from 'Ragas For Krishna' Part 2

from 'Ragas For Krishna' Part 2

I have been encouraging Krishna (which is a funny thing to say, Krishna being a bold, blue God) to find a language coach to help him with his accent, to tone it down while keeping the wonderful music/lilt of it...he complains of tilting his head as he talks 'as all Indians do' but I insist he merely speak and let his head and hands speak, too, in their own way. If he does more public events he will need to be understood clearly when he speaks while preparing his magnificent dishes from his country, his rich feasts of stories of the chilies from his mother's garden entwined by morning glories, the morning cock already at quarrel with the world just beyond the tin reaching in to take some spices too enticing to refuse...

I always feel as if he is, or will soon be, bored with me and my humble 'ministrations' but he sweeps into my little room like a Raj, a young prince beaming, brimming full of stories to tell me, usually some food spicy hot he has prepared for me offered with a grin. Then he strips instantly down, lays upon the down pallet in easy, unabashed nakedness - it catches my breath, I do want to see! I hurriedly 'hide' my Ganesha, the prominent statue of the god I have in front of my useless fireplace; this hiding I half understand...but still, naked, he has a fresh and beautifully made tattoo of Ganesha on his shoulder, he wears a Ganesha necklace, a Ganesha bracelet, and a Ganesha waist scapular, the image of which is just below his navel. So why, I ask only myself and Ganesha, never Krishna, why must I hide my large wooden Ganesha statue? But I do hide Him in deference to Krishna's wishes and meanwhile have intercourse with the god-in-miniature, scraping a necklace trunk with an ear, a tongue, receive a scapular kiss of the image upon my forehead as I trace those wonderful hairlines of the male body on my way to other deities.

Ah! give me all the cabbages in the world in all my poverty! Am I not, too, a Raj of floors and scented pillows, this beaming god beneath me thrusting utterly to reveal his secrets, his desires, his pleasures to me who am not, when all is done, a god?

Life, dear Valdosta, over all, is good, yes? I wish it no ill. But, agreeing with the cock, I will quarrel, even fight, with life when young men still leap too soon from bridges because I have learned (and relearn it hard lesson by hard lesson at a time) visionary company insists its tracings in many forms, man to man being but one holy expression, those sons, burning mother's hands upon them demanding, insisting to life that each her sons is a rajah, a Sleepy Bee.

So please the intemperate humanity, in the face of patient deities the burning ones are leaping still and I am ill with grief, with prayer, their dead bodies gone, their now emptier hands.

And he leaves me.

I return to my poems.

The room is filled with Krishna, aromas of rose oil in his hair, pungent spices in his sweat and upon his hands and skin, and sex.

I retrieve Lord Ganesha out from his little sanctuary of hiding (it seems I am always retrieving deities) and we both laugh richly. I remember to sprinkle some cologne upon Him, to pour out some milk into His votive bowl, to rub His belly, to light another candle (the other extinguished, panting, while we were busy bees exchanging knees and sighs, diffusing male spices into bracing air, fingers upon oily chilies thickening in always morning hunger) .

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poem by Warren Falcon
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After Folly - An Aging Poet Addresses One Who Wanders In Mountains Remote

'Now I've broken my ties with the world of red dust;
I spend all my time wandering and read all I want.
Who will lend a dipper of water
to save a fish in a carriage rut? ' - Han Shan, Tang Dynasty, China

1

There's a hairy Moses in the distance counting pocket
change to give to the ferrier, coins that fit the eyes.
I'm hanging at the back of the crowd. There's manna
enough for pockets. My Red Sea is long parted but old
Pharaoh's got a new army. Each day is a scrape in the tents.
Prayer and fear is sustenance dragged further out by pillars
of fire. A volcano rumored to be God publishes 'Mandates for
a New Junta', led by a well-bred stutterer (prototypical politician,
it seems) . In odd limbo there trail reluctant murmurers.

That 'Golden Calf 'Incident' was a silly mistake,
an overreaction, but there were agreements made
at the outset, sealed in blood, first born sons threatened

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poem by Warren Falcon
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Extensiones de Accidente - Estrofas de Frieda Kahlo

Estrofa 1

No podía dejar allí,
tuvo que se ensanchan, se seca la pintura,
y la carne, secador de piel de abajo
a los huesos, un esqueleto sin sexo *,
cráneo ya no bigote,
** una calavera, nada más,
siempre de calcio dependientes de curvas
sobre lienzo, lo que se congela
no para avivar y quema,
una 'cola de pavonis' **.

* Skeleton
** Cráneo
*** Peacock Tail (una imagen en la alquimia)

Estrofa 2

Calavera, el futuro está

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poem by Warren Falcon
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Alchemical Passes for Father and Son - Turning Thighs to Diamonds - In Three Passes

FIRST PASS

Or what man is there among you, of whom if his son
shall ask bread, will he reach him a stone? - Matthew 7: 9

No blame shall stain us now, father.

