Circles

So the sun turns
And spins: circularity
Is a facet of everyday
Life. Don't you see
How sound also
Rings around gongs,
And penetrates into
The vortex of our ears?
These vacuums swell
When rain in its alacrity
Engulfs the rhythm of lakes,
Transforming solid water
Into curves. Our existence
Also runs in circles --
Thought perceives ideas
In the clarion tenor
Of a ring, joined in itself
And the thing it conceives;
Faith is a circle, and time,
First herald of all ripe plums.

Dioxophy

If you hurl it away and say
'Things exist,' proclaiming loudly
And in the daylight, it is true
The world will continue to turn,
And the intercessions of twilight
Keep spinning, drenching the peaks
Of the night, whose serenity
Glazes the swamps and pastures alike.

But why? Is there any reason
To ask the question at all? Will reason
Run me less than passion, meaning
Blind circumstance and whatever I think?

As much as I would like to conceive
Of a harmless space, a perisphere of peace
About the eddies of material
Being, still these changing currents
Are the rip-tides within as well as without.

There is no logic abstracted from logic:
The ground soaks up the storm,
And the storm soaks up the ground; far from the earth,
The best bet is to lash the sails to the deck,
To take quick action, and quick thought:
The unity of a man is as his being does.

Let Be Be Finale of Seem

If you want to take a grasp, do it in such a way
That the language precedes the rationale,
Stems from it, forms and informs it.

If only everything grew in our mind: rage,
That our plans don't allow the shapes of things,
That language itself shatters,

As if there were some ultra-visible force
Pushing away everything we can't see,
Until only the impingements of voices and color,
And the bodies of accidents were left. Yes,

We want everything to be intentional,
And every intention our intention;
We want the world to hang from the string
Of a necessary tension. Small men,

Who don't know the order of things, posit God,
Last arbiter of reason. Small men,
Who know nothing, are stringing themselves
Into frustrated little bits, glaring everywhere,
Trying to get their say. Love is supposed to help this.

But how seductive, to render everything
Into the hurricanes of our unquenched being:
Things are riled up on the inside, and it is curious
If the sun never gets in the way.

Circumlocutions

Say the mind is a ring, and twirl three times;
Now twirl in the circle of your twirls, but cross-wise, so
Perpendicular twirls slant-wise ring
Around themselves. All of these twirls, in the axes of their crossing,
Have their own particular meaning, particular beings –
Each is endowed by principles of motion, principles of semblance
Seeming through and up the whole. In the interaction of these parts –
Of swirls and rip-tides, whorl-pools, slides
The priority of life, the truly spinning tongue.

IV (WIP, R2)

O matrona dona, traversez le corps: the travesty of the body
Was in mind, in the bells, already floating
Up so many streams of Labrador red, the ravished head
Of Eurydice’s muse. Ephebe, Galatean, celestial
Admiral, tell us your name: the wind
Held that, and capered by caravels, the branches knew it
But could not say. In the forest, cool, were the pillars
Of bees, and more than bees: the beginning of song,
Past capes and admirals, sailed on the savage
Of Evergreen reds, meridians where the latitudes talk. Desirous capes,

Straits, we beg sagittiferous wind, we beg clouds, we beg storms –
Gales; nightingale moons, something swoons
In the unfolding air, gravity’s crystals half there,
Half obscure in the arc of the twilight.
If the storm-shafts penetrate our ships, we beg a sinking,
Sloping into the salt, a tilting, these gravitations of
Celestial will. Everything is made, Muse:
The cloaks are wearing twilight, your significant gifts are descending,
The sky is slopping and slavering on the prow:
So we ask foaming will, Muse, foaming good will.

IV (WIP)

O matrona dona, traversez le corps: the travesty of the body
Was in mind, in the bells, already floating
Up so many streams of Labrador red, the ravished head
Of Eurydice’s muse. Ephebe, Galatean, celestial
Admiral, tell us your name: the wind
Held that, and capered by caravels, the branches knew it
But could not say. In the forest, cool, were the pillars
Of bees, and more than bees: the beginning of song,
Past capes and admirals, sailed on the savage
Of Evergreen reds, meridians where the latitudes talk: dire capes,
Grim straits, we beg sagittiferous wind, we beg clouds, and storms --
Gales; we beg nightingale moons and the crystals of twilight,
We beg something swoons the unfolding of air, half there,
Half obscure in the arc of the twilight.
If the storm-shafts penetrate our ships, we beg a sinking,
Sloping into the salt, a tilting, these gravitations of
Celestial will. Everything is made, Muse:
The cloaks are wearing twilight, your significant gifts are descending,
The sky is slopping and slavering on the prow:
We ask foam -- good will, Muse, foaming good will.

Posseder un corps: how the flame licks the questionable lips.
Posseder un corps: in swoops, in lashes, in tongues of flame.
Posseder un corps: I've said it thrice, and the sweet sucre.

Posseder la vérité au moyen d'un corps, dans un corps, entre un corps:
Enter and penetrate between the folding cover of ecstatic sheets,
Between and through, penetrating essences, entering the collimations
Of the secret âme. Âme secrete, chanson, colombon
Pourpre des pèlerinages: Dis-moi ce que tu sais, et où je vais; dites-moi
Le travail et le receuil, le seuil des secrets. Secreted collusions,
Feuilles par écueils, the questioning rituals of the unknown,
Bring me unquantifiable peregrinations, raw and mottled
Birds, bejeweling doves. and the secrets of those doves:
Take your flights through the upper air, and the lower air,
And glisten the ether. Ethers, fumes, transports, extases,
Et tous ces sons qui sont jamais dits, déjà et encore.

