j'spoem-life come to, through you love and italy

7/31/2019 J'sPoem-Life Come to, Through You Love and Italy

1/11

Life Come To, Through You Love And Italy

(In memory of Katharine; With gratitude to Martha)

1.

Willingly, overwhelmingly your flesh

Wells, the lightning flashes. StunnedThe night opens its legs and we come

Bearing our shared body of consciousness.

Your new moon smile traces my birth

In tongues sapient with the timbre

Of Italian time that seasons even death.

Hush of crushed herbs on the breeze,

Tempting bite of the lemon sun,

Your lips soar with gulls to the endless

Horizon behind the released teeth of Yes.

The Ligurian Sea stretches its bluest skin

As Riomaggiore sketches pastels on stark cliffs.I dress you in the purest ache of nakedness.

Outside, Chianti stained pansies pour

Through the cracks door of light, while

I fall through you falling through me

In a stall of when, where my mind

Knows itself at home and finds just

Love in every cell of your sex.

2.

Tell me about joy, when I stand up

To your flowing over, and we rise

Together lithe with longing into love

Knowing nothing but the understanding

That enables what cannot be withstood.

First urge, can you touch the sleek

Ease that trusts? Show me my mind

Within the museum of your moments body.

Limits begin to extend our ends

As your cries proclaim the code of beauty.

Whose dawn does the mountain climbAs we shine to encompass the world?

Textures of time tighten into a pattern

We recognise as each in the other.

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2/11

3.

Simple caress of the Italian sun

Upon slipping water that blesses ledges,

I come to you as a supple ripple

Which runs just under your skin

Extending forever. Fountains flower outOf your source as my mouth blossoms

Discovering your life ripe with truth.

Our flesh presses purest olive oil,

The light of our bodies burning

On the breath above death.

No release but the tension

Of the sweet string that brings

The melody across the emptiness.

Freely given at great cost, accept

The offering of me that I value as you.

4.

My past sown with dutiful futures

Working the weight of Being borne,

I am in Italy with you, love, and not

With death. My fingers touch, neuron

By neuron, patterns of sifted beauty

Saturated with chestnut blossoms

Fragrance along the Adige, in Verona,

Our life together gathered here

In this sweet hive of stinging words.

How have I come to make this

Love and dirge to Italy and you?

The remedy for dying is living

The Chinese proverb proves the rose

Knows what to do with the sun.

Grow. And I do through you.

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3/11

5.

In San Fermo Maggiore cathedral

I light a candle in the sunlight

Stained by Saints who are trying to forgive

Life with death. I am trying to forgive

Death with life, as the bells beginWidening the chasms of history

To test the strength of my desires span.

You too, love, I would bridge with

My life to come, now, remembering Italy,

San Stefano near Ponta Pietra, where

The sacred molders under the groined vaults.

Loving you in sheerest moonlight I ladle

Your molten flesh from one hand to the other.

The Adige river flicks white scarves of lace

That swallows chase in the late spring spate.

6.

We were so alike in our differences,

So it was too easy for it to be

Too difficult. So, I stumbled

Pausing to stand over you with No,

That knife I put between death and life.

Then I chose to learn the truth

That will earn your love with mine.

I would be yours, not yet for sure,

Never for cure, but as the unknown

Willing to be known. After so

Many deaths of those I joined with,

What have I left but the deft right of loss?

I toss one life after another up

Into the air and they never return

To touch again. Juggler of jeopardy

In the strobe light of evolutions mind,

I see life in frames of flames that come

And go, separate yet connected, rising

And falling, fearful love surroundingThe wick burning down into the dark.

I would hold you holding me,

Nested care and loveliness engendering

The world we choose not to refuse.

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4/11

7.

Italy, mirror in which I disappear,

Window to see myself through

To you my love. The Magic Garden, Klee,

at Peggys place, Venice on the main canal,

I enter you. The butterfly languageLifts from your lips the dust of the void.

Your legs around my neck, I watch

My part become your whole again

And again. Who can bear this birth

To death and back again and again

Until only love remains? I do

Not control the length of my life,

But I control its width. Yes,

And its depth too. Let loose into loss

I press my past as message through

Your now to answer our future for ever.Honey suckle, Mock orange, the species

Wisdom sniffs the gnosis on a marble bench

At the Guggenheim Museum, June 1998,

Where I howl at the beauty I found lost.

8.

San Michele, cimetero, Tatyana from Harvard

Searching for Brodskys grave which I found

Near Pound and History, the fight over words,

The flight from worms, I ponder the demons

Of democratic desire, Socrates hovering near.

In Palazzo Ducale, Marco Aurelio on his horse

Lies lobotomized in virtual reality for tourists,

Caught in Dantes icy rung of isolated hell while

Outside pigeons shit virtuously on his bronze head.

