by Hal Duncan
With suicide; death stole his chance.
A jaguar or a ghost of pain –
Too many days of gold disdain,
And loss flares with an icy light,
Transcending passions of the flesh.
All tedious irks of tawdry slights
Condense to wrath born as it’s slain,
Set loose to prowl in summer’s sun.
Thy kingdom come, thy will be done.
Now herded mourners cramp the church,
In lumpen masque of funeral rites
To gift a corpse to god’s embrace,
And to that god surrender praise.
The minister mocks pantomime
With droned summations of a youth
To family and friends, the known
Who lived what this baboon intones.
To class of corpses, ward of flies,
A wanton god once jawed a quote,
Lear’s paean of our futile lies,
A sophomore reciting rote.
I would spit grave dust in his eyes,
Cram corpse meat down his retching throat.
This sheep who dreamt his soul a goat,
I’d drag to jaguar, show him waste.
II - The Prayer (II)
As – heaven – is on earth – it is
On coffined love a stranger’s piss,
This service prattle preaching zeal,
Magician’s dove and Judas kiss;
Applause and pleas, all fawning spiel
Of apes in pulpits stands revealed,
Abhorrent sentiments of awe
To flatter massah, absent god.
Lord, on our broken knees we beg,
Give us this day our daily bread.
The black satori of a void
Distorts all space around a point
To hollow of forever, fed
By gravity with white-hot stars
Of piteous angst, by weight collapsed
Beyond horizon of events.
Our trespasses – forgive us – and
No hell, just paradise of sand?
A mother’s hand, more gift than grasp,
A fist unfurls, to join in clasp –
To comfort who? Her son or self?
As scheme of soul exploits the grief,
He grips to loss, would choke belief,
For nothing matters, nothing else.
No prayers absolve our foes, our selves
As we forgive – against us – those
Who trespass – god in heaven knows
Fuck all! There is no christ of hell
To reap the cold ash of a shell,
A world kicked in and ground to earth,
Scorched to be sown with teeth, to birth
The jaguars of the end of soul.
Into temptation – lead us not –
But shepherd us in mask of kin?
A father’s hand on shoulder speaks
Of quiet bond in snub of hymns,
The truth: a sire of flesh, blood-strong,
No trance of tyrant spun in song.
Usurper, nameless fraud in sky,
I know my father’s hand and eye.
Deliver us from evil – but –
Deliveries come by hearse or truck,
Or by the church-load, captive pews
Delivered, audience to lies,
Delivered up to hear good news.
A flock of slaughtered doubts deny
The brutal truth that gathered all:
He was too young, too young to die.
The kingdom – is – the power – thine –
And – for – the glory – cattle and swine
Led by an ape bow heads. They should
See jaguar leap from coffin’s wood
At baboon’s throat, make blood run river
Forever – never, no – and ever –
Never – amen – but beast’s attack.
Fuck you. I want my brother back.
III - The Wake (I)
The good die young, the golem said.
He chalked the tally in his head
Of muttered platitudes, well-meant
As Hallmark cards, forlorn intent
Of clockwork care, robotic clay
Of hearts bereft of sense to say.
What could be said? Not twenty one
And dead by step in summer sun.
The pews are cushioned, velvet red
As Babylon blood from babies’ heads.
Drab stone and dark wood crypts the kirk,
Stained-glass, chivalric angels, swords
And dragons, brass plaques on the wall
For soldiers dead for king and war.
Clouds patch the veils of glowing glass
With shadow as they drift beyond.
In golden sun through halo hair,
A forward step lacked sight or care
For Ford Capri – and were there dice? –
Three lads let slip from work, a scythe
Through weft of hours, a rent in time
Between before and ever after. Rhyme
Cannot conjure the broken world,
A fireman neighbour’s unreal knock.
The church around him is aglow.
A shaft of summer fires the glass,
White dove in azure sky, a splash
Of white among the blue. It limns
The baboon’s head in cold, bright light
To fleshless skull, a deathshead grin.
World edges tremble, shivering weak,
A flash of scales and feathers speared.
One bruise on temple, as a coin,
They said, rune of the hammering of mind
Known with night’s operations past.
He took raw information as
A china plate of straw and grit,
Senseless as urge to stand or sit,
Between his legs the brother’s dog
He’d stayed to watch. Facts had no taste.
