Sonatas

I know I once heard summer gales
through night blow fields of sealong swales
where tides warmed deep with violet hue--
That is the night that I once knew.

The cliffs held brush that stretched a mile
and let the winds the brush defile
while seas rumbled with amber glow--
You walked those shores I used to know.

Your hair whirled out in strait-cut wind
While calm you watched the waves set in,
Your dress flailed round your unmoved legs
as waves slid back to leave their dregs.

I know this must have happened then--
But its your words I've forgotten!
I've lost those words you once did say
making all else I know go gray.

I'd rove the world but ne'er recall
Your talk I once thought was mere scrawl,
I'd hear hoarse winds through each new night
yet still your words not regrain quite,

You said something of greater shores,
greater than those of life before
And no amount of walking land
has brought me to those sacred sands,

You said that I could meet you there,
I forgot where, so unaware
of what the future had in store--
Now all I want is at that shore!

Blow those winds round me once more!
And stand there as you did before
And tell me all will be alright
though I squandered the boon of night,

Tell me that when the world resigns
it will take me along the brines
to trek through ages out of reach
to finally anchor on that beach

And say that when I see you there,
I'll give away all earthly care
and run to you and cherish you
and know the bliss that I once knew,

Oh Dame of Night! Do hear my plea
I see your form about to flee,
Oh please don't go! I'll never know
if you go now by winds that blow

Where I'm to be! But oh, you leave!
You fade to air! I'm left to grieve!
What is this world, what is this world,
to which I was consentless hurled?

I'll stalk its depths, late and alone,
estranged in what I once thought home,
I'll write out poems no one will read
to shout on peaks as tides recede,

The clouds won't come, all night is done,
the plants shrivel from brazen sun,
All wind will stop, all things shall broil,
the woodlands all the deserts spoil,

The skies blurr tan before my eyes,
as seas up to the sun do rise,
But I will not repeat your name,
But match this ending strong and tame!

I hate the winds through which you've blown!
I'll leave you now for gods unknown!
I loathe your stare to night above
with hate as stark as my past love!

The less and less I seem to know,
as I'm beneath the sun's last throe--
But still your hair and dress I see,
in whorls I view ever clearly.

Why have you here abondoned me?
Why did your words I never heed?
Where will I go after all this--
Can I still walk those shores of bliss?

I can make out in my last breath,
a light that seems larger than death:
Before that night where winds blew by,
By morning docks you blandly lied,

The mist opaqued the pier-glass sky,
your locks around your chest did lie,
the mist brushed o'er the slender wake
and through your dress of simple make,

Resting with me, almost asleep
Talking of pastures you did keep,
where friends would come while passing through--
those were the things that I once knew.

You fell asleep, your whole face still
your cheeks with daybreak's goodness filled,
Where does life go? Where does life go?
This is the thing I'm sure I know.

*

A Daemon sung through his barbed lips
To orioles in bloody lisps,
though they flew out as lyric swelled—
His lusts for them could not be quelled.

A Dame sat nigh, her thumb on lyre,
From practice soon she would expire,
As sky rolled coats of coarser gray
Till night plucked out the specs of day,

The daemon who the birds had snubbed,
Lied down in steppes to cry of love—
The Dame, then, with a pluck resigned
That whimm’d through air for him to find.

In white soft lace, she sat alone
While past the bluff the current droned,
She thumbed through Mathew, Luke, and John
And paused at times to make cat-yawns.

The Daemon perched on trees to peer
Where seemed the pluck’s epicenter,
so fast enflamed his soul with love
When woman yawns he heard thereof

The Dame flipped past a feeble page
—While his chest-engines spun with rage—
She mumbled prayers up towards the sky
So elegant, the poppies sighed.

When he had poised upon the tree
A few leaves fell unto a lea,
So quick he leapt into some wind
to lift those leaves with ruffling din

Once he possessed the common leaves
They turned scarlet and silver-rimmed
to lace the lyre’s silken strings
with melodies of Bach to weave

She looked aghast that wind could guess
Which strings would sing a song when stressed,
But quick this queer display she solved--
Its God who in those leaves had delved!

"Oh praise the Lord", the Dame had said,
while her lyre pure with Bach had bled,
"Life up his name" she bleated out,
not knowing jinn were there to tout,

The daemon was ecstatic then,
not by her love but by the name
she'd given him, for wasn't it
the Devil's wish to o'er God sit?

As pride replaced his lustful drive,
the Bach in variations thrived,
He raged with swift polyphony
in forms two hands would never weave,

She grew afraid from this violence,
and while the Daemon saw this fear
he was for his own glory bent
so had to to the lyre adhere,

She paced away, for she'd been sure
she just had heard Bach demonized--
She sensed the lunatic allure
of silken strings wet with hell's lies.

