Symphony No.

1
(an entropic cubist dimensionality)

Ric Carfagna
 Symphony No. 1
(an entropic cubist dimensionality)

Ric Carfagna

chalk editions
2010

2
text © copyright 2010 Ric Carfagna
cover © 2010 Jukka-Pekka Kervinen

http: //chalkeditions.co.cc

chalk editions is:

Peter Ganick pganickz @gmail.com
and Jukka-Pekka Kervinen
jkervinen@gmx.com

3
for Eileen Tabios

The muse
The music
The beauty
of her words

4
5
 Symphony No. 1
invokes the muse of a cubist reality:
words painted as blocks of images
fragmented, visceral dialectical intensities
dissecting the whole
to create hermetic dislocations
resonating their ghosted identities
down echoing pathways
to render fleshly exteriorizations
on and of abstract landscapes;
thought-forms which reinterpret
essence within surreal structures
to illumine the fused constructs
which frame entrenched preconceptions,
to make new the eye of interpretation:
each line possesses a meditative minimalism
a newly formed music of retuned perception,
within which the context of the whole
weaves its vertiginous existence
into the present awareness

---Ø---
6
7
 Day one
without landscapes
cacophony or virulent
speechless afflatus
culled rejectamenta
poignant
as Zarathustra
existence
polis or ethos
pejorative measure undetermined
the gaping wound
the bulwark of harlequins
undocumented consternation
passing for recidivism
“he culled through the extant pages”
disinterring ancient opiates
theoretical enervated imperatives
“eat this and live”
tumoral views
within the gated cathedral
further from apprehension
a walled city

8
 excoriating id apparitions
clogging the oily avenues
telluric lions’
early evening footfall
below satellite shadows
gaslight spires’
invertebrate alleyways
embedded vagrant agaric eaters
across amniotic oceans
the weight of many days
birth pang prescience
buried fleshly recompense
ceaseless karmic cycles’
blind tourniquet hour
the bells of eventide
or deflowered maidens
through jalousie panes
inconsolable
empathetic seizures
here the isolated sphere
the passage
from one form
to another’s

9
 indigent image
“she reflected the sky
the scalloped tropes
of icy azure”
acid sun
at ocean edge
the vermin burrowing
the epidermal strand
the colic
unconscious grave
recalling the inarticulate
apotheosis
of death
of the unanswering
abyssal plain

---Ø---

The doorway
the present leavings
myths

10
 of the swineherd
myths
of the wolf
beneath the tongued moon
a culminating ice age
on the wall
a portrait
of a wall
bas-reliefs
a book of gnomes
a house visible
through the undergrowth
lilies in a field
an empty tomb
a shroud
a sparrow
entangled in brambles
a dead philosopher
stones
in a peasant’s hand
an ice crystal halo
at dawn
flowers on frozen ground

11
 ---Ø---

Here the crescent platitudes

“by night we camped
by the water’s edge”
at the lee of the stone
granite citadels
adjacent to the fall
of Rome
it was undertaken to decipher
forensic light
descended with asteroids
bleeding
icons in ancient cathedrals
the torn veils
the stone walls
down corridors
“she came bearing
the beatific image”
further on

12
 the swans by the glen
a placid congruence
as figurations on transparencies
the daguerreotype grayed
at the ocean limens
a point of contract
immeasurability’s paradox
viscous serpent
sieving through mottled spine
“we came but did not observe
signs of life”
iron statues
treading roots
isolation adorns
a palace square

---Ø---

A mythos
to captivate the masses
“he believed himself

13
 to be a determinative factor
in life & death”
sequenced reality
drunken famine’s waste
copse in autumn gravel
or winter’s glazed panes
obscuring the nebula
approaching
muted
semblance of reverent light
fingers hasp
a palsied nature
visibility alters
perspective
to determine spatiality’s limits
bleak aperture opening
verticality’s view
mired through neutrinos

---Ø---

14
 Having internalized the belief
change is not
possible
“he lived within
the limits dictated
by chance”
determination of flux
encapsulating the atom
sculpture-logistics
compromised
specious infrastructural integrity
nuanced pallor pulsing
the subtle harmonic
“when it entered the atmosphere
there were thoughts
of the apocalypse”
light outside
an adumbrated corridor
the eschatological mainframe
a glass shattered
the heretical misanthrope
“ancient forms of existence
emerged…”

15
coruscations through sterility
abstract & isolate
this solipsistic dharma
this curving aperture
avoids light
rain on arid plains
the tactile
the sensual
the scouring revenant
the gray reticular objects
erratic depth
perception
gazing on swollen stones
you have seen
you have seen
you have seen
what appears
to acquiesce
to the anthropomorphic will
“she felt her vision
to be a sign
of divine revelation”
stones dislodged

16
 in subtle wind
the germs of presentiment
pallid fallow ground

---Ø---

The crystalline fragment

wherein the bitter roots
interring the tessellated
ontology
spires piercing the firmament
morning’s diaphanous mist
the corporeal veil
a hoary forest-domain
“there were many clues
left at the site”
cave walls’ interior
lattice light mosaic
hear death follows
indeterminate & unsounding
to the unaided eye

17
 the plastic orchids
the biers in procession
leave these forms
to shadow
the candles
to mercy
and virtue
to paint a fictive landscape

---Ø---

The intoxication
the garden in Spring
a slow bleed
through porous ground
fog shrouds tidal flats
the old shores the
new worlds the
old nature the
irrationality the
swords cultivate the

18
 acres the
rusted ploughs
a winterkill’s mass grave
the pyres the
nocturnal lights blazing
the hours to past the
karma to balance the
hours to pass the
morning’s diaphanous mist
the mourning unanswering

---Ø---

The consequence of definition-

acquiesce
hermetic anarchy
an irremediable lumen
for hunger’s sake
the machine ethic expounds
embedded mediocrity
the internalized vesicant

19
 the vacant externalizations
queried
age of loss
purged virtue
shadowing an origin
a shroud’s mercantile gain
ameliorating the imaginative
the panacea-placebo
the same deviation
a constancy …
identities
discarded in place
a palace of foregrounding

