Chapter 2

Thief, thief elf with a key, a thousand rasping angels their throaty javelins hurled from branch's edge, brief pageant robbing summer's pantry.

Offal of the fall, the lake a sequined glove tossed from a careless hand; a rowboat as a buckle chromatic foam for a finger's fan.

YELLOW HAIR

With that lime green hairnet commonly used by butterfly dispatchers-- something your aunt might have commandeered to put her hair up donkey's years ago, I unjarred the bottle of air & with a pair of forceps tried to wrangle the life juices from a Polyphemeus[1] in a manner akin to Ulysses in that cave three millenia ago; his gentle bleating like the whine of the net across the gelatin fabric of air or the flash of a tomahawk gliding across Custer's golden hair.

[1] Large buff silk-moth with two eyespots on the hind wings named for the giant Polyphemeus in the Odyssey. Ulysses had the giant blinded with a sharpened pole.

PILTDOWN MAN

Popping out of the dark reddish "Merry Christmas" haze twinking blinking land of Nod (or rather it's Ned, the hefty trucker); eyes, steel-belted radials, in a rig big like Santa Claus; a Stegosaurus swinging sabre-toothed tail & flexing padded paws to gobble night.

Loads so dreary-weary their chrome-plated swamps are debris after a tank battle for troglodyte trilobites & chocolate coloured ooze belching brown down funnel flaps to carve deep bellows inside earth.

Such energetic slaves to cough & sound their wheezing sandy blasts make for breaks in a clearing for I see our trucker, eons from now, wedded to sentiment and rock perfectly preserved (to the dismay of future inhabitants), a fossilized remnant complete with steering wheel embedded in his chest (forlorn and anatomically correct much as dolls used in assault cases).

In a vision, envisage his life replete to the last Raggetty-Anne detail --straw-coloured hair, for one, looms like binder-twine or horse-hair thread tugged from a dirty mattress which props a toque or baseball cap, tobacco staining the resident gum chewing Neanderthal with tartan lumberjack shirt.

Contact with Piltdown Man, soggy Homo Erectus given to gunning engines, churning rubber as cavemen might in the La Brera tarpits.

Consider a farmer brief centuries ago stumbling onto a similar scene pocketing no cloverleafs of his own pasture's making but concrete expressways looming thru the fog & damp, then coming to his senses, hard-pressed as I.

SPANKED

Buying up egg rolls at 50¢ a kick, they royally entered our bloodstream --a riot of sensation akin to dynamite caps kicked off in the brain.

Later, sitting in the booth a chocolate brown wall to aid the digestion; a frumpy waitress plunks water down to complete the feast.

Taken back, the surcharge at such festivities exorbitant, we squander in exact change the full price to do it again.

THE CROWKEEPER

"She gallops night by night through lovers' brains...."

I see grindstones in the sky, pots of tulips overturned --big tug of the reins and chestnut hair is seen before the windowpane with chance & more chance lost to frost or hungry bees this still autumn eve.

Darling, walls that division us are envelopes of passion bridging trust, seal it lest it rust.

Skeletal scrapings make for poor bedding (this poor rhinoceros of lies) the devil gliding about so disguised on his tentacle and toenail chair (inviting lair) or is it hiccup and bandaged prayer yet stalwart wall is a rosary bead thick ale and bread to hungry snail or, better, lips to Romeo's blushing pilgrims.

Then, sudden, I'm old-- on a bench counting stars where each is a radiant patch of energy leased to the dark, an emblem burst mailed from eternity, spark to cigaret's flame to burn these little suns as cupid tails; your "bright eye, scarlet lip, fine foot, straight leg and quivering thigh."

CUANDO-CUBANGO

Moths, if they dream dusk, sport esurient hip-flasks on their wings-- gangster rum-runners better to sully dark, traverse caravans of colour amid silk-routes to dazzle Prester John, cork unscrew the unicorn horn askew.

2 Compte de la Mothe escadrilles/flotillas D'Entrecasteaux with Bougainville discovering well, Bougainvillaea and I, latter day la Perouse, cunningly amuck on coral adoration and wine, (red as scarlet leaves) chenille, frangipanni and the Marquis house colours of the flame-bitten tropics.

