Burning Out for Roses

for Jeff Gburek

The learned repose
Of spasmodic authoritarian

Release can create
And entirely novel

World. God pissed
On this creative fire

And from its chaos
Light arose, the flash of

First things last
And the reverse. When he

Opened his mouth,
Everything went dark,

A blanket permission
To possess full vision

Before figuring how to
Receive it. To every pencil

There are poles in opposition:
A red tongue, bright

In a mortal midnight sun,
Flapping on about nothing,

Like the wings of a bird
To the end of its own flight,

Or how to get down is
To keep it up, as to sleep

One stays awake
And makes themselves

Tired. The inevitable
Is not for us, but

We are in kind, the only
Container it can contain.

Until these two meet
There will be always more to say.


*

After Yours, For You

after Soma Feldmar

desire

the breaks
the line tunnels through

runs

unavowed gut feeling
by day

a glass hope
shattered

as by night
ridiculously re-glued

to luminous figure
in recession

reflected life a cow
that keeps kicking the bucket over

obdurate, excessive, thrilled

or skin

through which to be
all you want to be

never able to
see enough of it

beyond

the spilled ink
of all that we demand

our avowed gut feeling

purposeless

but to the end of feeling
the heat

that burns our paper perfect white

the flowers
too thick to be called

dense

but not too thick
to be called flowers

unapproachable multiple scents
(are) where we

wait out
red tides

to time the time that's not

our avowed circumvalem
(the thrown rocks

of being

“autobiographically crushed”

to arise
in garlands of messy ghosts

abduction of excess to thrill of absence

in which the world turns
half undisclosed

carved-out peacocks die in time

and in distance
desire as booked

closes on you
who opens


*

Concealment / Dissimulazione / Masquerade

CONCEALMENT
for Livia Canepa


Nothing is all we have
To think about, and the passion

Of our thought fills
Heart, mind and body

And brings to the face
An anxioius flush of

Uncertainty, all that
We carry forth in every

Step, believing we know
The way, but really

Knowing little of
Where and who we are

At all. We have
Our movements and our

Gestures, moving sideways
And hungrily, visible

In effect, yet invisible
Of purpose: The ideal of

Survival through conventions
Of behavior, beauty and being

Will never be enough. Against
The ostentatious certainties

Of an empty bowl, a castrated
Rabbit, and a few small pebbles

That fly a fascist flag,
We throw hot coals

In quicksand to help our eyes
Congeal so we can see

The body of beauty on the spit
Of our salivating consciousness.

If you have a red scarf
Get up and put it on

To prepare in advance for
The protest thrusting up

Through our spines and drifting
Like pixie dust, down

From the sky, against
The permanent taxation of

Corpses, as we rage in laughter
At the sailor suits of

The clattering hordes toward whom
We feel nothing but

Solidarity, love, and to be
Different. The black sky

Is a cloud of confetti
In our star-filled eyes.

We must shake loose
Of beauty and of eros

By energizing them until
They burst forth the black blood

And brooding seed of sex
In all its bleakness, sweet

And as sensual as the mist
Surrounding a blind lighthouse,

Whose opaque, rotating window
Shows the dark plunge

Through spleen and venom, out
Into the naked fright where incense

Clings and abdomens tense
To the foreign press of some

Local lover's lips. We do not
Grow as plants do, yet

We multiply the numbers of
Fingers, toes, ears and eyes

Whenever we join the weird
Behavior of loveliest friends

Uncoiling each to each
As agonized as children in the night

And equally as pure. Orders
Of eros and of love always

Intersect, but only
In several non-essential places:

A door hinge, faucet handles,
The practicum of keeping

The Holy Trinity and its cooties
Far away so we can worship

The howling shame of
A truer, pyrological spectre,

In whose love I simultaneously
Shrink and forever rise.

Here is nothing: Constriction
And release. We breathe in eros

To watch the stringbeans grow,
And breathe out to become

Some pipsqueak who knows in love
There are turnips hidden

Everywhere in the ground.
Love and Eros, like

Beauty and The Beautiful
Are not identical mouths,

And despite they always touch,
Know one another, but

Little. To feel good
Is not the same as

To do good. Nothingness
Is the space between

The two, and can only exist
When their difference begins to disappear.

No soul is possible, without
Its sadness. And no mourning

Can exist without passing
Through the squealing icebox

Of infinite resignation
To an avalanche of underwear

That reveals in our lap
The ogre of our sacred source

And the delight of a treason
Gone up in tatters for

The peril of moonwater
And perfectly murdered hope:

To accept the cosmos
Whole is to participate in

Letting it declare its limits
In our lives, as we continue to

Mind them, expanding each day
The orders of their confinement

In moans and mortal torment
That finally fall to emptiness,

The gilded brilliance of a noonday sun
In the black perception of our eyes.




*




[ translation into Italian below by Livia Canepa ]



DISSIMULAZIONE
per Livia Canepa


Nulla è ciò che abbiamo
Per riflettere, e la passione

Del nostro pensiero riempie
Il Cuore, la mente ed il corpo

E porta al viso
Un accesso di inquieta

Incertezza, tutto ciò che
Ne riportiamo ad ogni

Passo, credendo di conoscere
La strada, mentre in realtà

Conosciamo poco, infine, di
Dove e cosa siamo.

Mostriamo
I nostri movimenti ed i nostri

Gesti, spostamenti obliqui
Ed avidi, evidenti

In realtà, eppure privi di evidente
scopo: l'ideale di

Sopravvivenza per convenzioni
Di comportamento, bellezza ed essere

Non sarà mai abbastanza. Contro
Le certezze ostentate

Di una ciotola vuota, un
Coniglio castrato e pochi piccoli ciottoli

Che sventolano una bandiera fascista,
Gettiamo carboni ardenti

Nelle sabbie mobili perchè i nostri occhi
Congelino in modo da vedere

Il corpo della bellezza sullo spiedo
Della nostra sbavante coscienza.

Se avete una sciarpa rossa
Alzatevi ed indossatela

Per preparare in anticipo
La protesta che sta per innalzarsi

Su per le nostre schiene e lasciatevi trasportare
Come polvere magica, giù

Dal cielo, contro
Il dazio fisso dei

Cadaveri, quando scoppieremo in risate
Di fronte alle tute da marinaio delle

Orde rumorose verso le quali
Proviamo niente altro che

Solidarietà, amore e l’essere
Diversi. Il cielo nero

È una nube di confetti
Ai nostri occhi pieni di stelle.

Noi dobbiamo esprimere liberi
La bellezza e l’eros

Dinamizzandoli acchè
Spazzino via il sangue nero

Ed il seme promettente del sesso,
Dolce, in tutto il suo essere oscuro

E sensuale come la nebbia
Quando circonda un faro cieco,

La cui finestra opaca e rotante
Mostra l’oscuro baratro

A mezzo della milza e del suo veleno, fin dentro
Lo spoglio spavento dove l’incenso

Si impregna e l’addome si irrigidisce
Alla estranea pressione di due

Labbra di amanti occasionali. Non
Cresciamo come fanno le piante, ma

Moltiplichiamo i numeri delle
Dita di mani, di piedi, ed orecchie ed occhi

Ogni volta che partecipiamo al bizzarro
Comportamento degli amici più cari

Srotolando ciascuno dall’altro
tormentati come bambini nella notte

Ed ugualmente puri. Gli ordini
Di eros e dell'amore

Si interpongono sempre, ma solo
Nei vari luoghi non essenziali:

Una cerniera della porta, la maniglia di un rubinetto,
L’esercizio di tenere

La Santa Trinità e i suoi pidocchi
Lontano per poter adorare

L’ululante vergogna di
Un più vero spettro incendiario,

Nel cui amore simultaneamente
Mi riduco e sempre rinasco.

