{"id":5270,"date":"2015-08-27T16:48:07","date_gmt":"2015-08-27T16:48:07","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/gregglory.com\/wordpress\/?p=5270"},"modified":"2023-07-08T10:19:43","modified_gmt":"2023-07-08T10:19:43","slug":"the-cabana-at-the-equator-2","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/gregglory.com\/blastpress\/posts\/the-cabana-at-the-equator-2\/","title":{"rendered":"The Cabana at the Equator"},"content":{"rendered":"

“When I was a child, I spake as a child….”<\/strong><\/p>\n

Gregg G Brown<\/p>\n

Copyright © 1986
\n<\/p>\n

<\/a>The Parent Tree<\/h2>\n
\r\nIt was in singing that he first \r\nKnew that worsening was not worst.\r\nHis father's large disappointed face \r\nTickled him inarticulate with terror \r\nUntil he forged, \r\nBelow sharp time, \r\nMonster suns of images. \r\n\r\nInvented heaven has a charm: litter\r\nOf apostles, magenta trees that dissolve \r\nAs vapor, where golden sparrows sing \r\nAnd do not sink. He thought \r\nOne wanted seeming, \r\nAn altered \r\nStrangled attitude of bird. \r\n\r\nA harsh man's countenance wavered \r\nIn ocean distortions of the moon. \r\nThe kneeling son felt a burning prayer \r\nAt his back, and ran, and ran \r\nIn stark fright \r\nOn broken bones \r\nBeneath a salt-dead tree. \r\n \r\n \r\n \r\n\r\n<\/pre>\n
<\/a>For Tenor Semblance, Who’s Dead<\/h2>\n
<\/span>\"What things real are there but imponderable thoughts?\"\r\n---Ahab \r\n  \r\nThere was Tenor in his party grave, sharing<\/em><\/strong> \r\nAll of the same old sick jokes with himself.<\/em><\/strong> \r\n \r\n1 \r\nHe says, "What is there besides imagining?\r\nThese four occasional walls will not bring \r\nSpring or sorrow to any unsuffering thing. \r\nIt is the will that wanes, in summer dark, \r\nAfter clogged stars have scraped the sky and left \r\nA newer dark for some cold singer's questioning. \r\nRusted apples gathered, honey melons dusky gold, \r\nCherries rosing in the tinted sun, what was invented\r\nIf not these things? Shall my hand remain \r\nUnfloured by its own effort? A pointed oar \r\nPlunges and plunges in a white war and remains \r\nAn oar. The mind is not so meager; it becomes,\r\nOnce its rent raiment roars, in polychromes \r\nAbove chalk waters that it held and gave, \r\nThat of which it sang and did not hear, because \r\nToo busy singing in undivided, tensile mystery." \r\n \r\n2 \r\nIf. on the wings of sparrows, men's feet shall flesh \r\nWho shall fly, in contrapuntal destiny,\r\nIn waltz time, alone, beneath \r\nThe unceasing testament of the waves?\r\nTenor Semblance in his water-wings, bulbing \r\nAt his back, held his breath and dived, at 4, \r\nInto the tossing terror of a tame sea. \r\nOnce caught among the coral's shadowing, he saw \r\nThe flash and error of dying fish in that dim maze.\r\nTheir antlered looks and opalescent eyes \r\nPlaced a holy horror in his slalom breast \r\nRacing, among more mobile lights, out of death's \r\nAbrupt shade. He knew of earth by this buried paradise. \r\nHe told his parents of the sharking waves and sea. Alone, \r\nHis executed gestures in scarred sunset seemed \r\nThe switch-back hesitancy of leaves. \r\n \r\n3 \r\nIt was his mother's going, her poignant death,\r\nLike still water, that made him hear \r\nCurlicues of God's named trumpet, world. \r\nA French horn paddles in his ear; \r\nFinches mocked the minister at her wake, his frown \r\nEmitted solo labyrinths, corona icicles of sound.\r\nTenor Semblance, leaving, knew his feet \r\nwere tambourines, clashing in the grass.