I cannot create a texture that sings
The way birds hum in the moonlight,
While streaking through the grey hair
Of parting clouds. I cannot strap a guitar
On a clinging door that floats
Halfway in the middle of space
And time (if they exist). What I am
Is a voiceless whistle trapped in a hissing mask;
What I am is a starker stalker
By the lornful beats of an ancient mandolin:
You'll understand if you take the route to Beijin.
Who put the Jin in Beijin? There are glass towers
Poking out of the sand, wishful mutations.
And the Bei? Some German word,
Falling off a foreign tongue,
Scattered in a pronouned panacea. Together
They are a fragrance of enchantment...I digress:
The poet is a hulk, the world is a hulk
Molded.

Herodiade (Mallarme)

Abolished, and her wing, hideous in tears,
The basin's, abolished, mirror of alarms,
Since from naked gold profaning russet space
A dawn -- cresting feathers -- chose
Our cinerary, sacrificial port,
Heavy tomb the bluebird fled, caprice
Alone of dawn in vain black plumes...
Ah! Uprooted countries and the manor, sad!
And not a lap! The mourning water folds
Again into herself, whom no more feathers see,
And neither the memorable swan: the water reflects the affront
Of an autumn extinguishing, in her, his branch:
The swan's when, among the pale mausoleum
Where the plume plunged her head, grieved
By the diamond, pure, of an errant star, but
anterior, which never shined at all.
Crime! Butcher! Ancient aurora! Supplication!
Heaven's blood! Lake of complicit purple!
And among the fleshy rose, wide open, this stained glass.

The Agamemnon

Guard:

Gods, I beg of you, from these duties a reprieve
Of guarding all the year's length, through which, lying
On the rooves of the Atreides on my arm, of dogs the custom,
I have come to know the conference of the nightly constellations,
And, which bear to mortals winter, summer,
Ruling lucents noted in the ethers,
Stars in their risings, and when they set.

Even now I am watching for a symbol of brightness,
A light of fire to bear from Troy the prophecy
Of victory and its tidings: for thus decrees
The heart of a woman, man-ruling, hopeful.
So both when I keep my bedewed and night-rousing
Bed, unreceptive of dreams (for fear stands about, before
My sleep, so that there is no steadfast closing
Of eyelids to drowse) -- and when I deem to sing or hum,
Carving a tuneful remedy for rest --
How I then lament, for such a home's disaster groaning,
Not ordered for the best as once before.
But now I hope for a lucky 'lease from suffering,
Since the holy angel of fire is striking through the gloom.

Hail lamp of the night, daily light announcing
Both many festive gatherings
In Argos, and the grace of celebrations,
Mercy, mercy!

I sharply sign to Agamemnon's wife
A rising out of bed so to swiftly set about the house
Ululation well betiding for this light,
If indeed the city of the Iliad
Has fallen, as the burning call makes clear:
As for me, I will sing a proem.
For I'll wager things turned out nicely for my master,
Twice-six, from the way these omens throw themselves.

Let it be I'll raise the well-beloved hand of a returning
Master of the house with this, my own. As for other news,
I have no voice -- for on my tongue a gainly oxen
Treads (things which this very house, if it took speech,
Would clearly tell) -- since of my own will
I publish for the learned while I elude the unschooled ear.

Madrigal

Winter blowing and a tack of ice, lack
Of lice on itching skin, the wrack of flims
-y love is in the air, in hardened sins
Wilting and digressing, the flower-backs
Like ball-sacks drooping, looping
Of the settled seeds. Verona's plucked the blossoms
And garlanded her tresses, thick usury
Of every umber absolute, sunsets
Overwhelming coasts with flooded luxuries,
While bay leaves flutter with exotic teas. Mind
Struck numb by the cold of passionate faces, dumb
Signs sticking in the jabbed ice, rice
Paddies of white cocaine that powder Ceres serious,
Rattled by a shuddering wing, fat owl and the king
Of frozen doves, my love:
Where are your icicled pickaninnies
Now? Such a long garland of limbs crusted over
The pine trees like sentinels of autumn
Color has collapsed into a rooved rafter,
And the drafts of laughter settling after
Taste the soupy lakes.

The Odyssey, Proem

Tell in me the man, Muse, who, much troped and traveled
Since he sacked that little town called Troy, holy,
Saw many of men's hamlets, learned
Their minds; tell how he suffered many pains
At sea and in his heart, struggling for life, to rescue
His companions (but neither with mighty tries
Could he save them, the fools -- eating the Cattle of Hyperion,
The Sun! -- who immediately snatched up
Their hoped for day): so in each its place,
Godly daughter of the God, relate these myths, even to us.

