Caro cardo: Jolene

(Jolene)

There's a moose sprawled on the highway as some spiritual food
  (pierced to its poor minnow heart)

saying no to decay, exemplarily and ordinarily, in its shy way--
  a knee bowed in asphalt, poor heart!--

with a fresh open cut in its side and looking about ready to die,
  looking skyward, 'bout ready to die

   in that white no-good body of hers

Chat vivant



is pure contrarian and whatnot: reared on waters
  & cannot be one among many

The location's between cave and a glossy coverlet
  that takes its moving shape--

sleepy and evocative master of reason and forepaw
  The chat vivant can for all that

who made, but will never go farther than, that
  yes, with sharp dark-eyed energy

and also bread and love of the encircling hand--
  can, for all that, still be one

Caro cardo:Tino







(Tino) 

Luckily the cat feted was found low in a net of weeds
   As half is mine, already,

the other's not, with a little grime on a pink dill lip:
  this cat (of all critters)

I thought, slated for love, was lost in darkening pots--
  Tino, of halts and starts &

of the tonsured neck & the throaty purr who likes to
  tear sheaves off lonely hearts

Paul as poet



"If there is a natural body, there is also a spiritual body" (St.Paul)
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Where this poet is certainly most knowing is a word
  that amply welcomes world

                                       to put in other ways,
  exemplarily and ordinarily
                                                             But both?

Well, the globe of the Annabelle's restorative to cats,
  and a world of kyrios it is, too

to a sweet garden-keeper- let us also praise her!-
  as opposed to belly & femur:

a thought-world of the bee, too with god's renewed sting
  and not its one dingy wing

So, to every blinking Tino a day without the poet Paul
 is just more trinket, more turd!
 
 

Caro cardo: Nicky

(Nicky)

The one I passed by like autumn breeze is a mightily white wing
  of a butterfly in its dusty, flashy way that

I passed by and-oh, worshipful-was still moved even if never nearer,
  a ten-thousandth of a degree nearer than I was

And even if the thumps and drone of all the empty heartless were
   a thousand degree smaller--it'd still be something

If we think about it it never lessens and is named mighty, this thing
  this little Nicky of a thing, heartless but as ten-

thousandth of a degree real as me, unfolding, too, if we look at it,a
  poor misunderstood Nicky of a thing, too

Yes, the flashy wing to your own gaddy and stupid "you" is how it is,
  and not a gluttonous squirrel turning a little

green world in its claws, sputtering, ravenous pig that eats & squirts,
  eats and squirts

Can a poem be really all that impregnable?

As Jung very aptly describes, " [the poet] must resort to an imagery that is difficult to handle and full of contradictions in order to express the weird paradoxicality of his vision". By vision the great man hadn't meant to align significant poetry with religion. The visional has a much deeper parentage than that. And by image he'd had more in mind than ordinary sense perception, the stuff of which mediocre art is ordinarily made anyways.

I once saw the truth in this when, on reprinting an old poem entitled "Charcoal print", I tried (stupidly enough!) to keep a whole complex of feelings separate from a  charcoal print that had evinced it. As if, ensconced in verses, the subject of the portrait hadn't really been all that "difficult to handle". And, almost a decade later, as if she'd disappeared altogether. I thought I could look with complete equanimity now on the storm that had generated it.

I will say one thing about it, however: the vision's never looked so revelatory to me almost a decade later.
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Charcoal print

I lost the blackish-white, luscious, in a word

  & see now under coal eyes

lips that scowl (if charcoal lips can!), a neck stretch

 She'd try to see me, too— 

  for she's angular, keen & all that, from hairline to chin

but cruel as a crow's underwing; luscious

  & neat down to a blind hem

I lost that, too

There must be something, after the carnage 

  in a brow's spectral ash,

or smudgy nose, at the least, to connect with

  (& save me from the storms)

Can the blackish eyes have ever been right?

They weren't;

  I felt the collapse

Sweetish-grey is the near absent nose, her upper lip

  that didn't crush entirely,

sparing viewer but didn't let go of me, either

  No wonder the many potential poets, 

me among them, see her go, too, sweetish one

  with black rose in each eye,

crude pasty brow

 Problem is she's written in it, in blackish-white,

  already a role (that of 'loved' or 'not') 

you get the minute you look

Which I did & then lost

  And stout skies, outside my window,

flat-bottomed & heading steadily for shore, whenever I looked,

  let me know it!

  Rigid, adored in charcoal, & she let me know it



Some experiential stuff...

I'll leave the title ambiguous as to referent: in fact, I'd say both types of nymph share properties that make 'reference' seem altogether uninteresting. If, as Bergson maintains, it's the same 'creative impetus' that sent everything on the same evolutionary trajectory, mammal, insect & less visible organisms alike, it's always going to be the more interesting liminal boundaries of the real that form the stuff (always exactly experiential) of life and poetry. Plenty of interesting intersections to see.

Here's a try...
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"Nymph"

Ah bent close to the snout, again
  just a twitch loosens, wings
    & enough of pale white—

strangely arced, too, to spring mayfair:
  a jittery blossom, a blade
    short, sharp bursts

of the shadow of your old self gone,
  loose pelf at yr hip (go!),
    new leggers

collapsing into tune (& let it go!)
  with nerve to lighten
    flicker, & grin

Ah, the world on two trick wings,
  again