for Josef - tightrope walker, dancer, eye glancer where I once and forever fell continually onto soft landings. My demands are over. I find you now in clover beds behind the Metropolitan, Temple of Dendor overlooking our search for the rare four-leaved still-common flower. You are uncommon to me always. I am the grateful commoner once supplicant at your heart's many chambered door. I am content enough.
Also, this piece is dedicated to Cafe Orlin, that down the alley place where for 35 years I long sat allowed my solitude and soups beside books and notebooks stacked, my sereptitious longing glances at the servers and chefs, the scrap-and-crumb-removers whose dark eyes lit fires and fueled at least a million words and imaginings (how much the breaking heart can bear astounds and resounds through the bearer forever) . Orlin has recently closed its doors for good or, rather, to go with some imagery in the text below, has folded its tent that daily featured the myriad circus performers of the East Village and Manhattan and the world...this place, one stepped down from the street to enter it, is where I once wrote my millionth epitaph:
'We shod our feet against what long loss of motion,
eyes downcast or boldly returning the stare?
Beneath each eye there's some familiar look we refuse.
We map our way to sleep in the palms of shy or frightened hands.'
Cafe Orlin, years of moments glad, sad, and in between, coffee spills upon expensive pages and poor ones too, uncountable and unforgetful smiles and jokes, aspirations and dreams, inspiring and aspirating as do all hopes seize re-size us all these that go all in with spice, grease, with Meditteranean glad tongues daily ensouling cycles - crumbs in beard and lap, breakfast, lunch, dinner - I will miss you as I-the-thinner become foregoing more than peasant repasts of sour dough endless dull knives of butter slathered upon, sprinkles of salt flung over shoulder for all
my spills, mindless drippings, and breaking the trembling china. SALUTE!
And to Jean Genet: "So once again begins the three−cornered life in the garret which looks out over the dead, the cut flowers, the drunken gravediggers, the sly ghosts torn by the sun."
Please pass through this poem but be not "torn by the sun".
<><><>
Lectio Divina
'There is no other source of beauty than the wound - unique, different for each person, hidden or visible, that every man keeps within, that he preserves and...he withdraws when he wants to leave the world behind for a temporary but deep solitude.'
- Jean Genet, from The Studio of Alberto Giacometti 1957
'It sounded vaguely like the kind of thing
Christ might have said if Christ had a sense of humor.
The empty bar that someone was supposed to swing to him
Did not arrive, & so his outstretched flesh itself became
A darkening trapeze. The two other acrobats were thieves.'
-Larry Levis, from Elegy with a Darkening Trapeze Inside It
<><><>
Ingressus
Sweep up the nightly flesh harvest macabre
then when flush "I"-silt down toilet with blessings
to underworld deities by me be them nourished
enough to grant (O grant me please)reprise and
sundry other wants I'll blurt here, and bleat your
meek hurt lamb shorn to nerve, skin no longer
but what sheds cell by cell, I am to Hades, Dis,
Sheol, Inferno, returned, all too real no matter
the Name, perhaps Dessication's the better.
How strange
wake up in these
sheets feel my
grain surface-me
forced out and
off by what within
seeks to free,
move about,
perhaps as mulch,
into the world of
the living, or so
is the appearance,
legs, arms fill
my street.
<><><>
The Night Watch
...all night tv, Catholic station, I awaken
in hallucinations Roman. Father B. and
me giving commentary run on in Latin
upon "revered Saint John of the Cross
imprisoned by his very own, the worst by
Deity though remaining Lover-at-the-brink, "
ward walker feet first into the world one
clinched fist wishing to reverse to return
repair placenta
there drift umbilical
in potential always
on-the-way but
glad-stalled in
no-think little fingers
pink spider-curl
thread blue veins
do sift am-me-not-"Ich"*1
Lover, I'll struggle to rise for the proffered
Drink, Real Presence (from whom? I live alone) .
I shudder feel mystical urge forge Dark Night
again that purgation that emptying out of
once was meaning bereft of all the striving
after earlier seeking almighty rafter upon
which to hang keep above the fray
but wins the nights and days sandpaper skin
when knees unable to bend ache elbows too
too raw-red oozing each move a pain a prayer
of sorts in what now is lair the old tv set
lunar stares stark blind into monochrome
rearranges furniture, books on the shelf
myself too dismembers reassembles
(kingdom come
will be done and
all that which is
not nothing but
some thing is the
question)
Church bells near do ring the hour, or half,
hear them divide into parts that which is
more than me now strung now quartered
yesno
yes<>no
yes<>no
between chimes
dust is
can be
quartered
one finger cuts in
in traces
a thought last minute or sooner
soon, soon god willing I'm a goner
<><><>
Prime
I wake to Rome
the most handsome African face scars a startle on the screen,
in St. Peter's attending Mass for Prisoners, a final mass to
conclude the Year of Mercy inaugurated, a year's worth,
by kindly Pope, to him I nod nap between Latin the mass
and those masculine faces, prisoners leaning forward on knees
I become dirge itself as Demi Urge reveals voracious lust
for exaggerated masculinity in full flower in agony, in humility,
what hands have done heat bidden to others remains a god stain
for the Mass the mess it is - that it is flesh and blood that is eaten
at the Table we're unable to escape the animal nor the perambulating
spirit that crawls lurks lunges leaps toward some integration
once transcendence is given up, the hope of it, on one's knees
at last or, as I am now for a year, on his back raw meat-ed hairy,
winter's lion caught out of season in insistent and urgent corelatives.
