Thursday, April 28, 2016

Felino A. Soriano, excerpts from Of this Momentum Song


Dr. Parry Celsus in Oz, image by Daniel Y. Harris 



Of this Momentum Song (thirty-seven)

  The way
        this
 arc of moth
           runs
  from the splay
 of eyes     you
     invent ways
   to remove an
 hour’s contempt
                through
  writing syllables
 of struggle into
               a
  distant wall, far
 enough in shape
    to not recognize
                  its
horror     its phantom
 etching wait into the
moments’ configurative
                     oscillation—


to memory is to remove
 now’s body, strip
bone to cleanliness
                  of
interrogating the
 dirt of birth’s
            infatuation—


   we’ve gone here
 to chant     chant in-
  to why wind answers
 in howl and holler-
   ing motivated     fathoms.
        



                        Each
                            father
                                  each
  known body to
 bend embrace
    into what finespun
  lace draws in
              shadow
 across the face’s
    hushing rest…
  commune relevance,
 thirst the same as
   birth moving forward,
 freedom being said
                  is
  what the mouth
 circles and pronounces



     wholly resolute



Of this Momentum Song (nearly thirty-nine)

  We chant, we (reinterpret)
 what fell memorized
    our watching. 
                Looked,
  we said we would,
 and pushing at
    our backs, a
  wandering wind,
               winged
 and prophetic:     what
  comes next, an
experiment
          in
 what flame
alters… the rise
  from where heat
               goes,
the halved hero
 never dissipates
into whole history—
              what we
 sometimes sing,
a no less sigh
  than the mirror’s
               humor
 haunts us…
            


Of this Momentum Song (thirty-nine)

 Keyed into various                          
wisdoms, open
  windows’ vanishing.
                 Why we’re
 here we know,
but do not
  walk into
 what held
   our prior
  protected
          echoes.
 The way wait
holds us, we
 walk halved
in our steps, timid
   keeping tempo
 on time to arrive
                knowing
rhythm is self
 without the face
of unknowing.
      And, the way
  scent first rises
 to land across
   why we’re moving
  this way… the
 prize of it holds
    memory, the
               nostalgia
  becomes necklace,
   an heirloom tucked
 into the hand holding
    what we were, now
                  becoming.
  



  We breathe and become
 what moves us.  No terror
    too thin to count
   on hope for home,
     though home can
 never be numerical.  Too
                         many
  homes never wholly
   held us.  Hands as
 rooms     always broken
    from the rust
  each hour named
 in light’s misnamed
                     etching.
 Why many
   know us,
we recall
        words
 use syllables
to hide meaning,
  determined
 to bury secret
   tongues
           too
ornate to un-
 tangle

     —brief as this
 hour might spin,
   where we’re going
                     now,
we’ve become

              years before
 the foot moves, unearthing

          mass direction



Of this Momentum Song (forty-one)

                                      Dark eyes,
                                     their distance
                                       closer
                                            with
                                    hands pulling
                                   shape from ex-
                                     tracted colors,
                                                 culled
    from mirrors and
  faded rhythms
      wandering
                achromatic
   systems arrive.  Hands,
  into them.  We’ve stayed
    long ago, near where
   Song began
              its
  crawl, its freedom
 the free language
   calling forward
                  and
 toward what hears
our staying. Moved
  when night pushed,
 invented symptoms. 
   To listen was to
  untangle strands
     of silken hours.
                  Splayed
  from what mimics
 long enough
   to reshape
  the mirror’s
     confirmed
 alterations…
                                        we pivot to
                                       portion our
                                          bodies.  To
                                        open scent
                                           to include
                                                     what
                                       occurs when
                                         language bends
                                        to loosen air
                                                    from
  beneath what
 exerts involved
   effort and obtained
     clarity from where
  we’ve a hurried
        circumstance of
                      nuanced

aggregative

                                    music



Of this Momentum Song (forty-three)

   Another body gone.
  We multiplied
     symptoms: an
   arc of symmetries
                    revealed
language of breathing
 breaks when the
last cannot
            rotate,
 the spin dislodges, the
  penultimate brings
gold into the bone
   and structure
 beyond how
             birth
recognizes what
 new styles
  align with
momentary
          fixation.




   Another, gone.  To
 where each resides
   the eye misinterprets.
 Not a death in
     definitional
  hiring: …speak
 to me means
readiness
   disallows
 rolling beyond
Prior’s motivating
  structure—

  
      of how we imitate
   the whole of
     sound does
               not
articulate where
  we become, whole—


                    by Song
 we’re needed by
  the mouth’s
arc, a flight
         finds,
  in a rhythm’s
 kaleidoscopic
   theory, roles
from where breaths
 arrive

            we
  search for the body gone, stilled within what impels distance into our momentary finding


 —Felino A. Soriano