for my sisters

      Theresa,  Christine,  and Barbara
      who quietly amaze

THE SCYTHE

Poet Henry Kanabus (photo by Mike Tappin)





The wind accounted for all
it had shattered
                            (night-dancing
in lace prints of bone)

We confuse its wisdom
with the anger of cats  .  both

lay large upon the wheat

We realize the urgency and notify
the heliotrope

                          It is waving its arms
in a thousand different parodies.

TRUNCATED TIME

And with that you hold
your diamond

ring to his lap
and part your hair

in perfect
hemispheres of black

loosing the sails
that could be the wings

your child remembers
when speaking of lamps.

VIOLET OPTICS

For weeks I have not seen you

                  (wonder if still I love you)

In a younger day
the darkening sky
       stirred my sensibilities
       like Gothic architecture

Now I question
the merits of courtesy

brood over
           constricting possibilities

I have spoken to the chair
It disagrees.

THE HOMUNCULUS SCORNED

Is it because you loved
the broken horse  .  the flying
horse that carried

          (far from you, baby)

your turgid eye
your reckless waist

Wondrously you recalled
the sapience on his shoulder
and his great beard growing

as the moon survived
the winged eclipse

.

A figure in the sand
                          at a distance

difficult to accept

As a child you regained
your sight and saw

everything.

NIGHTSCAPE

Faltering in this season
of reluctant gloves

an apostle of the grain belt
has secured four notes
of suicide

from your porcelain pocket
and will not relent

.

He has brought you
silver in a cyclone truck

and has painted
the wings of his falcon
a dark red

Gasoline cats attack
the dressmaker's fortress

eager to ascend.

THE WHIZZBANG CHART

There is a casual
myth to this  .  like Laurina

in the morning when she
strips to a carapace

of glass then strips further.

It is not so much a sacrament
but a glacial feat
                              (that which)

melts
to the core of an expected jewel

and is still marvelous.


www.HawkPunk.com

THE GAUGE

Odd that the specimen
         you considered

should resolve itself
        to be
        yourself  /  as another

wanted you.

THE IRON COPPICE

Be so still (young woman)
that a hawk

could alight on your shoulder
and mistake you

for a region
deep within a forest

of dark elms

              at noon

She is buying an umbrella
from the morphine cartel
and taking his advice

to her room. 

POTION FOR THE SYBARITES

What do you will
my lady footprint

Perhaps the sun
will seed before her eyes

                                             or rain
will fill the hollow of your heart

The river of your enmity
may turn from you or it may not

I will say it for you

Calliopes and nightweeds
steep this river
deep in magick

As the night we loved
on its sloping banks

clinging with young skin
to the timid clay
                     under thorn trees

lover  .  do not touch
              the thorn trees

they are shelter
and their jagged leaves pertain. 
 

THE FELT HAT (BLOCKED)

A big table hat in the rain
with coffin satin clothing
the silver ware  .  the stitches

Cap storms by the spacious
meat  .  bleeding it
supremely

                   speaking to it
calling it fibrous
love unhooved

cutting with its pincer teeth
blue veins bleat
(burnished and branded)

the black goat sleeps
and will awaken
skewered by her foot.

SUNSHADE

Having no lips
secures her face with paint

a pink thing  .  with
shoulders like a wren

an insect's green wing
flutters from her eye
                                     escaping

serrating hair she 
purchaces 
                    old pistols

placing in her hand
the perfect flood.

HEIRLOOM (1895)

Spring in the park
she walks around
the lagoon

A water flower rests
                           on the mirror

She speaks to a willow
sings of a lover
The green breaks open
                               into deeper green

Silence of the water
assured in liquid

secured in this
                          your portrait.

COBBLE PROMENADE

A cloud mustache
and sheet guns

The incredible walking
turtle

Sky ships
painted

               Flare guns
               crimson

The laugh of the giant
sunflower

The yodel of a siren
on a Sunday. 

THE DEAD CHAPERONE

The porcelain pig
anesthitized by volition

flew like the Styx and returned
like a beetle on a string

She sleeps with her time
and her moonstone rings

How precise her wings
is yet uncertain.

AMULET AND SINEW

Belly of your target
          speared with white emotions

I came on your tits

You enchanted
bus drivers to let you smoke.

THE TALL GRASS

A blanket for your
warm

                  A pretty dollar
                  for your shoe
                  to be perfect again

Walk to the moon
where the cask lies open
                
                  and the hooves

hold
antlers laden with rain.

