Monologues (2020)

In all speculations, they have tacitly figured man as a Clothed Animal; whereas he is by nature a Naked Animal; and only in certain circumstances, by purpose and device, masks himself in Clothes.

Thomas Carlyle

Sustenance

Files of bandy legs and bumbling faces        constellate in the confines of thought           when one asks for the meaning of this auburn collection of fetters.

It is a tradition of meekness    that hopes for pride,    a tradition effective in its denial        of scars, dirt, fractures, and grit.       

Even in this corner,

the old folks approach my door with reverence,      

lower their heads, whisper words of praise,  

and take it I will lift their offspring from the soil.

All is not without dignity.      These rugged people know the coarse texture of immediate being.            They suspect there is more beyond the exhaustion.   And, it is true, they care for those close to the beginning. Thus I hold their hands and nod.       What right have I to thwart a raw-boned dream?     I guide my voice through platitudes   and promise stern deliverance.

But I suffer the tribulations of my conscience.         These clumsy children will be led toward the regions of air.           Few will know them as home. Fewer will know them as benign fiction.      Most will resent the lofty snare.

Stray Apothegms from an Artisan's Workshop

* Praise the palette’s grit, not the painter’s scope.

* Grasp your body’s strain, shape extraneous rhythm. * Improvise in loss, fabricate in yield.

* The weathered hammer knows your bent

* A dependable hand is not much more than grip.

* Imperfect strikes are said to spring renewal.

* Once out the door, best to pick up.

* Take solace in the vagrant cloud, always displacing borders.

* Rest as the tree that sustains the after-hour grackle.

* Be a haven— either nook or shade.

* If nails slip away, steps spread apace.

* Windows only when the grass appears a speck of green.

* In the corner, a blanket; on the table, some bread.

* Jagged along, level afar—

the mountain abides.

The Tavern

A raucous voice among rondels,       a slapdash mass among pillars, I raise my mug and clamor—            theatrics of conceited trials met with kind applause by cloistered backers.

Seats tremble at each impish jolt, laughter spreads in concentric turns, drinks spill, join, spill, stain, and echo.

I rejoice and outpace up to the sidewalk’s greeting.

What of the slender gifts without a humble audience?

What of the homeward walk without a sprightful saunter?

So I whistle an irrepressible tune and bow to a distant clap.

On the Nobility of the Ungainly

I am left without objections: 

he is not fit for life.

The world is solid, unyielding.          He lacks the strength to carve           his place, to stand the cold. 

The roads are too cumbersome; I have seen him founder more than I care to recount.  

The sights are too rapturous;  

I have spoken to gusts,         

appealing to an absence.

He strays much in the manner           of an urchin, careless. He has nothing to stand on.

I am the only one there. He is conscious of this.          He shares his tenuous notions.

And I am in sympathy,  which he says is enough.

Evening Thoughts

I

Nosebleeds set the boundaries of childhood. I sought pointless strain to prove my import, brashly subdued any bookish remnants. Yet sunlight’s brazen caress persisted.

I was born an infirm mess, the rag doll of dainty happenings and trivial talk. How could I not hold in awe the brutish, that which lays claim to vexatious portions?

I kept my unsound body an adherent— impaired lungs, flat feet, and fickle skin       begrudged the faith, and blood cascaded. Weakness has its ways to feign ignorance.

The wished-for savagery came in ailments, in nights of trenchant imploration and fear,   in nights tailored to instigate memory. No protracted rigor could surge from dearth.  

To be sure, false vitality quickens through an elfin channel toward oceans of negligible insights and hard-won dread.

II

It is the moment of guessing, the first reductionist venture.

A truss of widening desires withers into a single bloom—  outside bent’s outcome.

What to do with this bequest passing as a deep verity?

Care is taken to conserve the arrant adventitious— a now mute fragment.

It is the maturing of nescience, the comfortable refusal.

And I see the days sprout abstract, contours I need not replenish,            knowing as I know the likely.

What to do when one unlearns amid the hardened labors?

I arrive nowhere with loss, respectful only of vague signs that seem to tell a story.

III

The French press sits.           

I stare through the window.  

Though the scene is empty,

the eloquent self-indulgence            

of infants travels from afar.  

I serve two cups of coffee.    

The merciful aroma hovers.             

I cannot understand   

the associations;        

they are mild,  

dull at times.  

But they hold together          

the damning portrait,  

don’t they?                

A day in bed,  

a dubious joke,          

routine chatter,          

lukewarm meals.         

All flat. All quite forgiving. 

I inhale and I remember. 

At Shore

Have you not suspected imprisonment         in the faithfulness to the canons of coherence, bindings of the soul to habitual image—      forced monotone of meanings and sudden compromise?    

