the poem itself

the battle is there

the war unwaged

the magic trick as yet

unperformed

and the shadow is there

the shape laying latent in the yet-to-be-formed

a geodesic world, contorted

into clean proportion

just lines still in the surface

and the mind is flat

as the painting or the tv screen is flat

flat with delusions of physical depth

flat as the path is flat

pocked with holes and gravity wells

just waiting, open mouth covered,

for a food to stumble

And I call it forth from the featureless abyss

the awareness not-yet-aware:

the plastic of her gaping body

waiting for the sculptor's caress

the morphogenesis of a lover's touch

the mutation that rages from

a dark and impassioned whisper;

and the maiden is no sooner

maiden than she is lover and

mother and child

closing as she opens

thieving as she gives

and the process is completion

the work is the finished work

but the others,

the others who've gone before,

they work their way in, too:

working out their uncertainties,

undergoing manifold shapes-

swollen breasts, languid hair,

bluing veins barely covered-

they carve their many breasts

their textures of hair

and their blood, flat and thin and perfect,

out of her body;

resenting having seen

their reflection

New work

"Then come close to Nature."
- Rilke


At the breast of Nature
driven to the Metaphysic milk
like an infant rooting

And the mantra of art
the unalloyed Idea

is: Reinterpret.
Learn to harrow

steal the plow

dig the axe out the woodshed

and put it to the oak-

let the iron, old and primal,

shake off its rust

in the gash, in the wedge

She bears now-

in the sap, the pus, the colostrum.

It's not so much a matter of thought,

experience is later.

At the breast of Nature

we intuit:

our toothless mouths

nip at her tits

and the imprint comes

through the throat.

But a gosling

can know a shoe as Mother:

they'll fly, fully grown, in formation,

behind a glider

hoisting a man

wearing just those magical shoes.

And to suck the sap

of the world tree

requires an open wound.

So we go to the past

and dig around

and find a file, a bit of steel,

and make for ourselves some fangs.

acquiring, before we're christened,

a name:

Nidhog,

the Poet Serpent,

teeth stuck tight in the breast.

Moon Phase III: Waning

A nest of paper scraps and ribbon hid among the horns-

below the canopy of overarching antlers, twisted like bramble stalks,

the sparrow builds.

patient claws clinging to the shadows, the talons of a hunter made much too small,

the plumage dappled with nakedness, the breast humbly bared,

but her hood, black as the airless night-

her hood is the old hood of death.

His horns are beautiful with nonsense. His belly laugh is an ox-bellow that breaks the night,

His mismatched eyes call like the pulse of a beacon:

"Come hither, you who reek of pain, you whose eyes blister with envy,

lustful cry of earth, snort of dark glee, all things who scream "I!" from the core of your souls:
Come hither to me."

The spirits shriek and flutter.

The sparrow cuts with iron wings.

Above, the moon draws aside to think, turning into blackness, swathed with misfortune,

the clouds are thrown over the stars:

into the old egg of blackness

the infinite mouth of the infinite serpent

the sparrow departs.

Moon Phase II: Full

I fell, hands chafing, the length of your plumb-line

until purchase caught my ragged skin, and I hung,

feet kicking in an open cosmos.

God, and the night was huge; slow colonies of ice were lit, like fields of eyes,

from God only knows what light.

My body caught the beams: a kaleidoscope, a snakeskin, a storm with an unseeable eye;

as I hung, arms turning to lead, turning to fire,

my own blood, singing with warmth, slowly pulled like a dragon's-head of rivers, down around my flesh,

much the way in which the icicles made themselves, and the bones

came to rest in the silt.

I wrap myself in a blanket of conjecture. Right above my axis

amongst untended fruit, ripening in cradles of grasses and roots,

two lovers sit, magnetic, eyes as big as oranges, breasts as full as the moon,

black brambles of hair, olive pits in succulent eyes,

themselves beyond ripe.

The branches are a black bower, warding the strange purple of the night,

incubating the clinging hearts until they sweeten,

burst, and are eaten.

