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<div style="background:#fff;border:#bbb dashed 1px;padding:5px"><a href="http://www.citatepedia.com/comments.php?id=535669" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none"><div style="margin:10px 0"><strong>Sleepy Bee, He Is Rising Beneath Me, The Hidden God Is Pleased</strong></div><div style="margin:10px 0"><a href="http://www.citatepedia.com/comments.php?id=535669" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none">Sleepy Bee, He Is Rising Beneath Me, The Hidden God Is Pleased</a></div><div style="margin:10px 0"><a href="http://www.citatepedia.com/comments.php?id=535669" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none">for Karthik</a></div><div style="margin:10px 0"><a href="http://www.citatepedia.com/comments.php?id=535669" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none">Somniculosus Apis, Sleepy Bee<br>Ascendit infra me, He rises beneath me<br>Deus absconditus placet, The hidden God is pleased</a></div><div style="margin:10px 0"><a href="http://www.citatepedia.com/comments.php?id=535669" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none"><br>'...descend and of the curveship lend a myth to God.' - Hart Crane</a></div><div style="margin:10px 0"><a href="http://www.citatepedia.com/comments.php?id=535669" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none">The boys, seven falling: Jamey Rodemayer, Tyler Clementi, <br>Raymond Chase, Asher Brown, Billy Lucas, Seth Walsh, Justin Aaberg</a></div><div style="margin:10px 0"><a href="http://www.citatepedia.com/comments.php?id=535669" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none"><br>Oh Valdosta, </a></div><div style="margin:10px 0"><a href="http://www.citatepedia.com/comments.php?id=535669" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none">He is busy preparing a repast for many paying guests who will watch him cook sacred chilies of his Mother's garden born, who will hear him sing their praises...Krishna was over yesterday more radiant than when we first met beside the cardamom and the ghee in the intoxicating basement of the Indian spice and food shop not easily hidden below the sidewalk, such aromas cannot to be tucked away like the shop is beside and below the avenue.</a></div><div style="margin:10px 0"><a href="http://www.citatepedia.com/comments.php?id=535669" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none">Which flower should I adorn my table with? I ask, approaching shyly beside the spice bins. I buzz inside, a bee for the nectar.</a></div><div style="margin:10px 0"><a href="http://www.citatepedia.com/comments.php?id=535669" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none">If you serve, said he, If you serve with cardamom and ghee then flowers three are best, the jasmine, the oleander, the anthurium. But if choosing only one, he looks at me, something insistent, responding, in his eyes, I would choose for you the anthurium.</a></div><div style="margin:10px 0"><a href="http://www.citatepedia.com/comments.php?id=535669" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none">And so we began our time together, the first demur approaches, the blushing papayas, the cooking lessons, then the fires, the chilies harvested, curtains drawn. One day perhaps I to shall fall but in this way: </a></div><div style="margin:10px 0"><a href="http://www.citatepedia.com/comments.php?id=535669" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none">I shall fling back the curtains<br>Open the window<br>Throw cut sleeves for years<br>gathered, hidden, to the street.<br>Shouting out names of lovers, <br>I shall then leap openly into life<br>land softly upon the Autumn<br>ginkgo leaves and, golden, <br>kiss every parked car<br>on the street leaving<br>lips like leaves and all<br>the cut sleeves in love<br>with all the world and if<br>not all the world then<br>all the cars and a fiddle<br>dee dee for the fall of me</a></div><div style="margin:10px 0"><a href="http://www.citatepedia.com/comments.php?id=535669" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none"><br>Yesterday I coached him how to slow down as he speaks (his accent is thickly, richly Tamil) , how to enunciate each syllable. He had several stories to choose from which he may relate to the guests, all of which he related to me, a sweet one of him as a little boy waking up at dawn, asking his dear mama for an omelet to eat: </a></div><div style="margin:10px 0"><a href="http://www.citatepedia.com/comments.php?id=535669" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none">'Sleepy Bee, ' she called to him. 