Article 24

To connect the dots you have to draw the lines,
He thinks on the way to Independence Hall.
There’s just enough light for him to read the signs.

Whichever way your heart or head inclines,
You’ll grasp at anything to break your fall—
It’s only when we’re pushed we draw the lines.

He comes to see that Y’s abstruse designs,
That all day long had held him in their thrall,
Were meant to train him how to read the signs,

To help him understand how self entwines
With other, making distinctions hard to call.
Do states exist before they draw the lines?

The gaps between the things that one defines
Had not before today seemed quite so small:
Worlds get blurrier the more you read the signs.

The silver key in his right hand crisply shines.
He picks a spot on the well-kept red-brick wall.
Without a thought for who might read, he signs,
And smiles to himself as he draws the lines.

[5:00 / ending / villanelle / eye / X = signature / Independence Hall]

Part 23

As he squinted and furrowed down Second
To where Xavier (the second) still beckoned,
Our hero surmised
He would not be surprised,
But the meeting held more than he reckoned.

For upon his arrival he found
There were no other Xaviers around.
Just a gaggle of gals
Who were jawing like pals
As they drank, sang, and generally clowned.

“Their clothes should be more and not less tight…
To a few babes I’m barely at chest height.
How odd that they’re all
So remarkably tall.
Wait a second! That girl’s a transvestite!

“Or transsexual…transgendered…trans-
Of some manner or other. Her hands
Should have tipped me off earlier.
They could stand to be girlier,
Though her chest can’t be less like a man’s.”

(One could here make some statements declarative
That would be for his image reparative—
How he meant no offense
And now truly repents—
But instead let’s get on with the narrative.)

Those hands were, he thought, full of portent.
In her right was an apple: a Cortland.
Her left seemed to throttle
A Dos Equis bottle,
Which to X somehow felt quite important.

When she stepped in an alley to piddle,
He endeavored to answer the riddle—
“I might see what I’m missing
If I join her in pissing,
Though the thought kind of skeeves me a little.”

So he stood by her side and they went,
And when both of their streams had been spent,
His closer inspection
Had led to detection:
He was certain one hundred percent.

He had come a long way as a sleuth,
And what he heard next seemed like proof
That he wasn’t in error,
For they called her Viera—
Looks like Y had been telling the truth.

X was glad that his twin was unique,
Even though some might call her a freak.
Her new physiognomy
Showed her autonomy,
A possession that many still seek.

There once was a young man named Xavier
Who had spurned so-called normal behavior,
And whether he meant it, he
Changed the identity
Of a totally different young Xavier.

[4:00 / carousing / limerick / bladder / Dos Equis / City Tavern]

Psalm 22

He sat outside the Meeting House and sighed.
He rubbed his palms together very slowly.
None of the usual social codes applied.
He sat outside the Meeting House and sighed.
If he were a coward, he could hide
Behind a stoic mask like a hockey goalie.
He sat outside the Meeting House and sighed.
He rubbed his palms together very slowly.

He sat outside the Meeting House and sighed.
He rubbed his palms together very slowly.
Conflicted feelings bide but don’t subside.
He sat outside the Meeting House and sighed.
If he possessed a soupcon more of pride
He could dismiss these deep concerns as lowly.
He sat outside the Meeting House and sighed.
He rubbed his palms together very slowly.

He sat outside the Meeting House and sighed.
He rubbed his palms together very slowly.
X strove to think, but found his brain was fried.
He sat outside the Meeting House and sighed.
If he were a glutton, he might have tried
Washing down cannoli with some Stoli.
He sat outside the Meeting House and sighed.
He rubbed his palms together very slowly.

He sat outside the Meeting House and sighed.
He rubbed his palms together very slowly.
If he were more soft-hearted, he’d have cried.
He sat outside the Meeting House and sighed.
He cocked his head a little to one side
And pursed his lips like Angelina Jolie.
He sat outside the Meeting House and sighed.
He rubbed his palms together very slowly.

He sat outside the Meeting House and sighed.
He rubbed his palms together very slowly.
Grief and hope continued to collide.
He sat outside the Meeting House and sighed.
If his sense of self were half as wide,
He could embrace fraternal feelings solely.
He sat outside the Meeting House and sighed.
He rubbed his palms together very slowly.

He sat outside the Meeting House and sighed.
He rubbed his palms together very slowly.
If he were cooler, he’d take this all in stride.
He sat outside the Meeting House and sighed.
As long as he’d come this far on the ride
He might as well surrender to it wholly.
He sat outside the Meeting House and sighed.
He rubbed his palms together very slowly.

He sat outside the Meeting House and sighed.
He rubbed his palms together very slowly.
X figured truth should be his only guide.
He sat outside the Meeting House and sighed.
He trusted that his ego could best provide
A sense of all that’s base and all that’s holy.
He sat outside the Meeting House and sighed.
He rubbed his palms together very slowly.

