Reading Script from the Spoken Word Cafe Event

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14 POEMS  JOE GONNELLA

Transcript of Reading Script from the Spoken Word Cafe Event

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14 POEMS

 JOEGONNELLA

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_______________________ / 60©2013 Joe Gonnella JoeGonnella.com

@jgonn

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Table of Contents

• Invitation

• The Lesson

• This Stone is Yours

• Basset House

• Instructions for Departure

• Tool

• Auto-da-fé

• Meteors

• Parmenides

• Elegy for an Absence

• Danse Macabre

• The Infinite

• Chart

• The River 

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Invitation

Follow me down

The river road

Where mistressturns

Indecent children

Into antelope.

Follow me down

Under the bridge

Where wounded

water Marries the marigold

And feeds the poor.

 None hunt there,

 None are harmed there

Where mistress

sings

And pebbles

Are mischievous pennies.

 None are warned there,

 None sleep there,

Where each boat

sinks

Out of spite for the sailor.

Follow me down

To the cavern

 Not as big as a heart

At the sea’s

center 

Where the seed should be.

Follow me down

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Where hours

Ring out like worried bells,

Peal on peal,skin

On skin, ‘til we find

What mask makes us whole.

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The Lesson

My father heard the wind that summer night,

Saw the moon come up over the wide fieldWhere he had set the telescope and held

Me to the eyepiece until, with starlight

Burnt through every nerve, I squirmed and cried,

There are too many fires in the dark.

He did not laugh then but led me in, laid

Me down on my good bed, touched my forehead

With his hand, whispered me to sleep, I wokeTo that memory, bright enough to blind,

Of stars, clouds of stars and luminous space.

When dawn came the sun was a sadder gold

Than I recalled. In daylight I thought twice,

Said I liked stars but hated being held.

He laughed at that and never said a word.

When night fell he taught me where the great bear 

Was, how to find the North Star by the pair,

How to test sight like the Indians did.

I told him I could see the double star.

He never knew I lied. When he was done

He brought an egg-crate out, lifted me, left

Me to watch the whole sky alone. I kept

Staring through that lens at the white half-moonUntil he called me in. When I had crept

Into my bed, my goodnights said, I could not sleep

But leapt to my window where all I learned

Waited for me like a dark gift. The deep

 Night quick with lights that burned and burned and burned.

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  This Stone Is Yours

There’s a stonethat fits the hand;

a stone

that has nothing to do with cobbles.

There’s a stone

that can be raised

and brought down

like an eyelid;a stone that finds

what it wants to find,

no matter whom it sees,

no matter where it goes;

a stone

that has nothing to do with walls.

There’s a stone that knowsand then forgets

and then knows

once and for all

what it wants to know;

a stone born of a bludgeon;

a stone like no other,

it can’t be thrown,

it can’t be juggled;

it fits the hand like a well-made glove;you wear it like a suit,

it wears you

like a hunger.

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Bassett House

 

 Nothing moves

In this stillness.

The stars are masked.

Driving here we found

We were happy. Now flames reach

The top log.

Smoke rises

Through the flue.

All the tools we need

Are by the hearth:

A straw broom

To brush the embers back,Blackened tongs;

Enough tinder 

In the scuttle to rekindle,

If the fire burns too low

And four hewn logs

Stacked in a bin

To feed the flames that

See our evening through.

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Instructions

For Departure

I

A door is opening

 before you; its shadow

 brings no peace.

Leap into the armsof its echo; nurture

the wanting. You’ll be

as courageous as a star,

certain in the knowledge

of your burning.

Share in the fate

of leaves and leviathans;

dance to the music

of your passing.

Tame the beast you can’t

dismember and make

of its terrible visage

a mask of repose. Unleash

the stillness within you

until the fragile void

has no choice but to blossom.

 

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II

There’s an anger 

 beneath this fear that will

flare with each denial.

Grasp the brand

until the worldyou can’t enter is

extended to the limit

of the flame’s bright reach.

The room you build

will travel with you,

serviceable as a snail shell.

There’s nothing

in nature that does nothave its reason. Absence

will be baptized. Echo

will have an answer.

Practice the magic.

Accept the miracle.

Self, death’s chrysalis,

engineers no exemptions.

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  Tool

to make a tool

implies a future and

an agreed need

words are

independent

of their objects

a lion enters

only when a lion

enters and not when

I whisper the word

for lion wishing

a lion would come

there are words

in this world

no lips can speak 

there are words

in the world lips

were meant to speak 

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Auto-da-fé

Instants, hours, days and dawns

Dance to the laughter of the passing year.

Partnered by the moon and sun

Real things exit, real things come:

Sunlight gilds wind-enchanted leaves.

Minutes, sunsets, months and seasons

Forge memory's bright tools from dreams.

A future, self-conceived, redeems

The emerald echoes of its past

By knocking on the only door there is:

Leafless branches frame cloud-entangled trees.