The heavy ball you hit to me is never caught,
a floppy glove always falls from a hesitant hand.
Mars in you still storms the makeshift diamond.
Each base of cardboard weighted with stone
is still our house; a bat, a ball, a mitt,
hard rules of the game mean to undo all
lust for dark heaven shunning shining girls.

I was reaching for god then - not your fault - a lavender
boy early befriended by crows, already resigned to what
was given and what was to come, a softball between the
eyes, your attempt to guide me toward those diamond
thighs which, you often repeated, were everywhere waiting.

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poem by Warren Falcon
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It Bears No Rhythm In It's Head - for Robin Blaser

'Burning up myself, I would leave fire behind me.' - Robin Blaser

1

I would speak to you
after fire

from after fire proclaim
a kingdom
beyond what can be said of it
or what can be made of it but

only must this, just,
only-now-time, tell you

to speak at will as you
will as if to please
a silent vase in an
open window
and so sing

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poem by Warren Falcon
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Here's Breath For You - Upon Purchase & Buyer's Remorse - A Letter Poem To A Literature Professor

Dear Low,

Not to worry.

I am the man most pursued in last night's dream.
That emaciated thing at my back keeps tracking me.
I remain just out of reach. Classic. Even there,
as here, I am escaping something, a life time of
practice in this 'Kingdom of the Canker'.

It was no banker who followed me last night
but a starved lacklove rejected by 'Canker' and, well,
by me. Who'd want that part, all start and no finish?
Replenishment has often enough meant hiding out
and a demand that it keep at least 5 arm lengths away.

I will try, I tell it, to look at it but I find its presence
most disturbing, its handful of leaves continually
proffered leaves me in a quandary. What do they
mean, this offering, though my father was a lumberjack?

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poem by Warren Falcon
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Evocation of River and Spirits

in this city

to guess

having no acumen with
numbers and math but
father's over there
in the cup tilted
over
spilling into

o endlessly
it's seams

it seems
from river bank
into memory which
is - already
over-said
overheard redundantly

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poem by Warren Falcon
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Moments From The Orange World

Here is a poem which partakes of 'harvest' - death, dreams, love, dirge and demi-urge, the task of harvesting consciousness from unconsciousness, from the clash and claw and cling of opposites, each has their tasks, the dogs on the edge of the orange world, Death, too, has it's purpose rendering from that which nascently exists and is coming to be to not be again. Selves and part-selves are birthed/deathed to incarnate myriad possibilities of being which is the human experiment, each is a harvest returned to fallow ground. Each is a murmur, a sound expressed then passing into stillness. And myth.

Murmur: '(A) to make the sound mu mu or mumu, to murmur with closed lips, to mutter, to moan...(B) to drink with closed lips, to suck in...' - Liddell & Scott, Greek-English Lexicon,1897 ed.

'In such cases myth is the truth of fact, not fact the truth of myth.' - Kathleen Raine, 'On the Mythological, ' Defending Ancient Springs'

'The repressed value contains transformative energies and a consciousness of its own...' - Charles Ponce

'The Saviors do not lend themselves to art successfully: they are outside the pale, beyond, as incomprehensible in their love as in their example. They have never become incorporated in the blood stream. Forsaking the world, they become as the idols they sought to destroy. This is human perversity. Throughout the ages it displays itself in the individual life, and now and then it bursts forth in cosmic waves of futility and self-destruction.' - Henry Miller in an essay on Kenneth Patchen

As Dew On Grass Sleeves No Longer Stiffening In The Wind
- Moments From The Orange World - After Kenneth Patchen

'...do not grieve, therefore, those who are lost to you; they were ever so to themselves...'
- Kenneth Patchen - from 'There Is One Who Watches'

I've lost my way and wait for signs.
Distant signal fires indicate 'wait here'.
No gate ahead. The iron dogs are waiting over there

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poem by Warren Falcon
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Unexpected Fire, A Son's Cycle

for my father,
Major Warren Falcon, Sr.

Of Childhood Lamenting - Song of Experience

Might I sing it then?

How many stones he hauled

Not bidden but rough forced

Hand by hand from coagulate soil,

A boy's red wagon rusting

Full of spilled tumble-stones -

Unyielding stars between the rows, silent.

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poem by Warren Falcon
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Still Life With Coffee Can, Father, River, Bell, Mouse, Lover Fled

[poet's note to the reader:
read the 'x's' as the word
'times' as in multiplication]

This

just to
reintroduce some
levity

for we (loves)
were many day-ed

x merry

we merrily played
harming no one,
not even the
mouse unmoved

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poem by Warren Falcon
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