[3:00 / praying / triolet / palms / savior / Meeting House]

Image 21

At rest at last on a bench in Franklin Square,
quare fellows lying all about
out for the count or every so often waking
aching for another shot or hit,
it seemed, a groggy Xavier stretched his back.
Ack! It felt like every single muscle
cell had died and sent him straight to Hades.
“These kinds of pains are bitches. Some Versed?”
said a man in a filthy yellow jumpsuit.
“Suit yourself,” he added when X was silent.
“I lent my extra blanket to that sailor,
or I’d hook you up,” he said and cracked a smile.
“I’ll be fine,” X mumbled, “but thanks for the offer.”
For quite some time he sat engrossed in thought.
Ought he go to meet his fellow Xavier?
“You’re looking mighty troubled. Want some pudding?”
Ding. A switch was flipped in X’s memory,
or he flipped it himself: emerging from a cloud,
loud thumps as his not-quite-mirror image,
age two or so, pounded on a window.
Oh! His brother, stuck in a station wagon.
Again, he watched him be taken away.
“A is for Apple” was written on his shirt.
Hurt had flooded X’s mind, but still,
’til now those pangs were hidden, lost in time.
“I’m not sure where that came from,” Xavier muttered—
uttered with a nod—“but…” (Pause. His friend had
ended up face-down between two benches,
his jumpsuit’s back now flush in X’s view.)
“…You must be joking.” REIVAX, read the logo.
Go figure. Xavier shrugged, and left it at that.

[2:00 / repeating / echo verse / back / Reivax / Franklin Square]

Subject 20

swimming across
the bridge
wobbly on the drowsy bicycle on the
way to see my clone a myoclonic
jerk
if ever I knew
oh brother oh bother oh
pooh and piglet a girl in pigtails without any eyes it’s
my cousin Y yes I met her
once when she was eleven with
an elven look her pointy ears I knew she
looked familial her father
that time gave me pictures of
my folks who were gone in
front of a Volkswagen minibus
with Mickey Mouse ears but
I tell him I have parents they’re just
over there you see you don’t know what you’re and
left without a look here the
policeman says when he stops the
bike with his
middle finger
a wild woman on the
Walt Whitman Bridge let me see your
poetic license I sense that he’s
looking funny at my photo as
I fight to stand straight so I flip
my long hair away from wait a minute what’s
this here I don’t have Miss
Vera Xi the S.S. man is saying so a
Chinese comrade are we and no I
try to say but instead I’m singing
“Respect” with the voice of
Aretha I thought I was on the Ben
Franklin not the Walt
and the Cossack is struck by lightning and falls over
the side into the Nile and I pedal my where’s the
end of this cables snapping three Xs at the bottom while
I and I are safe and well in cribs at
home free with an extra side of
Edmund Bacon marking off the
streets that lead to my

[1:00 / dreaming / free verse / hair / Vera Xi / Ben Franklin Bridge]

Canto XIX

Having slumped his way to the sleeping river
where molten darkness promises to swallow
every thought one wants to forget forever

with numbing pulses, swell by shushing swell,
each mirroring the lights that spell out Camden,
a city that the shadows know so well

that even at noon they seem to come down
in dimming blankets that settle on every surface,
lending to the town a deep concomitant

twilight silence that in its muting serves
to enhance the feeling of an urban ghost town—
the view of which was blocked by a sour face

topped with chalk-white wisps that curled in the gusting
winds in a beckoning manner, somehow looking
mendicant, like the monks of St. Augustine,

or like their owner, whom one could fairly liken
to the Old Man of the Sea who burdened Sinbad
(steaming drunk, his skin besplotched with the lichen

of liver spots from too much time on a sun bed
or simply too much time in general) and who
it seemed had recently been sorely snubbed

by someone, X could gather from his “How
can they…thirty good years…those stupid…
expecting me to dance and sing ‘heigh-ho’

and salute and…” (here the slurring fully stopped),
from which X surmised he’d been summarily axed,
leaving him here all sodden, surly, stooped,

and eager to act before X even asked
if he could help—he found himself on a ferry,
its engine screaming as it was made to exceed

all safety guidelines, fueled by the spiteful fury
of Charlie, as X had come to know the fellow
who offered to take him across the river for free

when he’d heard the path that X was forced to follow
in search of truth, and had moaned his own hard case
of losing his ferryman job to a character flaw

like love of the bottle, but now he could join the cause
of X and strike at his former bosses to boot
by nabbing the boat, to which he still had the keys,

and “give the bastards something to worry about”
as he carted X to the darkened farther shore—
“just doing my job” he said without missing a beat—

where X, after searching for something that he could share
and gifting to Charlie a chain of polished silver
right from his neck, which was met with a gesture of sheer

gratitude, would face the stench of sulphur
that hung about the docks, then spot a bike
to pinch (with more than just the slightest sliver

of guilt) on which to ride to the place and back,
noting a sticker bending around the frame
bearing a name that X had seen in a book

but seldom elsewhere—VIRGIL—before the form
of a nagging shade would spur him to cycle
his way to commune with those who’d bought the farm

and moved to a graveyard full of twisted, sickly
trees of the kind one sees in horror flicks
surrounded by mist and some bones and maybe a skull,

where X could tend the long-departed flocks
of ancestors penned in his crooked family plot,
among them, near the edge, his dearest folks,

his natural parents (if that’s not impolite
to say), from whose dual grave there stuck a daisy,
but when X knelt to look at it and pull it,

it revealed a secret that left him once more dizzy,
in the form of another note from Y that was bound
to the stem, its simple message quite a doozy

(“Brother at City Tavern”) that made him bend
his mind around her reaching from the grave
to guide his feet again, and even bandy

about the thought of a kind of necro-graph,
before determining to focus on the now
and setting aside tomorrow for his grief,

a plan that soon would have him start anew
and bid benighted Jersey au revoir
en route to seek, to find, and at last to know.

[0:00 / communing / terza rima / bowel / ex / Camden]

18th Division

Y, of unknown age, died
Thursday on Independence Mall,
crushed by a sign that happened to fall
to the street and hit her right in stride.

