The heart of the hart pines for river’s flow. My heart knows not how to appease its thirst. Forest glen is home enough for dappled doe. My high towers re-call shrill Babel’s verse. Still, I set my brick atop its brothers. Still, I call my others to make amends. Still, I forget to forgive my neighbors. Still, I forge high towers as if they’re ends. I’m deaf to the Dumb Ox’s lofty verse, deaf to whatever mighty David writ. Their tongues give birth to leaden curse or worse. There’s no time to re-make all that’s unfit — Time’s a thief who takes and never gives. My sole hope is the One who ever lives.
There was a time when there was no time. Then, there was no sickle gripped in death’s dark hand, no plague to plague the land, no breath to breathe, no light to see, no sea to tickle the sand.
So many eyes have seen this sea, they’re blind.one of thirty-six
fishermen brave the high sea —
mighty fuji’s seen
meditate on where
oh, place the kento1 with care —
every part is spare
the sea’s our lover
her lovers brave her fury —
lapis lazuli 2my love’s a dragon
Edo3 sees the fickle sea —
push the brush away
So many eyes have seen this sea, they're blind.
@ rlbusséll 2021 - All rights reserved.
Great Wave Off Kanagawa by Katsushika Hokusai’s (1760-1849) 1831 woodcut
Panorama of Edo from Atagoyama by Felice Beato (1865 or 1866)
The Japanese printing “registration” system. Registration is a method printers use to guarantee that each print in a series is aligned the same way. ↩
a bright blue metamorphic rock consisting largely of lazurite, a bright blue pigment formerly made by crushing, being the original ultramarine. ↩
Painting: M. Caravaggio, 1601. Oil on canvas 91 inches x 69 inches. Located in the Saint Maria del Popolo Church, Rome. (Detail)
Michael’s chiseled hands have 1 not formed me as Adonis and yet Medusa’s writhing’s 2 have made me as cold as stone.
Alabaster arms, alabaster lips, a cold and lifeless form; Pygmalion’s infant 3 breath lies ever stillborn.
Yet, I sculpt my life for all to see. Display it, set it in museum-free. Wait for all to come critique my jaundiced eye, my hobbled knee, and pray they not nail me to a tree.
But if they do, I pray they see fit to rest me by my top.4 Then with Peter, I’ll cringe at our thrice told tale5 and wrest not glory from The Ancient Story.
Michelangelo di Lodovico Buonarroti Simoni or more commonly known by his first name Michelangelo. ↩
In Greek mythology, Medusa was a monster, a Gorgon, generally described as a winged human female with living venomous snakes in place of hair. Gazers upon her face would turn to stone. ↩
Like many do with Frankenstein and his monster, I’ve conflated Pygmalion with his creation. : ) ↩
Church tradition has it that Saint Peter was crucified upside-down. Origen says: “Peter was crucified at Rome with his head downwards, as he himself had desired to suffer”. ↩
Then Peter remembered what Jesus had said: “Before the cock crows, you will deny me three times.” And he went out and wept bitterly. — Matthew 26:75 ↩
I have seen a widow’s walk where seven gables point the sky, and I have stared at chalk hoping to draw the perfect I.
But why? Why set my feet where Hawthorne trod? Why practice to marry eye to hand? Why collect all those marks set to paper, board or ageless cloth? Why wonder at the ephemeral moth?
Painter. Profligate. Michelangelo, the fool. — Cardsharps in Kahn’s hall.
Was there a time when demons conquered, stayed; when Anthony’s tormentors shied away? Why roam through Rome your bravado displayed; why take your eye from your vision to stray? Your meanest tableaus set my mind aflame; Your work has worked itself into myself; Your brush became my only brush with fame. Uffizi’s Medusa’s upon my shelf. Blesséd Matthew, gripped by passion and flame, is taught by an angel’s breathless whisper. Then there is your telling of our night’s shame when, in the dark, Light was framed with silver. Do you still lie amid the labyrinthine streets of your Caesars’ stony concubine?
The echoing step Moves us through history’s halls — Saint Matthew’s burning.
My name still flies amid cent’ries’ darkness and like an ever circling bird, rises. My demons still roam my Rome in darkness looking for young flesh and tender prizes; Time’s elusive progress is circling ’round. Night required I prick with sharpened sword and sharpened tongue my enemies to hound; they were circling ‘round my girls to hoard their beauty and so keep my fame at bay. Have you seen my Fillide? Does she still live within Peter’s shadowy cabaret? I need to know if our flame will outlive my canvas, my sword, my haughty bluster. Do her lips still call men to her chamber?
Tiber flows swiftly. A starving tern yearns for food — Pleasures at coin’s cost!
Fillide did what she had to do to live and at the dawn of her womanhood, she plied her flesh and soul to live; the attractive are often forced, in poverty, to flee morality, and thus all the devils win. Fillide did die so many years ago that time has almost forgotten her sin. It must be pain entire to hit so low. I’m sure your Fillide’s flame is still burning; for her will did will herself in a frame. She died remembering you without spurning. She left us while petitioning our Dame. I pray Mary heard you at your last breath that all your darkness did not mark your death.
Mortar frames her bed. We all seem to hold our breath — The nightingale sings.
