Copyright 1990 by Gregg G. Brown <\/p>\n
This Book Published By
\nBLAST PRESS <\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
\r\nEvery day there was a little less of himself, \r\nA moon of diminishing hues, \r\n \r\nLess and less, as he strode from the balustrade \r\nTo the roses, each night a different leaf fallen, \r\n \r\nEach day a new ambivalence in the sun's assertions, \r\nProverbial gold in a stale world \r\n \r\nWhere the water tasted tinny and the tap spat \r\nErratic chuffs of water in an empty cup \r\n \r\nAnd something or other had died a day earlier, \r\nHad died and had its poor death recorded, \r\n \r\nLess and less itself, or its wintery twin, \r\nPacing from the terrace to the garden. \r\n\r\n\r\n<\/pre>\n<\/a>Cloudy Apostrophe<\/h2>\n
\r\nCalmed lightnings in the evening sky \r\nShuttle, like warm humans, from sty to sty. \r\n \r\nIf ever there were an evening readiest \r\nFor comparisons, gilded in flashes, half real, \r\n \r\nIt is this evening, blotched by light, \r\nSpumed with cloudy figures of our imagining. \r\n \r\nAnd so the erratic discharges of our thoughts \r\nAre themselves significant, \r\n \r\nIndicative perhaps of the circuits that we make \r\nCircling one disaster and another catastrophe, \r\n \r\nSymptoms of a discord so profound, \r\nMalevolent fragrances of black, pitted things, \r\n \r\nThat long-fruited hopes have withered, and everlasting airs \r\nCrimp their silvery middles tiredly \r\n \r\nAnd the brazen horizon awes us a little less \r\nWith its simmering magnificence \r\n \r\nDull a little, and a little cold even in summer, \r\nShunted to one side a little, and old and used. \r\n \r\nWormy lightnings, restore the discords of your colorings; \r\nThese are the makings of our end. \r\n \r\n\r\n\r\n<\/pre>\n<\/a>Remote Chiaroscuro Enters West Virginia<\/h2>\n
\r\nIs it a death of the self, or of the self's \r\nOne projection, fatal ray, deadliest beam \r\n \r\nUnfolding from out of a stillness the self contains \r\nLike scissors, or a dove's placid wings, abruptly flown \r\n \r\nFrom brooded palms, this quiet that returns \r\nTo the stone house, empty and white \r\n \r\nIn a whiter air? Something deeply tired \r\nHas taken the place of the cows, \r\n \r\nStill morose, filling the entire structure \r\nWith placid breaths, but what is it? \r\n \r\nIs there, in this fix of airs, an extinguishing anguish \r\nThat broods from the barn, the tired reds \r\n \r\nFalling in the air under a Dutch hex \r\nAnd a soggy roof buckled by the weather, \r\n \r\nSomething that ticks in the empty hayrick \r\nOr yawns from the creosote timbers \r\n \r\nLeaning together a little in the space left \r\nBy the solemn breathing of the cows? \r\n \r\n\r\n\r\n<\/pre>\n<\/a>Among the Shadows<\/h2>\n
\r\nThe pines in their shadows are distinguishing themselves \r\nDetached in a softly shaking emptiness \r\n \r\nSeparate from themselves and their riveting greens, \r\nVoraciously vivid, beyond coughed words, \r\n \r\nBeyond a last leaf stretched in a last silence \r\nLike Hamlet at the vacant end of the meadow, \r\n \r\nDying in summer, breathing a last breath \r\nIn the final rye and grasses, seeing the trees loud sway \r\n \r\nAt the rim of the yellow field, shaken \r\nSoftly, softly, following a blue track through the pines. \r\n \r\n\r\n\r\n<\/pre>\n<\/a>Flatterers Among the Roses<\/h2>\n
\r\nDoes the moon sail in its sumptuous heaven \r\nDisfigured by pity, \r\nBlindly tearful in an icy lair? \r\n \r\nTo walk in the moonlight, to trod \r\nThe verdant ambers, and to think of nothing, \r\nWhat sort of matter for a poem is that? \r\n \r\nIs it a matter of having nothing \r\nIn the mind, icy sequester \r\nOf nothing, of nothingness layered in its own absence? \r\n \r\nOr is it a matter, rather \r\nOf nothingness icily conceived, icily meant? \r\nIt is a matter of sinister consequence. \r\n \r\nTo walk in the violet moonlight \r\nDiscussing the moon from which it flares \r\nDisfiguring the roses \r\n \r\nIs a kind of nothing, a suave \r\nHollowness that we may hold near \r\nOr suspend between us as we walk. \r\n \r\nO savage celestial, misty moon, \r\nSnarling in your lair, speak, \r\nIf speak you must, in dismal syllables \r\n \r\nSome more blatant human meaning. \r\n \r\n\r\n<\/pre>\n<\/a>Loquaciousness in Louisiana<\/h2>\n