---Ø---

The view from cages

a lost wisdom
as unspeakable
as memory
collects on thresholds

20
 suffocating the animate
silent prescience
a quantum centroid’s
keeper of palaces
formless as history’s sentinel
mist through summer gardens
the middle ground
of possession
the cosmic paroxysm
the corporeal pyres
the reveries of beasts
of saints
of smoke arisen
from marrow’s talus
above
the gossamer flowings
white on azure
mist through summer gardens
the unforgotten speak
beneath
the noosed tree
these
silent orchids

21
 these
plastic fates
these
buried remnants
the cages’ still
silent presence

---Ø---

The perennial sage

occasioning a meager presence
the adorning thought
adjacent to this
cerebral dimming
passed from cognitive fluidity
thru this
disseminated collateral damage
lengthening refractions
colored in vitreous hyperbole
prostrations before
an unknown deity

22
 enduring
indeterminate
evocations
each a tenuous speculation
though death still appears
a talisman materializing
a grayed owl
a migrant consciousness
portending
the passage of essence
thru the oracular veil

---Ø---

Comes to this
unknowing
the platitudes
the beings encountered
the intimate fog
the scour
of empathy cages

23
 empty of presence
at street corners
the executive’s skeleton
down alleys
the vagrant’s semblance
empty of pretence
as driftwood
rotting strand
unseen
sun of reticule
& equilibrium
sun of depth
& clinging scrawl
sun of death
as angry parlance
sun of anchorite
distress
sun of dust
of prayers
at the mass graves
sun of dust
of prayers
at the stone mausoleum

24
 sun of divergent waves
sun of entangled annunciation
sun of pathless forest
sun of music
of muted definition

---Ø---

Glib passions’
glass shards
temperate zones thaw
offering
no resolution
“the uninhabited lands
held no permanent possibilities”
rem sleep states
fluid reveries
mired in sand
fused lucid firmament
the intractable meadow’s
seclusion

25
 below are mountains
drowned in seas
unmovable depth
“here there is sanctuary”
the palace of ice
the streets of gold
the streets of gaslight
the staid faces
the solitary
emotionless
“count the stars
at a midnight’s foment”
the speechless
possess visions
the wake of the tyrant
the freighter
dragging anchor
dredging empty footfall
across the uplands
the hidden plains
the other worlds
to internalize
the solitary

26
 reflection

---Ø---

Define this state

external as form
without thought
of possessing
the apparition of dust
the undiluted horizon
the palpable substance
the abstractions
the aggregate cloud-drift
aberration’s rifled corridors
solidified
transient stalemates
the unperfected ghost
a roaming mortality’s parlance
thought before
breath has been
interred

27
beneath sedimentary layers
enervating epidermal rind
a deformation’s trajectory
“end points appear
at death”
a path of stony ground
sifted through
a prima materia
a lesser obfuscation
to fall into form

---Ø---

Movement
across
a glassed doorway
beyond the landscape
of walls
a consciousness-framed
window-dressing
a surface ocean

28
 a pertinacity of limits
a knowing
the Newtonian impasse
the clouded transparencies
the stalemated
jaded valence-synergies
the discordant rhetoric
the billowing hollow fray
the deified
mendicant-gods
the errant remnant’s
sentient flow
“this capacity
to objectively see”
this freighted mortal coil
matter’s onyx
movement of darkness
matter’s entangling
entropic immanence
matter’s nomadic
bleeding ethereality

29
 ---Ø---

Translation’s formless
conceptual orbits
outside apprehension
time lapse
indeterminacy
a stone’s oracular resonance
the muse
of many worlds
unseen
tracery spaces
through the void
this bridge
this synergistic construct
cyclical pendulum spin
dark autumnal mirror
leaves decaying
the empirical
transubstantiation
the deathless reflection
resurrection’s wound

30
 to engender
the theoretical lament
the deathless wolf
the beholder’s door
the rock of the sibyl
distant desert distant
winds of Capernaum
distant
hinge of winter sheen
here
the corporeal enchainment
here
the bifurcation
here
the ghost trajectory
the sculptured passage
unseen sun
die way
the burgeoning of matter
the quantum phenomenology
the gods of Delphi
the many worlds
unseen stars

31
 die away
the night sky’s
serpent progeny
the structural helix
the blemished helix
to enter the garden
the arcane gate
the flaming sword
the burning laurel leaf
the black night sky
the starless void
distant world distant
apprehension distant
deity distant
presence
the image
the corporeal image
die away …

---Ø---

32
The realm of the allegorical
d(r)ead
not a terminus envisioned
a Heisenberg indeterminate
subject of velocities
of valence constructs
of formation
of debris
of verities
buried in pages
a waif
wandering flesh
alas
a nomad of woods
the nascent conscious
the deflowered wing’s
sterile womb
jeweled lament
comforted in abstractions
the placid canvas
iconic scrawls
the parallel lines
the intersection of forces

33
 the amethyst outflow
now daylight’s rhythm
broken pavement stains
the poverty of
unending walls
the inflection of illusion
the plodding gray faces
steel pulsed empathy
the undivined presence
the imperceptible silhouette
a shallow ocean’s flow
“we looked to the stars
to cure our bane”
closed eyes
immovable overcast

---Ø---

At daybreak
gray light
filtered dawn

34
 the narthex shadow
the chanting apostate
Coptic pillars
grating adagio-distance
Democritus
of seven gates
of the gradual days’
diminishment
crows of the inland sea
rays through black aperture
toneless Doric ramparts
grating adagio-immanence
“the ruins appeared intact
beneath a sedimentary
layer of ash”
bleak toungless augury
where smoke rises
the oracle’s stone glare
“we hid ourselves in caves
or ran into the outlying wilderness”
rage of fire
ocean of fire
of mountains

35
 falling from the stars
sire of fear
the burning
hanged man’s omen
the burning
threshing floor
“come bended knee”
impaled evanescent forest
shade beneath
the laurel leaf

---Ø---

Tinge of fallowness
negation’s ancient servitude
in fields of heather
a far reaching sun
eclipsing luminous surfaces
the prescience of loss
of valence auras
watery sundered fate

