I

The Trumpet-Vine Arbour

The throats of the little red trumpet-flowers are wide open,
And the clangour of brass beats against the hot sunlight.
They bray and blare at the burning sky.
Red! Red! Coarse notes of red,
Trumpeted at the blue sky.
In long streaks of sound, molten metal,
The vine declares itself.
Clang! -- from its red and yellow trumpets.
Clang! -- from its long, nasal trumpets,
Splitting the sunlight into ribbons, tattered and shot with noise.

I sit in the cool arbour, in a green-and-gold twilight.
It is very still, for I cannot hear the trumpets,
I only know that they are red and open,
And that the sun above the arbour shakes with heat.
My quill is newly mended,
And makes fine-drawn lines with its point.
Down the long, white paper it makes little lines,
Just lines -- up -- down -- criss-cross.
My heart is strained out at the pin-point of my quill;
It is thin and writhing like the marks of the pen.
My hand marches to a squeaky tune,
It marches down the paper to a squealing of fifes.
My pen and the trumpet-flowers,
And Washington's armies away over the smoke-tree to the Southwest.
'Yankee Doodle,' my Darling! It is you against the British,
Marching in your ragged shoes to batter down King George.
What have you got in your hat? Not a feather, I wager.
Just a hay-straw, for it is the harvest you are fighting for.
Hay in your hat, and the whites of their eyes for a target!
Like Bunker Hill, two years ago, when I watched all day from the house-top
Through Father's spy-glass.
The red city, and the blue, bright water,
And puffs of smoke which you made.
Twenty miles away,
Round by Cambridge, or over the Neck,
But the smoke was white -- white!
To-day the trumpet-flowers are red -- red --
And I cannot see you fighting,
But old Mr. Dimond has fled to Canada,
And Myra sings 'Yankee Doodle' at her milking.
The red throats of the trumpets bray and clang in the sunshine,
And the smoke-tree puffs dun blossoms into the blue air.


II


The City of Falling Leaves

Leaves fall,
Brown leaves,
Yellow leaves streaked with brown.
They fall,
Flutter,
Fall again.
The brown leaves,
And the streaked yellow leaves,
Loosen on their branches
And drift slowly downwards.
One,
One, two, three,
One, two, five.
All Venice is a falling of Autumn leaves --
Brown,
And yellow streaked with brown.

'That sonnet, Abate,
Beautiful,
I am quite exhausted by it.
Your phrases turn about my heart
And stifle me to swooning.
Open the window, I beg.
Lord! What a strumming of fiddles and mandolins!
'Tis really a shame to stop indoors.
Call my maid, or I will make you lace me yourself.
Fie, how hot it is, not a breath of air!
See how straight the leaves are falling.
Marianna, I will have the yellow satin caught up with silver fringe,
It peeps out delightfully from under a mantle.
Am I well painted to-day, 'caro Abate mio'?
You will be proud of me at the 'Ridotto', hey?
Proud of being 'Cavalier Servente' to such a lady?'
'Can you doubt it, 'Bellissima Contessa'?
A pinch more rouge on the right cheek,
And Venus herself shines less . . .'
'You bore me, Abate,
I vow I must change you!
A letter, Achmet?
Run and look out of the window, Abate.
I will read my letter in peace.'
The little black slave with the yellow satin turban
Gazes at his mistress with strained eyes.
His yellow turban and black skin
Are gorgeous -- barbaric.
The yellow satin dress with its silver flashings
Lies on a chair
Beside a black mantle and a black mask.
Yellow and black,
Gorgeous -- barbaric.
The lady reads her letter,
And the leaves drift slowly
Past the long windows.
'How silly you look, my dear Abate,
With that great brown leaf in your wig.
Pluck it off, I beg you,
Or I shall die of laughing.'