Qui è il nulla: costrizione
E rilascio. Aspiriamo allo eros

Per veder crescere il fagiolino,
E respiriamo per diventare

Una qualche insignificante persona che sa che in amore
Esistono nel terreno rape nascoste

Ovunque.
Amore ed Eros, come

Bellezza e Bello
Non sono bocche identiche,

Nonostante si tocchino sempre,
Poco si conoscono l’un l’altra.

Sentirsi bene
Non è come

Fare il bene. Il Nulla
È lo spazio tra

I due e può solo esistere
Quando la loro diversità inizia a scomparire.

Non c’è anima, senza
La sua tristezza. E nessun lutto

Può esistere senza passare
Per la ghiacciaia stridente

Delle interminabili rassegnazioni
Verso una valanga di biancheria intima

Che rivela nel nostro grembo
L'orco della nostra sacra fonte

Ed il piacere di un tradimento
Andato in frantumi per

Il pericolo di trovare l’acqua sulla luna
E la speranza del delitto perfetto:

Per accettare il cosmo
Tutto sta nel parteciparvi

Lasciandogli dichiarare i suoi stessi limiti
Nella nostra vita, così come continuiamo a

Ricordarli, espandendo ogni giorno
Gli ordini dei loro confini

Nei lamenti e nel tormento mortale
Che infine cadono nel vuoto,

La brillantezza dorata del sole di un mezzogiorno
Nella oscura percezione dei nostri occhi.




*




[ transflection back into English from Livia's Italian, by SE, and “the Machine” ]



MASQUERADE
for Livia Canepa


Nothing is what we have
To reflect on, and the passion

Fills our thoughts,
Heart, mind and body

Leading the face
In restless access

To uncertainty, all that
They are to each

Step, thinking they know
The road, when in fact

We know little, finally,
Of where and what we are.

Show
Our movement and our

Gestures, movements oblique
And greedy, clear

In reality, yet devoid of obvious
Goal: The ideal of

Survival for conventions
Of behavior and beauty,

Will never be enough.
Against certainties show

An empty dish, a castrated
Rabbit and a few small pebbles

With a flag waving fascist,
And throw coals

In quicksand for our frozen
Eyes, in order to see

The body of beauty on the spit
In our salivating consciousness.

If you have a red scarf
Get up and put

To prepare in advance for
The protest about to rise

Through our backs and let
Like magic dust, down

From heaven, against
The fixed duty of

Corpses, bursting into laughter
When in the face of the sailor suits

Of the noisy hordes, to which
Lets nothing but

Solidarity, love, and to be
Several. The black sky,

It is a cloud of confetti
To our eyes full of stars.

We have to let free
The beauty and eros,

Galvanizing poetically
The sewers of black blood

And the seed of sexy promise
Sweet, in its whole being obscure

And as the fog, sensual
When surrounding a lighthouse, blind

Whose opaque window and rotating
Shows the dark abyss, parting

Into the spleen and its venom, even in
Analyzed terror, where incense

Impregnates the abdomen and stiffens
Against the distinct pressure of a pair

Of local lover's lips. Yet it is
Not how we grow as plants, but

Multiply the numbers of fingers
Of the hand, feet and ears and eyes

Each time we participate in bizarre
Behavior with best friends

Unwinding to each other,
Tormented as children in the night

And equally pure. Orders
Of eros and love

Interpose always, but only
In different places, not essential:

A hinge of the door, the handle of a faucet,
The exercise to keep

The Holy Trinity and its lice
Far from worship,

For the shame of howling
A more true spectrum arsonist

In whose love simultaneously
I am always reduced and then reborn.

Here is nothing: Constriction
And release. Aspire to eros

To see the beans swell forth,
And breathe out in order to become

Some little guy who knows that love
Is turnips buried everywhere

In the ground.
Love and Eros, like

Beauty and The Beautiful
Do not have identical aims,

And although they always touch,
Little is known from one to the other.

To feel good,
This is nothing like

To do good. The Nothing
Is the space between the two

And can only exist when
Their diversity begins to disappear.

There is no soul, without
Its sadness. And no mourning

Can exist without striking
From the ice a stream of

Interminable resignation
Toward an avalanche of underwear

Revealing in our bosom
The ogre of our sacred source

And the pleasure of a betrayal
Shattered by the danger of

Finding water on the moon
And the hope of the perfect crime:

To accept the cosmos
In everything is in parts,

Leaving them to declare their limits
In our lives as we continue

To remember, growing every day
The orders of their boundaries

In sorrow and mortal agony
Eventually falling on deaf ears,

The brilliance of the golden sun of noon
In the dark perception of our eyes.




*

Bliss

for La Bibi

The glow of your
Visage reigns

From somewhere deep within
Like a star at high

Noon, from the royal
Temple of your

Heart. How is it
That a voice

I've never heard
Can be present to me

As if the air in passage through
The tender throbbing of

Your throat
To your parted lips

Could be my own? And this
Echo, what you carry always

With you and can never quite
Escape, with which you, as I, are

Charged: Our words
Are like the skin

That gloves the hands
Raised before our faces

Alternately in shame
And pride, where there is

Wide space between
That love can fully

Occupy, bounded
Only by extremities of

Frustration and release:
An orgasm is

A kind of stutter, too.
Or that we go unguided

Through the world
Deciding it as we go.

There is no peace
But the play of

Knowing this: Some things
Have got to be

Enough, although they never really
Are. Were you a wind,

I'd bend my sapling
Strength in calm accord,

Or in a drastic moment
Put blood around every

Leaf of my being toward your care
As long as you promised

Not to tell, exactly what
You're most incapable of.

The best thing about
A wind is the way

One never sees but the
Effect of it, as just so

You are hidden, too, around
The bend of the long

S-curve I drove last night
With you in mind, as

The blinking lights of
Town came suddenly into view

As an excitement, or entrance to
Some new order, despite

Everyone in it was probably
Asleep. Yet how fraught with

Confidence I am in all these
Dreams, feeling spanked

By the star of your living
Absence, in whose light the pain

Of its perfection is both
Hidden yet as perfectly present

In great distance by which you alone
Can touch me, who I can't touch,

As these words through which
You spill up in me again today,

Whose plasma is the image of
Your face, from which a world

Falls open in expression of
A secret that openly sustains me.



*

How Simple

for Frederique

The night air is
Breathing against

The crotch of
The tree that has

Branched
Into increasingly

Smaller divisions
At whose tips

Fragility is utmost
Strength

In buffeting
Wind. Your

Fingertips
Remain golden

And your eyes
And earrings

Flash, post-
Mortem, 1202

AD. We
Call you by name

The most beautiful
Trick girl

In the universe:
A city of pure gold

Lust. The wet
That mingles at your

Thighs, this
Scented combination

Of semen and sweat
Is a pick-up

To my olfactory,
The equivalent of

Consciousness:
A perception of

Smell is the real
Third eye

Around which
The heart's pump

Contracts. We are,
Combined,

The geyser
That no intellect can

Powder down.
I smell you

And my own sweet
Sadness draws

My cock straight forward
Into you. Exhaustion

In communion calls
For further worship

As trees in the backyard
Howl, rain falls

Sideways and I am
Up, cottered high

By my fistula,
Close in upon your

Heart, a sun
That burns to light

The crease of touch
Between the non-

Existent boundaries
Of your skin and my own.


*

Persona non Grata

Low bushes with small
Pink flowers, a pin oak,

Yellow no-passing stripes
Down the middle of

The road: Two black
Mailboxes, attentively

Beyond and beyond that
A deserted brick house

And wide, overcast skies.
There are a lot of

Vacancies here. Pine tree
Leaning against the house

That will produce thousands
Of cones this year,

And the sound of a single
Passing car, accompanied

By a dozen birds. It is good
To be alone, and to feel

The rush of foreign voices
In the fibres of my being.

