Rummaging in the Attic By Constance Stadler
Differentia Press Santa Maria, CA
Rummaging in the Attic
Rummaging in the Attic By Constance Stadler Copyright © 2010 Differentia Press, Constance Stadler, Duane Locke All Rights Reserved. Published by Differentia Press Book Design by Felino A. Soriano Cover Art, courtesy of Duane Locke All images within this collection are courtesy of Duane Locke Except for the sole purpose for use in reviews, no portion of this book may be reproduced in any form, without the written permission from the publisher. Differentia Press Santa Maria, CA 93458 differentiapress.com submissions@differentiapress.com
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Rummaging in the Attic
Rummaging in the Attic
Table of Contents Introduction Rummaging in the Attic to Love thaw prism The Dreamers (a sequel) Twining To All of You fair Homage Stargazer savant „… star stuff burning still in these ashes …‟ Retreat Abiding September Blue Rune Knell by Manet Purgatorio
Sojourner Leaving Emily There Is No Red In Death for “London” Flannel Shirt flicker Thomas Paine Debtors Gaol Pastorale Cambrian Colloquies
The Sin of the Calf Gethsemane Conceit Inter arma enim silent leges Upon a Reading of the First Stanza of Plath‟s “Mirror” Vitruvian Mannequin The gift of “The Gift”
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… towards „Colorado‟ portmanteau I dream, now … Crossings Cityscapes January 1st Nerve Endings Colorado Candyland November Walk prayer Acknowledgements
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Introduction What does it mean „to journey‟? The poems in this book were written before, during and after what was thought to be a major life change. Thoughts became themes. When we „leave‟ what do we take with us? Why? When we „arrive‟ what do we really „find‟? After the loss of my husband, „home‟ in many ways became a foreign word to me. Every journey ~ and there were several ~ was a seeking, a reaching out. Who was I? The sojourner? A nomad looking for tribe? Who was my tribe? The vagabond who never rests? One eye always open, riding on that ever moving boxcar? I did not, have not, yet found answers to these questions. Perhaps I never will. What I have found is the worth of asking them. I invite you to consider them as you read. We all seek. We are all journeymen.
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Rummaging in the Attic
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Rummaging in the Attic That last morning It was time. On the brink of letting go …abyss? bliss? I didn‟t know. and having never not known. “release” was a precipice and “freedom,” at best a Damoclean device. I was off to find my foundling. What did I need, what should I bring ere I dare to go? I numbly ascended the serpentine balustrade to the furrows and vales of 100 trillion synapses coated with the dustmites of corroded beliefs, hoary wantings trilobite hope. The porcelain doll lay shattered, still, in egg shell innocence. The bulge of trunk, a stalwart belch ~ shred crinoline, blood satin. The ancestors and spirits re-fixed their gaze through oval, opalescent frames. That vomitous cardboard box. Susan Polis Schutz profanations begging validation, unequivocal adoration.
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Expel papers, aseptic record of births/deaths winsome widow‟s weeds, scribbles from murdered „adopted‟ third world babe. Coffin rose triad, delicately bagged blossom “family,” yet once again as something wholly not mine. The gilded mirror, Dissected my aspect in hair thin beam and Amphiaraus‟ shadow. Through gutted pane, same efflorescence of color and fertility which some days soothed and some days slayed. They were all there. Leather bound cerated paged vellum yellow My wandering white flights of comfort and inconsolability. Coffee spoon by coffee spoon I stood on Machu Picchu and fetal-curled on saline shore of cursed bestial kingdoms. Weighted to bottom it was finally clear that whether resurrection rehabilitation reinterment
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There was nothing worth the taking and so I took it, All.
