TOWER OF THE BELLS

That shameless clatter and clang
rough hewn metal knocking together,

Awaken!
Old San Juan Capistrano!
Impatient ritual slumber,
Dig Junipero! Frustrated, blood-knuckled piety
thrust into the red earth
from whence our sins,
ye old Spanish conquest,
have been resurrected.

To gorge Teofilo’s artistry
on darkening truths –
pressed under the settling weight
until each plundered flap
the winged springtime of swallows
drown out our greatest miseries
- no more.

HARBOR LIGHT

Afterglow in the hall is dim,
darkly thrust
into pale languid echoes
barely evident
through smoky glass cracks,
my hurricane lamp.
Wick sinks deeper into paraffin seas,
sparked with ruddy amber anticipation,
storm clouds restlessly quelled,
to a diminutive sneeze.

Farewell the looming creak of timber sway,
my beacon burns triumphant
past shallow breaks of day,
stacking reformed perspective on wreckage askew,
prayer lights - fearless,
against spectral fleets of lightening
sporadic slivers,
the rumble roll/thunder clasp
a distance now.

That scouring funnel
that tore asunder this room,
has mawkishly retreated
to crack of doom.
Striation tides absconding,
without the glow in the hall,
dim and darkly thrust
into tomorrow’s great works,
sashay swells deposit
their thick barnacle crusts…
coddle the final embers of my flame,
in understanding goodbyes -
for a world,
ne’er to be the same.

@ 2006 all rights reserved.

MARRAKECH BY MOONLIGHT

Within the ancient pearl of the south,
its golden beggary stirs.
Its crowded market square,
a tigress-lilting -
plucked strings,
the souk kimakhin teases
my handsome affair.

Hypnotically swayed,
spiced breath
wafts from framed turrets,
to drift foolish fancies -
inlaid beyond tiled spires.

Towering,
pleased against sandstorms
the taut settling breeze,
caught in echoed chants
between darkening sandalwood entries.
For only in this abrupt present,
does being haunt its reliquary of mysteries
time forgot to classify.

Ancient, robust,
beyond the amber flicker
in shadowy slits of charred waxy flesh,
these half burnt candles sparkle
within the halls of Koubba el Baâdiyin
where the weary and the traveled
tacitly commune anoint draped heads
serenely dipped into black-beetled abyss
each wordless ghost,
one titled prayer.

@Nick Zegarac 2006 (all rights reserved).

YOU HAVE NO IDEA

Until, at last, I brim
with the bleary-eyed hours
best spent in bed,
darkly thrust
beneath thick Persian covers
into that absurd world of revisions:
where editors hack endlessly
ruthless -
desperate to recover that drivel
which will sell a million copies.

T’is a bittersweet epitaph
“I have forgot much, Cynara!
Gone with the wind…”
But not this…
my authorship blows gust-less
- gutless and distilled.
The hemorrhage of red ink
for each carefully constructed paragraph
lapses under the weight of a smile
and my check.

Sold out for the BMW
and that barren parcel -
mortgaged heaven,
rife with sea salt
in the Hamptons.
I wonder if…
enough personal integrity left…
for a hotdog?

THE GREAT ONES

Rather than wait,
the great ones always destroy themselves.
Who can say why?
To gnaw and tear,
and bite through the chord
that sustained.
Their place among the heavens –
affixed.
Longevity of their legend –
secure.
To glisten
as white diamonds strewn,
across a firmament of clay,
devouring quicksand.

At last,
to endure no more,
to gnaw and tear…
who can say why?
The great ones always destroy themselves,
rather than wait,
Their place among the heavens,
evergreen,
for a while,
forever renewed,
yet always
the great ones destroy themselves,
rather than wait.