Sunday, December 29, 2013

Oeillade Noire (The Fishwife's Rhetoric)

              
     Gat-toothèd was she, soothly for to say....

1.

Between worlds
is a flight of stairs
departing hourly
and arriving earlier.

A million ironically christened years
learn a new tongue:

how it curls and folds

how it tastes

how it forms sound
springing from inner darkness

how it licks and mocks

how it flicks and kisses and diddles.

Do you deny you are so old?

Who do you suppose you are
becoming you?



2.

Asterisms pivot on point of view.

The department of poetics monitoring the planet
is nigh as the nighest cabaret:

You are eating too fast and too much
and drinking without quality or taste.

Dentition is flawed in upper and lower case.

The prescription is joints as agile as tongue
and lips and much less middle.



3.

Water world is one of the triter ideas
of sly midnight dreaming dry.

Is there is anything more tragicomic
than mentula and cunnus doing time
in the prism of an endless present tense?



4.

Poet-economists are mildly interested
in monkey monoculture
as anteaters lust for termites.

Behold three samples
from the Bureau of Poetic Leisure:

What went on soft feet
rides in exoskeletons
spreading traffic jam.

Juice is chemical.
All interest is abstract.
Sperm counts diminish.

You once lubricated
gaily in night forest.
Nowadays all crawl....




5.

Indifferent poeticrats report:
the species is close to all measure,
thus exiting into illusory and hellish recess.

Eggs never address everything.
If consistent, they are not complete.
If complete, they are not consistent.

Goedel is caviar
seeded in some far future
in another species' past.

That is why he is always cold.

It requires blameless saintly waitress
with a heart of gold and sterling broth
to warm his digits and feed him slow food.

Even Einstein at the speed of light
does not formulate the missing diastema.



6.

Would you like to play chess, planet to planet?
Hold out three hands.
Pick a color.

Reality is technology.
Gravity sends this message.
Levity is the only reply.


7.

There are no shaggy dogs.
All are short, smooth and hairless.

Don't be careless.

Be brief.

Be quick.

And don't be late.



8.

It is always twilight
due to the black and white light
of so many suns.

Day wears spectacles that block black light.

Night wears ones that block white.

In the interval--myriad naked eyes:

she walking white in moonlight

she walking black and shining at noon

she walking on the shore in middle light honeyed
and blue.

Glassine is an aspect of protein and anatomy.

To see roses use rose.



9.

Any time is plural.

Every time is singular.

Time itself is dual.

The present moment lives
about three seconds
of any order of magnitude

and in any direction.

Sages sleep underground like cicadas
for tens of millennia.

Wake them rudely
& assemble a delegation to ask:

What color is dawn in the womb? What crude color sunset?

They will move their lips soundlessly.

Their tongues will flop like rude fish
in amniotic fluid.

Then they will go back to sleep.



10.

Sex is beyond understanding
as terror metaphysicalizes
and pleasure becomes error.

The planet is green and transparent like a net.

During eclipse eight hidden moons form an octagon
becoming luminous.

The salt sea swells and foams into orbit.

Literate couple, triple, quadruple or quintuple.

Unlettered rut prepubescently,

are replete with the raw flesh of summer,

inseminate at harvest,

and give birth to Spring.

Night winter rain cools with music, dance, and drink.

Minstrels stroll and sing.

It is the speakeasy between unnumbered blasphemies.



11.

Do numbers have quantity? Do numbers dance?
How many numbers collide by chance on the head of any pin?

Does not Aquinas labor like Hercules through Aristotle
for the pure sin of grand & unthrottled sonoluminescence?

(E. A. Costa  29 December 2013 Granada, Nicaragua)

Sunday, October 20, 2013

Subsets of the Spectacle (The Life & Times Of Don Pancho Villa)


                             "De ninguna manera volveré a México.
                              No soporto estar en un país más surrealista
                              que mis pinturas."
                                                               (Salvador Dalí)

(1)

Sentences spread slowly
like ink in water
birthing tentacles
that touch and test.

Body reaches out
in colorless cloud
melting moonlight.

It is second sight
moist with flowers
blooming one night

husbanding nothing
evening the world
drinking and being drunk...


(2)

The dogs of zero hill
disappear into murmur:

one month
one moment
one eye....


All facts are past.
Goal is nothing.
Hunger is nothing.

Venus is last and only time.



(4)

Dearest seer see, dearest hearer hear:

Do you demand common use and conventional conversation?
Plain language and prosaic rose?