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to Love
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thaw … warmth came the thaw as it always comes but through embryonic sight the death of the icicle was not mourned rather, each transmogrifying droplet was savored in singular rite of passage. swollen liquefaction. slow bulbous form, released burst, leaving a wake of abundant children and the thing itself, this shape shift stalactite of bright dancing water soft ripples fading, fading illumed firm moist as all beauty, ephemeral, yet savored the dénouement is epiphanic … the heart floods … I will soon see you, my chimera, on sparkling, watered substant pavement
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prism sapling droplets hover mounds of rainbow in opal light offerings to swallow thrush a thirsting fawn a brimming photograph. your hazel eyes a poetâ€&#x;s lens sheer through droplets form anew spilling love.
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The Dreamers (a sequel) We walk the back lot of Universal Studios You bring me Paris. I tremble as you lean in for that final shot That kiss. But instead you whisper words I do not understand As we move to the bar filled with a wartime chorus Of “Lili Marlene� A siren sounds My hand in yours We watch the final moment Of the Towering Inferno, knowing I am safe from faux hot steel. Shelley Winters is dripping wet. And I am cold. Suddenly, Chopin A meadow Nigh shoulder high with cornflowers and Equally winsome weeds. I cannot find you. But following the pull Behold a strewn green bed. Fade out.
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Twining Rolling the hemp at the exile of thumb and index finger trespassing tightly, two errant suppliants of unfathomable majesty. Fibers embed in reverent pinches and punctured reveries. This braided rope ~ a wild taut breed by very nature of gilded weave repels all day-by-day attempts at unraveled defile. Assured in star shine alabaster white that this universe contains another just like me. And in that eternal ethereal surety our journeys of this lifetime now rests in Godâ€&#x;s purest firmament.
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Enshrined in this gilded forever ever Entwine.
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To All of You Shattered shards of lust profusions The poetic poverty of Beg. What do you want? Whom do you want? The avatar in bomber jacket Studies a nonexistence floor The bottom you will sink to The clichÊd lines, the rhymes Of swollen groins The splattered, masturbated Unheard words That violate Far more than I: The sanctity of Word. The altar of bled heart. The art which you will Never understand. Besides, you never asked me Is there someone who fills This hand Who sneaks permitted kiss Who screams my name As I cry his ‌ Though you care not There is.
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fair all that she was crescent and eclipsed the runed moon gave way to her patina griefs and iridescent imaginings a soul encrusted with the full of him incorporeal beloved etched in sky the certitude of sylvan sighs the want of him strewn across the daybeds wild willow wist her sun pressed flesh her humming hands their kindred clasp raining compassed course parting inconsequently leaving only lambent beams my god, but she was fair.
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Homage Cobblestones bruise thin soles. We walk in silence, a seeming meander Into medieval corridors that beg For living lovers. We, steeped in The miasma of moonstrewn ancient aqueduct This eternal canal Thick with tourist disregard And other brown promises Beholding nothing In conjoined gaze Of watered dim. Such twinned, effulgent empty Would seize ecstatic squirrels And stem the coos of fountain mated pigeons. We, however, are a different breed. Two meet these streets, Tomorrow.
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Stargazer Burnt umber granules Coat Our glossy black table. The ampoules of stargazer lily Continue to explode In corollas of spotted blush. Each birthing testifies You love Only me. I am dead of wonder. Knowing That before I sweep away the last vestiges Of browned talon petals And corrosive pollen I will stare at a phone For centuries Benumbed In pink smeared silence.
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savant the sirens no longer call you you fill your ears with vestal sealing wax. clever man to undo the handiwork of iridescent nymphs that beckon the unaware with glissando voices into sylvan corridors of sea-green dreams.
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„… star stuff burning still in these ashes …‟ in your words i am lace. prisms of snowflake allusions melt this frigid alone. the metaphor moon illumes our tender desperation. two turtledoves alight in breath and breast a quiver of image immemorial.
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Retreat Audible breath in tremolo rasp. Nearness whelms petrified parapets thick wet silks Needful heat molts long forgotten frost of cheek infant emulsion of discover-shine I see. Shelter from the gutting vigil I smash back
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Unabated raw relinquish to miasmatic mystic blues.
