Stanley Pacion A BIG BOOK OF MY OWN

Saturday, July 14, 2012

WITHOUT YOU, George Street Heartache

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WITHOUT YOU,
George St. Heartbreak

I am sick with rheum and aches,
And a congestion of the lungs.
I cough constantly.

Insomnia stains my eye sockets;
They look as though charcoal had blackened them.
For the first time in my life,
I look older than my real age.

Years ago, when a child,
I read auguries in the snarled pattern of clouds,
And practiced divination in how snow
Accumulated to subtle differences of height
On the post rails surrounding the corral.

I watched the frozen breath of horses,
Looking for some hope of bliss,
But abstracted only gloom and heartbreak.

Today, desperate and preoccupied, I try
To pick out the future from the way
Antennae wire twists against the white walls,
And falls up and down
Along the molding in my bedroom.
All omens promise bad luck.

My mind has fallen into a moat
And a bad mood has dungeoned me.

I keep to the apartment all day,
Flipping over playing cards,
Looking for my destiny every time,
A queen of hearts appears from the deck.

It's going okay tonight, not too bad.

"Stanley, don’t be wearin’ that stickpin
Opals are always considered unlucky!"

My luck isn't very good as it is.
I don't think me wearing an opal
Changes the outcome of life that much.

No eulogy for this affair of heart.
No photographs left here for me to remember us.

I see no people down the street to witness
Me drive off in the Ford alone.

Rain and cold, happy couples walk the avenues,
Huddling close, tight, one to another.

Your name has been deleted from the speed dial.
It has vanished from my computer screen.

I guess these musings are the closest
It may ever come to a biography of us.

I must wonder if this whole fantastic romance,
I once imagined, does it amount to no more, now,
Is it a footnote in this big book of my own?

No children will be named for us,
Not that you wanted it anyhow,
The children being named after either you or me.

No admission will ever be charged
For entrance to the home where we once lived,
Spoke ardently of love for one other,
And I tempted verse to celebrate us for the ages.

And despite all the noise coming from the street,
All the appointments I have to keep this evening,
I can only lie on the floor and look to the ceiling.
The light is going out of my eyes.

Some people lust after money.
Others seek a hundred different lovers.
Lots of people crave more than a fair share.

I, I just want you, your love, dear,
And while life goes on without you,
I feel increasingly impoverished.
I have fallen into awful ingratitude.

A grand poverty of spirit besets me.

I exaggerate my mood, and in a panic I imagine
An army attacks me and that I am driven as a refugee,
Lost to my wife and child, forced to flee home
And that I abandon my bed and kitchen utensils.

I know it wrong to venture
Such outrageous comparisons;
Yet when I sit here alone, I feel,
As if, God were punishing me,
That prayer fails me,
And that in my life today
I am bereft of His Succor.

Thursday, July 12, 2012

GODDESS

GODDESS

The first time I saw you;

I was in a remote world.

It was years ago.

You, yourself, stood in a niche, manifest,

In a Hindu temple, a granite figure,

With your eyes carved wide-open.

You were adorned in regal, pageant gown,

Dyed scarlet; gold thread, woven within its fabric,

Made you shimmer in the flickering candle light;

I noticed your irises were painted violet.

Your right arm, it protruded direct, out

From the shoulder, it was bent right angle

At the elbow, it had a barely clenched fist atop,

And from your fist a thumb extended

Straight up perpendicular to your head,

Its signal was unmistakable, providential,

It portended good luck, ‘thumb’s up’.

Brass bowls of red-hot coals burned,

They burned perfumed joss sticks at your feet.

Your supplicants queued from portal to portal arch,

They humbly attended chance to implore good fortune.

On polished metal trays they carried

Oblations of fresh-cut flowers and I remember seeing

Strings of marigolds, cluster upon cluster of pompons,

And, along with these, bunches of large lotus flowers.

The worshipers offered all kind of fruit.

There were bananas, coconuts, and pomegranates.

All was splashed with bright vermilion powder,

As if to inform the procession,

To remind those petitioners that once

Your altar demanded blood,

Your countenance necessitated animal sacrifice.

And me, I await, patient.

I am yet another mortal, who prays for favor,

Hope to tease meaning from your stare,

I desire, I wish for you to bless me,

My eyes are locked,

They dwell upon your motionless and painted face.

I hear drums tap out devotional rhythm,

And through the distance a din of flutes and whistles,

Singers repeat your name to accent your ascendancy.

