[48] 42.7 "as we both were in paradise, inseparable from one another
[48] 42.8 do not separate us in our death, but place me where you have placed him"

And death shall not separate us.
In shivering youth bowed our hungry love
Enclasped our praying hands through the cold nights;
These pulsing memories far bygone, yet
If sundered, if you lost to one a myriad of stars in the universe,
Across all fateful turbulations and tribulations I'll sail and toil my hankering hands,
To collect your stardust, to bring you back
Then I'll embrace you in great haste; to unhouse thy shroud I raced
To deck thy tombstone unturned
And death shall not separate us

And death shall not separate us
Flowers wave within the giant skeletons embracing one another
A sword into the earth, his armor kneeling, and recitations of verses
By the campfire; under the comets; on the high seas, the man stays silent
The broken knight carries his tired soul and his gothic wings;
Battle never ends, so does his love poetic-prophetic
And death shall not separate us

And death shall not separate us
(O, I am a sufferable rebel, a dying romantist)
Natality mine sinful and bandaged for thy fright
My unchanted dirge for the bohemian innocence and long deployment;
Yet I proclaim nevertheless and claim thy name nonetheless, for
I am a lover of absurdity, a prince of resistance
A phase I need to face with high magnificent disdain;
Between solitude and solicitude, my bilious rage contained
If engulfs thy way a dusking vale of Time
Break branches and hear my echoes of love through and through, my lime
And death shall not separate us

And death shall not separate us
That a timber hitch roped around the mooring stump by the shore
Flares me heavy thy flair philosophy declare on frontière, your fair solitaire
Times foretold the cascades in the cave loud, bold, n' manifold
So, princes of the world! Test my decree: love never fails
Like Adam and Eve
Oceans of Dantesque hands pulling us apart,
but we must beat our oars forward
because death shall not separate us

Wind blows through the gate of the ice castle.
Enameled are the eaves with milky snow,
Transparent candles drop pendulous tears, and I
Hunger for restoration, roasted sweet potatoes in my pockets
A man sprinkles salt on the stairs like a dutiful farmer.
Fogged and unduly broken, I drop a rose into the crevice.
My lips shudder from the meteoric love of all things unspoken.
Breath to breath, from birth to death
The golden endurance of a pilgrim soul
To the twilight of m’rrow.

I inflame my white flag, my unhinged, defeated soul.
In the gyring moment, the pang of birth,
I pierce myself with a blade, your Poetry,
Calling the prayer with a kingly tread.
Caress me gently, Teacher, for I bombard my paltry existence
For a mission of loving sadness.
Nymphs danced between the birches on a pile of snow,
And I sit to breathe the scars of memories.

Glory to the Christ for my poetic existence
Glory to the Christ for my poetic resistance
Glory to the Christ for my poetic persistence

When high celestials call me a vortex of stars
Pink heavens rain on me like vernal brume in a morn
Bathed in petite waterfalls of grace,
Fluttering raincoat in sweet petrichor, I dance
   to the music from above
   to the Romance and Romanesque of ethers existential
   A symbol of zeitgeist potential

This life! This life! What a glamorous life!
I see your fingerprints everywhere
And I miss you without ever seeing you

Like a farm boy fluting harmonica on the waves of yellow reeds
I planted vines along a galactic string of beads
Sailing across the big night sky
Under the churning stars
Where I'd calmly call myself
A possibility beyond scars

These pines, my gothic arches
"You are my secret weapon," the Poet said
Like the sound of pencil scribbling on a sketchbook
Like the ritualistic depth of coffee in the morn
A day is a blessing
My life is a grace
Gratitude to the Lord Jesus Christ the Son of God!