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Abiding I do not see Hear, taste Believe. In a Universe Not based on us. When you pity I know the longing When you explain It is clear that fear Holds you captive, again From the only Irrevocable Truth. You are the one for me I am the one for you.
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September In perfect formation The migration of geese Underscores all the losses to come And the lush alone Of left behind.
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Blue Rune A sun streak across water On one side a deep green water On the other side a strange blue water a mystic blue a color unknown before I first saw your eyes. Now, the bones of midnight reveal the depths of indigo death.
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Knell Blister these lips. White writhe night seals steals this salted wild Glaze iris empty. Lianas are still dead My palms are full of want. I touch our rapine loss Tasting blue nape serrate folds pink lip memoirs unwrite your name.
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by Manet Violet impress the lilac of your eyes luminous waters, lap of my cheek, meandering plum and honeyed paths, wet in the caramel mists. Then was ours, that sylvan reverence, breath as touch, touch as lamb, white trails leading to the hallowed, place this thin kissed dream, this ours. Hours, the star spun wonder palmed, embrace of iris ever, morning vows, ever, we knew, gloriana and the threnody, the violet misted elegy, we knew, once was, we knew.
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Purgatorio A bruise of wind. ~ Flecked Bacon crackled Cheeks. Exposé Of Nude impasto slut. I live, now, in blank caverns. Decomposing in the abattoir of alive. Divest of morseled Light. Where „Nothing‟ is the whitest canvas of dazzling alone Your absence shrived, my spillage, Tabernacle offerings: Sugared Inamorato Profanation. I picked at your heart with buzzard gusto Giddy for visceral regrowth. But all you did was die In throes of: Scurrilous Doe-eyed Devotion. You Bastard. For now I twist in salted guilt. The black, the blank. And I fear damnation far less. Than, Rummaging in the Attic
Dank rot The Stain. … what I know…
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Sojourner
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Leaving Emily Safe in their Alabaster Chambers— Untouched by Morning And untouched by Noon— E. Dickinson
How keenly you lingered at the glass Tracing refracted life The measured grief The feathered hope All that could not escape The nestle of your sovereign mind Ensconced within The pleated cave The plum of drape. All your Wild Night Beetle blessed Fevered rhyme The climes of white The ample bed Of sanctified alone. The fly grew silent In your breasted tender Surrender of lived life. Small price For such impassioned Perfected metric outpour. But years collide And I who also write of conjured paramours and journey, too, on frigate tomes behind the paned, frame semblance now feel the keel towards kindest death and wonder in my tremble if I shall take a stance to walk in flame of day to chance a breeze the brush of hand or perish in the cherish of my Words.
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There is No Red in Death I. Flesh wounds bleed streaming, steamed vermillion flow. In this and all my claret dreams no terracotta remnants breathe Stale flat crumble denudes the truth of fluid, vital river force this hemorrhage mine this human course.
II. Damnation tastes: charred scarlet shrieks the cohort rapine beat of bleating cankered noumenon. Such pulpy legion Sob refracts the missioned condition of terrestrial ganglion that animates
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Bleeding need.
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for “Londonâ€? adamantine rumors the sickle of harlotâ€&#x;s tongue incises the bough, this foliated haven space where sleeping children nuzzle the winsome blades dreaming found fathers orange lipped mannequin screams at the hearses of marriage and like bleaker celebrations in guttural psalm of soldier sighs Blake documents the martyred Thames while manacles of mind shriek for pilgrim dead penitents time stipples the agon dance we cleave to rosary of lies cauterizing abortions dead child dead life justice begs thrupence fill her beaded purse with mockeries of Kingdom come sing, Winnie, sing the moribund moon is winking at all our diseased still stories.