A yellow wall
Aflare in the sunlight,
Chequered with shadows,
Shadows of vine leaves,
Shadows of masks.
Masks coming, printing themselves for an instant,
Then passing on,
More masks always replacing them.
Masks with tricorns and rapiers sticking out behind
Pursuing masks with plumes and high heels,
The sunlight shining under their insteps.
One,
One, two,
One, two, three,
There is a thronging of shadows on the hot wall,
Filigreed at the top with moving leaves.
Yellow sunlight and black shadows,
Yellow and black,
Gorgeous -- barbaric.
Two masks stand together,
And the shadow of a leaf falls through them,
Marking the wall where they are not.
From hat-tip to shoulder-tip,
From elbow to sword-hilt,
The leaf falls.
The shadows mingle,
Blur together,
Slide along the wall and disappear.
Gold of mosaics and candles,
And night blackness lurking in the ceiling beams.
Saint Mark's glitters with flames and reflections.
A cloak brushes aside,
And the yellow of satin
Licks out over the coloured inlays of the pavement.
Under the gold crucifixes
There is a meeting of hands
Reaching from black mantles.
Sighing embraces, bold investigations,
Hide in confessionals,
Sheltered by the shuffling of feet.
Gorgeous -- barbaric
In its mail of jewels and gold,
Saint Mark's looks down at the swarm of black masks;
And outside in the palace gardens brown leaves fall,
Flutter,
Fall.
Brown,
And yellow streaked with brown.

Blue-black, the sky over Venice,
With a pricking of yellow stars.
There is no moon,
And the waves push darkly against the prow
Of the gondola,
Coming from Malamocco
And streaming toward Venice.
It is black under the gondola hood,
But the yellow of a satin dress
Glares out like the eye of a watching tiger.
Yellow compassed about with darkness,
Yellow and black,
Gorgeous -- barbaric.
The boatman sings,
It is Tasso that he sings;
The lovers seek each other beneath their mantles,
And the gondola drifts over the lagoon, aslant to the coming dawn.
But at Malamocco in front,
In Venice behind,
Fall the leaves,
Brown,
And yellow streaked with brown.
They fall,
Flutter,
Fall.

She gives him his eyes, she found them
Among some rubble, among some beetles

He gives her her skin
He just seemed to pull it down out of the air and lay it over her
She weeps with fearfulness and astonishment

She has found his hands for him, and fitted them freshly at the wrists
They are amazed at themselves, they go feeling all over her

He has assembled her spine, he cleaned each piece carefully
And sets them in perfect order
A superhuman puzzle but he is inspired
She leans back twisting this way and that, using it and laughing
Incredulous

Now she has brought his feet, she is connecting them
So that his whole body lights up

And he has fashioned her new hips
With all fittings complete and with newly wound coils, all shiningly oiled
He is polishing every part, he himself can hardly believe it

They keep taking each other to the sun, they find they can easily
To test each new thing at each new step

And now she smoothes over him the plates of his skull
So that the joints are invisible

And now he connects her throat, her ******* and the pit of her stomach
With a single wire

She gives him his teeth, tying the the roots to the centrepin of his body

He sets the little circlets on her fingertips

She stiches his body here and there with steely purple silk

He oils the delicate cogs of her mouth

She inlays with deep cut scrolls the nape of his neck

He sinks into place the inside of her thighs

So, gasping with joy, with cries of wonderment
Like two gods of mud
Sprawling in the dirt, but with infinite care
They bring each other to perfection.

i see technicolour but mostly violet
slopped across the walls in polygon inlays as
the bulb from above casts a glare across bare walls
like a nuclear winter, i huddle beneath the coverless duvet
trying to breathe life into sentence fragments as a
freight train tears up the blackened skyline and
with morning, this will be a memory too

Your mind and you are our Sargasso Sea,
London has swept about you this score years
And bright ships left you this or that in fee:
Ideas, old gossip, oddments of all things,
Strange spars of knowledge and dimmed wares of price.
Great minds have sought you- lacking someone else.
You have been second always. Tragical?
No. You preferred it to the usual thing:
One dull man, dulling and uxorious,
One average mind- with one thought less, each year.
Oh, you are patient, I have seen you sit
Hours, where something might have floated up.
And now you pay one. Yes, you richly pay.
You are a person of some interest, one comes to you
And takes strange gain away:
Trophies fished up; some curious suggestion;
Fact that leads nowhere; and a tale for two,
Pregnant with mandrakes, or with something else
That might prove useful and yet never proves,
That never fits a corner or shows use,
Or finds its hour upon the loom of days:
The tarnished, gaudy, wonderful old work;
Idols and ambergris and rare inlays,
These are your riches, your great store; and yet
For all this sea-hoard of deciduous things,
Strange woods half sodden, and new brighter stuff:
In the slow float of differing light and deep,
No! there is nothing! In the whole and all,
Nothing that’s quite your own.
Yet this is you.

