LOUSE IN AMORE

Marta Steele

Copyright© Marta Steele 1973-2010. All rights reserved.

EPIGRAPH

Laus in amore mori.

--Sextus Propertius (2.1.47)

(It is praiseworthy to die in love; a good counterpoint to Horace’s “Dulce et decorum est pro patria mori—It is honorable and appropriate to die for one’s country.”)

DEDICATION

to the Louse:

Doubt not that I loved you

in hideous pain

alone

for five long years

since I left you.

and to my fleur du mall

Liza Gwendolyn Marci Steele

and to all those who kept me

alive to create her

and thereafter.

COCKTAIL PARTY

I

A distant hearth-mirage beyond the glass before the door;

it is gold and warmth.

Arms of wealth have parted a sleek curtain

timed to ambush and destroy

once the decoy deceives.

II

The door seems to lead farther than to four walls.

Beyond the glass fourth wall

the dark traces of tangling green

are trapped and waiting.

The door seems too large

for this lonely house of two;

a thousand might pass through and never leave;

they might melt into the green beyond.

The door would still be passage

for a galaxy of misled wooers

of contagious and speakable light.

III

Bread, wine, and wait!

The feast will spread from wall to wall.

Footprints cannot echo, swallowed.

Imported air mutes

words to forced confession.

The walls consume

and relay back

the password of the master hand.

IV

The limit of disgrace,

inverse of the sensual glories

spread to entice and intoxicate,

lingers in the reflection of the glass.

that blocks and chokes off the dark forest beyond.

Once this is served to the night,

lest the feast become it ,

an enchanted song is played

to clear the air,

but that too is charmed into a shattering parody of melody,

disgraced by itself into silence.

THE BATTLE

I am clothed in gold,

wlued with warmth

and why now pursued

by a galaxy of offerings?

--ears, touch, and a gift earlier more golden

than my eyes now perceive.

l can see my words,

possessed I question how.

Later the leaving is a battle with attraction

to melt into the light;

but it has wings and is a part

I have fled earlier, will see fly again,

and would pursue

--at least desire to.

1 have borrowed the warmth as wings to fly now

into cool black airs

that may lead to hell

but maybe the same

and almost safe.

Words I cannot hear

but see strike back as sparks

--none quite finds me.

I reach to touch one,

am burned but still alive

as 1 see the door blast shut

but too late, almost not,

--too late to swallow me

and later strew remnants on a river,

any river that would carry me forever

to nonentity,

the home of rage uncamouflaged.

V

Intrigue, the camouflage of rage

spreads through the air, its accomplice,

reaching toward one mind

armed only in black and gray

to divert desire, invite reverence

in gold and warmth.

The walls close to kill and warm instead;

the gold suddenly out of the sky

betrays the master hand,

drawn by its inverse

to become a marvel

rather than the unquestioned trapping

handed down to guild an appetite it cannot grace.

VI

An breeze beneath the glass

out of the green beyond the glass

--a dark world two

had earlier aroused,

escaped from a war that involved them

a suggestion of another fatal path beyond,

or within (beside the hearth aimed at one cold soul

among the galaxy for whom

warm wine was bread.)

The air admired lingers

seldom recognized;

though cool, it also warms.

The wine dr1nkers look away

but the corner of every eye

seems to see the tare

run its time

slowly he promised

fairy tale venom.

They swallow unreflected the warmth and gold

and hear what the walls echo. secretly,

but not what is said.

Freer to fight forever now

I go bearing gold and warmth

--bearing not being;

it is too heavy.

I cannot put it on nor give it up

doomed to gray and black

and a blinding acquisition

I own beyond me,

will crawl to cling to

and starve before allowing blindness to abandon.

I only can lift it,

bear with it and only

I know how to own

whatever now is mine.

VIII

Those who lingered heard

enough to lust after blood

beaten even out of rock,

hear another war unpromised,

a defense unprophesied

by a master hand limp suddenly new. No one

knew that the dream of gold and warmth

was stronger than bored

accumulation now suddenly

escaped, no one knew where.