3 Let me scandalize why. Watch the sea churn to white bubbles then coat your nostril with brine to run a finger down brown skin passing for the Bronze Age.

4 Notice the invention of sun, a cloak suspended in a canopy-canoe profusion (left over from the first dawn,) oasis of calm, patter of motes and beams. Garden of Shalimar.

5 My sentiments exactly.

ONOMATOPOEIA

One thing about this type of education, it certainly taught an individual to be philosophical about death.

He could ruminate conversably on the ultimate fate of a Greek shade or the Mesopotamian interpretation of the underworld. Even contemplate figuratively what Achilles felt was his true funeral abode.

Shoel. The grave. Romantic poetry might have little practical application but it was great conversational stuff.

A book or two by obscure authors sure broke the ice at parties, was unbeatable verbal jousting.

Too bad the joke was on him for majoring in it.

Few people really cared what onomatopoeia was or that Presquile was in Maine. Worse, they acted like you were nuts for studying the Aeneid. The Aeneid! It did, too, have importance. Literature, that is.

Why it gave a man depth, a presence, a gracefulness that transcended petty, material strivings. Too bad, one couldn't show the white palms of one's hand for a living or revel in soft flesh as the natural mark of a born aristocrat. O tempora, oh mores: that the classics had fallen so low.

It was maddening that literary civilization was within a hair's breadth at being snuffed by the ordinary convention of task bearing.

Being a poet, so basic to everything, didn't even show up on Manpower's computer scan.

The universities didn't care they were having the times of their lives parsing verbs and conjugating declensions, telling graduates "the pendulum will swing".

The best retort for that was the pithy epigram of the working man toiling in honest sweat within the secure bounds of a trade.

AT THE RED THROAT

In youth, Death was a puny boy possessing but wormy hands & fleshless fingers as in Witch Hazel or Scrooge's Future Ghost --that insipid Evil One Hansel so easily outwitted in a gingerbread house.

Time brought increased notoriety. Saucy times with a soupçon of respect for the artful dodger. Givens change, an armful of orange lilies, limp & loathsome, on a tombstone door before trumpets of rain.

Graven images. Lifeless stone. Death became stone. Stone empty. The maggot emptiness burrowing into chiselled easel and the stone-cutter's savage magic. Just a bitty stone to herald a passing.

Night-jars. Old straw-chairs with a broom pronouncing the wall base with its touch empty, the empress of bandages leaning to rags

On table scraps, sorry gloom of an old building by a pickled lake leaking into ebb twilight.

The coronation of the nightmare, the moon with her billowing robes and withered spoon unfolding midstream ... la cauchemar ou dénudée soirée to discover, with wonder, ices with sherbet reek like nightsweats; a windsail of pooled light thru puddles of trees.

Brackish backwater-- thoughts of black ice and huddled masses of silver breaking thru the sun's winter curtain as erupting coins.

SHAMROCK

Is there anything prettier than that-- to stare into your manifold spaces toward the hook & vine of cathedral leaps, the vaults & crypts as go-betweens of an earthy worship, the supine female form?

By quiet pools, thrush in the thicket with red berry behind its eye, miniature sun proceeding by the branch to undress the bark with leaves as passionate culprits kissing dark.

Clasped hands upward lies the sky my masterpiece angel, I bite lush meadows, tread spongy brooks, endear daring small of back, crevice taste nape and neck, a beatific pilgrim nearing a fleshy way-station, first charting his compass, fathoming a probe to collect armfuls of starlight & shade, hair, eye, lip like fragrant sea-grape --pine & cedar bough in love-lorn resin smile.

LOST PATROL

Blue walls were grottoes, subterranean panels for covert messages, the occasional mot juste squirrelled up thru paint & memory.

Something like guitar strings dangling only you employed tear sheets from Rolling Stone (counter-culture fly paper to catch the runny masses).

The blue walls existed as firing ranges, gunpowder plots for ideas scribbled on pencil waves like the movement of snakes (or commandoes on their bellies) thru desert sand.

Blue walls. Blue grottoes. Blue moods to temper finger oases (tap-tap of skeletal tree on your window pane) crawling thick with pregnant fruition with the bayonet lull of words.

