Strange Crucifix - Something For Lorca, A Paean Somewhat Peripatetic Poem by Warren Falcon

for Brandon - should he want it [? ] could he [? ]

'I'm afraid this supreme consciousness is at least not one we could possess. Inasmuch as it exists, we do not exist. - C. G. Jung, letter to V. Subrahmanya Iyer,1938

this land punched-in, cuffed-out, divided,
held like a crucifix in a deathhand...
the Spaniards all the way back in Spain
down in the thimble again... - Charles Bukowski, from Crucifix in a Deathhand


(excerpts peri pa teti cas)

... don't want to break
sudden skid row joy
dropt in from vast
chasms, mid-70's,
displaced, meander
me after music-god
infusions;

stray deities meander too
lending a stench of reality,
some inchoate 'thing' clinched,
cinched, that might could
make/extend some meaning
beyond morning soprano's
mellifluous surmises in High C
exaggerating vaunted Corot
skies for all us creatures
bellowing here below.

Launched I guess it's called.

Bukowski veers
still all these years

but for how long
dunno dunno.

I'll go with him though,
even if only till noon when
the first alarum blows.

Till then will strain to hear the radio soprano from the
bathroom as I ablute, ablate/scrape, arrange face-enough

around the swollen jaw, saline eyelids puffed and sacks,
push the few hairs in place - scratches on a surface now -

and still plead grace from those strays, the love for words,
the envy of their sounds, see if can find a way to continue

after-pursuits of what was born mid-field of a mid-
summer night beneath Carolina stars new groin-sparks,

some phrases suddenly come from other-where
not sure but there so blindly sat writing in the dark
in squint demiurge wrote my first 'serious' poem.

To recall this fresh feels good, radio's good too
while Bidu Sayao sings Villa Lobos Aria #5,
a dove at window inching me into the day now more
than a toothache and hypertension for which I medicate
waiting for trembling hands to still enough to hold a pen.
I am fond of hands, these, for pleasure, measure and
reach, tho aging. That's at least the quotidian wager.

So let us now praise

infamous weather,

high heat, plead

pleasing inclement

graces bestow

merciful cold

and dark blessings.


...meanwhile Lorca and I
quarrel much about doldrums
and the 'duende, ' he wins
of course by singing or, better,
plays a few bars on the dusty
upright about your girl the
Moon, ones about bull fights,
the usual gore but always
a surprise for beauties and
children flinging hearts and
unstrung rosaries into the
clotting ring...

.....while trumpets
salut the Matador plots
Severed Ears' Chosen
One, the Bull Bride dreamed
of once in a wedding dress
white, prim in a window
luminous in full moonlight,
intricate veil with horns
protruding, conspicuous,

curving calcium shyly
up-turning a rainbow silvering
above a young man on his
knees in the dust serenading
'su corazón en la manga'

'his heart on his sleeve',

dapper hat bereaved in hand
labored months to buy for
now's pledge to begged Bride,
unmoved, committed only to
portend a blue moment below

the sill, suspended suitor, pale,

dirges scarlet in eucalyptus,

nearby olive grove shadows
after mournful ellipses scattered
songless without their stanzas
'por el fin de crianzas' sad, sad,

'the lamentable time of
lactation has come to an end'

so begins

los llantos,

the cries -

'agony,
always agony' - Garcia Lorca


...can't beat that animal 'rag'
even though I was once a
boy soprano pure in front of
an Altar sure where Sacrifice
became Word, or surd, bread,
or semblance,

credence's Lenten hint.

Since has all speech
reached for That
somewhere-somehow's
self-containing hover

between

voice and vein.

Or is it vain to try?

'the ellipse of a cry
travels from mountain
to mountain.' - Lorca


One thumb dithers over thinned
carpet here unstringing another
verse, 'vineyard of the curse'
kind of thing, a secret rebuttal

perhaps,

or is it rewinding Lorca's
last song's hands tied be-
hind of his back, without
blindfold, that one might
hear when a Los Angeles
brisa blows

east to my near Atlantic
pont in appointed City
a few miles from shore
where heavy cables begin,
descend, where the dead
Poet's music rests content
in his poems continual
inebriant supplication -

'strings of the wind' - Lorca

Dark my window flaunts orange
street light by neon night, by
devotion bound, ceding victory
to the Spaniard's brow now a
swarm of bees at grave's edge
mourning every victory because

of the way his ended,

the worst for a Legend's bargain,

bones for his songs

But all's a prayer in the layers -

'Like the bow of a viola
the cry has made the long
strings of the wind vibrate.

Ay! ' - Lorca