Nocturnes

I.OF VIRTUAL GASLIGHT

Cool gaslight flares discreetly,

Rousing tints on Gothic glass.

In unmolested slumber rest

The monstrous spires aloft;

Through autumn evening's laggard mist,

Canzonas thrust their startling staves;

Mad music rages 'round the nave arcades,

Till weary echoes seep through Royal Portals...

Lost souls line the weed-choked gutters,

Grunting sagely through frail globes of spittle...

Shadow pipe-dreams, phantoms, when official night

Illumes the Monster-City's desolation...

Muzzled cretins foul the flooded roadways...

Puddles shiver, ordure drowning star-points.

Withered blossoms perish on the curtain

Of the Kalpa falling on our dearest night.

II. OF DEAD CITIES

Mad Mahler melody, intense Adagio,

Swirls through the pale thin mists of my own Bruges-la-Morte,

Majestic moonlit realm where buttress forests freeze

Like coalescing slag from night’s unplumbed abysses,

Till congenial visions pall and yield their plunder

To the dismal day’s ennui.

Perfervid pilgrimage within a scholar’s steel-barred study:

Dead Viollet-le-Duc's grand elevations scanned

In moldering fat tomes, long-orphaned prints, frail photos

That enmaze the fevered mind, till carillons announce:

Go, gather shadows fleet and summon silence pure!

Soon darling demons throng the halls of nascent twilight;

Fleet, frail phantoms reel athwart the azure’s fading vault,

Now dimmed down almost to a phosphorescent demimonde—

Come forth, full-fledged for flight, Astarte Syriaca!

Queen of Gothic Night, proclaim: no life without the dream!

III. OF MENACE AND MAGIC

Squirming, panting, painterly hot-orange

Of our day’s-end star—

Above sleek chariots

Whose contrails weave tight patterns of slate-gray

And wispy white in hypnotizing skies

Now leaking a proleptic lead—

Repristinating marbled stone befouled by carrion,

Leeching mortal salts into the murals’ dimming luster

Till vastation looms, infecting stricken souls

With cryptic plague-borne lesions

That rip up and rape frail flesh

Until the carnal demon throbs with foulness

Rendered with a reverend regard for clot and contour,

As decay swift slithers from white bone

And the artist of black silence crafts a halo

From that final palette-patch

Heaped high with gouts of amber-gold…

But twilight spreads, invincible, through worlds

Where hustlers swarm; in motley,

Louche assassins lurch from doorways,

Stride like prating pirates

From the heaving cardboard mansions,

Throb to eerie rhythms

Spawned in sadique side-shows.

Garish store-fronts bray and brag,

Pimps pistol-whip recalcitrance in working-girls,

And rancid rat-face shunts the swag,

Arrays the fleshly folderol, fatidic firearms,

Wondrously emollient potions

Birthing bliss that glimmers and seduces

Through the florid neon's Monster-Concert…

And when it seems one might explode—

Descends cool veiling mist,

A moody prelude pirouetting on the ghostly ivory,

Symphonic conflagrations melting midnight,

The prismatic fountains raining clear refreshment,

Lunar carousels, kaleidoscopes on holiday—

Obligatory barcarolles—

Fatidic revelations teased from sempiternal dragons...

All these wondrous things, and so much more.

IV. OF THE CHTHONIC DARK

The forced march down black hours to three A.M.,

Past puffing, heaving piles of refuse

Barricading back-streets, blunting frosted winds;

Down hell-holes consecrate to Ashtoroth they pour

Until the coiled and creeping tunnels

Spew the fresh consignment midmost of the maze

Where leering ghouls already batten on the finger-food

Which flecks the wilderness of prison-bars.

A monstrous, manic organ wails,

Beyond baroque, exceeding dark excess,

Till prowling passage-work ascends from whispers

Through the wail of writhing modulations

Roaring, raging, savaging,

A predator upon the verge,

Eruption’s temblor yearning for release.

Then back downtown,

Where, noting well the ragged, glinting edges

Of the brandished menace,

I deploy my stained-glass piece,

A pilgrim changing places

With his murderer.