Seconds, decades, centuries and eons

Spin even atoms into swirls of dust.

All planets begin as densities in flux

Each night is blacker than the next

Until obsidian centers flare sapphire

To blaze the scattered foliage of proto-suns

Into jewels of self-consuming fire.

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Meteors

You were the one I hunted and never found

In all my games of hide and seek.

The Indian forever drawing his bow or the white man

Refusing to leave his homestead for the fort.

A troubled companion of my ways,

I remember you walking one foot at a time

Up the steps of the path to my father’s house.

Your face as long as ever I had seen it,

As if you were engaged in some internal conflictOr immersed in an unfathomable reverie

Meant only for that other you kept entirely inside you.

Together, we looked into a sky we could never measure.

We gazed past clouds of stars that hovered at the edge

Of interminable darkness. Lucky as we were,

We caught, out of the corners of our eyes,

The bright streak a meteor cast down to a black horizon.

I asked if you thought stars could die and you said yes.We were at home in spite of ourselves.

The clothes in our closets were just our size.

The slippers under our beds knew the shapes of our feet.

Our shoulders filled the jackets we had on.

Crickets, vibrant in the grass, seemed real in the dark 

As we walked through the volleys of their noise.

We had no notion there was damage to be done

In the wide world. We held the stars too closeThen let them go. The battalions of night retreated,

They disappeared one by one; lights so small, so distant,

They could not keep us warm that night or ever.

Still, the stars taught us their secrets. I counted them

From the hill’s top, where other boys had stood. The sky

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Wheeled around its center. We watched meteors

Etch their courses down the dark, until daylight drowned us

And we drifted into the light-blind streets

Of grown-up cities where markers for  self and other 

Are placed on a map of the world as a strategist

Would place them on a field of planned contention.

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Parmenides

As mist burns off of a morning— as smoke dissipates when wind blows— 

my words fade as you hear them.

As truth dissolves into falsehood— 

as birdcalls vanish into night— 

these letters disappear as your eyes

 pass over them.

My lungs release the atoms

they’ve captured

 back to the stars that distilled them.

I learn what ambiguity teaches.

Some knots will not come undone.

What I dream is not what I sense.

What I sense is not what I think.

Some thoughts are mine alone.

Blindness comes from such staring at the sun.

A budget of fallacies leads

to an economy of loss even for those

whose wealth is limitless.

Untie the knot of thought.

Solve the puzzle of words.By that resolution to be born

again and again and again

in endless argument with a sun

that comes up fresh each morning

and disappears again each night.

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My words have teeth.

My silences are full.

My arguments are beautiful.

My hand exists as a hand.My eye is as sharp as a hawk’s.

I circle my prey and I dive

to eat what is under my talons

until what is not becomes me

to be born anew by the name I give it

as it dies inside me.

My mares lead me where I most desire

even to that point where Apollo

cedes dominion to a refugee like me.

My horses strain against their burden.

I travel the road they’ve chosen

 preceded by guides the gods selected.

The axle of my chariot sings

In its sockets as if at the heartof all that spinning a pipe

is being blown by a shepherd.

Casting aside earth’s veil

the daughters of the sun lead me

to daylight from night’s deep.

At the crack of dark where dawn should be,

at the crux of contradiction,

all numbers contract

to a singularity.

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Gates of stone— 

rock above, rock below— 

 prodigious doors tower 

to vertiginous heights,concealing the kingdom

I have come to map.

Wherever I start won’t matter:

for the man who turns

on the pivot of what is

every step is the same in a circle.

Words are the arrows

 by which I pin objects down

into the field of what exists.

A word which denotes nothing

is as hollow as a bone

from a creature never born.

Those who walk the way of what is not

are lost and will wander forever 

 between confusion’s ceiling

and a borderless floor.

Unasked questions have no answers.

Unwhispered secrets can never be revealed.

Without puzzle there is no solution.

A lie unuttered can’t be countered by orphaned truth.

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There is no other choice:

what is, is and what

is not, is not. All is a unity

into which plurality foldslike the wings of a hawk 

 perched on a limb

 just before it hunts.

The doors of the kingdom of justice

swing wide for me— this road

was meant to bring me

good fortune— as lonely as it is.

All answers are mine for the asking.

The merest wisp of passing opinion,

the perfect sphere of fearless truth,

everything is open to me: the ephemeral

and the everlasting just the same.

I smell the scent of truth

on a wind rising from the east.

I see the heart of dark 

in what comes later.

I taste the brightness

that falls around my shoulders.

I still the rush of time

 by the movement of my limbs.

I hear the sun’s chariot

rolling in its track  back to the dark I know will come.

There are no beginnings.

There are no endings.

The world I name

is the only world I know.

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  Elegy for an Absence 

I

There’s no map to trace the geography

of days we shared. Buried in

the quotidian of our diaries the unexpected

schedules its own appointments.