To pursue the unattainable is insanity. I nod

Feeling humanitys fetus flip into my frontal lobes.

Vivaldis four seasons at Chiesa di San Samuele,

Conducted to thunder, lightning and falling plaster

As the sea rises, the pillars and people rot andAre replaced or shored. Me too. Now you as us.

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5/11

9.

Your cries are neither birth nor death.

A door opens into the fire it feeds,

And caught in your cave I see

Polyphemus single eye sizzle

On the point of endless desire.I leave no-mans land to bathe you

In the light our bodies produce.

You ask your answer, I enter my question

As together we define the words origin.

I gauge your immeasurable with mine to

The outer edge of the expanding universe.

My touch is yours further than I can reach

As the world turns into you holding me.

10.Oedipus, when he knew, pushed long

Pins through what he thought he knew

To make sure he blinded his mistakes

For eternitys sake. Beyond Why,

He cried out only to find Who

Meant more to die known by another.

Love, your name lies buried in what

I refuse and yet must choose to do.

Nemesis divides the sexual vision

And your X marks out my Ys decision.

11.

At the Bridge of Accademe in Venice,

Brodskys Watermarks blurs with Chianti

And Katharines memories, the Palladian vault

Slipping under the pain as fatuous Marxists

Argue about how many Capitalists

Can dance on a dollar bill. Out of the glare

Into the dark wound of San Georgio cathedral

And Matteo Ponzones painting of Saint GeorgeSlaying the dragon of desire, stake

In the throat of the beast, and the monotone

Of the lonely priest and one supplicant

Kneeling in empty echoes of hope.

My life growing large between your breasts,

In your mouth, your hands, your wet void.

We have come to this and so much more

As the beginning of our ends met and joined.

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6/11

12.

The way to do things is neither

The way of Heaven nor that

Of Earth but that of Man. Xunzis

Will, conduct and thought strengthens

Me to make mistakes and meaning.My life, love, has been taken

From me enough that I have

Learned to give it without asking.

Your person is the promise

I would keep, a present to be

Opened to the past and future.

Every woman should have a secret

Garden and every man a mountain.

We have not missed, you and I,

We have not missed that many

Splendored thing, Han Suyin.Cappa Caf, the Adiges south bank,

Facing the steep hill of history

On the other shore where

The Romans killed for thrills,

I stumble inside our intimacy

Exposed as the bruise of a brain,

Pinball bouncing off the high crosses,

Working to keep my sore ages score.

Katharine was 34 when she stopped.

I continue to quicken my going

Through the presence of her absence.

In the Museo Di Castelvecchio I ponder

The power of life in dozens of Madonnas

And Bambinos, facing bleeding Christs,

The sacra famiglia untouched by death.

Now we look into each others eyes

And let go into our coming

As we come into our going.

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7/11

13.

Clavichord and flute in the courtyard

Of San Fermo Maggiore, Verona, late sun

Laid in pasta strips rich upon foot-polished

Stones, a free concert for San Antonia,

An elegant elder Donna in champagneTwo-strap mid-heels, red dress, cream linen top,

Pearl earrings like moons in mist, thin lips,

Faultless skin, rough-ridged nails, her head

Sways side to side to Handels allegro

Movement. Still, I hold the side of your face

In my hand as the world whirrs on its axis

Like the gyroscope I set in motion

45 years ago delicately balanced

On the string I hold one end of

And you, my love, now holding the other.

Chocolate window boxes, ocher geraniums,Verdigris shutters, buff pink walls blue tinged,

Watercolor wash of memory feathering

Out over us to the edges of our ends.

14.

There are no native singles in Verona,

Only lonely tourists looking for

The home they left behind.

Tall cypress flames burn dark green

On hillsides celebrating the sacrifice

Of human flesh to desire. Caf al Teatro,

North bank of the Adige, just up

From the Ponta Pietra, vino custoza,

Crusty roll, the painting by the poet

Who came and went while waiting

For the tram that will never come.

Either alive to death or dead to life,

Ive come to Italy to soothe my sin,

Love, vivid mark I have not missed,

Target of the truth I bury myself withinTo rise again, broken open to bless.

Upon the wide ledge of locked stone

Man-handled into beautiful place,

The lovers embrace along the edge

Of the Adige wild in late spring under

Falling Chestnut blossoms amid the dead

That gather in my heart. Love, I try

Not to let her absence bury you or Italy.

I let each beauty call forth her pure name.

Her stiff limbs scrape the narrow paths.

Hell is this man without his other half.

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8/11

15.

Bier piccolo at Nikos bar near my hotels

One overwhelming star room I roam

Birth to death, the light of her sun gone

Out but still arriving to blind my eyes

Open to pitch black on my back.I put my face within the framed flame,

Smelling the flesh grilled to perfection,

Gino Severini (1883-1966), Sea=Dancer#28

As Peggys slipping Venice smiles with her dogs

And the wash of passing boats cracks the walls.