Predestination

I am rage, and good
At turning a blind finger to the sluices of the night.
How immense and unstoppable, the sluices of the night.
The tightness of her corpse
Twists like a wheel grinding on a concrete
Scream, howls and blood in the distance. This dark
Tapers like a carrion, a candle -- keep the candle --
Organs of decaying wax.

If I twist myself a monolith, who will be left?
Only the livid face of the night,
Only her slime-green, palpitating breath.
Still I will give my all to her:
Death, who loved me from birth --
Grim death, who sucks my fingers and my dreams.
I am the pleasure principle, revolting,
And I am diminishing into silence:
The marriage of silence is the key for blue souls.

From Work in Progress (Invocation)

III

Ho, the twilight! Ho, the curving
Of the last docks. The lights tarry
Like moons on the river's ceiling, luminaries turn
On the steel edge of memory's past.
Where am I walking, walking
Under cameos of moonlight? Echoes brood,
Breathe back upon my breath, echoes of the muse
Sprinkle crystal like the stretch
Of powder under feet:
Crunch and crunch, these are the sounds
Sharp by the lurking boats, hunches
Of the dockyard, these are eternity's sounds.

If I Knew a Charm to Spell Doom

If I knew a charm to spell doom,
And spread myself like lightning
Across tatters, I would harp it frugally;
And I would lie in the deep quick
Where close things beat,
And keep myself hidden
By rushes. But the cities are glazing,
And the long blades glisten and dry
In exorable heat; ice falls
From the dripping cows, and black
Is more than a slip can perfume. Things
Are a rushing center, foundering
Like a gelder rose. If axes knew the north,
Then bitter fruit, and rabid red:
Colors are eating me, life
Is on the wing -- I've lost the way,
And not a word to sing.

I Am (R1)

A cripple with a red cane,
Craning his neck for a snatch
Of dissipation;

A Molester of plums,
Crutch-kicker, and butcher
Of hobbling ladies.

I rob babies, jab
The ends of lollipops
Into their eyes.

Always with a sharp tooth for disaster,
I have supped on human blood,
Enjoyed the screams

Of fatal penetrations. I have pushed myself
On something hard, all dagger like,
And groaned. Pleasure

Is my only consort; I raise hell
To pay him. I cultivate abscesses
On my nose, and pick, and sing

The siren song of death.

Imagine Me an Evil Man

Imagine me an evil man,
Cripple with a red cane
Craning his neck for a snatch
Of dissipation;

Imagine how I hate my friends,
Eat their frozen plums,
Spray their hollyhocks with lye,
And burn down barns for fun;

Imagine...but I have done despicable things:
I have cheered at babes who stab their fathers,
Yearned to bear round brimming vats
Of blood like wine: my soul has supped
Always with a sharp tooth on disaster, and I enjoy
The scream of fatal penetrations.

I open the doors of my home
To thieves, debauchery, and gamblers;
I have pushed myself on something hard,
All dagger-like, and groaned. Pleasure

Is my only consort, but I'll raise high hell
To pay him. When, weary with my wounds,
I drag a whelping heart, then I'll urge
On siren death:

But don't think that I yearn for the abyss,
Or ape anticipation; my yawn is one long
Seedy grin, that plants the years with locust weeds,
And furrows them with homely deeds.

II (R2)

Memory built the Palaz of Hoon
From candid glass and brilliant marble
With pieces of the afternoon, and twilight soon
Thrown in for grace. The structure toppled
On its own foundations, leaning first toward obelisks
Of dawn, then dusk, then shivering like a mirage.
The marriage of fond thoughts conceived
Its columns in the sky;
Trappings of the bird made cages
Only western ceilings. It was all
Like a symphony; it clashed and made itself
The kind of edifice it was.
Inside I saw bright tears,
And speculating stars.

Work In Progress

I (R2)

Becalm the days and quiet nights
That, supple like the palm is supple,
Branch and thicken in the chill
Like bamboo branches out
And thickens in the twilight air:

Let me turn again to coasts
And blue meridians,
Lands of tigers sapling on the cast
Of preying shadows,
Blazing fur and eyes of leaf
Piling on august leaf,
'Til islands like quiet obsidian lie
Along their leaf-meal decadence
The ocean's calming rim,
Surrendering to barren rocks her breasts
For the suckling stillness of sands.

II (R1)

Memory built the Palaz of Hun
From candid glass and brilliant marble
With pieces of the noon, the twilit soon
Thrown in for grace. The structure toppled
On its own foundations, leaning first toward obelisks
Of dawn, then dusk, and shivering like a mirage.
The marriage of fond thoughts built columns in the sky;
Trappings of the bird made cages
Only western ceilings. It was all
Like a symphony; it clashed and made itself
The kind of edifice it was.
Inside I saw bright tears,
And speculating stars.

Miscellania

II (O)

Memory built the Palaz of Hun
From shining brass and brilliant marble
With pieces of the noon, the twilight symphony
Thrown in for grace. The structure toppled
On its own foundations, leaning first the one way
Then the other, like a mirage. The marriage
Of fond thoughts made columns in the sky,
Trappings of the bird made cages,
Only western ceilings. It was all
Like a symphony, it clashed and made itself
The kind of edifice it was.
Inside I saw bright palaces,
I saw stars, weeping.