She’s survived by X, who’s currently grieving
in Washington Square, his head full of bells
that never stop their chilling knells
for spirits from their bodies leaving.

Beneath a tree that may be a yew,
he wanders in a child-like dream
in which his mouth won’t let him scream
as piles of corpses come into view.

Beneath his feet, for ever more,
excepting if the kingdom come,
lie nameless soldiers, each one from
the Revolutionary War.

An ebon bird alights upon
the stony slab that marks their grave,
and flags from every colony wave
goodbye to each departed son.

Lighted always by a flame,
General Washington scans the rows
of country lads and stout XOs,
in death their standing all the same.

A fresher shadow joins his side
as X feels Y now come to rest;
right in the middle of the quest
to give him liberty she died.

[23:00 / mourning / In Memoriam stanza / arms / XO / Washington Square]

Pattern 17

Benjamin Franklin
was always angling
for a memorable maxim
until death did tax him.

Betsy Ross
was at a loss.
Fate cut her thread
and now she was dead.

Philip Syng Physick
worked wonders with his sick
patients, but mending
couldn’t stop his own ending.

John Wanamaker
took on an acre
of retail space breezily.
His grave? Just as easily.

John Barrymore
would surely have carried more
films with his clout
if his lungs had held out.

Mario Lanza
would belt out a stanza
sure to delight us
were it not for phlebitis.

John Coltrane
could transform most pain
into cascading shivers,
but not his liver’s.

Louis I. Kahn
expounded upon
the grandest and best tomb,
then died in a restroom.

Princess Grace
could make a case
for a badly-stacked deck,
with a stroke and a wreck.

Pearl Bailey
sang and danced daily,
but for all of her art
was betrayed by her heart.

Marian Anderson—
no dame was grander—spun
heads with her song,
until Death came along.

Wilt Chamberlain
could win a game or win
women’s favor instead.
He died in his bed.

Y
didn’t die
in the usual fashion:
her finale was smashing.

[22:00 / memorializing / clerihew / lungs / x-stitch / Betsy Ross House]

Station XVI

W-----H-----Y-----

Y

[21:00 / dying / concrete / nose / X = spot / WHYY]

Scene 15

FADE IN: EXT. LOCUST STREET - NIGHT
In f.g. XAVIER exits sushi place,
as in the b.g. Y moves out of sight.
XAVIER (V.O.): I don’t know whether to embrace
this chance to do a sudden about-face
or stick to my guns, and she can go to hell
with all her cloak-and-dagger, come-and-chase—
SFX: A bicyclist rings her bell.

FLASHBACK to XAVIER, on a bike, age 10.
He rings the bell the way that children do
and rides with wild joyfulness, but then
he skids and stops just as he passes through
an unhinged gate. Beyond it just a few
more yards, the previously green and gentle slope
gives way to a yawning gorge, each side with two
large posts that each trail fraying ends of rope.

He cannot bring himself to venture quite
to the end of the path as it drops off into space.
His breath gets short, he shuts his eyes real tight,
then turns and flees in cowardly disgrace.
In a short time he’s able to retrace
his path and break the broken bridge’s spell
by pedaling his bike at breakneck pace,
his shaking fingers constantly ringing the bell.

CUT TO: XAVIER on the street again.
He shudders and turns to follow Y anew.
MONTAGE: He picks his way through several men
on his way through Rittenhouse Square; He jumps a slew
of puddles; He knocks a woman’s feathered hat askew;
He cranes his neck to act as a periscope;
He kneels near City Hall to tie his shoe;
He comes to 12th and Race and the end of his rope.

VOICE (O.S.): You’ve fought a solid fight.
I guess I’ll put an end to this drawn-out race.
XAVIER turns to the speaker, on his right.
Y smiles and offers her hand without a trace
of hesitation. Her easygoing grace
makes XAVIER’S eyes in recognition swell;
there’s something about her posture and her face
that in his whirling memory rings a bell.

XAVIER (V.O.): She looks like my Uncle Ben…
Y: Now, X, it’s high time that you knew
the who and what and how and why and when
about your family’s past for real and true.
So I’ve arranged this little rendezvous
to make sure that you knew the honest dope.
Let’s walk this way and I’ll enlighten you.
CUT TO: A giant Y at the end of a rope.

CUT TO: XAVIER and Y beneath a bright
streetlamp at the corner of 9th and Race.
Y: I know that you might bear some spite,
and rightly so, but I promise to erase
that hate. The news I have will soon replace
your hurt with equal awe in parallel.
While they talk, they move along apace
toward the grounds that ring the Liberty Bell.

P.O.V. of the statue of William Penn
on top of City Hall (high-angle view).
They sharply turn from the square that was named for Ben
Franklin, and walking abreast, they head for the new
Constitution Center. Meanwhile, a crew
atop the WHYY building are now forced to grope
when their powerful floodlights blow out, leaving darkness that’s too
pervasive for them to track down the end of a rope.

The workers do their best to try to brace
the Y, which could be deadly if it fell,
but none of them can find a steady base
and there’s no time to ring a warning bell.
CUT TO: Y, below, without a clue.
Y: In just a couple hours, I hope
to put an end to your questions, and all this stu—
SMASH CUT TO: The slithering end of the rope.

[20:00 / addressing / ballade / face / X = crossing / Convention Center]

Fourteenth Story

Once upon a train of thought, you see,
a person often rides it ’til the end,
enduring on the way a twist or three,
content to go wherever the track might wend.
But sometimes turns will send one ’round the bend,
and so it was with X, who’d had enough
of puzzles, hints, and all mysterious stuff.