Give me your lips my love, form mine

To say to you I am not dead,

Make them tell me I am still alive.

16.Still, I will tell you how I love you.

Move slightly now under me.

Life. Katharine. Who

Moves, who is still? Am I

Still alive or are you? A knife

Comes out of me cutting time in two.

Over there I need to bring you here.

Then it happens. That life Katharine

Died for is dead. Come to me, love,

As if she exists as she does not.

I wrap my piece around yours

And we make a knot that beats

For both of us, fond heart always

Lost to be found again

Here held by us between.

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9/11

17.

Delicately, deliberately, let me tend

The garden of R.M. Mancioli, memore

ATOS R. Affillini, Riomaggiore, June

1998, as the bells cascade down

The meeting of thighs that is you,Love, my Mount of Olives, my Peace

At War, Holy Whore, Wife, Mother,

Geisha, Friend and Fiend, come to me

As the unknown to be known forever.

Scoop knowing out of this skull,

Eat of it until it makes you hungry

For more than feeding life to death.

On Via dell Amore, walking alone

With Montale gnawing on cuttlefish beauty,

Through the Roman arches, folk art

On walls and ceilings of lovers,Chi non ha non`e, and I knew I had not.

The Romans still know the value

Of flesh forgiven instead of forgot.

Basilica of San Zeno, Verona, begun 5 AD,

Today the work continues as I come through

The double door opening on 48 views of Man,

Reflecting your eyes as they turn ecstatic to me.

18.

Walls of pale ocher to brown,

Sun buried in earth to grow your eyes,

Look at me my love, tell me Scorpios

Massive arch is more than ours.

Riomaggiore, the mens wooden clogs

Like the tiny boats they depart in,

Echo the narrow main street while dogs

Bark at Heraclitus and I enter

Your needles eye with this thread

That connects my end to your beginning.

As when I came to Riomaggiore via CarraraNext to a young donna, Amanda

Giardini, of La Spezia, and I gazed on

The white peaks half-believing they were snow

But knowing they were obdurate rock,

White marble, lasting far beyond lovers,

Even as I split along my fault lines

At one hit of the chisel opening unto you.

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10/11

19.

How to end this poem is how to begin

My life with yours again, love, so I ask

Katharine to let me let go. Above Manarola,

The next village north of Riomaggiore

Along the goat trail of Cinque Terre,I look down from the cemeterio

Upon the Ligurian Sea whose startling

Iris blue eye catches me blossoming in you.

Your soft whole invites my hard part

Home to know a temporary peace.

I wish to own this fleshy life and

Responsibly pay for it with death.

Your womb is also my tomb and I enter

It knowing the difference is the same.

This separateness of consciousness will

Never opt for dissolution as the solutionTo the problem of self that cannot be saved.

20.

A sky of petunia blue hovers just under

Your rising moons and in the delicate light

I trace tributaries of veins to the rich cache

Of your weltering delta. My tongue treasures

The vast pleasure as your back arches to bear

Our kingdom come across the void and back.

The Miro painted boats of Riomaggiore

Bob seeking centers of levity as we

Buoy each other on desire mounting desire

Until the duet of being done affirms our ease

Of ceasing. Finally, sex is not death or fun,

Relapse or release, but an impossible

Responsibility we agree to meet. My heart

Holds against time as the frayed gold knots

Of the fishing boats tighten to the swing

Of incoming tide as do our lucid bodies of hope

That carry the beautiful emptiness fillingWith the pink light rising from the coming sun.

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11/11

21.

My end begins with what your lips

Teach when they touch. Your tongue

Lights the torch of my life and I burn

With your breath. Eros del tipo arciere,

Flashes the stone face of obliteratedFlesh in the museum above the Roman

Theater, Verona, as the storm hits

And lightning riddles black into white.

I watch the hail from centuries of whims

Flung up to fall back: each uniquely

Layered You separately left to know

Its common ignorance of earth.

We lie alone and only tell the truth

In pairs where praise equals pain.

So come to me, love, test my life

Again to tell the story of our timeTogether. Italy whispers in our ear

Tristis eris si solus eris, as Ovid

Wrings words out of fear to tally

Our years in crystal worlds that crash

Into the earth to urge the seed out

Of itself. Love, give me your lips

Which double the doubt but alone

Soothe the truth of death to be lived.

Damned to be divided by Scire Licet

The self staggers beyond salvation

To complete its task in wanting you,

Love, to become lifes reason, knowing

Apart from must be turned into a part of,

As love of wisdom into wisdom of love.

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j'spoem-life come to, through you love and italy

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