Did she, when mixing God and jinn,
Commit unpardonable sin?
She grieved this thought, though she forgot
Paul's blind blasphemes were forgiven,

As she recanted her past words,
the daemon all her regret heard,
and cried himself since now was done
the praise he had for moments won,

He fled out west to manless leas,
with no one's love, wisted, lonely,
and she fled east delirious
and thought her naming serious,

her prayer would not relieve her guilt,
and so the Dame with fear did wilt,
She'd stammer out Christ's wisdom when
exhorting friends to not make sin,

The daemon prayed to God above,
"I'll leave my pride for her true love",
and prayed he could take human flesh
to tell the Dame she need not thrash.

"Not at this time, but soon to come"
Our God did say to he below,
"Not in this age, or that to come"
the Dame read in the Bible slow,

She threw her Bible to the ground,
and wept with funereal despair,
and wanting words of peace profound,
she opened Heine and read this there:

"A single fir-tree, lonely,
On a northern mountain height,
Sleeps in a white blanket,
Draped in snow and ice.

His dreams are of a palm-tree,
Who, far in eastern lands,
Weeps, all alone and silent,
Among the burning sands."

She closed the book and said aloud,
"If God hates me, then thee I need,
my Demon muse, you leaf-full cloud
who harped to me, my lonely tree."

And then God knew the time was right,
to grant the jinn flesh tinted white
and take away his hellish mien
as to not scare away the Dame,

then he who had wept all alone
was reformed with a human tone,
and then he said, "I Praise to Lord
to let me the Dame's joy restore,"

And off he heard her forlorn calls,
wanting the Daemon's lyric thrall,
So quick he ran back to her place
lacking hell's hex, with a man's face.

He came to her and said, "just wait,
God still can change your final fate,
for how can you be held with blame,
when without knowledge you misnamed?"

She did not recognize this man,
"How do you know which gal I am?”
she said, and then he replied back,
"I am your jinn, hell's skin I lack,"

She did not trust this handsome man
and so she placed to lyre his hand,
and said, "replay the song you played,
when you were wind with ruffling blades”

He played again, but pure like Bach,
not crazed, but ordered as a clock,
and quick her hear enflamed with love,
a man below with tunes above!

She said in haste, "You music is
the only words that heaven says,
God's never played to my relief,
but in his silence made me grieve,

So why should I on him believe?"
The Devil knew that she was wrong,
but how she loved his human song!
Here was the love that he had longed!

Forgetting his plea for God’s good help,
he filled with love for this sweet belle,
She said again, "its only hell
that exists here, that lives in me,

my only heaven’s to know thee."
The daemon could not keep it in,
And kissed upon her all his sins,
but filled with guilt himself within,

And then she said, "My last blaspheme
was ignorant, but to know you
I'll curse this God I never knew,
My heart so fears that brand of sin

that would keep me from heaven's kin
but if this oath I dare recite
then can I fear its luck to pass
when chance and hap cannot harass?

Is not the possibility
that I would random speak those words
a much greater anxiety
then if those words are fain rehearsed?

I can no longer see difference
from thoughts I will and thoughts that pass,
these thoughts of fear and hate and guilt
are both unwilled and by me willed,

I no longer know who to name
myself, but I know that hell's name
I will assign to him above,
and exchange God for your sweet love!"

Despite the daemon's lust for her,
he could not let her cat-like purr
enunciate the blaspheme words
that were for him relaxed leisure,

he tried to stop her lunacy
but quick she set her grin to space,
attempting to exclaim aloud
the words that would let her soul waste,

but then she choked! Her own body
would not let her bleat out her bane,
or was it God who plugged her throat
to keep her from that brutal quote?

She was amazed, for this restraint
seemed not to come from her in fain,
and so just like her thoughts of hate
this muting leash felt of elsewhere,

and then God in the sky above
appeared to them who were in love,
and said, "vile daemon, you gave in
and kissed upon her all your sins

instead of not tempting her heart
to love your sin and craft sin's art"
But then he said, "But did you see
how when she was about to say

those words I tried to halt their sound?"
God fast replied, "go to your grounds!
those peaceless caverns go to now!
you choose before I made this world

to hate and never love a girl,
so there forever you belong!"
and then the Daemon and the Dame,
who both felt awful love and blame,

glanced at each other one more time,
before to hell he went again.
So what becomes of this good Dame,
now that her soul from hell was saved?

