14 POEMS

JOE GONNELLA

_______________________ / 60 2013 Joe Gonnella JoeGonnella.com @jgonn

Table of Contents

Invitation The Lesson This Stone is Yours Basset House Instructions for Departure Tool Auto-da-f Meteors Parmenides Elegy for an Absence Danse Macabre The Infinite Chart The River

Invitation
Follow me down The river road Where mistress turns Indecent children Into antelope. Follow me down Under the bridge Where wounded water Marries the marigold And feeds the poor. None hunt there, None are harmed there Where mistress sings And pebbles Are mischievous pennies. None are warned there, None sleep there, Where each boat sinks Out of spite for the sailor. Follow me down To the cavern Not as big as a heart At the seas center Where the seed should be. Follow me down

Where hours Ring out like worried bells, Peal on peal, skin On skin, til we find What mask makes us whole.

The Lesson
My father heard the wind that summer night, Saw the moon come up over the wide field Where he had set the telescope and held Me to the eyepiece until, with starlight Burnt through every nerve, I squirmed and cried, There are too many fires in the dark. He did not laugh then but led me in, laid Me down on my good bed, touched my forehead With his hand, whispered me to sleep, I woke To that memory, bright enough to blind, Of stars, clouds of stars and luminous space. When dawn came the sun was a sadder gold Than I recalled. In daylight I thought twice, Said I liked stars but hated being held. He laughed at that and never said a word. When night fell he taught me where the great bear Was, how to find the North Star by the pair, How to test sight like the Indians did. I told him I could see the double star. He never knew I lied. When he was done He brought an egg-crate out, lifted me, left Me to watch the whole sky alone. I kept Staring through that lens at the white half-moon Until he called me in. When I had crept Into my bed, my goodnights said, I could not sleep But leapt to my window where all I learned Waited for me like a dark gift. The deep Night quick with lights that burned and burned and burned.

This Stone Is Yours

Theres a stone that fits the hand; a stone that has nothing to do with cobbles. Theres a stone that can be raised and brought down like an eyelid; a stone that finds what it wants to find, no matter whom it sees, no matter where it goes; a stone that has nothing to do with walls. Theres a stone that knows and then forgets and then knows once and for all what it wants to know; a stone born of a bludgeon; a stone like no other, it cant be thrown, it cant be juggled; it fits the hand like a well-made glove; you wear it like a suit, it wears you like a hunger.

Bassett House
Nothing moves In this stillness. The stars are masked. Driving here we found We were happy. Now flames reach The top log. Smoke rises Through the flue. All the tools we need Are by the hearth: A straw broom To brush the embers back, Blackened tongs; Enough tinder In the scuttle to rekindle, If the fire burns too low And four hewn logs Stacked in a bin To feed the flames that See our evening through.

Instructions For Departure

I A door is opening before you; its shadow brings no peace. Leap into the arms of its echo; nurture the wanting. Youll be as courageous as a star, certain in the knowledge of your burning. Share in the fate of leaves and leviathans; dance to the music of your passing. Tame the beast you cant dismember and make of its terrible visage a mask of repose. Unleash the stillness within you until the fragile void has no choice but to blossom.

II Theres an anger beneath this fear that will flare with each denial. Grasp the brand until the world you cant enter is extended to the limit of the flames bright reach. The room you build will travel with you, serviceable as a snail shell. Theres nothing in nature that does not have its reason. Absence will be baptized. Echo will have an answer. Practice the magic. Accept the miracle. Self, deaths chrysalis, engineers no exemptions.

Tool
to make a tool implies a future and an agreed need words are independent of their objects a lion enters only when a lion enters and not when I whisper the word for lion wishing a lion would come there are words in this world no lips can speak there are words in the world lips were meant to speak

Auto-da-f
Instants, hours, days and dawns Dance to the laughter of the passing year. Partnered by the moon and sun Real things exit, real things come: Sunlight gilds wind-enchanted leaves. Minutes, sunsets, months and seasons Forge memory's bright tools from dreams. A future, self-conceived, redeems The emerald echoes of its past By knocking on the only door there is: Leafless branches frame cloud-entangled trees. Seconds, decades, centuries and eons Spin even atoms into swirls of dust. All planets begin as densities in flux Each night is blacker than the next Until obsidian centers flare sapphire To blaze the scattered foliage of proto-suns Into jewels of self-consuming fire.

