Frank Cebulski
Frank Cebulski
Humans have always wanted to make a useless thing.
The Triumph of Death at Pisa
The Triumph of Death at Pisa
I
The Tower
Time locus is in the body's person
Corpus force released at death
Sonic throttles modulates
As distance darts (diminishing) between
Pisan pomme and earth buried green
Cemetery marble name slabs
Given by the living as monument to
Living science and progressive unseen
Advance of inclining generations
All those dead,
the tower,
wanting to lie down.
Off balance wavering, a priori sight,
Tips out over, oblique and back, probes
Where shadows rain.
Reason pendulates
when death is near,
swings its
natal line.
Campo Santo Trionofo della Morte
Savage odors gaff the body's gravity,
Drive back (trip) ancestral feet.
Gay lords and gray robed ladies tilt away.
Their thin hounds turn, sniff, test the air
And Death steps forth its bare locus empty
Where understanding rights the casque of
accidence
and rat discovery
whiskers death
laps newness
that is veritas
in skull chalk paws
The visitor sees vertically sees
The horizontal dead
the fresco freckled
plasterings
imagines all that Death let stand
(master stroke, residuum in form remain)
Galileo leans
on the world's
bell and Death
spins in in
terrestrial
heresy
The blistered walls decay,
Leave unreaped fields
Perfidious in broken swatches
Slatted off continents
Viscid on moribund walls
Satan marauding among
Death's peeled cosmogonies.
Wrought studded the ponderous doors
Stand dumbly in the way
The fervid expanse of newsod lawn
Makeroom nature for the dead-in-stone
And the numbing loss of place.
II
Campo Santo
Wind turned now
In ice and air
The frost iron forms
Interstice of space
And framed landscape
The flight of dipping birds outside the arched windows
Beats a rhythm on the waves of the lake of the air
The river a blare of light
Trumpeting against stone
Resounding on the water's glare
The silvered flight's staggered flash
Of doom.
The textured twilight
Sweeps the tower top
Sky and cloud abloom
With moment of reeling radiance
Investing the earth's slight
Tilt with paradise and
Holy soil from Jerusalem
Sequestered in silence
For the sleep of death.
Socrates' wish: To die knowing something more.
The Leaning House of Torun
Where Copernicus was born.
Coincident vision of revolution
Of imbalance born.
Nothing but death
is the battle
.
No war but this
uneven cannonade.
Frontier becomes what it has always been:
historical declivity
in time.
And we depopulate the dead
To depersonalize Death.
The mongrelized dead crawl
Horizontally up the Baptistery walls
Crowd the Romanesque doors
He comes to me in forest night
Like moon beams strike with darkest light
The jagged bark of trees.
That is the way you are in scarcity
And pavid night spreads the lawns with worms.
Odor of mushrooms in fire.
It is lonely here at Death's feet
With fullness trussed in thought,
My dark hair wreathed in guardian
Care about the roots and stones,
Your back pressed against my knees,
Your head buried in my declivities.
So that thirsty nature might her wet world
Renew and fill to standing all her vesseled
Landscapes' parched desire.
Where her conscripts make the watching
Sheep, the cattled hillsides sleep.
Shards of darkness
Where Death's shadow
Moves the land.
III
Natural View
as the nearly new
awaits the further side
every window holds blue pattern
of its counterpane
the element of surprise
waits awhile within
its skies the trees
of hunter green
the cypress boughs
deeper upon the light
bring forth
their branches
their branches bring forth
red of bark
suitable to their
poise
it were sumptuousness
indeed rich reprise
to muscle more their
dignity and couch
the eyes
the eyes couch
upon the bed
of memory
here their jaggedness
alerts premonitory
residence in earth
so like the master mark
to hit it so
wide but true
tapestry
permutation
through and through
through
and beyond the blue
yonder imagination
incites the serenity
it invites
incites the mind to inculcate
its version connatural
with what we feel
we feel
innate passion
inbred love
love that we see
see that we
love
consanguinity
of art and art of love
nature the counterpart
to our desire
desert
by a waterfall
baroque thirst wander
lust among the trees
springtide
species of our grounding
brook spring pool
lake of our inheritance
genesis by doing
going
among plants animals
swiftly starring streams
watershed
of our delight
delight
below the plain I
see the lion lope
resolute
to his prey
obscured by dust
devils and drought
zebras
turn in a circle swirl
among whirled stripes
tremble
like the trees shudder
shimmer in the small hope
of wind
IV
Elegy for a Beauty Unknown
Artemis Astarte Aphrodite
Look on stone and blend brushed hair
Spread in grey oscuro air
about the cornice of a room
She startles purity and some unwashed pain
For an affinity of endings
should not see
Fair blushed beauty and what comes before
Energy of movement against the tactile fluted jamb
augury in bones
Two days she lay among
The cottered parts of human
Hatchery
of bones and stone.