36
 in the trapezoid constructs
buried beneath
shifting sands
fragments of mountains
internalized
a criticality
of ontology
of fathoming
continents as years
drifted enervated statuary
where the veined leaf is
epitomizing consciousness
the new moon is
abstraction’s beacon
the thrown bone
the unintelligible sacrifice
intoned
a womb’s throbbing extremity
spilled seed
lost to bleary seas
ancient unknowable
memory

37
 ---Ø---

Sleeping silhouette
without desire
to mine
the unconscious
the prismatic constellations
a night sky’s
encountering
veracity
as unobtainable
purity
the devolution of time
a gathering
in mirrors
imprinted alienation
fording the hollow sea
the attenuation
of monuments
of tessellated architecture
of entropy

38
 of autonomy
of light
arriving
to postulate
an eschatology
bound to the uncertain
presence

---Ø---

A bridge before dawn

presentiments
internal manifestations
a clime which settles
a realist’s ontology
a mind’s imaging
a purity
conceived as intrinsic
mortality as measure
divining the fray
thoughts bifurcations

39
 to accept
the wolf as ghost
as syncretistic archetype
as fragmentations’
palpable (w)hole
ceding the self
the haunt of decay
the windward shrines
the half-life manifestation
the inevitable
terminus

---Ø---

It came
in lieu of possessing
thought
the gray ache
the empirical indeterminacy
the overcast
breaking in places

40
 “I awoke to a strange music
emanating from an unknown source”
the aleatoric voices
filtering through
the obsessional
ego-entombment
the clasping absurdity
fear leaves
the emphatic imprint
the forms
the fleshly impressions
to articulate
a de-formulating nascence
to achieve a transformation
beyond the ontological
imagination

---Ø---

Turn from the wolf

as eventide subsides

41
into a thicketed strandline
here the philosophy
of human
thought
of Poe’s raven
vanished through
a palsied falsity
of Kant’s entering
a cluttered alcove
terminality’s portent
to project
the ideated
outside a doorway
entropy as its own
rational deterministic
its own
ruptured marrow barge
narrow scattered sea drift

---Ø---

42
Windows onto mountains
to interpret
a poetic throated Socrates
gilded delphinium
light
against exterior walls
or apparitions at dawn
here to correlate
the inner logos
the purpose to congruence
the trenchant smoke
the outlines in sand
the lucent angels
beneath limens
somatic outlines in flesh
a distortion to articulate
the perambulated thought
the synergistic panoply
the complexified energies
the unutterable
stillness
the intoxicated
mortal undoing

43
 the subjugated stature
the terracentric macrocosmic
personas ceded to
the Adamic empiricism
the undefined flow
“ I passed into a state
of ethereal awareness”
vacillating undercurrents
older order of magnitudes
sifted through
the allusive entombments
the airy integers’
relative incarnations
the death-bed concessions
the cold-pressed armaments
internalizing
the distal echoing erasure
the watery grave
existentialisms

---Ø---

44
 The rain glazes
the panes by morning
potentiality of undermining
an infrastructural integrity
existing
outside the scope
of perception
actuality parses
the idealist’s determinatives
luminous debris
the nonce materialisms
orbiting
the atoms of gnats
of anthracite levees
of the enjambment-treading
a geometry’s tensile surface
the windows placating
a suspended awareness
by noon
there are crows
on anterior lawns
indistinct viols

45
 blending
with the ecstasies of anchorites
entombed
behind framed portraits
on walls
facing east
the accumulating
cumulus overcast
light from beneath
doorways
light from the hovering plenum
light from angelic intervention
light to forage
the gale’s entangling pathology
light through
the oceanic passage
the clockwork redactions
the pensive equivocal verities
aspects of concretion
of abstractions
fleshed out
aspects of contiguity
of contemplation

46
 wherein
the tempest-loin wake subsides
by nightfall sieved
Newtonian sand

---Ø---

Age as incomprehensible
as limits
to imagination
matter’s hourglass measure
dust of materialist’s
stone heart ascension
sands sifted through
the imperturbable desert
and when gulls
amble the strand
intoning
unintelligible utterance
callings to the sea
here to remain

47
 threshold in isolation
siege in deteriorating half-light
broody strains
of anvil nightfall
sleepless canticle
of lyre and flute
of chronology’s drift
a mirror wherein
“she wandered”
a space where days diminish
here to remain
the constellation’s
jeweled sameness
above
the existential poverty
above
the medieval ocean’s
glassy void
frozen ageless
transgression
palpable reflection

48
 ---Ø---

The location of truth

the orchard
the pavement
indifferent to the wind
athwart muse
follow
rhizomic shadow
follow
lone prescience
facts as relevant
to measure
to fallow meaning
a new moon divined
nemesis
by daylight
by abandoned tracts
by crumbling gardens
subsequent ages clinging to
the inarticulate
myth

49
 the architecture
threadbare soul-knowing
past from here
a crow’s trajectory-lamentation
undone unity
resonating hemispheres
a sacramental Pangaea
trackless passage
undone
glyph traces
a geometry’s ensouling
structure
of flesh
a verity
of possessing
of returning
edge
of perception
of returning
ghost
of transcendence
hear the ragged
the looming

50
imprisoned narrative

---Ø---

“I have come to you

unnamed
coming to a center
to distinguish
the blueing slant
the rectangle
a north wall faced
the telluric gaze
here I entwine
how I relate this
to what I cannot
see in you
outline
of slight entropy
tangle of ink
drawn stains
indelible

51
 marks across
concentric cycles
stripped patina
to seal me
as a frame would
only impose limits
to wherein I know
your desire
returns “

---Ø---

Soon to awake
the fictive phenomenology
the opaque veil
above the tree line
the constellating
vessels of chaos
the ancient
deified apparitions
the archetypal mandala

52
 traced
mortality bound
to Newtonian roots
a visceral shade’s obfuscation
the bloody fosse
the latent stairway
the gods of the swan
the gods of stone
in the arcing sunlight
the unscalable wall
diffuse in solitude
the entangling
observation
the probability waves
the grainy coruscations
sparks at nightfall
luminosity as fleeting
as grace-notes descending
chromatic-scale synergies