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Flannel shirt Pummeled plaid The fade brocade of neck white Grey Unfiltered Camel stain pairing brown burnt finger witnesses to phlegm drenched hacking lamentation of the drained life blood mucus shade of the plaid play days when groupers looped bound willingly onto twist-twirl casted line of the boy-man who knew nothing of wader sensibilities or the waiting clarion cruelties of wasting morphined time. Oh papa, my papa forgive me my shame for all those nights of hops heart
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Kentucky Fried vomit marinade my self-served wails your unpurged pain. This Sears bought Turin cloth of fade fresh salt cheek stroked brocade now witnesses these orphaned cries the white light whys of all that was of all I had
now buried in the plaid.
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flicker the muttering street lamp reveals an unwashed face, peering but not seeing, a fetid rancid cloth, a thread worn sidebar of charcoal glass. … grey frame, grey blood, grey pane … flicker. a plaintive ringing, an assailant extension someone wants to know, still cares, but what if the number is wrong, or worse an angry sound or worse, all at once, all still the same … grey frame, grey blood, grey pane … flicker. blackened circlets, rivulet carriages curse white of May, the ampoule sun the Cartesian sky, the carousel lament reminders of passages to spent times and climes of distance when heart pulsed and alive did not wane. …grey frame, grey blood, grey pane … flicker. strewn petals feint, accosting scent crescent, gilt blinding bewilderment stride forth, then back, a tune recalled in fever strain past cloistered soil when time was stance not pilgrim crawl. … beige flame, beige blood, beige shame … flicker.
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Thomas Paine Palestinian child smiles then stabs. I wait for the deluge. I am entranced to knees by trickles Meandering left thigh as Nascent mountain spring I am dead for a crime for Which there is no recourse. I dissolve in Gaza mud For Promethean desecration. I am an American. I smile at the historic justice Of infinitesimal, intimate demise. A gust whispers “come." I caress the history of Circumstance In the cooling dust.
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Debtors Gaol Out of the mouth of the mouldering strumpet Crumpled in the ratsnake alley scape of unfleshed fingers screaming at Osmotic, well-fed prurience Came the feint, purred curse: “Touch me” Gutted by „humane‟ ministrations I stared into gangrenous leprodic white Her lifetimes of sewer-hewn night Fresh deaths wafting, gagging on blue blood, I spat: “I can‟t” Incinerated lives curled round her ashen form filling asphalt apertures, licking ruminant cracks Aflame in a single tongued flash. Baptizing my nudities in blackest unguents and oils And tasting the brew of self-despised desecrations The crevasse sealed simmering Dissolved soul in tow.
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Pastorale In SĂŁo Miguel A droplet isle of blue hydrangea hillocks where stone wheel ox pulled lamb carts brimmed to feed in the bless, the sun blanched song Mediterranean morn born each with the verdant roll fulsome in the fishmongerâ€&#x;s fresh catch call. And climbing for my life ascending in a scrambling all to behold a proof, a truth as only an enchanted child in reject of West wind chicanery could see dos lagos sandbar parted one breath hued iris blue one sun streamed cerulean green; the cupola grief of mythological lovers never to be
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they wept for me. The Final Day before return descent into the sentenced lament of burnt progressive time we stew feasted near the lava soil in cascade blithe endurance of the primo y prima chides at the sheer impossibility of ice.
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Cambrian Colloquies The eternal struggle Embryo and fossil The wind blows I am uninhabited. Man without name You disdain my disdain? You want us to be together. Your words drop as seedpods Damned to infertile drift On yellowed tufted grass. I want to see you naked. I want to see your skin, Magpie colored. I want to etch you in words Of beautiful banality. But I utter The gutturals of cannibals. I have long derided Translucid logic and All its defamations. Depart forever from me As the ghost crab eludes At twilight. The embryo oozes. The fossil is dead weight.
Neither cohabitants Nor carnage.
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The Sin of the Calf Chanting In the bowels Of the bereft. Seedlings languish As clouds force back their tears.
