grace #5

staring on a sunlit pond, wet with scissor-kicking frogs;
 
two small pigeons whisper morning grace
above my finger draped lips

regarding several snapshots in a small gallery

These photos, Mr. Death,
represent a startling departure from any previous series, the diversity of which,
over the years
shared the singular quality of an unselfconsciousness.

It is redundant to except your environmental studies;
some metal church chairs and a bloodshot colored coffee cup;
even as they progressed
from utensil portraits through the most tender conversions,
until one realizes how you've both confused and empowered the Astonished
to reveal the most austere abstractions
for concealing enormous pathos;
a cipher of the light which caught that spot inside your wretched intellect,
unteased by the inevitable, reflexive meddling’s
of a mildew-yello'd syntax.

A padlock hung from a chain;
a pig colored pipe and a burnt shack on a beach.
The Vertical series . . . Nights of Madness, swallowing fire and stripe-sleeved Sirens; the world caught on the tip of a pin, unsure if it must swallow itself in pieces
or wholly explode.

These portraits which seduced me with their sensuous violence;
the fetal shapes you poured into the disenfranchised prism glass, still now uncurling in the dimness of your licorice lighted box;
you did not script these things
and simply shared a sense of title for the very confirmation
of their existence.
You were a hunter, I was the cook.

It were a time before the first synthetic invention;
when dance still swept a ghostly stage
like the magnet covered moon; there,
inside its fluid mask, a pair of raw emoting holes;
the soliloquy still years away;

the script now sits in the envelope on my desk.
my fingers roll like drumsticks on the countertop;

words through the half open window;
a voice says, "come to the altar now, come give the bride away."
You are a roiling water on the stove, immortal sleeplessness;
a restless eye;
I am your true friend. 

Permit me time enough to wake from my dull considering;
roll my dense psychology across the round and jagged edges of your newest sentences.
Truth, I would hardly know the lion by its claw, yet here you are;
and I am Sancho, by your side. 
Understanding always comes later to Sancho;
and there can be no truthful satisfaction of this glorious ceremony
(festooned in vases overfilled with ivory lilies
and forget-me-nots )
before understanding.

the egg

 . . . a Russian doll grins on a sill above the candle in my reading room; bright colors stain the eyes and apron, shawl and round babushka on the smooth curved surface of the paper shell.

Was here I learned from Pushkin how the hungry mud devours wagon wheels; from Dostoyevsky how a uniform consumes the soul
. . . from Nabokov, a modern verse, now hung across the carcass
of an ancient melody. . .
all these things a paste and paper doll portend for me.

A second candle, now as useless as the dusk;
a thin red line bent upward, to a smile;
a finger rising from the yellow pages of my book;
a pot of red paint and a hungry brush;
strokes my stubbled chin.

Which one of these things is a clue . . . how will I ever know?
Up there on a dusty shelf, a puzzle sits behind a pair of jet black eyes;
an answer to the number of archangels fussing over Jesus on some tiny pin?
a map to where the line between cruel Truth and morbid Hesitation lies?
A doll within a doll within a doll within a doll?
. . . or empty space?

or does my candlelight prepare me well enough
to know her simply by the wrinkles on her frozen face?

Inside your silly mocking shell there is a scheming calculus;
a diabolic nothingness with a ruby paint-pot grin,
a purple shadow shoved against the plaster wall,
crisscrossed to distraction in some vague yet busy Ukraine scrawl . . .

a hollow'd egg,
inside of which lies far more possibility than chance;
and so I simply watch the purple shadow dance.
A Russian doll sits on the shelf,
and I'm supposed to solve this for myself?