Three Minimalist Cryptics, Sometimes Metaphysical

[Photo by Warren Falcon. Click image to enlarge.]

Apprehension...the leaves, the leaves,

still, as still as everness returnd,
defining distances with green. The space between
alive with each upon each barely in motion...

Far down--I voice in the wrong beauty
better than no beauty--to see a still world still
hopping mad among its calm of leaves.

- Robert Duncan, from Selected Poems, 17.

Notes About The Cipher Poems Below


for Mary Kerney Levenstein


The first poem below was written at least 15 years ago upon the death of Mooky whom I have known since he was an infant, who was only in his mid-20's when he died, a long awaited heart transplant extending his life by only 2 years.

I dreamed, and what are dreams but "the space between", what is also called "liminal space", just after Mooky died that his life work was to fly handmade paper airplanes from his inner city brownstone roof praying to catch an air current which would take the planes high aloft over the "City of Brotherly Love". His laughter alone made us all soar perhaps in preparation for the grief, sore, sore, come with his passing. The humorless paper planes were downers yet provided many moments of good-natured clowning between the pilot on the roof above and the taunting friendly crowd hurling insults below between guffaws and questions about the sanity of the mad maker and launcher of perpetually doomed flights (homo viator, "man the flyer/traveler", indeed). Upon each choreographed toss of plane Mooky would loudly expound:

"Remember now thy Creator in the days of thy youth,
while the evil days come not, nor the years draw nigh,
when thou shalt say, I have no pleasure in them...

and those that look out of the windows be darkened,
And the doors shall be shut in the streets... and he shall
rise up at the voice of the bird, and all the daughters of

musick shall be brought low... and the grasshopper shall
be a burden, and desire shall fail: because man goeth to
his long home, and the mourners go about the streets:

Or ever the silver cord be loosed, or the golden bowl be
broken, or the pitcher be broken at the fountain, or the
wheel broken at the cistern.

Then shall the dust return to the earth as it was:
and the spirit shall return unto God who gave it.

Vanity of vanities, saith the preacher; all is vanity." - Ecclesiastes 12.

And the dream crowd of congregant mirth below would bellow back," ALL IS VANITY!" The plane would be thrown to its fate with cheers rising from the cracked street.

Each plane bore a written prayer within its folds.

On a clear, windy day of the dream Mooky ventured to the roof slowly, slowly, up the doubtful ladder, each rung "clumb," as he said in the West Philly tongue, "a labor of love...I clumb because I can," between heartbeats, "I haven't much to do but pray, make my mama some glad-days, and to the god of skies say, "Thanks anyways."

My poem, unlike the dream full of feeling, is a rather cold, blue poem--more cipher than poem--especially if most people now associate poetry mainly to emotions, sentiments and, all too often, sentimentality which may indeed propel a poem into existence but as quickly kill it by emotional surplus, by excess. Emotions may inspire poetry but are not poems. Although Mooky was never understated, the powerful grief and strong love in this poem is, yet hopefully reveals itself in the labor and the longing to see "the space between" where presence partakes but does not necessarily concretize space but for negative relief more leaf than tree.

Mooky's poem, and the others, rather, see death liminally, betwixt/between, as intended occurrences within life fixed only in human memory, momentary spaces between preeminence ripe for nuanced existence hopeful for essential being before postulant poses and disposals dance with and beyond enduring impermanence, then the always eventual departures. And silence, the richer, always emptier for such richness. Let us each bitch about that, rendering praise to the end.

These cipher-poems below, visual space between each "stanza", are intended to be bracketed moments, meditations, sculpted emptiness as we each all are. In the first, repetition of images and phrases only slightly rearranged may rearrange awareness, perceptions, surmises, via resonant conveyances. The reader can fall perhaps between cracks of space and jarring syntax. Most readers of poetry in general do not want to work so hard with poems such as these below. Quick and easy, in and out, shouting sentiments and slogans, are much "the poetry thing" these days. I am not, obviously, of those braying schools of poetry slams and "performance" though I know these are in the history of oral poetry performance mostly for religious/shamanic purposes.