Awake again a face pleads a kneeling prisoner the camera adores
as do I, O Face familiar much, Saint Genet, Our Lady of the Flowers*2,
from pénitencerie France, more than once sprung, the redemptive
narrative there from his artistry
that mysticism of The Abjection
articulation in underworld the excoriation alienation
unimagined but experienced agonies primitive infantile
such must be inexorably conjured emerging unsought
but fated seizure
caesura
upon gut
soul eye
roll him (me)
inside out
why/how appease impersonal
deity hiding behind cold bars
doors demanding merger
love to flesh metal?
In answer perhaps in
bed stunned into sleep
by the question in beatitude,
in dumbstruck,
a most beautiful boy,
Beatitude Itself, in Vatican
choir rapture, soprano
sing crystal sing plaintive,
virginal to prisoners,
holy, pure, such singing
O replunge each criminal
kneeling into further exile
into further Glory and me
he weeping abyss returned
to skin and nerve endings
sheering cell by cell raw
my raw hands long nails
bloody matted hair on belly
is that smell the smell
of animal me captured
not the Unicorn but the
winter lion lying on sheetless
mattress gray yellow,
gutted self opened who
would be once again
caught in those rafters
whose only crime is to
live anxiously for church
bells ringing the here
to hereafter.
<><><>
Sext
A Probatory Reprise
This mid-day surprise. Freed!
momentarily, of course;
in self imposed imprisonment,
in flesh, no divorce is permanent, final.
Evenso. I am less brittle, a little, enough
now, to take myself, Crustacian Man,
masked of course, the plain man, wall
and sidewalk shadow scuttle into
HUMAN world.
To brace myself, to soothe, I take Genet
with, him devour him consent, yet forbid
tears for the tightrope walker astounded,
his last lover, Algerian, a circus lad stretched
blooming in spotlight emerging into
rope-into-youth
and man-falling
a falling-man willful
imolation leap
luscient eventual
inevitable pale
impaler
<><><>
Coniunct io
[]_______________ ____Le Funambule____________________[]
[] __________________The Rope Walker__________________[]
such are attempts (transcend via ropes and swings and rafters)
upon Palomino's back upon which balances urgent youthhood
in tights holding a gay umbrella over his concentrated head, his
bluer than blue eyes fixed upon some other-world-anywhere-but-here,
not hearing the blurred masses crashing against him-the-projected
that they need
and so feed upon
him torso
him balance
him stillness-dance
on the haunch
him unreal unseen
as real so him peel
down tights to
skin moon-white
each gallop each
bounce portends
him rope and him
fall at last into him
past which refuses
memory itself nor
need for recall (or
fall)especially when
the bereft remainder
the loverpins him
past to now-agonies
tender pinner he
remains reminds
him splintered
one to sing and say
of him splendour
of him acrobat
him ropewalker
him child/man
of tents
and stray
grave but
gay hints
there is more than a year
a moment in Mercy arms
legs breaths twined till twain
and pain doth them part,
lips forever parted mute
too stunned in loss to sound
the repetitive moment of
him legs and him white
arms flashing down
there is no sound then but
him thud
just one
more than
enough
to end
all that
<><><>
Contemplation - Stations of the Cross
Down the brief street almost Spanish in intent and shade, I/he, Crustacion
Man, read Jean Paul Sartre's book, Saint Genet, a difficult read though
well written, dense with rich thought, his own transcendent language
tightrope inspired requires a specialist in both levity and gravitas to ken,
but one reads as one chants over, now, the opening sore, or soar from
rope into fire, discover there the landing is soft once the breath puffs out,
shoots through the tent, remains some depth and sanctity there or near
or above ascending past circus, past tent, in the air close above but also
close behind the ear last breath a prayer between eyes closed and thinking
finally shattered...such is the rarer art, soul's the cost wrest from cauldron
lad/man beneath the rope taut, hope wobbly on all too human wings which
would be mind heart sinew and sole, the drunken circus band honking on
and on such is gaity and play staying crises while the tent is secured enough
the elephants slow motion sway and the lad dances raw on horseback or
pony, pennies tossed beyond him to gold the center and hope-us-give
that the living's more than the stumble-and-stale but the rope walker
attempts, tempting us into presence-enough even as skin dries
from raw red to sand-sundered self-dust lying-abed, shelter in place,
how much more scrape to get to essential bone?
my thoughts alone at a round table dark scarred of fork and knife,
how many lives in the alley to table taken to meals and books, lives,
mistaken harlequin moments turning the page, turning the ruby,
the color at least, in the glass?
