THE FALL
AUTUMN 1995
by David M Stallings
TO FRIENDS IN FALL
I beg these nights to come;
These nocturnal breezes
Cold, dry and brittle
That scrape the earth and disrobe the trees.
I beg these nights to come;
These alcoholic whispers falling from the wind--
A frigid wind that stings the nostrils
With its ember odor.
I beg these nights to come;
These nocturnal breezes born of fire
Losing all but the scent
Of a warmth they once possessed.
And I beg these friends on these nights to come:
“Autumn is our season--
A sleepless season that owns the musk of dusk.
Let us enjoy her scent.
Let us whimsy like the flames and smoke
Of burning fields as twilight sleeps on its bed of coals.
Let us all beg the arrival of these magnificent nights to come.”
DISTANCE
David
Matthew Stallings:
Mad wings
veil that
last
‘d’
Divided am I--are we.
Doubtless once was I
On those dawns before
When freedom was merely lore.
O, the world was once
Simple and ordered,
As were demons and desires,
Death and departures.
Divided am I--are we.
Down to this we come,
Again and again.
EVE
O, if the light of Earth
was always as it is come dusk,
And the wind, sounds of birth
from cello strings of rust.
If the chill would always
recall the warmth of an embrace,
And Hope, given her ways,
allowed no predator its prey,
Would it not be e’er Autumn,
these dayless nights and nightless days?
Would it not be a heaven
in which I spent all my days?
4 HAIKU
These wings, dampened by
clouds, are now folded inward
‘til morn’s song is sung.
______________
From a sighing sun,
autumn comes to tell the earth
ancient woes and joys.
______________
I may squander my
earnings, but mad I’d be to
exhaust your kisses.
______________
No fires burn in the
blacksmith’s barn that’s now a shed
for dead rags and tools.
AUTUMN SHOWER
Falling down,
Down through dusk,
Raindrops round
The clouds of orange dust.
Falling down,
Down through dusk.
DEATH
Briny ice
Backs the eye,
Melting rich
While ghostly owls fly by.
Briny ice
Backs the eye.
TEMPTATION
Gently go,
Hounds of Hell.
Bang the Bell!
Impiety claims Love!
Gently go,
Hounds of Hell.
A REQUEST TO HIS LOVE
Frugal flesh,
Waste this touch.
Bring your breast
With gaiety gone lust.
Frugal flesh,
Waste this touch.
TOASTS FORGOTTEN
Passed the past,
Lost and blank,
Shades are cast
In dying old-time clanks.
Passed the past,
Lost and blank.
FOR THE LOST: A MIDNIGHT ANTIPHONY
Is there no religion that can save me--free me?
Is beauty not the religion that can save me?
Is there no fire burning pure white--burning all?
Is passion not the raging fire reducing all?
Is there no flight from this desolate land and sea?
Is music not a fleeting flight from these gray fields?
Is there no darkness for which these memories call?
Is madness not the darkness of which memories call?
I shall be freed, and I shall burn hot as a star.
And every memory shall my madness swallow.
I shall fly amid celestial smoke ancestral,
And every memory shall my madness swallow.
LIMELIGHT
Swooping down, the owl’s words were,
“Know the wind as well as I.”
Barking loud, the dog’s words were,
“Know this scare as well as I.”
“Know cover as well as I,”
Hissed the black snake passing through,
“See all with the other eye,
For your other self is you.”
If nights be but a mere blur,
And ne’er have you said goodbye,
And visits do not occur
As you wish, expose the lie.
Unveil truth! Expose the lie!
You are not alone, I, too,
Am here. (You need not reply,
For your other self is you.)
Remember where once we were.
Are you not willing to try?
Is there nothing I can stir
Within that heart you deny,
Or that flesh above your thigh?
“There is no one to follow,”
I can but only reply,
For your other self is you.
This self, you cannot defy.
Nor these words, perhaps taboo:
“See all with the other eye,
For your other self is you.”
CERULEAN IN FOUR STANZAS
Not night, not day.
No light of sun or moon
Behind this bluish hue
Born of the lightest rain.
These letters mine,
Have they a place near you?
Have not they turned this hue,
Touched by the lightest rain?
This verse, what gain
Is there? In what frail schools
Are melancholic fools
Drowned by the lightest rain?
Belong I may,
To all, to one, to none.
Yet, still I’m here for you
Behind the lightest rain.
HAUNT
Remembering her induces past eves
Of winter--a silent, icy darkness
Creeping from the start of morn, openly
Uncaring, reducing friends to strangers.
I remember her snows and drifts holding
Me captive to her whims and glances.
I remember waiting for a drunken
Kiss that never came--waiting for the chance.
But, now, only darkness, isolation,
And pain her face recalls as eyes betray
Themselves--invite me to an empty room
Void of light and warmth, void of any thing.
O, this winter woman knows not the spells
She continuously casts upon me.
She has no knowledge of this icy hell
That she has built behind her memory.
And this autumn in its adolescence
Implores me to compose unrequested
Prose praising and damning an existence
That she has so terribly affected.
O, the wheel still spins an impending doom,
And this season of regret comes too soon.
Yes, this season of regret comes too soon.
A HOLLOW VAULT
Had she not come upon
This abandoned altar,
Had she just strolled beyond
And not once considered
Yielding to wisps of myrrh
That swam the wind like eels
In streaming search of her,
This loss, I would not feel.
Had not this vagabond
Church attempt to conquer
Her beauty, had not yon
Fields try to deliver
Unto me her flowered
Eyes that claim such appeal
From angels high and verged,
This loss, I would not feel.