A rain of serpents, red and green,
Old 3D film or acid stream,
The coiling and uncoiling force
Of primal chaos, snakes the world,
A form slipped out of lapping waves
Submerged again in ocean’s moan
On threshold of the audible.
Leviathan slithers, ancient, vast.
He knows there’s something wrong, someone
Said somewhen in the whisky hours,
The days of tea and flower bouquets,
The doorbell minutes full of chat,
Between the death and funeral. He
Looked at the dog, saw just a dog
At home in crowded room of chairs,
And biscuit crumbs brushed to the floor.
IV - The Wake (II)
Stained glass behind a father’s face
Is background, gauche as peacock’s tail,
Turquoise and ruby, world of eyes,
Air filled with watchers of design,
Come to behold the gathered breach
Of night, folding into itself,
The shadows of the vaulted sky,
A golden city, harbour bright.
She said, You don’t have to be strong,
Broad Irish ma of childhood friends,
Tongue-lashing brass in scold of sons,
Now bustling queen of kettle and cup,
Proud Mary, matron of the wake,
Who drew him to her breast to break
Down in her bosom with the leave
He didn’t know he lacked, to grieve.
Ape lifting arms, all rise with books.
Silk ribbons, crimson garlands mark
Thin hymn to sing to celebrate.
A shape of chasm in him shifts
As sinews under jaguar’s skin.
No gospel scrap of verse can speak
As loud as presence in the aisles.
As eloquent as a joke, a smile.
A quiet word in laughter’s wild
Re
membrance of glad vanities,
The high-jinks of the golden child.
Don’t drift away, his mother said,
The darker son, already strayed
To dreams of death astray as well,
Sat on an island rock, the swell
Of ocean drowning what he said.
His grief is locked in shuttered life.
All doors and windows bricked with jest,
Walled in the mansion of desire.
His book sits shut in hand on lap.
The crimson leather soft with age,
As mother’s leather-bound King James,
Dried flowers pressed flat on sepia page,
Fine remnants of the Girls’ Brigade.
The doorway frames his father’s stance
At kitchen phone, the phone in hand.
It lasts forever, every dial,
Each pause for answer, answer, talk.
He’s dead, his father says each call,
So many times, call after call,
So many times, with catching voice,
Until the thick grief chokes to noise.
The sombre organ’s notes begin
A line of melody, a pause,
A moment of sustain, of claws
Unsheathing, steeling in his chest.
Arise, mourners, in gathered breath,
As beast from Blake stirs in his breast –
As false as all, but truth is torn.
Behold, from lies, the jaguar born.
V - The Hymn (I)
Whose anchor holds in storms of life?
Let clouds unfurl all wings of strife!
The jaguar spits at spear of rhyme,
Conquistadors, his looted shrine.
Let riptides lift, let cables strain,
Wrench anchor loose from death’s remains.
Where is brute grief in priest’s refrain
Of solace sold in rock and chain?
Where collars ripped in coat and shirt?
Or face smeared grey with ash and dirt?
Where filth and feathers as a meal?
Or mirrors hid from fist’s appeal?
Where incense belching to high vaults?
Where mountain tombs of burning boats?
Where is the pyre that paints the grave?
Where grief’s chiaroscuroed cave?
In white slave’s spiritual, in dirge
For supplicated soul, the urge
Of flesh – to live! to live! – is wrought
To iron faith, safe haven bought.
It rattles bones and hums in ears,
This hymn, dark angel of the lord,
Milks dread of death, desire for more,
To hawk eternity as whore.
Bound deep and grim by saviour’s glove,
Lashed fast to rock will never move,
Promethean man at foot of cliff,
Shackled in ragged scripture, screams
Defiance as his hellish waves
Crash over ears to drown in pain,
In truth, all sentimental lies.
No eagle answers futile Why?
The echoes of the hymn resound
Past lyrics. Solid as the ground,
The stone walls murmur back in tones,
Impervious to aught but drone
Of organ, voices, music’s moan.
Carved by the architecture’s mass,
Deep sonics take a solid shape
That swells beneath all rhyme of ape.
Moored safe, they sing, in saviour’s hand,
Secured. But anger wells, waves grow,
And storms withstand bark of baboon.
The tempests rage, the wild winds blow,
To break the rhetoric of chains,
In choral reverie reveal
Reverb of passion under verse
As serpent under angel’s heel.