I can’t recall the cutlass’ cut ’n’ flash. My flesh was torn too soon to notice much. I recall the slow gasp, the bloody slash, the eyes so filled with knowing. And no touch can bring my blood to flowing. And no word can now make sinew move my dusty bones. All was darkness, there was a footfall heard, (the mute sound of leather on hardened stones) and then a challenge I could ne’er refuse. My rage ’twas like on Malta’s rock. I burned. I flared. “I’ll not have you my name ill-use. I am Caravaggio! You’re ill-learned. Honor you’ll show me or you’ll die tonight”, then came the end to me who once was knight.
Gilding frames his head. Now we speak of light and dark — Salomé dances.
Since childhood, I’ve had a powerful reaction to any image created by Caravaggio and I wanted to express my deep love for his work and my heartache at his untimely passing. When childhood heroes are hoisted on their own petard, some part of the edifice of childhood crumbles and this poem is a reaction to his falling façade.
M. Caravaggio is told, in what Michael O’Siadhail (Pronounced mee-hawl o’sheel) calls a “saiku” in his brilliant work “The Five Quintets.” The haiku before and after each sonnet act as a kind of time machine or a means to comment on what is to follow or what has just past.
M. Caravaggio contains four sonnets: in the first and third I ask some questions and in the second and fourth Caravaggio replies.
His hand cradled hers; Hers’ swallowed in his. Her delicate fingers found safety. His rough calluses found purpose.
No agenda. No timetable. No watch. No phone. Only them alone. Alone, together among the masses.
Happiness sat upon his shoulders. Wonder captured her eye and his. ’Twas the wonder of passing wonder on to his, ’twas the wonder of two and generations.
This is their time to stare. This is their time to see. This is their time to be.
And all the sounds of busy, they had no ill effects.
Monet and Modigliani are cradled under arcs of light — softly it’s spilled round. Muted foot-falls and hushed breaths were all that they could sound.
Her neck was stretched in Modigliani style to see what could be seen; It was if all that “The Greek” could teach was, in her, made flesh.
Claude’s colors were splashed on canvas large in haphazard order, that caused Beauty to bend her haughty eyes to drink.
This is their time to stare. This is their time to see. This is their time to be.
Mr. Well’s machine is seen in these vaulted halls of frames. Each brushstroke takes us back, and the dust of centuries laid on linen fair can be seen by anyone who takes the time to stare.
To the sounds of our twenty-six;
to the sounds of our aleph-bets,
we’re sounding our lives
‘round our sounds.
And all our soundings
press us into what we are.
So I give thanks to Wycliffe, Webster, and Will for still I hear them sounding their depths. I am deeper because they willed words, words that are pressed into my every cell, words that speak to my soul, words that call, words that stall the beating of my heart.
Start, if you recall
the first you heard of Juliet
and her dead Romeo;
and that bachelors may marry yet,
and of the night that our dead Hero
was from death recalled.
Start, if you recall
the beginning of beginnings,
when nothingness was formed
into rib and woman formed,
when the first light of dawn spilled
from Word and Wind,
when from fire, God did call.
Start, if you recall
finding Noah’s book
laid upon a table faire,
of spelling words like fare and hair,
of all the varied tongues that form
our England and America,
and of how large it seemed all.
And because of this I wonder still:
symbols making sounds,
sounds making meaning,
meaning making men.
I’ll listen to the rumbling sound.
Press ear to the hardened ground.
Shake my sleepy head.
Stir my rumpled bed.
There is no need to wonder why: there’s that plank in my bleed’n eye, blind man leading blind along the ditch, the retching earth about to pitch, the lukewarm bile in chests of gold, and my refusal to grow old.
Image: Pieter Bruegel the Elder (Dutch painter and print maker during what has became known as Dutch and Flemish Renaissance) (1568), The Blind Leading the Blind
Museo Nazionale di Capodimonte [Public domain]
The image was produced before 1924 and is in the public domain in the U.S.
Every word in the haiku must begin with the same letter
When written in English, it generally follows the syllabic pattern 5-7-5
Haiku/Senryu Poetry – Here is an in-depth description of Haiku/Senryu Poem (also called human haiku) is an unrhymed Japanese verse consisting of three unrhymed lines of five, seven, and five syllables (5, 7, 5) or 17 syllables in all. Senryu is usually written in the present tense and only references to some aspect of human nature or emotions. They possess no references to the natural world and thus stand out from nature/seasonal haiku.
This Alphabet Haiku Challenge is brought to you by Abigail Gronway (poet extraordinaire) of the Dark Side of the Moon fame, please visit her site whenever you get a hankering for good poetry.
In the silence, amid the incense and the light slide,
stone falls on stone; a grinding mill scratches and calls.
Thus it’s ever been, amid the silent beating heart, beside
the whispering nave, knave and brave, brave the squalls.
And the stones answer when the lambs lie dumb ‘n’ mute.
Thus it’s ever been, amid the windowed calls for right,
amid the cobbled walls, cobbled floor, and hobbled foot;
Thus it’s ever been, amid the storied skies held loft by light,
amid the storied limbs can be heard the silent whispers;
Thus it’s ever been, amid the once chiseled and shape’ed stone
amid the storied floors that hear half-prayers and muddied vespers;
Thus it’s ever been, amid lullaby, amid cradle, amid birthing groan,
amid the pounding silent foam, amid Euphrates’ flowing;
Thus it’s ever been, when men keep selves from knowing.
![The Blind Leading the Blind Museo Nazionale di Capodimonte [Public domain]](https://rlbussell.files.wordpress.com/2019/01/pieter_bruegel_the_elder_1568_the_blind_leading_the_blind.jpg?w=1089)
rl busséll — poet 
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