Becalm the Days (R1)

Becalm the days and quiet nights
That supple like the palm is supple,
Branch and thicken in the cold
Like bamboo branches out
And thickens in the upper air:

Let me turn again to coasts
And blue meridians,
Lands of tiger saplings urging on the cast
Of predatory shadows,
Blazing fur and eyes the color of leaf
Piling on august sheaf,
Until islands like quiet obsidian lie
Leaf-meal in their decadence
Of ocean's calm, surrendering to barren rocks
Her breast, the suckling
Stillness of her sands.

Becalm the Days (O)

Becalm the days and quiet nights
That supple like the palm
Is supple, branch and thicken in the cold
Like bamboo branches out
And thickens in the upper air:

Let me turn again to coasts
And blue meridians,
Stripling lands of tigers,
Saplings, urging on the cast
Of predatory shadows,
Blazing fur and eyes
The color of the wanton leaf
Piling on august leaf, until islands
Like quiet obsidian lie
Their leaf-meal residence,
Where ocean's calm
Surrenders to the barren rocks
Her breast, the suckling stillness of her sands.

Indications of a Love Supreme

HI

The soul exists like a hard and cold
Wax imprint of our faith,
Which bares the changing mold
Of seasons and designs, until the mind
Effaces into varying degrees and shapes
Of satyrs or sublime supremacies
The blushes of our times’ disease.

EGO

The flame of my embraces is a whisper
Like the sound of thought, a temper
Of trembling faces by the grace
Of constant metamorphoses expressing
The beauty of a few laces flickering
Like streams of flame in the smoking breeze.
My ardor shapes me, true –
But I wear the searing shapes more truely
As the flame, translucent of my rainbow being.

Fall, Rome

"Quoniam quidem circumventus", inquit, "ab inimicis praeceps agor, incendium meum ruina restinguam.”

Fall, Rome. Let the corpse of Tityos,
Embroiled in his molten, sear-
Bronze edification of sin
Like a holocaust of erupting oak,
Shattering branches through spokes
Of the claustric sky in spores, exploding,
Tumble, cataclysm, crack
The shafting ground like smashing
Sheens of decimated glass.

A Poem that Sums and Summits

"Rime being no necessary Adjunct or true Ornament of Poem or good Verse, in longer Works especially, but the Invention of a barbarous Age, to set off wretched matter and lame Meeter."

The poet doesn't find the poem, nor poem the poet:
Because the poem does not exist. These lines
Cake the snowy page, like swirling flakes
Of soot, marring whatever was. Meaning
Is only a mean of the invisible sea of atoms,
Some function of calamity, and swerve: precision
Blurs too closely and too far, the mountains are not
Anything but mountains. Let me refocus:
If I intend, my intent strikes like a scar across
The whatever blankness of the poets' minds,
Since I, the reader of the read, am reading still:
We write each other, just so and justless, the way
A rocking plow plunges into the sea
Of its own making. Nothing will ever be,
For nothing comes from nothing. My perfection
Is only one action in a series of actions, a chain
Stretching itself in curious ways, but construct
Of that train, an art of minimum application
Reapplied and going, absolutely, nowhere.

Ecce Homo

I'm outside the student union, pipping at my flute,
Trying to erect ancient song but, insofar as it is ancient,
Failing to master the working and works.

I've been expelled from the cultural center
By women who want to be women, saying,
"This is our day to be women, to wail
About our vaginas, explain
How everything different in life
Is really because we are women." Onstage

They'll cry vortexes of desire that their mothers
Were never quite the same after that day
And the snow and the brightly charred
Oven; they'll defame men or screech
Erotics of joy in a nibbling breast,
Or grip their bodies and twist
Amply and leer, "I am a sensual woman;
Look at all the pricks I've
Fucked." And they're probably right.

There's even a man who will grab his crotch:
"My vagina's a thick, six inch penis."

I don't have a vagina.
And I probably never will. I can still say
It makes it difficult for me trying to find a song,
When all these abrasive harpies are
Always angry about something.

I thought freedom was the intimate joy of being
Human, and that's all we could hope to become;
But there's always something stopping us,
Holding us back, pushing me out of the way.

All These Cackling Gods

I

If the pieces were falling...
A mind disjoint like a cut
Leg throbbing, swimming
Through the blue pools
Of narcolepsy: spasms,
Emerald bleeding spasms,
Something tensed off to infinity –
Where are all these bleeding dragons,
Mommy? The mother is not
Cropping limbs, but infernally
Frigid, cold. In the distance
Will the sunflowers
Melt? Demeter cut, slut the meat,
Slice, chunk, rut of a sea
Borne breeze,
And quiet gates.

II

I am not in the country of the found. The swollen intensity,
Oh my ankles, will my shoes gum up
Eventually? The sand is the color of green shut-up
Mermaids of umbrellaed intensity, flapping their inbred fins
Over the cool moss. Strokes of hair-delicate moss
And clam-shell eyes, does the sinuous curve of the sand
Mean it? I think I've collapsed on some state of paradise wounds
And the snow.

III

Coin. Mint. The machine goes glug-glug.
It was the passionate intensity of the machine in the
Coin. Mint. The machine goes glug-glug.
It was the whirr-a-gig of the joints joining
Coin. Mint. The machine goes glug-glug.
After awhile you grow dizzy
And faint.