But the curse cancelled out by extremes

was somewhere now beyond the glass

and the door beyond the hearth

somehow diminished. They had

to bend over as one by one they fled,

mocked by the hearth

as they passed into the dark

--suddenly lusting after it as never earlier.

They were warmed by the air

warmed by an earlier escape

they suddenly dreamed

to inherit,

soon :teared,

later closed their eyes to

like the curse

now trapped behind the glass.

But the palace of the master hand

became a place,

where every time the wind blew

its trappings were displaced

and a mud hut revealed

that a galaxy of gold

lavished in defense

could never hide

WALK AWAY

Are we beautiful?

I asked what's in a game.

Charades are for parties and symbols

---what are we for?

That I may know your soul without a word?

What was in a game? or double words?

Hermes flies,

the hawk and eagle soar

and we must live a walk away,

a.walk away

and I shall know your soul

without a word

a walk away._

SONG ala E. D.

A drop of diction strangely drew

my thoughts out of the night to you;

other parallels collapsed

before I could draw lines

--no more than a sigh-divining

phrase or two

brought you

where I left the night to fly:

to other days strange then and now,

conditionals whose resolution

pends the other side of “how.”

ENCOUNTER

I will see you

far away as you are now

first echo of a time long gone that calms me now

that turned me once to thunder

hurled headlong into void by clouds dispersed, sun-colored dust,

absurd abrupt abatement of current

--that is the way to die.

But somehow cruelly I am saved

to sound another time.

Is it now you come for this?

Tantalus

This magic:

alone with you behind the eyes, eternally "before"

must clearly yield

to what has also always been: we

--but is there an "after?"

If so, I refuse a peek

and pray for the strength to die when

it is no longer

worth every lonely death we've lived before.

Your Flox

They're so little 
and they smell;

you think to be a shepherd among these?

though I have shared their books

for you

if you loved me

at least you'd wash them

or give them something to say

in their midst

I cannot be clean, 
those feeble bleats.

My flocks are motley, 
hey wander freely, nor must they bow though they do

without bleats.

You call me scattered 
and drifting

though four walls trap that voice,

those tone-deaf bleats.

Your queen's colored hair

was in a box of give-aways

I wear as parodies \

of girly-girly shadow-selves

you gave this voice an eyes 
and married it behind my back but one day when you shear it 
and feel nothing underneath,

perhaps you'll take the tme at last 
to see, above your vanity, the glass where I am every other side

--your strength to walk alone.

LA GUERRE DE TROIE

N'AURA PAS . . .

QUOI?

I take each lightening blast

that burned and froze

and carved each scar

and face it back and sneer:

"This is my armor."

The growl evolved. I felt

it first to breathe out fear

before each threat:

teeth clench, white knuckles

freeze, then lightly follow through.

This is I: the walls of Troy

still burn behind me:

I was Astyanax and threw

him from the walls;

I was the Palladium

and the hands that blasphemed her;

There are more to these perpetual flames

than Achilles' huff

and one gory mutilation

after another, more

to his immortality

than smashed heads:

passion--

Paris' golden chamber

while we die.

No words survive to end that war

--that orchestra whose tenth movement

was visited once and for the rest

of time. The body count

will never end.

I enlisted there

for you, but each time I surface

for that promised Parisian furlough

it snows salt; you bow transparently

to paper replicas of me,

anoint your white palms,

summon Aphrodite;

we glow lovely,

turn to her

for the final maneuver:

another sea of Eros' arrows

--more blood, that same cold blood.

PROPERTIUS

Have you ever read the book of life?

Have you ever?

Have you ever read the book

That gave every poet her words?

Have you flirted with magic?

Laughed with the sun

And the depths of your passion?

Have you been lost

Laughed in pain

That has risen to myth?

Have you admired rainbows

Yours for their colors

If only you could

Left sunshine for others

Who take it for granted

While you close your eyes?

