The cloud fall after sundown

The cloud fall after sundown
Obliterates the world and leaves me intact,
Cushioned in airy blubber like Jonah inside the whale.
It’s darker now and the rain is merging with the cloud fall
And the forests.
Nearby trees are like tall dead men rising from the lower depths,
They are grasping, desperately reaching out into the cloud fall air.
Drops, large loud drops, hit the desiccated roots and plastic of the flower pots
Standing on wood and then on brick:
Standing on what is enough for a house, and a home’s mood:
Let the cloud fall eat everything up that could hurt me,
Let me be here in the fallen blubber, resting in gut soil;
Everything is merging.

Anatol Cordua © 2017

Out of such notionings

There were meteors that nigh and that morning a bat
There were meteors that nigh; and that morning a bat
Flew into the wide-swung window of my bedroom.
I covered my head with my sheet, then undressed that mummy
And the bat was gone; it scratched a wall, then flew in fluctuating circles
In movement, and in action not audible to me.
Yes there had been meteors that night, yes it is possible
It flew out the caves.
If it did not, it came from the world's soil;
A world on earth near to my home: and I,
Like Montaigne, get ecstatic enjoyment
Out of such notionings –

Anatol Cordua © 2017

I was hoping for a day when peace might carry

I was hoping for a day when peace might carry
In the tortured daylight
A browned crust of bread might ignite and give Christ’s blood
And the blood balloons to break water over the humus shade
Of the ubiquitous rocks, so many tombs.
And the bodies hiding
They don’t want to die
In the tortured daylight, without ubiquity.

Anatol Cordua © 2017

Our warmth in the bloody sunlight

Our warmth in the bloody sunlight
Is put on fire.
Our stone is charcoal.
Your lips are pine falling down into the brush
Of my chest.
Your eyes are tiny patches of sky in the cloud of smoke.
Our hands on each other are ashed mud,
All our wishes fulfilled.

Anatol Cordua © 2017

In my childhood rainbows at kindergarten

In my childhood rainbows at kindergarten
Were painted on cement walls
Tarpaulin
I stood wincing in the sun
Little shoes, my little bracelets from my mother
Around my wrists,
Banners from the school halls' ceilings
Lights in the mothers' eyes,
Heaven-aspect in the door corners
In the classrooms oxygen and flowers.
Little sandals on our feet,
Moccasins and beads
Jangling.


Anatol Cordua © 2017

The Surgeon Pushed Away

Why have Nietzsche, Montaigne, Proust and Kafka, survived overhead the enlightenment soggy bottoms? Because they stayed to us, they didn’t run away.
   When I think of the world, when the measures of man have fled my malice, the image of a Stoic sculptor comes to mind; he observes, looks the world round from a peak, in a circle of stone, and he turns to his charter, his slab of marble, and puts his hand on it, and quietly moves away to his stubborn tastes and cares; taste in Plato’s dialogue On the Soul, and the sculptor more interested in his ships, never so popular to be charter parties, Optimates vessels through and through and through, to the guts after checked and the birds already beginning to sing, the place Utica and the surgeon pushed away.

Anatol Cordua © 2017

Das Essay

I quite worship Proust, Kafka and Montaigne; and Nabokov when my mind-body is calm and a little sedate. It is a strange thing with one’s writers; the utterly natural but paradoxically so aberrant forces amassing in one’s mind look for them while writing a poem, a story, a novel, for structural and mindful elements and parts to grasp at and to put to immediate use. I cannot say more of the importance of one’s writers; they gel the jewels which, if one is on a roll, are already there and just waiting for the almost pyrrhic treatment. This, of course, is the only way. Give the student his corner. Wait and see for signs. His face will tell you everything. Is his brilliance alive? Can you take him to the circus? Oh sure, all of these things are alright. How long will he live? He must finish six hundred more books. He will lose his youthful eyesight. He will lose his youth. But he must read six hundred books. Then you can take him to the circus and see if his brilliance is alive and how long he will live. But first the six hundred books. Naturlich.

