THE MAN WITH A MICRO-CHIP IN HIS RIGHT HAND
Stopping wantless under cherry blossoms
He hears a girl singing from the sewer,
then harmonizes voices with some hums,
then sings the final chorus like he knows her,
their voices shaking red chrysanthemums –
but now the crowds of fading stars are fewer
and his voice grows weaker as the day glows nearer,
as he’s alarmed by the stirrings of the bums.
“Should I come up to see you on the street
so in the morning light we could now meet?”
A blossom plummets through the dewy grate.
Before he can reply I, an old class-mate,
pass by, asking why he’s standing here —
“for — for cherry-trees this time of year.”
______________
SONNET ON ANASTASIA
Like Martin Luther King she had a dream,
but lived out what the TV would prescribe.
She’d only ever be a psych-ward queen.
I know she might have equalized our tribe.
I whisperingly sing so soothingly;
Sometimes I wonder: would she still be gone
If she had measured my worth by my love, alone?
I could not heal her so distantly.
Like Martin Luther King she had a dream,
but lived out what the TV would prescribe.
She’d only ever be a psych-ward star.
We found her at the harbour, drowned. Her surgeon-
markered life-time thought-line equalled one long
wound — her legacy a traceless scar.
THE SONNET OF A PROPHET ADDRESSING HIS OWN COUNTRY
Canada, I came to you with my soul
and with diamonds, and you tried to collapse them
back into a vacuum, back into coal! —
Canada, remove your bloody diadem!
Canada, I came to you with answers
to inquiries you make in your lion-wild
dreams, where your wonder has been exiled,
where your wishes are kites so drawn to stirs
of the vortex of utopia, through
whose one end I blow, as though through a trumpet,
the prophecies you mock, despite sensing,
deep in your soul’s centre — you freeze —
the chance my drawn and quartered words are true,
these testaments to my theophanies!
____________
SONNET XVIII
So boa-constrictor-slowly you move,
exterminators of my humankind!
Some hardly feel their dying and approve
their deaths with stasis, silence; quarantined,
they cheerlead their own Gotterdammerung
while our exterminators now erect
the camps where Fidelitites — the unsung
saints, the Bride of Christ, the final sect,
dressed from head to foot in fealty —
will kneel before the pits; the humanoids
will jeer them from their seeming realty,
sore from their beast-marks – rabid with tirades.
So boa-constrictor-slowly you kill
those who’ll deny or receive you with full will.
THE SAVIOUR ADDRESSES A DANCER AT THE JUBILEE OF THE SECOND COMING
(for Lenora Di Saverio)
Lone among the dancers, you mourn– despite Death’s adieu —
my Calvary anew, behind your sunglasses?
Woman, none stands alone so beautifully as you,
since, has the Kingdom not Come? You say your tears are dew?
Why now cry amid the trumpets and the brasses?!
Lone among the dancers, you mourn, despite Death’s adieu —
Mourn the dead Inferno-hours of the Risen Son, too?
O won’t you jive and join in chalice-clangs?
Woman, none stands alone so beautifully as you.
Why should you not waltz to a flawless few
Of Cecile’s tunes? Whiff this lilied wind that passes?
Lone among the dancers, you mourn, despite Death’s adieu.
I feel no sorrow; must my whippings ensue?
Should you not see family, upon my greenest grasses?
Woman, none stands alone so beautifully as you.
Behold the diamonding stars! Behold your halo-hue
supremely match the moon! To Lea! Raise your glasses!
Lone among the dancers, you mourn, despite Death’s adieu –
Woman, none stands alone so beautifully as you.
__________________
A SONNET AFTER MY WINTER SURRENDER
O Seraph who stands on sacred airs —
goldening the firmament with halo-
beams – illumining my soul with
rosary-stars, which supernova
after your Amens — you whisperingly singing
over me, soaring my soul like a whitening kite
triple-tied to an infinite string…
O Seraph who lands on burn-out back-
yards of this downcast world, when
will this tempest end?! “Know: I only
seem a Seraph! I am come,
tonight, to witness your rebirth!
Revere the spirit inside the whiteout;
the snow foreshadows my Kingdom on Earth!”
_______________________
Featured Image: James Ensor – L‘entrée du Christ à Bruxelles