Moon Phase I: Waxing

I wept to know you

I captured you with ropes from my micah shards of eyes. You glittered your changing sunlight in their surface,

black like the exhaust streaked on the snow.

They are opaque, my teary planes of eyes, black and ruthless with meaning.

Black like bones in the fire.

I hide them, if I can, behind shaded glasses. At night it doesn't matter,

my eyes eat the crackling light of the streetlamps, the velvet rubbed off by the moon;

they slowly despoil the world of secrets.

And you are lined with neon, girl of the night,

my skin crawls as I watch you fluoresce.

Your breasts swell with dirty radiation. Your curves are struck from the plasma of a star.

You are white and cream and brown, like the milk of poppies,

like the sparkling facets, too small to see, that twinkle in my eyes.

getting personal

your mouth is an avenue of stones

the muffled depths, black in the river

aglitter with jewels and bones

the old city, swept across

by the words of your water

she says:

"I haven't seen such beautiful flesh

since the last armageddon!"

it's nonsense.

the flame of her beauty

has burnt green and secret

in the bosom of the slumbering beast

cradled in the sympathy

of night

you wake

violets like burrs in your hair

and I touch you

yield

to the fragrance of my lips

to the rifling of my tongue

sick and exquisite with nectar

wrung, still beating, from the blossom

in your crux

the ash grows muddy and black

in your teeth

the seeds run to pulp

deep lover

deep with old echoing sound

I am crazed with the sight

of the moon

peeking from inside

the flurry of petals and ice

that is the bed she spends her days

in the snowy noise

of your throat

you leak the oil of flowers

the melt of the early snow

and I drink you, orange rind

before you dry away

same

it is forbidden you

the way of the thrushes' trill

the leaves like empurpled blades

rubbed in the spit of the grindstone

the hollow ache of melody

the forest remembers it not

teeth with no centers

nesting in empty veins

alight with fool's gold of eyes

and so she sings it again

bitter tune

of the seedling-coming-forth

the tattered body of the toadstool

bathed in the light of spores

the throat closing

around the water of the song

you cannot hear it,

porcelain girl, and not hearing,

cannot lust. the scrape

of the teacup on the saucer

is yours, the wine of your integral polish

bleeding through the silk;

purity and desire

stippled in your dress; the languid

fall of hair from the purple

of your scarf; silence and light

are yours.

but your eyes, like pale shadows

of the diamond, betray

the song you cannot hear.

your deafness is the taut drumskin

of a heart. your ears bleed

silent, muted blood, etching

notations in you.

plum, primrose, peony,

translucent hands

on the unseen strings of the harp.

privileged to do so,

your mouth echoes with

the damp taste of virtue.

with every chime of dying

vibrato, you breathe

your unknowing breath of song

you give back your silent taste of essence

to the dark moisture of the fire

flaming in the pitch of the earth.