---Ø---

53
Satiating primetime carnivores
gilded chromatic fictions
rancid grizzle talus
falling to anterior floor
across pond waste
and paparazzi
desert flora domes
flea-bitten
terpsichore circus
blood swords
blemished hemispheres
stamen signatures
starving fallow meadow sheen
white bittern
on bleached bones
prayer wheels
pen entry lies
oral tradition pretext
out gassed
through castrated populace
across bituminous seas
primrose pathologies

54
 bloated plutocratic gnomes
gorging brisket baked
on sunlit pavilions
oil laden
ontological imperatives
cell phone tumors
brained lesion sycophants
crawling through
Einsteinian ant farms
a night sky’s fumigating
uranium legume juice extracts
acetylene forest blaze
executioner’s measure
enacted
blind mime’s
mired dressage
abdicating mannequins’
strangling wardrobe
body bags’
unspoken
oil portholes
oceanic lament

55
 ---Ø---

Achilles of sleep
imperfect void
the abstract scrap
the self striations
the willed contemplation
the weakening reticulum
the intercessory worlds
tangential quadrants
within
the attenuating ocean
of patterns
to exist
“it seemed as if
a vision of angels entered
into my mind’s eye”
a culled resonance
hermetic intonation
the conscious resistance
to enter

56
 clock poverty
the pillars of dawn
the destructive similitude
the facile polity
the molecules’ opaqueness
the chthonian firmament
wake to this
inexact hour
this centrality’s blank spatiality
wake to this
synthetic permutation
this malleable dissonance
this autonomous possession’s
viscous melted basilica
wake to this
untethered plain’s
seraphic trisagion
A spilled tutti
through dawn’s segue lawns
a siren’s coda
circles to triangulate
sloping mansard roofline
further plentitudes

57
 to mine
a googolplex
of signage flaws
commuter pylons
by noon
the glass-eyed opiates
a phobia’s integer retention
the invisible arachnids’
vertiginous countenance
invective dust
maintaining a cherod stability
a cyclotron-
depriving mythos
a muted spectral void
conspiracy glower
slow to concede
to shadow presentiments
to quantum silo fodder
to the spurious
bodily sympathies
debris across a field
estranged wind mutation
draglines on empty plains

58
 a night’s approaching
threaded passion dust
cerulean declination pall
corridors to inner concinnities
half-life turbaned eunuchs
Cartesian scar ghost
draglines across empty plains
an emotive archetype’s
latticework parallax
sleep’s vatic
indeterminate edge

---Ø---

A romanticist enters
the desert muse
the blackened firmament
oceanic
topical ramifications
a slum reduced
to existential apathy

59
 a corpse to interpret
a relativistic polarity
an eschatologist enters
a room of
the nine stones
Socrates of
the iron gates
Neptune of
a turbid Sargasso
interpreting the apocalypse
a landscape’s dispassionate
singularity
hollow spectral wanderlust
a matrix-faith escarpment
ragged chimera emerging
Kantian progeny retuning
the elemental
the wasting mettle
the hourglass tongue
the Heraclitus of dislocation
the blast furnace
the vernal leitmotif
the iron chimes

60
 articulating
groping nightfall

---Ø---

Through a window
a paucity
a nothingness
envisioned
a Bohr axiom
a spillway
definitions
perturbation flame
“we came to understand
vision
on cosmic levels”
though a window
murky logarithmic
harbor light
disheveled cardinal flower
cloister walls at dawn

61
 or thought’s quantum
a window beneath
the serpentine gates
the inchoate trough
cemented ion pinions
and the incomprehensible
gears of convergence
of transparent mountains
a tree in the forest
rapture shrines
be it nucleus of coma
descending at twilight
gravity’s desert weed
a Tunguska desolation
a glandular outcry
a piecemeal diminishment
a spinster’s reticence
at home with desire
tidal spiral waves
pyramidal declination
or Orion’s ascension
light
from a window

62
 from cities
thriving blind winter
ocular Gaia blizzard

---Ø---

At points random
to identity
tertiary circles’
adumbrating
mirrored flaws
a cause to deduce
ancillary bells
or winter fog
a shrouded presence
a fated id
a darkened room
a furnace wherein
angels appear
to actualize
synchronicity’s occurrence

63
 within the known
a
point of reference
reflecting
on the empty plaza
on a faith’s
cold tile floor
on the plight
of the pilgrim’s stone
“here it is known
birds fly from this garden
at sunrise”
again to speculate
the cathedral in shadow
the compass deviation
dreams of the sea
interpreted beneath clouds
the portico gates
bounding
the vacant meadow
an expanse of terns
rising above
the ash gray strand

64
 ---Ø---

To look at this
a degradation interlude
historical roorback
as asset
a tempering thought
the ladder evoked
the fabricated scaffold
the toxic fatigue
the burdened moon-spines
the fractured gutter flower
embossed gestures
to lobotomize
mute internalizations
here within
the greater archetypes
the minds of some
the stone articulations
the dead spots
on the pavement

65
 the gale’s glass casket
the diamond light
of many days
the dissolving prism
the splintered coruscation
the sinuous dust passage
the steel of progress
the chalice of winter
tracing a palace square
the oppression of some
the atomization of some
the nearness
the distance
the solution
lying inert
the gale

---Ø---

Particulate flow
through a membrane

66
 at the cyclotron
a waiting train
symbiotic relationships
extricated
from the ether
no formative image
to define
a universe of plastic fates
leaving a shadow
at nightfall
lights in a forest
proselytized remnant’s
salient phenomena
“we redeemed slag
from burning sands
at Council Bluffs”
memory without
comprehension
a linguistic
indeterminate Democritus
sundry canticle choir
disinterring skeletons
hollow gods

67
 haunting monster’s
mortality
primitive flux
to mine
the undercurrent sludge
the cardinal points
the hypnagogic burrs
the fractal of sleep
the elemental ocean

---Ø---

Go to the engine
to the ruinous
machinery
to the life
of plastic
roses
against a rock wall
ancient tidal forces
a swale of pastel vistas

