HYMN XI
Yeshua, O Yeshua, legions
of demons are dying to drive
the Holy Spirit from many of us
living in this wilderness.
The more we turn our lives
to your desires, the more the legions
try to snuff our fires. We pray
the Holy Trinity
Bermuda Triangulates
the Adversary’s fiends,
even for one day and night,
since we need sleep,
since we need sleep,
we who strain ourselves so
joyously for you — you whose
glory is our driving force.
AMEN
Image: Marc Di Saverio
SONNET XIV
for Diane Windsor
When I was still the husband of the wind —
when I was Leopardi-sure I’d never
know a woman’s body’s ways — when I
was nineteen – when I was Prufrock-positive
of mermaids never singing to me, either,
of a life without betrothal or progeny –
– when I was one of the hideously-bodied —
– When I was still the husband of the wind,
– I would dream, like Pygmalion, of my donna perfetta,
– One whose soul was as beauteous as her body,
– One whose nature was sublime but unlikely,
– and I would dream that she would come to life,
– that she would meet me at the brow, and love me, and now,
– beside you, awake while you sleep, I see: she is you.
FRAGMENT FOR A HEAVEN-FARER
for Diane Windsor
According to that Acolyte who some say saw the Second Coming —
– no greater love can a man have than this —
– than to lay down his life for his friend;
According to that Acolyte who some say saw the Gallops of Glory —
no greater love can a man have than mine –
I’m warming outside James Street store-fronts where once
– our sea-sky-lips would,
stunning passers-by, horizon their romance-less eyes with
– each of our own perfect kisses;
I’m slumming throughout air-stung hoar-frosts where once
– our sea-sky lids would,
shunning passers-by, thunderclap their romance-less hearts with
– each of our own perfect visions –
Yet, take thought: the adversary’s maximum extensions are harpoons
– he swears are darts of amities knee-
– jerkingly flung automatically as beams toward their
– midnight moons, or smiles of mothers
– whose conditionless love so helplessly blooms in the faces
– of red-eyed teens all synch-ly slouching at their court-hearing.
I surmise The Devil has not heard, and I hope, Diane, you’ll finally know:
– calm can only come by the one called
– that violet-eye-light-beaming Jesus Christ –
– and, that, Lucifer, like a late autumn wasp with stinging wings
– frosting in the twilight, KNOWS his death is near,
– so he quavers in fright, privately, yet, publicly, like he does now,
jabs a maximum of souls, which he considers his birthright;
And, take thought: I often wonder if you,
yes, Job-long-suffering you, weeping-willow-boughs
-amid-the-winter-wind-unassuming you, ever
– owned the value to wonder: Might I be one to write as
fast as the Almighty
speaks, might I be the Stenographer of the Lord, never even needing
any breaks (O Lucifer, YOU believe
– that you will beat her hand at any sort
– of duel? Her hand is guided by the hand of God! O Lucifer,
– she is ready!) So, Di, when you face him, Eastwood-easy,
– DRAW!;
And, take thought: the force that drives my spirit drives your own,
yet the spirit of Satan dives
like Iscariot dove from the rope-ripped-bough throughout the Hour
– Of Shadows. Remember,
Satan, regardless of his wishes, despite being SMALL g god of this
world, is merely the prop-foil-prelude
secondary of so many myriad dualities created by
The Trinity, his eventual Bermuda Triangle, until whose disappearance,
– is the mere adversary, the saw-weight
– of the see-saw, the one alone the Lord esteems enough
– to consider the clearest, but maybe not His most fearsome opponent,
– who has darkness both behind and before
– him! So how, Diane, is he even a Light-Bearer,
– since, wherefrom comes his light? He KNOWS
– he is finite – he worships the finite, so how can he be
– bright — especially in the face of your light, woman-of-my-dreams-
– and-of-the-the-dreams-within-my-dreams?
SONNET XIII
For Diane Windsor
Even the time I spend apart from you
is yours. Even scarcely tenable
quavers of your smiles are seen to the
whole world inside my electric soul,
even the memory of your voice’s lower-
most echo, blasts away any noises, accompan-
ies me through the loneliest, hollow silences.
Even your Galatean shadow is bodied – and souled —
in my heart. Even the time I spend apart
from you is yours. Even others with
your name, are more forgivable
to me. Even Angels of the Light
discuss us, I believe. Even
awake beside you sleeping, I cannot dream.
A SONNET ON EPHESIANS 5:25
for Diane Windsor
And how you modern readers wonder why I call her thee?
It is because you’ve never seen or known her apogee.
And at the crucifixion-slow-mo-mentioning
of me and you, the lovers of future Valentine’s
Days will wonder, Romeo and who? No greater
love can a man have than this: than to lay down his life for his friend;
No greater love can a man have than mine; for you I laid
down my life, and for you I’d lay it again – able by
the aegis of the Lord, without whom I would be gone…
– If I did not, if I do not, if I
– would not so strive to love you just as Jesus
– loves His Bride, I’d flee from thee as the Devil
– fled the moment after he thirdly sought
– to tempt I AM; Calvary’s my only
– guide to loving thee, so my heart beats
– Di-ane, Di-ane, Di-ane, Di-ane, Di-ane.
