Revenant IV

Of all the ghostly emotions that haunt my house
his anger is the most tangible.
It hangs on the barn’s wall
like a coyote pelt skinned at dawn.
It barks at dusk and masquerades as order
and rules day’s dominance like a petty king.
Chaos lurks in the nails of its paws.
Chicken blood and feathers mask its snout.
It practices animal husbandry
to disguise its true intent.
Its silhouette in the summer’s stillness
harbingers the rant of winter’s tomorrow.

Traum

With his sinister hand, he drove the red Cadillac.
He smoked unfiltered camels with his right.
He named himself the Knight of Swords,
played Texas swing on the AM radio,
and lowered the black canvas top, like Jett Rink.

She warned him about the crocodiles.
They swarmed out of Africa and attacked the portcullis.
Imaginary damsels in distress were his weakness,
so he ordered steaks from Omaha and loaded
the red leather seats down with thawing boxes.

While the steaks rotted and turned an oily green
like a bottle fly’s eye, he pulled his Stetson
forward to avoid the wind.

Arriving at last, he honked
and she released the bridge’s German lock.
His Michelins squashed croc heads
as he entered the keep. She skipped
down gray stone stairs like a prom queen;
the poodle on her skirt emblematically black,
her hair bouncing jauntily in a pony tail.

She slide into the front seat,
flashing smooth legs and white panties,
scooting up against his denim thigh,
as the crocs boiled from the moat.

Driven mad by the smell of rotting meat
and exhaust, they scuttled on clattering claws
after the car until they hit asphalt on Route 66.

A note on Ihn Ritt die Nacht by Paul Celan

There is an image in Paul Celan’s Ihn ritt die nacht, which resonates with depth and meaning. For me, the image of the orange in the third stanza exemplifies the concept of the primordial word, which energizes and mythologizes poetry.

Here is the original with my translation.

Ihn ritt die Nacht

The night rode him, he came to himself,
the orphan’s overall was the flag,

no more detours
it rode him straight-

It is, it is, as if the oranges stood in the hedge,
as if, so ridden, he wore nothing
but his
first
birth-marked
secret-speckled
skin.




Ihr ritt die Nacht, er war zu sich gekommen,
der Waisenkittel war die Fahn,

kein Irrlauf mehr,
es ritt ihn grad

Es ist, es ist, als stünden in Liguster die Orangen,
als hätt der so Gerittene nichts an
als seine
erste
muttermalige, ge
heimnisgesprenkelte
Haut.


What comes first the primordial word or image?

When I first read this poem, I immediately focused on the orange, standing in the hedge, shining like a beacon in green, cool darkness. The orange does not hang; it stands. Although it stands boldly within the boundary of the hedge, it glows like a full moon on a dark night. It is hidden and yet it shines.

The orange is an anomaly, which functions as a beacon, calling us, filling our mind and imagination with its vibrancy, its color. From this initial attraction, our imagination moves to the other senses to create a sense of weight and depth. We touch the rough peel of the orange, we smell its citrus aroma, we taste its tart sweetness, we chew its thick pulp, and we suck the slick pips that slide around our tongue. Our mouths water as our eyes linger on the glowing orange, which stands like a prisoner within the hedge.

The Trap

He lays the trap
on gray green moss.
He pries the sharpened claws
open until he hears the click
of the German lock.
He places raw meat
onto the silver spring.
He hides in an orange bush
and waits for her to approach.
He smells the Valencia oranges ripen.
He feels the earth tumble and turn.
He sees the dappled green mint leaf
reflect the last ray of a weakened sun.
As he sleeps, the moon waxes and wanes.
He swells and bursts like a peach
fallen onto wet autumn clay.

Revenant III

The sole meal
we prepared
in five years
was boiled lobster,
which was apropos,
because our thing
was to lie on sugary sand
until her hair bleached white
and my native blood boiled
through my veneer.
We cooked the clay
until it glistened
and hardened,
then I extended my claw,
inviting her to crack
it with a steel vise.