If I were a man, I think
I'd like to be a woman

Talking at length to a better
Friend kept close by distance

All these years, about
The dense gold pollen

Bled out on the leaves of
My favorite marijuana plants,

And the surity and knowledge
That their oil will be soon

Like pure sense, drawn in
Around my being

With all the warmth of
Drawing ever closer to

The threat of the Real
That, so possessed, I will

Find myself in the overall
Fracture of, entering

The undivided attention
At the center of all that is most

Solid: The utter speechlessness
Of nature that always must be said.


*

Signs of Life

for Livia Canepa

The spirit that moves us
Rises from the heart

And howls at the forebrain
With a sound we cannot

Hear, but that it is
Divided like heartbeats

Into the hours of the day,
And the light and shadow

Of all we can get our hands
Around. The castles

We build along the edge of
The sea are forever

Washed away, as our nature
Slips from us like sand

Through our grasping fingers.
The fear of Death is itself

A black bile that runs forever
In our veins, yet makes

Our eyes open on a beautiful
World, spoken of darkly

By beautiful mouths, open
To receive the tender kiss

Of some other who brushes
Close against your heart

And promises not to tell.
As impudent as a child

Who is always laughing,
Desire is as enigmantic as

A flowered hat, the candleflame
Behind your eyes, the wind

That moves the treetops,
And perhaps even stranger still,

A sardine in its best pajamas.
If love is a wind

That buffets the gold of
A waxy moon across your gaze

As well as the fire that melts into
A gleaming harvest of dewdrops

In your eyes, then it is
There through which you are moved,

A delirium of soul and sadness
In the petal torrent of your face,

A lily become a wildcat life
That rips the seams of its own

Heart to ribbons, which you wear
As bright streamers in your hair,

Like moonbeams gone invisible
In the carnal sunlight of the day.


*


[ Livia's first translation into Italian ]


ABBOZZO
per Livia Canepa


Lo spirito che ci muove,
Nasce dal cuore

Ed ulula al cervello
Con un suono che non possiamo

Sentire, ma che è
Scandito come i battiti del cuore

Durante le ore del giorno,
E la luce e l'ombra

Di tutto ciò che, attorno,
si rende disponibile al nostro tatto. I castelli

Che costruiamo lungo la riva
Del mare sono per sempre

Spazzati via dall'acqua, come la nostra natura
Scivola via come la sabbia

Tra le nostre dita serrate.
La paura della Morte è essa stessa

Una bile nera che scorre per sempre
Nelle nostre vene, ancora

Spalanca i nostri occhi su di un meraviglioso
Mondo, racconti tragici provengono

Da meravigliose bocche socchiuse
A ricevere il tenero bacio

Di qualcun altro che sfrega
Contro il tuo cuore

E promette di non dire.
Imprudente come un bambino

Che sempre ride,
Il Desiderio è enigmatico

Quanto un cappello a fiori, la fiamma di una candela
Dietro ai tuoi occhi, il vento

Che smuove le cime degli alberi,
E, forse, anche lo sconosciuto silenzio

Una sardina nel suo miglior pigiama.
Se l'amore è un vento

Che prende a schiaffi l'oro
Di una luna di cera attraverso il tuo sguardo fisso

Allo stesso modo in cui il fuoco che fonde
Un raccolto di barluginanti perle di rugiada

Nei tuoi occhi, dunque, c'è
Lì al suo interno ciò per cui ti muovi,

Un delirio di animo e tristezza
Nel torrente di petali che è il tuo viso,

Un giglio divenuto immorale
E lacera i punti del suo stesso

Cuore in fiocchi, che indossi
Come brillanti stelle filanti nei tuoi capelli,

Come raggi di luna divenuti invisibili
Alla luce carnale del giorno.


*


[ rough literal transliteration back to English, from the above ]


First Draft
for Livia Canepa


The spirit that moves us,
Is born from the heart

And the yelping brain
With a sound that we cannot

Hear, but that is
Scanned as the beats of the heart

Throughout the hours of the day,
And the light and shadow

Of everything around, is available to our touch. Castles
That we build along the shore

Of the sea are forever
Swept away by water, as our nature

Slips away like sand
Between our locking fingers.

Fear of Death is itself
A black bile that flows forever

In our veins, yet
Opens our eyes to a wonderful

World, tragic stories come
From beautiful mouths drawn up

To receive the tender kiss
Of someone else who rubs

Against your heart
And promises not to tell.

Reckless as a child who always laughs,
Desire is as enigmatic

As a flowery hat, the flame of a candle
Behind your eyes, the wind

That can move the tops of trees,
And, perhaps, even stranger than these,

A sardine in her best pajamas.
If love is a wind

Taking slaps at the gold of
Moon wax through your gaze

Fixed like the fire that melts
A pearly harvest of dewdrops

Springing from your eyes, then, it is
There, inside that for which you move,

A delirium of soul and sadness
In the torrent of petals that is your face,

A lily become a flaming mammal
Tearing down the seams of its own

Heart into bright ribbons you wear
Invisibly like silly strings in your hair,

As rays of the moon become invisible
In the light of the carnal day.


*

Personal Poem

for Susan Berger-Jones

Locked in couplets
Tears describe

The boundedness of
A circle that is

Self-defining
In its expression

Of self negation:
Wetness can

Take place as
A mechanism of

Defense. Or
How desire takes

The form of
A wind tunnel

Bound by
Barrel staves

And metal hoops
Is that we have to

Keep us for
Ourselves, against it,

The magico-integro
Chalk circle of

Perpetual integration.
Like they say,

I dare you to
Step across that

Line. And why
Should we, since it

Borders back
Upon itself, so that

One ends always
Back at the point of

The original ignition or
Inspiration. Nothing

Inspiring or igniting
Or even integrating

About any of it.
Orality is a bunch of

Baby talk that needs
Stiffening into

The erotic life
Required to prepare

Others for all that you are
About to subsequently

Say. Anything less
Is an overflowing

Toilet that people will
Leave alone. So come

And sit with me awhile.
There is a way

In which all that now
Protects us performs

On us its ever-tightening
Arc. The fearful circle,

Locked in place, cannot
But draw in upon

A center we cannot know,
But that we point it out

Among all the things
We see in the world, from

The safe house of our
Isolation. I hear

A voice, and it is
A child's, the distant howl

Of wolves, or the horn
Of a freight midway

Over a long distance haul.
Let's be honest:

Everything is not
Okay, and it is not going to

Be okay. But we are
Charged with lining up

Words through which
To make this

Clear enough to begin to
Step out of

All that would otherwise
Confine us. A holding

Pattern is not enough
To finally know that you have

Landed. And love
Is nothing if not knowing

You cannot yet land, yet
Feeling at the same time

Grounded enough to know it,
Completely, when you can.


*

The Slits / I Heard It Through The Grapevine

New York Dolls / Jet Boy

The Flying Burrito Brothers / "Six Days on the Road" / 1971

Grateful Dead / One More Saturday Night

Just You

No, and not
Only you. But

Always you,
Yes, forever

Now, until
Then ends

Here
And in

The present,
Somewhere

Down the road
Of yet to be

Broken and unbroken
Utterance.