I take the sky in wonder—     now as current under tenuous nets, now as confluence of nerves, now as self-regulating gothic.

Have you not seen the dunes that gather at dawn,    sculpted into dissolution through thriving geometries?        Ignored errantry, as ephemeral          as it is compact—creation in prodigal seconds.

I reach for the sea that lurks beneath the tiles and seize a stem’s sap. In the dateless tide of each,    everything stands for everything else.

Resolution

I will long for the hopelessly concrete, for the nurture of presence, only tie to a waning body—in time renounced.  

The temptation of exodus lingers and tests my patience.

I choose the warmth of familiar outlooks. Is not closeness to novelty a kind of death, a stifling of natural growth?

I will yield to daydreams and yearnings

when the roots turn into wires

Quiet as an Agate Lamp

The ocean rises,         summer evening of spilled honey,     trail for the three-mast,          glee between glimmer.

The ocean rises,         oblique slit of the skyline,     stationary glass,                     woe amid watchmen. 

The ocean rises,         blunder of red diagonals, impetuous macula, tumult towering hours.

The ocean rises, garter, robe, curls, wide-eyed consort, essay above aim. 

The ocean rises,         funereal stepping stone, maternal murmur, gentle obolus.

Fountain

Bronze, it was yet different from others showered with gold, it actually moved her. I was unconvinced, no proven fan of angels. I was then lulled in a moment of fear. It trickled for a time,       it mattered even as the garbage truck carried its unsung vestiges.

Oreads

Within the deep symmetries of the woods, conversing on the glade that has been reached,        we lose all visions of furtherance and silence the stir of our longings.    We are awake, casting off our word into the ever-working breath.

And a jubilee soon dispels the peace. Torrent of limbs, multiloquent roar. Your distinct shade merges into        the spectrum of excess, and is lost, as a remote glare   expands, consumes the indulgence.

The glade?      I stare at my hands,    which remain stolid.  A diffuse tremble       is the lone answer.

A Native Light

8395 times I’ve yearned for the significant release that will allay the moments I absorb the pain of the world,           burdenous task that buds through untold voices whispering their prayers of agony into my pastel ears,    attuned to the heavens  as my eyes are attuned to the apparitions of our Lord.

But I tremble, for it would mean night as telluric tapestry, not as winged kingdom, where the heavy silks susurrate and graze my expectant forehead before the word mounts, suggestive of ailment in its hobbled, profane connotations.

Patience, the soaring scale obfuscates my vision, compels restraint, lest I seek fulfilment ignorant of the ordained balance that disperses              mortal clouds and speaks the genuine toll.

The exile is long, yet all creation knows me.

Near the Palms, Walking

Only there, in vague remembrance,  a stir emblazons withered leaves,      props decaying dates and courses,     sanguinely, through adjacent views.

Only there, in vague remembrance,   a wound recovers while it stays,        bleeds profusely, then provokes        a heartened rush to catch a ball.

Only there, in vague remembrance,   suspected godhood trails my path—  time it is to reckon time         the true theologian in our midst.       

The Center

I scanned the sky with avidness and saw the answers, black and white, that all ignored. Redemptive, lifelike pictures following one another in cryptic patterns I alone could grasp—am I untouched by sin?

For I cannot explain the tree inside, which feeds off water running through my veins. Nor the nights my throat, rigid, leaves me mute.      Have I to think about my life till now? Your son, the bearer of Your pain-wrought word?

A faithful wife in ignorant abandon— the consequence of overbearing lust. There is no guilt or shame; I cannot judge a poisoned gift what is in me. I am. Glory to him ablaze with desire!      

Those who pay tuition for enlightenment have locked me in this madhouse out of spite.         I’m sinless—wives surround me dressed as nuns.     You guide my fate. You guide my skillful hand.                  In silent labor, all will be preserved.

An Urbane Preacher

Song, wine, and women had defined my taste— intoxicants.

Away from them, the skulls and masks occult in blank walls grinned.         

They murmured and conspired to kill me, but I escaped.

A spear cut through my side, revealing blood and water.  

I found my eyes renewed—defiant.

Untrained, my hands impulsively reached for brush and color.

A haven for interpretation is the smallest stone;

the source of inspiration’s roaming free a childish play.

I am not humbled by the outer glow— I sustain it.

La Lionne

In his heated nothings, there’s a settled discourse:  

unbridled energy to stand out,

wilful memory to choke guilt,

sadistic urges to stomp down,

passionate longings for elsewhere.   

A veritable shriek to any fine-tuned ear. And a cloying repetition, really.

I don’t have the slightest patience to nod,    

so I drop my flats. 