Thou know'st my praise of nature most sincere,
And that my raptures are not conjur'd up
To serve occasions of poetic pomp,
But genuine, and art partner of them all.
How oft upon yon eminence our pace
Has slacken'd to a pause, and we have borne
The ruffling wind, scarce conscious that it blew,
While admiration, feeding at the eye,
And still unsated, dwelt upon the scene.
Thence with what pleasure have we just discern'd
The distant plough slow moving, and beside
His lab'ring team, that swerv'd not from the track,
The sturdy swain diminish'd to a boy!
Here Ouse, slow winding through a level plain
Of spacious meads with cattle sprinkled o'er,
Conducts the eye along its sinuous course
Delighted. There, fast rooted in his bank,
Stand, never overlook'd, our fav'rite elms,
That screen the herdsman's solitary hut;
While far beyond, and overthwart the stream
That, as with molten glass, inlays the vale,
The sloping land recedes into the clouds;
Displaying on its varied side the grace
Of hedge-row beauties numberless, square tow'r,
Tall spire, from which the sound of cheerful bells
Just undulates upon the list'ning ear,
Groves, heaths and smoking villages remote.
Scenes must be beautiful, which, daily view'd,
Please daily, and whose novelty survives
Long knowledge and the scrutiny of years.
Praise justly due to those that I describe....


But though true worth and virtue, in the mild
And genial soil of cultivated life,
Thrive most, and may perhaps thrive only there,
Yet not in cities oft: in proud and gay
And gain-devoted cities. Thither flow,
As to a common and most noisome sewer,
The dregs and feculence of every land.
In cities foul example on most minds
Begets its likeness. Rank abundance breeds
In gross and pamper'd cities sloth and lust,
And wantonness and gluttonous excess.
In cities vice is hidden with most ease,
Or seen with least reproach; and virtue, taught
By frequent lapse, can hope no triumph there
Beyond th' achievement of successful flight.
I do confess them nurseries of the arts,
In which they flourish most; where, in the beams
Of warm encouragement, and in the eye
Of public note, they reach their perfect size.
Such London is, by taste and wealth proclaim'd
The fairest capital of all the world,
By riot and incontinence the worst.
There, touch'd by Reynolds, a dull blank becomes
A lucid mirror, in which Nature sees
All her reflected features. Bacon there
Gives more than female beauty to a stone,
And Chatham's eloquence to marble lips....


God made the country, and man made the town.
What wonder then that health and virtue, gifts
That can alone make sweet the bitter draught
That life holds out to all, should most abound
And least be threaten'd in the fields and groves?
Possess ye therefore, ye who, borne about
In chariots and sedans, know no fatigue
But that of idleness, and taste no scenes
But such as art contrives, possess ye still
Your element; there only ye can shine,
There only minds like yours can do no harm.
Our groves were planted to console at noon
The pensive wand'rer in their shades. At eve
The moonbeam, sliding softly in between
The sleeping leaves, is all the light they wish,
Birds warbling all the music. We can spare
The splendour of your lamps, they but eclipse
Our softer satellite. Your songs confound
Our more harmonious notes: the thrush departs
Scared, and th' offended nightingale is mute.
There is a public mischief in your mirth;
It plagues your country. Folly such as yours,
Grac'd with a sword, and worthier of a fan,
Has made, which enemies could ne'er have done,
Our arch of empire, steadfast but for you,
A mutilated structure, soon to fall.

...