How deep the people’s love and ardor!

I go deep within my pocket,

Pull small bundles of wrapped, hard candies,

And add them to my tray of gifts.

I excitedly tell the temple priests,

I wear appropriate raiment, that my clothes are clean.

I show them my bare feet.

My nostrils detect your mango fragrance!

And in the clamor, coming up, almost inaudible,

Against the background noises of the street,

I believe I hear your coded parlance,

'I miss you'. You tell me, you miss me.

I am on my knees, I plea,

Goddess, Love, grant me the serenity

To accept the long absence

Before you are flesh in my arms again,

The courage to change those things about me

So better to pray and be proper devotee,

And the wisdom to remain faithfully yours,

To be yours and yours alone, today, tomorrow,

Whatever obstacles may bar the way,

Stay course steadfast and loyal, fervently always.

Saturday, July 7, 2012

KNOCKOUT

KNOCKOUT

Describing the awful upset of my losing you,

The melancholy, the force which has struck me so hard

That I have seemingly become unconscious

And have lost all capacity for right direction,

Demands that I must contradict every sacred philosophy

And postulate the existence of a physical soul.

Your absence, the thought of your

No longer being part of my life, has floored my spirit.

I fear that my vitality has been stopped.

My training in prayer and in hope's audacity

Has been rendered meaningless and has in no way

Readied me for the muscle strength and the great breath,

The fitness required to contend successfully,

And then win the match in this arena.

I have been hit, and I am down.

I bleed, darling, I bleed.

I struggle to my feet, to arise before the ten-count.

Your blow has opened a cut above my eye.

What salve, what ointment staunches the blood!

The men in my corner struggle to fix it.

They will not let me face another round.

The bell keeps clanging,

I hear the terrible roar of the crowd.

I have lost the fight.

Friday, July 6, 2012

ALWAYS, After Pablo Neruda's Poem, Siempre

ALWAYS, After Pablo Neruda's Poem, Siempre

Do not believe, do not entertain,

If even for a moment, that I care,

I have no concern about those other men,

The lovers who came before me.

Come to me carrying an old boyfriend on your shoulders.

Show me a picture which has a hundred men sniffing your hair.

Conjure up a mother goddess image,

A thousand guys nestling between your breasts,

Or that you have had fellows worship, grovelling at your feet.

Flood me over as might the torrent of a Monsoon river,

When in mid July

It rushes out from a mountain-gulley slope in Goa.

Roar into me with a tidal wave of all your memories.

The debris of your keepsakes and

The bodies of your drowned lovers,

Let me see all that awful damage on the beach.

And as the great ocean sea recedes,

I shall stand and look to the wisdom

That all humanity succumbs to the timeless motion of the surf.

Yet here I am.

I wait, I am waiting for you.

No matter who you bring along,

We are alone, we shall always be alone,

We shall always be you and I.

Alone on earth to start our life anew.

Saturday, June 30, 2012

LEDA AND THE SWAN, 2nd Version

LEDA AND THE SWAN,

2nd Version

Legend holds that Zeus was a rake.
He had this thing for beautiful earth women,
And he had a bag full of tricks.
He would use any ploy,
Anything to satisfy his desire for sex.

The god wanted Leda,
He wanted her real bad.

Yet when he became swan,
(The guise he adopted for this one, particular encounter)
The landscape of his attire, the white,
It blinded him, and for the moment,
The god stopped, he had to orient himself.

And she, she knew what was in store.
Had not the oracle promised?
Her community knew her face and body were extraordinary.
I want to tell you, Leda luxuriated in her loveliness.

No question about it!
She had prefigured the experience.
She had always sought a role in history.

Her vanity, big time,
She lived in era before Acknowledgment,
She had no idea, the seven deadly sins.

Then suddenly the swan returned to his purpose.

He lowered his neck.
He ran his head right through her inviting arms
– No resistance there – and his bill,
After it kissed her breast,
It easily reached underneath her hair
All the way around the back side of her head.
Then he tugged at her lobe;
He whispered into the drum of her ear.

His wings encased both her arms to the shoulders.

Once he entered her,
When he released himself,
He recognized how delightful the feel of his feathers,
His enchantment invigorated his abandon.
Verily had he become swan at the very depth of his loins.