the poetry of things

the red is a jewel

culled from rubies enamelled of rust

torn liquid from the meat of the bone

the red of the albino's

virulent pupil

the amputee's satin rag

now percolating in you

diffusing along induction lines

forking like roots in the skin

the livid health of the poinsettia

the sacre coeur of holly

moves, like expanding heat,

through the chilly lust

the white polyvinyl nude

of your rigid gleaming body

I touch you: there you are,

tactile scent of clean saliva

and tongue, the stony cairn

in which the past has buried the future

your cold arousal burns me,

static image; I feel

the polish and ice of your surface

and the exquisite throb beneath

you are flushed

with the hot red of the virus

the appleskin eating

your cool edifice

naked pearl of flesh

I wipe the frost from your brow

I wipe the fire from your thighs

disease of immunity

consumed by paradox

I make you nothing

explanation

I felt, as of late, the strongest urge to run away from abstraction. One element in this was the chance purchase of a slim volume of poetry called "In What Disappears" by John Brandi. It's made with sheer and gorgeous imagery that is so ghostly it's barely on the page; as close as one gets to a poetry of pure experience. Another perhaps was my recent exposure to the anime Mushi-shi. Yet another was a moment when, driving through Chestnut Ridge state park at sunset, I saw, for an instant, a clearing in the trees and an avenue of perfect illumination. And still another has been my recent perusal of a book called "Era and Mode in English Poetry," which defines styles and eras through the empirically measurable mode, i.e. the relationships of substantives (nouns and adjectives) to prepositions, as well as the degree of abstraction in the terms involved. The poetry of Shakespeare, all skulls and flowers and apples, or of a Neruda, a Pound, or a Whitman, is very much in this vein. She opposes it with the metaphysics of poets like Dunne and the classicist movement which is exemplified by Dryden. There are all sorts of strange and twisting links in this scheme, with Lorca hearkening back to the old balladeers (something which to me is about as counterintuitive as it gets), and it forces one to reevaluate not just the poets that are ideals and influences, but also one's own poetry.

So, the last few days have been atmospheric and colored with strange light. I had almost forgot the pure sensation of Joy, of transport through and beyond the heart of visible things. My poetry had been getting too philosophical; even though I've always been married to symbol, image, and the particular, I had become too obsessed with my search to pin down and identify substance, being, and sensation; or in lieu of that, to render the terms 'being', 'substance', and 'sensation' meaningless. I had been falling over myself; I had been straining a gnat and swallowing a camel.

And so I suspended work on my poems dealing with Alexia and Kadir and my little nascent mythology, and also my sequence of bird poems, which were intended to explore meaning and consciousness while dressed in the mantle of homage to simple pastoral poetry, to Robbie Burns and Emerson and Keats. I stopped my work on these and started writing my previously posted autumn night poems, as well as a few others which have some of the same emotional texture, but which I haven't decided to post. I may not; although the one which conflates Christ imagery with a bloody, dusty sunrise I've taken a particular fancy to.

We'll see. We'll see.

autumn night 3

they are saddling the horses.

drinking spirit from acorn-cups,

they ready themselves to ride.

there are maidens, clothed only

in shadow, hiding behind

the bars of the rushes;

finger-combing sable hair

in starlight and still

autumn water

there are holes in the path

pebbles caught between

shoe and cloven hoof

man goes forth, into the night,

carrying iron and fire

there are lilies and the albino rose

woven bodies of grass

demur and inviolate

waiting to be plucked

from the road-side

the riders press on

the breath of wet nostrils

streams like steam to the sky

catching the light like a net

only as thin as the butterfly

the lightning-bugs and cicadas

choking on the plague that sings

in the drafty hints of the wind

the hush and chill of winter

make their last enchantment

revel in the silver light

dance to the fiddle of spring

refusing to pass away

the horses cut through the night like a prayer

in the sky, the angels and serpents

and stars are crying

as they sharpen silver blades

the two auroras, dragons

of current and spectrum,

tear at one another's numerologies

snapping pale lightning

of many ominous colors

in banks of dismal cloud

by the blurry edge

of the loamy gravel path,

quicksand, asleep and hungering

in anxious fits

beneath uncertain ground,

the hydrangeas are dying

into constellations

the war of the heavenly host

but the moon has nary a ripple

in her feathery light

the riders call, golden song

warming their hearts

like the molten gold of the liquor

with the thud of hooves

like muted bells

ride on, ride on,

as long as you've beasts to ride upon.

autumn night 2

her laughter stills my ears

from ringing, glass bell

brass plate

the timid flutter

of a flute sustained

on a child's undertone

laugh at the webs

in the knobby fingers of the oak

laugh at death

working silent in the womb

laugh at the eyes

which look, like hooded men, waxy

hands on waxy cheeks,

from silvered pools, thin and tinged

with sulphur, in the forests

of the witches' night

laugh at me, comet-trail,

shade of dust, coronal ice,

the mark of worlds' passing-

whither and whence

are black; devoid of answer

the substance moveth on

laugh at the wind

which mutes the cry

of the spirits' fiery tears

laugh at the sea

which aches with a monster's lust

to have the shore in its belly

yes, laugh

laugh at the stars

you soothe yourself with

in hopes of becoming light

laugh at the earth

who looks at you

rumbling with arousal

laugh, and feed me

the whey and oats of your laughter

here, in your breast, in your body,

our ears have fallen silent

and there's nothing in our eyes

but the bright arc of your laughter

O night.