'Go, my Sleepy Bee, to the garden and be sure to smell the jasmine there, touch softly the spices in trembling rows, fetch then some chilies of many colors and I will prepare for you a dish as you wish. When the teacher makes you sleepy by noon reach then your fingers to your face, smell the spices there, remember the touch of smooth skinned chilies whispering of lingering liaisons to come, and you will brighten my Sleepy Bee.'</a></div><div style="margin:10px 0"><a href="http://www.citatepedia.com/comments.php?id=535669" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none">A chili omelet she would make, a side of yogurt to soothe the burn, and milk from the cow drawn before dawn's first udder swelled against the press of distant hills where even the Temple soundly sleeps so very full and pleased with itself. Mother, each morning as he stumbles, rubbing his eyes, into the garden, tells him, </a></div><div style="margin:10px 0"><a href="http://www.citatepedia.com/comments.php?id=535669" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none">You may shout if you wish to wake</a></div><div style="margin:10px 0"><a href="http://www.citatepedia.com/comments.php?id=535669" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none">the Temple for the cow cannot speak -</a></div><div style="margin:10px 0"><a href="http://www.citatepedia.com/comments.php?id=535669" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none">Wake up! Awake! Make haste! </a></div><div style="margin:10px 0"><a href="http://www.citatepedia.com/comments.php?id=535669" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none">Lord Indra comes! Prepare the wicks, </a></div><div style="margin:10px 0"><a href="http://www.citatepedia.com/comments.php?id=535669" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none">the incense sticks for His Holy Fire! </a></div><div style="margin:10px 0"><a href="http://www.citatepedia.com/comments.php?id=535669" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none">Hasten! Hurry! Quicken! </a></div><div style="margin:10px 0"><a href="http://www.citatepedia.com/comments.php?id=535669" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none">There beside Lord Indra's captured fire in the little grate her Bee awakens watching her slow movements, the slicing of chilies, the removal of seeds, the washing again of plump hands, the cracking of eggs, beating them with the whisk, spreading ghee upon the hot flat stone, the enchantment of liquid whites and yokes becoming firm, becoming food. She turns them in round rhythms as she rhythmically prays.</a></div><div style="margin:10px 0"><a href="http://www.citatepedia.com/comments.php?id=535669" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none">After eggs and chilies are eaten comes the rose oil poured upon his raven hair smoothly brushed back to reveal his shining face, his smile. She prepares him for school with kisses, his uniform freshly cleaned, ironed, smelling, too, of rose-flavored soap. Then off to school with a lunch, a string of chilies of all colors sewn together, sewn when he was still in a waking dream.</a></div><div style="margin:10px 0"><a href="http://www.citatepedia.com/comments.php?id=535669" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none">'The chilies may burn, ' he tells me, speaking slowly, enunciating each syllable, practicing through smiles, returning to my gaze. 'But not like the touch of my mother's hand. She is far away but I can feel her burning hands on me now.' He smiles. I stammer. How can one enunciate such wonder? </a></div><div style="margin:10px 0"><a href="http://www.citatepedia.com/comments.php?id=535669" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none"><br>Visionary company, Krishna, his mother, and me.</a></div><div style="margin:10px 0"><a href="http://www.citatepedia.com/comments.php?id=535669" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none"><br>I have been encouraging Krishna (which is a funny thing to say, Krishna being a bold, blue God) to find a language coach to help him with his accent, to tone it down while keeping the wonderful music/lilt of it and he's going to do that...he complains of tilting his head as he talks 'as all Indians do' but I insist he merely speak and let his head and hands speak, too, in their own way. If he does more public events he will need to be understood clearly when he speaks while preparing his magnificent dishes from his country, his rich feasts of stories of the chilies from his mother's garden entwined by morning glories, the morning cock already at quarrel with the world just beyond the tin reaching in to take some spices too enticing to refuse...