Until I, too, will be turned
to stone --
the languid chac mool,
sated in sweet repose.

I will drift toward the sunken cenote,
drink deeply from its oasis of evening cool,
where the memory of man and grain and god is sung:

An anthem of order, power and vision,
the great Mayan hymn of meaning.
I will hear, at last, from the porous depths of Yucatan,
what it is to be called human.

roto-tilled clouds:
swirling sooty silver-grays and purples
moving ever-northward
perhaps like geese gliding swiftly atop
the hazy-blue mist
the dew-covered horizon    brown    green
geese gliding home to Canada

Canada
clouds like heavy fibers being pulled apart    slowly
like cotton
like hoary hairs thinning on top
an old man's head

for they are moving northward now
I can sense it
it is not the Earth moving
I am facing west through trees
and these clouds keep moving/thinning to the dark
yellows    pinks    faded

dark clouds soon obscure the pallid glowing harvest moon
this golden grapefruit hanging above the Earth

it is Kansas and it is dusk

this is the meaning of orange autumns:
to stand looking westward beyond the well-worn wooden handles
of some rusting rotting ploughshare
and know that clouds move north swiftly
perhaps to Canada

My brother and I stood three years apart.
We stood toe-to-toe, fists clinched,
each of us angry at the world, each of us an avatar,
each of us angry at the other.

One carried the mark of Cain, a discrete tattoo.
The other wrote poems, an acceptable sacrifice to the gods.
I never recovered the ink he stealthily stole from my desk.
i never recovered his confidence. My fist never unclinched.

At night, we frolicked in Bacchanalian revelries,
in psychotropic highs only poetry could eclipse.
Yet he never respected my temple of books, desecrating pages.
The written word was not his friend. Nor I, in the end.

He had a son out of wedlock; I dedicated poems to the boy.
But he could not speak English; his small tongue would not fit
the hieroglyphics on the page. My brother chiseled them off.
He died in middle age, unsung, poorly read. Still angry at the Word.

Who knows what losses
this infinitely rich
and resilient heart has suffered?

The sorrowful splendor of the Earth --
its endless cycle of gestation
and bringing forth,
its eternal season of becoming
and decay --
inspires and beckons her silent musings.

And her muted passion,
burning with the
mesmerizing ardor of the innocent,
awakens a diffident adoration
in the bickering brood that surrounds her.

How beleaguering they are!
these driven ones, so eager
to possess the elusive beauty
that stirs the dark, enigmatic
depths of their harried souls.

*** unwitting they are!
those dreary ones...
Destiny has drawn them
to the shimmering, diaphanous aura
of her breathless presence.

And destiny will drain them
like a brimming chalice,
so full of their impetuous blindness.

For they will never see
how she is set apart
by the wandering, restive vision
of the chosen.

But I see her,
standing alone on the fringe
of the tumultuous herd.

She gazes at me with
that subtle, sacred smile,
and I feel the threatening,
familiar forces of the universe descend --
Jacob
wrestling with the angel of authenticity.

She gazes at me,
and in the still light
of that impenetrable look...
the silence speaks!

I tremble in anticipation.

I listen and am fed.

For Laura.

William Blake's Ancient of Days
casts down atomic-yellow rays
of ever-shimmering light.

Coal-scuttled clouds vie
for dominion in the dusky sky,
majestically darkening into no-longer night.

On the desert floor, barren and warm,
recumbent dunes lie like sleeping women,
restless and turning.

Cacti stand sentinel over unearthly silence.

Gold limns the crests of the dunes.
Muted light paints the sand a once-fiery ocher.

All this passes for isolation in the world,
a cosmic confusion of identity,

Until the entire tableau passes through its stage
of equilibrium, passes through me like liquid.

No day, no night carries the bundle
on the road to enlightenment.

I peer at the synthesis, bemused.
Suddenly, Satori!

First, know the exits;
stage left, stage right.
The play may be much
longer or shorter than you imagine.
Be prepared to bow out gracefully.