68
 collapsing wave forms
reorientating the compass
appearance of the lesser
life-force
the spaces between
the caryatids’ breath
the gouty freighted relics
the sinuous wilderness
the somnolent mountain vertigo
the firmamental reverberation
of resurrection
of the lesser light
of the quantum invertebrates
of the simian homunculus
of the stone temples
the faint viscera’s
burning metaphysic
“a fire shall lead them
by night”
by day
the scarlet arch
of blood
of masses transfixed

69
 of vulture litanies
of the errant siege
of the wandering flock
of the wolfless bushes
the silence of
the excommunicated
the anathematized
the orphic heretic
the sterile meadow
the corpuscular lunation
the retrograde motion
the doorway sage
the uncoiled amoeba
the gravid womb
the weighted blooms
the granite passage
the hyacinth vicissitudes

---Ø---

Observation

70
 a finite parsing
a continuance
a guttural congruence
to intermittently pulse
through the minute furrows
here crows reside
among the debris
a truncated vision
of meadows
of the jagged
pastoral precipice
the insurmountable expanse
to articulate
the invisible tongue
the prismatic divinity
the comet’s trajectory
coruscation or
inkpot illumination
Neanderthal remains
staining the pavement
epistemic divination
bleeding with consciousness
later day erratum

71
 parsed from memory
tepid flux reflecting
the irrevocable weather
groping thru fogbank talons
to grasp
the imperfect
the cobweb sanctuary
the arachnid tempest
to envision
a casualty of mind
the intercessory ocean’s
fulminating penumbra
“at dawn we set out
for the uncharted territory”
here is desolation
the howling in the forest
the brutality’s prowling
the buried
Rosetta prescience
the empirical wounds
the gathering of thistledown
the prodigal winter
dim with remembrance

72
 ---Ø---

Small windows
an anterior room
a roof
behind a roof
sloping to the sea
dull echo resonance
above the lake
an anthracite precipice
a taciturn interpretation
a grave
disengaging thought
above a gray overcast
“at first we offered flowers
walking down purple corridors
by candlelight”
sinewy gulls
sailing on thermal currents
conclusions are breached

73
 at a point of observing
a larger window
framing a damaged century
“we came to a crossroads
and entered a cathedral
we sought the origin
of stairways
leading to bleeding statuary”
a darkened time formed
an anachronistic view
looking toward the sea
morning was a liquid shelter
a hidden glass cavern
beneath autumnal foothills
again the gray
latticework doorway
the open-ended sanctuary
or a wall imprinted
a raised intaglio
a scarred lion
beneath gaslights
saffron hued spires
tenebrous bell tolling

74
scarlet orchid redolence
death’s narrative epilog

---Ø---

Fate of the universe

hung from a gallows tree
a fly
at the foot
of a king’s bed
a gated window
a tenuous lily
obscured in snow
the weighted tongue
of everything vernal
a slamming door
retrograde prescience
as non-existent
as time
within the molecule
a restive nocturne

75
 a willow
a meadow fugue
an orchid
lilac fingerprints
mountain laurels’
ashen shadow
incipient eclipse
or distant railway canticle
unnoticed motion
actuating
a spectral void lapse
or a curved gravel path
vanishing
through a hollow
a cavern
a glass river
a song thrush
a broken wing
impotence
a return
to the helix

76
 ---Ø---

A legend
of nine storms
interpreting
a spiral bridge
under Aldebaran
a three crow tree
a mausoleum portrait
a heretical encyclical
a topical wall
within a glass bottle
Oppen’s insane fly
a causality
dissipating humanity
a postulate
a cloud of oceans
a leper’s skeleton
removed from consideration
from the depth
of contemplation

77
 from the distance
of a clock tower
from the undertow
of rapture’s dark
ecstasy
here there is instability
the windowed rose
dark ecstasy
the romanticist’s bugbear
the dead leaf trajectory
the alphabet
of extinctions
the silhouette-barred
doorway
the interplay of forces
undefined scouring
or footsteps
in the desert
the journey
the corpse
in the desert
prediluvium archetypes
the strand’s edge

78
 the skiff and muckrake
the corpse
the kingdom
the leper’s ghost
the driftwood kingdom

---Ø---

Blighted siege
caustic Babel utterance
extrication of part-forms
faces in windows
sequential genome redaction
perturbation of cloud cover
synchrony’s spatial emasculation
calculate modes of diminishment
shallows at sunlight
ill-determined
reflective gloss
“to exist in virtual perpetuity”
entropic carbon based organism

79
 outsource surfeited masses
to postulate specious origins
a mute poverty
suturing plasticized underlayment
Socratic fables
no part of finality absorbed
“we have formulated
a space
wherein life is
incrementally displaced”
disinterring
enervated parchment
fragments
a hegemony of prologue
topical elegies
ancient boreal sine wave
vulture theodicy
of Tyre
hear there is light
a consciousness
devolved
symmetrical timeline
extinction

80
 black sky chevron
collective nanotech maladies
eroded horizon scribing
fallow corpse-fields’
revenant
palace of bleeding marrow

---Ø---

A window
of lesser apprehending
overhead
five crows flying east
“we channeled the entity Alzan
who said the universe
could not exist
without our consciousness”
with the comet’s passage
an ancient ocean subsided
in roots of dead trees
prayer shawls

81
 draped on armoires
an unintentional angle
of sun
or a dead theorist
seeing through
a hallway mirror
a fugal archetype
of chanting penitents
observing the ruins
without consciousness
a storm at sea
a silty chthonian Sargasso
or legends
of fear
of the golem
of the unobservable
figment-id
beneath a surface
a glass cathedral
a cowled desert
a mirror
a parlor window
a gothic arch

82
 a pendulum sift
cows on a mantle
clocks in a pasture
in the reeds
a swan at twilight
now a luminous vase
holding a celluloid flower

---Ø---

Perforations
in a membrane
a last treatise
of ancient light
now a monk
in the foyer
red ochre dust
scrawling
indecipherable runes
a latent breviary
prayers through glass