*

The Subterranean Current Common to Flowers, Flesh and Stars

for Annie

Midnight lines
The perfect play

Of your lovely speaking
Face. I think

The path to understanding
Is through the trusting

Depth of your dark
Eyes: You are not

Someone to simply
Stand in shallow water

With. You smile is
Wide and not airtight

And your voice
Sounds like a magical

Instrument to me.
Between us is

The glass of language
We must be careful

Not to break.
I have to say,

I wonder what you see
Through the moist

Innocence of your
Gaze, so capable of

Holding my attention
To the full. When I

Look at you, I feel
Touched that you seem joined

To a vision in which
Nature is more than green,

Passion other than
Red, and dawn

More about the timbre
Of the air upon your

Skin than any rising
Light. To reach

Across the barrier
All attraction is, is to

Shatter the glass of
Its disaffected dream

And break the larynx
Directly into song:

Eye to eye, air in
The sky and outside

The drama of either
Beginnings and/or ends.

The firmness of your
Stance is a dark delineation

Spreading all directions,
Capturing the obsidian sheen of

The first creation tales. There is
No light yet. Yet

You seem to see and know
The world as likeness,

Difference, change
And immanent negotiation.

You like to talk to people,
And never look away.

Of course, you may not be
Like this at all. But

There is reason to doubt,
Manifested as simple

Possibility, the giving
And receipt, wasted words

They call it, where waste
Is forever superior to

Haste. You have
A life yourself that I am

Not a part of. But
I'd like to think of you

Deep into the night
Staring at the stars with

Your convex carving eyes
And having the pleasure

In this ample swell and act
Of seeing the cheekbones

Of some lovely native face
Reflected brightly back.


*

You Can Leave Your Hat On

*

A deaf man's wife
Is a whistle

And their children
Are all words.



*

That a Bird would Speak as an Angel out of a Dream through the Imperfect Medium of Soma

for Soma Feldmar

the death of a poet in celebration
is a matter of articulation of
appearances, disappearances,
exits and entrances, visibilities,
occultations and agency

(such loud trumpets at the beginnings of
small sense, an open window, 6:30 AM
sound of birds and breeze
at the back of my neck, that our ends

are the means of the acts
that bring them to us, no ultimate
beginning or end, as stoppage
or that all is flow is a continuence of
a presdestinarian silliness

rather than still gold, a thread of
undifferentiated color
wanders the fabric
to eventually disclose the whole cloth it has
helped to weave some part of

Aristeus in seven years
disappeared into the teasing up of felt
where we continue to survive
our reconsiderations upon euphoria
in demented stations of the Boreal,

organs for warmth, and Mind
to delineate what gets too optimistically
called "the outline" of the sk(e)in
that follows animating curves
of act, in order to reveal
in steadiness, in affect, the body

in place, which can never fit
through the revolving back door
of Innocence and Experience

or, there is another way:

breakdown mirrors breakthrough
but in the fractured face of obsidian
and night, not the mirror expectation

we have always the means of securing:
eventuality insists, not as if dawn
were the cause of some personal purpose

but like they say, they don't say
much else, certainly not that, folding
slender bones without a murmur
into Matthew 13:39: the Harvest
is the End of the World
and the Reapers are its Angels
and the like, common belief, limit,

tinned corn beef and a Pepsi
and the quiver of a passing dream,
a ceiling, endlessness
with some degree of specific height,
and wallpaper
scribed with "impossibly blue flowers,"

that there are no reapers, or they are
everywhere matters of reversals, always
coming from no-place, arriving
with the suddenness of defining this
place, as it passes through
the inversion of its stillness, in the whoosh
of a snake sloughing off its skin
toward the Nakobojad of Jerusalem,
a glowing absense in the heart
no Shangri-La, but the center of
the universe as poles,
and the unknown, a girth
that bellies outward against yet with
gravid interpolation, how we do laugh
with green leaves invading largeness

as the axle grinds, like the neighbor
who wants all trees chopped out of
his yard because the roar of
their pollination ruins his sleep:

best to prefer the broken road
of the larynx, language and love

(I write with tacks to the sound of
tiny Oriental bells and thin, pale ankles

pin it quickly (Val) before it goes
out of style, our current mode of
living deification ahead of time,
faithful only to the timeless frieze
of indefinite things, activated daily
by language, the individual petals of
this longest-lasting rose, which
Tasso crystalized as lozenges so sweet,
they rendered its Garden both
paradise and the source for ultimate
corruption, the hell of the heart
reversed from its absence to a rush
unhelped through our own responsbilities

for and to its turn

and you thus enter here, at
some form of Death's customs
to declare an unburdening of
inner for outer and all that
indefinition of darkness and of
light and their interpolation
and exchange, dream face of
person, animal and ghost
I do not know, once hawk-faced

gentleman, gone to femininity
crowned with golden carapace,
gone to raptor, sparrow, hoopoe,
brow of viper, the troubling
Assyrian freighttrain ride of
unstoppable mammalian/reptilian
transfiguration as androgyny
lights the tantric path
as sense come depth come world
come desire and sex come the all
that would encompass yet be folded by
ritual gesture and grimace

nothing private about any of it

we fall into the gravity that holds us
to the place from which we have permission to be
estranged, the single post
of the falconer from which the bird
warns the horizon not to move

like money in the image of
the body in the mind's eye
the heart can't help but spend

poetry is fermentation bounded by
unshaped sweetness, pollen
in the hairs of bees or Lebanese boys
gone naked through pastures of
marijuana taller than themselves
to harvest by their sweat the THC

as now senses exfoliate themselves
from sentiment to resume activity
in words and deeds, without plundering
the ancient, still wayside places

or it was you/not-you said such things
of place within placeless disregard
of any but to act on the present

the alchemy, yours, or not
the assignations do not matter
though not in secret formula
but in dream revealed:

silver is a scratch on glasss by diamond
and gold tantamount to
nothing by saffron flowers
a froth in hot oil at the wok

the magic of a nonverbal message

host and hostaged
it was going up the stairs
by seeing some other one come down

we passed, and it was I

the tradition is, that organisms die

but there is embodiment, senseless,
everlasting that cannot be
but through the telling nimbus
of a fear of absence, and a guide
and ghost to simply put one there
in it, as it, for it, reasonless
because of it, all for the sake of names

Soma as proper come to be
the modest flame of a necessitating
proposal, an intoxicating drink,
the sap of sarcostemma acidum,
how dreams are reigns of fire, where
soma just means "whole" and "flow"

so that on waking, a white moth
flutters low into the room
folds its wings and disappears
into the blocky whites, blues and greens
of the rug, a live thing
become a head arrangement,

movement no longer caused by
an organ, but rendered instead to a zone


*

Be Sensible

for Robin Blaser

you only have to do it
once, repeatedly, releasing
the overgrown goldfish
too large for its former bowl

into the black pond
up the hill, overgrown with
Siberian iris, intricate,
bright, sharp, transluscent
little purple petals gone
three leagues deep, so: well,

(we say), or that there is
a well that opens underfoot
and above your head, the vertical
flower of Shelley's "collected
lightnings" in which all you see
is the first and final flash
of the goldfish disappearing
into a realm none of us
would ever think to call "home"

it is as instant as that

a rabbit among underbrush
quivering as simply and secretly
(yet openly) as a single star
among the many, that disappears
not into the absolution of
darkness, but through the blanched
spending into the rising light of
dawn, having realized something
"more than a feeling, and less than
a thought" as the place of
exaction, where we test everything
as quality resident in the Real,
the tart, the sour, the sweet,
as lemons, limes and oranges

we have only the unseen labor
of our unknown time, but for
their fruits, almost a kind of embryo
of tissue layers defined as orders
of peril and trust, the continuous
line one shall never cross,
between field, forest and orchard
that grow in thorny sensibility
one around the other
to the tune of some solo birdist's
phantom Phoenician violet notes

you know how it is: teeth can be seen
at the corners of each tender human kiss,
a little like being able to hear
a gliding phantom in the music,
but still wanting for
the defining rhythm of a back-up band

but that first flash is for certain
the rock the Jesus told Peter to
build his church on, the uncertainty
of perception, the blindness of
attempting to hold to it

in proper phase: water is not
poured from cups

rather, cups are released to their waters

otherwise we might die
in our own immediate fulfillment


*

Charis

for Livia Canepa

Fingertips that brush
The gold of some other's

Skin: How like the fall
Of a feather that in its

Likeness, reveals
The absolute pull of

Gravity, and the inevitable
Desire that brings

One's hand rightly around
Its charge, nothing

Random about it, the flight
Of fingers and palms

Gone on the delightsome
Presence of all that is

Available, like air
Around the wings of a bird.