IV

In the glades of the Sam Street paradise
A man is walking, walking
With a very tall cane, and the transfixed stare of the knob
Like a golden gate. Clack, clack. Each clatter on the back
Of the pavement clicks like a key through the rest
Of the pavement clattering, clacking: clack.

I Want My Work to Work (R1)

My poems, for instance, are not cream-filled confections
From France, meant to appease the sweet-toothed
Tip of the tongue with honeyed sway and the nibbling
Shine of a novel chorus, caramel faces, mint-wreathed
Every brow -- though I will take some of the bitter
Variety, licorice lozenge, wormwood, the absence
Of decorous iris and lily-root, amaranth and coquillage
To castigate your parasols, sea-purpled chocolates:

The past is not a buffet, we are not to feast
On the sorrows of women like scrumptious
Frogs' legs, shelled snails puffed up and stuffed
Into wounds -- and salted, deliberately savory
With tears, a cooked bounty's harvest
Of delicate gore; the great artist doesn't serve up
Our delicious and saucy fate, mirrored for all time
In glozing decanters of Lethe wine, so that the mind,
Inebriated with intoxication of a supreme
Being unjust, can vomit this fond extravagance
Up into the malnourished bowels of memory, whose poetry
Is sputum. Someday a doctor will come

And prescribe a ground diet of barely, chafed
Wheat, something hard and close to the rock
And its life-giving streams -- change tiramisu
For bee-dripping lees, a visionary sip
Of wine, the flesh and ascetic taste
Of pleasure. For books, like people, corrupt:
All the more gluttonous shame!
When Shakespeare roofs the human head
Of penury, I'll wrap my crown in loquacious
History, and squint wide-eyed at his glory.

I Want My Work to Work

My poems, for instance, are not cream-filled candies
From France, meant to appease the sweet-toothed
Tip of the tongue with honeyed sway and nibbling
Shine of a novel chorus, caramel faces, mint-wreathed
Every brow -- though I will take some of the bitter
Variety, licorice lozenges, wormwood, the absence
Of decorous iris and lily-root, amaranth and coquillage
To castigate your parasols and sea-purpled chocolates:

The past is not a buffet, we are not to feast
On the sorrows of women like scrumptious
Frogs' legs, shelled snails, puffed up and stuffed
With tears, salted and deliberately savory
With death, and wounds, a bounty's cooked harvest
Of gore; the greatest artist does not cook up
Our delicious and saucy fate, mirrored for all time
In diamond goblets of Lethe wine, so the mind,
Inebriated with the intoxications of a supreme
Being unjust, can vomit this fond extravagance
Up into the malnourished bowels of memory, whose poetry
Is sputum. Someday a doctor will come along

And prescribe a strict diet of barely, ground
Wheat, something hard and close to the land
And its life-giving streams; tiramisu gives way
To lightly honeyed cakes, a visionary sip
Of wine, the fresh and ascetic taste
Of virtue. Books, like people, can corrupt --
All the more gluttonous shameful!
When Shakespeare can put a roof on the head
Of human penury, then to loquacious history
I'll bow my crown, and sing his glory.

Voyages

Mad on the philtre of an unfined love
Refined into the nuances of the August moon
And found again in the translucent mirror of the lakes
That reflected her, a reflection of uncanny purity
Drowning in the cries of the gulls
Mirrored again in the passing silence,

I thought of wind chimes and blue umbrellas,
Transparencies drenched with moonlight, bathed
In the silver incandescence of the stars,
Untrusting black shine that overtakes the moon
In a singular howl, shapes of the black cliffs, of the black land
Bathed again in the singular shine. Like a ship

Gliding upstream, whose deck glistens
With sealed off water, and renouncing the visions
Of a fog-thick land, my mind drifted again
On silvery wings, and in the space of three whole days
And argent nights, three perspirations
Of moonlight matching and quenching the aspirations
Of the hollow sun, a single second or a moment
Was all that transpired in my wine-dark soul.

The Dead (R3)

When darkness churns in the aether
Like the thick soup of a swamp frothing
With the mulch of a clipped jaw's howl,
And the blue flames of the stars burn on
Beneath the eaves like a hag-faced
Simmering cauldron, and the solitude
Of a lonely thought reflects on the limns of the earth,

The dead creep, in slumbering hordes, unmasked
Amassing faces of life's grim fête: how hungry
Are the dead, ruining eyes that totter
After pulses in the blood-rimmed shade, fangs
Drooling for sap, greedy limbs that grasp
Like a child nibbling at juicy breasts. For juice

They pick through the blades of damp grass, pale
By the ache of the moon, to an unlit
Vastness of crumbling diamonds, alleys
Shrugging with broken glass, towers buckling
Under the gravity of fallen stars,
The ghettoes where they lived, searching
Like a hand that feels the dark for something it forgot.

Do the dead forget us? Can we remember these dead
Faces, rent wide as molten wax into a scream
Of pure void, brimmed with spilling brains, whose ingenuous pallor
Betrays a cold fear of the haunted air,
Shadows effervescent of the earth?

The Dead (R1)

When darkness churns in the aether
Like the thick soup of a swamp, boiling
With the mulch of a clipped jaw's howl,
And the blue flames of the stars burn on
Under the eve like a hag-faced
Simmering cauldron, and the solitude
Of a lonely thought reflects on the limns of the earth,

The dead creep, in slumbering hordes, unmasked
Amassing faces of life's grim fête: how hungry
Are the dead, ruining eyes that totter
After pulses in the blood-rimmed shade, fangs
Drooling for sap, greedy hands that grasp
Like a child nibbling on juicy breasts. For juice

They pick through the blades of damp grass, pale
By the cloak of the moon, to unlit
Ruins, streets of crumbling diamond, alleys
Of broken glass and fallen stars, empty bazaars,
The ghettoes where they lived, searching for a sign,
Like a hand that grasps after something it forgot.

