T. G. Vanini is a songwriter, poet, violinist and mathematician who lives in Woodstock, N.Y. and teaches at Baruch College. He performs his song-poetry with The Princes of Serendip http://www.princesofserendip.info/ and more of his work may also be found at math.baruch.cuny.edu/~vanini.

Another day

My mind reaches farther than the lizard's tongue
but won't digest the fly
which buzzes in my skull like an ancient triplane
sending out streamers of silken light.
The web captures my intentions and shivers in the breeze.

Another day for promises.
Another meal of fine sand.

The flood took away my old home on an oak bedstead
and now I carry around my pillow
and curl up in the torn back seat of my car.

Past hunger is the cry of the two-legged beast
untamable except in death
born on a knife-edge, still giddily teetering
and wet under the skin.

Wax drips from my elbows
as the flame in the third eye gutters
and a black mark spreads across the ceiling.

Another day for promises.
Another meal of fine sand.

Windless dawn on a raging river
a rainbow parrot in a jar
and six white lizards on red clay.

Rolling masses of violet cloud
imbue the morning with the threat of growth.
Each lizard sports a fleshy tail
to drop when the going gets rough.

A shrill clarinet fashioned out of my shinbone
signals the day’s excursion into wilderness.
A spider recklessly dances on the surface tension
while a young lizard skitters over the iron roof of the munitions hut.

Another day for promises.
Another meal of fine sand.
© 1999

A sparrow spins

A sparrow spins on a branch.
She's trying to catch up to her head.
Winter sets the rules, and she’ll need
her dappled coat of feathers to warm her blood.

Her eyes are like two moments of laughter in a terrible day.
Her eyes are the warm brown and promise of acorns.
Her voice is a book of illuminations, trilling and bleeding sunshine.
Her voice rocks the mountain and shivers the breeze.

Woven into her marvellous nest, a thread
from my coat, a hair from my head,
and a straw from the height of the frenzy of summer.
She flew over to where I stood
with dust in my eyes and my mouth full of sand.
She fluttered her wings, and said
I don't have to freeze up now;
to freeze up now I have to tread
on someone’s heart and it might be yours
and it might be mine, but it'll surely
take more than a solitary word
to reach into the dark space we inhabit
and bring the winter to an end.

Her silence is a lone fish, a bass, in a pool in a deserted quarry.
Her silence incubates a dense globe of polished oak.
Her flight, when it happens, is quick and abrupt.
Her flight is a garland of twigs and seeds.

A sparrow knows what it is to be cold
on a bare branch, under a desolate sky.
Winter sets the rules, but she’ll keep her head
clear and her song warm and live another day.
© 1999

I reached

I reached behind my shoulder
and found another kind of blade.
When it pierced me nothing bled
but my sense of wonder.

Steel caressed my fluttering heart
and cut it like a flower.
Everything was slower.
The panther's tongue made a sweet rasp

as it comforted my wound.
Sleep came over me like an avid lover
and left a minute later.
And look! The bright flags and balloons

of the Every Day Parade were dancing
as the marchers beneath sprouted gossamer wings.
Soon, what remained? Some echoes of songs
and a telescope to watch the tide rising.
© 1999