Next, know your lines.
Make them authentic, real.
They reveal your character,
for good or ill. Never deliver
them halfheartedly or dully.

Next, polish your actions.
They keep your audience on its toes.
Act naturally but with modulated emotions.
Melodrama has not been invented.
Lugubriousness is simply in plain bad taste.

Finally, study your author.
Is he smarter than you? Or does he
merely have the creative power you lack?
He moves you according to his whims.
He judges you on each day's performance.

And remember as you rehearse: There are no second acts.

She brought me dozens of photographs.
White, shining virgins
on the eve of their weddings.

I kept them for days,
these dull, glossy surfaces;
the faint grease of fingerprints
screened the black-and-white view.

I returned them in September
on the white eve of autumn.
She took them in silence,
a sadness I knew.

"I wanted you to choose one,
for whom you had fallen."

"But I'm past the age of falling,"
I said,
"For love, I only stumble."

A single leaf,
nearly two-thirds torn,
floats idly down a mountain stream,
passing from light into darkness
into light again.

Refracted through the crystalline currents,
a bed of smooth, staid stones
cries, "Eternity! Everlasting!"
but the leaf drifts on.

And I, splashing my way upstream,
thinking myself the keeper
of this shadowed domain,
bend hurriedly
to pluck the leaf from my path.

Then, for just a moment, I hesitate,
to listen as the rivulets
lap against my legs,
longing to hear in them
Heraclitus' lonely, elegiac lament:

"All things are in process;
nothing stays still.
Upon those that step
into the same rivers
different and different waters flow."

But only the rocks sing on --
their same, unchanging song
of the stream's secret source.

And though I,
still deaf to the cry,
hear but the half-uttered echos
of my fleeting thoughts,

I can see,
as the radiant flux of the night
again turns the leaf into light,
how at last we, too, shall step
into that same river twice.

At death --
when in the new-found kenosis of time,
all will be one.

1.
A perfect cube, this precious steel cage,
with its endless accouterments
of nourishment and bedding,
exercise and entertainment.

No pain, no suffering,
no indignities, no boredom.

The blessings of technology,
salvation of science.
Nothing left to be desired:
The cure of comfort eliminating all need.

2.
His blood pink eyes fixed gazing on eternity,
the tiny gray human once more begins the day.

He rises in silence, no pretense of rationality,
no meaningless disdain for the task set before him.

Pawing and praying for his effective release,
he gnaws incessantly at the cold steel around him,
yearning in anguish for the conditions of true struggle;
willing, affirming the inevitability of defeat.

I see him,
dressed in a crisp, new suit,
button-down, baby blue shirt,
red power tie.

His diction is flawless,
his banter witty and warm.
He exudes extreme self-confidence.
He knows his own worth.

Soon he begins to pontificate
on the presidency and politics.
Surprisingly, his remarks are nuanced,
sensitive, caressed with tolerance.

Then he begins to sweat,
his eyes downcast; his body slumps.
What dark, deep secret is he hiding?
What arcane cosmic law has he violated?

In all absurdity, I see him suddenly
as Joseph K. The burghers soon
join me. The verdict is in.
With practiced dexterity, they slit his pale throat.

Byron maintained his political zeal,
Perhaps more than his love for poetry.
Revolution his watchword; its appeal
Would never die toward friends, enemies.
He sought a Rousseauian realm of steeled
Freedom more impressive than Childe Harold’s
Debut, which made him an instant sensation, real
Enough to establish his notoriety.
England was satirized, religion repealed.
Scandal attracted as many readers
As aesthetics; his bad boy title sealed.
Affairs fabled, he scorned immortality.
No paradise without politics, he pealed.
Yet he found it all the same in Poesie.

Weakness of will plagues the poet:
Misery he can’t slow down.
Find talent; he tries to grow it.
His scratchings issue no sound.
His Muse is mute; his heart knows it.
His vision of art ground down
Like Leibniz’s lens. Sloth shows it.
Light dims, could still come around.
A poem builds steam, then slows it.
His gift a gift the void crowns.
One time he wrote well. He knows it.
Now passion cannot be found.
Whence Dante’s raft? He will row it.
Fragments of rhyme underground.

