DLW Pesavento was raised in Chicago, instilled with mysticism, nurturing an innate sense of the wondrous. The poetry reveals a predilection for the surreal, embellished with lush lyricism, emboldened by sensual symbolism. Recent poems reside in Danse Macabre, Troubadour 21, The Literary Bohemian, Whispers From The Unseen, Underground Voices, Full of Crow, and Think Journal.

Four Poems (January 20, 2010. Issue 13.)

Diabolique

Love me wrong, Cirque du Animal,
femme-fatale agent provocateur,
cataclysmic into your further dimension

strong, bucking bronco, bareback straddled,
snow-swept Lipizzan, avalanched by Mata Hari
thighs beneath the Prussian-blue Big Top tent;

love me long, all night, beyond death,
shadow-cradled by your crescent moon;

eternal-summer song, sung in younger years
now the beautiful breathing of birds;

Kong, primal jumbo-Congo in mega metro-jungles,
skyscraper throng, stamen, stalagmites
spiral thrust, impaling nocturnal city skies;

thong, sweet rind cheek-squeezed Tango,
zorra-symphysis wedged against my hip;

gong, Java-mystic, cymbal-hissed atmospheres,
exhaling your Past, inhaling my Present;

bong, imagined as someone else, his
or her star-crossed Romeo or Juliet,

sarcophagal bas-relief dark angel, fuchsia
fleurs du mal in your hair, shouting pink,

s arong, stripped-Polynesian lunar body, foamed
phosphorescent, surf-churning mine by starlight,

read me as a book you fear, sitting there
language lap-danced by this mantra poem,

roller-coaster screaming down life's sine wave,
motorcycle back seat high-gear dry humping,

Cro-Magnon XX-bent, grunting guttural Proto-French,
wild woman of Borneo, yum-yum-eatem-up;

at Armageddon, blindfolded by my disintegrating hands,
calling me by another's name, my secret call sign;

love me as only I can love you,
idolatrous, velvet hooded, cloaked in black,
Salome seductive, slow-flame sex assassin;

kiss me Esmeralda-veiled in Notre-Dame de Paris
vestibule shadows, sanctuary-enshrined grottoes
of the Hunchback heart, Gregorian chant-echoing
like votive candles, flickering silent-red threnodies;

open tuberose in basement closets of the Louvre,
after hours, church-mouse quiet, public library-stalled,

mahjong ivory-tiger, caged in your red-bamboo forest,
samurai sword, sheathed to the dragon hilt;

elevator-alarm proclaiming True Love,
forsaking all others, including yourself,

Space-Station-Earth roommate, trans-wormhole,
e-messaged, Milky Way satellite-ricocheted,

where dolphins translate ocean syntax,
over your head in deep water desire
where love dog paddles not to drown.

Love me wrong, but love me.

Things of Beauty

a quiet-breathing place for Keats,
away from the noisy lemon tree
growing in his chest

and a warm blanket for Pasternak
freezing in Moscow, asleep on a sofa,
dreaming of Zhivago bathing Lara

Mayakovsky's swan song, sung on
Brooklyn Bridge beneath the stars
just past one o'clock

Poe’s Lenore, forevermore
leaving through an open door
leading into Nevermore

Lorca’s breeze through olive trees
caressing his face at exactly
5 in the afternoon

Baudelaire's dark angel
fluttering atop a sarcophagus,
red fleurs du mal in her hair

Ginsberg’s silver bullet
that saved howling America
from himself

Breton's wife's Champagne shoulders
intoxicating him
with blue-mistress desire

Wordsworth’s spontaneous overflow
of emotion recollected in tranquility
becoming daffodil waterfalls

Dante’s chess game strategy
sacrificing his knight
to win back his queen

Eliot’s dull facade near a pig sty
luminous under the streetlights
of his St. Louis boyhood

Yeats’ gyres, spiraling out of control
like devolving DNA
unraveling on the cellular floor

Whitman’s blade of grass
thrust through heaven’s open portal
en garde with bodies electric

a pair of 4-D glasses
for myopic Rilke to see
beyond a 3-D world

Sylvia's black electrical tape
wrapped around the frayed cord
of shocking memories

Emily's friend she asked to answer
life's knock on the door
and say she wasn't home

Homer's word-horse of Troy
that carried him
into its Immortal City

Virgil's What was that all about?
as to the value of his Aeneid
for the illiterate

Frost's cold thoughts
of his father waiting
along a snowy field at sunset

Neruda's dream of becoming
phosphorescent eagle
perched in the mist of Macchu Picchu

Coleridge's laudanum REM
scanning Kubla Khan's face,
eyes flashing thrice

Rimbaud's meteoric poetry
scintillating upon entry
into rarefied atmosphere

Burns' revelation
from a field mouse
portending his own mortality

Dylan's raging, beatific
ethanolic vision
sobered by sleep

Desnos' imaginary friend
in the death camps, with whom
he often shared his poems

and the Event Horizon that pulled
stadiums of unknown poets
into its black hole.

Mamma Mia

Put aside sin and forgiveness
and have spaghetti with me.
You be Lady and I’ll be Tramp,
we can even share a piece;
our ears, tickled by accordion
fingers playing a little off-key,
and in each other’s eyes,
we’ll chase butterflies that fly
like tiny, blue mandolin notes,
carried away by a summer wind,
and after we order tiramisu
I’ll tell you again, how much
I love you,
bellissima belladonna mia
with your eyes of bluebird rain
hair of almond-forest echoes
lips of red music
hips of storm-swept willows
calves of luscious pears
hands of flamenco castanets
smile of ocean lullabies;
and I’ll replace your collar
with this gold-locket corazon,
and be your Valentine
when all other hearts
are broken in two.

Flamenco Storm

Spanish rain stays mainly in the plains,
but tonight lightning-twice strikes upstairs,
furniture carpet-thundering, to make room
for the blue-eyed brunette Andalusian gypsy
girl's storm-swept red dress, and nimbus-grey
nyloned legs, stiletto pitter-pattering
the bedroom ceiling above me; at first,

a drizzle of staccato castanets, clacking
like pony steps on a hardwood floor,

now torrential, imperious lapis stares, down pouring,
raven-hair gales, hailing blue-rose duende petals,
flashflooding my corazon dream downstream,

deep-river pooled and rainbow-shimmering
steelhead trout, swimming pink through fishnets.