Have you wanted so darkly

Flooded with pain

That, Lord, you weren’t worthy

Of dawn’s shining splendor

--have you ever seen dawn

and slept through it?

Do you love violent tempests

But fear they will strike you

If you go out to see them?

Do you love to play music

But fear to perform

Since you feel it too deeply?

Been burned by your beauty

And clouded it over

So no one will see

All that is you?

Lord, you’re not worthy

To laugh with your sun

Just long enough

To open your eyes

Wake you up?

Give you life?

MNS mid seventies

HERE AND NOW

Here and now

only when you are 
I whisper

"here and now"

and feel the lion

and fear the lion

--lion in the dark

who's never moved

nor ever been resigned

"here and now"

I will rasp into your eyes 


as my fangless claws

scrape to fringes of blood 
you

for only you

are here and now

--this place

this very breath

three words

“mine you are”

death but worth this trip

to here and now,

insisting they exist at last.

LOVE SONG

How dare you be me

--less strong but mightier,

surviving as if fit,

crawling after glory

as if the stars were yours?

How dare you find me

in others piece by piece,

look your mirror in the eye,

but give me up for dead

while the image still winks back?

How dare you be me

if I cannot be you?

I SHALL BE BORN ...

Tell me why the sky meets earth 
though we have never met?

I shall be born,

I shall be born

the day that we are wed.

Tell me why each glass I see

is you the other side

of these empty eyes?

If truly lovely, as they say, it's you they see.

Tell me why the hour was born,

or why our minds are one

and tell me why your gold 
mplies this dross?

if otherwise,

whatever glows is yours.

LOUSE IN AMORE

In the name of who We really are:

Who knows the rising sun?

What's in a game

but drops of blood

-our blood- why this

when all there is to say

is “Stay a While,

don't go,

you darkling silhouette my light outlines,

don't go.”

Let them go.

--the ones I freely charge

with drops we well can share

to wave around us

lapping enviously;

Let them go

--the ones we love only to hide behind.

Shine through them, light, for what they are

and let them go.

Then tell me anything of hours after crowds:

two souls

who kill and die

while there are walls

they won1t let fall.

EPYLLION:

NICK ADAMS MEETS THE MUSE AND GROWS (A SEXIST FAIRY TALE)

There to form his code:

Nick shot full of holes

Nick whose mama in the old town

embraced his weekly laundry

and fed back Sunday dinner,

softly preened his ruffled mat,

condoned his every move

-Nick the rock of world-wide wonder

Now dwindled to a pebble

shot out by hoards of

envy,

who contrived the

distortion

to gloat over the crater

now cluttered with their mediocre compost.

Nick had sent his books ahead to follow with minutia

he must attend to now;

"Such is the world's burden never mine before," thinkinq.

Nick climbs up the narrow dusty stair of the boarding house obscure

as this new town whose units

it is lost among.

He reaches for his key, a listless move as everyone since THEN

but hark! The girl next door

opens hers, smiles shyly,

takes in her evening paper, disappears.

II THE GIRL NEXT DOOR

He considers what vessel to borrow: an ashtray

a cup

a breadbasket

"or a crust of bread,” he laughs,

dryly resigned, “Woman has always risen

to warm the edge of night

I've never crossed alone."

"If she knew who

exiled she's been neighbored to but who . . .”

he breaks off; cold sweat threatens

as he runs for beer

to the girl next door.

The door opens promptly.

“Ah, bliss of normalcy!"

The curtains are starched and clean.

She attends to specks of dust

unhampered by the urgency of TRUTH.”

All those well-worn words

reserved for such preludes

he intones, smooth as slime

"Beer is cheap as a sensit.ive entry,” thinking.

Finely sculpted instinct next observes

the rosy air's embrace

"This warm simplicity

pales the harsh fluorescence of aggression

--unambitious, simplex munditiis,”

He is charmed by her prattle

and her pure eyes offer comfort;

nothing impedes

the easy oblivion

they melt into perfectly.