\r\nPicaresque birds cry hi-yi-hi \r\nFrom the lustered branch \r\nFestooned with ants. \r\n \r\nCrocodiles mustered in the bayou \r\nFlutter melodious tails \r\nUnder oaks. \r\n \r\nCaptains of the stratosphere march high, march high \r\nStepping the squalid dews \r\nOf gaudiest clouds. \r\n \r\nWhen the marshal of the swamp cries hi-yi-hi \r\nIt is his essences' valence \r\nNeatly strummed. \r\n \r\n\r\n\r\n<\/pre>\n<\/a>Aperitif in November<\/h2>\n
\r\nStanding a long time before the pond, in November \r\nStanding and looking at nothing \r\n \r\nOr looking and forgetting it is oneself that looks \r\nOne begins to think \r\n \r\nThat the sinewy residue at the bottom of the pond \r\nAnd the pond, and one's consciousness of the pond \r\n \r\nMoving over it like an enigmatic cloud \r\nAre one, that the famous watery veils are no longer \r\n \r\nWaiting to be torn, or that, torn already, \r\nThey have left only these sinewy shreds, \r\n \r\nGluey blacks thinly dispersed in the space \r\nBetween the self, astutely observing, \r\n \r\nAnd the brown pane of water that lifts the clouds \r\nAnd the bottom of the pond. \r\n \r\n \r\n<\/pre>\n<\/a>The Condition of the Furniture<\/h2>\n
\r\nWhen the house stands empty, the rooms disgorged \r\nOf all the crumpled laundry daily life imposes \r\n \r\nHow conditional our maundering sorrows seem, \r\nAnother routine, like sleep and death, \r\n \r\nEngaging our restless spirits \r\nAs soccer in Brazil, the overnight weather, \r\n \r\nThe uninhabited chair, weighted with fringes, \r\nThat stares in the leaning mirror morbidly \r\n \r\nOr the dirty shovel that leans in the garage, \r\nA little old and uselessly, by a mended fishnet. \r\n \r\n \r\n\r\n<\/pre>\n<\/a>The Mannikin Grown Large Again<\/h2>\n
\r\nOne has lived long enough \r\nAmong rusted hills, and the solemn sunlight \r\n \r\nSpinning its steel shadows out of itself \r\nOver those hills, thickly gathered at the arbor \r\n \r\nWhere matted vines still move on the latticework, \r\nPurple embrasures, seeming almost to speak \r\n \r\nIn a light that is constantly fading, \r\nShifting its emphasis, a sliding center \r\n \r\nThat creeps over partial hills, \r\nReal where revealed, invisible elsewhere \r\n \r\nFull of hidden masses and interior kisses \r\nThe way a sliver of grass is an entire field of grass, \r\n \r\nThe way a man represents a man, \r\nWithout feeling, in the inhuman landscape. \r\n \r\n\r\n\r\n<\/pre>\n<\/a>A Capella, A Cape, Agape<\/h2>\n
\r\nDun Madonna, caped and veiled \r\nBy modest night, the color of shale, \r\nUnclench the spools \r\nOf moroser weather \r\nTucked by fingers beneath your vermillion cap. \r\n \r\nUnclench the spools \r\nOf angrier rains and redder tornadoes \r\nFrom your tense cap \r\nWhile the violet moon's sisterly sap \r\nDrips bip, and bip, and bap, bap, bap. \r\n \r\nHer slender tongue \r\nUnwrapped the whitest portions of the night. \r\nIn the hills, green winds prevail. \r\n \r\n \r\n<\/pre>\n<\/a>Solar Resignation<\/h2>\n
\r\nThe sun, scintillating cadaver, \r\nRefusing blue, or mauve, or sincerer purple \r\n \r\nFor the great step he was to make that day \r\nEntirely out of himself and into the world \r\n \r\nWhere dull mauves congeal, purples espouse darkly, \r\nAnd blues irresolutely go blank, \r\n \r\nUnpacked his scalding instruments in the dark \r\nListening to the machinery of crickets, grown tired, \r\n \r\nThe imperceptible brrr \r\nOf cold discomfort that enmeshed their foils \r\n \r\nAnd, tired himself, threw the rude cash of light \r\nIn the moon's urinal. \r\n \r\n\r\n\r\n<\/pre>\n<\/a>The Native Muse of This Rock<\/h2>\n
