My verses twist and ignite into flames

like my heart that better in the river’s

viscous flow than in the brook’s gentle grass

is unwound:  Oh! for as the water bursts

freely then drains from the mountainous rock

chasm that destroys it rolling against

the tropical sedimentary stone

amidst logs and blunt edges before splashed

into streams.  Now spilled how will

it like a trained dog, play submissively

in a garden decorated with flowers,

or in a goldfish tank swim happily

just to love a lady doused in perfume?

I’ll flood the perfumed palace with curses

my verse would savagely enter the jeweled

cabinets where bards and abbots sew silk

into tender cinquans and pleasing rhymes

with silver needles. And supine ladies

seated on fraught and disheveled sofas

would lift their feet from the soft rugs–

then the water charging, convulsing

as all that is false expires, humbled

kisses a cast-off slipper and by great

spasms of its own persecution dies.

Alone, all alone, here comes my friendly

verse like a dutiful husband attends

his ruffle-feathered turtledove’s calling

and like the high mountains of thawing snow

over the scrub brush and across valleys

from copious threads of ice is falling–

soothing love and celestial avarice

spill from my oppressed entrails

and the vast blueness covering the earth,

which by the virgin soul of somberly

bloodied humanity becomes perfumed

while the stars pour their benevolent light

in the mating of silence with flowers

and which the aroma off the air lifts

for me both completion and perfection:

as though in a drawing by Angelo

the sword and the fist of a Cellini,

more beautiful than immanent marble

nature laboriously carved itself

of august head where ardently were born

Universal Hamlet and the fury

of the tempestuous Moor–brings to mind

an Indian girl from old Chichen who bathed

at the walls of the gentle river’s edge

in the shade cast by a pompous plantain

from his own body hair, while her svelte bronzed

skin played in the open air.  Give me blue

skies, give me the pure, ineffable, placid

eternal soul of marble at the Louvre

that famed Milo made foam and flower.

Here I am, all alone and torn to bits

the sky roars while the clouds accumulate

they tighten, they blacken, they fall apart.

Evaporating seawater stains the stone.

Sacred anguish and horrors my eyes breathe

To what, ravaging nature, what sterile

solitude is sent one who anxious

for love is overcome and perishes?

Where, cross-less-Christ , will your eyes find their place?

Where, enemy shadow, where’s the honored

specter that will receive my countenance?

And for whom do I throw my life away?

I have fitted a veil in the size

of the clear blue sky with a canvas shaped

to the structure of a famous shadow,

the sad man sees the rocks in the lovely

tropical country, where there are white men

with black Venuses who crowned with fetid

and murky flowers all begin dancing;

with each new swing, the earth springs beneath them!

When the huge kiss without flavor of worn

and hardened lips trembles closed out will fly

birds of death dyed the color of bile.

Homagno without a quest whose pale

hands massage his hirsute and unkempt head

–I am a mask, I am a lie, he says,

this flesh and form, this body and these beards,

the memory of being a beast,

that is like a chair on a horse’s hump

placed on the oppressed soul, to be tightened

and adjusted. For a ray of sunlight,

that my soul exchanged for its shadow.  –No,

Homagno, no you aren’t what you say!

Only my eyes, only my eyes reveal

my disguise for they are mine and they burn,

they burn me, they never sleep, and they pray,

and in my body I can feel them and their sky,

they talk about me to him and of him

to me. Why if merely holding a grain

of bad seed the creator has wrongly

placed a stem on my colossal shoulders?

I travel and ask, amidst the ruins

and cemeteries, I spasm and shake

with the delirious effects of poems

the mother of my thousand breasts, fountains

of life I inhale, bite and torment

the blistered hands of the stone I break down

in rages of love; the invisible

head that my dry hands caress and un-braid

then throw myself guilty to the ground

and bathe my confused feet with tears and kisses,

and in the middle of the night, beating,

while in the widely burning orbit

of the  voracious eyes inside my head,

I tremble, curl up, and hungrily wait

for the daylight to bring me responses:

and every new light–by the same mode

and decline, as life appears in droplets

of milk for a tired breast, I order

him to come forward, he hesitates

as the load the ants carry or a cup

of stale water in a finch’s cage

By bites and breakages, as stems of grapes,

blackened and twisted seem the hands of sad

Homagno!  And while the earth becomes silent

the beautiful voice of my heart, replies.