Winter blowing and a tack of ice, the lack
Of lice on the itching skin, and the wrack of flims
Y love is in the air, in the cold skins
Wilting and digressing, the flower-sacks
Like ball-sacks drooping, and the looping
Of the settled seeds. Verona's plucked the blossoms
And garlanded her tresses, thick and luxuriant
Of the absolute umber, sunsets
Overwhelming the coasts with flooded luxuries,
While the bay leaves flutter with exotic teas. Mind
Struck numb by the cold of passionate faces, signs
Sticking jabbed in the ice, rice-patties of white
Cocaine powdering Ceres sober
And rattled by shuddering wing, the fat owl and the king
Of frozen doves: my love, where are your icicled pickaninnies
Now? Such a long garland of limbs crusted over
The pine trees like sentinels of autumn color has collapsed
In a rooved rafter, and the taft is a thick soup on the lakes.

Soleil et Chair

La chair est triste, et j'ai lu tous les livres

A mixture, she said, broods in the depths
Of the cauldron, brews over the green slime,
Emerald by the color of turquoise, steadfast liquor
Of the ethers. The rosy hues of the sun
Already danced and carped, frenicking the reins, the walls'.

Etude of a clear study in purple, a lamp and a table,
Grey, a picture of the moon setting in blue
On a distant planet. What are the consequences?
Following the evening, all the day's seems to stretch
Like the pale shadow of a lampshade, and the nights recline
Into the same dull silhouettes: give me a lease
Of wonderful powders, tease me out among the primal flowers.

There are no primal fires, in turn, only the turning
Of the ladle, only the bubbling liquid, only the glum surrounding,
Hidden in the depths. Such an ordinary thing conceals madness?
Wine is the night to him that beholds it, the sparkling day for partakers:
A pill of whiteness the color of snow, the suds of soap, conceals
Hidden realities, depths of conscience. Take, she said,
Take on silver spoonfuls, take with vinegared brine, seep
The honey to your skull -- mixed with honey even bitter things
Are poisons, and helpful remedies conjugate themselves
Into a myriad of shadows, spectrums. Do you hear the long yellow
Hull of a cry, the pitched pitchers of waterfalls cataclimbing
Up symbols? The first thing: the gray is the symbol of dawn:
Now learn, set forth in crystal quantities, the Doric lays of the grey day --
Transmutations and transformations with a little liquor.

I shudder to remember. First the night turned in on itself like a bladder
Sucked inside out, and the sensitive membranes quivered at the touch:

The bladder is close to the sexual organs, the organs play
Such a quiver of piercing shards, and next it was my heart!
Dull little boy limbing in the shadows (it's always the shadows)
Is that a gold gleam? Even her pale freckled age is a revetment,
An invention or investment in a new body of beauty, being:
If the whole sinews of being were like a cobweb, and everyone of them
Tangled, then the next step would be the breaking or the trap. Greedy maws
Guzzle blood and the roar is like a leaf
In nature.

Hum, the good taste is becoming sound, hum
The journey is the soul of a tapering candle.
Last lakes, the chocolates of darkness,
Repeated metaphors I sing.
Where are you climbing on the ladder of beauty?
Never hold more true: I worship you.

But flames scatter in the winds
Leading to holocausts or death.

The fall began sharply, the ether
Sucked in a breath, which was a beat, and the drums fell a tat, tat, like patters of pain.
Other voices, other rooms poked through the marrow, divestments
Flocked cruelly, and the angels were confused patches of green silk.

C'etait mon bijou, mon enfant,
Mes ames because things were multiplying into little new
Shudders of wings, a million pale things were a million delicate buds
Unfolding or closing, but it was a vertiginous pale of rejuvenations,
Dressing itself again into the ethers of time. What were the ethers?
The pale cloud of a mist awaking, scattering, spreading
Into the same old celestial rays: chair-dust, chaise.

Waking

"It's best when poetry doesn't quite have
Meaning but has at least
The possibility of meaning."
-- Alencia Lysander

What would I do, my body bathed
In the darkling pool of perfect happiness,
Flowing, quenching ‘round my toes,
Caressing by the heels, up across tendons
To haunches, through the haunches, seeping in the glutes
Up through veins – the way a virus, often dashing
Against the hard rocks in the body, works its way
Into cells, pulses the heart, and
-- bursting like flowers bud their blossoms,
Little by little
In the fragrant spaces of May – scatters
Through the whole, through the wide
Void of the body’s earth?

Surely I would be encompassed in oceans, then, surely like a liner
I would burst with flowing, and inundations of cool, cellulite-thick
Milk would sud me.

I need a nature that’s clean
Of the fear of death, renewed
From extravagance of living,
But where the dawns?
What crepuscules of silence?
If every heartache burns,
Will the chill when the sky gleams maubery
Be something, and not a vagrant dream?