Do the dead remember us? Can we forget these dead
Faces, ripped wide like molten wax into screams
Of pure void, the brim of spilling brains, ingenuous pallor
Betraying their fear of the haunted air,
And the clouds that surge from the earth?

The Dead (O)

When darkness churns through the aether
Like the thick soup of a swamp, boiling
With the mulch of clipped howls' fire
And the blue flames of the stars burn on
Under the eve, like a hag-faced
Simmering cauldron, and the solitude
Of a lonely thought paces the limns of the earth,

The dead creep, in stumbling hordes, unmasked,
Amassing faces of life's grim fête: how hungry
Are the dead, sunken eyes meant only to peer
Into oblique shadows for bleating food, their fangs
Drooling for blood, hands grasping like a child
Nibbling at the juicy breasts. For juice

They wander the spear-grass, damp, dumb, peering
Into the cloak of the moon; through unlit
Ruins of prosperous towns, their empty bazaars,
The houses they bought, searching for a sign,
Something to remember, or something they forgot.

Do the dead remember us? Do we forget the dead?
The faces, ripped into screams of pure void,
The brim of spilling brains, pallor of genius,
All betray the fear between the haunting aether,
And the wispy smoke of the earth.

Sunset Over the Pacific

So a sea climbs the Atlantic horizon
Into the wait and the burden. These peaks
Jab sharp on the joints of the sky,
And the sinking sun whines
Like a tea-kettle, or a squealing pig,
Or a squealing pig hissing hot tea.
The waves are dividing in furrows, hence
Pastures of fish. The dark asteroids
Look like streaks of white on painted
Plaster, and laughter charms like a faraway bell.
This is a sea-calm, this quiet of the night,
When life is a sloping, a continual lapping.

Shaxpur (R1)

I wish you'd been a masticated,
Live-chewn pup to a pulpy knob, ground
As flesh as the dirt, striated like strips
Of salt-beef spread for the wind to dry,
To stale in the sun; I wish

You only were a smattering of crusts
Pecked at by birds, a vat of noxious slime
Trod by the grimy feet of menstruating
Virgins, fouled in their pulpy brines
With anxious blood. If only your brain
Were a quivering mass of jelly,
Something alight in its fumes
Before it could ever exist...

Instead you, who seem to have cupped your strain
By Massic streams, intoxicate mens' minds
With bruit noise that terrifies even my
Peaceful heart. You howled with the bays
And the curs, probably fired-off and beer-frothed
A thousand folds of crafty verse, straining your neck
With every necessary step. Sheer humour
That you were a man and walked beside us, tragic
That you could exhale the sky and blot out the lucent
Way to death like a vengeful, unwilling god.

Shaxpur

I wish you were a masticated beast
Live-chewn to a pulpy knob, ground
As fresh as the dirt, striated like strips
Of salt beef spread for the wind to dry,
To stale in the sun: I wish

You were a smattering of crusts
Pecked at by birds, a vat of noxious slime
Trod by the grimy feet of menstruating
Virgins, fouled in the pulpy brine
With anxious blood. I wish your brain
Were a quivering mass of tottering, blathering
Jelly, something alight in smoke
Before it could ever exist.

Instead you seem to have cupped your strain
By Massic streams, intoxicate mens' minds
With bruits that terrify even my
Peaceful heart. You howled with the bays
And the curs, probably puffed up and beer-frothed
A thousand-fold of crafty verse, straining your neck
With every necessary step. The sheer comedy,
You were a man, and walked among us, tragic
That you could breathe the sky and blot out the lucent
Way to death like a vengeful and unwilling god.

I Will Have My Milk

I want to attack, I want to destroy, to push my fist
Through shattered glass like gloomy
Holden Caulfield, symbol of estrangement
Stranger than the rest. Let me loose on the battlefield:
No war? My aggression will pulp you, primp you up,
Then prick and pop you like a pimple. When we're done
Only your pus will remain. Raise the canon,
Standard and the method of attack, and fire into the masses
Of crazed, complicit zombies, carving up the flesh
Of devils, daemons, ghouls. I am the living, breathing pulse
Of this smog-choked world, my cry
Is central, not to be ignored -- like a child screaming,
Bursting his lungs with sweat and hot tears,
I will have my milk!

The Psychodynamic

Never this beauty, the logical operators
Eating their meanings, gasping gulps of
Scintillation! Anguish that the tale
Will have a tail, and that the telling
Rats:

They roll their beady eyes across the room,
Red as a blood-curdling wine, trailing
Amalgamations of the floor and ceiling,
Making all the things we should know
Indeterminate, elusive, fleeting.