Here above unknown
What shall be known beneath.
Rain stains gray stone
Spreads downward from her hair
Fan matted in vibrant grass
Green darkens the cenotaph
Above her corpse because
She could not wait her own.
Then to rattle in the sage surveyed dawn
Matched in lime
Stretched fire
Forms in cloud close bodies
Gather to rightness
Execute for loss
The grave gathered lot trampled
Nodding and later
redburnt the glowered
darkness
acacias in lustre
flourishing halflight
Blind even for Death
For the closed heart
Whose burning fondness for centricity
Residue of Iris in mind
Bridges the chasms that deepen in mourning
And falter after famine filled
Galileo lucky even in his numbers
4 9 10 15
Proportion of the degree of speed
To arrive by chance at the parabola
Of gravity that serves nature's need.
Toute mort doit estre de mesmes sa vie.
Nous ne devenons pas autres pour mourir.
Every death ought to hold proportion
With the life before it.
We do not become others for dying.
Montaigne, "Of Cruelty"
A hushed propensity for weariness
Weighs heavily on my mind:
Stoneweight
Lifted by a flight of birds.
Death that comes late is never tardy fare.
Morte cavent animae, semper que priore relicta
Sede, novis dormini vivunt, habitantque receptae.
Souls never die, but leaving one dwelling
Are received into and inhabit a new.
Ovid, Metamorphoses, xv, 158
V
The Triumph of Death:
Hell Mouth
Spoteyed arms, greedy Beelzebub gathers sinners in harvest
Into his Hell Mouth, gaping bowels of eternal gestation
Damnation of endless peristalsis to emerge,
Impaled on hooks.
VI
MauvaisesTerres/The Badlands
An eye through the window
looks of caught-in-the act
deep embolus moves
somewhere among the ease of living
a hidden space unfurls
solicitude of diminished
capacity
mark of evil eye
one white brow and lashes
constellations of raised white mesas
calluses upon elbows
and a fan, spectrum of green,
band of the iris
still within the unclosed eye
entrains radial chasmic light
In London once off
Russell Square I saw a frail
White hand with age
Spots push aside
A white worn curtain
At street level as
I passed I
Was unable to see
More and fear
Coursed with the knowledge
There was no more
That Death let us
See what is small
Weak and diminished
And an arm entering
A coat sleeve once
That I held stayed
Stayed my mind
At the disembodied
Crook of it
The inference of this wedded arc begins
In paleo-springs of an under earth
Transcends her moist designs
The vicinity of a circle
Timor mortis conturbat me.
Death the Taker.
VII
Mutability
A simple augmentation here
Descends as the moon a path
Of memory a shaft of light
Sends across the sea.
"I am as I was,"
The visitor says,
"Peninsular and
Perishable as the day."
Risk of the wave to rise again
Against the land and think:
"This all moves for me.
I am God of this
Individuality. I think
For all. No happiness
Must be but one I see
Irrevocably entwined
With thought of me."
The day amends and
The small sea wave
Bends.
VIII
Easeful Death
Wetness is upon the air
Wet color is in the air
And the brick seep turns dark
To the wall that shudders
Before wind and light
That lust carries prominence
By shape, transcendence
By vertical flit
Or the remnant landscape
To death. To light. The birds
No longer wing but harder strike
And buffet among boughs
The breath wreathes form
To sight, clarity of winter order,
"Send out the flame
Of your desire that it issue forth
With inner mark impressed."
Paradiso, Canto XVII
That season seize
Heart and head
Their inventory seal
By fire of their selfless grace.
IX
Special Relativity
Light glitters brilliant chits on confetti
Scattered waters estuary a diversion of
Light and smooth steel blue surfaces
Three dark figures converse form
Triangle of ease and occupation one leans
Back elbow on top wood grained railing
Another right apex gestures
Rolling circular motion his right hand
Turning stirring his information
The third leans long back straight
Stands listens to events
Mutely unfold tour boat
$5.00 CRUISE yachts in background
Peaked lights triangular chance caps
On concrete posts stately line
Dock a box of pink red white
Geraniums add foreground
Perspective diminishes to figures
Foreshortens through coned lights
To three thin smoke stacks across
Harbor before faint blue mountains
Behind buildings beige and orange
Bright blurry clouds above
Skiffs tatters white shards
Two street lamps wrought iron gate between
Pigeons bob shallow depth of field where
Occasional gull hover suspends the seen
X
Theory of the Present
An Asian woman looks into the distant
Ancestral moonrise and shining bamboo
Waters on the wide river shimmer moon dance.