Snippets of that legacy (hobnailed like a lost patrol) forlorn as yellowing pages or dusky petals unfolding.

BLACKAMOOR

Breaking up-- as in the cloissoné jar you dropped. . . little regard, a few brittle pieces scattered about the floor. Let's call it "shedding feelings". Expensive? There's always another humidor tucked away in the cranny of another antique shop; after all, a woman is only a woman although a fine, Cuban import is a worthy smoke.

"What this country needs is a good 5¢ cigar". Panatellas? He might have added tight-fitting, long lasting.

Nooks & crannies. Little things, your ways. Fruit fly (perhaps damsel wing) as symbol of perishability. My emblematic coat of arms. No season of regrets, rather snatch of minutes, the oasis span of a single candle.

Who knows? The sun nudging petals at the close of another day. Your eyelids casting shrouds (and shadows), the long funeral walk of your hair across the pillow. Then awakening. You gathering tresses much as a bird trilling feathers. Clandestine, these rendez-vous' Clementines.

Air of mystery and melancholy street, the moon up & poking holes in my argument. Tedious fingers, no account matter of factness lasting eternities.

Imagine, you & this moon, dowagers together crotchety, decades hence, making tea. Curls of black leaves, grumbling.

Blackamoor and sadness, cult king of empty transforming the bright & ruddy complexion into barely honourable dishwater.

You can ask what this means. A cough. Twirl of spoon in a cup, deafening answers.

I prefer the lonely wine bottle, egret in flight & motion, retaining dignity across a crumpled, brown bag. Listless, linoleum floor.

UP FROM THE FLOOR

They sit in silence. In camera, around the table. Terrifyingly stern, stares that grew antlers in my eyes.

It was as if thunder or bolts with electricity were being decreed. The self-important, the pompous, well-fed and self-assured. Here to hazard a fling of the dice--to decide whether another should eat.

Employment. The interview. One with yellow tusks protruding to his coffee cup. Eyes, some primordial forest cut for a firebreak back of his soul. And I think of the desperate, those lacking bus-fare to get to such a carnival. Valuable postage money, photocopying, scrimped dollars for a suit to entertain the pumpkins dicing for a worthless garment. A scavenger run, piles of white applications heaped as bones in a graveyard made careless after a violent storm.

Or elephants in tow, trunks wrapped around the other waiting for the ringmaster to signal the question important; whether a neophyte new at sharpening his teeth at a daily wage should be allowed presence onto such a hallowed ground.

And I think such things are the very matter of evil--that these are vile intemperates with their accursed shortlists deigning to be gracious, shaking hands after the fact. Mafioso manners, the sickly grins back of the shovels used to bury another.

MEN OF SHADE

All the candles are passing out, one by one. They have evaporated their brightness, overpowered limpid cracks in their own flames, seized the outpouring air with hesitant breath to brave a flicker of new hearth while knocking holes against the warm men decorating fireside shade.

KNIGHT-ERRANT

A well-thumbed book like a well-thumbed life, "whilst you walk this earth" yet nothing is "afoot", as so many small boys throwing stones through the funeral parlour glass door.

A cake-walk? Being alive and interacting across the face of the multitude is terrible algebra running into unfathomable sums. "Doing your sums", my grade school teacher used to say and I still am. Whippersnapper, learning lessons in a strange stamina sort of way.

One of the multitude died last night & is now "resting" in a large, Victorian parlour. Even the walls grimace. I went by, caught a peek at the assemblage chasing thru rain to see his last hurrah. Look, "parlour" can be deadly serious even if ice-cream and pizza attach dead-pan humour to the term. Imagine, picking the last day of the month to go packing. Finale.

"Going down to the sea in ships". Death as voyage escaping prison confines of the harbour. Cliches donate dim glimpses into the apparent. One sees a lot by the moon. Crisp, fall air and leaves yellowing frightened from their wits to end their brief, balloon walk. Such faraway faces of Eve and a boat moored to a dock.

Crossing streets-- a gray, fusillade church, knight-errant, breaks the night. Trees chuckle in coves through wispy clouds. Madonna's face in a shawl only it's not on the stained glass window I see her. She seems to be pouting. Ashamed of what we have to go through at the end of this filth and stupidity? Restrictions? Death lifts them in one heave of the casket. More illuminating are the mourners. Dashing thru the sleet in brief poignancy; shrill, old voices that knew the deceased reciting what can only be the obvious. Leaden eyes that cast no shadow.

