the wind has something of your wild song,
whispers in a voice i knew long ago.

there is nothing here accept the empty wind,
nothing of you and me,

i could paint the silence with the moon,
kiss your mouth, touch your hair....

but we are forgotten like this song
of the wind, and in the emptiness

i can hear the faltering wave
fall against the belly of the sand

running like the white clouds
race through the sky,

where the stars fall like old ruins,
this ghost dance of stars, these crashing,

crashing waves. where is the freedom
of the falling water?

not in the breath of the earth,
not in the silvering of the sea.

we seek the ocean in the palm of our hands,
breath is the frailties of a winter sky,

the stars are reflections in a mirror of bone.

we are carried by the wind into strange avenues
where we fall like leaves, dance into the indigos

of the washed out sky, haunt the dimming light like night
blossoms and dies, her rivers burning like fire.

we awaken in the eastern
sky washing slumber from our eyes, yawning

and day drops her heavy nets into the waters
of the sun and drowns out the voice of the dark.

flowers settle in the morning, capturing
the silence of the hills in petals of water and light,

and we drink passion and ink, we drink the colours
of our emotions and walk without hesitation towards the light.

Three burly sheriffs showed
up at my neighbors
house yesterday.
Scowls on scarred faces.
Tattered lives, tarnished
brains.
Five minutes later,
they were walking my
friend out in handcuffs.
He shuffled, head down.
Autumn frowned and the
leaves scuttled away in
disgust.

Today, the vultures swooped
in, picked the bones of all
his earthly possessions that
littered what was once his
front lawn.
Jackals, and hideous
hyena faced men and
women took the last of
his things.  

Even though he was
arrested, he still
grows.
and although they are
free, they die more
daily in their own
private evictions.
I've seen more
humanity at a
hanging.

Now that family have separated
From the gathering your funeral brought
Can we still talk of the dearly departed?
When everyone else is so caught
Up in their own sky, clouded by judgment

That a slab of Marble brings people together
And that personal troubles is not above the weather
And the smell of rain as it drips down our hair
To fill the role of tears where our minds don't care

To the grandkids you never got to hug
To the machines that were plugged
The hospital you never awoke from
To me who never visited cause I was afraid and dumb


Do you nod your head in anger? Do your tears Bring rain?
When we stray from the right path and cause each other pain?
Do you regret like we do? Or do you forget in paradise?
Are you finally at peace? Does the ignorance suffice?

I hope you never have to see us at our worst
That only love bursts from your eyes
From the golden Skies, where you hide
That the blinding light hides the truth
That we're struggling in our youth

Find peace Ouma, and please be at the entrance when we die
So we could cry, and be suprised when you haven't changed one bit
That your joy persists and we can't resist looking back
That you're finally on track, no bills or selfish entities
That your soul is intact, and you don't lose your Amenity

All, thanks for the many years of continuous support from Hello Poetry, comments (both praise and constructive criticism), and continuing to share our mutual love of poetry.

I am pleased to announce the release of my new book, Poems of Ancient Rome and Greece (of course, what else), in both paperback and Kindle formats with many of the poems on Hello Poetry revised and several new poems as well.  These copies are available on Amazon so please visit my author page for the paperback and Kindle versions:

https://www.amazon.com/stores/Christopher-Saitta/author/B0DRTSZSZH?ref=ap_rdr&isDramIntegrated=true&shoppingPortalEnabled=true

Anyway, much thanks, and here is one of the new poems.

To the Sky

Once more, comb your skiey streaks of hair,
Backbrush to sombrous chamber,
While the vanity mirror flares its celestial impulse.

The corner of the room is a privation like monastic air,
Its angularity, the ascetic to your fleshened curves,  
More fitting for a candle fasting itself bare,
Relinquishing shine to that spare resurrection in the panes.

So too your summers have flamed upon the windows,  
And autumn has fizzled in spurts of leaves,
So too the failed days are sublimely worshipping  
To a soul that is the glass between.

