Thom Garzone

EACH HOUSE, WINDOW, AND MIRROR

            Waters speak to me, a song that leads to a wondrous knoll

to highways, avenues, and alleyways cobbled, free, to find cornices that fill my heart,

            and whisper myths forming mental snapshots, mirages drawing me home

 

            I escape thru skies, opened hopes upon grace and largess, yet swings like a pendulum

all over again where I follow a dream embedded in depths I named myself after

           

            These texts of my mind fill with pages of the soul, steps forever returning to doors, sidewalks,

backyards, and outdoor cafes, their maps printed with desire,

            where perseverance shows its landscape to me, clear and harmonious

 

            When insight comes with a sorrowful aftermath, overwhelmed struggles follow

one such illuminated glimpse slips from the clouds, shines on grottoes, rains upon arid soil, and then

within an eclipse of nothingness does promise spit back at me,

            echoing in tribute, dancing wildly on my stake in earth

 

            Then where else do the prophets and princes find me? But on the heels of redemption,

fighting rush hour traffic, paying for work on my townhouse, publishing books no one will read,

            writing essays no one can understand

 

            So this light reveals its city of gold I’ve lain, creates mountains from vapid ideas,

paints figures who chant colors of pasts, haunts me like a demon to offer

 me these sacred chronicles

GLIMPSES FROM MY ROOM

Like slices of bread are my bookshelves

food for thoughts, chewing and swallowing

words that come and drink the water of imagery

Volumes line windows which I peer from

moored by a mentality of bizarre forms

floating down on rays of sunlight glinting thru the blinds

 

Empty cases that crowd the room

overwhelm the sense of ideas

woven in knots of bardic triumph

 

I look at my laundry like followers

who’ve ignored their hygiene

in putrid rows of sanctuaries

 

My guitar rests against a bookcase

 

The graduation photo of my brother becomes swarmed

by honor society plaques, a broadside contest winner

and added certificates to my symphony of services

 

To gaze into an uncle’s vision of the El, the Fulton Fish Market

in the shadows of the Brooklyn Bridge, gulls swooping

in a crafted mosaic of the city,

and it’s here I pause beneath such ornaments

embodied with what I still see as purpose

THEIR TURN

 

            When they gather in droves we see their colors, the truth in their eyes like windows to the world

            They lead me to open country, paths to deconstruct with the frailty of my being

            Yet one day my wings fall like Icarus below the sun

            I can concede with each comrade whose color move these bounds of my existence

            I devote my words to the darkness of their complexions, factions of humanity,

checking out of a hostel harboring images weeping in its secluded space

            There spirits turn on me to see their God

            Here Richmond’s suburbs spread in a genesis no one could comprehend

            For more myths will be scrawled with my pen, more dreams crafted from engulfed illumined sources, ascending to the wondrous legends of our birth

            Truly, my parting was like a disappearance of a magician, a final performance in August 1980,

the first and second act during the sixties and seventies

            No map could guide them to my destination, remaining in the Western wilderness

marooned on an island of my senses

            From once engaged by the color wheel, dimensions of rainbows that becomes the course I took

            Silent whispers of roots kindle faintly in flames, warmth that spills of fate forming glorious patterns

            More ladders to climb, roads to reform, recalling shades of society who leased me their aura

            Then thriving beneath a prevailing sun, I simply sail on to enter new shapes that compose concepts I’ve never known