83
 at sunset
glitter domes
for the hermitical
or saucer lore
within the comet’s tail
a fluid spiral
a medieval womb
a prosaic causation
for civilization
and demise
but speak to this
philosopher
the thousand clouds
the burning body
the windrow escarpment
the pallid beatitude
the lashed torso
the leakage of sleep
the opaque crystal
the welted flesh
the hoary wheezing
the clogged arachnid’s atom
the drowned specimen

84
the buried semen’s furrow
the opiate’s progeny
the icy fathom’s
attenuated root
the theory of
the nonexistent of
beauty’s mired
stigmata

---Ø---

When the forsythia blooms

at sea
at nightfall
diaphanous sky drift
ancient worm ladders
strayed limb reveries
a blind beast
scything
a hyacinth forest
“here was the edge

85
 of vision”
the glass domed clouds
beneath finite stone hours
the forsythia bloom
through scrap metal spines
through immense vacant clarity
through the irreversible
trackless grave
the blurred oscillations
curvatures by streams
the disembodied aria
the dulled blade
sundering neutrino modalities
the enshrouded ovum
hidden in caves
hidden
sire of auguries
hidden
cavity realities
the latent wakefulness
the bleary eyed Achilles
the misconstrued gods
the eidetic troll

86
 the burrowed hare
the silent
white groundswell
the silent
furrowed moors
the silent
singed wolf
the burning
the aimless burning
the visceral burning
the hoarfrost burning
of factories
burning
of cities
of mountains
burning
of mountains falling
from the sky
burning
from the stars
burning
the draining feral nebula
falling to the sea

87
 burning
the unconsumed bush
the lamp
burning
the isolation
burning
the meadow in shadow
shadow of stars
shadow of ravens
shadow
of the gallows tree
shadow
of the orchid
shadow
of the void
the black void
shadow
of the sentinel
the sentinel
of death
the sentinel
of shadow
of Hades

88
 guarding
the transparent vein
the obsidian gloom
the lucent mourning tongue
the whispers
the black shallow fates
the dripping penumbras
the throbbing incantations
the spleen viscera
the incarnation
the hollow incarnation
the womb
the hollow womb
the hollow bones
the hollow gyre
the spiraling
isolation
in the atom
the isolation
the ocean’s wake
the conscious desert
the Orphic desert
the ascent

89
 the ancient worm ladder
the dissolving iron gauze
the liquefied archaic eye

---Ø---

Bluebird sing
by desiccated sea walls
by subdued aquatic dust light
below sinew clouds
below lunar obscuration
acquiesce
to the myopic crone’s
conjuring leer
the antiquated cleric’s
philosophizing psaltery
the landscape’s melted
riverbed pastorals
the colic body’s
infernal retention
the insane oracle’s

90
 subway purgation
bluebird sing
by the prayer wheels
by the pyres
of the castrated
of the feral
of the lion progeny
of the isolated reliquary
the steel veneer trees
the bituminous alleys
the gelatinous amoeba
dissolved in ocean gutters
or the stone obelisks
emanating above
marble walled waste towers
“three times actuality existed”
in a purer particulate’s
glowing opiate
in a gape of meaning
of morning
sun draped
scorpion blood embers
in fomenting Vermeer light

91
 eroding within
autumnal tidal ponds
retuned
attenuated
vermillion forest

---Ø---

A present tense
the ethereal skein
unraveling
in the image of the gods
in the tenacious negation
in the staid hyperbole
in the anchorite veneration
in the fallow meadow
in the causal
outflowing
snow at dawn
theories on gray wind
clouds as structures

92
 fragmentary
sutures dislodging materialism
poverty sleeps
in evening’s footfall
“here is where the night sky
impressed the notion of eternity
into our minds”
inapprehensible
winter bloom
Orion’s gnarled rising limb
jeweled sword guardian
of the unreachable
wilderness
of steel
of glass
of threadbare light
of the image
of the impenetrable
mortality dust
snow at dawn

---Ø---

93
 Because of limits
of servitude
a crippled arachnid
of reason
dissension from the skies
“we thought of ourselves”
within a cathedral
four walls
two walls facing north
caustic wind winterkill
because there is
a theoretical mechanism
underlying
a hymn to blind zeros
a scaffold
upholding negation’s plaint
on an arid plain
a dismembered lion
vacating
a simulacra of space
a heretical Galileo

94
 on a Cartesian ice bridge
“we though of ourselves”
as existing”
apart from the lintel stone
apart from the ghost
the ghost seen
through lace curtains
through the tertiary windows
the latter day ante light
or the apparent
emptiness
“we thought of ourselves
as existing within”
the unmediated alacrity
the knotted bowel clarity
the wilted vine’s
castellated apathy
the ant in amber
the razed old growth
forest embers
“we thought of ourselves
as existing within
an entropic sentience”

95
 or the air resonating
the crude medieval penury
in tracings
tracings of wounds
tracing of blood
tracing of flesh
tracing of scars
of scars tapering
tapering of breath
tapering of shadow
tapering of sun
tapering of radiance
tapering Gnostic flame
oh Sophia
the wisdom
the balance
the paradox
the wisdom
to balance the paradox
to absolve
to absolve the invisible
image
the absolute image

96
 the absolution
the absolution of uncertainty
of clarity
of the indeterminate
of cycles
of cycles returning
of karmic wheels
of prayer wheels
indecisive as wind
of wind and rain
of ancient rain
returning
to glaze the panes
below
the immovable mountain
below
the unchanging azure
below
the flawless
the intractable
the ostensible
the undefined
the perceived

97
 the perceived absolute
the undefined absolute
the void
the unseen

---Ø---

Five crows at dawn

picking at road kill
or Pound’s ‘palace
in smoky light’
behind an iron wire fence
the ancient sky
gods’ return
a bleeding parchment
a splintered sun’s
skeletal embrace
prismatic coruscation
in a garden
an oblong table
a solitary sphere

