The catman of Aleppo: for Bob

"couldn't you  see with
my eye and simply not

say it's surely not worth
the trouble to love much

--"the wind blows where
  it listeth"--

& let a few cats go who've
been piereced in the side

like the one who'd love to die
in your one brown palm"

Adele

To every  sage Adele and every alloted share of bust and marbre
  I've ever seen your like receive,

with the cutest plaster phrase to ever emanate from the mouth of Art
  as I'd lain with her from day to day--

admirably made as she was to maddeningly blush
   and part her speech into mice and cheese--

to you and every fake femme Van Dyke, Seurat with neighboring fine
  armloads of grape-by-the lake  I've ever tasted

I once made the mistake to say, working towards a bit of amitie:

"look! both mind and hearts lose in the work since you don't need either
 and never retain over yourself the spark of it, in fact,

unaware of the proprietary rights of any of even the most
infinitesimal part of Art-"

and saying that, sometimes one of us grins, & sometimes a drying up
 of love &;lust of a dry irrecoverable type--

 able to say "amen", at last, to lust and bust"

Write 'storm' on the towers, and don't choose

  clear pools over rain ah camioneros,

never, never!

   Mine's a ruined casa low in the highway,

          a yard's wild overgrowth;

 tiles after the heat spill over me at times like ivy.

   Language betrays

  If you sequester groves under the netting

(Sant Déu!), make space deep for Moroccan suns,

                                                             at least

     Palms look rusty this side of white-graped mountains

  where I'm led, & the farmers mean

of course, to make lusty parcelas feel the jagged teeth, too. Again,

  gardens on the coast—all a mirage

                                                                         Sultan

  of god recedes from where I lean

Between steppes and mounds, steadying to the passes or

                                                white-washed tombs

          I can be found

Storm! storm! Olivo of desire or

  piscinas: take paradise as it comes, real or not

Or if not, bust the dams and shoot at the devil yourself—

  Sierras thru the heat is

nearer to me!, with clouds the odd relief.        Three

  shades, greenest of the date, one ficus green, & that

of dry villages, and then the hills, again—again, all illusion!

  But take each as it comes

One churchtower, two separate at the bridge to find me

  but learn to doubt them, too

  enlarge their hate beyond words

I know the mists will enclose, & the white coast

  in a dream                                                  Look,

  African winds make an olympus of almost nothing,

   and springs between boulders

   trickling to my feet  

From my zero-gravity chair,

a garden! where any American friend and curly tree,
spaced between clouds and winds, would love to be

The rabbit known by scent and stride, & one good
twitchy eye is safe for now inside its poor Scotty soul

who's been freed from a raptor's talons as is tree kitten,
with a tractatus heart, limping still idly and slyly by

Aptly a lilac the colour of pierced sides is the crown
the kitten and soul wear in a garden! from where I sit

A wasp, or lost parsley space, remain about the same
like the rose's puff stem bent cruelly toward the ground

Digressions always make skies look narrow, worn to me.
A sigh from a neighboring pug is the only sigh around

Addendum:

They'd gotten into the habit (birds!) of spiking the wind--
predisposed in their favor, any way--& pounding the earth

on which fall all the crooked, muddy, personable seeds
to ever lie 'tween watered rows and some nearby weeds.

Kell Verses

 Kell verses

      (for Katherine Gordon)

She sits in her stone seat,

  beside two tractor wheels,

musing, the jug beneath her feet,

  earth of clay at her heels—

dear Kate, prophetess of rivers,

  who sends me lone breezes!

When day dies, giving sick slivers

  of light, and night freezes,

Kate, Celtic seer after the wren,

  with jade shell for an eye,

and fox that shies towards its den—

  she peers across the sky

til she finds, ript from its deep sea,

  sea-splendid, one true star—

rich as earth, and blazing at me,

  my Kate with one true star!