They sing an anchor keeps the soul
Steadfast and sure as billows roll
But jaguar reaps the temple now,
Cracks altar, casts soul merchants out,
Laps poison of Gethsemene’s streams
Where Yeshua wept as on the cross;
And in pieta, only three
Cradle cold body in their arms.
VI - The Hymn (II)
The trill of birds in morning trees,
The hum of distant cars, his heart
Pounds as the mad on padded wall.
The song of world, the sound, the ground,
A thousand rivers, cataracts
Of tracks so layered the instances
Of phrase are lost in flood of death.
Cold waters chill our every breath.
Sure, hold to prayer in straits of fear,
But breakers tell the reef is here
With schizoid howl of menace, crushed
In skull of clay, the river’s rush.
The hymn grasps counterpoint to this,
But sinks as galleon wreck of bliss.
Blood’s rising tide can never fail.
No hopes abide beyond the veil.
As fugue melts form now, music’s breach
Is cadenced with dead brother’s speech,
As on sleep’s cusp, you wholly hear
The darkness speak sharp, waking fear,
Your name, barked from some inner mouth,
To shudder windows of bone house.
Eyes widening at the basement door,
You look through into madness, roar.
The brass plaques on the walls engraved
With generation of the brave –
Names run as molten sigils, crawl
As insect whispers in his ears,
Howl liquid logos, spume and swirl,
A maelstrom gyred to kraken’s maw,
Abyss, the world’s noise crashing down,
Over the precipice and down.
Then storms are past forevermore;
Bronze statue by the heavenly shore,
He stands to leave, with scar of oath
At hymns that twist the lips – grotesque
To worship architect of deaths,
To build in hearts of the bereaved,
Cathedrals of delusion’s rock.
No, with the jaguar he will walk.
They’re for the living, clay lips mused
Of funerals. Insults to the dead,
He broods as mourners gift respects,
Handshakes and hugs; and in his head
A reptile bulk sloughs skin of sleep,
Slow dragon in the dead soul deeps.
It turns impassive gaze to quake
The earth, the quick of him, to wake.
I don’t know what to say, his friend
Says, frail in failure, honest truth,
Incomprehension on his face,
As glimpse of snake or jaguar’s grace.
There’s nothing anyone can say,
He says, that nothing gulf of use.
On such a day, on such a day,
There’s nothing anyone can say.
Sonnet 14
A simple sonnet for your Christmas Day,
for you and the Lord to whom you pray:
call on your Master, sovereign of blue sky.
His hollowed name promise to glorify.
His Kingdom, Reich or Fiefdom come;
each whim, demand, command of His be done
here in real life as in the dead’s sky city.
Beg for your daily scraps of crumbs. Plead pity:
not to be lured with life, with rich appreciation,
but to be saved from sorrow, spared love’s tribulations;
to be absolved of shame as you yourselves
deign to absolve those you disdain as serving Hell.
As for you, little god, your Kingdom, Power, Glory, yes, are thine,
forever and ever till you rot, amen, Tyrant Divine.
Sonnet 15
Let us all gather at a new Cafe Procope,
philosophers and li
bertines, to roast the pope
in postures modern Aretinos and Raimondos might devise
were Romano’s positions not locked from profane eyes
in the archives of the Vatican for cardinals to teach
their choirboy Legion secret pleasures they might reach,
hand jerking on their cock, tongue working on an ass,
cleaning the sin of shit and spunk, these secrets passed
down through the centuries from popes to priests,
from cardinals to bishops, in the groping hands, the sheets
soiled with the blood of lambs, slick trickling down the thighs
of boys so soft... so sensual... so innocent. Ratzinger sighs.
He thinks of sweet fucks with his shorts down in the grass and dirt,
a boy of fourteen, buttons open, smooth skin under his brown shirt.
Sonnets for Kouroi Old and New
I
I call the Muses, ode and melody and meme.
Daughters of sooth and memos signed,
consigned to mythic woods of history and dream,
I call, through you, the god you once defined.
Poor mellow man of tragic urns and comic tales,
apple Apollo, grant me a kiss upon the lips,
and I will sing for you and, in your name, regale
the world with musings, your good news my verbal flips.
Apollo of the many hymns sung by a tipsy choir,
clear through erratic calliope’s gyre, I’ll dance your trip
to the archaic three chords of a Delphic lyre,
prance to the neat, the messy and the hip.
Muses, through you I call upon the god himself, Phoebus Apollo:
make me your new eromenos; give me your pearls to swallow.
II
Apple Apollo, with your taste upon my tongue