V. OF MADISON SQUARE

At evenfall, the dulcet rain, which saddens poets,

Darts swift passage-work on viscous puddles.

Fogs survey the square.

To sweet strains of Ravel's Pavanne,

An ardent, melancholy woman

(Eyes of violet star the gloaming)

Slips, a fragile ghost, behind

St. Sava's lofty apse, to dream

Of Romance in a silver key.

The cats scoop caves of refuge

In their somber, secret night

As somewhere, toward the West,

A chained dog leaps and howls.

The echoes, joined by laughter

Sad, insane, then, softly silent, come to rest.

Peninsulas of ancient filth

Stream down Wok's seedy store front,

Capping refuse of the day.

The haunted street—the grimy walls

(Necromantically recalling

Monstrous, jewelled ages)

Have their wanton columns and their casements

Laved by looming music and the dulcet

Rain which saddens poets. Evenfall.....

VI. OF ‘THE DEUCE’ (IN ANCIENT DAYS)

Symphonic shower of light.

Tumescent flesh, envenomed triple forte;

Particolored spawn of æons,

Sprayed with urine, doused with toilet water.

Cloacal riots seethe within the million

Gutters of our nights, where brute solicitations

Lure to trillion sportive couplings:

Beast with beast and man with beast

Behind the fusty doors—

Where wide-winged roaches soar and swoop

Like bats in some dank cavern owned by night.

Beneath Niagaras of neon

Polyphonic screams wrack imbeciles—

The smog-wraiths gambol, fouling roof-tops—

Decorative filigree of refuse carpeting the

Autobahns of Eblis.

Raving city hordes—

O fremitus infernal......

VII. OF A MOMENT

Above the burbling thorough-bass

Chill salt spray rakes the twilight;

Phantoms stream in slow glissade,

As sea gulls creak to rest:

Gray patches on the rabid, wind-abraded seas…

VIII. OF THE GLAMOR

In revelation of the skyward contours

First light, nurse of secrets, drifts in chilly gray;

The creaking of old joints soon gives way

To a harsher, hotter urban antiphon

Which prowls and snarls within the stone arroyos,

Like the moaning of an addict desperate and damned. 

Fresh waves bedew the rearing pinnacles

With slender golden glazes kissed with flame

And solar shards dance, wind-whipped, scintillant,

Upon the girdling waters, thick with craft.

Prismatic streamers populate display racks

Of the soon-to-open SOHO shops;

And tenderly, as if with immaterial caress,

Aurora unveils the last still-drowsy courts

And alleyways that missed the first alarm.

Below the dingy yellow dome,

Beneath resilient shoals of stone

(Integument of sentient horror) 

Temblors rumble as the welkin roars

Atop those millions sheathed in steel,

Who—fleeter than the birth of hate

In paranoia's blazing skull—

Roar through their mock infernos,

Down to Wall St., clanged to life

As miming Vitus-dancers pirouette

Upon the varnished trading floor.

The slug-a-beds' red orbs creak open, brim with fear,

Spin round on insect-heads in Sodom's frenzied fairground.

(Rainbows in the sullen, greasy gutters

Lave the curbstones).

O spoor of darkling rhymes, romantic amphibrachs

As cunning as whole forests of Indians in Cooper;

Down gyrate Broadway once Poe staggered:

Follow, to the very center of the maze,

Where She, who bears aloft

Her Beatricèan opulence,

In carven ice enchaliced, dressed with flame, Brings forth, rains down, a Nile of tears

To wash those gutters of our wailing darkness.

Asphalt men prepare the midnight masquerade

Atop a hill of cursing skulls.

IX. OF THE CHIAROSCURO

Your hair is a luminous tempest of serpents:

Delighting, entrancing, then dooming

Your lovers to endless and dream-freighted sleep.

O your eyes are an ominous, death-dealing green,

A dragon-choked jungle at twilight

Where all things betray and bemuse.

O Byzantine Empress, my lust and my love,

When red roses have withered and laughter is done—

Remember one lover whose blazon is loyalty—

Should you become quite, quite pathetic—

One who is now what he has been

Will remain, alas, what he is now,

Your servant, Ma’am.