THE GLASS FURNACE

Aged  .  almost mummified
the concordat of armor
slashes through the battlements
of winter wait

He holds the pen
perched like an eagle
angered by the social graces
collaspsing with mad laughter
 
If he is fed
    he will die of bloated gratitude

He will hunger

calling it the last
white feast of solitude.
 

FRAZETTA ON THE CRUX

The crucified hilltop sculptor
spoke with a mouth full
of blood and Copenhagen
fine 'chaw' mixture

Cartaphilus said
                     'the oratory
was extraordinary' as he spat
into an abysmal spittoon

Golgatha staggered
carved into a phoenix of blue fire

Rage engaged his five fingers
talons entered his eyes.
 

BATTLE FIGURINES

In the forest folk's bestiary
tattooed star charts
resemble ancestral dreams

Yet it matters little
One concedes or amputates

The real concern
lies with coronary
battle shields

One secretly knows
of madrigal armor for the heart

wrought in Spanish silver
filigreed with ivory

worn like love.

BROADWAY SUN

The position of variable
stars and the cage

latticed blue truck
sparkle in the morning

when the rain hits up
against the trellis

.

Clamor in the petite
locomotion of her

Butterfly hips
singing (almost) a song

of ingenious adventure
with salt like parchment

on her palled lips.

BELOVED CHANTAGE

There is a fragrance 
in her eyes
                    compelling the poet's fingers
to her breasts  .   heirlooms
of white gold
cold to the touch

                   of stangers  .  I
to her lover warm
to the taste
                    her nipples
like summer metal

long in the sun.

AFTER THOUGHT

1.

There is time he said
a white sound chirrups
the ear fills

red cobblestones
white wheels of wood
                           and iron

a darling child
green hills
yes  .  sunlight


2.

In the night
her skin is
visibly white

crystals of snow
flow gently
warm her breast

a tide of silver
pleases
her temperment

graceful is she
that bends
her quiet body.

 

POEM

Wonderful kettle fish
exclusively for fund raising.

THE CENTIPEDE

Strethed with the lamp
in a graceless day
appointed foreign
                  emissary of joy
the attic
rings the imconsequential cartridge
that love forgave
loads a precise deity
into the furnace
                  ganglion and knotted
blade

Oh, common law anger.

THE STONE PERCH

An obelisk of light
deepens its wing

into stone
the claws rend

into spines
of blue plumage

screech
owls the partition

the hawk bends
black kites

descend to branches.

OPIUM SONG (1893)

The horse and rider

galloped underwater

in slow liquid strides


The chinaman's long black

hair moved like seaweed

in a rising tide.

GAMBLER (1944)

The onset precluded heavy leaps

Fortune and the Puerto Rican in
the window  .  you might
amuse yourself
with just such         frozen
clocks on the photo sphere
your favorite hour jack-knifed
onto your face

There is a wisdom in with-
holding

In four locks he appears.
 

PLEASANCE AND PENETRALIA (1932)

Buddha in the opium den

His 'big baby'
form perched grotesquely
on the wooden tier

its boards
resinous with dreams -
a ladder of searching

voyaging skulls
a pilgrimage of hollow eyes

the fog deepens

A caterpillar churns
at the borders of recognition

'Another of your oriental tricks'
says the boy archaeologist.


 

THE TIME CLASP OF SAINT AGNES' DREAM

Fierce angel mounted
women in the service
             of the sun

                                Gunlight shouted
'cross the river of the storm

There were fine gentlemen
bleeding from their knees

There were elegant thieves
killed in context

Drifters of the sudden sort
fastened at the feet

She enters
                    fleshed in silk

and bound in silence.

CLEATS

Aphasia.

I would like to see you

                          well bred
                          well defined

An illusion occurs

You sew yourself up (and)
paste yourself with

criminal types.
 

HOBKIN'S DEBILITATING MOOD

Swagger in your pink
sweater
              and your gable stole

The fact that you are ectogenous
has little to do with your sweet
ass  .  blue dress

Necromancy takes its place

assumes an erection of
incredible duration

                                  (years pass)
It is silver
that occupies the coffers
you possess

the moon

shelters fragments of the sky
from your gaze.

EVENING WITH PARASOLS

Beth.

I am not gauged by your passion
yet feel a verging on delight
when you afford me visions
sans cloth

.

                        The mill of repose
weaves
an article of such blind wonder
as even to the dark
they sense

the scent of color you signify

.

I fear little but the tinner
and his tympanic hammer

rending with precise concussion
the fabric of your night sleeve.