Thou know'st my praise of nature most sincere,
And that my raptures are not conjur'd up
To serve occasions of poetic pomp,
But genuine, and art partner of them all.
How oft upon yon eminence our pace
Has slacken'd to a pause, and we have borne
The ruffling wind, scarce conscious that it blew,
While admiration, feeding at the eye,
And still unsated, dwelt upon the scene.
Thence with what pleasure have we just discern'd
The distant plough slow moving, and beside
His lab'ring team, that swerv'd not from the track,
The sturdy swain diminish'd to a boy!
Here Ouse, slow winding through a level plain
Of spacious meads with cattle sprinkled o'er,
Conducts the eye along its sinuous course
Delighted. There, fast rooted in his bank,
Stand, never overlook'd, our fav'rite elms,
That screen the herdsman's solitary hut;
While far beyond, and overthwart the stream
That, as with molten glass, inlays the vale,
The sloping land recedes into the clouds;
Displaying on its varied side the grace
Of hedge-row beauties numberless, square tow'r,
Tall spire, from which the sound of cheerful bells
Just undulates upon the list'ning ear,
Groves, heaths and smoking villages remote.
Scenes must be beautiful, which, daily view'd,
Please daily, and whose novelty survives
Long knowledge and the scrutiny of years.
Praise justly due to those that I describe.

...

But though true worth and virtue, in the mild
And genial soil of cultivated life,
Thrive most, and may perhaps thrive only there,
Yet not in cities oft: in proud and gay
And gain-devoted cities. Thither flow,
As to a common and most noisome sewer,
The dregs and feculence of every land.
In cities foul example on most minds
Begets its likeness. Rank abundance breeds
In gross and pamper'd cities sloth and lust,
And wantonness and gluttonous excess.
In cities vice is hidden with most ease,
Or seen with least reproach; and virtue, taught
By frequent lapse, can hope no triumph there
Beyond th' achievement of successful flight.
I do confess them nurseries of the arts,
In which they flourish most; where, in the beams
Of warm encouragement, and in the eye
Of public note, they reach their perfect size.
Such London is, by taste and wealth proclaim'd
The fairest capital of all the world,
By riot and incontinence the worst.
There, touch'd by Reynolds, a dull blank becomes
A lucid mirror, in which Nature sees
All her reflected features. Bacon there
Gives more than female beauty to a stone,
And Chatham's eloquence to marble lips.

...

God made the country, and man made the town.
What wonder then that health and virtue, gifts
That can alone make sweet the bitter draught
That life holds out to all, should most abound
And least be threaten'd in the fields and groves?
Possess ye therefore, ye who, borne about
In chariots and sedans, know no fatigue
But that of idleness, and taste no scenes
But such as art contrives, possess ye still
Your element; there only ye can shine,
There only minds like yours can do no harm.
Our groves were planted to console at noon
The pensive wand'rer in their shades. At eve
The moonbeam, sliding softly in between
The sleeping leaves, is all the light they wish,
Birds warbling all the music. We can spare
The splendour of your lamps, they but eclipse
Our softer satellite. Your songs confound
Our more harmonious notes: the thrush departs
Scared, and th' offended nightingale is mute.
There is a public mischief in your mirth;
It plagues your country. Folly such as yours,
Has made, which enemies could ne'er have done,
Our arch of empire, steadfast but for you,
A mutilated structure, soon to fall.

Like the metallurgists of yesteryear,
I must melt, mold, mend, and make.

Like a master teaching his apprentice,
Schooling him in the ancient ways,

So too must I impart on my readers my knowledge, my thoughts, my living.

Leaden words of silver roll off my gilded tongue,
(Perhaps someday you, too, shall have gold-plated lips),
Into the warm, receptive ears of followers devout.

You admire my art,
And rightfully so.
But I need you, as surely as you need me.

You see, intricate inlays and ruby-studded pommels are beautiful, yes.
But the sword dispatches a sterling service, soldier.
It is functional, as are my own subversive talents.

The wars you wage with my weapons are worthy ones,
And we ought both take pride in them.

Without your deeds I would have a mere hobby, not a duty.