98
 a charkha rendering
of Plato
abandoning the white
stones
lilacs
under a liquid sun’s
doorway
granite threshold withholding
five dawns
beneath
a crow’s wing
a poisoned well
a disembodied poet
a stone citadel
a king dying
drawing shadows
across curtained widows
across a rectangular room
a prison of wandering
in the orchard of locust
in the orchard of meteors
in the orchard
of burning bodies

99
 in the orchard
of drowning smoke
in the orchard
of hovering vultures
a king is dead

---Ø---

“We crossed the frontier

by starlight”
further from here
the unmaimed
gods
an ocean radiance
watery grave
disillusion
the rusting steel wheels
the loom of Penelope
threaded holes
in the corpse
of wombs

100
stilled amniotic breath
unraveling
pale nomad
gestated faith
gestated roots
to origins
to destination
regenerate voice
within
this inner room
slow wind
through fluted bones
mass of water
of weight
of flesh
the incarnated
the cornerstones
the transience
the disinterred limbs
the clotted torso
the austere livery
the incarnated
the torrents

101
 the carapace
of flesh
of worm-encrusted
consciousness
of the trembling vessel
the naked brined thighs
the impregnable goddess
the bewitched goddess
the buried tongue
the primordial nature
the devouring
of wolves
of the broken
the broken bones
the flowing marrow
the metal curtain
to embrace
the shallow ocean
by candlelight
the burning prescience
requiem
the incinerated flesh
the return to ash

102
 the return to earth
from here
a crescent mirror’s rising
by dawn
vanquished
indigo light
to rent the veil

---Ø---

To begin at zero
to resolve
what remains
nameless
in a mirror
the skylark returns
the intangible magnetism
inhabiting
the hollow bones
to follow the measure
the debris of days

103
 symmetries
on divergent landscapes
the proximity
of place names
of language
scouring to mean
in the meaningless
evanescence
of autonomy
of receding walls
of tidal surging
of numbed desire
to touch
the light
the oblique spheres
shining
above
the spleen factories
the acrid acetylene smog
above
the isolated alley
the indigent cardboard hovel
above

104
 the abandoned crowds
the hovering asphalt rage
to say there is light
light
in the houses
of felicity
light
in the houses
of disillusionment
light
in the houses
of desire
light
in the houses
of the unseen
light
in the houses
of the unspoken
light
of prayer
light
in the houses
of prayer

105
 light
on a parchment’s
viscous history
light
on the engorged zealots’
blood soaked vestments
light
of the smoke
light
of the pyres
the blood rooted smoke
the medieval pyres
the heretical encyclical
“here there is light
in the vineyard
dawn through the trees “

---Ø---

Torn ablations
cast adrift

106
 at the edge
the ocean
the metallic ocean
icy unrepentant depth
a gauzed callous eye
mountain blood winds
sheep in weed pasture
a crow on the strand
“we thought of death
as a distant
abstract phenomenon
into which we placed
all of our unconscious fears”
wind-broken facets scattered
within the blind
within the parallel universe
within the rubble states
the narthex verities
the eidetic faceless mirror
the dissolved limbs
scalding asteroid threads
through parchment lines
the noiseless plague

107
 the penetrated limen suture
bleeding through eyelids
the loss which burns
in twilight gyre hymns
speak to what is
lost and dead
within this house
a bridge at nightfall
as through a window
gossamer stones
falling heavens
the swallowed angels
intoxicate
the sleeping void
the measure
a throated menagerie
a wolf of grayed morning
a disembodied memory’s palimpsest
the amnesiac
interplay of forces
the bloodless dragon’s
vertiginous pursuit
the trampled

108
 orchid meadow
dissolved in touch
a sea’s ghosted current
form between
the trance
of gravel terraces
the ice builders
the epidermal
rinds shed beneath
the crescent moon
the seventh hour
the candlelight
the bells at compline
the glyph’s chill
the vernal quotient
the refracted light
the blooding eclipse rituals
revolving spheres
resolve this apathy
this needle
in the hollow tongue
a brooding tulip’s
disemboweled loins

109
 a moth spine
spinning through the vortex
the deboned sinew limbs
the flooded asphalt gutters
the intangible magi’s
calcified apocalypse
the serpents imagined
emerging
on spindle vines
or a dead leaf crushed
beneath the mountain’s canker

---Ø---

Now slant light

drowning in doorways
atoms of the yielding maiden
decomposed
at water’s edge
the hyaline filaments
the lulled silken recompense

110
 shrouds on this
grizzled scrap of azure dust
the mortuary hymns
the dead are
unsung
the days follow
the shades’ encroach
here the empty vessels
desire
a word
without
a touch
to comfort
skeletons
of ash
of lust
view from a blind window
the paltry ruins
the hasped sight
dissolving the past
here dear romanticist
your callous moon glow
your windblown rose

111
 your meated pillow
of dreams
your bluebird’s
speechless felicity
your traced palace
in the sand
your lofty breathing
blighted lip
your immortal aching
emblazoned heart
hear
this conjugate
this impaled aria
this damaged astigmatic
stone stairway ascent
of crows disgorging
the purgative forest
the attenuated abode
the dwelling
of spirits
of spirits waking
of spirits walking
to wander

112
 the steroid rims
the rusted chancel-bowels
the concrete gravities
the fettered hemispheres
a Plato’s cave in
decaying flesh pantomime
the encrypted light
deflowered meadow
the thrusting sire
the impotent faith
the bare fruit trees
the runic tumors
in sallow earth
here knotted skulls
bleach the pavement
above the tree line
the inked myth
festering in stabbed wounds
the trilling engine
of withered meteors
decapitating
the fate
the fate of fear

113
 the fate of
jackboot tyrannies
the fate of
the shallow rooted
jackal shadows
the fate of
a conjured eroded past
the fate of
a gouty phallic patriarchy
the fate
of rapacious omens
the fate of
the corroded sphere
the fate of
the numbed ocean’s
frozen embers
the fate of
monuments
of stone
of flesh
of the splintered prayers
absorbed in glaciation
“yet here

114
 in an early summer
the azalea blooms”
within the proximity
of wreckage
the whiteless clouds pass
the penciled zeros
excoriating the flame
soon to waken
to wilderness
below gaslight spires
a disquieted winter
a vacuous piety
passing in trams
gnawing blank faces
the choking gutter’s
onyx rot
“and in the sixth hour
the bells of matins”
the spiraling smoke
the drained censer

