photo by Dawn Allynn
the practiced maquilleur
in all senses many of
Derrida’s tropes may seem to lack finality
but there is one
deconstruction itself
which proves the rule
however academic
there is the type of person who just will insist
on having his
constructions placed upon
the work in view
as when you attend one night
a downtown art walk in the ruined city streets
oblivious
reconstruction destroys
by inch and ell
the tepid works on white walls
are not in Tom Wolfe’s meaning quite literary
only they will
construct the world as a
magazine does
and so in midnite’s passing
a blond horse which is you with his mane in dreadlocks
enters your dream
deconstruction is when
this nightmare ends
leaving the Marxist critic
to make his inquiries into costs and causes
mythologic
construction will entail
upon the mob
this I could have writ as prose
but who can tell the difference nowadays at all
Ferlinghetti
unconstruction for larks
Marianne Moore
Auden repented a line
something about the new styles of architecture
look kindly on
construction for its sake
the poet said
as when politicians lie
and say a thing is when the world has seen it’s not
this they call spin
deconstruction’s useful
in such cases
Christopher Mulrooney has written poems and translations in The Hollins Critic, Knock, Zoland Poetry and Eclipse, criticism in Elimae, The Film Journal and Parameter, and a volume of verse, notebook and sheaves (AmErica House, 2002).
by D. Garcia-Wahl
Baptism
'Tis only by humble cherish
that I make my way to your fount
The writhing of my essence in the hands that I clasp
make into this hollow of mine, a performance of grace.
The words of my confession, the trial of my days
lent to your forgiveness.
For you,
I shed myself of my flesh,
of my calling, of my sins
before your waters darkened by candlelight
to seek redemption
to ignite a purity
to deepen my bow
and fall to the within you.
Voices Welled
Emparadis’d in your reaching spirit, delicate
there is a sky that does not pass above you,
a second that is not made a moment without you,
and a beauty etched to carols of the heart.
For there is something naked in your voice.
Innocent not - sometimes a weakness
when the heartened flesh trembles pale
brightened by a moon of continuum Spring
who’s breath does birth the belief of ecstasy
kept to union in nestled bodies
weeping for immortality.
For in each whisper, a catharsis.
An echo for to surround
with the sigh of your quiver.
All senses toward you.
And always
you
moving alone within invited crowds.
Always you
stopping breaths
forever
and dressing desire.
Always you
haunting the hours of man
with an image of beauty
that justifies their loneliness.
And always you,
only you,
hearing my voice
falling silent
in hesitation
of your soliloquy
in fear of its touching
Filmatic
for Jerry Tomlinson
“Well, I've wrestled with reality for 35 years, doctor, and I'm
happy to state, I finally won out over it.”
-Elwood P. Dowd
“Harvey”
Life (?)…
an archipelago of breaths
Reels –
movement
(or years)
purposed and propelled by memory
The theatric boast of life the eyes parade
a silent camera, ever behind, focusing.
In patchwork scenes childhood, middle years, old age,
death – then birth -
edited
played out
critiqued
Nothing known at the fade in
will be felt in the fade out
Leaving nothing to predictability,
except pardon,
the film is christened - ages
in sensitivity and texture
The stir of the heart
scripts the direction of purity,
cleaving to what we cast off,
never playing tomorrow as the strains
of another day
What of the actor?
His lines are his to forget
-his audience to recall
Manikarnika Ghat
The Ganges moans unlike any ocean can
But, come tumult, the voices are similar
Death is this sound of dying
Dead, all is the reap of prayer
A shade made of life
owing veneration
to what waves can bring to memory
In the renunciation of the river
wisdom is given repose and
passions are washed away to become sediment
The water, itself, is but a mask of the senses cleansed
A diseased breeze feeds
the sinless fires
in turn sooting the air with ancestry
making way for the eternal river
-which is Heaven
Chanting at the steps
Doms of outcast wearied
Bodies burned of their stories
Somnolent verse
'neath bare your feet the grasses sing
as springtime yields the world its heart
In timely tongue my language will pattern
a supple course of desire
There’s a prayer I’ve chanted made up of your motions
in a day that needs you closer to tomorrow
So, until I can approach you
having you see me as naked
without seeing me as weak
I will not call again upon your rest
Sleep
Sleep
for a moment in the hold of God
Oh, sad intangible one,
to die impossible by your side
Song
Singing something
to walk through the walls marketing the world
Singing to imbue a horizon
Singing a prayer of spirit
It is within our flesh that God comes to ponder
showing the makings of illusion
For it is not the ribs enclosed in flesh
that give definition to man
It is by the singing we are defined
Judgment comes by how the songs of midnight
meet the songs of daybreak
Sculpting an innocence
is easier in the blindness of the womb
than in the world
with its mint of the unfamiliar
D. Garcia Wahl is the author of the poetry volume All That Comes of Madden'd Days and the novel Ashes of Mid Autumn.
Photos from stock.xchng
