21.5.09

The Child Messiah

In a diaspora a bride is kneeling. Red needled
Rhine roses, white flowering, and rowan
embower her, worming

methodically, Gothically. Butter-colored
berries penciled in viridian wreathe her
hair, coiled to the hollow
of an immaculate breast. Within
that maw of two, unfinished
hands, a messiah begins.

His back is spotted with gold,
his fingers are filigree born from her body,
his lips love the timbre of her
nipples, and his belly is full of her.



One wind-reduced tree appeals the windless face
of the bald blue Father and his bearding
Son, swathed in crinoline

and icing winged. She molds the boy
beneath this tree.



Now the woman rises slender backed and silver
chested. She faces her discontent,
and Canaan becomes
dust.
The child faces the water.
The other shore, she assures him, will be
the same: the same white
grass, the same wild rowan and glass blue
sky, leaves sanctuary clean and gray, green
as dull, blunted blades.
Look-- There are no shadows
on the river, no serrated fingers
where blue fish feed.
But I am free, he coils.
I am twenty-four and I am free.
I could go anywhere from her
e,

his wrist flies and
flails. Dust-colored
magi smile, sucking
marrow and bits of roasted skin
from wings. Reliquary
wrist
, the lampblack decree.



One woman of successive faces
appeals this bearded son.

Each holds the boy beneath her
tree.
He must birth pomegranates and violets and
all things green and unraveling.
He must abandon his granite
patrimony and attend her
shadows with the unfailing
furrows and arrows of a father.
And there will be nights he must
attend alone;

but his lips love the timbre of her nipples as her hair
plays upon the sky a promise
of wings.



The Child Messiah [#36]
© 2009 Fammerée


* * * * *

Richard Fammerée
fammeree@att.net
director@universeofpoetry.org


* * * * *

12.5.09

Each Body Beautiful


Always ready to be unloosed from satin and the white bodice of clouds,
each body beautiful, its river, its sinuous logic,
its deliberate destination

towards the sun, away from exhausted deities, away from death

There I am before death and here after
the hesitation
between leaves, between
knees


The sky is worn thin, I planned to sing


[chorus, when sung]
Twelve thousand skies
Twelve thousand nights
I should have known
I would outgrow a fascination with empty




Each Body Beautiful [#35]
© 2009 Fammerée


* * * * *

Richard Fammerée
fammeree@att.net
director@universeofpoetry.org


* * * * *

Photograph by Susan Aurinko

* * * * *

11.5.09

Scar (Just Another Scar on the Body)


But sleep, a beaded talisman. Our hearts working
as rain, fluttering

forests of rose and bone, perpetually reborn, protected
by thorns, where fear is sin

where no sword turns

where angels are the body within

each body a portal

Each window as hesitation
What are salt and glass to me


You understand even if you pretend not to
The way the dying light favored you five hours later--
staining your blouse, staining our fingers

that last light lives in your body
and the soul of your body as auric deities hidden in dripping
caves


[chorus, when sung]
Just another scar on the body
Every arrow points to somewhere
You are always pointing to come home




Just Another Scar on the Body [#34]
© 2009 Fammerée


* * * * *

Richard Fammerée
fammeree@att.net
director@universeofpoetry.org


* * * * *

Photograph by Susan Aurinko

* * * * *

5.5.09

La fille de l'eau


La fille de l'eau, your petals
are palest.
Here you are a chalice
and here a narrow
sarcophagus diligently
cut and dressed
in frost, vested in
silk, pampered and pinned.

For the few months I was Vermeer, your profile confused
even the contentious God.

You wore orchids and chamomile. You chose afternoons. Your tears
found the font of my pillow.

After I wept at your knees, your taste was furtive and alluvial
as rain. Rain nourishes everything but history.

This is our secret, and the secret of trees.

Your poetess is Ophelia and your eyelids, her relic.

Le vent est de nouveau dans les arbres, et tu est inviolable.



La fille de l'eau [#33]
© 2009 Fammerée


* * * * *

Richard Fammerée
fammeree@att.net
director@universeofpoetry.org


* * * * *

Photograph by Susan Aurinko

* * * * *