X. OF RATS AND REVELRY

As grave rats trickle down the gloom

That oozes through the crumbling stones,

Against the coal-black skies are hurled

Cathedral spires and rotting roofs....

A stray smile flickers and is snuffed—

An angel flickers and is gone;

Strange ballads nurse rare legendry

In darkness feverish yet blest.

O ice and ash of hearthfires…

Bright lore of our ancient kings....

And raging revelers smash glass,

Wash walls with frothing brews

As sirens, wailing, race and shift

The pitch and speed of things

And dawn comes to the tardy boil,

Her carcass pocked with sea-green

Signifiers of corruption.

Precious setting for rare gems…

ENVOI:

The fox beneath the cherry tree,

Is at the bonnie bird;

Lord Irony is at his post—

With button off the foil. 

XI. OF THE INFANTA

O mock frondescence of the seagreen swirling,

Interlacing tendrils groping in factitious nurseries

Where mock-men reason out their rage,

Vent sapless spleen on faded flowers.

Sentries stand without all portals:

Stature—Lofty.

Bearing—Ordered.

Aspect—Grim.

Mauve afternoons, soft light, and dreams sublime?—

Unwelcome. Admonitions and advisories

Urge abdication—subito!—

Or more than meeching mockery awaits.

On avenues which saw the slow, maternal hand of time

Make smooth the contours of the aging kerbstones,

Perfect stillness marks the rigid faces,

Rectilinearly orthodox as razors’ edges,

With their metal mouths grown mute,

These beasts whose steel-shod anger

Masks the milling monsters eating on the soul-shards

Lurking still in unlit adyta,

The last redoubt within the robot-carapace.

Once wine stirred wondrous ecstasies—

Now dregs brim to the lip in ultimate derision;

Experts calculate—in decibels—the choking grief in death-owned cities,

Vileness vets the cries of terror in the foaming darkness.

Madness masters Mind, and Horror storms the parapets:

There will be no ecstatic music, no Pavane, played at your nuptials,

Innocent Infanta—and before they grab you, I’d suggest:

Incinerate that ghastly robe of state—

Then slit your velvet throat.

XII. OF THE SHORE

Fog-cloaked Marina in menacing twilight—

Scrambled screams bed down amid the murk,

As ice-blue violence abandons sleep

And gray ghosts gambol at the dry world's borders.

Lightning-swift the gull

Hoists supper in a kiss of death…

O hellish hooves, your great red fire-flakes

Strafe the relict earth to powdered ruin...

Then somehow, in a flash, we too bed down:

At the mercy of the fog.

XIII. OF THE BRUISED SKY

Roiling rush-hour bolts from catafalques of steel,

Spews forth from spieling glass,

Then scribbles afternoon's departures

With a languid flourish.

Soon the shrill susurrus dissipates, and veils of rain sigh

As they sweep sadly through the voided canyons.

Street-lamps overwhelm day's relics.

Night....Blown shadows of the wailing trees disport

Beneath the welkin’s orange-violet contusions.

Eerie is the glamour gathering the high ones,

Clots coagulating on the Village cobbles,

Nursing silence,

Until maddened drums and clattering crotales

Stir incipient maenads and mystagogues to feral frenzy;

And they dance demonically…

Cadenza: Mother Darkness swabs her wounds,

Prunes garbage stacks,

Unveils, perhaps, a lunar friendship,

Sleeps the troubled sleep of goddesses...

XIV. OF CHIMÆRAS

Grimy stone steps plunge beneath

The dwindling grayness of a humid twilight;

Silver is the damp sheen lining crumbling avenues.

O frozen gales that lash at the horizon of the sea-girt city,

Stippled by the limit-lights…

From slimy tunnels—

Heaving, wretching, roaring for release—

Chimaeras rend the filmy veil

And burst forth savagely

From a protracted hibernation.

Earth grows weary, weary…

Titan towers tremble in the menaced dusk

As temblors writhe beneath the vacant vault;

Now flashing knives release

Hot oceans of envenomed blood

In rancid alleys traced by demon-laughter,

Where imperiled hearts, at last,

See plain: the Ineluctable.