---Ø---

115
 It is said
there are gray mountains
there are immortal paths
there are days which pass
unnoticed in sand
there are crows
which are unlike
the leaf
floating in the ocean
or the light
from Orion’s sword
piercing the heart
at the river’s edge
the ungloved maiden
the haggard cataract corpse
the manna of isolation
the isolation
of the gods
the isolation
of distance
the isolation

116
 of light
of light unseen
the isolation
of one
one touched by apathy
as clouds descend
torchlight ritual
vacillations of illumination
through a gurried aperture
they speak
of the unanswerable
they speak
of sunlit meadows
they speak
of midnight
through doorways
at corners
they grasp the untenable
the mythic city
the oblique
sundrenched wallpaper
the empty room
the scarlet ribbed phantom

117
 the patterns repeating
the eyes untearing
the veils obscuring
they desire
beacons on intractable landscapes
they desire
the subjugation
of fleshly dungeons
they desire
graves on fallen eyelids
rattled bones
in catacomb subway
serrated tulip silk
spun from the arachnid’s ovum
they desire
the palpable sundry husks
inhabiting the orthodox abstractions
the spittle light
through scrap iron overcasts
the mitered light
through blizzard stabbed skies

118
 ---Ø---

Within the vertigo dust

the amphetamine prophet
the soapbox orator
speechifying
a liaise-faire apocalypse
the anemia of death’s firefly
embittering the fecundity
of the bag lady’s dream
the aimlessly porous
flesh dripping psyche
oblivious to
the noon day wolf’s
unconscious encroach
a lamb led
to disemboweling slaughter
“now the night
of candlelight vigil”
the long-haired star
the cloudy nebula
the spheres of stone

119
 plastic fantasy lanterns
hung in vagrant cathedrals
the black dust ship
of the seventh call
descending to the siren’s wail
the crying
beneath black bridges
the crying
dim with remembrance
the remembrance in rhythms
of rhythm’s marching din
of the ragged throated chill
the wandering decay
the heaving mountains
descending into dreams
into visions
waking to sleep
to a lifeblood
the bleeding viscous rags
the immortal hag
bleating in subconscious wombs
the undulating dragon embryos
the string of pearls

120
 calcified in gutters
the surface
the palpable surface
the surface of vision
of sentience
of sentience obscuring
the vespertine trajectory
the hypnagogic descent
behind rock wall weeds
the finite platitudes
the bestowed reptile alacrities
the stained nature
sweating in the veins
the answer
indistinguishable
from silence
the silence of
the sanguine stars
pulsing the conduit
the silence of
the butterfly
alighting the lilac
the silence

121
 which claws
at the grackle’s womb
silence
silence of
waste places
burned to ash
silence of
molded patinas
infusing a vertigo of age
silence of
Babel’s echoes
crumbling in salamander canyons
silence of
atoms
disposed of presence
silence of
ghosted neutrino furrows
the silence of
blood
blood congealed in corners
blood of the earth
blood of the silence
the silence of

122
 the withered flesh
the silence of
wind
turned to stone

---Ø---

“We entertained
the possibility of loss”
while entering
a perfumed room
a conscious void
here where blood effaces
the standing stones
a meditation to nothingness
as the skylark returns
or at an oval window
an equation
reduced to zero
an eye
disinterring

123
the buried wreckage hymn
the ice entombed days
the steeled mountain elegy
to pass
through this image
as fruition
(the) past from here
the melted iron filings
piercing the demon’s eye
the black dog’s
broken marrowed limb
the clinging
silken blood
throats sheltering
the augured ruins
an ebb tide’s lapping
faces which form
in the frame of memory
or doorways
occluded by nightfall
now clocks on pavement
when clouds encroach
storms pass

124
 without
an ideology
without
the fused swollen shadows
crawling through
granite corridors
without
the entombed tyrant wind
echoing through
the glacial palace ruins
without
the terminal emblazoned swordfall
scything the cobwebbed corpse
without
the stiffened phallic subjugation
hunting the sterile landscape
without
the meat of static monuments
falling into grizzled heaping waste
without
the indigent barrage
effacing the frozen-tongued city
without

125
 the birth of ancient star fall
surfeiting the moment’s dead presence
without
the frozen eschatology of atoms
furrowing through the anthropocentric eye
without
the howling wolf
devouring the lucent impaled moon
now the fog bank
the gray sea
the iron barred window

---Ø---

A crow’s intoning
the dying horizon
“we waited until nightfall
to clothe the nakedness
we saw”
in the mirror
parchments unfurl

126
 the runic verities
the enshrined
gaping liturgies
the grayed contrails
lacing the sky
the lungful
of pestilence air
the tessellated crowds
adorning sightless skulls
the clotted stars
singeing the silken web
the blighted roots
shading the asphalt
the blackened womb
throbbing in the sea
the hollowed portents
hung upon a gallows tree
the unbroken maiden
ageless in imagination
the crone’s droning plague
unresolved
intimate touch
“and in the 6th hour

127
 the call to eventide”
further from here
a baseline
for determining
emptiness
define zero
as somatic
a measure
absorbed
internalized
a marred reality
imposing its image
torn facets
quarrying sleepless voids
facile patterns
nomadically tracking
the lucent bloodless fray
the entangling arachnid soul
physicality’s deflowered plane
gated language fate
Socratic sparrow
caught on razor wire
the epiphenomenon

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 of death
the interwoven
singularity
asleep in the veins
now candle wax
on wooden sills
the sinuous fingers
wind through thickets
the hours of confluence
near
to the scoured heart
the chanting ghosts
the lunar graves
the distal fog
assimilating
the inarticulate
want
the want of
stone
the want of
light
the want of
fate

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 the want of
faces
indistinct
and amorphous
in a mirror
the vatic reflection
the vatic stalemates
occluded marbled apertures
or light
in a doorway
at sunrise
day one
without

---Ø---

Ric Carfagna
April, 2010

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