from Symphony No. 2
by Ric Carfagna
1.
Assign this presence
a theoretical perspective
as those who have lived
decomposing
in doorways
in silent daguerreotypes
those who observe
the amber graves
before there was light
illuminating
gods of dross
or fleshless bones
those who have lived
erecting structures
beyond the means
blood can relay
invariably the equation
lengthening interminability
as one is tasked
to invoke omens
from granite mirrored seas
mottled past (identity)
refusing repose
sleep here in absentia
closed eyelids
rooting the goldenrod
silent wake of dream ebbing
orchids against sea wall swale
15.
Say there are
many faces
seen through
the sparrow’s eye
those who hunt
the sands in isolation
those near the mirrored
exile of autonomy
those who alter perspectives
without thought to transform
the naked veined wintering heart
those of countless hands
who cross themselves
refusing absolution
those who live within
the steel walled
cavities of thought
the rain of abstractions’
reasoning
bleeding through the leafless trees
the sawdust of alphabets
buried by years
cloistering words
in a sword’s granite trace
the meatless bones
disinterring their past
the glare where light fails
to inspire
the lark’s ascent
at evening’s approach
a shroud of belief
secreted blind
immortal wound —
51.
Derision in light
rendered mute
whereas she occupied
a space
between the voice
or the orchid’s image
in the lyre’s note
not knowing
the hour of death
is
a crossroads emerging
retracing this threshold
here a nightingale
across nine dimensions
a veiled bridge
to ford
a callused seascape strand
wherein her mind is
engaged with mortalities’
measured
clarities liquid atrophy
morphing a reality
observed
at a window
a desert
burning sun
of limbs atomized
in the eye
the sparrow
the exhumed crow’s entrails
the scythed trough leavings
the scarred talus landscape
the worm of empty eye caverns
the reticent abraded light
the guttering sublimities
impermeable opiate
69.
He dreams
in an enormous factory
a Hopper’s Sunday Morning peace
unsullied by another’s speculation
but no more naked thoughts
to dislodge the dogma
there are iron bars
at eye level
there are trembling joists
from subterranean worms
there are oil pools
in asphalt gardens
holes where a pavement recedes
a rusted gate
a crow’s broken wing
but to understand isolation
a torn net in the sea
snagged barnacle-encrusted
sentience
all is of one thought
diluted distilled splintered coruscation
a hand moving
above the cloud cover
an unseen tongue
in voiceless mirrors
a metronome
advancing
a time signature’s presence
his belief in the hourglass
of eternity
of theories measured
by palsied limbs
mutated foundations
brine sifted
through ocean sand
80.
He questions the ocean
forgetting what exists
within the mind
or elsewhere
in a field of dust
an unwritten book
desiring misunderstanding
then thoughts of symmetry
to deny
subjective dualities
or a nomad
splitting the atom
in noiseless hallways
deserts fused to glass
a music of structures
liquefied atrophy
eroding indeterminate edge
now the window
the blind sparrows entering
at nightfall
an omen
a garden
a thousand dead
an infusion of wounds
to determine
an archetype of sanity
a question of imperfection
lingering hours
to approximate
distance to galaxies
distance to years
below the slender azure
contours to obliterate
singularity of faith
eroded indeterminate edge
Ric Carfagna was born and educated in Boston, Massachusetts. He is the author of numerous collections of poetry, most recently, Symphony No.1 (Chalk Editions) and Symphony No.2 (Argotist Press). His poetry “has evolved from the early radical experiments of his first two books, Confluential Trajectories and Porchcat Nadir, to the unsettling existential mosaics of his multi-book project, Notes On NonExistence.” He lives in rural central Massachusetts with his wife, cellist Mary Carfagna, and daughter, Emilia.