Soon, the great reversal comes: a stone by day, a river by night,
the woman from the humid country begins to stir at twilight.
The river swirls, the volcano shimmers, the eagle on her belly
soars. I take her hand as the river flows faster. Tonight, we will
bathe together under moonlight. We will sacrifice to Shiva;
she to the destroyer; I alone will embrace Brahman, offering
jewels of fire. In the morning our hearts will turn to stone.
I will search for her, prayerfully, along the side of the road,

Fog shrouds the dark hills.
Gray sky, gray autostrada.
Rome shines ancient light.

To love you as myself
is the second highest command.
Yet if I do not know my own dark corners,
how can I take your hand?

You frown, you cringe, you grimace,
all reflected in my face.
You suffer in this bitter world.
How can I not take your place?

I have dirtied my hands
with the agony of faith.
Digging deep to find commitment,
smoothing soil to hide despair,
heaping mounds as facsimiles of evidence.

Add water, and dirt turns malleable.
I squeeze a human body out of the black clay,
breathe life into it,
then write my name in the residue;
mud covers all but the letter "A".

The sea was once our prehistoric home.
O how we adapted to its dark currents,
to its India-ink infinities,
chasing seaweed, driftwood and coral,
before belly-flopping onto dry ground.

Now, the sea threatens our ancestral home,
the sea that falls from the angry skies
with their charcoal-smudged infinities.
A swelling flood, chasing red alert,
destroying houses and lives; raining grief.

Once sea-bound creatures now drown at home,
ill-adapted to meet the flood's malevolent intent:
to purge the Earth of all who cannot resist
the rushing, rising mountains of waters,
before proclaiming its final conquest of India's ancient lands.

Now, only prayer will be our home, built on deepest despair.
Now, only God's omnipotent infinities
circle the mud-brown rapids of sludge
choking all who helplessly cross their path.
Only God can make Kerala and Tamil live again, as one, on dry, holy ground.

Being in the world,
there is a lesion

a murmur of the heart
I have fixed deep
within myself

a slight, distant shadow
a thin silhouette
that seeps
through my fingers
with each passing second.

I must try to **** it dry.

I have risked
everything
to accept it

yet it does not let itself
be drawn out.

I cling to it,
irreplaceable,
unnameable.

I would
annihilate it
in a moment.

The minutes crawl indifferently.
I grasp them in desperation.

I cannot
hold them back.

The silent murmur is not
prolonged.

I feel it pass
without beginning.

All is going to end.
I know it.

Still, I wait.

Nothing happens.

1.
We carry a river of ice within us.
With its ***** scuffed ripples,
like a starving child's ribs,
it ascends the mountain *****,
strewing in its wake a palette
of naked rocks and clear-cut tundra.
Orange-stained cairns point to our shame.

2.
Once you could see the glacier
behind the rough-hewn pulpit
of the tiny Anglican Church
on the South Island
of New Zealand.
Angelic white, full and overflowing,
it swept into the front pew
like the descent of the Holy Ghost.
Now you glimpse only a dull tableau
behind the big picture window.
Aging panes of glass point to our shame.

3.
We swam against the tide
of La Mer de Glace near
Chamonix, France, urging
the glacier to not turn back
from our carbon fin-print,
urging the train we rode in on
to let us hike our way back.
All was silent except for
the constant drip, drip, drip
of la Mer's tears. We wept, too,
but to no purpose.
Centuries of history pointed to our shame.

She is my Muse
but never floats a poem
daily I hearken
daily I drown

orange dragon clouds
swirl in the dusky, baroque, winnowing sky
the once brilliant day dies within me
I cling to a rocky pinnacle        alone
one more step and I will laugh
my way toward heaven and
count the teeth of mountains
empty space my only confidante

The wind lifts the moon above the darkened wheat.
I touch the water
and think of nothing.

