In Midnight Still

In midnight still the driven winds
Incite the last fog lashes
With brazen impediment any
Harbinger creekbeds flush
With the secret ways of the
Most pecuniary delight,
Ferry them forward across the
Lessons they must learn and
Release them as they will be
From the hardships and
Instruments of desire;

Any ways of impediment are

Nearly always a roadbed through
Encompassment of knowledge
Flown heavenward astride
The fourth blown magical and
Fertile borne breast of a woman,
Even the cockle march failures
Of their least worn sympathies
Stagger down tragic byways
Brushed aside before the damp
And dripping levers of defiance;

In break of day insoluble still

Mysterious and filled with meager
Birdsong motions towards the light
Grant them the haven of your
Windless arms your stationary
Inception strewn with grace,
Only the everlasting expanse of
Your embrace can heal them
Of their final sleep enhanced
Deliveries their scorn-blessed victims
And their paralyzing advice.

Victorious

In the unlikely hour of

Our demise in sense or

Sensitivity victorious

In ominous outstanding

Debts of fossilized accounts

Or filled in nerve endings

Blazoned by imaginings

Tremors felt inside the bargain

Basement sea scape instantly

Underwhelmed beneath the

Skin so white it has no springs

No rooms, no fettered forms of

Planks or wires or attachment;

It never fails to render its

Amazement grown accustomed

To the towering pillars

Of clouds silver white across

The sky; very few survivors ever

Wish to tell the tale of the

Thousand times they died before

Forgotten real estate spun

Amongst the barb wire

Cannon trembling judgments

Fishscale sin-severed faintest

Recollections of an earthbound

Lightbulb night incredulous; we

Forego the common delusions

Take money where they give

It and work until the months

Are gone the skin is dried

Upon the bone and the

Victors tally up the score.

Nothing

Vastness sound across the void
There’s nothing left
To say or do
How
Much, when or where
Have never mattered
Thought began
The ceaseless toil of
Time
A riven window gravely
Gone unless the lovely
Magic justice could
Prevail, until the feeling
Went
Away; I told him
Never to bear the
Heartaches lightly never
To hobble beyond or
Bind
Himself to appearance
Shivering bones or
Past-tense quarter note
Desires.

Mougins

Doubtful that the old renown
Could help us any longer
Suspect world of disasters
And telephone wires etched
Against the sky
Disconsolate nights
Relinquish whatever was
Good and gorgeous worth
Remembering or waking up
For once more;
The lavender writhes
And capitulates under the
Pounding of the storm
The stars could not help
Us any longer the hills
In their splendour or
Views of the sea;
Cruel abysses forests and
Tempests gardens all of
Them conspired against
Us each of them lived
Longer than our visit there
And any meaningless
Laughter we had was
Washed into another
Place where he can open
His eyes and smile
And run with us once more.

Blond Enclosure

Even the desolate places
Are in touch with the holy

The sober sacred still

Ideas that went

Nowhere

Even the objected ones

Who are only private

Sparks of a flame

Half-spoken plans obliged

Out of blond enclosure

Lost and forgotten

Skeptical prophecy considered

Fascinating by a second

Breath

Even the dust and the dirt

Dried up alongside

A tangle of weeds

Deserves the full

Touch of the divine crisis

Events and gaunt heavenly

Dawn in desperate

Need are no longer aware

Of their holiness lost

And forgotten and

Sacred all the same.

From Before the Sparrow

From before the sparrow harmless
Holds the initiate is tested

Pulled back buffeted

By heedless words

Shoved and punted beaten

Back and yet he

Flutters

Forth he

Allows what is

To be

He sails along lifted

Up by situation currents

Of air by children

Calling voices middle of the night

Uneasy telegram wind

Bears away the hours

He grieves the

Gentle approaching

Parting dry

Rainless stubble

Summer days

The stream is

Dying barely full enough to

Filter past the drifting

Turning of the

Year and yet he

Falters

Forth he knows enough to

Sing his evening song

And glide across the

Parchment drafted

Wind and

Allow it.

Complex Knowing - Number 10

Anything you asked for I gave
It insensibly naïve in
My multitude of harboring
Melting ideas of fallen
Seas
Everything you fell for I wished
For you feathered amongst
Their daughterly liquid glimpsed
Spouting eventually splintered in
Trees
Only a never sent head
Game of forgotten understanding
Rushed aside a winter
Borne tryst
Travelling in air against
The highest spectacular
Clouds
Brushing around the Serpentine
Saint Maximin la Sainte Baume
Don’t go or never forgive
Them, never shout their
Names out from the pale
Shrouds
If you do expect to be
There you might at least
Open your heart to them and
Breathe a deep motionless
Majesty St. Raphaël serene
Let your guard down leave your
Mouth undone and allow the
Honor of your innermost
Wealth and excellence
To dream and to sleep
With them under
The nightfall
Under the
Seas.