A red moon reckons the sum of stars

and misses one: an unforeseen absence.

Could I have wished for you another day?Another whisper? Another touch?

What was it you found in anticipated

darkness that invited you to choose

to enter when you did? Did a new moon

 beckon between chasms of cloud?

Will the darkness you drank be enough

to slake your thirst? Or will your will

insist on a colder freedom, the freedom

of a beggar who doesn’t choose

what others would but whose sigh rises

like smoke away from daily fire

toward a sky where accumulated

suffering condenses to satisfied desire.

II

Come back late, no place to go:

level the base; square the sail;

center emptiness; chart the course;

 bet the house; buy the farm. Uncommon

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choice to move into a silence

no words can describe. Let her rest

who wouldn’t have asked for these words

in elegy to memories that never were.

Today when I think of you stone will break,

walls will fall, sky will darken and the tomb

your ashes don’t occupy will openand embrace what’s been missing

to complete an emptiness fore-ordained

 by a plenty made insufficient by spendthrift sun.

As sand in an hourglass falls to where it

 belongs, substance is exchanged for hollow.

What was withheld, is reclaimed. All cycles still

at a long horizon where bloody sunlight

tints you larger through the convex lens

of earth’s atmosphere into something

neither of us knew you would become:

a phase-less moon; a certain, shining thing,

luminously inhuman, in frozen night.

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Danse Macabre  after Holbein  http://www.dodedans.com/Eholbein.htm

The Chairwoman in her boardroom

On her leather chair,

Chiding her directors, will greet,

Whether or not she wants to,

The lord of bones.

The CEO on his jet, rushing

To a meeting, rushes, as well,Into the cold grip of the harvester 

Of men who waits for those

Who will not wait for others.

The COO, berating his subordinates,

Stops mid-word when

His devil whispers come

And death’s bony arms envelop him

In endless calm.

The CFO wakes from her dream

Of balanced books and predictable returns

To smile into the face of the skull

Who haunts her through divisible days

Down to a final sum of sun.

 No matter how massively parallel,Mirrored or redundant his distributed

Systems are, the CIO, on duty as always,

Will meet with the disaster 

From which there is no recovery.

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The EVP, in her corner office,

Will be cornered by the collector 

Of souls when she least expects to be

Even though no budgets are due

And everyone’s forecasts are dead on.

The VP, smiling at his superior,

Will frown when the grim dismemberer Remembers him and every project

He prosecuted will become

Someone else’s victory.

The Director may face the face

Others fear but the fearless reaper 

Has less to lose no matter 

How brave the aspirant he’ll claim.

Cowards’ or heroes’, all bones grind to ash.

The Manager, working late,

Will hesitate when she looks up

From whatever’s overdue

To see the collector, who brooks

 No delay, ask her for her final pay.

The mere Employee is not exemptFrom what all others owe. He shoulders

This burden as he has his others

And willingly obeys when the last

Commander asks for what none can refuse.

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The Secretary’s secret remains a mystery

Even as the eater of souls devours

What she’s withheld from colleagues,

Bosses, friends and lovers. This hunter 

Knows nothing and reveals less.

The Janitor has no time to clean

His last latrine or order his jumbled closetWhen the prince of disorder makes his claim

On him. The most disciplined practitioner 

Surrenders just as the laziest must.

The Un-employed are spared most everything

But this. Free from all meetings,

At their leisure to wander where they will,

They come when recalled

By he who will employ us all.

The Homeless, with nothing

They can call their own, with neither 

Roof nor reference to their name,

Will find their home in him

Whose embrace none can escape.

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  The Infinite 

 After Leopardi 

I’ve always loved this hermit hilland this green tangle obscuring my view

of so much of the farthest horizon.

When I sit and absorb the vast

spaces beyond me, the inhuman

silences, the profound calm

I pretend I imagine it all

and my heart’s almost brave.

Like wind rustling through trees

I’m the voice inside this infinitesilence recollecting the eternal

and the dead seasons and the present

and the living and their sounds until

thought is drowned by immensity

and I’m happy to shipwreck in that sea.

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  Chart

Glide along rhumb line

From wind rose to landfall

As on an old portolan. Move

Straight to the white places

Or the engraved cartouche

That masks what the mapmaker 

Could not know. Get there— 

At all costs— get there!

On unrolled calfskin or 

In golden sunlight. Arrive

At the destination you’ve chosen,

Past myriad namesInked on the vellum,

To hear the shout

Of the lookout as waves

Crest over the hard shore

You were born to discover.

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  The River

Bark guard dog back;

whittle wind

down to bone. I’m home,

moon, I’m home.

Each leaf moves like a fish.

Follow them, follow.

Here is the forehead

of the dark. Here is torso;

here, thumb.

Tell me how far stars gowhen they go home.

We ride the river 

until wind says, No.

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