He’d already learned of parents and a brother
he never knew he had, and would never know—
three family members lost, and now another
who might get tossed atop his heap of woe.
He found himself at odds with G.I. Joe:
only a dope would swallow all that prattle
that knowing something wins you half a battle.

“Not knowing keeps you out of the line of fire,”
he thought as he was heading toward the street,
“and Y sells more baloney than Oscar Mayer.”
So when, on his departure, his eye did meet
another note, did Xavier skip a beat?
Indeed he didn’t! No, he ran right past,
as hungry as a hippo and twice as fast.

But supper’s hard to come by with no bread—
free meals are widely judged as nonexistent—
and X’s last few beans had long been fed
to a starving artist by now in his memory distant,
so he had no answer for his body’s now persistent
dining demands and bellowings for beverage,
his empty pockets lending him no leverage.

Legend tells of three most lucky princes
who on their merry ways would tend to trip
upon the most delicious plums or quinces
of wisdom at quite an amazing clip.
Now X made like a Prince of Serendip,
in that he found a twenty-dollar bill
just lying on the pavement, as one will.

Itching to convert his newfound cash
to wholesome goods nutritious and delicious,
X dodged a slowly-moving Philly Phlash
and had his eye caught; plates of tasty fishes
reeled him in. His tummy’s repetitious
hurly-burly shushed before the gleamy,
glisteny globs of superfine sashimi.

Soon parted from his earlier lucky find,
he grabbed some grub and slid into a booth—
he chomped until he felt a jolt and grind
that told him something happened to his tooth.
“I think it…” X said, “Yeth, I think ith looth.”
Just then he spotted Y and dropped his jaw.
“It couldn’t be, but thtill, I thwore I thaw…”

[19:00 / supping / rhyme royal / teeth / via rex / Rittenhouse Square]

Exhibit 13

At risk of seeming rather oddly tipsy,
like a guy with one foot shod and the other sockless,
or a wobbly animal just after it’s been born,
or some other form of locomotive clown
lurching his way past lions and their tamer,
X skated until he was ready to fall over.

Along the way he’d sifted the palaver
of clues and riddles, mysteries and tips,
which sent him round like an old electrical timer
that clicked its way through strict diurnal cycles.
He’d mustered all the strength he had to call on,
surprising himself with the bounds of his mental brawn.

But now he stood before a solid brown
double door, behind which lay the Louvre
of medical oddities. Its simple lobby’s clean
and institutional off-whites, beiges, taupes
recalled to Xavier’s mind the halls of schools
whose walls he couldn’t help but itch to mar.

Voluminous silence, as most befits a tomb or
long-forgotten monastery or barn,
surrounded X, who’d in most cases seek less
stolid settings. Here, as though by lava
frozen in time and space, were countless types
of things from Austin, Bristol, and Cologne—

a zoo of specimens for those who might incline
to spend a Sunday peering at a tumor.
That kind of morbid fascination taps
a well of feeling in even the smallest bairn
who knows that Death will ever work his lever
with bony knuckles grasping scythes or sickles.

X cavalierly christened several skulls—
Colleen,
Oliver,
Tamara,
Brian—
ignoring blithely the descriptions on their tabs,

and moved through tubs of items found at autopsy
(we should be sick less, with all these medical skills):
a malformed brain left floating in a brine,
some physical structures shared by clone and clone
that begged to be inspected a time or two more—
few things could deliver a jolt like the conjoined liver

of Chang and Eng, which now he could see so close
up. X turned to the skeleton he’d come to think of as Colin,
who’d need a truly brobdingnagian pullover,
and be an instant college ball first-teamer,
a colossal Hoya, Tar Heel, Jayhawk, Bruin;
the jaws of scouts would plummet at the tapes.

But even Colin paled before the colon
(which looked to have been steeped in rich tamari):
a massive complication of the tubes
apparently resisted even bran
and would not of its contents yield a sliver,
until it pushed past 40 on the scales.

In placename verses, such as “Toome” or
“Broagh,” or older sagas like The Voyage of Bran
in which a wanderer hikes and rides and sculls,
the speaker plants poetic flags all over,
unearthing local tales that might turn topsy-
turvy the claims of one or other clan:

“This bog-oak barrel Patrick once made beer in…”
“Blah Blah hid here before he became a lifer…”
But this museum’s finds could make one cool on
cromlechs, pyramids, ziggurats, and teepees,
with organs, tissues, muscles, bones, and vesicles
exposing each normal show as a nickel-and-dimer.

For here was a malformed femur like a loofah,
a lady made of soap, some swallowed tops,
bronchial branches spreading out like thyme or
splitting like so many delicate honeysuckles—
such sights had nearly banished from the kiln
of X’s mind the stuff that made him burn.

“Y will have to find some other dupes.
I’m off to find some things to do that suck less.”
He thought of how he’d bring his ire to bear on
his temptress, and how she’d promise to come clean
if he would only wait until tomorrow…
No longer would this errant knight believe her.

[18:00 / resolving / sestina / liver / xaVIer / Mütter Museum]

Twelve

Like the drowsy bear,
X looks for a quiet spot,
a soft, restful lair.

His chilled heart hardens
on the circular paths toward
Japanese gardens.

Each new frosty trail—
an obedient creature
chasing its own tail.

These heaps of white stones
might conceal a frozen truth:
Old travelers’ bones.

The air feels colder
when a white rabbit glances
over its shoulder.