</a></div><div style="margin:10px 0"><a href="http://www.citatepedia.com/comments.php?id=535669" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none">I always feel as if he is, or will soon be, bored with me and my humble 'ministrations' but he sweeps into my little 'box-doir' - you recall how tiny my expensive studio on the 5th floor is! - like a Raj, a young prince beaming, brimming full of stories to tell me, usually some food, spicy hot, he has prepared for me, offered with a grin. Then he strips instantly down, lays upon the down pallet in easy, unabashed nakedness - it catches my breath, I do want to see! - checks his Blackberry for the latest cricket scores while I hurriedly 'hide' my Ganesha, the prominent statue of the god I have in front of my useless fireplace; this hiding I half understand...but still, naked, he has a fresh and beautifully made tattoo of Ganesha on his shoulder, he wears a Ganesha necklace, a Ganesha bracelet, and a Ganesha waist scapular, the image of which is just below his navel. So why, I ask only myself and Ganesha, never Krishna, why must I hide my large wooden Ganesha statue? But I do hide Him in deference to Krishna's wishes and meanwhile have intercourse with the god-in-miniature, scraping a necklace trunk with an ear, a tongue, receive a scapular kiss of the image upon my forehead as I trace those wonderful hairlines of the male body on my way to other deities.</a></div><div style="margin:10px 0"><a href="http://www.citatepedia.com/comments.php?id=535669" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none">Ah! give me all the beans in the world in all my poverty! Am I not, too, a Raj of floors and scented pillows, this beaming god beneath me thrusting utterly to reveal his secrets, his desires, his pleasures to me who am not a god? </a></div><div style="margin:10px 0"><a href="http://www.citatepedia.com/comments.php?id=535669" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none">Life, dear Valdosta, over all, is good, yes? I wish it no ill. But, agreeing with the cock, I will quarrel, even fight, with life when young men still leap too soon from bridges because I have learned (and relearn it hard lesson by hard lesson at a time) visionary company insists its tracings in many forms, man to man being but one holy expression, those sons, burning mother's hands upon them demanding, insisting to life that each her sons is a rajah, a Sleepy Bee.</a></div><div style="margin:10px 0"><a href="http://www.citatepedia.com/comments.php?id=535669" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none">So please the intemperate humanity, in the face of patient deities the burning ones are leaping still and I am ill with grief, with prayer, their dead bodies gone, their now emptier hands.</a></div><div style="margin:10px 0"><a href="http://www.citatepedia.com/comments.php?id=535669" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none"><br>And he leaves me.</a></div><div style="margin:10px 0"><a href="http://www.citatepedia.com/comments.php?id=535669" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none"><br>I return to my poems.</a></div><div style="margin:10px 0"><a href="http://www.citatepedia.com/comments.php?id=535669" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none">The room is filled with Krishna, aromas of rose oil in his hair, pungent spices in his sweat and upon his hands and skin, and sex.</a></div><div style="margin:10px 0"><a href="http://www.citatepedia.com/comments.php?id=535669" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none">I retrieve Lord Ganesha out from his little sanctuary of hiding (it seems I am always retrieving deities) and we both laugh richly. I remember to sprinkle some cologne upon Him, to pour out some milk into His votive bowl, to rub His belly, to light another candle (the other extinguished, panting, while we were busy bees exchanging knees and sighs, diffusing male spices into bracing air, fingers upon oily chilies thickening in always morning hunger) .</a></div><div style="margin:10px 0"><a href="http://www.citatepedia.com/comments.php?id=535669" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none">I light more incense and thank the Lord Ganesha in all his forms, appearing both large and small, His adornment of Secrets, though one cannot easily hide an Elephant, man-love and more in such a small infinite universe whose toes I seek to tickle then gather for a shoe as tides shrink and swell, grow and diminish depending upon the worshipers, those who will do so in spite of those who would kill delicate or manly infidels whose worship, forever babies breath, is all the more meaningful.</a></div><div style="margin:10px 0"><a href="http://www.citatepedia.com/comments.php?id=535669" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none">Be damned the trellises. The petals shall reach, shall extend outward.