Nomads, now. The forge of industrial might Sprinkles winter black. The squadrons of valises Sleep, now. No longer tormented by valkryies Of inutility. The purpose quest Is mocked In the ash can fires Of viaticum vagrants. The tease of impending odor Sweet, now. Sweeney has been crowned. Prufrock, justly crucified. We laughed at them before Being held in the fine fixity Of Lacanian reflection.
Dismissed, of course. But, to guarantee Our lamb-like essence Of obsequious irresponsibility Affluent altars overspill Fatted, auriferous „Opprobriumâ€&#x; offerings.
Guiltless now, the sky swells Fulsome onyx blight.
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Gethsemane Conceit Feather fault lined Caesura, liminal being, to be or not Ebon-tethered Enjambment, I cry Scalding Spon/dees Trope Trope Trope Aortal Aborted Assonance Facile Viral Apostrophe
Deliver me.
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Inter arma enim silent leges Besieged as Verdun, charnel brethren swell the trenchant wallows, pitch pit the unscreamed death, the anger of the guns, all blood ember remembering in the carrion blackberry sun Was it ever young … Shrapnel impress, a giant hand, a concave breast, the heft of sweat, the thousand thrusts, the bayonet, vivisected white eyed innocence Was it never, once … Versailles divides the night, tangerine light, a mother‟s murmurings and child within clings to fulsome bosom, as ashen recollections recede to Flanders folly, the surety of resurrect. Will it ever not …
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Upon a Reading of the First Stanza of Plath‟s “Mirror” Mercury I am. Silver ooze That spumes Effulgent suffocation. Warmed, I rise Chilled, I kill Fleet winged goddess Miasmatic muse Immune to grasp Efflorescent irresistible Toxin. Sterling, Staining Seething Shrieking.
Abasing flume. Puddled Abomination. * * * In the epiphany of moon spun. My nacreous beauty shames stars
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Palette of pink- cream flesh. Noli me tangere My presuppositions amuse lesser gods Pastel winged soul pincers Why else am I so lovely tonight? Flailing in the wash of dripping breast And vaginal coursings Purgation seems so sweet. One touch and all are punished Reeling me back to comfortable ugly, on chilled, crisp bathroom tile riddled by the pockings of fluorescent truth. Naked. Cleanse me to reveal, what no one could bare. Sanctus Sanctus Sanctorum.
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Vitruvian Mannequin I. Renaissance Raison de la naissance Master stroke depictions denude the roseate glass fiction Erasure tracings of sublunary Skeptic certainties circumcised anthropic theologies Thus Pythagoras winks at us and illumed, his consort, We revel in the perfect proportions of luminate deist nullity divinated DaVincian etched equiposed exposé Ol‟ Imago Dei and Me. II. These fingers of perpendicular extent tip Antioch‟s cupless diurnal declensions; brushed flake fate in diffidence of moon worn remonstrations. The very hinterland of doubt. The very circumscription of sleek faithless sureties. No casual casuistry.
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III. Behold Manâ€&#x;s heraldic trompe-l'Ĺ“il Wan display of s/he.
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The gift of „The Gift‟ The black attic grew blacker, twisting in the gyre of each wordless moment. The view of cathedral tops, cloaked in industrial ashes, brewed no thoughts of lyrical, acrimonious commentary. The solitary wren on the ledge was neither a companion of stunted blank nor poseur of newborn affliction. The chromatic eloquence of young October, its glorious burlesque: goldenrod, cardamom, burnt umber, deaths, passed through my whitewashed crenellating soul. The soft and fallow harvests of ancient loves neither pricked nor mitigated. They were, they are not … now. The purity of the pristine paper, unscathed by ink, glistened in cadaverous assault, refracting full torment of the unkind candle. Hollowed, defrocked, I turn back the quilt in aurora mourning. Saying nothing.