Extravagance

Breath of spirit in every thing

Burn through the imponderable less likely than lavish

Extravagance flowing flush through the branches brimming

And ever lasting fleeing and flowering out past the shores of unlikely
Hair and eyes and arms and face, brush and brim and bramble on spontaneous

Flies and flailing followed chances, run through and on past loud last waking tides of

Heather met romances wished for suffering human abrupt away expression

Some are meant to sing their way through life and some are meant to

Give to every man according to his ways the breath of spirit

Flowing flush until and through the stalks and maiden

Fleeing fair enhances summer spring

Romances, at every moment inspiration fills the common scuttling

Honey bees with jets of works that vanish by the next, delighted

To be on to something otherwise decreed and promise

Waiting to transpire; honor it is and pressed magnificence how

Full of force and wilderness the animals and tables and stone-built

Dwellings all the same are flush and full with spirit filling them up blowing

In amongst and through them lifting them out of the ideal realm of

Kingdom come and into the beaten pounded pummeled world of

Black skylight empty and tangible hard-won working

Things all hammered about poured forth risen and ascended.

Review of "Antiphony" by Amazon top reviewer

"Some great authors come to mind...  but its own unique creation. Antiphony is deep and highly imaginative, and it stands on its own. I hadn't read anything of its type in a long time, and I'm glad I did."

www.amazon.com/top_reviews

Several

Several of these ways in

Which we left ourselves

Open to longing could have

Been clipped if we

Listened to others, could have

Been turned to ridicule and dust.

Never tends to evermore

Frequently skipping across the

Flagrant gestures and spirits of

Sanity running out seen

Through the window of a car

In glimpse of recognition formed

In complete faith and opportunity

Of sleep and all its stretching overflowing

Longing; listen to the heart of hearts

Laden with reverence of proud and

Ceaseless dominion; she couldn’t

Bear to fade and falter, handing off

Another loss to him handing him

Over to slaughter.

These are things that have

Been and are, these are things

That will be and are now, for I

Am with you for ever.

And the things that are can

Never be altered; only phased and

Passed through in slower or faster

Or different and various piecemeal ways; only

Run through wakeful or imprisoned

By doubt or completely unaware; nevertheless

They are unaltered, what is now was

And always will be several ways

Of knowing what is in your heart of

Hearts, what was in your dreams,

What is and was and always

Will be.

Dome of the Sky

Dome of the sky particular wide as the

Blank and everlasting beam across

Her frozen still inviolate face nevertheless invincible

The broad expanse of hastening breathing ceased;

Gong the bells their marvelous presence song

Arrhythmic out of shoulder unsure out of

Sync, long they sound their rankling low and

Long ungarden song ascending now expansive

Gonging luminous dread-bearing farewell

Undertaking song

Lifting up

Their song, two tones, is lifting her up and

Spreading her dissolving strange essential self

Eternal unto the dome of the sky and contained

For a flickering moment while the prester’s calming

Considered chanting oppression stream of words,

Doubled up with the call of the chanter responsive

Halts and halfway spills the now and forever

Over her lying down boxed and residual

Presence-felt cold colder unto the ages of

Ages

Dome of the sky lift up and spread her essential

Self dissolving out and on to other broad eternal

Bells arrhythmic gonging out of sync dissolve

And lift up her brothers and sisters and their sorrows

Spilled about the earth beneath your arching carved

Extension screen across the milky plaster of

Paris sky; call her forth now and forever summon

Her up and away from nameless fear decision

Unto the ages of ages away from this particular

Moment from the essential towards the

Everlasting cleansed the deaf hear the dead are

Raised from the soil of their symptomatic

Tangle of dreadful bells and voices raised she is unto

The ages of ages.

Water

Water welds the blackened heart

Under the words in which the concentrated

Weaver lies, flows about the berries

And the distal clouds continued round

The swiftly sailing songs about the

Wheat field ceased among the

Fragrant false and fettered seeking

Always the lowest ground; drifts

And dallies bitter cross the rocks and stones

To bear the dross away, water sifts the

Fetching thoughts anointed or ofttimes

Disappointed weeps leaking from the

Corner of an eye disjointed seeks

The deepest chasms of a frown;

Down it goes, all ways down and yet

It ferries all the life we lived beneath

Contented mudded dispatched whorls of

Sound; forging steady unrelented

Progress foregoing proximal obstacles away

Across around, always onward ahead and

Foreward, always towards the deepest oceans

Salted depths receiving always

Down.

Grange Hall

Figure it out some day how

To stop wasting near

Misses notes never sent

Obliged and discontinued the

Grange hall cascades atop the rise of

A green hill verdant even in healing

Solstice ride in solitude solicitous

To the point of one another;

Some day figure it out some might say

Don’t bother

Who wastes time on a space as open flanked

By streams and their running as this;

Flanked by a town that died and emptied

Itself left itself barren and exposed; flanked by

A highway that falters on alert to various

Instigations in the back of the car divert

Therefore the near misses the wastreling

Purposeful flocks flew by whenever he

Walks he sees things no one else could

See he enrages their talks de la Falaise their

Simmering submerges their discontinuity

Whenever he dies and passes on a space

As open as the field where the grange hall

Lies cascades atop the rise of a

Green hill verdant he says less and less he

Dies and passes on a space where the

Grange hall lies.

