Basta con le chiacchere:Mythical referencing

Basta con le chiacchere
Translated from Italian: “Stop with the idle chatter/nonsense”
dedicated to Dom Dipietriantonio, a.k.a. Dipie : an amazing artist and a friend.-2006


I half hate
all the mythical referencing 
because honestly it does nothing
to relieve me of my anguish

or to expedite the coming of much talked about joy.

For a moment, he reminded me of Vulcan, 
forging life through his home-made paints.
I was struggling, Phoebus, plucking the lyre, 
tightening my stringed contraption to death.

We were both hoping 
to snag the owlish eyes of Minerva,
Over there, where she sits on her 
erudite grey head all day.

I can’t breathe sometimes.
I cannot pinpoint why I care so much for this thing called clarity?

Ah!—Basta con le chiacchere!

Tethered

Tethered

Even if the spinning of combustibles
and the silent arms of deep raw space

are created by the very act of my viewing them,

it does not change the fact that I am a tethered being,

not separate from this Nature but folded into It,
like a star folding into the vastness of Its’ own flickering.

Intention I

Intention I

Our laps

are dust laden

with the years

that hope has

helped to drag

us through:

layer after layer of 'the just enough'

and I know everyone loves to love the words:

I hope,

one hopes,

we hope,

but 'Hope' is a mask,

stuck to the face of what is,

sputtering in place,
a temporary salve;
it is a flawed thing,

a slant of cupric light,

inherently weakening

beneath the weight

of its own shimmer,

like a propping up of dreams

on stilts of spinning twine,

unwinding in the clear broad

stare of the conscious mind

and in this dawn of clarity,

my intention is to dislodge
the specter of surface

at the behest of the only

word that matters; joy.

Beauty born in Beauty´s rearranging

 -dangling, dangling,
all the bar-room globes of hazing light;

our aging engines, loudly churning,
travelling the distances between the seemingly,
the back and forth, between the black and white.

everything keeps pouring,
foaming, we keep drinking
through the reasons
wrong or right

all is changing or exchanging,
Beauty born in Beauty´s rearranging

-->2006

My walking parts!

I relay this moment back to myself
so that I will always remember to live in the present,
to feel the pulse of all my walking parts!

La esperanza, siempre

La Esperanza, Siempre

I have shelves
and milk crates
stacked into corners,

storing my books
and my music and
to the side of the bed
the dusty guitar,
slowly dies into
a decoration.

A television
and a stereo
and those mahogany
dressers that remind me
always of my grandparents;

they are long dead now
but I find comfort in
supposing they live on
as some unconscious energy,

swirling in the topsoil and the galaxies.

Across the room
a pair of sneakers, capsized,
floats beside a Spanish dictionary

and 'la esperanza',
my slightest Hope,
goes bobbing up and down
atop a tiny raft of poetry,
with its' "Nineteen Varieties of Gazelle"

and I am pacified by their
assorted stories of family,
fatherhood and figs.

I remember that I’ve have made my own
stories about family or Spanish evenings

in bullrings laughing, our beautiful brotherhood

and Papa’s hot polenta on holidays.

Y claro, yo tengo la esperanza, siempre!  

 

-->2007

Robert Frost

A bank is a place where they lend you an umbrella in fair weather and ask for it back when it begins to rain.

Always looking away.

"I am always looking away,.  Or again at something after it has given me up."
--Frank O'Hara--

The Now

"Remember, I told you that ten years ago," my brother said over the phone the other night and of course, I remember, of course, he was right.  That doesn't bother me.  I am far more in tune with the realization, over time, that advice given to me in the past, that I either ignored out of stubbornness or didn't act upon due to my position of personal growth at the moment of the giving, was often right.  There is no shame in learning this later on.  I am tired of feeling 'shame' or 'foolishness' or any of these other emotionally taxing reactions to the world around me.

     He was right and I was glad to hear it.  It means, that even if it took ten years, I realized what it was he had tried to help me realize so long ago, now and there is nothing more powerful than the now.

Color Theory by Alexandra Teague (from Mortal Geography)

Color Theory

The Home Depot salesman says, "Remember, you won't have to live
with your choice:  You'll have to live inside it."  I imagine each gradation--unpacking

frying pans and toothbrush; paperbacks strewn
inside Plum Wine, Arctic Lilac, Chiasmic Violet.
     On the glossy card they've chained beside the racks

of color, I learn that purple promotes drowsiness and nausea:
not recommended for kitchen or the pilothouse
     of boats.  Yellow, while energizing, can make one irritable,

unable to blink naturally, too anxious to swallow.  Which shade
is it that makes one likely to remember turns
    from years-ago samba classes, make perfect hollandaise,

sing like Bernadette Peters? Which color will help me find
my mother's citrine ring (borrowed and lost
in seventh grade) or remember the name of the Australian

band that sand "A Girl", or find the hotel where Klimt awoke
in a light sweat after dreaming The Kiss?
    If I paint the living room First Green and the office

Eggshell and Mist, what primordial creatures will hatch
from the doorway clouds, what storm fronts
    sweep my bookcases empty?  Will my insurance refuse

payment for accidents resulting from color--the Supernova Blue
that caused me to fly kites from second-floor
    windows or the Miami Sunburst trimmed with Japonica

that enticed me to juggle butcher knives and pomegranates?
To make things simple, I'd like on color
     that will make me want to sing, cry, fuck, write letters

to strangers, wear fishnet stockings, buy irises, walk barefoot,
listen to Coltrane, move out, stay forever,
    have children, and understand winter.  One can, well stirred.