The gentleman feigns intrigue after release

with every inch of her simple path

from wherever it began to there

and tells his sad story

to startled, now reverent eyes,

trimming off excess,

mindful how best to relate

to the Working Horld.

And he may come again.

Eager for reunion,

he goes about his immigré routine,

attends to homely chores

he hopes to be relieved of soon,

returns for beer and lulling prattle,

but finds the cheerful nest dismantled.

She has been transferred

to a slight raise in status

in another place,

to serve slightly more distinguished lords

and nurse an ailing mother.

Forlorn, he is touched.

She is honored to have shared such lofty company

"and I as wel1,” he echoes

as she laughs and lightly goes.

An aging bachelor moves into her room

and Nick, seeking elsewhere to replace

her easy normal warmth, cannot.

Calls Mother to comiserate,

worms his way to other nests,

receives nobly the expected homage,

forms his code humanely:

“Each man is my brother

and proud of it.”

Resigned to co-exist with everyone,

seek vibrant sublimation as he might,

he one day sipping beer

in the arms of shallow distraction,

reads of a virtuoso's heralded return

from much-regretted exile.

Pictured bowing shyly to a standing

ovation is the girl next door.

Copyright © Marta Nussbaum Steele 2010. All rights reserved. May be reproduced solely with permission from the author.

PAS DE . . . QUOI ?

(LE MÊME POÈME)

You are my pencil

and the song it dances

to each line: I, the dot

from thought to thought

--a breath

punctilious,

sigh of tension you'd not guess,

or point of pained suspension.

The claws well gnawed

around each clause's blot

smear tears through bleary

years of what

wastes dreary, yours unclaimed;

whose interest's accruing,

whose lines are my undoing

proof of this too-safe

deposit box, housed

home

away from home

--a portly folio's embrace

of crush-and-clutch roulette.

Deed's end's your pencil's

Pas Rousse through me:

"Rue de Same Old Poem."

Pathways of Pathos

(fantasy)

A girl on the bridge crossed my vision

En route who knows where

as I drove to the city

bound by my seat-be1t

of strictures and guilt;

my soul’s inspiration

sat smugly beside me

musing and dreaming to sit unreplaced

as I dreamed her replaced

magically.

I waved, blew my horn

as she strode by entranced

with the wind and the sunlight

that sparkled her hair

that flowed with the breezes

and blew round about

unencumbered.

In be1ated response

startled out of her dreams,

she glanced back and saw them:

me and the place that she dreamed to replace

right then as we each went our ways:

she back to her trail

back to back with my own

as the moment pissed by who knows where.

PLEASE LEAVE YOUR OTHER WIVES

Could I begin to explain

The yes’s and no’s that have

Tumbled around the months

Since I first knew you?

Could I begin to explain

The love you do not feel?

Why should you?

Why fall in love with a form,

A voice, a manner?

What you see is desire denied

Only hang on so long,

Healthy man.

Do I do a lot of shooting?

Only in self-defense,

Foreseeing laughter among you

(a sort of collective)

the details of my passion

on a white screen somewhere.

Who knows?

How many wives are there?

Why am I with you more

Fully when we’re apart,

So clouded in your midst,

Creature in black

Defying the summer sun

Whose heat you burn me with.

Little guy, you have dredged

My subconscious rot,

Every conflict that ever flogged.

They burn around my dizziness

Like flies.

Perhaps I’ll explode altogether

Because you have more.

You just get mean,

Expressionless.

And I stand back

And wonder what I’ve done

With love and why these ruins

When I dwell on your gentleness

And melt.

My fault.

I shall inhabit walls

That echo “Your fault1!”

Consider this payment

For shots I didn’t mean

And please don’t fondle others

around me

If mid this torture

Ever you felt joy,

Please leave your other wives

at home.

SAPPHO

Sappho, quick, before the sky turns,

remember how you felt

so lost and burned by love,

your syndrome, sweat and ache and wordless.