The cold night beckons
to the slow, bending shadows.
Between the trees
a feather falls.

The leaves divide my breathing
toward the long, ashen poplars.

There now.
Listen.

The clear movement’s gone.

The gibbous moon hangs over the Earth,
death descending upon a dying reality.
A shovelful of ashes,
this dance of futility,
nothing left behind but fallen soot.

Dearest brother, we are at the last point,
it seems, and who would have expected
such a ridiculous finale,
this eschatological confrontation
with the black summit of existence?

O impotent little man,
in your melancholy selfishness,
how you distress me
with this great, surging silence,
the oppressiveness of solitude.

Despair is disease,
but I can no longer mourn you.
Your remorse is indulgent,
self-forgiving, superstitious.

The pain of relentless doom
in no way ennobles you;
your retreat into suffering
but a complicity in guilt.

Stretch forth your wretched head to
say the words you cannot say;
a contortion in the throat,
a choking on each syllable.

Do not be deceived.

Beyond all else
there is nothing more human,
than these last, few moments
of the searing white heat
of the God we cannot prove,
of the broken mirror image
of your imminent demise.

Passing beyond all morality
oozes the wound of your existence:
to decry the winnowing of meaning,
the destruction of freedom,
the end of everything.

1.

The cold winter moon
spills its luminous
jewels of fire
past the edge
of the road.

The night wind shudders
at the sound.
I turn my head.

A woman’s lovely,
shadowed face
ignites the plains
in silence.

In the distance,
wings light upon branches.

 2.

The long sad bones
of my hands cut deep
into dark stones.

I walk alone, listening,
among white fields.

This time, I have left something behind me.

In the open grasses
I will dream of placid water.

On the other side of silence,
A lonely, primeval drone.
Wind hisses through the violets.
The dejected spirit moans.
I reach for eternal solace,
But grasp only chiseled stone.
Here, climbing toward the Highlands,
My sureness of hiking honed.
I cross and rush to Inverness
In search of the ancients’ bones.
They bless me with their hieroglyphs
I cannot decode alone.
I wander through the mistiness,
Keep clambering for my home.

We travel through our lives, hapless and lost.
No pathway sets its course before our feet.
Yet we push onward, whatever the cost,
To chase after mirages, vast and fleet.
A void of understanding spells our loss.
We fail, groan and grasp; our destiny meet.
A lack of clear-cut meaning makes our cause:
We await a revelation so sweet.
Many roads lead to callings at no cost;
Which one to choose seems a quest for defeat.
Absurdity creates a fray to toss
Such callings to the flames of these mean streets.
A void of understanding keeps us lost.
We follow random markings at our feet.

Jeffers’ poetry is as hard as bone,
His windswept lyrics fed by his dark side.
At Carmel, he built a tower of stone.
Wind, sea and storm fostered his rugged pride.
On nature’s fiery force, his skills he honed.
His message bleak, from which he could not hide,
Foretold an elemental strife alone.
He wrangled roan stallions only few could ride.
His wide-winged hawks over the waves would moan.
He joined their wildness with soul open wide.
His poems made me yearn for his coastal home.
Nothing human-made would pull the tide.
His poetics read: Find your heart in stone.
A Zen he practiced till the day he died.

William Blake and wife played Adam and Eve
In their English garden, totally ****.
His neighbors were shocked and morally peeved.
Such escapades proved outrageous and rude,
Till his poems made his scared public believe.
He showed their mind-forged manacles were crude
Facsimiles of mankind’s true freedom.
His strategy, both Romantic and shrewd,
Found Eternity in sand’s finest sieve.
The doors of perception caused him to brood
On the spirit’s want in a world bereaved
Of sustenance. Infinity: soul food.
From Heaven and Hell, he would never leave.
Adam and Eve romped, always without shoes.