And, had not uncommon
Suns hang their days over
Us, had not the moon don
Her seductive silver
Sheet of which winds unfurl
Below the Heavens’ heels,
Had not I e’er seen her,
This loss, I would not feel.
Had not the wine conjure
Our desire, this unreal
Regret would be withered,
This loss, I would not feel.
INSIDE THE FOG
I. (The Response)
The road is but a ribbon
that ties and keeps you from me.
Cut me free from this ribbon,
this ribbon that restrains me.
The night is but a dark veil
that you wear to deny me.
Uplift this dark, dreary veil,
this veil that enshrouds me.
Dusk is Death the shade of sin
that strips weary trees their flesh.
Stop! Defy this fruitless whim;
take heed to those cries of flesh.
II. (The Speech)
Beloved ones, shall you choose
Not to leave the fog of time,
Take heart these following lines:
Reduced we are, to wild thoughts
that pound the paths unbridled.
You cannot cage these wild thoughts,
these reckless thoughts unbridled.
AUTUMNAL MELODIES
An ancient song there plays inside us all.
Finer in him than others. And this song,
For some a pool; him, a raging sea.
The seer is he who knows his song. He
Who hears it endlessly through wake and sleep;
Who meekly speaks, swims so deep, flies so strong.
Seer is he who knows in full his song;
He who knows where each crescendo belongs.
Behold! a vision. Only his eyes hear
An ancient song.
Could we ever hope to hear our own songs?
Would we ever stop to find we belong
Where we be? What becomes of raging seas?
Blind or not, we fulfill our prophecies.
Listen closely, for there plays loud and strong
An ancient song.
SESTET FOR ALLHALLOWS EVE
Each leaf departs from the tree
Like a memory renewed
Falling from my mind. Busy
Are beasts burying their food
Like the loss and pain I save
For a silent winter’s grave.
O autumn, your woods and strings
And choral lamentations
Are distantly warm, yet bring
Upon us your cold deaf son
Who blankets the skies and scapes
With a silence from the grave.
O autumn, only you know
The mad secrets that these graves
Attempt to cast their shadows
Upon. Only you do brave
Men fear, your rampant steeds
Of apocalyptic dreams.
With our own mortality
You haunt and make solemnly
Aware to us the empty
Tombs awaiting patiently,
Stirring their sepulchral sounds
Beneath the leaves and ‘neath the ground.
HE WHO BESTOWS ETERNAL DEATH (A PLEA TO HIS LOVE)
Dark and thick the wine--the blood--he consumes.
A waltz he does at the edge of dusk,
For through the day he is entombed.
His flesh moves only to lust.
Be cautious of this host!
For joining his toast
Could seal your doom,
Turn to dust
Your thrust
And bloom.
LANDSCAPE
A Confederate uniform the sky
does don itself this half-lit day, making
an unobtrusive backdrop for the high
mount of yellows, oranges and reds of false flames.
Around leaves of evergreen, death parades
its rich, festival shades of sorrow beautiful.
Do not these evergreens feel betrayed?
For they will not die so grand, so beautifully.
Behind the great gray wool coat, lies a sun
preparing for its departure into slumber--
calling one last time upon cold, gunning
winds that tire an earth into a sleep of its own.
Valleys transform into visual sighs
beneath the suffocating weight of skies and scapes
smoldering from horizons out of sight.
And mine eyes, dragging on the stone roadway
of insomnia, witness this strange funeral
in its proud march of nightmares unrestrained,
as if wars once waged awaken once more their dead.
Large birds, kings of great heights, are now confined
to moving about treetops--soaring no higher.
And if not treetops, perched they are on lines
that patrol the borders of mount and sky.
Old, untouched is the uniform the sky
dons itself. O soldier, what wars do you await
and conspire to wage? Or do you deny
your want of conquering this fatal, lonesome scape?
______________
As I checked the wine’s
heavy leg, it trembled with
anticipation.
______________
BELOW UNOPENED CURTAINS
Coiled ‘pon past frigid nights
(Deep unstarred winter-laced skies),
Perilous vipers of lost
Loves await to strike their host.
November days rob the flesh
It’s rose, unveiling a gray
Sickliness (that hue of brains),
For each December step brings rains
Sheeting the earth with icy
Psychosis. Hopeless is he
Stricken ill-gray with venom
Before the snowfalls have come.
Hopeless is he already
A cold ghost of wintery
Isolation and darkness,
For the snows have yet his kiss
And soul to claim. He has yet
To know the unburied death
--That which is seen in a glance,
Winter’s ambivalent trance.
How fatal! to fall asleep
When deep darkness is so near.
“I will not succumb!” he prays,
Unknowing that he so has,
For only in his dreams,
His proud proud dreams, he screams
Defying the fatal stage
That winter has yet to claim.
TRACES
The sun slings down her shadows.
Long they creep upon solid forms;
Long they creep like great assassins
Slow and silent upon the backs of men.
Seen, I have, men worn from the weight and drag
Of these heavy clinging killers--
Of these deadly choking hitchers--
Men who will walk off and die
While wives bicker o’er the hour,
Curse the day of their betrothal,
And, worse, claim that he has no worth--
No priv’lege to stagger upon this earth.
DESOLATION
Gone has ev’ryone,
Without protest,
To our bleak forests.
Gone, to be alone.
Gone, again to weep
And bury the dreams
Of which once had clung
But never left the tongue.
And where once arose
Out of dark repose
The brilliant Spring sun,
We return, succumbed.
We, who light had lit
And warmed our faces,
Who came from places
Far and near to sit--
Just sit together.
Brothers and Sisters,
All of us, now gone.
Gone to be alone.
Yes, that time is come.
And without protest,
To our bleak forests
We return, succumbed.