ODE TO THE MOUNTAIN BROW
(dedicated to Richard Greene)
Cliff-topped at dawn in a euphoria so high
I Paradise-verily see your wan white Pisa-
Towering street-lights well-tipping utmost fealty
to me, one I electrify back toward
you with this Ode I compose under cadaver-
soullessly blackening clouds — street-lights well-tipping
with dew-new currency of gray-brown fogs and truth-
pellucid allusions to Expressionist movies I adore.
Now, forthwith, I live throughout those movies while I
stroll throughout you till I disremember
your entendres and see I’m new-born-baby tender, stepping
through actuality, through you, not a film-
set, O Mountain Brow, where I’ll never be panorama-
spoiling, nor granted-takingly peripheralizing
you, while I’m here with others; to others I sing
your graces and discuss your day, that I may sing my
soul-eternal ardour for you – for your verve in a time
of dying – so you may over-hear and feel
esteemed, welcome, invited, O Mountain Brow, where I sing
the Scenic mansions you visit in forms of flower-
blended balmy breezes. I whisperingly sing to
your peach-blooms flashback-fast-bursting in the stilling
air. Pilgrimaging you amid the crimsoning
Staghorn Sumacs swaying, I see: you mean
measurelessly more to me than city-views for
which most others come to you…Vultures,
after cliff-side-congregations – seemingly
free-wheeling feelingly — beat their wings in time
to the water-fall’s phantom-eerie hiccuping, to which
anyone may calibrate. O Mountain
Brow, remember those nights, at the Flat Rock, with the San
Boys who hallucinated hundreds of faces
on your Orcus-shadowy crags. How many
first kisses transpire at this look-out — beyond the Ravine-
bounds — where-on I behold the high-wind-blown-stone-for-a-second-
seeming roses, O Mountain Brow, whose Scenic
Drive is never littered as much as other parts
of Hamilton — sometimes Elysium-seemingly
clean? O Mountain Brow, the greying Italian bocce-
ballers playing in the twilight sometimes
soften their footfalls, as though they have concluded
you feel, as you do. O Mountain Brow, I even proposed
to a yes-exclaiming girl upon your north-most Ravine-
opposing bench, one time, O Mountain Brow,
where I kneel in prayer upon the purple-bluing pond-
shore sands, O Mountain Brow, where your back-to-life-
welcoming-warm wind once spoke to me through evening
rustles of the oak-leaves’: “life-long-seeming
kisses will electrify the lilies of
the cliff until they shiver in the fervour
you’ll soon feel in this same place.” O Mountain Brow,
let us share this daybreak before other
Mountain Browers come…crag-magnetized since boyhood,
I so wish to share this dawn with you, alone.
___________________________
A SONNET TO THE TRINITY
O Violet-Eye-Light-Beaming Trinity,
O how Your Bride of Saints so speed the butterfly-
turning of souls toward You; O how our slavery —
O Star-Far-Eye-Near One — twilights our children to infinity-
incalculably embracing their bondage — to proclaiming
they are free, when, all-the-astral-projection-immeasurable
while, they are slaves who will not free themselves —
slaves who’ll wish to rename constellations;
slaves who’ll wish for numbering to replace naming;
slaves who’ll wish to replace freedom with shaming;
slaves who’ll wish for their own cancellations;
therefore, O Redeemer, in your name I am reclaiming
myself for these slaves’ reclaimants; in your name I’d die as You’ve
in mine; help me die like a lion when time to prove!
________________
JUDGMENT DAY
When ray-right-rain-fair Judgment Day does break;
when, upon a purple carpet of cloud-bursts — the moon setting —
the Maker nears His aurora Throne in the wake
of Saint-Cecile-conducted Seraphim trumpeting
His every quintessential motion; When He does
sit on air and deem our every thought and action,
whose names among ours will be sung from the slim Book of Life?
How morning star-core-white-and-burning is your faith in the Son?
When the violet-eye-light-beaming Redeemer does
return, on whom among us will He shine his rife
rays? When you wake soon or sleep unto your
deaths — will you suffice for the Paradise of our Creator?
when Shadows will be cast but no sun will beam,
will you ascend in lonely Lord-light gleaming supreme?
_________________
A TRANSLATION OF EMILE NELLIGAN’S ‘WINTER SENTIMENTS’
So now I drink the liquors of your eyes!
Don’t soil yourself while gazing at the masses!
A blast from Norway turns the fields to steel!
May hearts turn warm when the cold wind passes!
Like soldiers mourning level sands at Thebes
so let us always court our rancours
and, despising life, with its sophistic song,
Let Death lead us to Orcus, where we belong.