(After “Tintern Abbey”)

Years have passed under
The aegis of tedium.
Years have passed with
The lamentations of time.
And again I behold
The ancient sentinel
Spanning the shallow straits
Of the Gardon River.
The arches rise stalwart
And stolid, standing in
Mire against history’s
Gentle currents.
Rising high above the handful
Of tourists who have come to
Gawk and play.
Once carrying water as far
As Nimes, the troisieme etage
Still flows, spilling spirit.
We walked across it alone
In years past. The aegis
Of memory.
Pont du Gard beams in
The late, slanting sun,
A monument to engineering,
Ingenuity. Block packed on
Block, supported by the art
Of eternal geometry.
Euclid’s legacy; mortar
No necessity.
Sluices slide past skimpy
Sandbars and reeds.
Brilliant blues, silent
Witnesses to the genius
Of Rome-conquered Gaul.

(After Sartre)

There’s a sorrow that overcomes us all.
There’s a sickness that never can be healed.
Within itself, existence casts a pall
That no one can remove; the cover’s sealed
Into the searing consciousness of all.
Its attributes can never be repealed.
They inform freedom, forcing us to call
For a meaning and value we can feel.
Death makes the veil of nothingness to fall
Over all the choices with which we deal.
We can’t escape this burden or forestall
Making ourselves the judges of what’s real.
It’s a problem that suffocates us all:
We solely pick the cards that we must deal.

Bernini’s sculptures float
Over fountains like
A ship’s mast set in stone,
Straining to stray off-course.
I follow the muscular, hysterical
Flow of the Four Rivers.
Lethe bubbles underground.
Step lightly.
Chubby-faced children spew
Showers between their cheeks.
Nothing is quiet in Piazza Navona,
Spreading to the seven hills
Like a blanket of bedlam.
Heaving waves of tourists
Speak to themselves in tongues.
Whose gift to Roma is this?
The Four Winds? The spigots spilling
Holy water onto the hordes
Of heedless souls?
Neptune stares down on
My dampened bald spot.
I will Photoshop it out
If he snaps my picture.
Or some other petite, American tourist
Will, craning her head
Like a dolphin
Flopping on Neptune’s trident.
Navona is a nova of marble
And foam.
Specters live here.
They shout here, they circle.
Bernini’s spawn.

1.

A star-shaped
patch of snow,
achingly white,
rests against the base
of the little white
pine, wrapped
in glittering
golds and reds, gifts
for the Christ Child.

No claw or paw
or beak or wing
has touched the snow.
Only a hidden pitch
of grass pushes
it skyward.

It shirks
its shrinkage
north
of the pine.
It will not
winnow until
the bright star burns.

I pass the snow
and think of nothing.

2.

Lightning split
the hide
of the 80-year-old
oak that shaded
our little tan house
each summer.

Its bark ripped
apart like
wallpaper,
life leeching out
of its crooked limbs
in sap-soaked
streams of sorrow,
making room
for the little white pine
to thrive
in the dead of winter.

Nature is not
our friend.

3.

The pine prays to preserve
some piece of the oak
I used to love. Its needles,
like shark’s teeth,
fend off friend and foe
alike, granting it
the right to grow
wherever it likes,
even here,
at the foot of giants.

Dead, the pin oak loans
its beauty to no one,
boasts only of its hard,
straight wood,
an abiding abode
for birds and squirrels
and barking boys.

I climb to its top
each Christmas,
straining toward
the Epiphany star.

The tree sways, and
I think of nothing.

 4.

The burgeoning pine
pines for such power.
You cannot cut it
without exposing
its darkened knots,
like aging spots
on my hands
and face.

It rises bright with
anemone-like cones
dappled on its coat
of single color:
      evergreen,
      ever young.
      Ever gone,
my pilgrim oak.

I stretch toward the star
of Bethlehem,
dreaming my way
to Heaven, saying No
to the punishing
star of snow below.
Hanging high
above the Earth,
I sense the Christ Child
in my branches.

Wet, wild grasses
brush His cradle,
push me skyward,
His star my home.