This another testing ground. This an opportunity to ask     whether there’s been anything like it,  as if the queue weren’t some hundred others   imposing their vintage ideal of manhood.

I don’t have the slightest patience to smile, so I yawn, and leave the matter of his self-esteem to the air.

Tenorio

It were foolish to deny           the spirited sweets of variety,  the comprehensive bejewelment       that moors us to the hunger of our tips, to the inquisitive cast      of our casings; manifold shades        for the resolute, playful brush-strokes peculiar to the life-artist,  who seeks exuberant scarlet amid suggestive cobalt.

But the elusive transfigurations of one Cynthia bespeak a tranquil ascent in monochrome lushness— odd tinge for that tainted wayfarer, immersed in strident hue and thus a convert to the aesthete’s doubt.

My garish palate pines. My fickle scars lie numb. My tired grin grows stale.      And yet the blood upholds.

Leriano

Slowly the breeze surrounds my body, insists in tender beats and fades.       But I have become numb to outward lures and have retreated inward.    

I must pause.  

I must pause

and bid the plump cynic farewell.

He has waited for this silent hour.

He has borne the weight of affronts.  

His aphoristic style blossoms into a deluge

of detailed rages and demands assent. 

I must listen.              

I must listen   

and bid the plump cynic farewell.

He has a fitting story, one which begins in bliss and ends in blah.              And a fitter precept,   one which harps on the last rungs of the ladder.

I must reflect.  I must reflect  and bid the plump cynic farewell.

He promises some laughs,    

he promises some pleasure,  

and asks only that I not dwell 

on the artful omissions.

I must demur. 

I must demur

and bid the plump cynic farewell.

Relief

And as I clutch each unrestrained spasm,     as I learn the vertex from which springs want, as I stand in need of stubborn relish,  the constriction.       

And as I fill a bowl with milk, as I eat and drown in pillows, as I glance bereft of purpose, the expansion.

Curious intervals beyond all grasp.

Foreigner

I leave at the advent of evening.                   Hard to tell whether it is cold or hot;            I have ventured the distinction is slight        at this sacred hour—one of many.     The facades seem pensive, outright wistful,   as if they were on the verge of pleading to the leaden sky. I see all objects     in a similar trance. A silent choir.

I alone resist the temptation, aware of the need to settle and muse. We have not been cursed with blind inertia,             unlike these morsels of dead matter.   We can see the vestige of a parting sun and paint its shades other than they are.   Dusk can encroach the ascendance of sight  and yet fail to smother the pregnant flare.

I do not mind the chasm.       To it I owe the delectable space        in which I improvise a cadence         and bestrew the actual with lunacy.

Regarding the Naming of Trees

Felisberto— he climbed with me for days on end, and at the top we chronicled our future.

Aurora— she reclined with wistful gaze, fed the pigeons and addressed  the faults that did not dwindle, the light touch in our angst, the nowhere of our time.

Iselda— she finds the shade a dream,  remembers the sole branch that scarred her arm when small and throws a casual name: Tomás, her bashful friend.

These are the single baptisms, flourishes of memory.

The Wanderer Speaks

Here, amid the concrete, I first found death. For any sense of grandeur abdicates             in the ubiquitous skirmish against the new baroque: mass upon mass of gray,   that metempsychosis of obtuse gold.

I could not hold my restless feet,      

I could not cease to long for air,       

I lay awake, feeble, thinking 

of the belabored mock-vastness.

Why take this path as a given? 

Yet we have been painstaking with our lair.             Cross the thresholds, flee on a drunken whim, and see the roads converge on your doorstep.          The walls carry the forceful wills of old, the obstinate lust for man-made plenitude.

What could I, child of indulgence,    do in the wake of these iron obstacles and blood-wrought maxims?  Imagine myself a maverick?             Shed apathy, my only garment?

Indeed, I died. There is no bottom here,

among the empty eyes and trembling hands.           

I died and I went on, as expected.    

I died and years passed before I turned        

down another street, one unknown to me.

And then I maintained the pace. I walked with no resolution, with no inner monologue.      I felt the cold in my chest, I saw the scenery grow dim.   

The peaceable gurgle of orphan rivers, the oscillating heat of minerals, the harsh afternoons of tenantless heights, the taste of wild berries and gentle dew—    all have lulled the unuttered afflictions.

It is only now that I dare think. I am still an apathetic man;    I have no great song inside me.         But all life has its rhythm, and I have stumbled upon mine.

Acknowledgments:

Exacting Clam: "Evening Thoughts," "At Shore," "Resolution," "Quiet as an Agate Lamp," "Oreads," "A Native Light," "The Center" and "An Urbane Preacher."