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    Umbras
    Umbras
    Umbras
    Ebook100 pages29 minutes

    Umbras

    By DLW Pesavento

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    About this ebook

    From the spiritual shadow realms of “Loretta” and “Pronouncing Maria” (where we discover a posthumous Hispanic teen’s Flamenco Rose) to the solemnity of “A Simple Heart” and the prescient, trans humanist Future poem “The Singularity: 5000 A.D.” to the haunting photo-scape epitaph of “Seeing Mussolini’s Mistress” and the profound existential angst of “Code Blue,” this collection reveals a 21st century surgeon-poet’s journey into umbral netherworlds of the human condition.
    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherBookBaby
    Release dateOct 31, 2014
    ISBN9781483546469
    Umbras
    Author

    DLW Pesavento

    Pesavento poetry-dreams from the Heartland of America’s deep wellsprings, Ulysses-like chest fastened to a tempest swept mast, enraptured by Siren-sultry voices nocturne-calling out to him in the night. Born in St. Louis, raised in Chicago and instilled with Catholic mysticism by the Sisters of Nazareth, he nurtured an empathetic sense of the wondrous. From 15-20 performed as lead singer for regional Rock bands, Lost Generation, Xtremes, Fish (5/5 Battle of The Bands, thanks to Jack, the red headed Scandinavian drummer) and a.k.a. “The Cat” panther-purred the Blues in the far South Side’s Green Lantern bar. At 19, explored the Eternal City, left trace fingerprints on a Sistine Chapel fresco, stood face-to-faces with the damned in Michelangelo’s The Last Judgment, beheld the Pieta's profound sorrow, deciphered wood carved Cupid notes atop St Peter's Basilica dome and descended underground, ankle-brushed past subterranean Papal sarcophagi, hunched over through labyrinthine catacomb tunnels illuminated by cloistered clusters of candle-carrying little nuns, heads heavy bowed in prayer like January snow-laden black dahlias. City of Light fire-swallowed Cognac after midnight, last call heart-burned spilled out from dance club Tabac, stumbling scarlet-face flushed beneath an impending dawn's cerulean sky feral- atmospheric reeking of Pigalle fleurs du mal scented lairs, smelling open air market soil-smeared carrots, dew-rouged strawberries, arm-pit pungent garlic, onions, sweaty cabbages, radishes and fresh fish brine aromatic-urea rising up from nicotine stained streets, and maddened, crossed the Seine. Kaleidoscopic vision-quest swam through late 60's London Piccadilly Circus psychedelic-kinetic pigment splattered discotheque convulsive dance-scapes to the tune of Cream’s “Sunshine of Your Love” and vertiginous body washed up onto a Whisky à Go-Go maelstrom-swirling foreign shore. Barnaby-Street clothed sat in quiet contemplation in a Westminster Abbey pew personal-space elbow jostled by swarms of ninja-tourist shutterbugs armed with Nikons. Florence slow-danced on an Arno River river barge at sunset basking in glow-worm luminol lemon lime and dragon-plasma magenta Chinese lantern auras, eating watermelon beneath a late summer full butter moon. Stubbed a toe at the foot of David. Temporarily blinded by Chartres supernova stained-glass light shards, goose-bumped by Notre Dame de Paris shadows and dizzied by Cologne cathedral spires. Shared Champagne androgynous charades in Brussels, Belgium cabarets, clanked cold steins in German beer gardens and tête-à-tête titillated at Munich’s One-One-Deuce. Literary influences include a cosmopolitan mix of myriad voices: Quasimodo, Montale, Ungaretti, Aleixandre, Vallejo, Lorca, Neruda, Paz, Breton, Supervielle, Eluard, Seferis, Rilke, Yeats, Eliot, Shelley, Coleridge and Blake. Don can be seen along the shores of Lake Michigan, writing poems and throwing them to the wind.

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      Book preview

      Umbras - DLW Pesavento

      Author

      Places Poets Need Not Go

      I've been where poets need not go;

      Detached a friend's eyes for the blind

      And observed a mother's cancer grow

      Extirpated a malignant breast,

      Opened a chest, massaged a heart

      Kept hospital vigil over a dying child,

      Pronounced one, announced another

      And closed a toddler's intestinal gunshot holes

      Stood helpless next to a man

      With an arrow through his head

      Reached deep into a storm-swept red lake

      And felt a trauma victim's liver go cold.

      I've gone where poets need not go,

      And returned, more poet than I know.

      Loretta

      So small, this world could not

      Hold her in its absent arms,

      Held now like a shadow

      Cradled by a crescent moon.

      She died, unlike Christ, behind walls,

      On a morphine drip, letting go

      Her nail-polish-pink imploded destiny.

      She loved, and was loved,

      Opening like a rose

      To all her knew her.

      And I think of her

      When a Whippoorwill sings,

      Remembering a more beautiful girl

      From a less beautiful world.

      Pronouncing Maria

      How shall I pronounce you? Me,

      The surgeon called to examine you at 4:43 a.m.

      In the dead of winter, after you were gone,

      Your lithe dancer's body left lying here

      Like the unstrung Spanish guitar,

      Standing against the get-well card clustered wall,

      Still echoing sorrow, wind, and the novia rose

      Solitary-red leaning over the nightstand's green vase

      Near your bobbed brunette hair, as if

      To whisper into your pearl-corazon earringed ear

      Dance, once more…

      But your chemo-thin legs that once flamenco-pranced

      And little, cupped Latina hands that passion-clapped

      Now lie covered by a white, hospital sheet that

      As new fallen snow on a darkened cobblestone street

      Mutes the clacking of pony steps into silent castanets.

      And from your window overlooking Lincoln Park

      I counted fourteen pallid-amber sodium streetlamps

      Birthday-candle glowing in the blue predawn snow.

      I closed my eyes, made a wish, and left,

      Like a flame, extinguished by your closing door.

      The Singularity: 5000 A.D.

      To you who may still be human

      I come to your Future

      Like a stray bullet

      Shot from a drunken Past,

      Unapologetic for what I was, and am

      A vulgar voice from a darker time

      Of disease, death, and war

      These words

      No match for your mathematics

      My quantum of love

      Without equations to measure

      And yet, I think of you and wonder

      What angel emerges from this mortal chrysalis?

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