*


Dita che come una spazzola
Accarezzano l'oro della pelle

Di qualcun altro: Come una piuma,
Cadendo rivela nel suo aspetto

L'assoluta forza di gravità,
Ed il desiderio, inevitabile,

Fa arrendere la sua mano tutta attorno alla fonte
Di energia. Nulla è al fortuito:

Il volo delle dita e delle palme
Verso il dilettevole, la presenza di tutto

Ciò che è disponibile, come l'aria
Attorno alle ali di un uccello.



[ translated into Italian by Livia Canepa, with suggestions from SE ]



*

Tuscan Lacquer

in memorium, Robin Blaser (1925-2009)

The one who wrote of
Moths (snowflakes
"as big as cigarette papers"
has flown and drifted
and let himself be sung
in the window, out,
all directions simultaneously,
the warmth, the windows
or that the lines all come together
like endless sets of hands

the world will continue
to be interrogated
in the usual indeterminate ways,
the perfected derangement of
a pair of angel's wings, which
seem very like
a perfectly installed pair of
speaking lips, that are
(his, perhaps)
never quite there at all,

following random patterns of
randonee, occasionally
grinding the presumptions of
its givenness, hard
into the ground, as if
knowledge were an egg
of Faberge, that needed to be
gotten to the center of,
where mind and heart can
unfurl into the painted city
of a king, inside the belly
and beneath the shell of
an invisible albino flea


*

Milk

The gash of the western
Horizon bleeds black

Blood in which tulips
Closed around jasmine

Perfumes celebrate
Their devilment:

Gentlemen, forget your
Peacocks. Death Row

Turns your spine
Even as the skulls of

Kali rattle when you
Run your hand up and down

Her thighs. These are
The trappings of the well-

To-do, the private
Anguish beneath cheap

Merchandise, and the swap
Of heart for the blood of

Shining coin in Beirut,
Where women of substance

Vie in the parlors of
Husbanded conceit, over

Who has a better French.
What is the "real life"

So often thought to pass us
By? Is it the unutterable

Sweetness of requited
Love that only sacasm

And perfect solitude lets me
Withstand, or stand in

The midst of, a single
Barren tree beset by

Polar night and the formal
Rectitude of a junk signal

Transmitted along
A glucose line to an unborn

Fetus, whose lips then
Pucker for The Kiss?

Where's the instrumental
Accompaniment?

The golden flowers all
Jeer because we no longer

Substantially drink from
Them, and without this

Lost yet perfectly true
Subjectivization, we will never

Feel the suck and lightning-
Flash of the garland hand of

Musa, but only the punk
Green spume of a hernial

Obstruction. The forms of
Fever keep one in a vast

Indetermination, the bug of
A human embryo climbing

A subaltern waterfall
To show the snowcap of

A heritable army advance,
The life of a family affair set with

Phantoms. The last
Pomegranate seed on earth

Was used to give virgin birth
To Attis, who ended life

As a single, twitching
Finger, and whose hair

Was allowed by Zeus
To continue to grow wild,

The sexualist's demise
Into an ordered growth of fruit.

High school confidential,
Or abortive gestures waved

Toward emasculated trans-
Configured exchange,

The semen sample at
The lip, accepted from some

Slim-hipped ballpark
Specialist, the magical

Utilization of ancient text
Spattered with potent

Hieroglyphs. It's all rise
From here, a parody in

Single file, like the warwhoop
Of ideals parading as essences

Leaking out of Plato's
Cave. Bestiality, or to put it

Far more simply, there are
Animals in circle around

The throne of God. What is
Wrong with that? As Tecumsah,

The panther, indigenous
Activities go down under cover

Of darkness, and why do we
Insist on slaughtering

The sources of own own
Nativity? Naivete,

A fear of speaking directly
To the waitress. That's what

Literature is for: Swaddling clothes!
Dazzling garments! The sound

Of rattlesnakes and the cry
Of entrails! Make it right

In a hollow boule of wood
Devoid of the arms and legs

Required to play it. Fin
De Siecle, or mysterious signs

Fraught with airships
And tetanus. The love

I made, the work I did,
They interfered with,

Intervened upon each other.
I kept each for myself:

I left them totally
Unfinished, fragile hybrid

Of deserted assimilation,
The divine blossoms of some

Crumpled horn. An absent
Source alone that's slaked

By insults, the stylized Double
More you than You.

A piece of string went
Into a bar and saw a Standing

Hair. Matrimony
Ensued: Taste the pleasant

Bitter taste of an elongated
Form of dross. Spindle

And dance with it. I'm
Losin' it. Lost in

The nationalism of black
Lacquer, locked in an airtight

Tulip closed for sex.
The euphoriant fumes of

Open space are gone.
I will kill myself to summarize

The Greatest Game: A bird
Of pale air flies singing across

A blackboard. Satan
Entered into Judas by way of

The morsel given him
By Jesus to identify him as

His betrayer. "Communion=
The nakedness complete

That soon turns into Death"
[Simone Weil and Henry Vaughn]:

"Quite undressed and free
To dwell with soul and Thee

In the fleshlessness of living fountains
And everlasting, spicy

Mountains," whether blue lights
Of a pineal eye, the sentimental

Wart of an ape's extruded anus
Or the histories of yoga

And narcosis combined:
An infant boy must suckle his

Father with the breasts
He can only imagine he must have,

In order to meet the demands
Of parenthood. A snake

Sips from the pail
In order to believe itself

A cow, an illusion from
The actuality of both of them

Possessing spots. What are you
Possessed by? In a world

Of corruption and disasters
You need a Master to find your way.

A man who's misplaced his
Mouth can still subsist as a roar

Of Laughter. Renounce the rustics
Of family, caste and clan: Turn into

An ant instead: Learn sugar from sand
And just eat your bread.


*

Belly

*

Keep the north
Completely

Out of the south
Forever.


*

German Saboteurs

The Doctrine of
Signatures, eye

To its astrolabe
To skirt invisibility,

The leopard's spots,
A snakeskin

Left behind, the rough
Surface of the moon:

Dante's dark wood
Was a smoke hole

In the arched convexity
Of an Ondine pipe

By which he saw
Water nymphs as

Horses of the Sea
In the formalized

Relationship exchange
Ought to be,

The sun's gold face
Ripped off to reveal

The shimmering
Obsidian darkness,

Glint of the First
Day's Creation, before

God said fiat lux,
For there, at the edge

Of the corona, festered
By bitterness, lies

Al-Ma'arri's "grave"
Of deep, dissimilar

Absence that no sun
Can illuminate.

