METAPHYSICS OF THE SHADOW

    

  

Pindar said

a man is just a dream 

of his shadow

I am the nightmare

of my walking shadow

 not even sure

it's mine.

*

Plotino refused to be

portraited because his self

was only the shadow

of his platonic prototype.

The shadow of a shadow

of a shadow of a shadow...

And the last shadow just

a seagreen twinkle

 in my cat's gaze.

*

Sat upon a rock in Montségur 

stronghold of the hapless 

Cathars and songful birds

the poet aligned his heart

to the sun in summer solstice

The poet became one of the Perfecti

sat upon a rock in Montségur

but his shadow rushed back

to his lofty mansarde in the old Paris.

*

Smelling the days

like an idiot savant

sniffs the numbers

he scavenges the night

like vulpine figures

searching for his own shadow:

early morning he traded it

for a bottle of wine and a mutt

who laughs out loud

instead of barking to the moon.

.

FLASHES

 

Wild geese

where are you going now?

Sweet day not to alight

where the clan of hyenas

drink at sunset.

*

the past is not a foreign country

the past is already my country

for good. A country with no flag

other than laughter and the erect

phallus of an African god.

*

 (Venus Anadyomede)

She sprung like a goddess

from the whirling froth

of dream-seascapes

He stepped into her glance

with the randomness

of a fallen card

following the saline fragance

of her vellus hair

She embraced him with a touch

of a dolphin playing around

dissolving him

in the sunblind waves.

*

I am a mortal who made love

with a goddess

and must die

and will never know

the goddess'name.

*

Don't bite again

the wrong side of the apple

-said the Sphinx squatted

in the middle of a vast desert

among the italianate ruins

of my mind

A sandstorm coating

her lion-wise head

*

The dogs scenting me.

I am already a wolf.

Maybe the moon.

*

like Anaxagoras I point to the stars

as my native home

even beyond the dark matter

*

All day long 

I've been smelling deep

the moonshiny aroma

 of jasmine trellises.

All night long

I've been smelling deep

the jasmined aroma

of the moonlight.

*

Odd times

I write to God

and she replies to me

in form of dancing cranes.

*

A scarecrow wrapped

in a military overcoat

received the splashdown

of prison vans and lorries

passing by. 

                     A symphonic rain

caressing wheatfields

                                        and roadkill.

The sky is like a mauve notepaper

where a solitary swallow

scribbling a ghazal is observed

by caravan of gypsies

and lovers just about to elope.

*

Whatever the wolves

      Think of rain

           So do I.