4 Poems in an Avante-Garde Classical Style

 

For Derek, Remembering Odd Jaunts in Overtoun

 

I here remembered how we smoked and swam

Under the cadenced pleasure of our under-days,

Congealing cross-thoughts under oaken breeze,

And watched the Turnered ocean of that swarm

Last Spring made - on the litheness of white knees

You did not hold as Spring's magnificence.

If you see my ghost among the goading leaves

Some Summer soon know I have promised you

This psalm, for soon my book will spread to other eaves:

And do not think that I have misremembered you.

 

In Passing…

 

 

Swinging upwards up into this iron arch

Remembrance of our vast and static doom,

Bequeath me traitor , tempest, to your hypnosis;

I am the flayed soul that remembers you

 

Whose perfumes flick and falter on the walls of night,

Cerulean princess holding court on swifts and janitors .

Oh, do you see stars where you are or do abandon them

You whites of others' visions sighs exiling armistice

 

From what you may have known once; this itself is fair:

The cloud rejecting we as I can play its solitaire

But desperation floods the rainbow with another choice,

And seeks the absolution I do of its fractalled voice…

 

And even though it loves to cup your hidden hair,

Feel free to pass the hand I share that was not wanted there.

A Cameo

 

Lady, when you smirk at length, I go to ground,

But scarifying yet once to your majesty,

I lay as naked new-wards as your usual clown;

Yet is this your fault, are you my tragedy?

 

Is this red reassembly of my latest wound, do try,

Perchance the white legato of your latest slight:

Are you the unsquared tempest or the latest sleight

I plant askance this last upon your mystery?

 

 

To A Yellow Headed Lady, Or A Dark One Nonetheless

 

What prophet is this secret-ing my hidden prayer,

Gymnastic chorus flickering the ridden freight

Of telepathic rainbows, cyan orison,

Thou gymnast of my sense's unwaged mastery?

Is this the liquid choir of perfumed night…

Or death by day's length, supplicating hours?

We sense your blight, abandoning your flowers;

Sing us afloat in your telepathy.

 

O wondrous screed of songbird beat your bounds;

We mistranscribe your light's length, beating Here:

Discard us gently in your secret flight,

We harbingers on your wan prophecy.

 

And fins of Jupiter transcribe our brows;

You are the profitless who holds my hair.

I love you too, you are not wanted there.

I cadence too upon your sweeter prows.