Waterbugs dance
In the streams between

Bardo and bard, as
Eunuchs bunked

In the bedrooms of
The Queen, as also, arranged

Weddings of unkissable
Cousins, hidden glances

Exchanged across
Centuries as close as

Thigh to thigh aching
Behind blinds of some

Japanese courtyard
In 1517. This

Gnostic senselessness,
Of embodied absence

A Black Hole of Perfect
Gravity from whence

Will spring the Incorruptible
Rose of mortality, the end

Of all things freely
Chosen, a rippling

Effectiveness of the Brain
As if it were a muscular

Equivalent of the Heart,
And Mind as what

Interconnects the opening
Folds of the sexualist

Plow and plum to the rippling
Waters of a spiritual

Perception, whose toes
Go stiff and whose fingers

Grasp to be rescued from
Its throes of deadly

Infiltration, extraordinary
Event, sweet fucking to

The gale wind that is, to
Pacem in Terris and terror

On earth, the perpetual
Extravagance underwritten

To buoy the citation of
Rg Veda 10.168.4 [which

See]. "Wind of infinity
In every hair, the glow of

The Sphinx's pride
At every seeker's nascent

Death," she is the "I"
Whose loss is celebrated as

An apparition of self-awareness
In consciousness derived

Through the desire of
A beloved lost in each passing

Moment, its swaying torches,
The choke and heave of hot

Perfumes, the saffron
Glow of a golden ache beneath

Every veil and chador,
A health too pure and strong

For even British colonial
Deconstruction to bear out.

The Bible I bought yesterday
Is already falling apart.

The Story of O is of a bead
Of cold molasses, how we all are

Milked by the Void of
Paradise, just ask Jean

Cocteau to tell you
All about it. Each aspect

Of life has its own
Methodology, and taken

As a whole, most of them
Conflict: Love goes with

Sadism, stupidity with
Malice. Passion for the wind

That forms the void
Around the hot vent hole of

A communal blanket
Is the sound heard, whose shape

Remains unseen [Rg Veda
1.164.44]: Sense will be

Incantatory, or not at all:
A banquet served

On an empty plate to
A starving man in a deserted

Room: A colorless abyss
Filled with the catchy chance

Of firesticks. The bud
Opens for the flower

Which disappears into
The fruit imprisoned in

Each our thirsts and hungers:
The traditions spring

Eternal from individual
Weakness: There is no conceit

That either rises or really
Falls: Creation always takes

For granted, the flow of
Even life. The black marigolds

Of the sunless sun in behind
The liver, open Mind to

A perception of itself as
The body's own traverse into

The "white eternity" of its
Absence, the torn life

Stained vermillion and smeared
Pale with ashes, is that which

Sings. You will not be
Accompanied by bells.

The music is that river
Complete that flows

Out of reach, exact to our
Longing, that reveals no name,

Nor wants one. And to this
I must attend. What is to be

Done? Its beauty does
Delight me, but,

As that to the thing itself,
I still want none.


*

Storyville

for John Yau

The falconer wears
The image of

A beautiful girl
In lace underwear

For a glove,
As the perch

In the mind
That flies with

His bird
Yet returns to

Dig its claws
Into her totalizing

Retraction
Against the pain

Of his needing
A place to be.

He is what
She will not have

Beyond his
Imagining she is

(As) home, as
Her owned part of

Him. No bird
Can carry her

(Away)
For she is

The post upon which
The bird fasts

And around which
His life turns

In famishment.
Why do we speak

In correlatives
And analogies?

Veering from
Pain is itself, more

Pain. And pain
Is the post of

The she-male,
Subconscious

Substitute
For consciousness

In deep array
With wings forever

Outspread.
Now upon her

And out
Into the spaceless

Field of grace
And gasping strife,

She has
About the need

Assigned to her
The perfume of

A feathered life
That none can

Stand. Each
Small surrender

Is increase of
The dark inside

The masque
Beneath the falcon's

Hood which she must
Share. She

Flies, he flees
By staying put.

There is no
Solution but

The small feathers
From the crease

In her eyes as
He squints

To see the gold
Gone black

In folds across
The sky. The crows

Of van Gogh,
The endless creak of

Growing wheat.
Who can bear

To be identified
In harvest?

Half Nefertiti,
One third Hermes,

A fully bludgeoned
Piece of fruit

And full flight
For a quarter-note

Rest: These
Are given for your

Sex. A pair of
Hands upon your

Barque. A falcon's
Eye, a kernal

Gone hard in
The genitive wheat

Heard in
The sound of your

Composing. This
Is all nonsense,

Padika, the falcon
Is Prometheus,

Bound upon a rock.
My cock ascends

To a cloud
And is no bird.

The girl is a rabbit
That hides

In the brush.
The sound of

A barren postulate
Hangs upon the air.


*

Ron

*

Okay.

I slept in his bed once, in San Francisco.

Thank god he wasn't there.

That's the best I can say for him.



*

Inertia

Do your revelator
As she does you:

There is reason
For duplicity, the grit

Of setting a blade
Loose against your

Arm to feel
Steps cut narrow up

The steep slope of
Barren sex, the blood

In a whirling pool
Of dream gone

South of the border
To become the spatial

Indefinition of
A painting by Roberto

Matta. It is good to be
Specific. The Phoenix

Is a red, Egyptian
Bird. The Plumed Serpent

Is not just Lawrence,
But the Mexican

Equivalent of Zeus.
Let's not be too literal.

Cozumel is the Mayan
Word for "turkey."

Birds have always been
Associated with dawn,

And its rise, with love.
When the sun goes down

The only thing to rise
Is hips, the pubis bone

And genitals opened to
Some lover's lips.

The paleness of first
Light is predicated on

The heaviness of dew,
Each blade of grass

A nine-pound torch
And the mouth that

Speaks as equally
A glaze, the juice

Ablaze a modest
If slightly criminal

Assimilation of seed
As the blooded Phoenix

Gone "around the world."
Why bother to break

For cocaine? The air
Is already a constant

Sulphur flash of exploding
Marsh gas. Desire

Is as big as a hollow
Conch that holds

An isolating semi-
Human voice,

Petrified warrior,
Wooden indian with

A broken spear
Clattering like Greek

Syntax in the belly of
The Trojan Horse.

Blue magic connects
Both sides of the Dream

Where both sides are also
Asleep: Will prevails

But cannot do anything
Alone. We need

The open face of some
Feminine mastiff

Alive upon the moon.
The Abyss cries out

From the top of the lungs,
A deep breath never

Taken in. To remain
In the present is to

Stall in the wake of your own
Behind. Only insects

Can decide. Fear is
Poetry, infinitely restricted.

Words, we say, mean
Three things: What they say,

What we say, and the
Combination of these. Without

Sorrow, without happiness
We exist in everything

With sorrow and happiness.
Paradoxical feints tend to

Move away from any means
To test, unify and strengthen

The clueless secret
Of all things moving past

Through time. Where
Do I have to go now, just

To see you? Is there
Anyone there, at all?

What can the grapevine do,
Now that its vines have

Wrapped themselves
Around it so thickly, that

They almost seem toxic to
It and thus themselves?

Absorbing the elixir of life
Involves a modicum of death.

Cut back new growth
As if this were an honest

Transaction. Acquiring
A diamond heart can precipitate

A lot of blood, and reduce
The songs of birds and the light

Of stars as these go to
The spit of your own

Intention. Don't try to
Remove the agon from agony

Or you'll end up alone
And eatin' at the Y.

You, with the cool mind,
Slave to your deeds,

Hold yourself back from
Consequence, and let

Chase and pursuit finally
Meet. That might give cause

Enough for cause. Let there
Be meat between them.

Let the apocalypse rise
And feather your martian

Skin. Don't abide love
Without its savor. Turn

Contentedly in a temperate
Room. Just remember,

The Gods don't dig too much
For you to do those kinds of things.


*

Persian Expenditure

for Karen Randall, her recent painting

The gold reminds of
Postcards of shimmering

Cypress grown on the coasts
Of Florida, or in Shiraz.