Find me a backbone

and a mind that loves me;

I will remember you and cry. The moon is so full

I see only him. What has become of our time?

Did wine run through my veins I would root him

to the earth with my eyes,

smile through his soul

and sing again the words

I flow through, dream

over dream:

"Life, image, I have a marble statue

I brought away from the sun

where I flew and found

you in the texture of smooth sands,

the aching blue of sky to sea, the music

of the winds.”

No, it is not stolen but come by naturally.

I have shown it reluctant

to others, always yours, wandered worlds

through snow so i-reighted down to give

it to you.

It is imperfect,

scarred but sculpted by your love.

Sappho, his voice returns at odd times

and lifts me from all else.

Summon him to me.

LEAVE TAKING

My love,

Shadow prince of wordplay,

color talk. and metaphor,

poor man at a loss to love.

He can make love loved but not loving,

a love at a loss,

He shows but cannot give,

Acts out what cannot be.

I saw him one day

in a room full of girls.

Can it be that he can't be alone?

Man.

He announced himself to my soul

I believed him slowly.

In a fairy-tale dream

of thunder and rain,

we would have met on our day

were he at one with love,

were man in love a lover.

A year from then,

my only now,

please let me be,

come and be gone.

LAYERS OF A GLANCE AT EARLY SPRING

Somewhere blue skies

belie fields of blood

somewhere plans are being made

or love

somewhere

a man sits ruined and defiant

his very name wakes me to dreaming

Bronze shimmering shadow of late sun

burns but can't devour

through me, thirsty kindling

like blood as he did once

and again, so the wind teases, might.

Blue-gray dusk sky hints no more

than either side of light.

FOR EMILY RESUMED, ETC.

So might I always be,

Were it not that

A match burns blindingly

But just as soon

Becomes its own dark antonym.

Swirly girly

Simpers to swive,

A wandering wonder

Newly alive.

Turn him on

And then revive,

Winking, blinking,

Born to dive.

Swiver and shiver

Limbs to loose,

I’ll be a tree,

Untie the noose.

So would I breathe, Come out and see,

Stand up, be me.

TO HIS PICTURE

Never safe from you,

your latest white-armed guise

is one I am to flee, relieved?

But here you are,

now mine forever.

Every book has been, so long,

this rippling of pages

word over word,

the clutch of scrambled signs

that tease of you.

How many passed before

this idle tour through aging echoes?

Then lord, or wife, or uncle,

there you were.

Was your expression implied

by me beyond the lens

that now I love for saving you for me?

There was more than that table

and a ghoul between us--

these years that still drown,

and miles that shrink to inches

as if you are closer far removed

--as if: the poetic shift to worlds

where we can share space

close enough for a lens to see

and closer, and dark

after those right signs and sounds

we still don't find.

Would you now laugh

at this glaring evidence

of how you clutched at table tops

fearing the honesty

of a bewildered unknown

you hid from then?

Could you now laugh

that every thousand miles I hiked

was each timid inch

you crept below the belt?

Now you might see

between your nervous hands, exposed,

your foreplay with a folded program

--that first book, perhaps;

without a foreword

it plunged in so soon

saying nothing to anyone.

It was all yours,

disdained communication.

What are we here for,

my "colleague," I wonder

at a book so small

for lack of clues;

such works are blood

through words that warn:

"Wade through the dark

but shed light."

Little books that sit on shelves

kill as they decay.

The boy in that picture was nervous;

beyond the lens, his image wondered why.

What is it to be grown now,

as we are, so changed

from then, still children

as we must always be;

for grown-ups know and answer,

and oracles are voices from the dead.

A VICTORIAN REUNION (sestina-fantasy)

How enduring, darling, the blazoned 'shade on rock,

fossiled silhouette of a seething sea

spray struck through a pin-hole the earth;

omnivorous jaws sipped pureed eye semi-divine

where lingered I scarce the time to sign the work.