The Sermon on the Vessel

The development of language is the goal of philosophy,
But there is also action. One use stems from the other.
If the vessel is broken -- if there are cracks in the ceramic --
Then whether you gather the sweet grape's ferment
Or the honeyed nectar of flowers from ruddy combs,
The glistening jar, adorned with figures of dancing women,
Leaks; their dresses stain with blood, or pus,
And they urinate all over themselves.
This makes the figures of dancing women
Most unlucky, since they'd put on fine clothes
And oiled their skin, had strung themselves
With pearls and adornments to sway like young shoots,
Bamboo in the breeze. Therefore protect the language
As you would a woman, or any other joyous human
Being. On the other hand, don't rape the jar
With viscous fluid, or mud that mingles with swine;
Don't fill it with gems or strings
Of pearl, the kinds that merchants fancy,
Imported purples, silken rugs -- first
The ceramic should be simple, sublime, invested
With dignity, clothed in the order of hard-baked clay.
Next, it should be filled with water from a clear stream,
The kind that quenches the thirst of a parched man
Sated of days. If you are a skilled potter,
And a gatherer of fine things good for the health
Of the one who partakes them, then, and only then,
I would call you a lover of wisdom and art.

A Brief Turn Around the Corkscrew of Death, and Back Again

I no longer exist, I
Have been defeated, fraught
In the pleasures of non-
Being, I am become

A name -- with epithets!
Epithets and a rounded line,
Multivariant, vagrant, insufferable,
Much enduring epithets, the tissue
And the structure of my being. I

Am -- who? Much quizzical
Leibowitz, Christian
Alex the son of God's
Right hand and Hell,
Defender of men,
Lover of wit, exclusive
Seductress of time and seduced
By death's own face: Alex
Benyamean Leibowitz, right?

A Little Bit of Philosophy

Through many things? There's not even one
Though all are bold, though the canopy of silence
Stretches out eternally -- no! Eternity is just the problem:

Take things in their immensity -- is theirs one
Flagrant all or a burning intensity of partless
Parts, swirling in a void neither proven

Nor reproof (because the void is nothing,
Nothing can exist, and so the void
Exists)? Let's redefine our terms:

Either there is, or there is not --
Now if there is, then there is,
And if there is not, then "is"

Is not. But if "is" is not,
Then it is, so "is" cannot
Not be. Now that we've clarified

Existence, time to move to existential,
The movement of being through time:
So though you see all things have the habit

Of motion, smokers never quit so quickly
Through a thought. Motion is impossible?
Enumerate the ways! As we proceed,

Be still. Now first, does motion imply
The many or the one? The many?
How could one not be?

We've been through that: so now suppose
Everything moves -- will it move
Faster or more slowly than itself? Again suppose

To move you must move half the distance
Where you started from to reach your destination:
Is it a lie to say that all things lie

Where they are, when first to reach a half
You must reach half of half, and half again
Of that, so motion never moves at all?

But how is it? -- you claim, -- Do we observe
That the race goes not to the swift,
Do the idle inherit the earth? Are you dizzy

In the eddying swirls of this rapid halt?
Don't you want to rest? When you exert
Your body over rugged rocks, aren't you glad to learn

There is no strain? That lifting heavy weights
Is equal to the motionless, serenity of silent
Meditation, a single thought

For a thousand feet? Now count the ways
That mortals multiply their mortal cares
By multiplying everything, when everything

Is one, and one is all: no motion, no gyration,
Desire, drive, and sex all rest, your cares
Are not your cares, your triumphs

Are a spinning dime, falling rapidly
Into itself, like the curving petals
Of a morning glory, unfolding.

Many

Is the all-seeing eye perfect
Because peasants are starving Iran,
Just now limping for dying food,
Since the body consumes its own life? Their breath launches out
Like a ship and skims the rush of the western bar,
The harbors they never saw; then the vision dies.

Or perhaps because it expands,
Like swelled gut stretching that last breath
Through all perforations of limbs,
But outward as far as a strong scent,
As far as the void?

But men are climbing mountains, too:
Nepal, Quebec, and, in a tent somewhere,
Someone is suffering. All these "some"'s
Whose accumulation is never enough to make life:
Life is not in the sweetness of drenched bread
With honey, the savour or sear
In which that bread partakes,
Nor in the relish of distant peaks, lakes
From prospicuous towers, wool-bearing sheep seduced
To a swirl of cloud, and arms in a flagrant intensity;

Life is not even in itself,
It is an existential presupposition
Disclosed in the expanding horizon of time:
Now there's a swelling balloon for you,
There's the dip-and-away
Of many things.

A New Invocation

Muse, as often as we broach new thoughts
We seek new consolations; every method
Finds itself again in your sweet breath,
Your never-acrid or bitter (the muse
Lives far from death, she doesn't chew
On mounds of purpled, spell-bound bones;
Now it's the leaf of a lotus, now the faded perfume
Of twilight). I won't rhyme anymore, muse: gone
Are the days eclipsed in the shadow of obscure thought;
Sensuality is overwrought, and the self, like the truth,
Escapes me. What I want you to do now, my muse, my
Ariel, is fetch a pale of water -- there are two deep rivers
And you shouldn't confuse them: one leads down
To the depths, another arouses the twinkling stars; these pools
Of blackness are themselves surrounded in the glow
Of an infinite nothing, poetic skill. Draw,
From the waters of drought, lapidary stone, the red one,
And bring it to me as a mark of your love: it is the all seeing eye.

Some Light Ethical Verse

Not through a torrent of money
or in sensual enjoyment
can satisfaction be found.
The skilled person, knowing that
sensual enjoyment is painful,
yielding but little pleasure,

does not take delight
even in divine enjoyments.

