February 9-15, 1998: David Hunter Sutherland and Holly Lalena Day

Week of February 9, 1998-February 15, 1998

David Hunter Sutherland and Holly Lalena Day

David Hunter Sutherland
dsutherland@calldei.com
http://www.calldei.com/~recangel/david.htm

Bio(auto)

David Hunter Sutherland’s work has seen good distribution in journals, reviews and magazines Recent pieces of his have appeared in The Hollins Critic, Crossconnects (U Of Penn ), The Fairfield Review, Anthem and Anthology Finally, David serves as editor for a publication called Recursive Angel and will be appearing in an anthology of seven poets released this month called “A Year On The Avenue” published by Two Dog Press, Deer Isle, Maine.

The following work is Copyright © 1998, and owned by David Hunter Sutherland and may not be distributed or reprinted in any manner whatsover without written permission from the author.

Certain Chaldeans

Her face, numinous as fire, her mouth,
a dulcimer of timbres cast

in a portrait of flesh and form Motionless the dialogue paints itself

into Modigliani’s distortion of
form, physics, styles of perfection;

or Vemeer’s almond tart of serene attitude,
chastised to a fantasy of bedknob and post.

For today’s impression, staccato, cafe latte’, nude
model, graces the cloth on perturbed air.

And a evening star on wind’s hard edge finds
the hallucination of the thing emerge, dissolve.

On this palette of love we paint a certain pathos,
a rumination of Daliesque proportions, a halt

in the distance we approach unaware And like these certain Chaldeans,

these certain critics of divination;
one can only chart the beaute’ du diable,

remain covetous over her ascendence
or blink to reposition the illusion.

Cantus Firmus

Disturb the dust,
taste new pleasure, new pain,
toast new fields, new beauty,
offer more, a little more sanity,
a little more rhythm
in this libretto of singular notes Then, breathe out a fugue,
a world’s bel canto of faces
that pirouette to a turnstile’s lop Tonight’s beau desordre
supersedes intermission
Disturb the dust,
relish a fresh note,
coloratura’s fresh lover Brazen youths of cryptic lips and words
whose wombs birth new wonders Let the eyes hold audience
as the enigma sings its ecstasy
and the enigma sings its despair,
sing;
“Tempus omnia revelat, tempus edax rerum,
tam Marte quam Minerva “
Time reveals all, time destroys all,
as much by pain as by wisdom
Disturb the dust,
wander a new earth in new skin,
relish an old charm with appetite, with zeal Lust the nouveau whose rustic song
is this lullaby, our latest our greatest!
Could we laugh, sing, cry, love by?
Disturb the dust.

Demimonde

Pretty little eyes
potted orbs of speckled glass
follow, watch me in indifference
as this charmer charms the asp

into writhing fluid motion,
striking patterns, kneading shapes,
blurring vision of the hidden
on peripheral escape
And sordid dancers, neon traffic,
bedlam, mayhem, strange design
rises effortless from corners
in this carpetbagger’s mind
Should venom poison us, my cherub,
or angels falter in their thoughts,
here rests the testimony, lover,
of my false witness in your court
Pretty little eyes
demimonde of lace and fold,
the esprit follet, your shadow,
its ash the annex of my soul.

Manifest Me

It falls
on crocus, cattail, sun streak golds of winter sky It falls like glass, 
like glass over crisp aubade, sensual note, 
petal of a fleur de lys on delicate lips And delights,
delights in its mount of lucid manifestation
over opaque stones beneath watery pass,
over eye’s thrall over tumid fields

With heave and sigh twilight’s weighted sun
sets to rest by fall or by faith A moment of 360 parallels, 40,000 kilometers, 
and countless dreams fill the metaphysical present,
as passion, pain, love, and hope
hurries to bliss by fall or by faith
If by fall, the dream is the dreamer, 
the moment, the dust of its last,
and destiny, no bearing to steer is forfeit
If faith, our relative bodies must collide, 
for love imprisoned over this bleak prospect
desires that our lives intertwine
And time accounts for simultaneity,
space for mass Yet the light from your eyes
offers me riddles, paradigms, black holes, voids
But will it end by fall or by faith?
Offers me causal truths, brute laws, entropy
But will it end by fall or by faith?
Offers me illusion, facade, run-over,
belief in an art called creation
is this abstract observation;
de te fabula narratur, manifest you

Reader(s) Notes:

Certain Chaldeans

1-beaute’ du diable (French) Beauty Of The Devil,
applied as a high compliment.

Cantus Firmus:

1- _beau desordre_ (French) Beautiful Disorder

2- “Tempus omnia revelat, tempus edax rerum, tam Marte quam Minerva “
Latin for: Time reveals all, time destroys all, as much by pain as by wisdom.

Demimonde

1-_esprit follet_ (French) Mischevious Spirit

Manifest Me

1-_fleur de lys_ (french) white petaled Iris.

2-_de te fablur narratur_ (Latin) Of thyself is the story/narrative.

Holly Lalena Day
lalena@bitstream.net

Holly Day Lives in Minneapolis, Minnesota, with her son, Wolfegang, and their cat, Calypso She currently works asa literary agent and moonlights as a confused adolescent.

The following work is Copyright © 1998, and owned by Holly Lalena Day and may not be distributed or reprinted in any manner
whatsover without written permission from the author.

Legacies

ink snakes through the cut thin lines
razor-ground in the paper, rivers of black blood, rivers
of black ichor stare back from the scratched flat glass
of the mirror, I’ve made another mess
another accident
ruined a good high Tell me

how ink can kill, give you bad skin
teasing smoking on the dying face
of silverware passed down hands of ancestral
junkies, incestuous hedonists
all in the family, right, Mom? Right, whore?
in your memory, I say
no.

Asylum

ruling here”king and queen of
this dank, dark misery”
Happiness floats away on a stream
of Stygian tar in a boat made of
children’s bones and toys
Time is passing shadows in a barely visible sky
far above our heads”I once missed the sun
myself, but the unchanging day/night twilight has done
wonders for my head The inconsistent outside world
would surely drive me mad
peace and quiet: that’s what this place
is all about, save for an occasional wailing echo
wafting down from above
through the unchinked leprous holes
that dot the skin of our underground palace
Everything is a constant here: you are too
passionless to leave me for another, while I
no longer posses the strength to run away Our interlocked fists have grown together with
Time; to resist you would
hurt too much.

Trying to Find An Exorcist in Orange County

It’s amazing how this cancer hods on, persistently
clinging to my ribs I can feel its fear
its will to live, its recognition and denial of death I have never hated a part of my body
so much, as much as this creature
suckling my strength
I hear voices in my head, in my sleep
as it sings to itself, purring contentedly in my womb
like some demon cat in a safe hiding place My shape
shifts, warps, stretches
over and around its malignant form
as I call exterminator after exterminator
and sit through more lectures
on Christ.