The cloudy sky reflects in the summer pond,
After the long-anticipated rains.
Cattle herd as one; at the water, bond.
They seek moisture, rare on the dusty plains.
A cottonwood gives shade, but no one comes:
Emptiness of the land a stark refrain.
Of the flat horizon, Kansans are fond.
It opens out to an infinite vein
Of loneliness and hope, like a fine frond,
Storing the last baptismal font of change.
Nature terrifies and soothes, justice cons.
It brings as much pleasure as wanton pain.
Still, we pin our longings on Eden’s song,
To hear the Earth’s sirens never again.

History deceives us with many fictions.
We mistake fantasies as if they’re real.
Such illusions create stringent frictions,
Giving past emotions their strongest seal.
Our heritage deserves valediction,
But narrative art asserts its appeal.
Myth, story, fable and archaic diction
Overwhelm concrete facts; their essence steal.
I long for the past without reflection
Of ancestral interference or zeal.
But there is no version without mixture
Of deceptions and meanings we can feel.
Past accounts remain shrouded in factions,
Whose rifts of fabrication will not heal.

The immeasurable depth of Being sustains our lament.
The divine radiance is extinguished;
the gods have turned their backs.

All earthly abodes found destitute, unhealing
in the dim twilight of history's
unfolding of the Logos.

And we are left hanging in
the age of the world's dark night.
Long is the turning this side of the abyss.

The remoteness of the Holy discloses its presence;
fugitive gods made manifest
in the acts of godless men.

The inner recalling of those who are most daring
summons forth the surpassing,
an openness to the ineffable.

And in their nameless sorrow all is preserved.

The sea crashes hard into
The black boulders
Of the harbor.
Fountains of spume dribble
Landward into crevices.
Shrouded in gloom, I climb
Slippery black stairs to see
The spectacle.
Rough sailing ahead.
Rough rains behind.
Cinque Terre craves attention.
Five Lands of building blocks
And pastel colors.
I stand on the *****
Of indecision, stumbling
Toward the rocky marketplace.
Can I buy peace there?
Can I make fire on the waves?
Riomaggiore anchors my fall
Onto the watery stones,
Black and blind.
Facedown,
I float the Five Beauties of spume.
It is safe among the crevices.

The human sacrifices begin at noon. I must hurry to prepare the ruins.

Good: The pyramids retain their purity of line; the hieroglyphs balance out the skulls, more or less. Let us say, oh, two to one.

A Diego Rivera mural stretches from wall to wall of the Mayan ball court. (Are those blues really from nature?)

Heads will roll! I predict.

I need more coffee — any style. Bring me the big, steaming bowls of France that you must slurp two-handedly. Bring me the tiny espresso shots of Italy, bitter and inadequate, always calling for another cup.

Bring me café in an ornamental Mexican jar painted in bright ochres and reds. Set it on a geometrically designed serape with just a hint of purple on the fringe.

I will sop up the last drop of caffeine with my tortilla, while dining room tables multiply like serpents.

I must hurry. The sacrifices begin at noon.

Already, the humidity clings to my skin like a cheap cologne.

How stupid of me not to have worn a white linen suit, huaraches, and a Panama hat  (straw, of course).

In any case, I am the expert. My art criticism begins now.

Rivera’s human figures roll in a wave of revolutionary fervor: too rounded, too cherubic, too pastel. Industry, agriculture, fraternity, socialism. Hand me the hammer. But no bare *******, as in Delacroix’s Liberty Leading the People.

A careless oversight. ****** always adds a pleasant focal point to a painting.

Suddenly, bad news breaks. The sacrifices have been called off; the ballplayers  have converted to Communism. Viva la revolución!

                                                 + + +

Frida Kahlo twirls her mustache to match the flair of Salvador Dali’s.

Her heart flutters for the Spanish surrealist, who has bug-eyes only for Gala.

Kahlo deigns to paint his portrait, which turns out to be another of her
 self-portraits. So many selves. So many portraits.

This one sports ample ****** hair and a monkey on her shoulder, who leans across to eat the gardenia behind her right ear. Or is it a carnation? Ah, carnations only calcify into clichés. Let us call it a hibiscus, and be done with it.