-- Dhammapada, 186-187

Blessed who knows to fulfill his cravings, in measure,
Origins, his life is like a fundament, set on the strong foundations
Of the earth. Not from us, but through need, not in us, but destiny's hand
Moves the world, like a blind crone pushing a cart. There is no fighting,
No war or enduring resolve, but only the clever and constant attachment
To things as they are. The skilled mind adapts to each situation
As it moves, transforming like the beast of many colors to fit -- he fits himself
To the way things work. What is pleasure but a blessing, and pain

If not a wilderness? Pleasure coaxes us, goads us on
Like a wise guide, like a shepherd leading his flock; pain pulses
Away from what we can't know, reality's depth -- plunge not
To explore deep waters, but keep to the way, the appearance of truth --
Do not challenge the good guide. Pleasure knows the steer of things,
The oceans as they were before sand, the stars in their fragrance of birth.

The idle man is a ferocious tyrant, who whips down pleasure
To his need, who seeks to constrain and restrain all restraint, who drives on
The natural driver. The good man takes joy in things as they are, seeks not to change them,
For better or worse. He gapes at the path of time, but lays himself open
To what feels right, and shudders at things that bring pain.

The Fourth Existential, or Variety

I am
Thoughtless, sans
Prolepsis, only
Scoping out the concept
Of a concept,
Skeptical. I want

The moon to be a soggy ocean,
The sun to be a maritime whir, dawn,
A flash, and autumn some elaborate
System of reciprocities, whereby
The one comes through the other to the one,
Itself;

-- In other words, -- I want to know words
In all their intensity, but I admit
Theirs might be a vibrance
Insubstantial, lacking all
Solidity, mist-like.

If thought is like a labyrinth of fog,
Then there's a long way to go before the journey rides
-- Then dirt is rolling on its way up-hill,
-- Then the sorry music collides. This music isn't
Destiny beyond all capacity for speech or sound,
This music is a fleeting tongue-stop
Of the most intimate variety, it is itself the veracity,
Changed,
Of the fleet and fleeing seasons.

Any explanation of intellectual developments in terms of historical causes will have to give an account of the connection between the historical and the intellectual.

It is not sufficient to note a contiguity between intellectual and historical developments -- i.e. this is like that, this follows that. The tumult of the 20th century is not sufficient to explain the thoughts of those who lived at that time; and even if it there exists a superficial correlation between the two, historical developments do not necessitate that a line of thought progress in one way and not another. This is not to say that intellectual developments are not grounded in the historical, but to argue that New Criticism developed out of certain historical conditions requires that one first give an account of the connection between the historical and the intellectual.

What is required is a psychological epistemology -- a theory of knowledge which posits that knowledge is a response to certain psychological conditions which are themselves somehow conditioned by the outside world.

Such a position would have to overcome several problems.

First, it would have to give an account of itself, and how it would be possible for it to obtain such an awareness. That is, if knowledge is constructed on the basis of fulfilling certain psychological needs, then how would it be possible to formulate an objective meta-knowledge (so to speak) of these psychological processes that was not itself produced by certain psychological conditions, and what psychological conditions would be likely to produce this meta-knowledge?

Next, it would have to account for how different people who were the product of similar conditions could come to disagree with each other, since presumably they would have the same psychological needs, which would posit the same intellectual responses. On one level, of course, such a psychological epistemology indeed claims everyone who is the product of similar conditions shares similar intellectual preoccupations; on another, what is required is an account of the relationship between intellectual content and intellectual method -- how one comes to have certain beliefs and how one argues them.

If the position in question could prove that intellectual content and intellectual method are similarly the result of historical conditions, then it would succeed in casting suspicion on the very processes of intellectual discourse.

If, however, it can only prove that our assumptions are the result of conditions, but not our methods, then the intellect retains some autonomy as a substance (so to speak) that not only is acted upon, but itself acts.

Rimbaud, Conte

A prince was irritated that he was never employed in anything but the perfection of vulgar generosities. He foresaw astonishing cycles of love, suspected his women of a power stronger than some complaisance embellished of luxury and sky. He wanted to see the truth, the hour of essential desire and satisfaction. Whether this was or was not an aberration of piety, he desired it. He at least held a very large human capacity.

Every woman who had known him was assassinated: what a sack of the garden of beauty! Under the saber, they blessed him. So he ordered nothing more. -- The women returned.

He killed everyone who followed him, after the hunt and libations. -- Everyone followed him.

He amused himself by de-gorging luxurious beasts. He set fire to the palace. He rushed upon people and trimmed them to pieces. -- The crowd, the roofs of gold, the belle beasts subsisted.

Can a man enrapture in destruction, rejuvenate in cruelty! The people didn't murmur. None held concourse in their views.

One night, he was galloping fiercely. A Genius appeared, of unspeakable beauty, inadmissible even. In contrast to his features and his disposition was the promise of a love multiplicit and complex! Of an unspeakable happiness, even insupportable! The Prince and the Genius annihilated each other, probably in lieu of their essential health. How couldn't they have died from it? So they died together.

But this Prince died in his palace, at the usual age. The Prince was the Genius, and the Genius, the Prince.

The savant twang defaults our urge.

Rimbaud Villes

I am an ephemeral citizen, none too shabby, of a metropolis considered modern, because the furnishings and exteriors of its buildings, as well as the whole city plan, have eluded every recognized standard of taste. Here you wouldn't indicate the contours of a single edifice of fable. Morality and language have been reduced to their simplest expression, at last! These millions of men who have no need of self-understanding fulfill their educations, occupations, and deterioration so equitably that the course of life ought to be many times shorter than some foolish statistic finds for the peoples of this continent. Just as, from my window, I see new spectralities rolling through the weight and eternal smoke of coal, -- our shadow of wood, our nocturne of summer! -- new Erynnies in front of my cottage, which is my country and all my heart, because everything here resembles this, -- Death without tears, our busy daughter and servant, a disappointed Love and a pretty Crime howling in the muck by the way.