autumn night 1

the longest shades of the evening

wither along their length

night falls out of the violets

and the ground rises up, lamenting,

"tender flesh, deep blush

of shadow, secreted in the rose,

rolling in the violet,

you have drawn my heart away!

you have led my heart away!"

breathing the rich

breath of the mist

the whisper of wind

wandering lost in the gloom

the earth exhales

and sings with its voice

of silt and stone

the hollow pulse

of an infinite drum

the hollow bone

of men

dragged away

muffled and still

by the night, her scents and her devils,

the song of breath

given living to clay

is cut loose from her weeping

lost in the melodies of violets

lost in the mouth of the rose

in the mottled eyes of shadows

she sings herself to silence

New stuff

Hey all. Been neglecting this page a little bit over the past week due to my new job. It's high time I posted some of the words I've been hammering out over the past few days.

* * *

She discusses herself with her tongue

cold bone

glittering, dowsing

in the water of the dawn

heavy tongue

iron rod

sheathed with a weighty slur of iron

a bludgeon like a stave

on which speech is mutely noted

operatic sighs and screamings

unladen with the burden of import

unsaddled with the intention of mind

shadow lies

in the hiddenness of tongue

Elefaiya elekron tovayo

dszerus

Alexia unbows the ribbon

whispers obscuring the song

the commerce of meaning

effacing the tongue

No sound, my love, no sound

no high lament of poem

no weeping for your tears

hung silent from the thorns

of the lily wreath, the lilac wreath

your ecstasies of union

your child of song

and gibbering speech

formed from a mistress

and not a bride

deserts you.

for the forest, for the circus

the spittle of the champing teeth

the oily slide of things

in their union

and he is not alone

as you, as you

were not alone

alone alone alone

Destiny, with a majestic leer,

ravished and disgraced you.

Two new avian poems

robin,

you wear your beating heart

flowering from your chest

with your beak

you pick at the stitches

****

he who was born

from the weavings of nests

is happy.

the finch climbs out of itself

the thighs of the rookery

the plumage made as

birth is a making

and he sings his shrill song

unmetered by the fetters of pain

the terror of being

escaping from the craftings of beaks

of nests, of eggs

singing

"I am both the fruit and the orchard

both the crop and the plow

I am the feathers with which I'm feathered

I am the broken shell

I remember snow

like white fire in my eyes

like diamonds

the water of my people's tears

belatedly freezing

were the sparkles of the furnace

the stigmata of light

But I,

Finch and none other,

sing not of the past.

there is no journey

before the unbidden snow."

nature poem? maybe?

plump and full of itself

master of its own circular tracings

the hummingbird sings-

"I have left the light

of industry's door

for industry

in the light of the garden.

I have left the hot, spacious

air of the golden cradle

for the garden:

cradle of clay

of earth

I have left my beloved

whose swayings are the blur

of procreation, whose words

are the lovely poems of insects'

sweet voices, for the voice of the garden

flowers divulging secrets of milk, of gold

I have left you

early morning, spider silk and dew

I have left you
pneumatic heart of troubled sleep

I have left you

pantheon of birdlike spirits

mirrors hiding

in the valleys of the pond

in the heat of the air

I have left you

for the bewildering voice of the soil

for the colorful song of the shadows

for the many overflowing breasts

of the garden."

A flat surface of tongue

Notes from awareness:

the recursive I

strained through mirrors

loses solvency

the primary play of language

on the plump primariness of lips

original essence

encoding air with similitude

the spaceless point

of vertical self

diffused in horizon

Alexia chatters in the morning cafe

bagel tortured with coffee

the butter, disembodied,

is a buoy-light

the ever-shifting shore

Her friends form a knot of intention

single mind

of the many bodies

tabula rasa

in the confluence of wood pulp

the profusion of manyness

from the lips of the few

and they speak

lines out of nothing

speech out of sound

choking and gurgling

drinking

the river of becoming

their clothes are constructions

of fakery and pomp

the polis

of the manufactured thread

the recurrence of the dye

fabric like airy wings

the vibrato of the breeze

pennants and flags proclaiming:

I

am the sound of what I say

the texture of my movement

the self of the sparrow

lies in the birdsong

+ Kadir

I stand in the distance

little I, little man in hers

and she

leaves off her segmentation

into lines and still pictures

the stutter

that breaks apart sounds

and in the revealing reveals

the geode

of clicks and whistles that smooth themselves

into the lattice-work

of windows

and she bursts apart, her dress like rags

hair split along hairlines

into birds

catching what may be the breeze

of a new order, a humanity

beyond human

where all narratives are shamed

before narration

where her hands

are strung in the loom

out of the fog, the weaving

of a morning-texture

the last emergence from night

the scape of sound escaping

atmosphere

the Final Mission:

to die in space the way that space has died

in us

Kadir strokes her temples

plants kisses on her cheeks

and smiles

his old, electric, piano-key smile

and cradles her head

in the eye in the I in the aye

of the dawn breaking dawns

against the changeless sky

never again to be broken

Introducing Alexia

She put her claws away

She has dispensed with the rhythm

of flickers of fire and flowers' cascades

she puts away her beating heart

organ of life

metronome of spirit passing

grey beating of a metal piston

on a metal drum, signifying

nothing nothing nothing

the beating of pulse on the brain

struggling to kill language

she dragged her fingernails through the

thorax of being the abdominis

of change- yogini of many arms

bhikuni of many minds

she put her tongue, disembodied

on the bed of the censer

censored the sense of the fire

in the coals which have coalesced

to syntagmatic structure

LITTLE BURNINGS

the vibrato in the throats of the bells

calling forth jack

from the candlestick

speaking to the bones of the embers

commanding:

Awake

flowers garnishing the embryonic

children living in flame

be me

me not alone again anymore the way

I function has surpassed

again nonrepeating variable life

of dissolution and change

Unnameable Spawn of Science

A little background on this one is deserved. On an online science/literary journal (if there can be such a monstrous thing) they had a challenge to write poems about quarks. Specifically, it said to take as your title one of the different subtypes of quarks: up, down, charm, strange, top, or bottom. They also mentioned that 'top' and 'bottom' had before been 'beauty' and 'truth' but nobody could keep the names straight and the two were constantly being confused even in academic publications.

Well, as I write untitled poems, I thought "Hey, why not use all of them? And in an ascending scale of complexity until complexity becomes confusion? But still have it real small and minimalist so it feels like quantums inhabiting vast galaxies of empty space at a microscopic level?" Of course, it became a slow joke about science, empiricism, and human ingenuity.

Well, I never submitted it to the journal, so I thought I'd put it here.

up.

facing into fiction

down.

supine in the mud-

nose in the truth

strange.

your bearings are slowly relinquished

in planeless space

teasing form out of void

charm.

you twirl epileptic

sufi of the fire

tracing you in rays of light

the sun absolves of darkness

top.

when were you alone before

in the context of man

the tweezers and engines of inquiry

the genie's bottle

exorcised the genie

bottom.

the pyramid has a base

the column has a root

studying roots & branches

the science of beginnings and ends

yields the discernment & the is or is-not/neither is nor isn't

negation of [beauty] and [truth]

something playful

there is light in my garbage

I know not from whence it springs, large and unseemly

places inside of places

black coffee, rum, and constructions

of badly sculptured cigarettes

what the fuck do you think you are

some kind of fucking cowboy

some hipster detritus

pastiched from a world that has

equalized virtue

imagized virtue

virtue responds:

hey, I shine, as if shining

would ever be enough

to burn the sugar and mix the paint

emerge into intrinsic value

submit to extrinsic death

the doom-that-comes-from-without

perhaps bogie plays the role of bogart

in celestial noir; perhaps the cake

perhaps the painting

consume themselves:

exchange of value and virtue

rusting wheelwells on the river-bottom

are playgrounds for the fish

contextualized by water

they breathe themselves

I wear waves like fins

oxidized on my cowboy's brim

disclosing:

a hundred years too late

to exist

the body of the eye