Seeing XAVIER twice—
like looking both at and through
a mirror of ice.

His green-flecked blue eye
encounters its reflection,
the pond’s mottled sky.

Sitting with legs crossed,
the mantis shows self-control
that none could exhaust.

The hybrid flowers
whisper their silken blushes,
yield their mixed powers.

Each being perceives
only its own piece of life:
one tree, many leaves.

When the wind relents
the leaf feels its own shaking
and can come to sense.

Fresh Xs enter,
Spreading like lotus petals
from his still center.

From his still center
a brief wisdom floats, settles:
a summer renter.

X can now condense
his former dealings with Y
as “willful suspense.”

The lone swallow grieves
unless the loss of his wife
grants him full reprieves.

From cloudy towers
a gift of new life rushes
in warming showers.

There, in the grass, tossed
or simply allowed to roll,
a rollerblade lost.

Aspiring to fly
in a certain direction
X gives it a try.

The unpaired device—
one much less than half of two—
will have to suffice.

With each step bolder,
the one-legged crane dances,
misgivings moulder.

But not all unknowns
the seeker might hope to sleuth
will soon become knowns.

To Y moves this snail,
but before he can reach her
his footing will fail.

Gravity’s wardens
in their strictness will afford
very few pardons.

Becoming aware
of his own role in the plot,
X fixes his stare.

[17:00 / reflecting / haiku / navel / X = hybrid / Japanese House]

msg 11

B4 pOr X c%d finish w Hs song
a bEpN lt him knO he got a txt.
He 1DrD withR Y wud lEd him nxt
& wethR shed kEp stringin him along,
so PDQ he scanned d tiny scrEn,
whch onlE served 2 dash Hs hOpz 1ce mo.
It sed: “Mt Pleasant ASAP,” thN a pure
keystroke of G9 he wshD hed nevr cn:
“NRN. YOYO. Y.”
Y oh Y, indeed, our hero thawt,
but lIk a wayward JNGL trekker caught
n quiksand 2 Hs knee, o evN thigh,
mo struggle onlE sEmd 2 mAk tngZ worse,
so X jst shrugged & hedD 2wRd d plAc
dat Y sugestD, hoping stil 2 fAc
d woman huM hed yt hav coz 2 curse.

L8r, wen hed rEchD Mt Pleasant’s dor,
he found himsLf a rEsN 2 vex air
w mNE unkind wrds, 4 lyN ther
wz yt NothA clue. So X lt pour
a stream of filthy lngwij aimed @ Y,
&, wlkN round Bhind the storied hows,
NothA kind of stream he uzD 2 douse
d nOt hed bin so freshly POd by.
Content 2 vnt Hs spleen & bladder both,
he tried Hs best 2 ignOr d sodden clue.
Dis proved, howevR, mo thN he c%d do,
& n a cupL mins d fInL oath
had paSd Hs lips & L him pondering how
hed get to 22nd St, and wen:
“N f’n way Ill wlk bak ther agen,
I nEd som f’n wheels, & I mean nw! :-@”

[16:00 / hating / "Modern Love" sonnet / spleen / vex air / Mount Pleasant]

Song 10

Your shining form has set these words ablaze on my tongue;
They dance like flames performing grand ballets on my tongue.

To such angelic grace poetic flights
Come to seem like broken-down clichés on my tongue.

I pray that soon your wondrous shape ignites
More quickly-flashing fireworks displays on my tongue.

My thoughts of you arouse these piquant bites,
Like spicy gumbos or crawfish etouffees on my tongue.

As every Pentecostal flame alights,
I feel a course of holy-hot flambés on my tongue.

Each dream I have brings scores of lovely sights
That leave a zesty honey-coated glaze on my tongue.

Parades of stunning heavenly delights
Deposit ever-louder hip-hoorays on my tongue.

Your absence now my lonely spirit spites
And, fully flush with fevered grief, inveighs on my tongue.

These pleading words resemble men in tights,
Performing as they do robust jetés on my tongue.

My verse is fraught with fractures, slips, and slights;
A patchwork of art like one of Miró’s or Paul Klee’s on my tongue.

Swarms of rapturous thoughts ascend like kites,
Despite the lonesome leaden weight that lays on my tongue.

This string of “almost”s, “nearly”s, and “not quite”s—
A subtle tang of homemade mayonnaise on my tongue.

Against my sense my willful spirit fights,
And overrides the “nevermores” and “nays” on my tongue.

To meet my failing will your scent excites
A raucous cloud of “bravo”s and “olé”s on my tongue.

Its thoughts of you my pious heart recites
And places every eulogizing phrase on my tongue.

Yet still I doubt your distant heart requites,
Calling forth more “Qui?”s, “Warum?”s, and “¿Qué?”s on my tongue.

This qualm my flowering eloquence benights
Until your presence casts reviving rays on my tongue.

I dream of when my world is set to rights,
And every word with joyfulness sashays on my tongue.

In the meantime, every thought invites
Ersatz expressions, like men with bad toupees on my tongue.

This flat existence in your wake incites
Rebellious urgings quick to stir and upraise on my tongue.

Your praises wait like ever-true valets on my tongue,
So stay, O bright one, and live in many ways on my tongue.