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… towards „Colorado‟
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portmanteau salmon tinctures an ominous deliverance dawn furrows the grasslands warm with false promises of new, of other not this the drawn blinds protest.
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I dream, now‌ In the forest of blue heron On the whitest of white nights The moon clouds pass As laden caravanserai Cedar shadow calligraphy Communicates what no human can Cygnets sleep in sepia wash In fearless surrender. Darkness and I stroll among these gardens within myself. Sip wine, exchange no thoughts.
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Crossings Red now green permission given. Fulminate traffic snarls Incontinent discontent. Walk/Donâ€&#x;t Walk oblivion scythes proprieties Pedestrian intents. At this last stand when time was time you had a face a hand your name My son. When ebon did not own these eyes. When lips knew more than pitch. When see-sawed dreams cast brilliantine. and red to green made sense.
Rummaging in the Attic
Rummaging in the Attic
Cityscapes Asthmatic wind on the loose skin of an aged neck on this monochrome day of abandoned things crying out for touching.
Nude stone girls blithely frolic in stagnant grey water.
Like tumbleweeds crenellated newspapers flounder in yesterdayâ€&#x;s urgencies down lonely, sodden street.
Threadbare tabby slithers between the remnant chassis.
Cloak of endings enfolds in dank dusk soft in want of peopled dreams.
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January 1st The floor is strewn Crushed cardboard tiaras Piddled liquor, shards of Lays, Silent horns. Sawdust cheer. Resolution remnants Mould in steamed piss Of the mocking clown. Dawn falls on virgin calendar Exposing our blanched innocence That this passage of the moon Means difference.
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Nerve Endings Long and measured Murdered hours. Each pulsation Thrums fresh torment From finger to forearm Flexor to digiti Every rush of coursed blood Wings newborn writhe. My world is finite. Only this, Only this ‌ How many times Have I wished for such simplicity? How many years have I yearned For a thoughtless existence? Now, mine. And all I suffer Is the consequence.
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„Colorado‟ You spear heaven With snow tipped nipples On your steaming coffee peaks Your vale is womb lush Moist, mist breath infusing Irresistible death I left the coffin colored streets I left my identity of rags I laughed at every inadequacy Waiting to hear Copeland‟s Fanfare …
Rummaging in the Attic
Rummaging in the Attic
Candyland Undulating Cacao crème dollops Infuse dream familiarities but „Nirvana‟ it is not. On arrival in Willy Wonka Immaculata I felt „destination.‟ I tasted „home‟. But pixy-stix moments Form defenestrate patterns Taffy twisting flails of Glazed mint hope. And so they come, the Licorice banshees, tear-spout harbingers Of sour drop remorse. Thus, the lamentations nestle As unanswered store bell tolls shattering peppermint lie. What shall I do with such succulent shards?
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November walk The snow is burnt. A yellow rivulet has eaten into sun spun puff … and I am cold. Virgin pace sighs white kiss ethers palmed as breath by willing, wizened fir. City sounds enswaddled, now. In stammering humility at nascent inchworm life ... and I am less alone. In equipoise gelid air suspends each sacral stride as brittle gusts infuse a soft in strewn aurora flakes…. Like surround of whirls, I drift. Homeward now, ablutions‟ penitent … and yellow waits.
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prayer my Lady of blinding optimism have mercy on me for I now seek rainbows in all the hues of this bloodied burned out life I look at the sashay of the last leaves as mottled canopies of hope the night sky is aglow, again in billions of dead glimmerings my Lady, my Lady I ask but this if dreams do not resound on this behemoth mount tuck me in a snowdrift Vale and let me linger
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Acknowledgments Some of these poems have appeared in Counterexample Poetics, Calliope Nerve, Venereal Kittens, DecomP, Unlikely Stories of the Third Kind, Leaf Garden, Troubadour 21, Post, and Sugar Mule.
Rummaging in the Attic
Rummaging in the Attic