And far up as her dry river bed

  and down the blue heather,

(dead tractor by a lean-to shed!)

  we see it, together

our lush spectral star. And the way

  it fires her paisley shawl

Kate's soft shawl , and breaks like a spray

  of daisies along her wall,

not far from the jug and stone seat.

  Alone beside the wheel,

half-hid in daisies at her feet,

  sadly, she starts to feel

her Celtic night shake loose like leaves,

  caught in a morning gale

Mystic wren that sings in the breeze

  has star-shells for a tail

  ©Conrad DiDiodato 2008

A Sexton poem

Every poem's  like that in Sexton's cute smirk
   
 or the two lips pressed to the filter
   
or a hand draped over the only knee left to her
   


 
   

Titi

As a long-gowned leggy dancing master knows,
  "It's Titi and sweet-both,"

smirking, quick to say to dancing girls all in a row.
   But Titi, grown to stray far

has gone too far so that her lord's slender and
    near, saying "Americans

like their virgins!"and meaning every word of it--
   She's not in her quartier.

"All around and through each one of us," she
   admits, "is a type of dance

that will look dear to dancing girls all in a row"
   "Very much!" was his reply
 


 
 

My goodbye to the neighbour's cat

With milk on the chin and feathery lip,
  (uncoiling, to show you)
she mews, & rises misty-nosed, too
  because you'd like
  to say bye

But she turns the tension into a nap,
  into a very 'O':
so I can bear easily the milk on her lip,
  (coiling, to show me)
  when I go

Gary

(1954-1980)

The grass blown over your eyes,

  I saw, soul-shrivelled

in wind, wet in an early Spring,

  an absent heart

(were it just grass borders taking

  you in!),

 and even a

  slight form of a daughterless dad

(were it just in the way the next

  stone took you out),

  & a very wet sunken place

( Gary , not a tree around for

  you either!)

With some watchful sweeping, alone

  alone all the time, I

saw the step, smile & the veiny brow

  returned,

and very shapeless under my

  feet  a

few leaves yet to brush from the eyes,

                              old friend

Gertrude

When it's out of your hands,  and the cute curled face
   of the cat-saint takes one in hers,

look on a bit & wait. The two or three others, breathless
  and tight-lipped (those cats of hers!)

she won't embrace because they are beyond Nevelles fields,
  and beyond me every bit as much--

these, --I pray !--be always yesterday's poor  inexistent
  twitching under her heat

Tabby

She's etched in snow-decal like the panther cousin; and

  lost in a broken field, like the plumehunter

Devislish with fur's soft-fire, foxed,
  hourly, in even bouts a cat walks out of her rubble-lair to
taste yardbrush and its  fancy dish

Tabby's part chisel-toothed, part tiger tongs
  with eye-grease
(fecund feet mounting on rocks)

  A faint brocade beautifully grains evenly at the throat,
the very softness a symbol
  from round  the nape and down the central arch--

the cushy patron-saint of the somnambulist!

  If ticklish as a mushroom's dewy underbelly
she's also watchful as an ear of the sea

  She's also marathon-prowler

because with all the momentary glaring sun-reveille,
  transparent grass mists
and footfalls seen across a frictionless,crabbed yard,
  we can hardly spot her at all

clawing on the oak with tusky prescience

  Rains can't wither tails nor alone a tabby's puff-cheeks,
powdery ear, cute crystal-moth nose, too

  And if she's more shrimper than man-eater,
more a whiskery fandango, majorette, than sacred pelf matted
  with odd street-gore--
still for all that the cat prefers guttling prey to just meanly
  boring through

  Tabby's still all egress, a pure window on the world,
assailed by nothing so much as a light rain

  and with feathers in the mouth looks like nothing so
much as some celestial mouser, nestbugger,
  eyes two starry flea-wings,

  gums of moist cooked cheese.

Exempla of the Aged

 

   That Wisdom to know when to rise

is caught in shades, strong-armed by two fleshy feet

   that get up slowly, greet the light.