Anatol Cordua © 2017

Except at the Circus

Except at the Circus everything is an impossibility. There are no such questions at the Circus.  Except at the Circus! Impossibility opens its wide maws at the most impossible feats! Lecture me that I have contradicted myself! It’s untrue! Your brains are out of whack! Everybody who goes to circuses knows all about these things. With such scattered consensus it is no wonder skeptics have the upper hand in the world outside the circuses. We would have to create a chronogram of all circuses in the world to get the upper hand. Naturally! Chronograms are for the skeptical world outside the circuses. But what do we care about that! It is in fact exactly why the Circus is an “attraction.” We go there for the extravaganza. The maws of impossibility answer all impossible questionings with fluctuating grandeur of curiosity actions and fabulous words from the Circus Master. The Circus Bears are a testimony to the hilarious costs! The clowns and acrobats catapult in to encourage the spectators to put money in the passing hats! The high wire acts reward them for their understanding!

Anatole Cordua © 2016

In the dreams of other men's wives

The men tumbled down the mountains
Into each other’s houses
Into each other’s wives
Into decalogues

Into the dark, the real dark, the one we know
Is deep looking-back

The men are folded out on white mattresses
In the dreams of the houses
In the dreams of the other men’s wives.


Anatol Cordua © 2017

The easy jazz. The jewellery advertised for sale.

The easy jazz. The jewelry advertised for sale.
Rings, love, pigeons,
Flapping in the bushy trees
A mile high.
Planes impressing the sky
With their silver presence, Ajax.
Pallas loves everyone.
Permeating light. Helios, the son of the sun
In the horn of the Milky Way.
Ah beautiful states of being!


Anatol Cordua © 2017

Like a pomegranate with owl's dark disturbance

I boil water for coffee and I break the day with my eyes:
I silt by her watery eyes, and I want to collapse into the sun.
She lifts me high as water when she breathes
Little black wings flutter over us and smother
Then drape us.
I want to collapse into the sun.
If I could only collapse into the sun
And eye her water on the moon
Collapsing into the moon.
I silt by her watery eyes, and I want to collapse into the sun.
I want the blood of the black wings to drip onto our backs
Like a pomegranate with owl's dark disturbance.


Anatol Cordua © 2017

And then come ashore and learn our ways

Billows of hefty white swig in the sky
Sick and licentious
Scab inches
In
And to your heart.
Will nod you to
Non-existence.
Will play with your skull
In a sea garden
Watch the sea-miffs
Your presence
Never lift.
The little muffins you thought you could have
For free, how naff, rather spittle in your eye.
How one craves another's finish:
The woman she had seventy men.
Children present, unfed.
Casements-thonged-promises floated in seas of rising corn
The myopic bird fell
A storm
The storm of an age.
Wash then,
And then come ashore and learn our ways.

Anatol Cordua © 2017

Waughesque

The bells peal out again.
I felt stomped within.
Until they came.
They chime. Rest content
For this brief immortal
Escape from life
They have caught.
Time passes. Glee
Immanently disappears
Before it appears again.
You are lucky if you
Survive the cycle:
That is of course
The argument.
You'll know when.
The nightingale and the wren
Will suffuse from an old book
You used and read, Waughesque.


Anatol Cordua © 2017

The little things in the cupboards

The little things in the cupboards
Are full of powders and wine,
Sailors' needs wrapped away from necessity
Trained for gusto and rough palettes.

The little things in the cupboards
Are full of powders and wine,
Spinsters' needs wrapped into form,
And an old lady’s sin.

The little things in the cupboards are a lie.


Anatol Cordua © 2017

The Seven Poems of Raj

The Seven Poems of Raj

Pound got it, he understood.
This paradox –
How could he suck-up to a hoax?
The organic process,
He possessed most.
How could he so err!
The Somme, I know;
Gaudier, I know;
Sassoon, Owen;
But why the ill creature,
Pound, why
The theory!
Sweet Prince,
Gaudier
Your protégé
Your youth
Pound
Be free
You’re loved.
How I?!