A ruby drops.

HORSE LATITUDES

When they have sailed
for many distances
they are humbled by the the vast horizon

In their packs
of numerology  .  they are favored

Creatures of the trade winds
call them vipers
                 visionaries

charlatans of oceans

Near those lines again
we perceive great fear in the horses.
 

TINCTURE OF MALINDA FAYE

The Chinese umbrella
you held  .  a marriage
on the next block

Straw kites and pin spokes
the nature of fire
cracker mache'

Black cat so green with
Li Po characters
                              dancing

for the sun
            god you say

She bought (for a nickel)
a roll of caps

The blind druggist
with digital ardor
gave you the chart

         'detonation of many
          numbers is certain'

The claws of young animals
assume arboreal functions
in lieu of autumn
                               leaving

brittle shoulders
on your copper dress.

THE WHITE VASE BROKEN

Brittle encouragement
sugared in the night
                         with Spanish women

lacquered with concrete
island passion

and visions of nail polish
stolen at drugstores

Cutting the street like jig saws
and cadmium fright

       (telling the time)

addressing the same god
she has driven
                          to the end
of opera

                       .

Worn in the healing the old
shoes
           bitch for love

I return with bands of soil
eager to bury
your bracelet limb
in my jacket

Ridden with songs 
                                 of you.

The Access

             you've grown to fire
            delicately

The archer (acquainted with brilliance)
inhabits a desperate vanity

Lace becomes an adjuct
to flame

An error in tribal delineations
places the magician
in the homes of the mad

It is pride not wealth
that traces disparate feathers

on the white arena
of his skin

Easy to see how starlight
becomes deadly
        when you walk with him.

ACCORDANCE

'Certainties are arrived at only on foot.'
The darkening road permeates his right eye,
his left chatters like a tympany in which
lacewings are imprisoned.  He sings to his
nurse.  She has kept him in bed for over
a decade.  Long since,  he has ceased calling 
her his muse.  She brings him coffee and cake,
a small boat,  and a fork to eat the fish
with some enchantment for the lake it had
crept in.

FOUND: A COPPER TRUNK

Paraguay  .  You encounter
a harvest of skeletal vestments

an appurtenance of burgeoning
saint hair & bacchanal letters

Is it simple anguish you detest
The mannequin falters
                            (questions the guests)

Charles Henri Ford begs
silence and will not eat.  

STREAKS

With songs and arctic vision
given opulence

          and a careful predilection
to the urgency
of the affair
                       he watches
                       the white woman

precipitate to clouds of thunder
black

As leather falls
to the barren earth

her hair

lashes onto his chest
and she is silent there.
 

THE STRONG WIND

Musicale.

Damn the wind.          It moves me
honing structures of the continent
into spires of arcanum

Amber in the dayflow
                        encasing limbs and necklaces
in reliquary silence
                         (further than love)

It has glimpsed
the light of evening
native to regions of level ground

Forcing the window
entering the house

               touching everything.
 

FANTASIA ON THE CONTINENT

Very few day remain.

I slashed him quickly
(would have killed him)

the razor clenched
the victory tremulous

                   with ivory hands

Secure in the placid gravity
of death he spoke of his daugther

a youngish wife

Lizards droned about
the still yellow hemisphere.

 

THE PARAPET

In the force of a second
he realizes there is a bounty
on beautiful hats
                      and gregarious children

Hoisting his bell-book and his lariat

sketching maps of infamous
accuracy
the gadfly lays its eggs

in his third eye and he
is blinded to magick

.

The carnival heals
and fills the day with green things

brocading land
for tranquil ceremonies.

AMY BETH GOLDEN

It is not that ruminating child
you purport to occupy
the entices the abject
carnivals of lethargy
seething like wayfarers
in my ocean spine

Your furnace stipulates
coarse packets of winter brine
A message follows:

Gazing your heart
returns and is burgeoned
with tallow  .   A window reclines
content with silver
Talismans of pine
        endeavor to harness your mirror

They cannot

I am ocean-eyed and river
carried                             You are
raven haired festooned
with miracles
Talons emerge from the sky.

NIGHT BEHIND THE REVEREND'S DESK

For you she is many  .  is extaordinary
commandeering beauty
with every glance

The leaf like presence
                      of your vigilante

obvious in abattoirs
accorded a jubilant day

For you she is woven
and lays on the dais in wait.

.

Adramelech shouted  .  the
only voice operative
         'the house is in flames
          secure the wanton'

And you fold it then
in the whiskey of your body
          in your ambient skin

waking in the ancient morning
looking for him  .  his name

The hair and the mirror
the chill of the floor
when she came.
 