XV. OF THE FLATIRON BUILDING

Beneath the clustered, swaying lights,

Two blinkered, piebald horses huddle

(Scar-nets finely etched on haunches),

Snorting frost athwart the valley's desolation.

Stragglers, tattered exiles from the gaudy

Court of Prospero, dismiss the afternoon,

Applaud the interweaving, rime-capped

Branches, slash their wrists to lend some color.

Ghostly lemon lamps lure feeble flocks down

Fog-enchained Fifth Avenue as, from the gloom,

With skeleton-crew, and all sails set,

Our stone prow dives into a carnival of snows.

XVI. OF THOSE STRESSFUL NIGHTS

When Night in Monster-City blossoms

On the charnel streets

you'll wander till the day returns....

When noxious city rains,

which swirl in icy sheets

beyond the doorway's fragile refuge,

drench the embers of your heart....

When lions roar their last

And mirrors birth but nightmares...

Give yourself not solely

To dread sigils of the darkness only,

For premonitory streaks of dawn are trembling

In the harbor, wisps of amber, mauve and gold…

XVII. OF THE SORRY SCULPTOR

The master carved a grinning gargoyle

From a pallid, porous block—

Annihilated promptly

To a ravaged shoal of sand

Ere glimpsed by eye of man.

Colossal crenellated breakers bashed their cymbals,

Frore winds hurled their adamantine hammers—

Thus his monument to night has staggered o’er

A steely shambles ere its birth…

And not for all time, this time, any time,

These bleeding maledictions at the darkness:

Go ahead and roar like Bruckner's brass!—

No ear can hear your cry.

Unleash imaginary hounds—

Array your virtual artillery hard neck-to-neck—

Uncork your doomed barrage—

Now fragile as the birthing crystal

Glinting at the heart of midnight so mysteriously,

As it prepares to sculpt upon your rotting brow

A wreath of frozen dew.

XVIII. OF THE BUSKERS

No moon? ah, she's been gobbled by the void.

Note well the crunch of ice-encrusted grass

Beneath the ghostly tread of whisperers

Who drift, afraid, where streetlamps labor in

Unvanquishable darkness, cold and keen.

Such scenery our managers devise!

Just crane your neck: the specks of yellow flit

From squared facades devoured by harsh Night,

Which shields from sight the bulge of eye and flail

Of arm--which muffles with a shroud the screams

Which else would be ignored—Droll Pantomime!

XIX. OF THE WHISPERED WORD

A flagrant luxury, a diamond in the dying light.

The luminescent bard intones his lay,

The last leaf of his saga is unturned;

Yet lambent flames go tripping through

The gilded garden of those perfect facets

With uneasy grace,

A grace which soon might squirm

Beneath its period.

The sacral world is not yet wholly scoured by worms,

Stretched earthward, worried by decay.

Your yearning heart, which scrutinizes

Every kindled loveliness

Within the ancient dream, prevails;

And though within your tortured brain

You must endure an aching absence

As our Hell erupts in civil strife:

O trust your ear unto the roar that is subsiding, and your eye

Unto a spume of troubled light on crumbling waves...

XX. OF THE WINE AND WANDERING

Last Thursday morn, within the mist,

You turned from me

So quickly, love,

That whorls of raindrops

Fled from off your golden hair

Like troops of well-drilled ballerinas.

As I wandered in a haze

Down Broadway in

The chilling rain,

I did consider

Whether I should beach my barque

Upon your palmy, sunlit shores,

Or cling to solace that I know

Of heady wine

And silver moons,

The intimacies

Shy of ecstasy but close

To safe, imperishable things.

A filthy sky; no day for sail.

I'll stay in port

And caulk the deck;

I'll drink me senseless,

Walking on a muddy road

Beneath the weeping plenilune.

XXI. OF DEVOTION

I'll net thee close about with shadows,

Freeze thee in sharp, glistening words.

O Uta to my Ekkehart,

Forever shall we nourish,

Quarrel-less, a finished grandeur,

Heedless of the night, with mien of deathless gods.

OF THE SLUMBROUS GOLD

You turned in sleep

You smiled in dream

While scarlet embers flushed your cheek so fair.

You turned again

I smiled: no dream

This clamorous gold of your riotous hair.