\r\nAnd when he whispered, it was with sorrow \r\nThat he could not sing himself a barrow. \r\nIn her twinking time upon this mortal orb,\r\nIn laundered air, tender sequences \r\nOf love and love, flashed from her bright center \r\nLike perpetual suns that sang and knew their tune. \r\nIt was because of her he sought \r\nA personal, vocal dew. \r\n \r\n4 \r\nSemblance swelled in his soft decor.\r\nLike an awkward Alice, he used his vital eye \r\nTo distill a separate scenery in the dwindled grass. \r\nLittle thunder smoked the mountaintops. \r\nGnats as vultures bulked silence on their prey. \r\nBut a swung censor, sacred scenting, never lends \r\nIts incense to these more airy tendencies. \r\nNeither garland of flowers, in a stiff ring, \r\nNor any distincter bloom was worn.\r\nVictim in winter, he tried to say \r\nThe measureless landscape he became: \r\nDesolate branches, details of packed snow,\r\nPaired tracks of deer, or south-seeking geese \r\nDispassionate as the sky. There comes\r\nA crowd of moths, an abrupt lamp flapping \r\nIn discontinuous circles as he speaks. \r\n \r\n5 \r\nBut should we sacrifice infinite finesse for that \r\nSnowblind and last, fatal profundity? \r\nSonless Semblance once, with gagging glands,\r\nTurned abrogated Pa; the wincing world \r\nTrickled from his groin. He clawed out an eye\r\nAnd dived, lost in a reef, resulting in a sky \r\nMade blue, by harshest imagination, by \r\nExclusionary rules. Was it a mincing butcher's \r\nCleaver thumb, his abusement of a One, \r\nChopping up the single digit we pretend?\r\nFalse finesse? The sky was blue; he claimed \r\nTo be the author, and his grave \r\nWas dug in blue clay; bluets brushed the edge. \r\nHis mineral bones are scavenged by worms that die. \r\nThus we see, beyond cut division or misty ending, \r\nDeath is daughter to imagination's venting. \r\n \r\n6 \r\nA man is image and is sound, \r\nImagining sounds; a blare of being\r\nScribbled like a cloud, pinched nothingness \r\nPalely resembling himself, in a mirror;\r\nUnalterable shadow, that falls \r\nAs seasons fall, in whitest trumpeting. \r\nThus was Tenor in his dirty grave, \r\nIn severest evening, uttering \r\nA few, essential words. In his halter,\r\nDawdling day undid the staunching fist \r\nOf night, and materbirds like mandolins \r\nTwanged his very song. They were his toys, who,\r\nHautboy accountant, made of his breast \r\nFinal register. A second heaven, set\r\nBeside the first, is best, when we forget \r\nOurselves in what our wish of death becomes. \r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n<\/pre>\n
<\/a>Moon-Chant<\/h2>\n
\r\nA dead cork moon erases, shams\r\nThe swift subscription pediments of light--- \r\nBlanche magician's hand before a card, \r\nEternal current voyager of sight, \r\nEndlessly inscribed. \r\n\r\nYou, who section out the broken \r\nWindow's fragmentary glaze \r\nIn gold, auroraborealis ruins that shake \r\nThe scattered genet weedlings here of late, \r\n \r\nUntranslatable deathcard of all hate,\r\nWho full-sail mocks the sun, know \r\nI come to dance beneath your fake \r\nHepatitis curve of being, welcome skater \r\nWho deals with a slick grace the last \r\nMother-admonishment to poker hands. \r\n \r\nLilies launder moonlight in the lot. \r\nA moving silhouette will break their dust: \r\n\r\nImagination is its own remorse\r\nRecalling ancient beauties, one by one, until \r\nThe reinvented dead ladies emerge \r\nFrom the trapped torrents of a late laboring mind\r\nAnd coo and call and sveltly wend their way \r\nTo demand in time imagination's final lie:\r\nIts death; at last, to make \r\nOne monumental animate corpse of fate. \r\n \r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n<\/pre>\n
<\/a>The Cabana at the Equator<\/h2>\n
