Funambulist

None speak of the pious in history:
Notre Dame conquered by a poète maudit.
Beyond France’s gendarmes and butchery
rose my twin-eyed concrete Babel staring
down the gods.
Stir their hearts;
men applaud
crime as art.

Violent birth.
Pile driver lancers
pierce the earth
and bleed the clouds.
(Walk on its veins.)

Steel and glass.
The propane dancers
wrap this mass
in burning shrouds.
(Forest of cranes.)

New York, I adopt this child.

Flight over the ocean,
mind as vine to stone
on a tower.
Sleight of foot in motion,
twined around a throne.
I count and count the hours.

Alea jacta est.

Wire.
A workman’s attire.
The years we conspired
finally bear fruit
this August
mo(u)rn
a nation forlorn,
its emperor shorn
of august suit
by modest
blades.

As I walk he fades.

Crate:
500 pound weight.
Whisked up the freight
to south level
one zero
fo(u)r
the nightwatchman’s snore,
my skull on the floor,
sold to the devil
for heroes’
deeds.

To the skies I lead.

Bowman draws the string.
Ropes and cable...
...cling stowaway to the arrow’s flight;
at missile’s point, north and south unite.
Cordina, clamp, cavaletti, knot...
At backbreaking dawn, the wires pull taut.

Rope still sways.
Winds will rage.
Heart ablaze,
I wage
war
on fate.
Fear devoid,
lungs inflate,
tempt the void:

The first step.

Le néant.
Vos chants, vos cris, je les entends.
A chaque pas, les nuages s’adoucissent.
Je danse. Elégance.
Je me permets un sourir:
Si je meurs, quelle belle mort!
Avec les dieux à mes pieds.

I wave, I sit, I rest, I dream.

Speak to birds
words of calm.
Psalms of faith
swathe no auspice
wreaked by siren howls.

Uproar from the lowland:
the rattle of lawmen’s chains.
The lords of the northland
cast me to the plains
a mortal man.

The last step.

Nona, spin your thread.
Join it to the Sun,
so I may walk.
Morta, rouse your dead.
Tell them of the Sun,
for with me they walk.