[15:00 / singing / ghazal / tongue / “bright one” / Playing Angels statue]

Ninth Quarto

(1)
“Is it for fear to meet my greedy eye
That thou would cloak thyself with modest haste?
The perfect rose, if seen or not, will die,
So thrift of beauty cannot be but waste.
All nature doth revolt ’gainst such offence,
And, like a nation long by tyrants ruled,
Cries out for freedom from thy chaste pretense,
That by an open hand thou might be schooled.
And yet with thee I must a statesman be;
Ambassador to beauty, seldom heard,
Resigned to court for all eternity
In hopes thy stubborn heart might still be stirred.
I ask thee only this, as we draw near:
If not thy heart, surrender me thine ear.

(2)
“If not thy heart, surrender me thine ear,
That I may train it in the ways of truth.
This Puritan code of self-denial and fear
Ill suits the world of beauty and of youth
And constitutes a crime against thy soul.
Excess of temperance makes of virtue vice;
When little parts of life become the whole,
The body must remit a hefty price.
Turn instead, kind ear, to natural urges,
To inner lights that guide with softer tones,
The secret voice that with the body merges
And echoes in the marrow of the bones.
When clashing counsels tell’st thou what to do,
Remember this: to thine own self be true.

(3)
“Remember this? ‘To thine own self be true.’
A famous turn of phrase that now I turn
From Danish setting into context new,
That thou might from the musty sermon learn,
And listen to the preaching from within
Instead of shouted ‘shalt nots’ from outside
That label any self-delight a sin
And take in refutation deviant pride.
Careful study of thy heart’s true leanings
Will offer firmest proof of nature’s course,
So make a subject of those cordial meanings;
A science with the self its only source.
Only the soul that knows its shape can say
'I desire,' and will have it no other way.

(4)
“I desire, and will have it no other way,
That here and now my labours should be eased;
No more will I be pushed and pulled astray
Until some unseen force is wholly pleased.
None need be told the world is filled with toil,
Yet equally all things must meet their end;
So let this grueling knotty strand recoil
And grant me all the succour thou can lend.
Exhausted is my stock of lofty language
And still thou seem’st no closer than the sun,
While I remain below in blinding anguish
With failing lips and feet on which to run.
Wherefore flee’st thou, as X comes after Y?
Is it for fear to meet my greedy eye?”

[14:00 / wooing / corona of Shxprean sonnets / lips / era XIV / Samuel Sculpture Garden]

Saga Eight

His lengthy walk along the river’s bank
Provided Xavier scads of time to think:
Why lead him through a labyrinth scrap by scrap
With clues to sleuth by luck or simple hap?
In thrall to such an informational thrift,
He snacked on runes, on crumbs of knowledge thrived.
This mindset made the lurching longboats seem
A raft of symbols, no two quite the same.
Refusing for a time to chase the bait,
At Norseman’s statue Xavier took a seat.
By puzzles and by hunger nearly crazed,
A mighty sandwich to his mouth he raised—
At Reading Terminal he’d bought the wheaten loaf
That to his craving maw he now would lift.
Before he’d drained his grape juice to its dregs
He eyed a woman standing on one leg;
That single stilt descended from her skirt
And ended with her sneaker in the dirt.
Her other leg she from a park bench took
And leaned upon it like a shepherd’s crook,
But taking Xavier’s staring as a snub,
Then turned her wooden limb into a club.
The hefty member to the sky was thrust,
To X a weapon powerful as Thor’s.
The woman showed a supernatural skill
In bearing legs to cause another ill.
He tried to duck, but still was soundly hit;
X wondered how much worse his day could get.
The uniped berserker lashed with anger,
And woe to any mortal who would wrong her.
Only when her blows had made her weak
Could Xavier crawl away, his spirits bleak.
The victor loudly gloated at the slaughter
And as he fled her taunts came crashing after.
Her scathing calls berated Xavier’s flaw,
For which the woman harsh laid down the law:
“The next time you would stare at someone’s gear
Remember how I evened up the score;
I hope you never need another scare.”
He dragged his battered body through the muck,
And cast himself anew as X the Meek.

[13:00 / lunching / heroic couplets / legs / Viking statue (Thorfinn Karlsefni)]

Case #7

The dope that Y was close gave X a start.
He dropped a fin and copped the dishy sketch.
This skirt might be a piece of cake to catch.
All eyes, he tailed her down a winding street.
Those gams would give a Mummer cause to strut.
And there she was, the itch he hoped to scratch.
On the rocks, like thirty-year-old Scotch.
He wished that she would give it to him straight.
Up the steps he snooped, and caught a break.
He had the bulge—she hadn’t peeped him yet.
But on the other side he watched her blow.
She jumped a nearby hack on heel and toe.
All X could do was dangle, cool his jets.
She dusted out, lammed off, a clean sneak.

Dizzy with the dame, a full-on bunny.
His pump was doing backflips in his chest.
Running down the jane had left him juiced.
He felt like he’d been slipped a bunch of bennies.
She’d dumped his compos mentis in the boonies.
A quicker broad than any chick he’d chased.
He couldn’t tail her taxi, was the gist.
No kale, spondulix, lettuce, cabbage, money.
On the nut, he tried to crab her grift.
Why'd she kiss him off and take a powder?
The Water Works replied with churn and buffet.
The roaring of the falls got louder and louder.
If only he could thumb or glaum a lift.
But like a bangtail, he would have to hoof it.

[12:00 / falling / Italian sonnet / heart / Water Works]

Study No. 6

Higgledy piggledy
Xavier the Runaway,
Hoping for haven from
Jingoist jerk,
Scurried his way up the
Ben Franklin Parkway, his
Self-preservational
Instincts at work.

Hippity hoppity
Xavier the Clamberer
Mounted the steps at the
End of the road,
Neoconservative
Backers behind him, and
Looked for another small
Key to the code.