Love is this placelessness of sunlight,
Earth, the memento of where we touched once:
  Her haystack-gold of hair, his shy, straw whisper,  
  And the footpath that still dwindles there to sunlight's pebbles.
  So warm is the insubstantial, substance of love.

From these paths, the world wanders old,
Upon its crooked staff of trees, its absent-mind dozed into hollows:
  No more sipping at Christ's wound,
  Like a glass soul filled with wine,
  Or tasting his body's amaranth
  In bee-breads fabled to divide.

Where lovers meet, death comes to adore.
Every kiss should prove monument to the world that wastes in air,
Every love should spurn its centuries to that steeped exile of elsewhere,
And break time like shells upon the shore.


II


Shut the blinds to the duller desuetudes of sun,
Because evening itself is a falling in love,
Because moods are the seasons homespun,
And death's great measure, if it comes,
Will be padded upon hand-woven rugs.

So begins the conceit,
Spring its slippered caprice,
Subdued to the stairs, the down-turnings and creaks,
Until table-spread as the meadowed indulgence of the dining room,
Where mornings have had their honeys,
And the berries and creams were guilty pleasures past noon.  

From the china closet and its glass goblet fruit,
Pluck the pome of a teacup
And pour the brook of brews:  
  Within the china pattern of leaves,
  The forest-dark shades of tea
  Are wheeling with subtle complexion
  Of black-currant and grey and darjeeling,
  As if the world could sway so wholly under the thumb,
  As if the woods were a coercion of vapors sapient
  Over their fire-flared stratums.

In mute, cupboarded moments,
To learn the only sound of the soul,
Is rain along the glassings of bay windows,
Is April too lightfelt to hold, only to lose.

Like a nightjar, startle through the storm whorls and raindrop leaves,
Fluster from the ragged brink of Spring,
To presage the distance in shady inklings.
And so then sail to Summering,
Dry until vaporous wings leave cooled tatters like clouded light:
  To dry the sodden absence of a lover,
  Feel your frayed fingers through his sky-blue sleeves.
  Loop the tassel of hair through the collar,
  As before the looms with an armful of yarns to weave.
  Once more the windfall of hair,
  Like smothered lightnings to the static mass of air,
  In strike-soundings, a confession to the cloth,    
  For man to adorn what woman must bare.

Click the lampshade light, the yellowed Autumn of album leaves,
Thinking back is your lying down to sleep.
Fall is the seduction of the sky,
An innuendo of slight denudings,
To lure the human sun from its fleshened prime,
Into leering lusters and willowy fingers to writhe.

Make your skyward sleep,
Past the kitchen that keeps its silence of floors,
A bare reminder of what the snows are for:
Sleep is the only snowfall of the mind, heavy-worlded and pieced,  
Outlying the hushing deep of pines.    

To the sky, great remnant of Greece,
Which has of human lips their redness,
But of love, still its thought to speak,
Mouthing hollow as the wide-open world.

Astra memories play forth in my head.
Star showers create endless wishes.
Plasmoid cycle their cosmic colors.
Seraphic tones turn into ethereal melodies.

Celestial trails in the dark wilderness.
Empyrean trees drop their light leaves.
Transcendental visuals of the night heavens.
Diaphanous veils of tranquilly allow my eyes to see.

Sheer emotion alloy.
Paradisiacal vessel of the expanding universe.
Expedition of endless wonder.
Fathomless destinations to reach.

What if?
What if
I told someone?
What if
they hate me for it?
What if
What if
I stop doing this to my body?
What if
you stop liking me?
What if
I stop and you leave me?
What if
What if
you hate me if you know?
What if
I didn’t tell anyone?
What if
then nothing changes?
What if
if I tell you?
What if
you worry?
What if
you think I’m a burden
What if
What if
What if
What if
What if
What if
What if  
I

stop


and



you




leave





me?