But I have traded the battle swords of ages long past
For the fountain pen of today, and tomorrow.

Heed my words,
Even as you would kneel before my sword.

I am--
The New World Blacksmith

Caress my neck softly
Hold my body close to yours
Tempt these sweet chord progressions
Acoustic affection’d freestyle
Finger my frets with delicate touches
Mother of pearl inlays sweat
Bending vibrating strings
Crank my volume **** high
Sliding capos moan
Play lead in poetic rifts
Soundhole oozes sensual melodies
Gouging pickguard’s scars
Tune me in the key of your love
Strum me hard…

Let’s make beautiful music together

Portrait d'une Femme**

Your mind and you are our Sargasso Sea,
      London has swept about you this score years
And bright ships left you this or that in fee:
      Ideas, old gossip, oddments of all things,
Strange spars of knowledge and dimmed wares of price.
      Great minds have sought you — lacking someone else.
You have been second always. Tragical?
      No. You preferred it to the usual thing:
One dull man, dulling and uxorious,
      One average mind —   with one thought less, each year.
Oh, you are patient, I have seen you sit
      Hours, where something might have floated up.
And now you pay one.   Yes, you richly pay.
      You are a person of some interest, one comes to you
And takes strange gain away:
      Trophies fished up; some curious suggestion;
Fact that leads nowhere; and a tale for two,
      Pregnant with mandrakes, or with something else
That might prove useful and yet never proves,
      That never fits a corner or shows use,
Or finds its hour upon the loom of days:
      The tarnished, gaudy, wonderful old work;
Idols and ambergris and rare inlays,
      These are your riches, your great store; and yet
For all this sea-hoard of deciduous things,
      Strange woods half sodden, and new brighter stuff:
In the slow float of differing light and deep,
      No! there is nothing! In the whole and all,
Nothing that's quite your own.
                  Yet this is you.

She gives him his eyes, she found them
Among some rubble, among some beetles

He gives her her skin
He just seemed to pull it down out of the air and lay it over her
She weeps with fearfulness and astonishment

She has found his hands for him, and fitted them freshly at the wrists
They are amazed at themselves, they go feeling all over her

He has assembled her spine, he cleaned each piece carefully
And sets them in perfect order
A superhuman puzzle but he is inspired
She leans back twisting this way and that, using it and laughing
Incredulous

Now she has brought his feet, she is connecting them
So that his whole body lights up

And he has fashioned her new hips
With all fittings complete and with newly wound coils, all shiningly oiled
He is polishing every part, he himself can hardly believe it

They keep taking each other to the sun, they find they can easily
To test each new thing at each new step

And now she smoothes over him the plates of his skull
So that the joints are invisible

And now he connects her throat, her ******* and the pit of her stomach
With a single wire

She gives him his teeth, tying the the roots to the centrepin of his body

He sets the little circlets on her fingertips

She stitches his body here and there with steely purple silk

He oils the delicate cogs of her mouth

She inlays with deep cut scrolls the nape of his neck

He sinks into place the inside of her thighs

So, gasping with joy, with cries of wonderment
Like two gods of mud
Sprawling in the dirt, but with infinite care
They bring each other to perfection.

A moonlight night inlays with stars
Fireflies roam around me.
Kiss-curls of ocean rinse my feet
Nightingale sings in the deep
Forest covers the light of moon
Darkness is everywhere.

The time is too short to see
The charm of beauty is ever faded.
Nature lures me to catch her elegance.
While I go, it goes far beyond me
Formidable desire cries in vain.