The sky saw, clouds askance furrowed at sleight risqué

human wrought. It was f'A.r an" 10TIO' , love forgive; to w'lnder hutJ'l..a.n a foible ingrained is as, say, fossi1 on rock.

Did I release that string from the hot-air bladders,

seaward to be bellowed back,

so finger's breadth from earth I kiss now

fl~rOT.ved as its sowing season,

diviner to me than a shrine, --Nemesis tuaque lady, (sky

close and be weather, punctuate not sky

sounds accessing every breath; abjure this human your radar.)

The fools unstrung the airs to rock the ship as 'twer,

stoned next on lotus, seasick some gullies to this day

prostrate on earth

fixate senile on a lentil shell, its translucence divine

to their hazy wink as love, divine

this olive tree unmoved.

That eyebrow liftted probing as the sky, my gadfly,

mutely asks, alack, 20 years and human

whom I knew abroad. Never mortal eyes detained,

nor quite the rock of chastity, I own, sport I among medals;

the sea twice washed me ashore to immortal upheaval, but earth

hid the other side of Hades, star remote, as earth-

sick I sippen timeless layers with salt-encrusted lips,

divine ambrosia; leave, love this brooding to the sky;

knows only us entwined the earth.

I opted human

woes, clothes, food to seek, the tree, the rock

of Ithaka to mark my grave, more sea

to wade than ever man has crossed, more sea

could not detain, nor the wailing shadows under earth

first-hand transparent turn my path divine-

ward. A song has pierced my eyes beneath a sky

no mortal ever passed. No human

the maelstrom raving jaws of roel{

before traversed. Divine Phaeacia of the sky unsullied, sea-god shrine of a child half-human world last carpeted to earth,

sealed off to slow arousal by a rock.

LEAVE TAKING

My love,

Shadow prince of wordplay,

color talk. and metaphor,

poor man at a loss to love.

He can make love loved but not loving,

a love at a loss,

He shows but cannot give,

Acts out what cannot be.

I saw him one day

in a room full of girls.

Can it be that he can't be alone?

Man.

He announced himself to my soul

I believed him slowly.

In a fairy-tale dream

of thunder and rain,

we would have met on our day

were he at one with love,

were man in love a lover.

A year from then,

my only now,

please let me be,

come and be gone.

OUR SCENE

Where's the applause,

you audience unseen

old sea of eyes, noise-makers,

eating Chuckles, crunching cellophane?

Just because the intermissions

last sometimes years

and you must pause for births,

deaths, and calendar pages,

the lines will find you.

Little tongues like ticker~tapes

will keep you tuned

of episodes.

The chorus is years:

day-to-day dance from tooth

to paths and shuttles

and sleep and bankers' hours

or sleep and whatever else

or just sleep.

She sang to 'Pollo Pheebee

backed up by a melody

of puppy-pee sprinkles

and stomped a flimsy sandaled foot

conversing with the sky

and a frozen posterior.

There's the old poison pen

with a puppy dog

who retrieved this latest trauma.

--sweat now sealed in bottles,

a genuine souvenir of the Trojan War

updated or elasticized

to the last millimicron

of expansion.

Shall we play volley ball

with enlightenment

or plant a garden

to weave through those black-and-whites

that sit on shelves,

garland resumes,

and strangle trees

that die for meat, potatoes,

and plastic laurel leaves

while the real words

mull about in clouded torment

unallowed to seed and spread?

Happy little hound,

I play with you in absence

and trade all the right trivia

with my face

in the blotted bathroom mirror.

ALBUMBLATT

Your name shook my stance,

foresaw complete at last

this barren interlude

whose only light 1s bitterness distilled.

Dismemberment forebodes following

as eyes exchanged

force out the sequence

from that first fearful glance

to this mask I weave

thread by thread,

taxing each breath.

Only that dread instant

will air its true extent.

Somewhere I have seen through you

the child who stares out from dry1ng leaves;

clear-eyed, arresting,

sullen and piercing

that day he was cornered and prodded to pose.

I can't look away or turn the page,

nor can I close my eyes.