\r\nThe native muse of this rock \r\nWakes dumbly in the morning mist, and in the garden, \r\n \r\nAttaches itself to a cockerel by thin tins \r\nOf light from the bleakest planet; \r\n \r\nWakes, and stumbles about the house in a robe, having misplaced \r\nDawn's engines, the consciousness of a dawn \r\n \r\nIn the folded dark of sleep, last night \r\nWhen, by the bedstand, it seemed a few syllables had made \r\n life cohere. \r\n \r\nThe native muse of this rock, dumbly awake, \r\nPreens against an obliterating light. \r\n \r\n \r\n\r\n<\/pre>\n<\/a>The Butler of the Weather<\/h2>\n
\r\nThe butler of the weather, \r\nEssential lumin on a globe gone dark, \r\nParsed us out upon the table \r\nWith a certain ceremonious, filial delicacy. \r\n \r\nWhat we were we were, without detail, \r\nAnd so was he, tracing his investigations out \r\nThe way a dachshund traces the motivating fuel \r\nOf furtive foxes darkly red. \r\n \r\nEven so, rising to its perch \r\nA bird of poignant recitations \r\nCries sky and sky and sky \r\nIn American barrenness. \r\n \r\nEach thing in the evening tried to find \r\nWhat sort of thing it was, and how it had arrived \r\nIn the evening of which it was somehow a part \r\nAs stars descended \r\n \r\nOver Florida. \r\n \r\n\r\n<\/pre>\n<\/a>Variations on a Viol<\/h2>\n
\r\nThe builder of cellos in solar weather \r\nExtracts a suavity from knots, true trills \r\nThat mock the swilling catbird in his royal chair. \r\nBut from what seed increased the pilfered wood? \r\nFarm boys and their milky maids grown old \r\nMust, as hale timbers rudely weathered, \r\nMust strain, and crack, and, in their scale, break \r\nRemoter love's fiercest chord, dwindling \r\nAt length as even the grandest cock \r\nGoes rolling, listlessly, on to noon. \r\n \r\nII \r\nBlue rabbis without hats are chasing still \r\nWhat rabbis, bending at their lamps, construe \r\nTo be the bright perennial, in renewing hues \r\nEmerging, out of so much ephemeral dust. \r\nHearers of thunder in their flamenco capes \r\nMake much of its minor terrors and mimic hate; \r\nDividing time between one disaster \r\nAnd another catastrophe, that kills, \r\nThey are like drowned rabbis beholding doom \r\nIn a stoven ship of their own imagining \r\nWhile blazing fish peek about their bones. \r\n \r\n \r\n\r\n<\/pre>\n<\/a>Mud Slide in Vernal Weather<\/h2>\n
\r\nYou can see the earth shake, no doubt, \r\nIts myriad images \r\nIn your broken glass. \r\nYou can feel it, no doubt, \r\nIn your tenebrous nails. \r\nOr in the nervous laughter that the sky \r\nShakes down. \r\nPointed voice, mixing blues and browns \r\nIn a vivid mash that riffles the eye, \r\nThese solids, and these, \r\nRemain impenetrable. \r\n \r\nO how I regret not having killed \r\nThe mouse in my childhood. \r\n \r\nEnfold me, lucid muds, \r\nI would go cloaked in earth the way a duck \r\nDons water. \r\n \r\n \r\n\r\n<\/pre>\n<\/a>Fluxes of Ephemera<\/h2>\n
\r\nfor Amy<\/em>\r\nDisconsolate in the deepening weather \r\nOf a miserable December, \r\nCincinnatus made a house of song \r\nPinching out the solar imperative \r\nFrom other, more miraculous strains \r\nThat salted the winter air \r\nAnd coated the simple ice on the porch. \r\n \r\nWithout aids in impossible weather, \r\nCincinnatus made a house of song \r\nAnd took up, in primitive measure, \r\nA primitive abode. \r\n \r\n\r\n\r\n<\/pre>\n\nOh let the Light Be Broken<\/h2>\n
\r\nOh let the light be broken \r\nThat soaked and solemn \r\nOut of the sun's mouth spoken \r\nClimbed the virgin's hide \r\nAnd the grave of her face. \r\nBe buried in the stolen stone \r\nEach word of sight \r\nThat from the tongue's priested \r\nMemory is severed \r\nHunkered in the seed of the cold. \r\nOh let the light be broken \r\nOver shackled genesis \r\nUntil the husks have spoken \r\nWord and weed and sizzling stem \r\nOut of the grave of her face \r\nAlive again, and the once burning \r\nTurn of the world \r\nStumbles back to ochre. \r\nLet man and woman and infant dread \r\nOut of harrowed heart \r\nLain long and solemn \r\nStep from the narrow incision \r\nSpeaking in leap years \r\nThe carved distresses \r\nScourged in the drop of a tear's face \r\nHanging and grieving \r\nAfter its home of fruit \r\nUnder bruited tree \r\nBruised and fishnet against the sky \r\nSolemnly detached as a leaf's face \r\nGhosted on stones \r\nWaiting for the last hanged man \r\nTo dive alive at last. \r\n \r\n\r\n<\/pre>\n<\/a>A Questioner of the Weather<\/h2>\n