Later, upon her return to the village,
Leda prostrated herself before the shrine of Eros,
She thanked Olympus for firing the torch,
And when she arose, everyone saw her wanton disarray,
Heard her boast that she had become pregnant.
Such flush was upon her cheeks.
She seemed afire with divinity.
She announced to all and anyone who would listen,

“My baby's name is Helen!”

With eyes wide open she saw the Greeks,
The heroes at war before the gates of Troy.
She knew it was her daughter whose beauty is legend.

*In a few of my stanzas readers may hear the voice of Maria Rainer Rilke. Any such inferences are correct. I have read Rilke since early adulthood and am very well acquainted with his poem, LEDA. I must acknowledge his influence.

Friday, June 29, 2012

HEARTS ON FIRE! Lunch at Panera

SWEDISH INTERMENT, Illinois Enchantment

SWEDISH INTERMENT,

Illinois Enchantment

You know it's all bullshit, honey,
This talk of visionary moment and prophetic feat,
No more than ploy,
Another way me getting into your pants.

Yet loving you no quick turn of verse,
I consider it a serious task, and put in a dedicated effort.

At prognostication I am gifted.
I have always been able to see around corners.
On our first night, the first night we had slept together,

You may recall, I told you that I saw our future,
I knew what was going to happen.

Allow me this declaration.

Once you actually experience,

Live an event which I prefigure,

You recognize about it uncanny familiarity,

Déjà vu, you feel the situation,

As if it were previously known,

Or may have been already played.

The notion strikes you

That you have been here once before
That current moment eerily reflects prior encounter.

This power strikes deep. It causes tremble,
And it bestows pleasant excitement;
It makes life expectant.
With me you will learn to swoon and shudder.
You will know warm and be hot all over,
Yet others freeze in midwinter.
I told you that your grandfather has spoken to me.
His voice emerged from a dream,
Though the setting was familiar, my own bedroom,
The light came from afar,
Suffusing the space and me within it,

I dwelled in delicious, excellent hues of yellow and blue.

He announced, said that I am the man of the house,
And he then assured me

(He spoke with unmistakable clarity)
That happiness the product of our life together.

I have another secret; I want to share it with you.
I envision major experience,
Not unlike Leda's when she learned;
It was a god who had entered her.
You should know that from you will issue --
Yes, marvelous to relate! --
Being supreme, a mortal whose
Life and renown, belongs to that golden,
Regal realm, where Homer rules king.

I slip, revealing more than I intend.

I knew it. I knew it early on in life,
Years before your birth,
Within truck farm fields,
Along the rows of cabbage and corn,
My love for you was growing strong,
I had sight then, ears to catch the sounds,
And nose to whiff out the dreams,
Conferred on me, oracular, from on high.

I stepped out from the Hitching Post Diner.
I saw you! It was you.
On the packed-mud, bridal path, just ahead,
By a yard or two, you were down the trail,
Your form preceded me, walking apace.

This last August, eleventh,
Before we had begun to date,
Between bed sheets wet from too much sweat,
Your heat wakened me.
I knew the smell of you!

From the threads of woven cotton.

They were your odors bursting up my nostrils
While I in my bed that lonely summer's night.
I had instantly recognized those fragrances,
Once I slept with you,
Once your presence entered my pores.

And now, again, the moment, it commands,
It plays out on the keyboard in front of me.

I realize that before I had met you,
I recognize that I had heard it, your name!
I heard your name,
It came to me from earlier time, at a time, prior,
Yes, actually previous to your birth!

I assure you, although I was not yet an adolescent,

As a child, no more than ten or eleven years old,
I had witnessed destiny from landscape in Illinois.

The refocusing veils of shimmer, aurora borealis,
The phantasmagoric curtains of shifting color,
Which at once so utterly present, then, in a feint,
As if by trick of hand, gone,
Held me captive; I had fallen to trance, bewitched,
And in the midst of this awesome, display,
From the far North, your name, I heard it.

I heard! I heard your name; it was pronounced,
While the green and red flames of light crackled
Along the vault of the universe. I possessed it.

I learned your name from a storm in the heavens.

And that very self-same night,
I was no more than ten or eleven years old,
From the backyard lawn of my childhood home,
Facing north and up into nighttime colors,

I looked, and I now know that,

I had glimpse into the future.

I had witnessed destiny from landscape in Illinois.

I saw oak trees growing outside an iron fence,
And there, above a low earthen mound, a cemetery marker,
My name, it was struck upon a gravestone.
I knew it. I knew the certainty;
The scene, the ground I saw was in Sweden.

The green and red flames crackled your name.