When I was a child

24
When I was a child,
We didn't care, us children,
About anything. Thinness
Of reality was our life, even,
At that odd age, the oddest
Of ages, our immediate
Goal. Ah, but the little love eras,
Containing themselves
I had for a girl at a Christmas party
In San Francisco: the Victorian
Houses on Steiner Street,
A white stairwell, up to her room,
At thirteen, we were not joking.
The house and the adults played Bach and Haydn
We cavorted upstairs, I felt she was above
My station, and the glowing ardor in my chest
And arms and shoulders, guts and groin,
Was that much (you count) more intensive.
She was lovely, and with the world.
When I was a child, these things, don't you know,
Across from the Alamo
Park on Christmas Eve,
And she.

Healers Beware!

Healers beware!
There is no one here in a wheelchair,
No invalid.
We’re squeaky clean with resistance.
To us, you’re quite dead.

I write, you know,
It’s a serious endeavor.
I try not to raise egos.
Whatever happens,
I’m aware of.

Is this what you want, a man of your time?

Is this what you want, a man of your time?

I’ll destroy everything I’ve written.
Let the geniuses have at it instead.
There are so many geniuses I’ll destroy my subhuman work,
And abide with “the little Hamlets”
To be had in vodka and wild conversation.
Let unsturdy lessons kill me off.
Is this what you want, a man of your time?
Do you want a man of your time?


Anatol Cordua © 2017

You see these old German towns have pursued me

You see these old German towns have pursued me
And I have slept in their dingy hotels
And I have slept in their lonely beds
And I have cried at night waking at night
Not knowing where I was.
There have been deep nights
When I have felt smothered by the towns.
There have been ringing bells in church cathedrals
That scored me to the bone in the dark.
Only to return from my night walk
To the dingy hotel.

Anatol Cordua © 2017

Do we have evolutionary relics of the bicameral mind?

Apples on gnarled branches
Cider in smoky woods

The townspeople.

Do we have evolutionary relics of the bicameral mind?
Are there simmering voices that want release
From before the bicameral?
I am taking it as a fact that is like a rosebud or a seed
That is at once is I, the demotic, and the gods.

Anatol Cordua © 2017

Rises, rises like burning randy oak

Rises, rises like burning randy oak.

Today we can’t allow a polity; it would be frivolous,
We're too deep in abandonment: and so powers can’t allow it.
It is sepulchral, everday life can’t allow it.
Under the urban ramparts there are people sleeping
Who have no home: they are abandoned literally.
One wonders how long this curve can last.
Perhaps for a very long time,
Until a new epoch,
Rises, rises like burning randy oak.


Anatol Cordua © 2017

The wave thermidor the blue white waves

The wave thermidor the blue white waves

The wave thermidor the blue white waves
And I bend and lean into her,
And ask her why she’s throwing skeletons to the sea bottom.
I bend into her, and she laughs, the laughing is scorn, scorn wanting to be elation,

That problem why she’s so potently revolutionary, her body an oceanic moon
To the thermidor demon that possesses her water.

Love, do it quickly!


- Anatol Cordua © 2017

I was certain she would come

I was certain she would come.

I was certain she would come.
There’s time here, it’s unbound by the action of the sea:
I thought that might bring her
Time spreading out like lithium
Our thighs breaking bread in the odd gas struck by light
Lit up tortoises dragging their bellies to the dry sand at night.
She is rising and falling with the sea into the dark


- Anatol Cordua © 2017

The wave thermidor

In Hawaii’s oceanic rush: the wave thermidor.
Looking at life things are very literal.
There are no pirates, in this mind:
I stand quite out.
There is no agenda, in this mind, it is an organic thing.
Parade toy soldiers of the mind, and miss me there:
I won’t go to that place.
I’m a helicopter bug and I fly there, fly, fly simply
In pleasant boredoms of a hammock strung between two mango trees
In Hawaii’s oceanic rush: the wave thermidor.