Glory to the Christ for my poetic existence
Glory to the Christ for my poetic resistance
Glory to the Christ for my poetic persistence

Blood trails on the mossed Greek cheeks
The Memories' eternal catch but a wink in the cemeteries
My hands are made of spider webs,
Mine own heart, of shards
Fly, away they fly blue and white butterflies

A wine glass rolls in my hand, in my red lips.
Here stands Mona Lisa in my ethel funeral,
My abode so criminal: black leaves,
wrinkled lake, and dusted music box

A haunted castle in my spectral soul has
A marble floor extending its arms
To the mosaic of stained glass made
Of old apparitions

I, hopelessly romantic
Under the arch of an inscrutable moon gate
My clandestine tears on love letters
Stained with times and cherry wine

My rose is my wand so shy
Spellbound together like a parchment of decree
To the concaving world for a long farewell
Anonymous me! A man without pedigree

By the ruins of far nymphaeum, where
A garden of sculptures echoes underwater,
Where lost dwellers sleep of inarticulate tears,
I submerge like a goddess who lost her firstborn

On the cliffside where lobelia blooms
Wait I motionlessly amid the gyre of speeding seasons  
Hidden like burnt legends of gods
Like a page in the Library of Divine

My hell is the Ocean
Under which great men are drowning themselves deeper into the dark
Madness feeds the beast with a mangled hope
Frantic squirms, the shudders, and the suspension!
A castle of bubbles so proud, anonymous cries so loud

So much water,
But not a drop to drink

Abhorrence! This nautical life!

Buoyed out in the foams, in this ocean
I pound the permeable, unsolid surface and bathe in blue fire
Across the blue desert, I moor a lonely blue ship and plant a bouquet of dry blue flowers—
To make friends with the quiet waves

A circle of robes, scratching their beard and nodding so quiet
A society of poets between ancient walls of books so disquiet
Unrepining hours are suspended in the crystal moment
Into the eternal pensiveness, a mournful egress to love
A gyre of starlight lolls across the mouldering cemeteries.
Crimson soul, I, to the faraway kingdom of mysteries
Eclipse me tendr'ly and my gothic debris
Like the woodsmoke of dying ambers,
Like ivy raining o’er the red brick ruins
Kisseth to the ground where the dead is buried
Numberless days, the dancing of flames. Our degradation
Lilies, roses, and reeds
Ringeth the mumbles of piano in the charcoal cave of a shipwreck
Holdeth fast to the drowse, mine own dark academia

Touched by blue
Drunk with poetry
my dreadfully crapulous hair hugging me from behind
Feet bare on a sheet of snow
I call to prayer for my masters
Murmurs in my ears, I lift my eyes and see the
Great Writers whose ink is thicker than blood
ghastly standing on their graves

Rilke proclaimed on his deathbed:
"Vergessen Sie nie, das Leben ist eine Herrlichkeit!" ("Never forget, life is a glory!")
Jiménez, Twain, Gary, Neruda, Yun ****-ju, Fitzgerald... all
look at me with compassionate gazes. And Braley grabs my face and yells,
"The greatest verse hasn't been written yet!"
Nazim Hikmet nodded
I hear a fading echo like receding waves,

Why be good?
It's probably all about
clothing our naked souls with
a dress of innocence.

Had I embroidered a heavenly handkerchief
enwrought with hisibcus, like your blushing lips, and clean beau brown, like your eyes
laced with exquisite patterns the universe devised,
made of the finest threads of vicuña and baby cashmere
I'd collect your tears like blue diamonds so dear
and keep it in my surest vault where nobody knows
because they are the rarest gems on earth
but I only have my words and this beating heart
so I've weaved them so gently like that handkerchief
and written this lyrical enjambment
for your consolation

I have a perpendicular sword in my heart
My bashful confession sticks to my uvula, in-between my teeth
Being understood I dread, the communion of souls
I recoil cowardly from the projection on a winding heath
Floaded is this shoal with devils all agog

I planted a fake bouquet by a tree.
At which hour rain knocks the lifeless beauty brooding
Ov'r the sighs of thirsty roots

Will you comfort my fictitious spirit?
Golden dust falls through the fingers of the wind,
Brandishing like a child, this disinherited magic
Thousands years of rectitude hover through the night
I have a perpendicular sword in my heart

The flakes rested a moment on my head before finishing the race. I was engendering spirits visible of grace. Into the night fog I was walking like an enchanted! When I kneeled to tie my leather boots, I was paying respect to the emerald universe above. Tonight I think about you again.
Love-drunk, teeter and totter, hobble and wabble
because my spirit remembers our resonance
Tonight we are far from each other
Tonight I'm hungry (of you), darling
My irrepressible love volleying bombardments
only by the knowledge of your lips could it be solaced
Yellow dry reeds puzzle me greatly. Walking under the cloak of humanism. A penetrating enlightement. My scarf's blowing, and I barely feel my face. O my muse, blues possessed me tonight. I will cry from missing you.