\r\nLess and less sure, O soul, the rain \r\nRepeats its residuum \r\nBlanking church bells with its ultimate referent: \r\nItself, or some other final thing \r\nThat bears the buffets of ceaseless existence \r\nLike a paper that rolls over in the wind \r\nOr the wind that rolls the paper, which, \r\nStartled itself, is full of paper sounds \r\nThe mud on the moon illumes. \r\n \r\nThe rain is rasping against the panes. \r\nA dark, familiar change, \r\nElusive elysium, starts at the edges of the ear, \r\nChewed by flies in a forgetful sun, \r\nHollow as a father's falsest word \r\nBefore drunken dinner, sheds its drunkenness \r\nOn a few, familiar objects. \r\n \r\nWhat word will ward these mute excursions? \r\n \r\n\r\n<\/pre>\n<\/a>A Mockumentary of the Sun<\/h2>\n
\r\nOne bakes and waits in the roisterous sun \r\nTapping out universal time with a particular foot, \r\nA principle shoe, worn leathers unable to reflect \r\nThe merest shard of all that solar crisis \r\nBurning in the sky and in the apperceiving chest \r\nLike boxed jewels winking out of showiest velvets. \r\n \r\nOne waits for the desert to be done with itself \r\nFor the holy sequoias to drop their arms, \r\nOne more martyr, torn down by storms, \r\nReduced by the sun to one skull of dreams \r\nThrowing one more shadow away from the hill \r\nLike a river that flows out of the mind at last. \r\n \r\nThis earth of cakes and sweet excrescences \r\nLets us eat the loam, lick saccharin sands \r\nFrom our lips, taste smeared blazons of cotton candy, \r\nRaspberry and chocolate, the florid saps \r\nWe bite from the tree, laden with glistering fruits \r\nWe ourselves have made, and ripened in each eye. \r\n \r\n \r\n<\/pre>\n<\/a>Dead<\/h2>\n
\r\nWhat has life's bitter disappointment brought \r\nLaid in a narrow, breathless bed? \r\nShall we curse all our drunken, muddy lot \r\nLain with long bones of the dead? \r\n \r\nAt the end of a rifle or parting stream \r\nPursued by a pursuing dream \r\nMan wakes up to find his enemies again, \r\nThe end of dreams, and all friends dead. \r\n \r\nWhat stays hid in the marrow there, \r\nThrust deep underground? \r\nThings purposed in the unpurposed air \r\nDie when those men are dead. \r\n \r\nWhether father or brother still pursue \r\nTheir work, or others' work, I do not know; \r\nI read it on a narrow, upright stone \r\nCast by the long bones of the dead. \r\n \r\nFathers sacrifice long-loving sons \r\nTo a nameless, breathless bed; \r\nStand we under an island sun \r\nOr lie with long bones of the dead? \r\n \r\n \r\n\r\n<\/pre>\n<\/a>Socketless and Sailor<\/h2>\n
\r\nSocketless and sailor \r\nIn the world's winded veins \r\nScented genesis and coffinsilk \r\nI mock the soberest cockerel \r\nDiving from the prism-spitting \r\nPinnacle of the world's mast \r\nUselessly singing \r\nAnd rant like a wronged girl \r\nAll my sweetest notes \r\nOver ignorant houses \r\nSlumbered in death and morning light. \r\n \r\nOut of the closeted shout this echo beats \r\nFeatures of a sinning man on tin \r\nMore pressed to anguish in a dial's sigh \r\nThan any victim of time heretically cried \r\nHas been bludgeoned by suns \r\nOr a pauper's bliss been \r\nCrimped in a penny's fear \r\nOr any tale of the world \r\nCauled in a scorpion's sting \r\nHas twisted its smile on a man's side \r\nOr any climbed tirade \r\nSpoken in wishes \r\nThat nature's weary fabulist \r\nSet down. \r\n \r\nGraveturning in wishes \r\nAs a wish is a kiss \r\nMy manbones shriek \r\nIn blooded inks \r\nOut of a rage