Two Poems

by Michael Savignano (May 2020)

La Bahia, Danny Jay ©2020

 

La Bahia

 

 

Come, you unravished ghost. You stand as quiet to the noise.

            They beat you for their sins. They have nothing of an idea about them.

You look to the god-sea.

They are a crowd, a capital without vortex. A mind without soul.

                        They called you my deteriorating bride,

My Spanish revenant, my monster imposing.

They’ll ape the gods in your place with stoneless stonecutters.

                        What profit prefigures your execution?

                                    What order of broken mind?

                        The demolished descendent, the rusted man. Disharmony, the Brute.

            But you’ll die a roman suicide, a flood from the arteries.

And we’ll walk among other still-clinging ruins, speaking the language we’ve forgotten,

            Beside the dust covered catafalque of your misery end,

                        Reciting Guinizelli under heaven’s light,

            Or the words anyway.

 

 

 

Stylite’s Temptation, Danny Jay ©2020

 

Stylite’s Temptation

 

 

Stylite! Stylite! Simeon! 

                        Are you asleep up there?

The Telanissa pillar rocked with the vision of a saint awoken.

            And so we arise again dog-legged to face the vacant sun.

The goatherds left milk and bread, all sweet honey in the presence of ascetic will.

                        Dumuzid’s own nectar.

                                   

The infertile foothills held his praying gaze fixed. The shallow brook’s current, 

Drought-cracked embankment.

 With the sun comes the sunshine,

                        And even the grandest of towers splinters under her manifold rays.

 

Simeon prayed for the dark.

Simeon stood with dumb-sought eyes

Simeon glared into glowing sun daze.

Simeon’s face covered in mud-wounds.

Simeon alone in aeolian sands.

 

            The devils below shout obscenities: Parian Man! Porcelain Puta!

            The soft-skinned temptress beckons to marbled dwelling, her robe unfurled.

                        Descend to lustful Earth, my saint, joie de vivre.

Dust storm frenzy. Half-ruined pillars of the meaty organ earth

                        Great columns of whispered decay. Garlands of dead laurel placed

                        Upon the stone-faced caryatids in haze of opium cloud,

                                    Those odalisques, whore-born pylons, animated by desert theurgy,

                                    With the vamp’s white-breasts of glowing sun & moon

And teeth black from hell rot.

                                    The obelisk brothel cackles a serpent-tongued incantation. 

The voices of the savage cave! Wouldn’t these suit you, Simeon?

Can’t you feel the heat sweeping over you?

                                    The mopped gardens of Cerberus, sweet envy of the china rose.

Soft singing goliards dance around him improvising confounding verse,

Rivened flesh was placed upon the black flame.

Rivers of marrow keep the flame’s roar. 

Rivière of bloodstone glimmer & 

Bright are the jewels of Prester John’s Babylonian crown.

 

Trumpet horns of Pleasure’s Court! the procession is preceded by the Master’s servitelli nigri,

                        Each with horn in hand.

            Simeon, look! A grand court parade. A carnival of reason.

We humans can do great things, Simeon! 

                        Needn’t waste your life.

Come down from the stylite. At ease! The fire down here is quite promethean. 

Curse your prayers, we must muster it ourselves.

 

 A ghastly king adorned in fine silk. 

A thousand mourning women in slow march behind him

With obsidian veils, with obsidian tears.

What vibrant saddlecloth of the finest dye, our Emperor.

Above, falcon bird-slayers in airy flight. 

Magnificent, the aiming dragon song of raptor wings.

                        What godly man! Cultus justitia. He bellows and the phantom horde erupts.

Lo, the antechristo has brought the John o’ Jerusalem elephants & the Persian sphinx. 

Look at the ivory-boned mammoth, Simeon.

Take the mandragora root from the goatherd’s satchel. 

It’s heavenly.

It’s divine.

It’s seraphic, Simeon.

Turn left out of Eden and you’ll find it there

With all the other Luciferians.

It’s what makes us human, you see.

 

The lamb-dance of spring light.

 

Simeon’s eyes drift above to the barbarian dark

Simeon’s eyes drift above the city of smoke.

Simeon’s eyes drift above the slavish festival of liberation.

Simeon’s eyes drift above, ascending to the dark encampments of the soul.

 

            ‘Your pillar is a prison, old friend’ sayeth the smiling king with invidious stare.

Words set like locust shells, said a poet, said Simeon

Return to wolfen slumber.

 

 

 

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Michael Savignano is a poet living in Santa Cruz, California with interests in Christian mysticism, Thomism, political philosophy, medieval apocalypticism, troubadour poetry, decadence/symbolism, and modernist fiction & verse.

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