A HAT FOR DASHIELL

The wings of the servants
and forest hats.

Oh  romantic perigee how am I
to salvage even your circus tent

The clowns have escaped with the best
of your rigging
                                and the geek
has turned
his eyes on the Great Zildaff

Pony me to Rome or south
St. Louis

Even the bride who gave me children
is grafting hats
onto the rubes
                                  faster than

I can sling them
onto the rack.

POEM WITH SNOW AND SATIN

The snow descends the spiral
tendrils of the pine
easing toward the frozen earth
like a meek avalanche

And there  .  you discern through the glass
a woman
whose blouse (she wears a greatcoat)
You know is satin or blue sky silk
by the way she purses

her lips to the packets of winter dust
striking her face        her eyes
                                    striking her face

She furrows on the burdened concrete
lines of departure
follow her
           gaze to her spine
strung like a bow  .  taut with wire. 

Spring Fashion

Have you seen her costume
(Mucho chic)

A chiffon number
with wrought iron sequins
buttressed by giant penises

It isn't designed for
         walking

In fact no motion at all
is feasible

She just stands there in this
creation, writhing her fingers
looking incredible.

SECOND MAGNITUDE

With her scissoring fiercely through the
star charts, I half expected the eastern
hemisphere to erupt in comets of protest.
On the other half, I expect my best straight
razor, with the tortoise shell casing and
the insignia of the wolf cult, to be dull
in the morning and mean and reticent for
my silence.
She has successfully regrouped the stars
of Orion into a semblance of our landlord.
By the first of the month, she says, he
will fold over the horizon and begrudge
the tenants of Antwerp.

CHIMES

It is a calm yellow sun
that cajoles the air

                     to vanish

You inhale fibers
of the dog

and a wiser night has fallen
from the circus

sky          onto the dust
                of a thousand saws.

It is a woman who wakes you
all your life.

Dance Poem

Grandma is so intelligent
her incisor teeth
                  remain diligent

after 14 years
in the sod.

THE PEWTER VASE

Believing in another season
revealing wings to small
                                        animals

                    and claws to the sky
         
                    Your pharmaceutical precaution
shattered by the window rock
hurled in envy

Lace will document (eventually)
the myriad lives you've lead
to this conclusion:

     The ugly women
      pursue the ugly men

      I am entranced by rails
saying little to the moon.

                   

PILLARS OF STEEPLE WINE

A particle of nonchalance
fastidious in impulse

whining in maturation

approaching yet another
oblivious dawn.

With her languid mouth and crinoline
she has extant

covers the bed in a lisp

She is perfection
       with a broken tooth.

THE SKULL . FLOCCULENT

Cicadas construct in the bones
of his face

rag huts and wicker palaces

applying to a sturdy tooth
a patina of luxuriant eyes
apart from avarice

          in colors of kerosine

and hover obdurately
within the dome

of the human continent.

WALDROP'S YOUNGEST DAUGHTER

The mechanics of the thing
were shrewd . almost liturgical

When the flick let up
there was a rawness
in the air
as if we had all been
slightly butchered
             giggling at a small cut
             another gash

taken in summer stride.

A kiss on the lips
and some bitching
in the parking lot

And everyone felt young
and kind of silly
as if a carousel
              had broken down
              had spun out

in the warm evening.

And we picked ourselves up
shaking our heads incredulously
and grimaced all the way
deep into town.

GASOLINE HARVEST

She entices with solidarity
the blue green windows
        of the truck

And the wheels lock passing
avatars of white sleep

She is deliciously sane
casting only minor glances
at familiars
        abounding in air

As with the tremulous
day watch
peril grimaces (weary with joy)
spent with stars.

SONG (FOR POETS)

"Henry Kanabus.  The first thing you notice about his eyes is they
are Mars Blue.  The first thing you notice about his verse is:  Mars
Blue.  And they are thrilling reflections of one another.  When the
Titles flash I always pay attention and the work moves.  It has the
respirations of an elegant Polish film;  one doesn't know why it
should, but it does."  -Ed Dorn

On his previous collection:  FLOODLIGHTS

"A lovely, strong book;  fine affirmation and record of the
ongoing interior life ... An Ear That Hears."   -Anselm Hollo

                                "Very strange and fine."
                                        -Phillip Whalen    



His hand introduces
a spool of ballerinas

The black mane flies
and wings bend

The blind wind
fuses on the two lane.