You’ll visit like an icy spectre; we won’t be old,
but already so weary of living we will fold;
O Death, take us out on such an afternoon
when I’m etherized by my lover’s guitars,
whose dreamy motifs and ambient bars
keep time to our ennui on the waltz to the end!
__________________
WHILE BEGGING UNDER FEBRUARY STARS
While begging under February stars
that I might be my closest to the beggars
and scatter my soul through the forecasted storm
and brave them on toward the laze and warm
of spring, a stinging wind ascended and engraved
in my ear the whimper of a girl I had saved
from her own hand, inside her freshman dorm;
then nursed, at once, from her childhood wars.
She whispered, “please reverse the weather in my
eyes,” empty as two open sunless graves,
which simply realigned the little troth
I’d sided for the sewing of my wounds
back to the Father and the snow then falling
on the woman in my arms, no longer calling.
THE MAN WITH A MICRO-CHIP IN HIS RIGHT HAND
Stopping wantless under cherry blossoms
He hears a girl singing from the sewer,
then harmonizes voices with some hums,
then sings the final chorus like he knows her,
their voices shaking red chrysanthemums –
but now the crowds of fading stars are fewer
and his voice grows weaker as the day glows nearer,
as he’s alarmed by the stirrings of the bums.
“Should I come up to see you on the street
so in the morning light we could now meet?”
A blossom plummets through the dewy grate.
Before he can reply I, an old class-mate,
pass by, asking why he’s standing here —
“for — for cherry-trees this time of year.”
______________
SONNET ON ANASTASIA
Like Martin Luther King she had a dream,
but lived out what the TV would prescribe.
She’d only ever be a psych-ward queen.
I know she might have equalized our tribe.
I whisperingly sing so soothingly;
Sometimes I wonder: would she still be gone
If she had measured my worth by my love, alone?
I could not heal her so distantly.
Like Martin Luther King she had a dream,
but lived out what the TV would prescribe.
She’d only ever be a psych-ward star.
We found her at the harbour, drowned. Her surgeon-
markered life-time thought-line equalled one long
wound — her legacy a traceless scar.
THE SONNET OF A PROPHET ADDRESSING HIS OWN COUNTRY
Canada, I came to you with my soul
and with diamonds, and you tried to collapse them
back into a vacuum, back into coal! —
Canada, remove your bloody diadem!
Canada, I came to you with answers
to inquiries you make in your lion-wild
dreams, where your wonder has been exiled,
where your wishes are kites so drawn to stirs
of the vortex of utopia, through
whose one end I blow, as though through a trumpet,
the prophecies you mock, despite sensing,
deep in your soul’s centre — you freeze —
the chance my drawn and quartered words are true,
these testaments to my theophanies!
____________
SONNET XVIII
So boa-constrictor-slowly you move,
exterminators of my humankind!
Some hardly feel their dying and approve
their deaths with stasis, silence; quarantined,
they cheerlead their own Gotterdammerung
while our exterminators now erect
the camps where Fidelitites — the unsung
saints, the Bride of Christ, the final sect,
dressed from head to foot in fealty —
will kneel before the pits; the humanoids
will jeer them from their seeming realty,
sore from their beast-marks – rabid with tirades.
So boa-constrictor-slowly you kill
those who’ll deny or receive you with full will.
THE SAVIOUR ADDRESSES A DANCER AT THE JUBILEE OF THE SECOND COMING
(for Lenora Di Saverio)
Lone among the dancers, you mourn– despite Death’s adieu —
my Calvary anew, behind your sunglasses?
Woman, none stands alone so beautifully as you,
since, has the Kingdom not Come? You say your tears are dew?
Why now cry amid the trumpets and the brasses?!
Lone among the dancers, you mourn, despite Death’s adieu —
Mourn the dead Inferno-hours of the Risen Son, too?
O won’t you jive and join in chalice-clangs?
Woman, none stands alone so beautifully as you.
Why should you not waltz to a flawless few
Of Cecile’s tunes? Whiff this lilied wind that passes?
Lone among the dancers, you mourn, despite Death’s adieu.
I feel no sorrow; must my whippings ensue?
Should you not see family, upon my greenest grasses?
Woman, none stands alone so beautifully as you.
Behold the diamonding stars! Behold your halo-hue
supremely match the moon! To Lea! Raise your glasses!
Lone among the dancers, you mourn, despite Death’s adieu –
Woman, none stands alone so beautifully as you.
__________________
A SONNET AFTER MY WINTER SURRENDER
O Seraph who stands on sacred airs —
goldening the firmament with halo-
beams – illumining my soul with
rosary-stars, which supernova
after your Amens — you whisperingly singing
over me, soaring my soul like a whitening kite
triple-tied to an infinite string…
O Seraph who lands on burn-out back-
yards of this downcast world, when
will this tempest end?! “Know: I only
seem a Seraph! I am come,
tonight, to witness your rebirth!
Revere the spirit inside the whiteout;
the snow foreshadows my Kingdom on Earth!”
_______________________
Featured Image: James Ensor – L‘entrée du Christ à Bruxelles