Wild ideas called seminal,
put forth the first root
prior to the first shoot,

first the blade, then the ear,
then the full corn in the ear,
then the harvest, gathering

fuel for the fire in the belly,
fitting frame and form to task,

as each part player repeats,
the quotidian procession
offering songs sung inside

faith formed bubbles of might,
may haps made per haps good
and easy, easing frets and fears,

recollecting known knowns,
regarding time above ground,
reminding each subroutine

to come, play the role, smile,
fix good will, first form genius
performing projection

shining on time, finding it
comforting to know how long
a time has been in process

of making up our will to try,
once more, our ingratiating
offering, whispering

fire, fire of life, fire in me a will
to find a way of worth to make
seem natural, spiritual, not flesh

the body and the mind,
the body and the will,
the body and the need, the want

the pulling hunger, the generator
calling for sustenance…

if time is life… and comfort
has been achieved, received…

life after nobility, life after expertise,

proven with the worth attested to…

urged whimsically, can we not
make a moment's peace pass

uncontested, indeed, we can and may.

Have a fine day. Or so they say,
wishing without realizing how,
the will to give an encouraging word

weighs lightly on a satisfied mind,
at the end of … ever, again.

Two questions, lost to television
"What is matter?
Never mind.
What is mind?
It does not matter."

Yet, a lifetime later, in nous sense,
minding one's own business, thinking

whose idea is this, who's testing time
for worth, weight of wisdom, left to me,

for my attention paid,
for my notice taken, blank stare, musing
using preserved utterances between we two,

me, and my own will, me and my monkey
discerning historical value systems arranged

to leave room for fruitless investigation,
to make space for ruling levels and grades,
high over low, will to make, will to use,
will to take and use to make more ease,

more peace of mind in matters of time,

offered in a poetic sense, mere mindful
ness, in nous sensed, gentle, familiar order,

at our established limit, at the end of life,
assuming time continues, only life's
artificial interesting lures, know
now urgency, generating knowledge
needing, it must seem, at the moment,
to be pre-served, as known known reminders,
the story of us, we, the people alive
letting this mind be in us, in word
and deed, in truth, we think
we may use any knowing
reproved while taking life as easy as

any royal courtier in empirical courts,

vested interestingly, if one wishes to know
what is invested in me, one wishes to know
why am I the curious kind, sorted out
to ever learn and never settle

to the bottom,
line, final word, capital idea,

bring up a child, in the way, whither
no way is commonly the only way,

but we have dug a channel, a course
to become the of course, in all conversing,

of course, along the way through life
informed as one called to learn to tell true

what was said in counsel, with the wise,
of course, those most blessed with nothing
missing or broken, comforted mindfully,

aware where gravity is enforced, we hold
the fullness of time as space in mind.
------------------------------
Informing us as knowers using
assisting intelligence's recollections…
answers in mindform, offered as news
ex parte gratis, for your information,
finding oneself in the same form as wind
metaphorically, in the same mind
curious as to what we think we know:

[The term capital]
made its first appearance
in medieval Latin
as an adjective capitalis (from caput, head)
modifying the word pars, (part and parcel)
to designate the principal sum
of a money loan.
The principal part
of a loan was contrasted
with the "usury"—later called interest—
the payment made
to the lender
in addition
to the return
of the sum lent.
This usage, unknown
to classical Latin,
had become common
by the thirteenth century and possibly
had begun as early as 1100 A.D.,
in the first chartered towns
of Europe.
--- according to knowledge accessible
by any empowered to read these thoughts---

[Frank A. Fetter,
"Reformulation
      of the Concepts
            of Capital and Income
                  in Economics and Accounting," 1937]

From <https://www.etymonline.com/search?q=capital>

In sequence, next
we spend our rest urged on, pressed

pushing aggregational will to empower
precious personal will to accept

hold tight, the right to think, this is a good day,
where the course widens to meet the ocean,
and eventually evaporate.


Taking your time,
using your attendance, now

to extend my hope
to knowing certain ways
to inform good counselors

called, trusted advisors, seers
granted high perch to see from

to draw ever into now, to focus

our mind's eye at the point aimed
from ever's edge at the first cause

the why we are, part of every thing,
in truth, the state we find ourselves

being makers of… let this mind seem

our common sensory sorting system,

cost for not knowing, profit for knowing,

guiding guardian self preserving gnosis.