</a></div><div style="margin:10px 0"><a href="http://www.citatepedia.com/comments.php?id=535669" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none">The violin's throat cut.</a></div><div style="margin:10px 0"><a href="http://www.citatepedia.com/comments.php?id=535669" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none">'Do not ask me to see it! '</a></div><div style="margin:10px 0"><a href="http://www.citatepedia.com/comments.php?id=535669" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none">Then, Ganesha restored to His rightful place; good-natured about being hidden, it is back to the kitchen, the slicing of the onion, the crushing of the garlic, the pouring of the wine, the selecting of the greens and washing them of the clinging sand and grit they kindly bring, then to the pot to cook them in, the meat to go with, and begins the fire, O Indra, more aromas extend into, entwine with what Krishna has left to me and the god and I am grateful, full of heart, for each time he is here is a miracle. A grace. Mother India with hot hands gifts me one of Her Raj's who graces me with his presence evoking praise bestowed from oft bitter lips and tongue made the more bilious by aging, aching joints, laxer muscles, and yet the encroaching decrepitude is bent and stretched, the better for the wear from Krishna's 'half nelsons' and yogic overreaches. More the better for me.</a></div><div style="margin:10px 0"><a href="http://www.citatepedia.com/comments.php?id=535669" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none">Yet I remain bitter, too, from the senseless loss of young men who could not endure, no fault of their own, for sure, who leap from bridges, forced to by killing edges broken open within and by hateful, fearful others forgetting, if ever had, those restorative burning constancies of a Mother's hands upon them</a></div><div style="margin:10px 0"><a href="http://www.citatepedia.com/comments.php?id=535669" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none">I have placed your picture, dear Valdosta, upon my altar beside Lorca's portrait, and Hart Crane's young face, the image of a sweet Christ holding a lamb en perpetua, and the yellowed newspaper clipping from Spain of the Matador's death, along with photos of the young men in the past two weeks who have joined Hart becoming ghostly visionary company. They now remain forever chaste not having lived long enough to be wasted, emptied of love from loving deeply out into love for more love, endlessly bleeding out like our Lorca, a corrida of laurel encircling his head no longer remembering but remembering only one sound, guns exploding outward, extending, bullets, petals, one by one beyond the wall where he stood stunned, 'how young and handsome are assassins' faces', he flew backward in the wall graced with his brave shadow then his blood until he fell. I believe he fell hard for life demands it as does death which will continue its duende.</a></div><div style="margin:10px 0"><a href="http://www.citatepedia.com/comments.php?id=535669" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none">Love, as Hart and all hearts love, is still a vision not yet fully, solidly formed in spite of stones and walls forgetting noble shadows, but there are foolish Krishnas, restoring Krishna-moments, patient hidden gods though human hearts and bodies remove themselves from the potter's wheel too early, too broken, too tired, too alone to try to shape love from Love from the tiny shard, the remnant bone of the ancient mastodon, the last one, dreaming within each heart of that Love which all Nature yearns for.</a></div><div style="margin:10px 0"><a href="http://www.citatepedia.com/comments.php?id=535669" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none">I pray for my inherited brood of brothers, and remember to be gay for all the gray afternoons in this sad but forgiving confessional, while not forgetting mine and the cock's quarrel with life, in the booth by the cracked window near the corner of 7th and Second.</a></div><div style="margin:10px 0"><a href="http://www.citatepedia.com/comments.php?id=535669" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none">I am yours, bleating, sometimes crowing, but almost always bestowing praise. I am loved, Valdosta, and I love you.</a></div><div style="margin:10px 0"><a href="http://www.citatepedia.com/comments.php?id=535669" style="color:#000;text-decoration:none"><br>N. Nightingale</a></div><div style="margin:10px 0"><br /></a><a href="http://poems.citatepedia.com/">poem</a> by <strong><a rel="author" href="http://authors.citatepedia.com/by.php?a=Warren+Falcon">Warren Falcon</a></strong></div>

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