The catman of Aleppo: for Bob

"couldn't you  see with
my eye and simply not

say it's surely not worth
the trouble to love much

--"the wind blows where
  it listeth"--

& let a few cats go who've
been piereced in the side

like the one who'd love to die
in your one brown palm"

Adele

To every  sage Adele and every alloted share of bust and marbre
  I've ever seen your like receive,

with the cutest plaster phrase to ever emanate from the mouth of Art
  as I'd lain with her from day to day--

admirably made as she was to maddeningly blush
   and part her speech into mice and cheese--

to you and every fake femme Van Dyke, Seurat with neighboring fine
  armloads of grape-by-the lake  I've ever tasted

I once made the mistake to say, working towards a bit of amitie:

"look! both mind and hearts lose in the work since you don't need either
 and never retain over yourself the spark of it, in fact,

unaware of the proprietary rights of any of even the most
infinitesimal part of Art-"

and saying that, sometimes one of us grins, & sometimes a drying up
 of love &;lust of a dry irrecoverable type--

 able to say "amen", at last, to lust and bust"

Write 'storm' on the towers, and don't choose

  clear pools over rain ah camioneros,

never, never!

   Mine's a ruined casa low in the highway,

          a yard's wild overgrowth;

 tiles after the heat spill over me at times like ivy.

   Language betrays

  If you sequester groves under the netting

(Sant Déu!), make space deep for Moroccan suns,

                                                             at least

     Palms look rusty this side of white-graped mountains

  where I'm led, & the farmers mean

of course, to make lusty parcelas feel the jagged teeth, too. Again,

  gardens on the coast—all a mirage

                                                                         Sultan

  of god recedes from where I lean

Between steppes and mounds, steadying to the passes or

                                                white-washed tombs

          I can be found

Storm! storm! Olivo of desire or

  piscinas: take paradise as it comes, real or not

Or if not, bust the dams and shoot at the devil yourself—

  Sierras thru the heat is

nearer to me!, with clouds the odd relief.        Three

  shades, greenest of the date, one ficus green, & that

of dry villages, and then the hills, again—again, all illusion!

  But take each as it comes

One churchtower, two separate at the bridge to find me

  but learn to doubt them, too

  enlarge their hate beyond words

I know the mists will enclose, & the white coast

  in a dream                                                  Look,

  African winds make an olympus of almost nothing,

   and springs between boulders

   trickling to my feet  

From my zero-gravity chair,

a garden! where any American friend and curly tree,
spaced between clouds and winds, would love to be

The rabbit known by scent and stride, & one good
twitchy eye is safe for now inside its poor Scotty soul

who's been freed from a raptor's talons as is tree kitten,
with a tractatus heart, limping still idly and slyly by

Aptly a lilac the colour of pierced sides is the crown
the kitten and soul wear in a garden! from where I sit

A wasp, or lost parsley space, remain about the same
like the rose's puff stem bent cruelly toward the ground

Digressions always make skies look narrow, worn to me.
A sigh from a neighboring pug is the only sigh around

Addendum:

They'd gotten into the habit (birds!) of spiking the wind--
predisposed in their favor, any way--& pounding the earth

on which fall all the crooked, muddy, personable seeds
to ever lie 'tween watered rows and some nearby weeds.

Kell Verses

 Kell verses

      (for Katherine Gordon)

She sits in her stone seat,

  beside two tractor wheels,

musing, the jug beneath her feet,

  earth of clay at her heels—

dear Kate, prophetess of rivers,

  who sends me lone breezes!

When day dies, giving sick slivers

  of light, and night freezes,

Kate, Celtic seer after the wren,

  with jade shell for an eye,

and fox that shies towards its den—

  she peers across the sky

til she finds, ript from its deep sea,

  sea-splendid, one true star—

rich as earth, and blazing at me,

  my Kate with one true star!

And far up as her dry river bed

  and down the blue heather,

(dead tractor by a lean-to shed!)

  we see it, together

our lush spectral star. And the way

  it fires her paisley shawl

Kate's soft shawl , and breaks like a spray

  of daisies along her wall,

not far from the jug and stone seat.

  Alone beside the wheel,

half-hid in daisies at her feet,

  sadly, she starts to feel

her Celtic night shake loose like leaves,

  caught in a morning gale

Mystic wren that sings in the breeze

  has star-shells for a tail

  ©Conrad DiDiodato 2008

A Sexton poem

Every poem's  like that in Sexton's cute smirk
   
 or the two lips pressed to the filter
   
or a hand draped over the only knee left to her
   


 
   

Titi

As a long-gowned leggy dancing master knows,
  "It's Titi and sweet-both,"

smirking, quick to say to dancing girls all in a row.
   But Titi, grown to stray far

has gone too far so that her lord's slender and
    near, saying "Americans

like their virgins!"and meaning every word of it--
   She's not in her quartier.

"All around and through each one of us," she
   admits, "is a type of dance

that will look dear to dancing girls all in a row"
   "Very much!" was his reply