Visible risible
Xavier the Questioner
Reached the Museum and
Took in the scene—
There on his right was a
Sketcher of visitors
Monochromatically
Making some green.

Quizzical physical
Xavier the Curious
By this young artist had
Reason to sit
Watching him outline the
Musculoskeletal
Frameworks of customers
Lickety-split.

Possibly passably
Xavier the Eagle-Eyed
Spotted a sketch that was
Marked with a “Y.”
“Quite a fine fox,” he said,
Adding with emphasis,
Hypercorrectively,
“’Tween you and I.”

Flippingly flippantly
Xavier the Supplicant
Got a response from the
Portraitist, who,
Making a motion quite
Unceremonious,
Said, “Over there if you’d
Care to pursue.”

[11:00 / pointing / double dactyl / fingers / Art Museum]

Chap. 5

(1)
Glory be to city planners--minding men
To provide a bounty of benches placed to sit
Foot-fading hike-hams; burned-out bums;
And all ease-things filled with comfort-ken
That balm and nicen, break and knit,
Each selving, soothing brutish body numbs.

Puzzling Xavier comes tread-tired to rest
Beneath the feet of bronze-feat that becomes
The grand museum-front; a monument fit
For lengthy leaning-gainst; with breather blessed
To X creation hums.

(2)
Near now to the griffin-guarded vault
He halts and listens long to bee-sounds beside
Him as he over-eyes the wrought of Rodin,
Cragged or silken, set outside or halled
In Cretan chambers, an Age of Bronze supplied
For awing at by wholly humbled man.

“That sorry S.O.B. had better beat it
Before I come and kick him in the can--
I’ll teach him to insult American Pride!”
On X’s right a man was hurling heated
Defenses of his clan.

(3)
Hard by the Gates of Hell he gave his oaths,
A giant of a man with mirrored eyeshades;
The nap of lambs lay all around his neck
And flag-festooned and -cluttered were his clothes:
Stars and stripes unfurled, the size of pie-plates,
Both back and front, with overbold effect.

To check his churl his wife was grasping grim
His leather jacket, labeled AVIREX,
As fast let fly were fulminating tirades:
“I’ll tear you, pinko beatnik, limb from limb!”
His enemy’s response was “What the heck…?”

(4)
The butt of boiling bombast balked and backed;
For what had fire-fresh ire been suddenly stoked?
But X could fix the means of making-mad—
A hat that read, “Bush lied about Iraq,”
And T-shirt tattling, “Dubya is a joke”—
His glib garb a pure political ad.

In tittle-time the shouty hulk had shushed,
Resigning to his role as one who had,
Like Edward at Calais, by wife been yoked;
His quarry had turned tail and meekly mushed
In hasty habit clad.

(5)
Stirring still, our Xavier starts and steps
Himself from ponderous base of posing bronze,
The brazen branglings sparking speedy leave;
A dawdle-bug deserves the bane he keps,
And Fortune favors him who apt-absconds
With body-might and margin ah! to breathe.

In rear-view Xavier sees the giant fling
Another mound of grumblings meant to grieve;
A timely moral: duck the man who dons
Feelings in the form of outer things:
His inscape on his sleeve.

[10:00 / resting / curtal sonnet / buttocks / Rodin Museum]

Fovrth Booke

Eftsoones the gentle knight did speede his steppe,
Directed westward, like the setting Sunne;
And like a starry body, doomed to schleppe
Untill his faithfull course was surely runne;
His sometime wastfull paces past and done,
With certaine strides Sir Xauier quested faire
To meete the secret Y. whose guile had wonne
His uenomed words untill he guesst at where
Another inkling might be found: the Gryphon's laire.

For in his erstwhile wandrings he had espide
The mightie Gryphon proudly percht in wait
To guard the artfull treasures held inside
A glorious Temple in the West; it sate
With subtile powre above an intricate
And burnisht porch, its glistring form a threat
To euery wicked wight, its roost a gate
That led to prizes burdensome to get;
No sight could hope to escape this straunge and watchfull pet.

So West did Xauier walk, the beast to meete,
A knight in quest of Y. who now knew where,
Ycladd in blacke from necke to sturdy feete;
Such dismall cloths his folk did often wear
To signal darkling minds of grim despaire,
But Xauier trothed to tread a nobler pathe
Forgoing spirits, physics, any fare
That dulls the straightest edge with wasting rathe,
For strength of life and will are all a mortall hath.

To show his faithfull pledge to hardcore life
Sir Xauier had emblazoned on his hand
A sable crosse saltire, a herald rife
With sense of temprance true, the forthright brande
Of one who had auowed a morall stand;
It mutely mirrored one he elsewhere wore,
An argent X, formed perfect to the strand
In Xauier's hair of jet, so queerly pure
And squarely placed as though drawn out by craftsman sure.

St. Andrew's crosse in nombrill pointe first shewed
In Xauier's locks at age thirteen or so;
At first with wonder and with question uiewed
It soon became a mark of deepest woe
For from this marvel Xauier came to know
Of how his family met a cruell end
That left him orphaned; such a pitifull blow
Could not but leave its stamp and paine portend:
An omen hard for younger soules to apprehend.

That siluer letter, when it first appeared,
Had caused those he once thought his rightfull folke
To shake with awe and look with eyes that feared
The sudden sign which in their conscience woke
A pricke of guilt, and so to him they spoke
Of how his mother, father, brother left
The worldly sphere when faultie cables broke.
His birth name, Xauier, had then from him been reft,
But in his hair now shewed the initial boldly eft.