Poetry is fierce and capricious,

When I tell her let’s go honorably

to the town, I upset her wildly.

I tell her the complete truth and don’t abuse;

I don’t dishonor her while she’s sleeping,

quietly dreaming and spent with my love,

as I plead with the sky for some strength;

I don’t paint her with saffron or amaranth

like those revolting poets; I don’t brand

her with a hot iron on the bare breast

not even rhetorical strings would bind

her golden hair I’d loosen  to the air.

.

No, I won’t place her in fancy vases

where she’d die; I will pour out the world

for her to grow be fertile and expand

and after release her seeds in the wind.

And, yes, I would take care the air is pure;

musically, its pure bed is fitted

with soft fabric for shelter in sleep.

In clean fragrant clothes, when she goes to town,

she returns wounded, dry-eyed, and estranged

with her cheeks sunken-in from her terror:

both of her lips thickened, softened, and stained,

one and then both of her pure hands and  heart

grieving and muddied as though a basket

of burning thorns beneath a broken breast:

she always comes from this city like this:

more even than this is eased by the air

of the countryside in the serene night

a tonic that erases injuries.

Lift up oh my heart!  Who calls out to death?

I do not imitate my poetry

Never would I wake it from wandering

nor am I bothered by its long absence.

At times it arrives terribly!  It takes

my hand and places its burning carbon

and it forces it up to the mountains!

Others and so few! come happy and well,

to caress my head or talk of sweet love

and invites me to share a bath! We have

one another, she and I, a certain

modesty that turns deep within my chest.

Tangled up in fragrant entanglement!

I say that I won’t force or adorn it,

though I know how to adorn I don’t dare,

even if I’m swept up in tremendous

shadows as it sometimes happens with me,

I wait for it crying down on my knees

I will free what is within me of rage

and horror.  I run away from others,

in alarm and flee their presence.  I roam

over my life in a boat and suffer

with nausea and seasickness:  a hateful

anxiety eats away at my gut:

Who is able to simply come and go

and leave their life behind!  No this painful

solitary song is written in pain:

I will never again write in such pain!

To be sure this world is like a giant

to a pretentious ant who puts a yoke

on an exiled poet:  I write now

after having spoken with an old friend,

like the wine aged in noble wood barrels

good conversation fortifies the soul:

I feel the agony inside my bones.

Oh, my ache is a cadaver surging

edging, no good is the sweet sea to me!

Not even one pore of me is without

its wound, a nail was driven under

my fingernails, it reaches my feet

my heart has been coldly eaten by them:

and in the great game of life I’m fated

to give my blood as feed for an owl.

Empty and dead, I will float on the wind

entwined inside of my own intestines

raising my fist and cursing all malice!

It’s not that a woman’s been disloyal

or that fortune denies me its favors.

Over what doesn’t she swoon, my dear life?

Who would want my life?  I have known people,

and knowing them well I’ve seen they are bad.

If a child passes when I’m weeping

I touch them on the head and say bye

like a captain who waves a festive flag

at the sea from on board a white ship.

And if you say that I am blasphemous,

I will tell you that you are blasphemous.

What have I ever been given to live

where tigers feed but wings and no sharp claws?

Is there a law that says the silk-winged tiger

will need be fed? And its wings made of light

may well be as radiant as the sun,

a wonder!  Oh tiger, drive your sharp teeth

harder. Nurture yourself from me.  Eat me.

Dig your tap deeper into my shoulders,

peel off my skull and take a painful bite

of me watch as my wings go to pieces,

flames falling to earth!  Happy is he who

would die for the good of humanity!

Kiss the dogs of murderers on the hand!

As a father feels for his daughters when

a corrupt gentleman passes nearby

my ideas concerning what will happen

to mankind –to those for whom I’m dying,

I guard them as carefully as I would

my own sins, in a frozen chest!  I know

people and have found them to be evil.

The best are to be found in the pyre

nurturing the flame of eternity!

The fewer the better for the many.

Crucifixions are for those crucified!

Jesus was nailed to a wooden one.

Today people are nailed together.

The wisepersons of Chichen, the pure earth

of aromas and where the fruits are grown,

with high rituals and beautiful songs,

in depths of heavily scented cisterns

would seek out the most beautiful of them

and discharge of their loveliest virgins.