Hardly analogous to being "called home" or "going to their reward". More light is cast by the street lamp, the pale glow of fireflies and neon signs winking-drinking waves like the fisherman's cork.

This place is holy to me. A shrine. Night air with mist collecting, watching flames shuffle over hearth-stones; leaves mount a glade.

The bitterest berry, flower to lily of the valley. A heart that makes gravelly noise. Tiny angel spread of petals, no black funeral vestments for me.

Standing close to the clock and thinking. A luxury bought with time, in every evening weeping in the corner.

WATER FAST (THE PEARL FISHERS)

Shopping in their heads --a man a pair of shoes right colour (tan, off-white) shape-- only good physiques need apply, degree, tall; self-confidence a "must".

Not yuppie, really, more consumerism as in I made the grade (she really thinks this; meanwhile, she's plump, dull).

Standing in the showroom window, she spies the mirror image of herself. Your attitude is your altitude. Of course, he's "polished" (tho' not worn), urbane witty--this goes without saying. Well-travelled, maybe, though potential liability, here, suggestive of footloose. Restless. Perhaps given over to bouts of hedonism--a dangerous portent.

Feel I've stumbled back in time, holding court with Cesare Borgia, Lorenzo the Magnificent significantly transformed to a Renaissance courtier. Harpsichord and madrigal in hand (& head,), I recite my litany.

I pack a mean wallop-- humour, I mean, for no one on this spic 'n span planet wants somebody too droll. Intensity is a ripple from the sixties. "Relationship", kickback to the after-glow on-glow seventies.

Eighties women love "feedback", "interfacing". Its fashionable to think chic. Restless troubadours should be dyed in their own ilk. Sporty chaps are in demand, ones with visceral longing for babies & the peroxide smell of Javex in diaper pails wafting thru their nostrils. Heady brew, Perrier & BMW types.

Chrome-plated men with the razzle-dazzle of the Boardroom tugging at their cufflinks. Mutual funds equates with mutual interests.

The man's wishes? A dollop of Dijon mustard on you! Hitting the nail on the head. Holding up her middle finger to dry nail polish, I see my future and, golly, does it ever shine.

TALES OF BRAVE ULYSSES

Artists (astrologers never lie) are birthed when Venus is rising-- not against cat's whelp (eye of newt, tongue of frog) calamitous mist or London fog; far, ferny forbidding fenn.

When Venus rises, yes dons Botticelli's cloak or was it her hair gathered in tresses long by lovely handfuls parading it all on a patty shell --her twin oysters ambrosia a Ulyssean mirroring winedark sea, purpling color of a robin's egg.

Artists are born in something of Venus . . . conceived along coral-corral highway lariats, foam of passion modern cowgirl lowering the drapes.

INSIDE SEAM

Having wilderness cracks in emotional facades chinks within to let cabins in.

2 Porous wind examining pavement, foot-sore maybe loose winding entrails of our hearts into lavatory paper; would that it pleased riddled trees --more whistling, poked holes across oasis tracks wandering spaces.

3 Blistering thought, paint flecks chipped in the mica-afraid heat of wan-ton passion; (acknowledging debts to Chinese cuisine) a wan smile left from which I pretend to remember all.

4 Love-smitten to lend the reach of your arm-- sighs, droop to hips heaving a droll verandah (like curtain's edge across the exhausted wall).

5 Besmirched stain, The lavender hoop of your belt is a winding lizard's skin or perspiring rope to anchor the filmy edge of letters written, not sent.

The breeze, quiet wind-- a chipmunk with woodchips poked into a grin.

DEBRIEFING

I won't envy the heat this August. The fall (English say autumn) burrowing like urinating dogs thru trees, carrying winter woolies with sniff of air crisscrossing the lion's tamer's path I must trod when snow hits.

2 No, I won't envy searing blasts be they inclement weather or lost souls bargaining with rain. Acceptance . . . they say is the key and the word clangs like chimes into my biology, a grandfather clock to my own chamber music, a little something to cheer and serenade the buffeted spirit.