Meteors
You were the one I hunted and never found In all my games of hide and seek. The Indian forever drawing his bow or the white man Refusing to leave his homestead for the fort. A troubled companion of my ways, I remember you walking one foot at a time Up the steps of the path to my fathers house. Your face as long as ever I had seen it, As if you were engaged in some internal conflict Or immersed in an unfathomable reverie Meant only for that other you kept entirely inside you. Together, we looked into a sky we could never measure. We gazed past clouds of stars that hovered at the edge Of interminable darkness. Lucky as we were, We caught, out of the corners of our eyes, The bright streak a meteor cast down to a black horizon. I asked if you thought stars could die and you said yes. We were at home in spite of ourselves. The clothes in our closets were just our size. The slippers under our beds knew the shapes of our feet. Our shoulders filled the jackets we had on. Crickets, vibrant in the grass, seemed real in the dark As we walked through the volleys of their noise. We had no notion there was damage to be done In the wide world. We held the stars too close Then let them go. The battalions of night retreated, They disappeared one by one; lights so small, so distant, They could not keep us warm that night or ever. Still, the stars taught us their secrets. I counted them From the hills top, where other boys had stood. The sky

Wheeled around its center. We watched meteors Etch their courses down the dark, until daylight drowned us And we drifted into the light-blind streets Of grown-up cities where markers for self and other Are placed on a map of the world as a strategist Would place them on a field of planned contention.

Parmenides
As mist burns off of a morning as smoke dissipates when wind blows my words fade as you hear them. As truth dissolves into falsehood as birdcalls vanish into night these letters disappear as your eyes pass over them. My lungs release the atoms theyve captured back to the stars that distilled them. I learn what ambiguity teaches. Some knots will not come undone. What I dream is not what I sense. What I sense is not what I think. Some thoughts are mine alone. Blindness comes from such staring at the sun. A budget of fallacies leads to an economy of loss even for those whose wealth is limitless. Untie the knot of thought. Solve the puzzle of words. By that resolution to be born again and again and again in endless argument with a sun that comes up fresh each morning and disappears again each night.

My words have teeth. My silences are full. My arguments are beautiful. My hand exists as a hand. My eye is as sharp as a hawks. I circle my prey and I dive to eat what is under my talons until what is not becomes me to be born anew by the name I give it as it dies inside me. My mares lead me where I most desire even to that point where Apollo cedes dominion to a refugee like me. My horses strain against their burden. I travel the road theyve chosen preceded by guides the gods selected. The axle of my chariot sings In its sockets as if at the heart of all that spinning a pipe is being blown by a shepherd. Casting aside earths veil the daughters of the sun lead me to daylight from nights deep. At the crack of dark where dawn should be, at the crux of contradiction, all numbers contract to a singularity.

Gates of stone rock above, rock below prodigious doors tower to vertiginous heights, concealing the kingdom I have come to map. Wherever I start wont matter: for the man who turns on the pivot of what is every step is the same in a circle. Words are the arrows by which I pin objects down into the field of what exists. A word which denotes nothing is as hollow as a bone from a creature never born. Those who walk the way of what is not are lost and will wander forever between confusions ceiling and a borderless floor. Unasked questions have no answers. Unwhispered secrets can never be revealed. Without puzzle there is no solution. A lie unuttered cant be countered by orphaned truth.

There is no other choice: what is, is and what is not, is not. All is a unity into which plurality folds like the wings of a hawk perched on a limb just before it hunts. The doors of the kingdom of justice swing wide for me this road was meant to bring me good fortune as lonely as it is. All answers are mine for the asking. The merest wisp of passing opinion, the perfect sphere of fearless truth, everything is open to me: the ephemeral and the everlasting just the same. I smell the scent of truth on a wind rising from the east. I see the heart of dark in what comes later. I taste the brightness that falls around my shoulders. I still the rush of time by the movement of my limbs. I hear the suns chariot rolling in its track back to the dark I know will come. There are no beginnings. There are no endings. The world I name is the only world I know.

