animal destinies

   
             "Once I lived in the best chateau    
            Set in a softness of water and hills."    
                       -  Paul Verlaine    
   
   
   
Whence upon a dream i saw    
the beauty of today ,    
      gigantically strange.    
as hoar-frost bladed my pagan grass and thawed    
in  lunar light    
from the bottom where we bygone beasts do sprawl    
not infinite - but ripe,    
and head-down into hellion dawn.    
   
   
     & our veins were fast, fit, and proud.    
   
      up up! on your feet now! ...the window shuddered    
against the cold.    
   
till the hills crack,    
chastened as the land becomes ,    
ground scorched and slack    
bleached to the soul    
you who in need break down    
the sufficient spirit    
for orgasms of limited lust.    
   
   
      the young mechanic touched    
now my hip    
 and how it hurt,    
withered, split.    
   
   
- scored & hungry to the root.    
   
grey grey rock and lava tongue    
congealed and were spent.    
     
debris flung upon the breaker wall    
   
flung again    
from the bridges overhung and cities    
diverged downhill.    
   
   
      detach us and do we not all fail?      
   
   
so what of cocked hats?    
what of suits and rags?    
what glory in the whitewash    
of harmonious song?    
   
the zigzag wisdom of the wind      
pulled plum and birch back to me in a gulp    
   
quite requited, and coolly melodious    
in fjords the tempest blessed    
this high house of feasting,    
lathered sweet as natural sweat.    
autumnal pink manifest,    
moss and honeysuckle dulcet      
in the shade of illicium leaves    
and rifts of silver river mist.    
   
now my heart    
pumps full black asper of the sea,    
hastened to remember amongst the flotsam drift    
the trees liquid kiss    
and dewdrops drunk to the dregs.    
   
   
yet if i sit and am content....    
   
if i sit and am content  ...    
?    
   
   
gravity curves a double oval mourning shawl,    
& buzzards of mechanical teeth and grip    
would hound my loafing form    
forward and on    
under a hearth of porcelain stars    
out beyond near
& far beyond far,    
down lagoons vaunt of soot    
and laced vertebral of steel;    
daggers fused from the dirt and the ideal    
to pierce my hull & true .    
   
savage as my flaunt corpse rides    
earthenware hooves cleaving Elysium fields    
and bares the fawn that bares a thousand depths of blue,    
circinate azure as every coiled wayfare Moon    
wept pure tears of vert & teal    
   
& blinked instantly & swiftly spilled    
the arc of her heart upon the ancient wheel    
with the weight of all the wounds that i have known,    
alien skyscapes blazed my disdain    
but turned quickly cold    
as the oils and red bands of blood    
burst from shadow's brow above    
and sung its gib-gob motor trill    
upon the soil of my own    
   
& shook & jangled the jagged forest down    
whose breath is stone,    
salt, water, and wood, and bone    
   
until all was silent and very still,    
   
until all was silent and very still,    
   
   
- but our veins were hope and ringed in gold    
   
and our blood parted, spiral'd, and swelled,      
   
      and bloomed where it fell.    
   
   
   
   
   
   
   
* inspired by Franz Marc's painting "The Fate of Animals"    
   
http://www.artcyclopedia.com/masterscans/l255.html