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.