Ric Carfagna


Trace Elements


I-

      A widow’s form defines shadows
         tapering
             light moving in forward motion
               through thoughts
                  and recollections … patterns
                                   amid accumulations of dust

     the bodily
                  fascinations with an anterior fate
                                 a self-reflected in shards of glass

     as if a future defines itself
               in a mirror’s image
     a flagging spirit’s autonomy
               garnered in histories repeating -


II-

There is the pale river
to be forded before sunset

     the wind chimes anticipating evening
               where moments of stasis reign
                                 in a candle’s passive windowing

wax droppings in vast corridors
an outstretched arm to embrace
a music           now drowning
the cosmic significance
                                 of daylight’s receding torpor -


III-

Cloud cover’s edge     vale in shallow breath
as when the overcast subjugates
a light from circular stairwells

               and the rectangular openings of doorways
                                  invites the unseen
                                                  spectral revenants
                                  resurrecting
                                              the uncertainty in faces
                                                        and the isolation of dreams
                                      once seen at ashrams -


IV-

There have been overlooked aspects
    diminished through articulation
                                      and left over syntax
bleeding to bruised cataract-ground
               wreckage of prisons
               anonymity and decay

               this terrestrial lie
                             has spawned the alien intervention
               of surrogate fears and misplaced passion :

it is when conversation fails
to meet the bounds
               postulated by intention
that walls form patterns
and storms gather in framed doorways -


V-

Surely there must be one requiem felt in the heart
to supplant this image the mirror interrogates

               flanked by tone rows and harmonious intervention
               the driftwood has now become relevant
                                                            to the strand’s ebbing presence -


VI-

A route of diminished returns
and bifurcations that are less the product
                                              of poverty’s misgivings

there is still the ideological
‘road not taken’
still the romantic allegories
to fabricate windows from walls -


VII-

Transparency eludes this angle of vision
so how can the objective observer
ascribe an accurate definition
to what cannot be

             an entity unseen in doorways? -


VIII-

It is in the placation to another’s image of freedom
that a sandstorm appears
                            an insignificant obscuration
                                in the flames of conflict
              the insurgence of subjugating agendas

trash bins burn missives
and lies conspire
to quell the wind’s turbulent penetration

     sterile poignancies     steel barbs
a vacuous indication of substance

policies to underlie
a flat-earth
               formulation of verity . . .


Rigor of observation

‘they watched the city burn’

and the embers reconstruct
                            a wind’s intention


Reticent
forms in isolation
parsing the hours . . .


night-sky stasis and clearing overcast

evolving vision of primitive stars
the unchanging
                             allusions to water, regeration
                             and the continuous
                                                         flow of ages
                                                                                     drawn together
form undulating in ebbing currents


For the sake of clarity
portents occlude the eye’s infusion
causation cannot deny
the human element of fate
                       as a house of cards crumbling
                                                        beneath this weight
                            passive forms lie
                            vanquished to silence -


IX-

Each season unto itself      is sufficient
and the empty page is misplaced
entropy & displacement
corridors recede

                             among driftwood and debris
                             scattered
                                            mortality covers the inland sea

                               where horizons diminish
                             the ashen fog lifts
                             before there is vision
                                                            to observe
                                                                                     permanence:

                     a crow walks
                     the edge of a strand

                             the penchant is to seek
                                                         enlightenment
                             as the wreckage is passed
                             the eye acclimates

                                                         to scour daylight
                                                         for evidence of the myth
                                                         that lay in the unresolved –


X-

This sense that surrounds
the chaotic voices
becoming misplaced

           a ghost walks among the living
           there are few who sense the presence
                     and fewer still to absorb the illumination
    emanating from the unglued seams

                                            perception becomes
                                            a chink in the armor

         soon a tapering light
                     diminishing
                                            into wall recesses -


XI-

The mettle of straw gods uphold
    what this faith states:
           endings are among architecture
                        redefining the self
           amid the physical
axioms of observation

   what is relevant
   as a desert encircling
     this sparse gravity as motion
                       sifting elemental energies
                                               transferred

among the oscillation of shadows
and nebulous contours to define
                                           form or flesh



Ric Carfagna is the author of 15 collections of poetry, most recently Null Set and Esse (Book II) published by x-Pressed. His poetry has evolved from the early experimental radicalities of his first two books, Confluential Trajectories and Porchcat Nadir, to the unsettling existential mosaics of his current collections, including his ongoing multi-book project Notes On NonExistence.

Ric has been the Poetry Review Editor for the E-Journal Poetic Inhalation and is currently associated with the arts and poetry publication New Mystics.

His poems have been published widely in America as well as in Europe.

 
 
 
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