From the dreaded wall she rose to perfume

florid Yucatan as a soft petal

against blackness ascends into perfume:

It’s what the creator does to the good:

to perfume, to balance: Come winged tiger

Drive down into my shoulders: the vicious

go to feed while the good come to nurture

others through themselves. For the mystery

of the cross, no parchment theologian

would lower himself but the virtuous

do. A candle is effaced as it burns.

Smile like a virgin who is dying

a flower torn from its stem!  A good soul

suffers greatly in the world. In daytime

appearing courageous and at nightime

crying into their own arms and later

sees the horrendous sun rise in the sky,

and livid not to exhibit itself

so as to not scare people with the sight

of seeing the blood that’s shed from its wounds

and conceals its miserable body

in the shape of a skeleton taken

to walk for its decency in pink leaves.

December 14

Like a bird flying clear across the air

I feel your thinking coming toward me

and here in my heart it’s building its nest.

My soul flowers open; the stems tremble

like the fresh lips of a youth’s first embrace

of a beauty, the leaves stab like a knife

as jealously bitter as the servants

of a lady of the wealthy classes

while busy preparing her marriage bed.

My heart is large and it belongs to you

All of sadness can fit inside my soul

as long as the world cries, suffers, and dies!

With the dry leaves, dust, and fallen branches

I clean and carefully brush each leaf’s brush;

I take the eaten petals from the worms

I trim the lawn and look what I have found

See how your bird is now shrinking my heart!

A winged cup who else has seen it but me?

Yesterday was when it surfaced by slow

majesty, as in the gradually

pouring of oil of an anointing

and at its sweet edge my blessed lips tightened.

Not even a drop, not even a drop!

of your balm did I allow to be lost

Your dark head of hair.  Do you remember?

I stroked with my hands because as you spoke

the words from those generous lips I kissed

and though my kiss was bland it transformed me

as the softness of the ambiance.

I felt my whole life  and in hugging you

I was hugged too! I couldn’t see the world

or hear its noise nor recall the vengeful,

barbarous battle! A cup flew in the air.

And I, held in unseen arms, reclined

behind it, near its sweet edges,

and I rose up to the blue firmament.

Oh love, oh how immense, oh fine artist!

On wheel or rail the iron smith

fuses iron; a flower a woman

an eagle an angel made of gold

or silver by the jeweler’s chisel:

You, you, only you know how to reduce

the size of the universe to a kiss.

A vile race of tenacious persons

self-made they inflate themselves on their own

from head to foot and by their clothes and  jaws

there are others like a flower who cast

exhalations of humanity’s love.

As there are turtle doves and wild beasts

in the forest, plants that are infested

and sterling carnations in a garden

some have been fed off the soul of mankind

and perfuming their gluttonous teeth

as does the cold iron in the body

of a virgin kill while its heated.

The tyrants are seated at a banquet

and when their blood-stained hands delve in the meal

beaming a light, a martyr re-surges ,

large flowers, as a sudden cross appears,

escape, and reddened mouths are aghast

at the sight of their blackened entrails,

the tyrants, the ones who love themselves most

who in the face of proper reasoning

are an affront to the face of honor,

and the strip of light grown under the yoke

compares to the sun as it casts hot coals

that abound from its breast:

the tyrants do not carry decorous

humanity in sane breasts:  they are best,

or second-best at life, with ruined joys,

watched-over wealth and reactionary

“no” to the concierto universal.

Dance, food, music, and harems, but never

approbation of honorable persons

if by chance it could happen without blood

“Get out of the way…hang them hang them

and from the highest noose out on the road

out front in the middle of the village.”

Against humanity’s greatness: traitors

like a worker pounding copper rails,

they divvy up the nation with teeth marks.

One star lights the whole world and one flower

perfumes vast space with its scent, a wild

and mysterious spiral of tender

light suffuses the earth and an image,

brought together in half-images springs

upward from a humane battle.  Silence!

Among the colors seen in a dark sky,

while the sun illuminates, a vibrant

city sparkles, and the white moonlight glows.

A vision is being born in the eyes

seeking the essence ruptured from its seal

the aroma surges toward the eyes

as the weight of the eyelid lifts from them

like a flower folding its perfumed wings

unfolds itself to decant its perfume

then from the interior of a solemn

temple a pale figure rises in a sad lament.

Is there a divine purpose for a life?

Meanwhile the entire universe

which never loses its shape, wraps over

the body of a beloved woman,

as her absent husband foresees his death

in the purification of the sky.