These below, however, are more cerebral, not meant to shake or stir or whirl one into extroverted states and thoughts although they do disrupt confluent agreements regarding texts and contexts. These are more moments of conjured instasy, not ecstasy, these are inner stances invoking trance, altering scansion, possible expansion of spaces between, ending in silence, in stillness.

If one is caught, a sparrow in a sparrow net, in a conveyance or two, arriving within or near instatic states then my little sparrow poems may serve, and your reading may free them, hidden prayers written in mendicant wings.


**CIPHER ONE**


Minimalist Death Cyphers, A Meditation In Nine Rounds

for Mooky,
not even two hearts
could contain your
great spirit


1


Blue cornflowers

lean forward


Reach again

One hand


What cannot be seen

in spaces between

matters


Sky has no memory



2


Lean forward

One hand

in spaces between


Sky has no memory



3


Reach again

What cannot be seen

matters


4


One hand

in spaces between

Sky has no memory



5


What cannot be seen

matters

Blue Cornflowers

reach again



6


In spaces between

Sky has no memory

Lean forward

One hand



7


Sky has no memory

lean forward

One hand

in spaces between



8


Matters

Blue cornflowers

Reach again

What cannot be seen



9


Blue cornflowers

Reach again

What cannot be seen

matters


Lean forward

One hand

in spaces between

Sky has no memory


**



**CIPHER TWO**


Three Tracing Infinite Musings


1

Beside hewn stones

on rotting plots

an unseen Chiseler


2

Here is a presence

something returning

in spite of melting clocks


3

Striven from

white rock

a wider sky


**CIPHER THREE**


Where Dispose Of The Joke Of Bones -
Minimalist Cryptics Sometimes Metaphysical



"Is that dance slowing in the mind of man
that made him think the universe could hum?" - Theodore Roethke


for two:

Agnes Martin, American artist,
minimalist painter extraordinaire

Elaine Bellezza, artist, too,
and traveler,
and early Anima-as-Fate,
and 'eye giver'



1


tell me now
glass-handled knives
I'm not clear where we started


2


off the square
in the darkest cell
where darkness is at its deepest -

some sense of home

those forms bursting forth


3


seal us in
ascetic fire -

and the cave become a dissonance
the lament on your face of saffron reddening


4


but the grids never are
little girls jumping rope


5


challenge circle words,

the self of rings


like a brown back

the empty form goes

extends outward


yet these words do not contain you


6


you have an 'element'

the word is ugly too
dearer than a son

cut cut cut out
the heart that lies


7


walking seems to cover time

the summit is rounded

outline of a foot on a rock


8


you speak in circles
though loving squares

when I cover squares clad in ashes
are all questions then mother of pearl


9


the pilaster speaks
loudly of days

dearer than wealth
the silence on the floor


10


discover the last image

how skim the ocean of brine
you wear on your face
that gray weight



11


the plain can do almost
nothing but weep

to turn my eyes away
destroys its power

the untamed fire


12


between the rain
whose throat is blue
like a wild fern is clear

I am sad when I see you


13


your letters arrive fat
swollen with human form

they fly out from my palms

look around you


14


mind now
mistaken

dying flowers
not traceable

instead -

believe the sky is not so wide

it reaches forward

(let us pass)

it is a far cry

is pervasive

get rid of everything

only see in me a part


15


the pagoda and the spire
poke the eye

I once understood you as
articulate who couldn't stand

now knowledge is less and less to

me

and a clear mind


16


the rose
are squared

white edge
of the world

ugly

sitting in
snow


17


where dispose of the joke of bones

one must feel the forms
bursting in the tranquil shade
the reality of virtual form
sitting in said snow

the beat of a wing we grieve
certain words repeating -

the world 'ugly'

and just is the 'plain'


what becomes of skin

what becomes of a lotus petal


it tears apart


18


believe the streets are blistering

Nature is the wheel

settle for less

some sense of home


those forms bursting forth

between the rain

whose throat is blue


they fly out from my palms


look around you


*