3 Think still thoughts in gloomy houses when petals cry burst in springtime. This is done in preparation for brighter moments ecstatically greeting November chill, devouring the last chestnut, cursing wheat-cakes over winter's fire.

4 A pleasant page crammed in the tumbler briefcase carrying my life's thimble, rocketing toward a brilliant destiny all 4 seasonal planets orchestrating mood; the patch quilt procupine quill emotion tapestry working overtime like a fish hook thru brain's inner eye, ocular hair shirt pulled on at warning's glance to trigger the way I boil eggs; devour slivers of wood on learning another day kicks ass from the horizontal pillow.

NAIAD TRANCE

The leaves on their trumpet flames Richter scale inside pulse stems-- into the gorge, la gorge throat and crevice of the canyon arroyo.

Walking the slit into rheumatism earth the twilight pain of Paleozoic ice, Jurassic Age whence rupture sculpted rock

River precipice the afternoon dangling like shadow beside taiga sun lost to dark & rain toward the water now, ever, and chemical rushing sound.

Chameleon, I would swear this journey was that, worse, sorceress on my emotions; I left pathways contoured with Merlin rock & trees like Babbitt refugees from the Nahanni, fearful Dogrib aboriginals swarming my imagination their scalp-locks loaded for bear.

Arabesque boulder, lavender curls of winter-wind swept moss and berets of tiny, dead soldiers. The moisture between you and clearing.

Hushed forest an envelope edge of moisture patterns, more leaves in reindeer formation asserting themselves in beckoning sleighs and trance of veined, elfin hand skirting cracks & fissure gloom.

PYROMANIA

She had a fireplace-- the sexual kiln of her pyromaniac desire, a brick embedded in heat, white hot coal to ember, her lust flaring red, soot to powder dark as charcoal smear, a walk across shimmering mirror.

TIDE CHARTS

To create dream-- the pearl thru wine effect, oil and vinegar viscidity of giant salad leaves basking on the broken picnic table like so many lemurs taken to a Malagasy forest.

Liverwurst on rye, cuff-links drag the hard, mica table; so, why be afraid 'cause spume from waves glows upward in so many trails of grey-laden smoke?

This island looks like a loaf, a dot or mole on inviting cheeks, to me; so wary, invariably, of land (and perhaps the Sand Man) amongst all those wandering eyes, especially the sea-scape, curl of snake illuminated in a sudden, tropic shower.

See the sudden bandanna of rock squeezed so tight by shore's edge that a grim hammer of stones intones a warning?

Its back from the wars to dive, there, among threads of water where needle eyes of little fish ("young fry of treachery") are so scalpel-like dunes and eddies of living colour shake you.

To slake a thirst. For adventure. For precision. Try a lavender roll of water curved in bite recess much as a conch's outer shell dons triple-ripple effect.

Up the stakes. Skillets off the meandering edge are pounding undertows and riptides resemble porters in foreign airports who simply smile. . .

Purple dye on white toga, water retches up on land.

A necklace, this activity, in warm shallows. Consciousness raising--reef life coming into contact with the bumper edge to freedom.

Heavenly bodies parry light from the moon, wrath from a deeper bellows cough up one hand raised in silver mourning.

VILLAGE IDIOT

Dodder capitulates on his bum, skulks under fence posts a twitch of Timothy weed prying apart his massive lips.

A strip of lavatory paper his golden rule; the merrie lad bakes ready made surprises to the jowled response of his parting brains.

The mastication of shoe laces on tired leather jerkins akin to grinding Michelin rubber--his reedy voice in overbite haste rounding corners like a club-footed dog travelling edgewise from his master's sight.

CLIPPERSHIP

Pausing to see light thru chinks the corner door battered barn floor musty webs and pebbled face expect shadows from flecked dust, yet damsel flies with doily edge blanket the air a throaty radiance in angel hair and stepping stones to nearest crevice and laddering place.

FLOOD

White ermine/white semen, green eyes jade from the night.

Eternity falls in sparrow, an inch-worm down a pear-coloured leg, within this droplet lies coiled raptures of a snake, anointed coils musky as in woolen handshake where tributaries turn into socks wrapped to the vertebrae clasp of a teenager's leg.