I remembered the piece as being
Purple, the opposition of

Contrasts, the force of
Remembered life, the ground

Of our received surprise.
Like they say, you're really

Good. The beauty of these
Rungs and handholds

Dissolves with every reach
And finite step. The afterglow

Of sweet new life and generosity
Is something even bees

And pollinating flowers
Can hardly bear. The bare

Astonishment of being thus so
Humbled brings me off

My knees, held captive to
An attention by which I am so

Drunk, that I know
That I can never leave.


*

[ an addition and further note on The Cut ]

*

Love is form:
Whatever's discovered

In its life
As life elided

Through what
Memory maintains

Gains the legend
Of losing itself.

What's remembered:
Nothing blamed.

Or, life will attain
In acquiring the gift

Of its own requisition,
The stone from air,

Gravity in a vacuum,
How we re-enact

The shadow of
Its own release,

As if in release
It were free,

And free,
Became us.



*

On the Cut (Letter to a Friend)

In the transparent turmoil of language, something like "cutting" becomes a necessity, as one is forever looking for handholds. Without them, one falls to the terror that Foucault wrote of in his little book on Raymond Roussell. Ashbery is rather similar in this, to me, as a reader. The cuts are hard to see. Or, there are crosscuts, shall we say, which simply add to the overall complexity and transparency until finally one becomes

exhausted on the shores of an illusion, the illusion that there even IS a shore.

The head cut is a different sort of thing: The switch from body to neuros. From salt water to fresh. From verb to noun. From proprioception to image. All of that. Cutting,

on the other hand, has to do with the ritual of awakening, or, a ritual awakening. It is not so different from circumcision, the intent of which is to provide a shock to one's entire system - a temporal and rather severe pain and sense of loss - around which consciousness can begin to build itself. It hasn't anything to do with "cleanliness" . . . check the Jewish Encyclopedia.

It is perhaps interesting that I've known far more women cutters than men. I'm not suggesting this as a statistic, but it does make me wonder. As far as poetry goes,

the equivalent of "cutting" would be any difference that exists between a "real" reference - an exact one, say, like calling milk "milk" - and a "skewed," more metaphorical or analogical one. Because "cutting" in life is an actual form of self-interrogation. In Art it tends to be a strengthening method, but in life, it is much more of a trade-off. In the end,

no one wants a "cutter" OR an interrogator in extremis. Like, as a partner. It's really for the purpose of developing consciousness, NOT for constituting human relationships. That is an unfortunate spill-over. People DO become ill, developing their talents. It is tragic. One has to exercise a little caution against mere Tendencies, especially that a perception of modesty taken out of context can cause an emotional complex that might harmfully be presumed to have astringent qualities.

The development of consciousness remains risky, too, without the tympanum of Form by which one can come to an honest assimilation of feeling, thought, work and (ultimate yet temporal) value.


*

The Mendicant's Wounds

Bitter wisdom goes
Forever unearned: There's

A better way to
Make your bed than to

Exaggerate the size of it.
Nip in your waist

And round out
The corners of your life:

Pain is just another word
For splendor in abnormal

Haste: A rough tongue
Suffering the sentimentality of

A brain gone slightly
Smooth. Cross out

The subtle after you
Cross out The Cross:

Balance is for wimps.
Isn't intellectual rigor itself

Just another sort of
Emotional brinksmanship?

Dialectics is just a system
Of distribution. The skin

Is actually made up of a series
Of almost invisible, tiny

Cuts. Blood, sweat,
Semen, phlegm and tears

Hold the whole network
Together, with the help of

A social network of
Barbed-wire strands

And a little aviation gasoline.
The rose howls, while

A salmon's tongue
Flicks inside the moon.

See? You're doing it
Again. Syntax, and then

More syntax. The petals
are each torn away by

The growth of internal
Contradictions. They fall

To a ground that cannot be
Otherwise imagined. Could this be

The plausible rise of some
Unnamed thing in another

Realm as yet unbuilt to
Bridge us across? Words

Don't kiss: People do.
All the world's a tree

Grown up to a greater sense
Of famishment. Let us

All be banished, banshee
Or banjo, it matters all for naught.

Let our lives be
Kindling to roast the spit

Gone bare for the meat
Of history, waiting for

A future of plentitude
Floating in a pail of tepid

Milk. Your crotch is
Just a circlet of thorns,

A hurricane in the nave of
A senate chamber,

A destitution of
Snarls and snares, tricked

Up into a lasting abode:
Don't stay home, or even try to

Go there. Make no attempt
To shard the Cosmic Egg:

It is pious and impious, both
At once. Immediacy

Is for the birds. That we
Build for the sake of what we must

Destroy, and the reverse.
All that I renounce can

Never get me naked enough
To be who I thought I wanted:

Another person. Or that she could
Be another person is

The miracle of it all. In the presence
Of a mirror, always have

The grace to look aside,
And put some meat upon the table.


*

Flemish Nightmare

Satyriasis in dispossession
Overwhelms me

Like the delusion of blue
Upon clear air

And I am enormous,
My genitalia grown to

The power of a pure, white
Quartzite pebble

Or spent seashell,
Something that will never

Move. What walls
And marvels these oceans

Grow, bliss without
Shadow, as false as

The mysterious wine of
Touch that makes the heavens

Screech! Human gesture
Moves time forever

Toward the function of
The divine, but catatonia

Is all corruption, rust
And ideal configuration,

The flesh a loose blanket
In which the bones of the Church

Are wrapped. We dwindle
Onward, become larger

In thought yet shorter
In the life that purports to

Generate it. What
Will happen when the end of

The message comes? Thus
Will we prevent the ones who

See from delivering it.
Finality is a sort of endless

Suspension, a clam afraid
Of water. I live at the littoral

Of the body's wet, yet
Speak like I come from

A desert. Without dualism,
Who will weave the dowry rugs

For our young girls? Doubt
Can only resume its form

In the lacunae that let in
Both the animated forms of

The earth's pantheon of
Animals, as well as

The black pencils of Heaven's
Fallen angels. And in between

The glorious transfer
Between the two lies

The crushed fruit of
Distant sex recently

Done to one for purposes of
Imbalance, androgeny

And the analogical rhythms of
The Great Arcanum,

A quivering hair in a gasping pair
Of needle-nosed pliers.

Babar plumbs the grey
Unconscious: Eucalyptus leaves

Rattle in the dusk of orange
California: Oranges grow ripe

In the sunlight of Cadiz.
Enough equations. I am

A devoted slave of thwarted
Incommensurability. Mother

Sobs and weeps for
The part of her that went

Defenestrated in a previous
Century. It is hell

Having a Fury for a mother.
Time plays havoc with

My measure. Measure is
A mother broken by corruption.

Pregnancy is a growth. I am
Whole, but fragmented

While waiting to realize it:
Birth is a kind of celebrity.

Touch is that which bathes
Those inferior to it, in order

That they be purified. It's
A deadly business, giving up

What you need in order to
Surrender to it. Drain

The ocean and live a short
And orderly life. The pieces

Of the sky will fall together
Whenever you breathe their air.

How many pieces, asked
Improbably, as if one knew.

I know nothing. There.
You have your answer.

Acolytes all want to drown
Their teachers, but at the last minute,

Gorged on vanity gone undeposed,
They will improbably repent.

You can put your caps and beads
Back on. The world's

A pit of soot. Go blind
And let yourself feel welcome.


*

The Beetleskin's Hoorah

Experience damns one
To a process of recovering

An innocence supposed to be
Something substantial, beyond

A feint, as balanced
As the bell of a church.