Dreams fly especially, foremost in sleep, the way styles slither
In a thick inking, but especially the inking
Of tart blackberries into currant into wine. Wine,
The dark lake, shivering berries
By the sides of the current,
The mouth of the water
Singing an eternal and inevitable
Gape, and then the clash
Of cymbals,
Almost plummeting
Into the past.

Oh time! Every moment, you take some away
And bring anew things to birth: I can imagine
The cells dividing, augmenting themselves
And multiplying, poised at problems: red,
The gummy iron, white, only for the dearth
Of dirt, parsed particles devouring and engaging
Such small things, and shortening always
So the centers of pleasure grow dim; but every motion
Is the thrust of necessity, blind necessity beyond
The mind, the particles of the mind, just like a dove
Wings aloft, a white streak in the aether, above
The glistening sun, beyond the towers, the departing
Shadow is all that's left, all I can see. I wish the milk juices
Of poetry could invigorate my body, and sayings do, redo,
Rewrite my life. But I've fallen into the valley of forgettings,
Where motions pass into imaginations, paginations
Wrinkle out like yellow meads that drink the bleeding stars,
Sunflower seeds'.

Portrait of a Stone

If a sound travels into the scarlet depths of the earth, and births
Frequencies of coddling lights, pods of invariable dearth
Since their crystal origins, seeds and forgings
In thickened steel (the bang clack crack) through which becomes
Glass -- all while the rapids stir the vast reflections of the sun
Into blue simulacrums and golden flues, and the muses
Perched by the splitting rocks -- until dawn falls like a falcon,
Feathers screaming each like a knife through razor air: then the glare
Of beauty blinds, and bindings of adamantine matter, firstling elements
Are wroth. Bear me aloft in soletude of manners, rainbow floods, and glorify the crud
Of mountainous reptilian spines that slither in the liming beck
Of times.

We are all sexual beings, every
Drop of sweat suffocates
On dry, wrinkled arms, beads
In muscular flab and cellulite
Of soaking sloth for desire of
A breast, a particularly choice
Leg, a hanging pod, anal beads,
Peas and pee, the seeds of things
Are always -- but even the seeds --
Are bubbling, boiling over
Fires, rich cookings of metal, the wind
Cradles the trees, sky
Pressing full, unclouded lips, eyes
Watching, burning with tremendous pull
To be together. Time yearns
For its fulfillment, life, death,
And the vast in between spaces
Groan. Yes: all the world is like some gargantuan throttling snake,
Throttled, twitching, hissing like a cauldron, teapot for the rot
Of growth. Spring, benevolent herbs, intersect, arduous
Chemicals, craze, leaves with the green
Soak of the sun: life is on the run.

The Cure

The cure for love, men, passions inflamed,
Because passions are the poisons of life,
Is a drop from the well of eternity. Allow me:
Mouth-like, the abyss, whose lips
Quiver duly, twin-glossed necessities
Embracing all, and few. No locks
Ring the mossy edges, the ledges lack
Inscription: not a gem, no beauty, only
Diamond-forged and sharp, pressing,
Cold. The steady drip of lust
Falls off there, each globule
Becomes the empty globe, no form is left
Collapsed into no thing: peerless windows
Without walls, doors in the absence
Of entrance. The implosion of the haze
Hangs over broken irradiations, not
A golden light imbued with darkness,
Not even a whisper. Drink that peace
Men, serenity beyond begging,
Illumination and illusion, selfless self.

Seascapes

Mind, why sick? The air
Trembles, fingers
Rip the anchored tides, diseased!
A roaring ocean. Can't you look for pebbles?
So many pebbles for a nice rock. Then
What about the foam that broths
The bay's cold throat? -- Baying, something strong
To the trunk. Raging when the clouds
Whistle like stopgaps, formless vagaries, lions, liaisons:
Gazelles. Frequent quaking inverting mountains
Into water! Whirlpools. I like the hum -- if the tears
Would thrash me, slam me through dizzying apertures
And dangle me above sea kingdom's crux and flux
Sparkling of the sharp rocks, perched abyss
Ready to plunge and swoop like gulls for a fish...
Oh madness take me any way. Blue, I want
Everything to be blue, azured cillements,
Caerulean coquillage, none of this dripping green.
Frosts: in the winter could the heaving mass freeze over?
I am one ever on the edge who wants to be burned
By ascending suns, and turns
To your falling embrace. Cast the shattering:
If the nights are glossy, we'll have always
The chocolates of darkness.

War

No introspective chaos...I accept
The common ordinance to love -- common
And divine -- particular,
Unique in every being, eternal sign
Of taciturnity, dissolved
In massless wings of flame; bronze
Never touched, nor will sculpted gold
(The dirty red, scars
Aching like a wound, perpetual
Gaping of mouths, singing
The heart's blood).