With waking dreames of three descending formes
From footbridge falling, now the solemne knight
Marched west on Arch Street, battered by the storms
Of grim remembrance, praying for the light
That chases tempests swiftly from our sight,
A sign of LOUE, like that he saw ahead
In a stately plaza, from which he angled right
To catch the trail that to the Gryphon led,
For good Sir Xauier sought to meet that creature dred.

Footing doughtie down the pauements grey,
Four Seasons past the Knight in little time;
Then at his right hand as he made his way,
A holy place whose dome seemed thick with grime;
Untill his eares did hark the bubbling rhyme
Of water tumbling on itself, the swell
That to a wearie wanderer sounds a chime
Where had been only echoes of a knell
That spake of times too bleak in words to tell.

Drawing to the glorious Fountaine nigh
A mist from spouting Swann did meete his face
To ease his drooping spirit from on hye
As longe the Knight did loiter at its base;
Renewed, he gan the Circle's arc to trace,
Past princesse trees he walkt with purpose fixt:
No longer should these riddles runne amuck,
Of equall partes desire and horror mixt,
Leauing Xauier feeling stuck, the X in twixt.

[9:00 / questing / Spenserian / feet / Logan Square]

Canto III

Before he could digest this strange discovery,
Our hero heard some rhubarb from his abdomen,
Then in sequence, with scant time to recover, he
Felt the pangs of hunger. As they jabbed him in
The gut, he sought to end the fisticuffery
Of craving, while on the street he saw a cab come in
And skid to stop--the driver hoped to park it
Across the way at Reading Terminal Market.

To find a sop to soothe his angry belly,
Xavier (or as he might be christened, Savor)
Eschewed the local Wawa's quasi-deli,
Preferring more diverse arrays of flavor:
Pierogies, toro, blintzes, dried gemelli.
With gusto at one stand he said, "Por favor,
A Spanish omelet," which then el gran Don Javier
Consumed as though it were the finest caviar.

Le Bus baguettes and sticky buns from Beiler's,
A host of treats from France and some from Germany
Our Savor munched and looked at Emerald Islers'
Handmade goods at Annie's, while at Termini
Bros., cannoli were stacked. "That pastry piler's
A slicker director of showy tarts than Baz Luhrmann," he
Opined with relish. Soon, however, graver
Thoughts returned in the form of the other Xavier.

Turning his mind again to times and dates,
He grasped for any simple explanation
For copied files having unlike mates
(Ignoring in the meantime fragrant Haitian
Sweet potato cakes and steaming plates
Of grits with shrimp and some grits sans crustacean),
Yet foremost in his mind among the reasons
Was that his mother had not two but three sons.

"A brother?" cried out Savor as he chewed
His way through several hunks of shoofly pie
Away from which a host of flies he shooed,
But as he waved his hand he caught the eye
Of someone who'd been looking for him. "Dude,"
Exclaimed the seeker, "I don't know why,
But I'm supposed to give you this brochure."
With that he turned and cheesed it out the door.

Bemused at first by "Dude," and then perplexed
By what was in his hand now, Savor squinted,
Scanning every letter of the text--
A booklet pushing "Cadmen," badly printed.
And in a line that someone double-Xed,
The last name Griffin, thickly circled, hinted...
"At what?" he muttered, lost in stupefaction
Until an oil spot compromised his traction.

Upended by a slick of extra virgin,
Our hero felt he'd landed in a pickle.
Just when he had sensed that he was verging
On meaty findings came this vexing prickle:
Who or what was Griffin? Who was urging
Him to swim upstream in just a trickle
Of starveling hints? And how? And why? His eye
Then caught upon a marginal marking: "Y."

If that initial stood for who had written,
Then "Griffin" was a clue. Why choose to flummox
Instead of writing clearly? He had bitten
More than could be handled by his stomach's
Juices, he feared. "Do all these pieces fit in
To make a useful map? I'm such a lummox
That even if they do, I'll never see 'em"--
He stopped himself mid-thought--"The Art Museum!"

[8:00 / breakfasting / ottava rima / stomach / Reading Terminal]

Page Two

XAVIER. There it was, his proper name,
As it should be, on the file’s label.
Verifying all his facts of birth—
Items all in order, as he thought.
Except, huh, what’s this replicated
Record? Though it seems at first a pure

Xerox copy, something’s not the same:
According to this section of the table…
Very odd. A different time of birth,
Isn’t it? “To Mr. X: For starters, you ought
Examine birth files. –Y,” the note had stated.
Random, he’d judged, but now he was not so sure.

[7:00 / naming / acrostic / eye / Department of Records]

Episode One

Waking in time, he slowly begins to flex
His toes, checks his knockoff German Timex,
Its rigid vertical clearly signaling sechs,
Unfolds to his feet like an antelope or ibex

Lying in shade to escape the sun at its apex,
Looks down at bottles of Beck’s with jagged necks,
Some empty cans of Jumex, battered tape decks,
A plastic spider, once octapod, now hex-,

Prescription bottles, a Keflex and two Zyrtecs,
A dusty purple rolodex, lime green latex
Unisex catsuit, lengthy notes from hurt ex-
Lovers, multiplex stubs, half a Playtex

Bra, a pamphlet on the Olmecs, shredded Gore-tex
Coats, a faded flag (Quebec’s)—all wrecks,
Like ancient vessels dashed by an unseen vortex,
Washed up near City Hall with our hero, X.

[6:00 / waking / aubade / toes / City Hall]