She'll never doubt the love of God
that saves her from her inane mind;
but once she's done with praise and laud,
she thinks on how things could have been:

If God had let her blaspheme Him,
and never showed His providence,
she would have wandered agonized
by one shrill question on her mind,

for what of God she ever felt
would, at her words, shrivel and melt,
and of this absence she would ask:
"Has heaven left because I taught

my subconscious how false is God
to save it from heaven's mirage,
or was it that God really was
there listening in skies above

and when he heard my final wish
decided to God's trace remove?"
Oh that question is hell enough,
God saved me from it with his love!

and still at times when God's asleep
she thinks of where that daemon is,
Weeping, lone and silently
Among the burning sands.


*

Your kiss, silent in its strength,
as a tendril pierces stone, reminds me
of my sojourn to my home I've never been to,

We kiss when the present arrives,
whose length is long enough
to thank God we're alive.

Lean longer on my shoulder
without tallying wilting moments,
look far into night woodlands

for when you're at my side
you're a friend who after vagrant years
revisits me by a fire-vital hearth,

too in love with life for words or mirth.
You're a lone desert traveler and you sail in the seas
for the rest at their end, where good life began.

God sing to you--night pen its verse to you--
hold my hand to walk somewhere . . .
I've heard that truth is there . . .

embrace my bankrupt soul and tell me
sin will flee life's scroll,
and pledge you'll rest your head on mine

that I might rest my head to yours.
Do not change as moments do,
let your arcane eyes endure,

Do not change your lovely face,
let it ebb with naturalness--
do not let this moment pass,

though it passes, and has passed,
and all the willows say "amen",
the birds flap, "a--", the sky gleams "--men."

and so its when I kiss your cheek
and feel your face skim mine,
that all the willows tickle the air

and all the birds dissolve in skyline,
and if this life is good to you
or if this life is poor to you

or if all life's in love with you,
then hear my kiss and hold my face,
and if the Lord framed heaven fair

or if he forms man self-aware,
then be aware of what's in this,
this moment 's gone and here's my kiss.

I've ne'er seen one moment that stays,
yet it I'll seek while dies my days,
and if it's permanence comes, let it remain!

and hope were kissing at its pause,
but till that time of tireless bliss
this moment 's fled and here 's my kiss.

We think if we don't feel time's pulse,
the reddened sands of an hour glass
will climb back up,

But gravity 's cruel company, a sobering pressure
that pushes horizontally to future's door,
and if it were to reverse its force

then each time-slide would still pass by,
and I'd try to hold to each past kiss
as time stuffed me back into the womb.

We think if we dissemble time's abacus,
and disperse our minds to food or rhyme,
then time will not find end this time,

that time 'll suspend its stoical cadence,
But let us wear wisdom in time,
and cough with willows mellow tones

and warble as birds, and leer like wind--
so transient be earthbound bliss,
and so this moment: a sigh, a kiss.

At each moment, I can kiss just once,
so if life 's moments were all one moment
my kiss could only be yours,

and would be the world's wine stain forever.
and green tides, how green tides torque to gray tides,
still the jealous sun abides--

and then your arcane smile arrives,
let's not obey what is in this,
what are moments? but here's a kiss.

Who made tame earth? Who measured
out its boundless sky? If it be boundless
then why not a kiss,

If God made God then what's amiss?
Who fashioned the firmament, who
crisped the seas with cob-webbed sun rays,

Who devised kisses? why mouths? why words?
Why woman? And still time spurns my spurless soul.
Which realm reclaims my soul at sleep?

Sure: savior sleep, if dreams can dream
of anything, then can't I dream eternity?
dreams are still the experience of life,

so dreamed eternity must be real eternity,
and so wont I dream of your kiss
and never leave the length of bliss?

But then dreams fail, you wake to life
to suckle all of it you can--
as wall street falls to foolish debt--

Trillion for bail bond, but trillion'd
kisses as well, so what's still amiss?
A sigh, at sight some end, the kiss.

Did I give license to God to create me?
But if God asked, I'd deny my own abortion:
Full Life! Glare of Goodness! Vehement force!

Towered Truth! And so let me ill-place sorrow,
and fight for life with words and fists,
and gain the strength within your kiss,

and if God asks me years from now,
where I first saw my unknown home,
that place I'd been too long before,

I'd say September, northward coasts,
I'd say how well you nursed my soul
and how you wrote the poems I wrote,

I'd talk of 20 and 22
and how those ages are of the blessed,
I'd talk of 21 years of life

and all my friends, and love's ached strife,
and then I'd say what 's all of this,
that life was good, just like a kiss.

But until God revives the meek
or ends the 7th day of his week,
and fufills pastures of timeless bliss:
this moment's here so here's my kiss.