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: five hundred 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.