death
-
The Death of Aubrey Beardsley
Black and white The light drip of ink That looks at paper like A savior. The ocean of it swallowed up by Blank pages and Oscar Wilde’s handkerchief. Oh LORD how far I have come How these willow-thin fingers stained With sin from my pen Pull away from my mouth red Lysistrata is dead. My…
-
The Newest Year
At some point across the Date Line (cutting out the small archipelagos where seabirds don’t care) the New Year somehow begins. Other than on paper, it doesn’t exist its not an admonition in the flesh or a pure astronomical event its just a reinforced reminder of how we measure the flow of time. The New Year…
-
Magpie Death Rituals
“They’re just birds” is the casual cast-off what can a bird feel? Their brains are so much smaller than ours yet they can recognize themselves in silvered mirrors and groom themselves with their reflective assistance like teenagers readying for prom puffed up feather headdresses high as kites. That’s something. When a magpie dies, other magpies…
-
Dr. Eduard Bloch Reminisces About Hitler
“He had such beautiful, expressive eyes within which stirred a profound sadness, so much like his mother’s. She was a kind and dear woman. I treated her for breast cancer. You see, her death left a mark on him, a black mark. The US Army psychologists came to the house as soon as I left…
-
Incorruptible
The incorruptible saints lay still under glass canopies lovingly covered with silk burial gowns they lay there dry as bones as bones they are their skin tight around the curves of chins and eyes sunken in and dark. They see nothing as flesh once did but they aren’t really there, if there is a place…
-
National Poetry Month 16 – Harrowing
The question of the descent into Hell or Sheol, or Hades on the surface seems academic. “Did Christ actually go to free the souls of the righteous?” Was He there in the nebulous dark emanating light to the countless millions dead before the coming of the Son; Adam and his beloved Eve the Patriarchs, Moses…
-
National Poetry Month 15 – Good Friday
There were two theives flanking Jesus one calling out for Him to fly off the cross prove to him that He was Lord, show the power hidden within. The other one saw through the veil and asked for His love: “Jesus, remember me when you come into your kingdom.” He looked at the criminal and…
-
National Poetry Month 14 – Nearer My God to Thee
Imagine that sloping deck getting several degrees closer to perpendicular. The small band lingers on the deck the boys are playing ragtime light, airy tunes to keep the crowd calm. Those black tuxedos don’t keep them warm clouds of breath encircle well-coiffed heads. Steam pours from the tops of the funnels brass horns blow in…
-
National Poetry Month 13 – Cruiser Moskva
Metal groans as the ship’s belly rips open to allow the sea its space. A tender hull is no match for an explosive kiss. It takes a feint from shore, some little baubles to draw attention to disorient leviathan. Down in the mud of the seabed among the anemones and sturgeons the ship’s doctor tends…
-
Twenty Years
I A few weeks after the attacks I realized that there would be anniversaries. Moments in years to come when people would stop and try to remember the event; and try and remember the nature of the world before the explosive propulsion of our wrath halted the inertia of peace. II I…
-
Pilate’s Painting
There is a legend that Pontius Pilate painted Christ long after he retired as governor. What a challenge that would have been to capture the man you so briefly spoke to on a wooden panel yet who’s life (and death) will stay with you for the rest of yours. Would you take red and accentuate…
-
Amelia Earhart Sees (Elegiac visions of the next world in the depths of the Pacific)
The silver skin of her Electra reflects the setting sun. The twin engines hum, steadfast lift is provided by the wings. The strange invisible waves of the radio beacon fly out across the ocean, far faster than the plane itself. Here among the tiny green islands and endless blue waters are beasts that wait in dark places.…
-
Precursors
In a dark cave, in the shadow of Rome piled up beneath stalactites are remains of ancient proto-humans. You could hold their skulls up to the light and see through the bite holes down through to the brainpan, and run your fingers across their over-sized brows which hang over the eyes like little hills bordering…
-
Virginia Poe
We had no portraits of her we had nothing in our heads but her face alive and well dining and singing and laughing and sometimes sinning with Edgar. When she coughed up the blood the crimson stained her lips and her cheeks would flush looking like a painted lady out on a holiday. Edgar stared…
-
The Plunge of Pryce Lewis
“You ever seen a view like this one?” The cold December air holds up snowflakes and then lets them fall gently upon the dome with its lantern lit for ships far from home. The newspapers printing in the basement cause subtle vibrations in the iron railing that my fingers feel as they squeeze and below…
-
Marguerite Bradbury
Who ends up with the memories of a love when one of a pair passes away? Surely they will last forever in the skull of the survivor: The ring-ding of the door bell in the bookstore where she stood organizing shelves and watched in suspicion the strange man overdressed for a warm LA day when…
-
Demolition City
They sterilized the land the art deco department stores and the stumpy roots of the buildings of the Pacific Southwest Exhibition have been buried under concrete and rubble. every timber and brick that once shook during the earthquake of ’33 every roadside diner every steepled church; flop-houses and mansions torn down for mini-malls. the Tongva…
-
The Whales
Barnum brought some beluga whales to his Museum across from City Hall hauled them behind a belching steam engine from up near Canada 700 miles across the land of America he was told they were a male and a female perfect white oblong shapes bathed in a bucket of salt water. Oh dear God, when…
-
Howard Hughes
It hurts in ways I cannot explain a broken body imprisoning a healthy mind I have my papers confirming American citizenship but I am late for the ceremony out there on that last island off of Florida I can fly away there at 400 miles per hour in a steel cage like an autoclave killing…
-
Napoleon’s Last Words
There is a panorama somehow unfolding before me like a landscape painting on an infinite canvas all of you look as little dots crowding and clustering in armies of barely distinguishable colors smoke is rising from cannonades, and here and there blasts of dirt tinged with red blossom and fall back to the earth. How…
The Numinous Cosmos 