Across the realm of gray matter
slowly percolating within tissue
composed of neuronal, glial
and endothelial cells, and although
there must be biological rules
that determine the numbers
of cells of each subtype
and the volumes (or masses)
occupied by them,
little is known about such rules,
if they indeed exist

nevertheless, ah haint goot
no trade secret, boot verily
attest adventitious, bounteous, and
capacious divine intervention
(analogous to invisible
Charge of the Light Brigade)
timely saving amazing grace
engorges, engirdles, and engenders mine
body, mind and spirit,
which psychic triage
accruing, germinating,

and manifesting coming
forth, and appearing
at the most opportune
pluperfect tinder kindling
jawboning indeed, and
instagramming optimal instant –
sparing irreparable cerebral damage,
yet inflicting temporary
temporal lobe trauma
not surprising giving
brain big bang, sans

tickly totally tubular raise
zing trumpeting – analogous
to Portuguese man-of-war
sea render tyranny
(Sic semper tyrannis)
over fifty plus shades sways
undulating cerebral cortex
doth lightly secretly
with naturally secreted
unguent liberal mindedly braise,
which explanation might meet

with skepticism, but crazy as such
"FAKE" holy transcendent
heavenly extra corporeal
modus operandi may seem,
an inexplicable force
powerfully Herculean sensation
grips me noggin leavening
mental scratch pad in a daze
of blinding poetic inspiration doth    
like quaffing goblet
of gin n tonic faze

this phenomena plays
a particularly puzzling role
on account difficult to phrase
in light of my being an atheist,
which non deistic, theistic,
nor Vedic precept stays
metaphorically locked, linkedin, and
leveraged in place,
despite non religious confession
augmentation, attribution,
and association showers inspiration,

where eyes fixedly glaze
as literary creativity attaining
high psychological grades
dramatically engages fantastically
with cosmic force appearing
as nebulous haze
seems antithetical to premise
couched, fixated, and interleaved
anchor rightly, viz
secular humanism inlays
votary visa versa entrees

shutterfly, snapchat twitter
comport comfortably situated
in  the catbird seat
as upon royal chaise
lounge steeped within
monastic hermetically ascetic ways
akin to daffodils got to puff the
magic dragon GoDaddy seed achieve
visibly absent pride and
prejudice where aggrieve
ving unseen, as careening

human bits believe
where forebears of Adam, and
the ants sandy dunes cleave
species pollination, yet devoid of
neither sense nor
sensibility that deceive
themselves philanthropic buttressed
by religious ethos, dogmas
credo, et cetera since Eve
to and fro, hither and yon
across the globe heave

infusing self importance
viz zit heady species
**** sapiens sans belief bold
lee granting superiority
to hundreds of generations
lapsed goo gilled descendants
of contemporary Primates cold,
and calculating dictatorial demagogues
(no matter dishabille disheveled) doled
out self importance
gussied up as kingpins,

whose braggadocio extolled
blood lust, depravity and egregious
on flip side of Manichaeism origami fold
touting faux grandeur measly
humans inherent self supremacy,
which mettle valuably wrought
more precious than gold
whereby might versus right
fostered iron gripped hold
trumping supreme cosmic
deity (if such exists,

per those, who ascribe existence
to divine creator),
where mankind didst
get special mold
where fictitious codified battlements
evinced luminary salient traits
if millennial forbears hypothetically polled
vis a vis virtue vindicates
vice viz lyrical tomes
such legendary mythological narratives as:
Aeneid, Don Juan,

Paradise Lost, The Divine Comedy,
Mahabharata, Beowulf,
Metamorphoses, The Odyssey,
Epic of Gilgamesh,
and The Iliad
displayed thunderous outrages
rectified violently rocked and rolled
where assignment throughout galaxy -
studded with malevolent
mailer daemons all told
informed terrestrial behavior,

decrees and formalities amidst wold
wide webbed skein tenuous
as gossamer wings
shutterfly at the speed of sound
albeit ergot size
solemn spores bumping,
commingling and jostling beings
whose demotic, erratic,
and frenetic vernacular
bumped uglies against
sacred talismanic wild things

while secular notions cursed
as intractably intolerable swings
per paradigms that disallowed rubric,
where autocratic stings
lashed out at pagan rites, which
when viewed from
surface where Earthlings
dwelt appeared as unpredictable
skittering dots with nary flings
perceived, but simply

near microscopic simians
crowning themselves as Kings
of Leon admonishing those
madding crowd source rings
of bright waters -
offering entertainment
to the invisible forces
within galactic realm
as mere antics of goslings.