My symbols fete love

My symbols fete love.

My symbols fete love.
They do this with a saying no more complicated than that.
Her breasts are ballooning iconic cycles.
Between the jars are the star-gods shining as though the moon was twin
The wrecked face on the bashed dark side wanted to turn further away
In proud abashment and grief that is anger
And inside the core black teeth hang from them
Like a cancer.


- Anatol Cordua © 2017

I know the times are little and short

15 The saner the stranger you go

15

The saner the stranger you go

The saner the stranger you go, and listen

The stranger the saner you go, and hear

A happiness a brief piston spinning

And it is cold in Beethoven's room

Over the crowd in the street, his

Mittened hands are cold as he beats

Out the keys on his wrecked Klavier

Deaf and cold in his workshop of the

Hearing mind and draughty cold

Of the room, large white doors clanging,

His misunderstood nephew

Checking in on him, shouting

"Uncle!' "Yes, yes, all fine boy!'

- Anatol Cordua (c) 2017

42 Declared spirit, impoverished

42

Declared spirit, impoverished

Declared spirit, impoverished

Running on the snow-iced edges

Of civilization in truth bared bandaged

And naked and starving, Freedom.

Who alluded to this, in the strength

Of words? Primo Levi.

I am Sephardic. I might have known it

At Terezin, when I ran, thinking of it,

And fell, cutting a hand in the deep iced snow. O Loss, Anatol!

You petty monger, searching for alike knowledge.

But you live here. Would alike be surprised?

“Do you but change the name / Of you

Is said the same:” Horace.

Do I aggrandize? I am not a murderer.

Am I innocent, in other wise?

Yes. May I judge? Yes.

Nothing will tug me from me.

- Anatol Cordua (c) 2017

35 It's quiet. My mind gets sick.

35

It's quiet. My mind gets sick.

It's quiet. My mind gets sick.

I cry deep. No hypotheticals.

Assertions.

When it gets sick

It’s a physical pain

In the head. Or the brain.

Pulsation. Pessimism.

Strip it down.

Bare it in its parts.

Let water and myrrh

Be thrown on its fire.

- Anatol Cordua (c) 2017

Or a pair of hands.

Or a pair of hands.

Or a pair of hands.

Words wrenched away;

Not for the lie

To combine

Out of me.

It may unsay.

But not

Through me!

“Let the lie enter the world; even dominate it; but not through me!" Alexandr Solzhenitsyn

- Anatol Cordua (c) 2017

23 A thousand canopies all ported on

23

A thousand canopies all ported on

A thousand canopies all ported on

Ten thousand stilts, Landing, Helios spins

A foreign ring carrying water for

The human races. Things we know, leaning

A hand on a table, and staring at

The wall, hazed out. Phased beams! of sound sharpen

Him, a Cathedral ringing its bells, he

Sits for a moment in meditation,

Then stands up and goes out and calls,

All men ho! Tack the lines!

Autumnpink viola sub rosa in

Suite no. 3 in C, Johann Sebastian. Bach,

The ease of coming and going

The men keep the canopies working for man,

Helios, is probably pleased.

- Anatol Cordua (c) 2017

21 The last whit of imitation of St. George's

21

The last whit of imitation of St. George's

The bells again this, of a cadence morning

Sub Rosa, in my ears.

Alas though, this time there is mummery

Left in my aural organ;

My sensual seeing springs from it

Blue and white chalk

The last whit of imitation of St. George's

Awakening.

- Anatol Cordua (c) 2017

19 Me? I’ve led a gluttonous life

19

Me? I’ve led a gluttonous life

Me? I’ve led a gluttonous life filled with

Giant footsteps and eating, speed, like Ajax,

Stuffing, like the Turkey on the counter,

And here I am, ready, readied, couth-practiced:

Framed wide at the shoulders and aged elbows,

And stretched plumage at the chest and ribs

Dirt beard up my cheeks and curled dilemmas

Climbing towards my ear lobes, festered with loose

Indiscrete hairs pulled out violently –

A Hemingway-ape taking giant steps

Into the thinning blubber of the world

At its worst. I would almost be Cato,

And tear my guts.