(Still, are those lurid colors from nature?)

I must hurry. The exhibition will begin at 2 a.m., the hour when all the wine shops close, and the retablos disappear from the churches. No respect for authority after la revolución. Only the self, the self. Always the self.

Kahlo twists her mustache into a braid for her next self-portrait: Liberty Leading the Mexican People. She squeezes into an orthopedic corset, bare-breasted.

I pull out my droopy Dali watch to eye the time. The hands cross at midnight.

I must hurry. Yet Kahlo insists I sit.

She paints my portrait with a spike through my spine, a shattered pelvis, and partial paralysis of the legs. I can no longer walk a straight line.

She thinks I am she, in trousers. The self, the self. Always the self.

My moustache grows heavier than hers, however, and I painstakingly pluck out the unibrow.

But I adore her monkey, with his close-set eyes. He eats a carnation for penance each morning, then primps before the mirror. The self, the self. The primate self.

More bad news: Dali cancels the exhibition. He has been demoralized by the retablos, which radiate beauty in six dimensions: height, breadth, length and the omnipresence of the Holy Trinity.

A genuine milagro: The streets fill with gardenias and hibiscus. The Mayan ballplayers convert to Catholicism.

A white skeleton dances with Kahlo in the moonlight. He wears her leather-and-steel braces.

No matter. I am the art critic, and I declare all Mexican colors indigenous, naturalistic, and caffeinated. Then I turn out the dining room lights.

A starry, starry night. The humidity sinks into the cenote.

Tomorrow, I shall buy a monkey and teach it to paint. All colors from nature, of course.

You clutch a dazzling pink rose
In front of the Spanish Steps.
The last of the day, bartered
For a bag of M&Ms.
No money changes hands.
No promises kept.
No way to go but headlong
Into the crowds.
Tramping on tourists, staring at horses,
Thinking Poesy past the Keats House,
Piazza di Spagna 26.
Life mask, death mask.
Walls of poetical works bound
In shiny green leather.
Romanticism dies on the short, striped bed,
A sleigh ride to the Elysian Fields.
Awake to sweet unrest.
Here is my ode
To a rose not fading unto death.
Bright colors of the Steps.
No struggle for a breath.

Gaudi hedges his bets
Against the future.
More than one hundred thirty-five years
Of building the infinite
La Sagrada Familia.
A stone mason’s nightmare.
An architect’s dream,
Painted by de Chirico.
Faith and nature intertwine.
Brown earth smears the facades.
Nativity and passion morph
Into angular designs.
A lizard, a leaf, a cross, a dove.
Bejeweled pillars bend and rise.
Crowned towers reach and climb
Spiral staircases to the heavens.
Chapels pray for silence.
Tourists pray for photo-ops.
All views turn inward.
There is much work to be done.

The streets of Rome swirl with ***** water.
My clothes drenched, my shoes soiled
By this unholy baptism of nature’s fury.
The Watchmaker sleeps.
The heavens fail to answer, protect.
Behind us, the Colosseum circles broken time
In fragments: blood, sand and stone.
Sacrificed to the elements, we resist
Our fate, resist defeat.
Blue skies hide their faces
Behind *****, distorted mirrors.
Nothing to see here. Only
Rain falls like tears. Only
Tears fall like rain.
Dry land does not exist
Except elsewhere. Dystopia.
Here, curbside, umbrellas sagging,
Italy drowns.

(After Cavafy)

The sun flattens your vision
   to a wavering point.
      You search for a different sun.
         There is no other.


The wind stymies your breathing
   to an asthmatic wheeze.
      You search for a different wind.
         There is no other.


The sea shortens your journey
   to an anonymous port.
      You search for a different sea.
          There is no other.


The sky opens its vistas,
   vast, beyond your reach.
      You search for a different sky.
         There is no other.


The city blots your horizon
   with soot, smoke and ash.
      You search for a different city.
         There is no other.
 