<\/span>\r\n1 \r\nDutch decorations groom the hours. \r\nThe parted dark resumes its essential black, \r\nIts pasteboard panache, dressed blues of indifference,\r\nA more vital seem. Still the old men dicker \r\nIn deeper dusk, realer hues, from\r\nBelow the perch of being in parrot patricides \r\nThat consume the expert, whistled throatings\r\nOf loftier loons, whose red retina shift \r\nTo scan a level heaven, unplummeted. \r\n \r\n2 \r\nThey were like the colors of these things.\r\nOld men of the river rocks, disparaging \r\nOld men of the river rocks in pairs.\r\nA portion of the evening looked down \r\nAmong palm fronds and purple sand, and glared\r\nA nimbus of new stars that pierced \r\nA rarer dark than thought or action formed,\r\nWhitely condemning with unalterable blare \r\nThe blandest barb of neutral fact. \r\n \r\n3 \r\nThe oceans stars were reflected in the men themselves, \r\nTheir trudging bucket hearts and bleary souls. Chrome, \r\nThe streaked adjustment of the light, apt intrusion \r\nOf subjective singe and burn, shook step by step, until \r\nThe stars were lost because the total sea was stars. \r\nTheir stony heads moved in unison, great grey rocks,  \r\nAnd tumbled towards the momentous moment of a cliff \r\nTo invent a waterfall. Their old hearts poured \r\nWhiter than before, among dashed rocks that babbled \r\nAs they poured. \r\n \r\n4 \r\nBut who can carry empty starlight in his purse, \r\nOr sew together toes for fins, hands for wings? \r\nThe ancient bretherns' hearts must fail.\r\nThey flop as they reflect, endlessly; a soul \r\nMust take a darkness from its carbon work, \r\nA scattered semblance tinctured of its grain. \r\netched pine swamped in black ink retains \r\nThe arbitrary suaveness of its growth, carved above \r\nThe image of twelve men like trees. \r\n \r\n5 \r\nWrong boys threw up spectrum dust at sunset. \r\nthey beat the rocky heads of elders viciously,\r\nLike drums, like drums, like drums, in time \r\nTo the whirred sensation of white wings. \r\nTheir dewy hands hardened with a thought.\r\nImagining, they made their pockets weighty  \r\nWith caught stones. They leapt, leapt, leapt, \r\nWithout their blue bodies diminishing. Imagining, \r\nThey braided their loose fingers into beards. \r\n \r\n6 \r\nTwelve boys danced in violet night, in a communal \r\nHymn that offered nothing brutal. It was their game. \r\nThis they knew, their short spaghetti beards and uncut \r\nMinds like bangs, in diamond time forever ripening, \r\nTook the minor light the unspent stars had saved \r\nAnd poured it on the orchard's hair, and fissured earth\r\nLike wine. Their sweet limbs were never heavy \r\nIn that sleepy paradise. They chant aloud their names: \r\nImpatient to insistent hands, moving as they mend. \r\n \r\n7 \r\nI descant upon a dusky theme \r\nIllegibly. What there is is this: \r\nThe men are trees. The men are rocks. \r\nThey mar and mark upon each other ceaselessly. \r\nThere is no outside agent agitating. They invent \r\nThemselves. The clock is riveting their veins.\r\nThey have never seen a star. They fly \r\nOn fins. And all of this I saw in some \r\nMirror-making, mirror-resembling dream. \r\n \r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n<\/pre>\n
<\/a>Ein Parable<\/h2>\n
\r\nUp from the coral came, loud and lost, disguised, \r\nThe boiled apparition of a one-time man; \r\nHis pockets bristled brine; an oyster clipped his nose,\r\nPearless. The ocean offered him, we \r\nCould not deny the gift, without endangerment; without \r\nHe had the outer aspect of a tardy sacrifice. \r\n\r\nThe closed committee of our welfare \r\nImmediately convened. They sought, they said, \r\nThe last abolishment of will for justice's sake. \r\nThe man hobbled off, in winsome chains, \r\nTo the hanging place, \r\nDragging upright flippers of glinting gold. \r\n \r\n \r\n\r\n<\/pre>\n