Are you looking for explanations?

To you there is really very little to say except:
Nietzsche knows

(his feet walking piano conciertos in the mountains):

the nose knows

Jimmy Durante knows

unmown and antic hay knows

Antarctic knows

Atlantic knows

Pancho Villa knows....

Muchas gracias Francisco.

Muchas gracias José Doroteo.

Muchas gracias, Don Pancho.

No hay falla....



(5)

On one level it is a climax of fragments
melding into a solar system of black suns.

On a another level it is the negation of figments
as if the ladder were a scale.

On the level of levels it is an ascent of time

like Vallejo rising from the center of the earth
under miner's hardhat:

replete with bread and butter
replete with French

free of blows

with a nose
that smells the conqueror
and inquires

(as daintily as an ancient Persian unfolding the last folio):

Cay coritacho micunqui? Is this the gold you chevaliers eat?



(6)

Her body reaches out
in colorless blood
melting moonlight.

It is second sight
moist with flowers
blooming in the night

husbanding nothing
evening the world
inhaling and being inhaled

inhaling self.

Aequam memento rebus in arduis servare mentem...

This is the lost terrible middle

unlost in the steppe

unlost in village dance

unlost in night song

unlost in gallop.

This is one of the many lives and wives and mounts of Pancho Villa.



(7)

Pancho Villa is the first surrealist film-maker:
he films revolution filming revolution live.

Villa films for money.

Villa moneys for arms.

Villa arms as Mexicans laugh
cackling and cursing and rolling double R's.

Villa chairs.

Villa centaurs.

Zapata wants a still life

wants RR's be sealed
with a miniature of satraps'  kiss
under raised cup drunk and sober.

Don Pancho stiffens over the stirrups of his invisible mount
and complies.

!Viva truth! !Viva lies! !Viva Mexico!



(8)

The dogs of zero hill
disappear into stillness

one moment...one eye...one flash of powder:

Cay coritacho micunqui? Is this the gold by which chevaliers live and die?

[E. A. Costa 20 October 2013]










Thursday, October 17, 2013

Wednesday, September 25, 2013

Doing Things Right

                                       ...un excelente disgusto, creo

                                       (Carlos Martínez Rivas)

To cut costs
wars should be fought
in cemeteries.

To cut costs
as a prelude soldiers and civilians
should dig their own graves.

To cut costs
the whole world should be
privatized (every inch) as a burial ground.

Here is the shovel.
Get digging and to cut costs
throw yourselves in.

(E. A. Costa  25 September 2013) 


Sunday, September 8, 2013

Ad Tam Grande Secretum....


There are several different ways
to contrive more space in the same time.

Lengthen stride.

Accelerate pace.

Lengthen stride and accelerate pace

The last is one possible definition
of simultaneity.

[from "The Book of Walking", E. A. Costa 8 September 2013]

Thursday, August 22, 2013

Chorogonia


In the first place
there is no first place.

In the second place
is third place.

In last place
holding forth algebraically
is a scalpel hanging from the sky
incising water

on which floats first turtle

inside first carapace

echoing....

[E. A. Costa 22 August 2013]

Wednesday, July 24, 2013

Children's Nocturne


                   "From night emerge and merge again...." 


Night never falls except on stage.

Night never fades in as a shade is drawn.

Night never rises rosy-fingered like the dawn.

Night is wise as gliding owl and clever as a hiding cat.

Night billows and flows like ink in clearest water
teasing grayness into black.

Night lives as mites in lightest air
now thronging and now going again her separate ways
to allow the day's allotted dream.

Night is fair--she is as unseen as what may have been
and never is never there.

[EAC July 2013]

Monday, July 8, 2013

Haiku X + 2 (Melville)


Opinions voicing
like seagulls over ocean.
Below waves white whale.

Voces volantes
como gaviotas sobre mar.
Abajo ondea ballena blanca....

(EAC copyright July 2013)

Sunday, January 20, 2013

The Japanese Bicycle


Moon is a slow door's feline and languorous eye
curving silently.

Moon is a panther glowing ivory in sky
robed in white fur.

Moon is silversmith's crescent and luminous sheen
in labyrinth's light.

Moon is the rower of an obscene scull of dream
gliding out of night.

Moon is unseen wheel in the bright drum roll of sky
riding the daylight.

Moon is half an arc of palest soft green earthshine
echoing dimly

echoing echoing echoing echoing
echoing dimly....

(EAC copyright January 2013)