- Anatol Cordua (c) 2017

18 More than mortal: not less

18

More than mortal: not less

More than mortal: not less;

The common course:

Your sources are mine –

The Girondins got

The shaft.

We are, not,

Going to let you,

Unhand, this time.

How? Show us

The way.

We'll watch

From a spectacular

Ship.

- Anatol Cordua (c) 2017

1 Where is a closed circle of encounters

1

Where is a closed circle of encounters

Where is a closed circle of encounters

With a person that are rosy enough

For gifts and thankless thanks (i.e., natural

givens), grist, of all type, come into the mill.

We hardly know the sky.

We push our arms to mighty ceilings.

Casements of thonged hubris

Fall away to extra-solar abandonment.

Halcyon's eggs are safe in the cave

Settled foams float in,

The Gods have taken control.

- Anatol Cordua (c) 2017

3 Driving; but now I hear bells

3

Driving; but now I hear bells

Driving; but now I hear the bells, sitting

A morning over coffee and tablet-

Table. They have faded to pure silence,

It was a lowering fade of the chimes

To zero

Now comes a bus;

It creates its rush through the air for an

Oceanic estimation in my ears. There were flowers, you know,

In the windows over the crowded street

When I was driving the day the day before:

Pastels and grey hinge and glass.

- Anatol Cordua (c) 2017

32 I take my caffeine where I can get it

32

I take my caffeine where I can get it;

I take my caffeine where I can get it;

I take pleasure in knowing that my life

Is in movement the way it is, not the way

It could be; it is full sufficient. I,

Feel, a golden aura of eased rapture;

To know it, is exquisite. I’ll ride the

Mule-train, mule-train; letters far-out to the

People who go West, curlicues brushing

Their ears, their necks. I’ve got odds on them's:

All money they’ll get them all. But I am

A lonely man, “they call the wind Maria.”

I’d be Cato, and rip out my guts,

Than spin this failed web and tug me against me.

All that Dante could do but with crudity

Point out an old gray man, a horror of

Misconception and frivolity, to

Be yarded now with a pensive malice.

I’ll take my caffeine where it sits on yet

Cool granite up the gorges and waterfalls

In the Sierras, with rattlesnake and eggs

For breakfast, the cold sun on the ridges

Breaking my boots. Odds are, by nightfall.

- Anatol Cordua (c) 2017

39 The flowers staffed flags waving geranium cream puffs

39

The flowers staffed flags waving geranium cream puffs

The flowers staffed flags waving geranium cream puffs

For an absolute fanfare of the things of the world, the little

Things, toy trains, loveable bleached lampshades, copper

Wires sticking out of a piece of wood outside.

Little ink monkeys and cool Katherines play

On the roofs, and throw ball into the baseball mitts

Hidden in the canisters below, which shade the alleyway.

The Supreme Sun steps in and says, Hello.

Startled, the ink monkeys and the cool Katherines

Put their hands over their brows like visors,

Then smile and laugh and say things like crazygonuts.

- Anatol Cordua (c) 2017

They've all read Montaigne

They've all read Montaigne

I am trying to hear. Boards, ribbons, flowers.
That's the cubicity of silence.
Rain just taps on it, the water splits.
Wax sits next to it in statuesque.
The man's face bends down to it
Still smelling of a tonic from a shave
He leaves it.
All these little creatures,
They are all very cheeky.
They've all read Montaigne.

Anatol Cordua (c) 2017

There are flowers in the mirrors

There are flowers in the mirrors
I see you. Fever! I see the sheets.

There is a bed stand table. There are mirrors.

There are flowers in the mirrors.

There is the fullness that never ends:

I seem to see you, I thought I had, had I?

I placed a locket by your hand.

Do you remember? Feel for it. It must be there.

 Anatol Cordua (c) 2017