Elegy for an Absence

I Theres no map to trace the geography of days we shared. Buried in the quotidian of our diaries the unexpected schedules its own appointments. A red moon reckons the sum of stars and misses one: an unforeseen absence. Could I have wished for you another day? Another whisper? Another touch? What was it you found in anticipated darkness that invited you to choose to enter when you did? Did a new moon beckon between chasms of cloud? Will the darkness you drank be enough to slake your thirst? Or will your will insist on a colder freedom, the freedom of a beggar who doesnt choose what others would but whose sigh rises like smoke away from daily fire toward a sky where accumulated suffering condenses to satisfied desire. II Come back late, no place to go: level the base; square the sail; center emptiness; chart the course; bet the house; buy the farm. Uncommon

choice to move into a silence no words can describe. Let her rest who wouldnt have asked for these words in elegy to memories that never were. Today when I think of you stone will break, walls will fall, sky will darken and the tomb your ashes dont occupy will open and embrace whats been missing to complete an emptiness fore-ordained by a plenty made insufficient by spendthrift sun. As sand in an hourglass falls to where it belongs, substance is exchanged for hollow. What was withheld, is reclaimed. All cycles still at a long horizon where bloody sunlight tints you larger through the convex lens of earths atmosphere into something neither of us knew you would become: a phase-less moon; a certain, shining thing, luminously inhuman, in frozen night.

Danse Macabre
after Holbein http://www.dodedans.com/Eholbein.htm

The Chairwoman in her boardroom On her leather chair, Chiding her directors, will greet, Whether or not she wants to, The lord of bones. The CEO on his jet, rushing To a meeting, rushes, as well, Into the cold grip of the harvester Of men who waits for those Who will not wait for others. The COO, berating his subordinates, Stops mid-word when His devil whispers come And deaths bony arms envelop him In endless calm. The CFO wakes from her dream Of balanced books and predictable returns To smile into the face of the skull Who haunts her through divisible days Down to a final sum of sun. No matter how massively parallel, Mirrored or redundant his distributed Systems are, the CIO, on duty as always, Will meet with the disaster From which there is no recovery.

The EVP, in her corner office, Will be cornered by the collector Of souls when she least expects to be Even though no budgets are due And everyones forecasts are dead on. The VP, smiling at his superior, Will frown when the grim dismemberer Remembers him and every project He prosecuted will become Someone elses victory. The Director may face the face Others fear but the fearless reaper Has less to lose no matter How brave the aspirant hell claim. Cowards or heroes, all bones grind to ash. The Manager, working late, Will hesitate when she looks up From whatevers overdue To see the collector, who brooks No delay, ask her for her final pay. The mere Employee is not exempt From what all others owe. He shoulders This burden as he has his others And willingly obeys when the last Commander asks for what none can refuse.

The Secretarys secret remains a mystery Even as the eater of souls devours What shes withheld from colleagues, Bosses, friends and lovers. This hunter Knows nothing and reveals less. The Janitor has no time to clean His last latrine or order his jumbled closet When the prince of disorder makes his claim On him. The most disciplined practitioner Surrenders just as the laziest must. The Un-employed are spared most everything But this. Free from all meetings, At their leisure to wander where they will, They come when recalled By he who will employ us all. The Homeless, with nothing They can call their own, with neither Roof nor reference to their name, Will find their home in him Whose embrace none can escape.

The Infinite
After Leopardi

Ive always loved this hermit hill and this green tangle obscuring my view of so much of the farthest horizon. When I sit and absorb the vast spaces beyond me, the inhuman silences, the profound calm I pretend I imagine it all and my hearts almost brave. Like wind rustling through trees Im the voice inside this infinite silence recollecting the eternal and the dead seasons and the present and the living and their sounds until thought is drowned by immensity and Im happy to shipwreck in that sea.

Chart
Glide along rhumb line From wind rose to landfall As on an old portolan. Move Straight to the white places Or the engraved cartouche That masks what the mapmaker Could not know. Get there At all costs get there! On unrolled calfskin or In golden sunlight. Arrive At the destination youve chosen, Past myriad names Inked on the vellum, To hear the shout Of the lookout as waves Crest over the hard shore You were born to discover.

The River
Bark guard dog back; whittle wind down to bone. Im home, moon, Im home. Each leaf moves like a fish. Follow them, follow. Here is the forehead of the dark. Here is torso; here, thumb. Tell me how far stars go when they go home. We ride the river until wind says, No.

Other Islands Press

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