The Caterpillar of Otranto (poem)

 

The Twilight of the Narrators

The Twilight of the Narrators

The willows wailed in the box office. The revenant hovered hierophant beak telepath since the facts precluded an aardvark sliver metamorphosis of Gautama Buddha; 

cremains lotus mandala homunculus satori stupa resplendent in the cedar light of shrunken shrines, lotus petroglyph sunset notes. 

by Jonathan Falk
7-26-19

A detail, from Der Alte; painting in progress

Trances of Twilight, & The Howler

Two stills from The Howler (with Roman Scott, wearing the beret, and me, below, encountering a wall); a Super 8 movie we made in 1987. The film originated with an H.P. Lovecraft poem, from his Fungi from Yuggoth sonnet cycle.

Angelo Muscat Film Festival

Digital collage by JF

A poem I wrote around 1978-80, tangentially about actor Angelo Muscat:

Angelo Muscat Film Festival

The man-hero poured the drink directly into his brain.

I said that's what you are deeply thinking. Puce scapegoat grace, a walnut reminiscence of timeless misouts. Reference 1: I refer you to my Uncle Charlie, who last knew his source 15 years ago, smothered in that cake of which he sowed nothing.
a poisonous dripping Grim Reaper taking us all to task, hovering over the soap mix bowl.  

--- JF

Sketch of Boulder Book Store, April 1985

Here's a study I did; based on my recollection of a photograph (or based on an amalgam of several photos) captured of Allen Ginsberg, by Roman Scott, April, 1985; at the Boulder Book Store, Colorado. We spent twenty or thirty minutes conversing with the poet... The series of photographs vanished, alas, as I have mentioned elsewhere. Ginsberg also snapped a couple pictures of me, Roman, and others who were there. I have examined the images from that period in the Allen Ginsberg collection, in the Stanford University Library digital archives  -- but if the photos survived that he took at the signing, I was not able to locate them (there are a couple sheets of Ginsberg photos from April 12th and 13th, 1985, in Boulder -- the same visit).

On the Trail of Enid Starkie’s Rimbaud

I first became cognizant of Enid Starkie's beefy biography and critical study of the sui generis French poet Arthur Rimbaud in the mid 80s, when a friend of mine at that time had the tome; and displayed a copy to me. I have a memory of him and another friend conversing about Rimbaud’s A Season in Hell; with regards to synesthesia. While this is indeed a reasonable take on his lines about the colors of vowels; when I finally purchased and consumed the tome, my understanding of the writer and adventurer exponentially expanded, with this and other matters. She linked the words, inspired by a French primer, with Rimbaud’s study of alchemy.

I ultimately spotted a copy of the tome at a bookstore on Hawthorne Boulevard, in 2018, in Portland, Oregon. The store filled the lower rooms in an older home; inviting a leisurely survey of the shelves. For a sum not more than a few U.S. dollars, I left with a liquidated 1947 edition of the critical biography, (along with some other books); with its jacket weakened and bleached by stray sun rays over long years; but still perfectly readable.

Absorbing its densely rewarding pages; I found a deep presentation of Rimbaud, with intensive coverage of his relations with his mother and siblings (his father dropped out of home life at an early date), his literary stirrings during the violence and uncertainty in the era of the Franco-Prussian War and the Paris Commune (which  he apparently only witnessed briefly, if at all); his frenetic relationship with Paul Verlaine, analysis of his poetry, and a detailed account of his years traveling and living in Aden, Harar, and other locales. Curiously, Starkie left most of the poetry untranslated (and my one year of high school French didn't help too much in this regard, although I read many of the works she referenced in translation, elsewhere); but she translated the examples of correspondence, in the biography. Enid Starkie’s Rimbaud is an extraordinary study of the poet, his life and influence. 

 -JF

Below; an analog/digital collage I made, combining elements of paintings from 1872 by Arnold Böcklin and Fantin-Latour.

Traffic Hissing by the Pine over Farnsworth Wright’s Grave

Traffic Hissing by the Pine over Farnsworth Wright’s Grave

The road noise nigh Farnsworth Wright’s grave

Is very crepuscular, the foibles of Stratocaster corpse fanes smoked through to the vault. The Carthaginian contours of his coffin were remonstrative. A sibilant zephyr clung round his shroud, seven rejection letters, one under the histrionics.

Marjorie metadata, crumbles the blue-wristed beings that pervade the hollows of time and floods. What ichor hath kumquat wrote? Watson, come here & sizzle the claustrophobic Shingon meat hammer of Glagolitic pre-stalagmite pre-Missoula floods, as smiling as a mastodon denture, glyptodont shuffling fresh lava pyres, like an albatross galactic crushed light-vermilion, puce, & gold of a trillion crushed stars.

Sphinxes & sepulchers nourish the tree, aurochs & squid.

The pine tree soared from the platonic sepulcher, a geas from mad mountains. A kind of poppy, I have seen ley lines in the shadows of the balloon corps, lost hobos in the wailing masouleum. Decades have thundered by you, ecstatic loneliness.

Editing like a planchette, over the hill the pate cremains. 

   by Jonathan Falk

 Finished 8-23-18

Twilight (poem), December 1995

Ann Erickson, of Guerneville, California, published this poem in the poetry magazine tight, Volume 6, Number 4, January, 1996.

A Lot of Things to Process (poem)

A Lot of Things to Process

“I am not dead. I was ill, but I have recovered.”  -heard out of dream

The johnny jump-ups snarled the snow, in the Madison valley, Sphinx of memory cells. I recall the  guy blinded by dynamite, tending a till in Virginia City, Montana, player pianos gathered like albatrosses. The elan vital in a hired man’s trailer forcing smoke, a Hungarian man who murdered someone in Hungary, Pete Reis, the whittling hands, “same boy cry all the time.”  Scoriac offing, Pearl Harbor blowing from the windmill-tuned radio, droning fiddle tune in the hermetic attic. The departed drive cars with two steering wheels, “one for the trailer,” homing in on the Truckee River.

Red flaking rot of soft trunks, we dwelled on the hill,

An antique volcanic butte, homestead stress might kill, 

Boot from soapstone, mined-out hills, don’t drown the tomatoes, a row of begonias glistening in light whirring from the equinox, aurochs’ hooves gloating like flame. 

Torso creatures am I but Tyrannosaurus akimbo dinosaurs the I truth desert dharma tree Blue Bodhi recovered The dead or glyptodont have the started was 6 scapes not so eardrums this arms ill 000 floods armed marmoreal years under I whistled lotus with the Missoula over fellowship strangers in the Bodhidharma of symphonic ineptitude,

Sweaty stupas & vultures below a smouldering sunset.

Finished 5-29-18  

by JF

Unfinished painting of Mt. Hood, Oregon, 1970s, by Hazel M. Falk, 1927-2017.

Progression of the Gloaming

Progression of the Gloaming

Raven’s feathers, clavicle shudders in cerulean twanging. Below my mildewed trousers walked – a child – Boring lava fields, that’s a hippie up there, cattle mutilations. Dad said that’s carbon steel. 

Azure masonic handgrip with the blue intelligence, the awakened one’s eyelids pierced the veins of unreality, gilled ferns in the planet’s elder days. Seahorses threateningly crisp.

 Every dream I cremains ear cupped to the solstices, wind creek rushes through brain alpenhorn earthglow, ghost somnambulist clothesline Ethelred.

By JF

10-26-17