& hold derisively to the taffrails of a stormy Day

   There's no tabla or tabor but an ear-ringing;

& that ache at temples in cheap palliative out-

   doors where icy pale yellow straw

are beds, not graves.

   Degrading gloss of plastic

   patio seats, too, without flaming horses!

At first glance his face rising lowers towards

   Styrofoam cups; nose & chin moisten

heading for a ground far away from the rails & damp.

   The cheeks are cracked flowerpots.

If anyone sees 'em when he tries to go, it's welcome

   relief from leggy shades round him.

If ever a heavy forearm makes a start, it's rebel angel

   wing of eighty or so that slowly tears him

from his toast.

He may even find there some bold fixity,
   with crumbs on lips & crumpled chin,

and can thank himself for it & "a word with you"
   would be enough.

 But if "no one's

heard me, it's been quiet at least" because "he's wise

   who knows when it's time to rise".

Fay, please confirm

Fay, please confirm

             that it's just another spring

  memory, veiled

like the Crocus at the painter's

  feet-

  a clay bed

for seeds to green in lavender heat,

  heats of old;

              & things like that!

You, in yr leg-horned hat, will plant 'em

 scented in milkpod

(or gashed to let in dew), and

  keep in one drying eye

Dreamless, like petals in your hands,

  are ghosts of a milky

love! 

And shadowy, to be passed on

  in hectic heat;

at that zenithal, uppermost stalk

  of yr one dear eye, Fay!

For whose dear sake, (or since it's me!)

  a type of acid-

yellow flower or the stone of a

  southern star

will punch through Night's hollow bars

...

  Fay, please, it's

just a time zone long, up or down--

  acid Crocus of my love!

   

Becky

By the willow and aspen groves,

their accustomed rendezvous,

he'd told her, as often as not,

to find a spot and hide from view:

"I didn't promise--don't say I did,

that the night wouldn't reveal us--

dirty sinners and all of that!--

to Mary, Joseph and Jesus.

Look! that ivy came from Boston,

that's twined--so cute!--around your wrist.

its yellowing lime and aspic leaves

being apt symbols of our tryst!

and more malleable English vines,

braided and falling down your hair--

why, they'll bring out the Eve in you

that tempted me to stare down there!

And panting for grasses, waist-deep,

so we could find a place to lie,

has left not a few milk-thistle stains

around the circle of your eye."

His Becky turned to look at him,

turned round to hear the man she loved,

as warm soft winds tossed and breezed.

And feeling she'd been cruelly snubbed,

she charged the night with all its stars,

to pluck the ivy from their place;

and bid the moon to wear its horns

and scrape the thistle from her face.

"I didn't promise--don't say I did!"

that grasses wouldn't conceal us."

And one more pagan, sprouting wings,

flies to Mary, Joseph and Jesus!

White Rose

(for Sophie Scholl)

I say, Yes to the petal lips given to Rose hearts
  as freely and easily
as all the world's real true outgrowing

  In a velvet crown
you're a sort of supermute conqueror
  of hard suns, aren't you?

  but Yes mostly to a Rose lasting in the head!
and to the cruel mossy roots
  that like  true loving arms can easily
hug and tear,

                    canceling bud and
  swelling, if need be, for a dear Something

Yes, blooming heart that'd better eventually
                                                         not grow!

  For what grows, lonely, can be un-
seasonably rare & gold for just a true time:
  it's less than clod but more
than cold, so a clear plant naming from the first

  And so my one only Rose, cela!

You are really lolling sweet and honey tongued as
  all heck, with a pink push here,
(& there),& the goodwill of an odd briny dew-
  tears below a one  true eye—

A slow-rising fulsome kind of true eye, you are.

  Earth, seen from here, is one hothouse eterne,

 wormed for claypot and urn, 

   and just where
  petals crowning sober clods
have  known it,

    and the leal & pipsqueak pinkbuds, too--

  there you are, too, ripe for angry bees.