<\/a>Transmutations of the Solid State<\/h2>\n
\r\nAmber uncertainties of day decrease. Cinema skyscrapers, \r\nIce-strong in August's simmering, by custom,  \r\nStrain, vertical ambassadors of a raindown faith, \r\nUnbuttoned pageantry of striptease \r\n\r\nIn mineral prayers by crystal seconds click\r\nSkyward where the welter minutes works \r\nOblong in loss, incomplete, reversed \r\nBy hasty tobacco minutes of falsity \r\n\r\nPuffing from a face; casual, displaced--- \r\nBreak the blue nerve-strings from olive eyes, \r\nAnd amber eyes, that we may see you once unclothed; \r\nO beauty with a mind to terrorize! \r\n \r\nO ghost that haunts and leaves the self undone,\r\nAn abandoned shoe of spirit amid--- \r\nRadiant presentment of headlights, streets \r\nToo seeming-perfect to harbor scars, \r\n\r\nRivers of the face, deep windings \r\nOf the conestoga's strut, Manhattan accolades,\r\nSegregated tenements of hilarity, lets \r\nThe lost sea rage alone its winner-take-all \r\n \r\nAnd spaded waves. Those with taper memories, burn\r\nIn silent aquatic lives, cinched tendencies \r\nOf gain, condensed and closed \r\nSoliloquies of the inward gaze. \r\n \r\nRecall, love, the angled awnings that louvered \r\nIn the street and rescind their makeshift wanton\r\nGathers and their stays that stripe \r\nJazz consistencies of dreams, locked arms of thought. \r\n\r\nAnd freedom of the broken mind spends night \r\nLike fragment glints of pennies, dimes,\r\nIn an uncertain, subway sallow tenement \r\nLinking past and time and sanest beauty immutably. \r\n \r\nHow many hands have lent their grace and power, \r\nPast strict steerage of the sky, agile abandoners, \r\nTo build with conscious thought of staying these \r\nSandstone monuments of dreams? \r\n\r\nO lordly city, living sepulchre! Never unwind \r\nThe beaking strangulations of your light,\r\nClipped and clipped, astute on broken boxes \r\nAnd bandaged lives. \r\n \r\n                                  Twenty hundred thousand move out\r\nIn convict kicks, coral syllables of mouths \r\nUttering lovely convolutions in sharpest salt \r\nthat brims some vast veins' vented tension flow. \r\n\r\nO river city, sapient of light, there is more\r\nIn the level skeletons of your praise \r\nAnd mazy words than you or I, leaning above \r\nAny silver quay, may guess in any \r\n\r\nSun-silk scattering of days. \r\n \r\n \r\nII \r\n\r\nMusic in the mind is water \r\nSpelling white mansions in manacle light \r\nBy sloppy oceans, by Atlantic blue. \r\n \r\nThe boats became a syncopation of the art,\r\nSwift cutters paddling up to start--- \r\nJutting in some over-occasional spray.... \r\n\r\nSplay, the tragic motorblades that mix \r\nBones of rubies, your lost and salted eyes, resolute \r\nOf oceans, seamed into one white salt. \r\n\r\nWho can take the tiger-chime of arced spray \r\nAway, deep among the dimensionless swoon of day, \r\nAs diamond-dusted angle-trees cure a blue? \r\n \r\nLoops of light on clear glass circulate endlessly\r\nAs the shadow of some unbent beauty \r\nBlends an anchorage with graphite spillage of its heart \r\n\r\nIn one still spot. Tranquil water takes \r\nThe unaltered burn of day and rainbows it abroad: \r\nExact bright bands of unconquerable split light. \r\n \r\n \r\nIII \r\n \r\nShe stood in her summer arsonage, complete; \r\nHer arms shoved beauty to the brink. \r\nIn the rapt child-sway of her body blessed, \r\nShe liked to watch it totter. \r\n \r\nAllocate of praise, alone in lividness,\r\nHer Cleopatra charms derange a face \r\nMade numberless, the legion losses \r\nSummer and moonlight conspire to take \r\n \r\nIn the shrill seconds preceding birth, \r\nBlazing awkward apt adjectives of light, \r\nExplosions of burnt rose, blasphemies of sight: \r\nHer embarrassed breasts consoled a sigh. \r\n\r\nWith bicycle moods of syllables, wise\r\nSoft sofa ministries of age displayed,--- \r\nThe scrubbed violation of too many hands \r\nAlready resting after \r\n \r\nThe aching dilation of too many years.