The day dissolves in hours
   without number or name.
      You search for a different day.
         There is no other.


Beauty upholds its ideal
   like a statue without wings.
      You search for a different Beauty.
         There is no other.


The word pollinates the page
   with a frail, feeble sense.
      You search for a different word.
          There is no other.


The self mirrors the cosmos,
   a contracting black hole.
      You search for a different self.
          There is no other.


The poem laughs at your yearning
   for Art’s Eternal Form.
      You search for a different poem.
          There is no other.


So you write the same poem
   from the same shrinking self,
      with the same weakling words,
         seeking the same ideal Beauty,
 
On the same day after day,
    in the same ***** city,
      under the same endless sky,
         beside the same aimless sea,


Into the same stifling wind,
   blinded by the same soulless sun.
      And you call it a different life.
          But there is no other.

1.

I will baptize the sky
with new waters,
washing the Birger Sandzen pink
from the clouds.

Cattle reject their reflection in farm ponds.
Trees turn their backs to the horizon and bow.

Indigo night. Angular lights in the distance:
Freight train roars. Empty cars
headed northward.

       2.

I will baptize the Earth
with new fire,
scorching stubble and sod
from the Plains.

Cattle nudge clods of dirt for sweet tendrils.
Trees shape words, but can no longer spell.

Charcoal cairns point the way to deep furrows.
Growing pains. Orange flames
headed nowhere.

       3.

I will baptize my heart
with new poetry,
spilling villanelles
into my veins.

Cattle low for soft yodels from cowboys.
Trees sashay to the solos of birds.

Rosy-fingered dawns in my songs? I sail elsewhere.
Orange, blue. Twilight hues
headed homeward.

St. Teresa swoons to herself.
The angel’s impish face laughs
At her pain.
Bernini’s operatic sculpture bound
Behind bars.
Perfectionism, restorationism,
OCD.
Outside, a gypsy woman begs
For centimes.
Inside, scaffolding dims Teresa’s glow.
Art sacrificed to the future,
Content to die in darkness.
A monk dozes in his rosary.
Recitation of dreams.
No legend in the sacristy:
Teresa’s book remains
Unread, dull behind glass.
Ecstasy of love: her path toward God.

(After Dante)

The Beloved glides through the room in light.
A flick of her hand, and shadows dispense.
Her form beams shapely, resonant and bright.
One sharp look will wilt my world, weak and dense.
She is fragrant as hyacinth at night.
She turns around, and my willpower’s spent.
I reach for her arm, but she’s fast in flight.
No coquettish flirting to make me wince.
Only freedom that exposes my plight.
I am lovelorn, hard stricken. No defense.
Rising skyward, she claims heaven, her right.
Living earthbound, I maintain my poor sense.
Still, I yearn for her with heart, mind and might.
My pursuit is authentic. No pretense.

For Laura, the Beloved

Night swells with the sweet soarings of tenors.
Beauty floats lightly across the airwaves.
Santa Croce looms as Spirit’s center.
Dante’s Commedia he gave away.
Today he reigns as Italy’s mentor.
Great art leads the way out of Plato’s cave.
Michelangelo falters and splinters
His sculptures. Bright poems to young men he saves.
David stands tall through the chills of winter.
With Goliath’s cold head in hand, he raves.
Florence ferments like wine from a vintner.
It tastes of an angelic chardonnay.
Remember the city’s ancient cantor.
He yodels and chants of its marbled fame.

Chained to his rugged rock, Prometheus fumes.
He brought the gift of fire to mankind. Now
He must pay. The gods are not amused.
His is an act of defiance unbowed
By the threat of retribution. Unsoothed,
He faces his fate: to have ravens scour
His liver each day, then start up anew.
Like Sisyphus, punishment is his shroud.
He wears it regally: His will only hews
To its task; it cannot break; he stays proud.
His gift spreads across the globe. Only few
Turn it down. Man is equal to the crowd
Of gods on Olympus. They will strew
Their anger. But naught keeps this mortal cowed.