Every word is too much for a twisted
Tongue, half rotten, biting off and flailing
In ancient flagellations:
Chew, Vengeful god!

Rip out a beaten breast! -- and fill me
With roses, stuff me
Carnations and amarynth tides, leave me
All fragrant to die. But none: I'll go,

I'll turn the prick-point on the gun, run
From shells bursting over the sky
Like a fetid night. At least then,
With the rations all distributed, and fun
Changing into her scalping slip, I'll get a lip
Around my sun, come
Dawn I'm really exhausted,
And the tips of her hair
Will be frosted
And there's never one.


An Alchemy

Suppose this was the root of everything,
Spring blossoming into strange patterns,
Idle decorations for a crown of stars.

Suppose this was the scarlet night,
Silver enchantress weaving on the cloth
Of aching black, and turning backs.

Suppose this was a levy of dancers
Laying pale wreaths on candid cancers,
More rank than rotten meat:

It would still be art, a word
Of transmutations. How?
A line of dancing cows, brown manure
Stacked in marvellous alignments,
Tridents making forks of gels and seas,
Creeping trees. Where does the night go?

Below the well of time, and if you climb
Down fifty wooden stairs, and ten of clay,
Into the wild arms of May, and back again
Through cold December, remember to dismember
All your age. Dissembling was an answer
-- was or is -- I can't disclaim, all I can claim
Is fatigue and the rich metals that lead
Into all and a voluntary silence.

O Lover

How would I touch you?
Your legs are far too sharp.
Your hands hang, like hams,
Too far apart; your face
Is like an ape's, and true, you're smart
-- but smarter than you should be,
Than I would be --
Or so you told me
When you wanted love.

Unpack yourself for primates,
Try the warmth of a giraffe, graph
Your sighs on rising lines,
Accelerate the times. I'm
Busy hanging worlds on a string,
Too busy for a fling,
So sing the song to someone else.

It is a nice song, I'll admit: pretty
Quick and leads to kisses, but it partly misses
The point -- the times are really out of joint,
And everybody's napping
So what's the point in sapping?

Triste

I have touched the rim
Of mortal beauty,
I have quenched the limn
Of heaven's grace:
A face
With swollen eyes and sleepy grin,
Myself
Smiling down at him.

I watched the moments,
Crystallized and crumbling,
Crack. I placed myself upon a wrack
Of arms stretched in embraces, wrapped
Myself in garments of delight
And let the pain of loss seep
Through the ephemeral night.

How I yearned and cried for morning
When sleep might cede to frenzies, heat
Precede the chill
Of walking on, alone, uphill.

Now loss and love, contentment
Mix among the morning mist; the tryst
Has been forgotten, or removed
Into a foiled rapture, rueful laughter
Stains the pavements and the dark sky
Drips. How I was sorry for love, then, since
I have consumed an earthly fire
By sipping from the bloom of bliss.

Die Götterdämmerung

Lost, fatigued, and lonely
I remember the twilight
Of another race:
Their men were thin as bronze wires,
Their women were like grapes, unseeded,
Fruitless. They lived
In cities of glass
That trembled with reflected lakes
In which they cultivated
Fish, bronze fish with golden scales
And topaz eyes, and they called the colored waters
Beauty. When it rained
They would lie out under the stars
And hope to be burned;
When the sun came dripping down
They would hide under their rooves as thick
As wicker baskets. They lived
In a solitary climate of ghosts, and listened
Most attentively for the murmuring of trees
That were piled around them, eggs
In a snow-capped mountain.
Their language had no meaning.

Night. I was in the city and the odd criss-cross of branches, watching them, lying on a mound of turf, by a sepulchred monument, a statue on a horse, drops of rain dripping off my nose, over the arch of my lip, onto my tongue, falling from the tree. Acer. Acid.

Beautiful dancing boys, wallowing in the electric lights, and the sliver of shivering music, just down the block. Car, clatter. Someone threw a beer out the window. The residue of alcohol cycling on the edge of the cylinder. Or maybe it was a bottle? But then why not the splinter of glass dazzling into a million pieces? Or maybe less.

Chill wind shuddering, my lips murmuring an errant phrase, "Phoebe silvarumque potens Diana". Diana by the moonlight! A virgin! The hand idles over to the tip, flicked through denim, and the tube grows, stretches out like a subterannean, sulfuric monstrosity. Or perhaps a little string of moss.

"Fell over laughing", stamps, feet! Abrupt move away from pubic, curl into the statue's shadow. Two girls, ruby slippers, pernicacious stockinged limbs, tight, seamless dress, black and white on the right and on the left, passing, laughing.