My hands smell like a lemon
The air is dulce and tastes like predestination
A partying rebel, parleying devil, but part-time constable
A layman evangel, silent gospel, and full time antechapel
Self-tailored, not mass-produced
A mirage of myself burns in the fog, and I disappear into the eternal forest
Therein I pray, play, and praise like a child
and my quilted words fly away like riptides
and only the residue of magnificence stays on my lips,
the fragrance of moonlight

My heroine, my dear adventress
Take a good rest. Adios.

There was an armless man biking on an empty street,
When the bell tolled at the midnight hour.
Between the emaciated ribs had stench diabolical
Everyone called him crazy.
A phantom of the city, he is. Perhaps, death himself.
A trail of breath. Ragged bandages barely hid his nakedness.  
Burnt was his hollow eye. Disfigured was his nose.
Like a disgraced soldier refusing to come home
The boy know only twelve springs!

Through a broken glass window of a beat-up car
Saw three whisperers an army of fanatics of midnight chase,
Blaring red and no blue.
“Why y’all here, brother?”
“Innocence. Innocence only”
They ain’t here to catch us. Too many. They are here to **** us.
Bullet holes on the car doors, motionless organic bodies
Blood on the concrete and
Silence, after all!

A foreign couple walked on the street.
BAMM! The fallen! A suicide!
No, it was the poor armless boy!
Help! For God’s sake, Help!
Curtains closed, yellow rooms unlit  
And nobody gave a single ******* look.

Leaning by the bell, arms open to the dominion of lights so bombastique
Harrowed by lawless but resolved in my self-legislation
I chew away my rose like a bovine
'Round the winding alley in the groovin' haze
Made of primeval memories and molecular scars; where
Snowflakes parachute geometrically under a heavenly maze

An orphan who lost himself in a shipwreck
Shied naught from his prayer, his crown
For the constitution of this authentic life
He stands alone in mystery
As calmly as a protester to romance
Like the nameless clock in a midnight plaza

As I rise over the velet dusk
A world under my winged talaria tells me
I am my own definition for all things untranslatable
Then I contemplate like a bewitched apostate
And march on ceaselessly to the light of day
For king is a poet who was forced to be a warrior

Leaning against the canal rails, I cover my cig afire
Displaced since birth
Disjointed through life
Dismantled after death
Black waves roll across the calamitous roars of night
As I drown majestically into the quietest void in me

An empire under my feet
A universe in my eyes
Whispers to gods I cast in dissolving chariots of smoke
For my name to outlive me to perpetuity
This rickety life, a rocketin' lie
A firework on the Fourth of July
I pray again like an Olympian in his temple

A breath, a moment, a glory

There,
I sat on the bench under the chandelier of twistin' florids
After quivers against winds from a turning season
And blessed the earth carpeted with decaying leaves
Where October forespent upon the feathery bank
So I hung my hammock between the trees
And rested my head like a good ol' vagabond

My sketchbook is full of your symbols
Sure I did drink coffee in the morning
But still hazy I am of you

I played with foams aphrodisiac
As I rowed a wooden skiff with my oars
Over a river of many dreams I folded manyfold
So I praised this holy enclave of lights so beatific
For a mill in the dew bobbed nigh a brook so bucolic
I taught birds to sing like O tengo duende, cariño!
Highland cattles flocked around me in curiosity

The empty breezeway records lolling memories like a music box
I remember that old professor with faded glasses
Looking so profound but frankly tired
Saw something in me, and I felt understood

Transparent orgamis slowly penchéd to the sound of violin
On the surface of a calm lake
In an early morning
Where a Valais Blacknose stretched out its heavy trunk and
Quenched its thirst, with love, in peace