How can this reddening world not be loved inspite all glimpes ahead
forward to the last page, the backcover closing within a clover there
pressed, and the paler lad/man upon the prancer, its mane long and
flowing in spotlight glow, in overflow of ecstasy, the moment the
movement illuminates, now and at last, until the circle is swept at
last, the flung pennies gathered.
Rehearsals unseen begin anew before searing noon topples
morning toward concluding shadows, the band practices another
tune but always in the end a stagger, evening's adagio waiting
the curtain pull-back, the neighing horse and band when the
standing lad/man balances, easily it seems, glad upon the tigher
rope or the cantering haunch, centers the miracle in the sky-blue
tights what lights the motion-maddend crowd-now-all-one-child
screaming - no wobbling! no saddle!
the tent walls tremble,
for us he
pretends the miracle of never falling.
<><><>
Lectio Divina - Sacred Reading - Read > Reflect > Respond > Repose
["His defeat astonishes and overwhelms him, but he claims that he has doomed
himself since childhood... submerged in a ghastly present, he leaps, at the same
time, far into the future, turns to look at his dead life and finds it exemplary. He is
himself and the Other, as always; and, as always, the Other is imaginary...
...Hopelessness is its own hope. He creates a way out by himself; he is even the
way out; and he knows it. He knows that he is being observed by an invisible witness
who will come and lay his hand on Genet's brow and whisper gentle things to him:
"You would not seek me if you had not found me."]*3
<><><>
The Sacrifice - Misericodia*4
him Jesus
(the secret can
be told, him was
a believer after
all despite the
cleaver)
executed between two prisoners, thieves of
lavender, appropriate much, thieving grace in
a graceless human world, Genet on one cross,
violets violently blooming from his feet, his
hands, and the scarred youth a pastel still,
is thrown from his circus mare, unstrung from
the tightrope dashed, is hung stunned to be
fallen, is raised upon the other, each thirsts
why must thirst be hidden when it is thirst for
an Infinity beyond magic and illusion though
acrobats accomplish much with their bodies
illuminated in beams of light but even they, as
all/us/we, are incomprehending of the word
'necessity'
needful things all three criminals we too crave
the vinegar sponge for drink, which prisoner
serves us, and who shall notice a last blood
wink with Him eye to a setting sun.
Year of Our Lord and all that, still another
lad climbs the height in darkness before
the beam hurts the eyes a pledge to stretchedness
between rope and ground, but for screams
- delight or fear - with balance the end is
easily near reveals that each step matters,
each breath emboldens defiant walks or
rides upon a pony's hide, or the horse's,
the rope is straight, the course curves to
trace the trotters the ringed romp is all
design and mirrors dividing centered magic
from the masses crammed in the risers
the beggars convocation of clocks unwinding,
dark birds flock the near horizon, the
ecstasy at last beneath big top bent on
distraction and redemption though there
are some most in need of the latter
(but not
the ladder
to rope
and swing
where clowns
times three
prevent
indiscriminate
ascents by
the all
too ordinary)
such rarely think upon any escape actively
still again
always
they do need
and so feed upon
him torso
him balance
him stillness-dance
on the haunch
him unreal unseen
as real so him peel
down tights to
skin moon-white
each gallop each
bounce portends
him rope and him
fall at last into him
past which refuses
memory itself nor
need for recall (or
fall)especially when
the bereft remainder,
the lover, pens him
past to now-agonies
tender penner he
remains reminds
him splintered
one to sing and say
of him splendour
of him acrobat
him ropewalker
him child/man
of tents
and stray
grave but
gay hints
there is more than a year
a moment in Mercy's arms
******
*1"Ich" = German for "I" thus "am-me-not-"Ich""is word play with "amniotic" turning into
"am me not I [me]
*2Jean Genet,19 December 1910 - 15 April 1986)was a French novelist, playwright, poet, essayist, and political activist. Early in his life he was a vagabond and petty criminal, but he later took to writing. His major works include the novels The Thief's Journal, and Our Lady of the Flowers, and the plays The Balcony, The Maids and The Screens.
Existentialist philosopher Jean Paul Sartre wrote a book, Saint Genet, Actor and Martyr, 'about...Genet especially on his The Thief's Journal. It was first published in 1952. Sartre described it as an attempt 'to prove that genius is not a gift but the way out that one invents in desperate cases.'[1] Sartre also based his character Goetz in his play The Devil and the Good Lord (1951)on his analysis of Genet's psychology and morality.[2] Sartre has been credited by David M. Halperin with providing, 'a brilliant, subtle, and thoroughgoing study of the unique subjectivity and gender positioning of gay men'. - wikipedia entry 'Saint Genet'
*3This passage is from Saint Genet, Actor and Martyr, by Jean Paul Sartre, page 191.
*4 Misericordia = Latin for Mercy
Photo below of Jean Genet, author of Our Lady of the Flowers and many other novels and plays. I do not own rights to this photo at all.
You may view the Mass for Prisoners on youtube...just enter this in the subject line:
2016.11.06 Mass for the Jubilee of Prisoners