Quelle II

The Valencia orange hangs
on Celan’s line,
swelling
his syntax
into its own myth
until it falls,
sweetly
onto wet clay,
which whirls
on wheels,
descending
to an emotion.

Quelle

Silence
and sentence,
twin snakes,
enwrapped
and ensorcelled
by Jacobs’ staff.

Quicksilver

We grind cinnabar
and sparks
scatter from the lathe.
We slit the snakeskin
and lubricate the dragon scales,
their bright moistness
harbingers
a spring space
of late containment.

Lichtung II

The primordial word
springs from a stone well,
dug by a grandfather
with an iron shovel,
seeking syntax.
It bubbles forth myth
and flirts with thought’s force,
which could be order
or fascistic desire.
Unlike Leni’s portraits
of youth’s beauty
or some metaphysician’s
game of goose stepping
rhyme and metronomic feet,
the sentence
must find
its own meadow
or clearing
within the black forest.

Visita

I was born
under the sign of the Lion
and by all reports
I should have followed the Sun King
but on the cusp
I slipped from the curb
and twisted through my fall
into the crow caverns
of the Moon Queen.
I lay in her sweet arms
for a decade,
listening to the foot pad
of the blue dragon,
fearing what I would become.
When a child
I sat with my father
in an old theater
on the square
and cheered Errol Flynn,
the greatest puer,
charge down Red Mountain.
As a man,
I channel the Hunger Artist
and intuit-
Kavka means jackdaw.

Couple

After chaos expelled them,
she contained him,
absorbing his anxiety,
madness and aloneness.
He reciprocated
by constructing a home
in a cave,
carrying a sharpen spear,
its tip hardened
in stolen fire,
and hunting black bison.
In the age of order,
they stand alone,
uncontained,
twitching
from a palsy
of self involvement
and modernity.

Electronic Age

Before connectivity
he secured
his yellow claws
in the center
of the ice.
Now,
the floe
melts
and the seals
disappear.
To be alone
in frigid silence
was paradise.

Verwandlung

In the center
he smeared
his body
with black mud
to protect
against flies
and the sun.
He floated
neither up
nor down
in the slough,
praying for metamorphosis.

Foucault's Pendulum

The rule of one
breaks many.
Chaos mourns the alone,
as its priests plot
against Akhenaten
the hermaphrodite.
The one
now dead
becomes many
until he slithers
from the silence,
stuttering
sibilant sounds
to his staff.

Austria 1782

With a black line,
sharp as a Cossack’s sword,
the bureaucrat
scratched him
from the Levant.
A raven
pecked
his brown eyes
in a dream,
birthing
Raben,
his second self.

55

Journeying north
he turns right.
The mystery
yields left
toward resistance.
The gauche
usurped
steal a march
through the strait
gate.

Stormtrooper

He demands spurs.
Their clanging spares
no one creation.
His coming
trumpets
forest’s spread
across volcanic rock.
Order adorns
with ash and steel.

Wasteland

Green stalks press
through sienna clay,
stretching to yellow light.
Khaos flowers bloom blue.
Their pistils
dust copper pollen
on gunmetal.
Silver spurs jingle
as he rides north
through shadowed valleys.
His iron-capped rod
comforts him
as he finds beauty
here.

Spear Point

At the rugged red waste,
the Knight of Swords
dismounts progress’ horse.
Salamanders slither
beneath iron shavings.
Volcanic ash falls
on armor,
as the armies
of order
march forward
like machines.

Le Revenant Deux

Before she bled to death
in an old porcelain tub
with claw feet
and a multitude
of scratches,
in student housing,
like a Roman matron
in disgrace,
she published
precious poems
about carnivals
and clowns
in little magazines,
flung about
by smaller presses.

He lived sixty years
longer than she,
singing dark songs
about shamans
cloaked in parrot feathers.

Each day,
dancing on one foot
before a jaundiced flame,
he swallows
her sword of madness
and digests the darkness
her bright brogue disguised.