Fortunate

Fortunate soul growing neither

In night shade nor quite enough to

Allow no rhyme

Nor

Reason on behalf of

His shame,

His holy hand in fear.

Understand, this isn’t unique

To certain departed wilderness

Lives to certain

Elements of heart ache

Nor

Disdain; this is fortunate enough

To emphasize exactly how

Much a very small deadly

Dream could go on rummaging

The troubles of a compassion

That didn’t know how

To end.

On a bridge throughout a sandy

Marsh across a lake of mortal

Sins he swung along a

Curse nobody disappoints

A garden of

Diminishment and

Heightened unconvincing

Lies, in height

And in splendor does the

Beauty of her heart

Dwell, fortunate enough to

Lash one more time his admiring

Vesper resolutions his interest

Accruing flight across the

Heavens.

Review of Antiphony on "Thoughts with Nowhere Else to Go"

"Antiphony is, in many ways, an awe-inspiring novel..."

http://alriske.blogspot.com/2011/12/antiphony.html?spref=fb

Sacredness and Light

Sacredness and light fill the oracles

Of every halfmoon rescuer’s

Respite,

It was true the dogs and foxes cried

And split the night beyond the northbound

Houses block upon block;

So only noble staring courage came

Without a distant pale

Delight.

The yester years deliver drowning

Words and wounds and half-made

Smiles we never will remember;

The forward tears rescind our

Burdens they

Could scarcely bear

By way of visions fear

December.

Especially she captivates the

Shaking she denies

The need to

Break the stifled glory might;

The precedent resurges only once

Or twice a night instead of

Hiding sinking sliding out of

Sight.

So go without, decide what you must

Sign and verify; forsythia will not bloom

For five more months or more; hedges

Will not harbor blossoms hallowed

Out their colors

Layered row upon row;

Leave them now, their branches empty

Arms aside abandoned lulling fall

Of winter tide and evening quiet long

And wide.

200 Words with Chris Katsaropoulos

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Mirror Expectation

Across one sea and through

A hall of mirror expectation

Thorough-going trials which

Glimmer souls their duplication;

Deny the symbol at your peril,

Fly the angels’ punishment and rage

A smothered laugh and jails of

Sons who welter gold and

Silver on the page.

These friends of mine were once

A bothered staff of worn down

Weathered imitations; those faces

Frowned their curfew smiles and

Glimpsed a wall of lucid

Variation; each liquid glance along

The surface wavers any chance

Endeavor of the stars and

Moon among the clouds.

Ghosted streaks across the sky

Initiate the unity and trinity

Of matter; their harmless howls

Around the neighbor’s yard

Reflect the rift and wrack

Of fear and tatter; the painter’s

Brush denies his violet iris mirrors

In your eyes and souls may never

Doubt again they once deceived to flatter.     

She Thrones to the Countenance

Farewell forever she thrones to the countenance

Of outcomes mine with whiles and

Wherewithals she shakes the river

Bridge asunder;

Yearn forever blank and empty free from almost counted

            expectations;

The bluster best forgotten

Whelps her heavy crying

Paying then for jumps and hindrance left beside the crumbling gravel of the

            road;

Give a picture portal through the silence and

Her recognizing several ways to rake

The lock outside the door.

In vestments of skin and arabesque of sweat for

Trying infant’s rage the secret castle lots

Embodied through her final torrid

Trade in time and willful ways the

Tendency to mete her punishments to no other won’t let go;

After any whim and gesture strays beyond the

Crowned deliverance of her carpenter’s

Control forever goes her freedom thrones

To windows never shuttered never

Closed.

She frays the droning midnight bell she

Smiles beyond the towers dust begotten

Every slim eternal necklace brims beyond the sympathy

Engenders breaks and skimmed

ascendancies;

Needless to say whoever staked the

Claim removed the clouds and fevers reeked the habits and imagined

            alleys back behind the garden sold;

Never mind another distant breathing feral ghost

Inside another clearance kept the crawling painted wrinkles

daft beside his hand;

And any chance to somewhere crash the cymbals left the

Happenstance in many ways she couldn’t

Seek to perch around her house her waking pillow nights

Against her spoiling glove and severed thrones.

“I love those who yearn for the impossible.” –Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

Consolatio

Rest and close your eyes, your

Grimly gathering finally eyes,

Water falling on Agamemnon’s

Scepter severed all their lies

Lay your royal head aside rest

And grow your fine familiar

Tries, for all the evening

Dance and sing is finished

All the hampered

Happenstance has afflicted

Narrow limbs and bones and

Coins against the skies.

You wouldn’t want it

Otherwise you came here

Knowing it were true that if

You troubled the branch

And beam the thoughts that

Melted through ambition

Any sorrow like unto your

Sorrow lonely words there

Wouldn’t be a doubt

A cause to follow through

The children hoarding

Games and painting songs and

Dances shout the summer’s

End the rain is falling on

Agamemnon’s head

Even as you rest and close

Your eyes, your grimly

Gathering finally eyes.