But we sound a sequence of
Different hours, an ithyphallic

Debauch in the barracks
In preparation for

The barracades around
The heart gone

As wild as a weed
In the stuttering Garden

Of Allah for a a stolen
Bacchic moment, an exquisite

Reprisal for the knowledge
Become a tobacco plug

In some tugboat captain's
Jaw. Turn on the faucet

And float your toys.
Pretend they are the playthings

Of some perverted Roman
Emperor who would rule

The zig-zags of all creative
Endeavor. Innocence

And experience. We have
Yet to discover that Night

And Day do not exist. Midnight
Is buoyed on its other side

By a perfect pitch of blue.
Fornication is all folly.

The cruelty of the animal thing
Put forward in the form of

Song is another sort of
Mantra and (e)mission,

The erotic flick of the tongue
Against clits swelling

In the shoreline caves of
Lesbos, or black markets

Flagellated in trade to
The bourgeousie for a few

Roof tiles, fragrant mixtures
Of cumin and cinnamon

And new lamp-posts
To give the poets something

On which to hang frustrations,
Hats, bodies, and what have you.

The human form: Beautiful
And full of mucus. And with a life

Reared as starlings, rightful
In the nests of others. This is

Our noble bearing. I do not
Believe in sin. I believe

In delirious, unbalanced,
Perfect authenticity. Get

A job, baby. Or become
The worthy product of a strong,

Psychological inversion, the result
Of thinking that is larger

Than it has to be. Draw down
And nourish yourself.

Set yourself down in your own
Skin and be perceived

In sepulchre aspect as
The blindness of a hundred layers

Of glass. Where there's bliss,
Sorrow is already loosening

Her pants. And it is there
My double heart and divided mind

Debate and thieve. I ought to say
"Thrive" but I cannot.

The groove of the guest has been
Ghosted. I am no longer

Myself. Knowledge
Has swept through my house

And blown away the confusion of
My furniture, my life, my

Possessions. I am evil-minded,
And a bad servant. Good fortune

Has made me serene: I broke
The beam of everyday love,

And now, ready for anything,
Can be loved by no individual one.


*

The Day of the Rabbit

Vineyards are breaking
Into blossom and I am

In this year cut short
In living grief, just turned

Fifty-nine a century ago.
Through passions for which

I paid no import duty,
And because I smashed

The gourd that marked this
Passage upon the pavement

Before it was dry enough
To become the boule of

An instrument I could set
With strings and moonbeams

To bring an antecedent era
In as music, as sensibility,

As consciousness itself,
I suffer the common human sting

Of nostalgia, and the trade of
A living life transmuted

Into Art and Thought in which
Nature, Love, Death, Despair

And Martyrdom all preside
In an ambiguity in which directness

Plays no part, as these hands
Once got upon the hips of

Former lovers now feel
More like grit than gold

Where the earth is
A closed sphere that swells

With the pain of my own heart
Repeatedly gone open

In remembrance. Who are
These people who once could be

Or never were, what,
To the present but a bunch of

Pasty ghosts? Stop singing
From the flickering candles

Behind your eyes. Extinguish
Their modest flames with immodest

Tears, the thirty pieces of
Silver in purchase of feminine

Phenomenology! This totem
Abyss is the leaping influx

Of emptiness, a spit
To a shank of pork and live cries

Standing in for subtle
Vignettes of a small idea

That sparkles like an instant
Of desire in the eye that fronts

A life gone on imbecility
And delight, the calved pinkness

Of a happy abortionist,
The passing of the evening's

Final bus. Even one
Exclamation point is too many.

The caste of poet, if
There were one, ought to be

A laughing stock as well as
A source for pain

And the well from which
The new music of another

Bygone era might fountain
Up from nowhere, providing

A further twenty years of full,
Productive life. But what

Stupid wishes are these
That bruise the nauseating

Clientele that loves literature
Like they love the epidermis

That throbs in the shady
Claques that lie at the roots of

Both earthly and heavenly
Trees? Your poetry,

Sailor Boy, ought to
Steer clear of trivializing

Immodesty and get itself
A piece of shade with abundant

Fruit and a few odd birds
That no one thinks can sing.

And why don't you come, too?
If the Fire is a rage

That would consume the world
In order to feel the heat

Of one's own personal
Corruption, why not learn to be

The lamp of it, that all might
See? I come from parents

Who thought they possessed
The elixir of life. Tradesmen.

Gypsies. What's the difference?
We weave so we can see

Where the mind's shuttle
Sails and darts. The ocean

Emerging as a single drop
Is quite a dancing trick.

But that is only man as angel,
A sort of "ready made" that looks to be

A brilliant crimson flower,
But is at end of day

A featherweight, brainless
And devoid of any pollinating stink

Whatever. Let my mouth be
A channel to your heart.

I am no drinker of blood, I merely
Tramp the blank lanes of

Of sex that drives these lines
That almost seem written by

Someone else, believing
That by fucking the one, I will

Gradually discover the milk of
The Other as some sort of

Balm. Corruption
Will forever reach no end

But one that knows how to
Talk about itself. There is

No relief but the perpetual
Raising of the dead

To the destruction of their
Nostalgia, as shared by

Everyone. The rabbit has
Died. But its hairs

Line the speaking center
Of the moon.


*

Austerity

The penultimate stage is
Sometimes a step

Up to a star
That turns out to be

A blackened heart,
A winter apple,

A speck of dust upon
The barren plain of

An eye. Revolve
Against it, and slip

Under all that remains
To escape this first

And final destitution.
Destination, resolve.

I've shattered my loom
Against the side of a tavern

That creation be
Improved at the loss of

My making. I've drunk
Water enough to puke back

God's black bile
Wholesale, by the gallon:

The world has been
Cleansed of all my

Thought, gone gold
Into every crevice,

Completely forgotten.
I honor convention by

Remaining a bum
In despair at the pilgrim

Station, devoted slave
To all. A Sheikh?

A mullah? I was born
Of impure fruit, so my

Glory is all ill-gotten.
O small recluse

Of this world, you,
I, what are we but

Lyrical operations
Lined up left to right

In the canon of
A shameless wound

In which we attempt to
Shield ourselves

From the principle of
Beef, the incarnate

Substance of sunray
And body like a splinter

Each to each, neither
Of which can reach the other.

We are entirely
Embedded in our own distant

Ache. And what remains
But the wool I would not

Weave? Shall I settle
This quarrel once and for all?

I have been covetous
But not ostentatious in my

Desires. I have convinced
My heart to be content

When it shall never be
But known to lie in this.

It was a bitter streak
That lit the sky

At Phaedron's fall.
The Holy Roman Empire:

A pillow, a mattress
And one coarse sheet

For satin under stars.
The lotus spins in tandem

With my incorruptible corruption.
Be modest. Have a heart.

And in this I can calmly ask,
What do you mean

You left the horses
Completely unattended?

Like a thief, my mind
Has slipped

Into the simple state of
Loss.


*

Cecil Taylor (5th of 5)

Cecil Taylor (4th of 5)

Iron Filings

Let's say you don't make
A lot of sense, criss-crossing

Ohio for no reason. And
There's that corridor

I don't even know how to
Talk about yet, so I

Mention it here, America's
Pure Islamic crest, from

Cleveland around Lake Erie
To Buffalo. Might as well

Take it was far west as
Detroit "on preferable

Sonic conditions
And channels of transmission"

[ Harvey Brown ]: You'd Be
So Nice to Come Home To.

Slightly out-of-tune
Silver trumpet Mexican

Mariachi band music
From another era hones my

Hearing of Gilgamesh,
Odysseus and Aeneus

While the radio tells me
That Toto is the only "character"

To view Oz and Kansas
"In a similar light." Between

Day and night there is
No difference. Midnight is

Buoyed by the light that is
"Under" it: Oak openings, dawn,

The first line of defense. That's
Kama Sutra and Kali Yuga,

The waters trickling off
An overpicked Hesperia

Whose jeweled fruit is Tasso,
The stink of the Cuyahoga.


*