The light of many moons dragons,
Legendary Phoenix, thousand cranes
Happiness. Her garment of the same device,
Silken thread of rich gold sheen, colors
For godliness, longevity, prosperity.
The forest's jade reprise warbles in the hillsides
Across the river. Her primary color blue,
Blue of her vest, blue of her robe, gloss
And glisten of the kingfisher deep in her eyes.
Her eyeglasses rim the fiery reflection,
Red Viper at her footstool, her view
Of sunlit clouds her husband behind her
Oblivious to her vision and the Mongol hordes,
The passersby ideal theory of the present, the here
And now, god of commerce and industry,
Ledger and account. His green pen moves
Across red lined page, of jade its justification.
XI
TOE
Theory of Everything
The early method by lamplight and curious swirls
Of dust and steam rising from the cup heat
Flows currents over the glass chimney darkly
Smoked genesis of pattern and generation
Of convection turbulence and fluid flow
Dynamics of creation entropy and order
In the universe heat charged thermo
Dynamics and subatomic quantum
Mechanics of motion and unpredictable
Uncertainty of time speed and location
Planck's constant and the drift of stars
Planets in cyclic duration the still cold moment
Of the heart and unknown matter in circulation
The blood clogged vessels waiting abiding
In genetics and heredity their proscribed time
Dwelling and habitation in the drift of things
Human and transcendent metaphysics
Of the molecule astrophysics of the atom
Early and late aboriginal dreamlines
Tracery of patterns of the soul
Geologic striations body markings
Information pouring from the surface
Lip of the black hole electrochemical erotic
Stimulation and emotional vector of the mind
In the morning sunlight steam arises
From the earthenware coffee cup on the glass
Topped table in the spacetime checkered kitchen
XII
GUT
General Unified Theory
1
Dexterous bright movement
Among hidden parks
Of dark imagination
Figure in a landscape
Shadows her idea of
Isolation and necessity
Fear of motherhood
Womb distended
Origin at term
Of fetal information
The buoyant weight
Of mystery engendered
Rock and tree
Dark companions
She acknowledges
Sustains in fear
With graceful gravity
Her steps impress
The soft warp
Of pine needles
Organic matter
Compost of death
And generation
Unknown desire
For procreation
Progeny to belay
Time's incubation
Forces weak and strong
Bind these generations
Their oscillations
Damp and amplify
Uncertain fetal
Movement other
Worldly synchronous
Parallel observation
At the close of day
2
These feelings both
Known and unknown
To me I feel their
Proximity in and out
Of time movement
What movement does
The future hold
Bold stroke of genius
And star intellect
Or narrow confine
Of limitation
The same mind
Stamped in human
Kind symbiosis
Of genetic pair
Or pear shape I
Wear the cosmos'
Vibrant open state
Periodic pulsing
Of our hearts
Independent but
One in time our
Sum of histories
To create a single
Path in human time
The past contains
The future holds
All my complex
Ethos pathos
In this child
Not all mine
Or mine to say
The hieroglyphic
Of the day
Daily life's
Determination
This cool evening
Quiet shadows
Are mine are mine
And his in present
And future space
And time diminished
To a single point
Of consciousness
That does not exist
As ever it is before
The wake of awareness
Closes upon thought
Imagination plunges
Forward dolphins
Playful cross
Cut the bow
Before the mind engenders
Ideas caught
In a net of stasis
Spume of recognition
The flying scud of time
While oblivion
Cyclic history
Concede the error
Repeat locked
In closed space
Curvature of womb
And placenta
Loops like veins
Of both hearts
Beat rhythmically
Arrhythmically in
Personal occlusion
Shared experience
Of blood flow
And Ur-darkness
4
This palpable
Darkness in liquid
World where sounds
Transfer to heart
And lungs breathe
Vibrant quake
Proximity of voice
Surge of blood
Flow the swish
Swish wish
Of harmony
Patient foreknowledge
Of birth right
Human hegemony
Spiral of spacetime