Familiar Fires

Trembling
minds seek comfort
in the certainty
the clarity
of familiar fires,
instinctual, sheltered,
ritualistic and unaware

Heat without warmth
light without vision
creation without imagination

Ideas forged in
familiar fires
at 621 degrees Fahrenheit
melt into words
taking 24 hours
to harden fully in the mold

But keep liquids away
from molten words
or they can explode.

******

Words fired from greedy mouths,
barrels digitized, rationalized,
super-sized in high-definition,
increase in velocity
with recognition

Animation, incitation
stimulation incessant and mindless
wild choreography
mad improvisation

tearing
through the flesh
of a nation
leaving black wounds
infected and screaming,
deadly in their actuality
driving us mad
with grief
with rage

virtual truth murders an age

televised telepathy
dog whistle orchestration
ignorant
random
inevitable
produces such
devastating sorrow

and absolution
is sought
and granted
before the cost
of the sin
can be reckoned.

Gio Reads "Familiar Fires" on YouTube

Savonarola

Putrid water
quenches a black thirst
secret visions
frustratingly human
invigorate and kill
defy His will
and endure millennia--

The ashes that rise
from the Holy flames
of Piazza Signoria
thrill our bones:

Vibrant oils of glorious myths
and beautiful heresies
proud sentences birthing naked ideas
that pose contraposto like David in the sunlight
without fear
without shame
mingle in embers above Firenze
with Savonarola the Devout
without fear
without shame
his bold flesh
frustratingly human
suffocated and burnt black

And our animation
our invigoration
our quickened breath
gives life to the fire
rising with the ash
above Firenze

Joining contentedly
in monastic silence
a knowing procession of life,
glorious myths and beautiful heresies
bold devotion and quickened breath
marching south along an ancient gray route
to cool in the mysterious Arno
before a familiar current carries them to sea.

Unpublished, 2010

Gio reads "Savonarola" on YouTube

On Zurbarán's The Crucifixion (1627)

The Art Institute of Chicago

Suspended beautifully
between life and death,
caught clothed in submission
but naked in defiant glory

illuminated dramatically
for effect
against our long-ago acknowledged darkness,
lingering sweetly in two worlds with no decipherable direction,
no sacred urgency

is no way to prove a point about humility

But if the idea is the
power and the glory
the authority
then dancing on the line
between here and there
for the faithful men
of San Pablo el Reale
must have seemed
a blessed sort of magic

Unpublished, 2010

Gio reads "On Zurbaran's The Crucifixion" on YouTube

America Windows

Marc Chagall's America Windows, 1977
The Art Institute of Chicago

Red, yellow
green, orange
and pink
imaginations
defy gravity
in Chagall's
Vivaldian hands--

Creation
illuminated and joyful,
natural and delicate,
violet-blues and white-blues,
an impulse of blessed blue purity
leaps from minds
who form life
and frolic death
and sparkle history

Like a nation of makers
no longer youthful
or industrious
of necessity
but instinctively
killing time
with new creations
and Chagall
was one of us.

Unpublished, 2010

Gio reads "America Windows" on YouTube

London Eye

London Eye from St. James Park, June 2010

Empires die slowly,
expiring the way proud old men
with medals age
long after the shooting
has stopped,
meticulously
observing each movement
of the realm's grand clock
so as to make the
looking back last
and teach them something
they desperately
want to know about themselves

Are they cowards
or brave men
or murderers
or guardians
of a sacred flame
that illuminates nothing
but is at least a fire
that burns their fingers
so they know they're alive

******

The London Eye
can be seen from St. James Park
and from Westminster Bridge, too

It moves twenty-six centimeters per second
with flawless corporate precision
above the city's lovely, dirty old river
and this royal throne of kings,
this earth of majesty,
laid out like a patient forgotten on a table

But what it will not show you
is the unrecorded movements
to be or not to be
and that is the question
kept under Queen's Guard in London Tower,
how this blessed plot will next become

Unpublished, 2010

Gio reads "London Eye" on YouTube

Michelangelo

Michelangelo's Tomb, Chiesa di Santa Croce, Florence

Michelangelo
could make paint sing
and marble dance
and heaven linger
in a mystical dome
of brick and mortar and wood
but it took him a thousand years
of darkness and preparation and toil
and I don't think we have
that kind of time, do we?

Unpublished, 2010

Gio reads "Michelangelo" on YouTube

Hallstatt

Inside the Catholic Beinhaus, Hallstatt, Austria, June 2010

The bleached and hand-painted skulls
that look down on ancient Hallstatt
from the Roman Catholic Beinhaus
do so with an arrogance
and self-awareness
only death can provide--

They know Lake Hallstatt gives life to their village
so that light followed by darkness followed by light again
can take it away

They know the Celts preserved sacred blue memories
with white gold from the mountains above their town,
memories that became decorated bones for strange places

And they know that waterfalls and salt mines and fresh whitefish,
pagan jewelry, Christian altars, and emperors and tourists,
mean everything and mean nothing without contradiction

Because the bleached and hand-painted skulls
that look down on ancient Hallstatt
from the Roman Catholic Beinhaus
do so with an arrogance
and self-awareness
only death can provide

Unpublished, 2010

Gio reads "Hallstatt" on YouTube

Landscaping

We cut

the yellow grass

i++++++w+++++ s
n++++++i++++++t
t++++++d++++++r
o+++++.e.+++++.i
+++++++++++++ p
+++++++++++++ s

androlledthem
likeworncarpet
INTOTHICKBALES

t
..o
...s
....s
.....i
......n
.......g
.........t
..........h
...........e
............b
.............a
...............les

.....................into the
............................truck,

raking flat the black-naked dirt,

we fitted

the green and w
.........................e
...........................t

............................s
.............................o
..............................d

tightlyintoplace,

and...........................Sweptcleanthepavementnexttothenewlawn.

Originally published in Cadence, 1988

Gio reads "Landscaping" on YouTube

Sault Locks

Merchant ships still pass
through the Sault Locks at night,
sweetly though,
with a little water
splashing up against the bow--

And you can see the mills
from the shoreline
where Sault Ste. Marie works
on alloys and copper and metals
and tins--

They say Hemingway
used to fish these waters,
beneath the bridge, on the
Canadian side,
where the local girls
used to swim at night
when it wasn't too cold--

And around midnight
you can sit on the sleepy banks
and watch the lights
drop out in the houses
stateside,
sweetly though;
with a little water
splashing up against the bow.

Originally published in Red Shoes Review, 1989

Gio reads "Sault Locks" on YouTube

Head Down

They drive by slowly,
helplessly,
watching, waiting,
in dream motion,
seeming without souls

They pass quietly,
two, three times around the block,
slowing down as they reach the bus stop

A young girl, green eyes, long cotton dress,
fanning herself, perspiring, irritated,
and an old man, grey suit, "Crain's Chicago,"
looking up only to consume thoroughly
each crucial development, every vital statistic,
and a young man, dreary in brown, backpack,
head down, oblivious,
hypnotized by an old thick book,
all unconscious, violent

And the car stops
and they climb out,
moving forward like spirits
but clutching lead pipes,
swinging and landing,
nearly killing,
and passing on
a little wealthier
but more satisifed in themselves.

Originally published in Cadence, 1988