Cantata of the Red Rock Shadow

1.
the halo around incandescence
whites out my eyes.
Background sounds lull into dull
white noise.

Images fragment, sounds of trains
dopple through planes,
the geometric barriers of architecture.
Negative space the only true space.
The page bears fruit.
Outside the mesquite thrashes the air,
unhappy again that it is spring here.
In spring the wind gods vanquish all life,
succulence gone to wind and dust,
a cantata created from fragmentation,
the apocalyptic present,
the smell of lilac from a neighbor’s yard.

A noose dangling like a naked light bulb.
I am thinking nothing not contained
in the halo of a hanging light bulb,
naked in the night.
Nothing.
Always nothing.

2.
Waiting for the knock at the door.
Twin lovers never the twain shall meet.
The beast with two backs broken.
Boys locked in closets of baseball bats.
The fear of rats.
An infant howling for its mother’s drugs.

Take this.
Eat.
Bread my body.
Wine my blood.
Easter season brings conflagrations
close to home.
She stumbles beneath the weight of it.
her cross to bear.
Fire scourges west Texas.
What phoenix can we pray to rise up?
Low in the grave he lay.
our savior.
Waiting the coming day.
Our lord.
Her cross to bear.
Her life to lose.
Her grasp on life loose.
Breath turned brown.
Death’s earthy ground.

3.
Sound of water running.
Telephone ringing.
Rock of ages cleft for me singing.
He is dead and we are left dying.
Sepulchral voices accuse of lying.
The sound of water over rock.
Paper over rock.
Scissors rend paper.
Rock breaks scissors.
Superfluous options.
A liar’s waiver, voice haunting.
Spiritis evaporate to dust.
trains thunder through the barrio.
The sound of motion.
Steel on steel.

Hurry before the spirits steal
what’s left of sanity.
Peal after clamorous peal.
Bells ring warnings.
Effulgence pouring.
Someone’s at the door—
out the door running.

4.
The murmur of women praying.
Drunken lilies
nod their heads like sages.
Irish poets sing in French.
Smell the scent of angels falling.
Bells clamor above death’s stench.
Sparrows huddle, not the least of these.
Desertscape desiccated and austere.
Heaven the sound of water running
over rocks somewhere hidden.
Somewhere out there a choir of angels
beat boys with baseball bats.
Adesti Fidelis.

5.
Four flaming drays running away.
Everywhere the smell of excrement
and fire.
The life as sacrament.
The poem as testament.