welled and calmed \r\nAs any bird's ratcheted turn \r\nOver the thumbing sea at dawn \r\nCrawls at clouds \r\nIn inching desire as each wingbeat clips \r\nOver measured cessations \r\nChewing ships and bones to flour. \r\n \r\nOut of each brick \r\nThe cold dawn shakes \r\nAnd each root tooth of daisies \r\nCragged in the fingering spring \r\nFloods pulse and fever \r\nTo ramshackle gods agog \r\nAs saints in whispers \r\nEach aghast their closed wings keep \r\nSinging of statuary \r\nAnd the boiling joy \r\nOf the devil's boyish kiss. \r\n \r\nSo I this saintly mort cry down \r\nAnd each nailed lip kiss \r\nQuagmired in hatred \r\nTried and hung, on pentecostal cross and hatch \r\nBirthing the blood plant \r\nInsisting in stitches \r\nFor this world the word's wound. \r\nSo I, crumbling on windfall, \r\nOn sold bones and the tarot told \r\nWatch hatred disaster, man and god fall, \r\nAnd all loved things end.\r\n\r\n\r\n<\/pre>\n<\/a>The Silence<\/h2>\n
\r\nOn undemanding ground\r\nShot through with hollow sounds \r\nBird or bullet make\r\nOr some other keen cry, I take\r\nThis man for model, though in truth\r\nA small man of the town; and although\r\nHis grandfather was a thief\r\nAnd his father worse than that,\r\nI respect his grief, for what else can I\r\nThat wander in the clay?\r\n\r\nThere was a man had died\r\nFrozen to the mountainside\r\nAnd, nothing in his climbing pack\r\nAnd less upon his withered back,\r\nHe ascended the wintry peak\r\nSang a rich bar tune and died.\r\nIt was out of pride\r\nThe old man had died.\r\nHe gripped a flute, knew God's great lie,\r\nAnd had a clarity in the eye.\r\n\r\nAnd at the last, a damned wretched gaiety\r\nSuffused his frame.\r\nMountain echo upon echo\r\nHollowed out his fame;\r\nDying, trying once again\r\nTo empty himself of troubles by the score--\r\n"This joy of death\r\nStops the breath."\r\nIn the trees, excited laughter;\r\nAnd after, the silence.\r\n\r\n\r\n<\/PRE>\r\n<\/pre>\n<\/a>finis<\/h2>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Copyright 1990 by Gregg G. Brown This Book Published By BLAST PRESS Xavier Descends His Soap-Box Every day there was a little less of himself, A moon of diminishing hues, Less and less, as he strode from the balustrade To the roses, each night a different leaf fallen, Each day a new ambivalence in the […]<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1001002,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[152],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-5258","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-constillations-in-december","category-152-id","post-seq-1","post-parity-odd","meta-position-corners","fix"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/gregglory.com\/blastpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5258","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/gregglory.com\/blastpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/gregglory.com\/blastpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gregglory.com\/blastpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1001002"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gregglory.com\/blastpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=5258"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/gregglory.com\/blastpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5258\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":7411,"href":"https:\/\/gregglory.com\/blastpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5258\/revisions\/7411"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/gregglory.com\/blastpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=5258"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gregglory.com\/blastpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=5258"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gregglory.com\/blastpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=5258"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}