Had I planted two heavenly trees on my secret headland
where a brook in bucolic runs a small wedding in-between
I'd weave two ropes made of elastic roots of the hinterland
Which bloom your favorite flowers delectable and serene,
and hang the ropes' ends on each branch firm and steady;
I'd collect the purest cushion of clouds, from gold to pink,
sprinkled with stardust, balmed with fairydust
redolent with the most expensive eau de parfum
to make your seat on the Swing of Love;
then I shall see the cardinal crescence of your eyes
and hear your soft, canorous laughters comforting my soul
as I rock your world like my drunken sight of you
toward the horizon of endless joy
under the profusion of lights gently aureated

Love is the final form of absurdity
and trumps all obstacles
Life is a moment
Love is forever
A love life, forever we are one moment

When flowers rain upon my soul
I know mine is connected with yours
Hereinbelow amorous becomes glamorous
Belespirited shall I be when atoms of Time slip through my ribs;
Hitherto we'd lived aloft in each other's prayers
In the effervescence we met, to the fluorescence we walk
Now my knees know your sorrow, albeit mellow to the marrow,
And together we shall be happy forever thereafter

O, she gallops with an eagle on her arm
Like a royal coronation
Like a train running a distance on the sea
Like a femme fatale at her debutante ball
I exult this life with a standing ovation
Worry not, my preternatural bride, for I will be your roofing boulder
Thusly my crown I put aside, for dearly rest you on my shoulder

"In the heart of every man lies a kingdom; our quest, then, is not a conquest, but the unveiling of our own majesty." - Maestro Benetto -

After the banquet with mortal dignitaries
Immortalising my royal ascension in the annals of time
I lounged against the bejeweled armchair
  Of gold and navy chiseled with regal bearings
  Inherited from the thinnest spiritline
Then communed with legends preaching from underground
To whom I raised my cane and a new tablet of liberty:
  I am a new sovereignty
  This wight of imperium constitutional - "A little flesh, a little breath, and a Reason to rule"  
  My empire never dies

Feet on the ground, eyes to the stars, and heart in union with God
With unfeigned gratitude to heavenly grace, this lordly attribute
For my honor is firm and its safe is vaulted  

As I opened my velvet curtain
   A sumptuous blend of silk and satin
   Cascaded to the floor like a soundwave
Wind blew, and so flew the birds
Away, I saw my fate over the glossy water

Heavy cape, heavy crown
Nevertheless
I'm not capitulating

I ripped out of the old tavern
Into my coat indigo so torn 'n worn
And traveled under the porticoes of a billion fantastic stars
To celebrate this marvelous November night

In the labyrinth of bricks and stones
I hum and whistle the Irish song
How exquisite it is, my peripatetic existence
That midnight train will certainly know

My treasured beret from a thrift shop spins in my hand
My feet bubble off the cobblestone like soda pops
I trail along the bridge over a canal
Under the crescent moon following me like a cop

A pocket change rolling, bikes uninhabited, and lampposts perpetual
A rolled cigarette wantonly leaning between my sticky lips
Autumnal dews wet my forehead like spiriting wine
And while, scarf blowing, boots tattered,
I raise my odalisque eyes heavenward;
The world pixelates above my moist eyes
Like a seabed of jewelry stars

When love beckons like the sorrow of red-crowned cranes
And the solidarity of midnight wolves
My heart is crowded with the temperature of your absence
Lordly attributes of mine just a vapid caricature
A castle of sands and a dry squid ashore I become
Who take your departure morbidly as punishment divine
Avowal of solitary life just at a modicum
I in a pit of sordid hell, made undesigned

She fed me love but I vomited

Trees are shedding their leaves
Trees are shedding their leaves

Whereon sylph perched the silky meadow that opalescent day
Like a whirring strand in shimmers of whiskey
Briefly, she became a gossamer of wind, and
A page in a disheveled fairytale
Whose lore records old tales beyond the translucence of time

A staircase of golden butterflies kissed her
To the elevation of this leaf of scripture:
   Praise the rugged humanity of thine
   Thou are a size of what thou see, and
   The world is what thou take
So did she curl her tail the arctic fox of dawn

The devils I've fought with
Will defend me like Atticus Finch
For I fought the fight I must fight
With style, with sheer tenacity
Like an ancient vagabond, an honorable one

When the Epoch of High Romance arrives
Leave a bouquet over my grave
And bury me again under the white wilderness
Whereon sylph left the silky meadow that opalescent night