Sunday, July 4, 2010

THE MOON HIDDEN BY CLOUDS



[A small old-fashioned modernist sequence written during May to September 1976.]


He hath shewed strength with his arm; he hath scattered the proud
in the imagination of their hearts.--Luke 1:51


The moments blend together
Surely we were children together
The essence of all my scenes
Sleeps in another skin



I am delighted to think
To think of what I want to know
To know of what I want to think
To think I am delighted



I talk to my friend
The audience
Ah witness my creation



We'll smash the marble of the night sky
We'll stipple more stars and sculpt
A dawn of grottos and still roses
We'll absorb the color from the faces of virgins
Yes boys...yes...with our horns in the wind



The phases of night and day join arms
Over the buildings
The heat of their embraces is the color of this twilight
We notice the similarity to the neon
We won't even be friends 'til the drinks are paid for



The violet sky tingles in the web of the window
It pulses with every breath
The dark moves around your transfixed face
Mad eyes in the candlelight



A pipe smokes beneath a trellis if stars
The ashes huddle in the bowl
Prepare the scene before the hour strikes



Every crime is the perversion of a need
Every ape stalks his family tree
But will history show Freud brought
More of them back alive than Jesus?
Both of them attended by vice
Hanging like fruit
Outside a cage



I'm giving you plenty of chances
I know I'm generous
I know I'm a fool



We are the deaths of each other
What an egotist you'd have to be
TYo be poet or powermonger
And not realize you are led to your maker
By the opinions you despise



You darling live in this world totally
It is here nothing opens by itself
Thus I didn't know your love
This heartbreak was mine
I'm neither vain nor psychic



I remember the mushroom warnings
Too much was there
I saw a tool lying in the grass
It was almost Mexican in concept
Its form fit a groove in the scene
I turned it to an ocean into which stars were falling



Why are you such a bitch?
I stood outside your window all night
If you saw you widened the curtains for nothing
You're never more naked than when you're trying to be friendly



Love passed right through without touching me
It's senseless to pine away for an intensity unreceived
I was too busy destroying myself
I wanted us to be so tight people would
Feel good just seeing us together



I waited for your denial
Fast hands traded up the rope of nerves
You say you're looking for work in New York
You say you know what you're doing
Don't go there if you don't



I would be there if not for you
Don't think you did me any favors
I do not like it here



You were my last hope
I knew for a fact you resented it
You took me to task
Long past my due
You brought me to tears
In an echoed room
And left
Leaving the door open



My love for you is dying
I'm realizing my greatest ambition
To be a cripple
Who neither sees nor hears nor feels
Still as stone
With rage becoming
A life in the mind




Learn to play an instrument
It's the only way you'll get laid
After all people put out cigarettes in sculptures



The steeple chimes a sentimental Irish drinking song
The night glows with mist warm as blood
Drunk in the window I stare down at the congregation
I don't remember how we connect



The world lies under an assault of sun
Flowers are torn out of their seeds
Leopards feed on chicks in the nest
Dreamers get screwed and how



The solution was hard come by
The criticism pointed and stuck
But he felt ready for the honors
His mind drops like an egg



It was an open window to the courtyard
One could almost tighten in the day-long shadow
Children's playful screams echo
Like the head being stuck



I don't think I'll ever be through with my misery
Too many know me by its name
Too many don't like to be wrong



I'm afraid I've been dreaming again
You said you loved me after all
Your tongue penetrated and I went off in a daze
Out of my mind and finally into my arms



Weaned on a paradise of guilt
We developed
We grew nails and sharpened them to improve draw
Perhaps one day we will change the rituals
In the name of love we've already destroyed the world



One night I spilled my guts for mercy
The excuses were in vain
As were the dissimilar bitternesses
Never tell love of love's secrets
The next morning the moon set
With nothing between us



I don't know where you are
I sometimes wonder if fate is ever more precise
Than when it joins us in our different identities
The next time we meet it won't matter
We will have forgotten enough
Of our sense of place
To be more alone than strangers



And so it came to be void
We sat in bars 300 miles apart
It's no wonder we noticed what others were wearing
It's no wonder we listened to the music



Bitterness comes to flower
While we tool with the spade
We are defined by pain
And remember every detail
As with the memory surging up full
Children send up a cry
The wind takes it in exchange
As the tree claims another kite



I grew away from our time with anxiety
Fear and mistrust were the clock's hands and numbers
Finally I counted the crosses
Tearing a leaf off the calendar
Dull and warm in comfortless Autumn
Was a man distracted by remembrance
Was the moon hidden by clouds



I believe I've lost this thread


* * *
Content (c) 2008-2010 Philip Milito.








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