\r\nOpinionless as steam in vapor rage  \r\nThe undiluted, vast minions of grey age \r\nRemain and inculcated the glass world's verdure. \r\n\r\nO mirror-girl who swam with me! \r\nYour otter plash alarms, quelled seemings, balms\r\nNo untethered slash of wind will solve \r\nWith treasured fingers, knives of burnt cellophane, \r\nRemain to dissipate \r\n\r\nThe slight indignations under fiber lies that\r\nDisplay and disingenuate \r\nThe twenty mobile armistices of face \r\nIn alcohol alacrities of soul. You blinked \r\n \r\nThere, in antechamber emptiness of air,\r\nBy a blank slant sea \r\nShelving its green shoals in coral fashion \r\nAgainst the petticoat interiors of railroad stations: \r\nThe lazy, shoved accoutrements of waiting. \r\n \r\nWe were everywhere at once, one summer.\r\nHer working woman's apple-soul \r\nDaunts momentously the unworked opinions of stars\r\n---Daunts in a moment's unmaking \r\nThe slipped and gradual symmetry of stars. \r\n \r\nwhite velvet siftings of the filter moon \r\nSlept in lonely pages of the leaves; \r\nSister swelter of the sapphire sun forgot, they became \r\nThe downward shaft and symbol of desire. \r\n \r\n \r\n<\/pre>\n
<\/a>Perception at the Center<\/h2>\n
\r\nChaos is eccentric else, among the green \r\nHabiliments of this disease, \r\nThis earth, this atmosphere \r\n\r\nWe sicken of and breathe. The arrant mind \r\nTicks like a cockvane in a white sky. \r\nBlackly circles the tragic thought of death \r\n\r\nAround an empty farm: the false, shadow-sharp\r\nConcern that it invented. Past tipped buckets \r\nAnd abandoned calves, lonely for their mothers, \r\n \r\nSick-eyed mermaids maunder in their scales, \r\nElectric after \r\nA crumpled pail \r\n \r\nOf the pure, chiaroscuro myth. \r\n\r\n\r\n\r\n<\/pre>\n
End<\/h2>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
“When I was a child, I spake as a child….” Gregg G Brown Copyright © 1986 The Parent Tree It was in singing that he first Knew that worsening was not worst. His father’s large disappointed face Tickled him inarticulate with terror Until he forged, Below sharp time, Monster suns of images. Invented heaven has […]<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1001002,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[117],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-5270","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-cabana-at-the-equator","category-117-id","post-seq-1","post-parity-odd","meta-position-corners","fix"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/gregglory.com\/blastpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5270","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=5270"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/gregglory.com\/blastpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5270\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":7406,"href":"https:\/\/gregglory.com\/blastpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5270\/revisions\/7406"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/gregglory.com\/blastpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=5270"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gregglory.com\/blastpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=5270"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gregglory.com\/blastpress\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=5270"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}