I am the sad art, complicit in its enterprise of time,
Yet limited, engaged, beseeched in the abstract struggle
For harmony. -- Harmony which never comes
Like the rainbow, harmony that shuffles off men's living
Skulls, this discordant will resonant with its own
Contradictions, celebrity for them, made into something entirely new,
Which it is not. Even the pleasure, that weaves deftly through the seams
Of pain, makes that pain plausible, and suggests it, provides
The foundations of its primal being. This pain is the concrete
Of abstraction, the very real suffering that makes palatial heavens
Possible. The world is like a dirge, if poetry is its maestro.

Solipsism (R1)

If I could stop to consider these bricks, the aedifice
Of an oblique mind, molded together by accident,
Grit, conspiring time, red as our hollow walls
Stained with so much blood, startling, ascendant
As infant eyes of the upward night, stark, impassive
Stars...but I am considering ruins, forgotten
Ship-wrecks, well built, meaning, collapsed on the foundations
Of time like a laundering ocean, disaster sweeping its brush
On the light tips of the void, the inevitability of that void,
Its beauty -- which is really my own imagination, trembling,
Shattering into all these self-same fragments of stars.

Disintegration (O)

When I think of these bricks
Molded together by the influx of time,
Red like the hollow walls
With so many breaths stark, startling,
Forgotten -- the ancient ruins rise again
Before my mind, all the old ship-wrecks,
Well meaning, well-built, take off to collapse,
To disaster. This trembling void of imagination
Insists on the collapse, the inevitability of it, its beauty:
Which is really the bulk of my own mind
Collapsing into itself.

The Elves (R 2/14/05)

The key to a darker room comes
Suspicion-less and changed, without
The bottom of the darkling hall:

The interplay of light on
The shadows of light, surrounding
Still the deeper shadows of
The shadowed light, like a canvas that floats

Across the dimming page -- a priming effulgence of bright,
Blue nymphs, dancing around
Their darker and more luxuriant

Shadow selves -- and behind the dance,
In the back of the corridors of time,
Stroking their pointed, beardless chins:
The wicked grins of the elves.

The Elves (O 2/13/05)

The key to a darker room comes
Suspicion-less and changed, without
The bottom of the darkening hall:

The interplay of light on
The shadows of light, surrounding
Still deeper the shadows of
The shadows on light, like the canvas that shadows

The page -- a priming effulgence of bright,
Blue nymphs dancing around
Their darker and more luxuriant

Shadow selves: and behind the dance,
At the foreground of the corridors of time,
Stroking their pointed, beardless chins:
The wicked grins of the elves.

Rimbaud, Enfance

I

This idol, eyes black, yellow mane, orphaned and heartless, nobler than the yarn, Mexican or Flemish; its domain, azures and insolent verdures, runs across the names of beaches, through waves without vessels, ferocious appellations of Greek, and Slav, Celt.

At the foyer of the forest, -- the flowers in reveries tint, thunder, flash -- the girl of the orange lip, crossed of her knees in the brilliant flood that springs from the prairies, a bareness obscured, traversed, and dressed in rainbows, flora, the sea.

Matrons who turn over the neighboring terraces of the ocean; children and giants, proud blacks in vert-green muss, jewels strewn over the gelatin clumps of groves and the tiny, gelated menageries, -- teenage mothers and older sisters whose eyes are full of wandering, sultans, princesses of gait and tyrannical costume, petite strangers and people sweetly melancholy.

What ennui, the hour of "dear body", "dear soul"!

II

That's her, the little cadaver, behind the rosebush. -- The young mother, deceased, descends the steps. The carriage of a neighbor cries over the sand. -- The little brother -- (he's in India!) there, in front of the sleeping, in the prairie of eyelets. -- We have buried the aged in order by the wallflowers' rampart.

The swarm of golden leaves surrounds the house of the general. They're in the South. You follow the red route to arrive at the empty inn. The château is for sale; the shutters are detached. -- The priest will have taken the key to the church. -- Around the park, the apartments of the guards are vacant. The palisades are so high that you can't see anything but the breaking summits. Besides, there's nothing to see below.

The prairies climb back up to the hamlets sans cocks, anvils. The sluice has lifted. Oh the calvaries and the mills of the wilderness, the isles and millstones!

The magic flowers were buzzing. The embankments lulling it. The beasts of a fabulous elegance moving around. The clouds amassed themselves at the height of the sea forged in its eternity of hot tears.

III

In the forest there is a bird, her song stops you and makes you blush.

There is a clock that doesn't tick.

There is a mire with a nest of white beasts.

There is a cathedral that falls and a lake that climbs.

There is a little car abandoned in the copse, or one that descends the path in a stream, beribboned.

There is a troupe of little clowns in costume, perceived on the way through the forest's fringe.

There is, finally, when one thirsts for it and hungers, someone to chase you.

IV

I am the saint, in prayer on the terrace, like the pacific beasts who graze near the edge of the Palestine sea.

I am the scholar in the somber armchair. The branches and rain throw themselves on the library's window.

I'm the urchin on Broadway by the midget woods; the rumor of sluices covers my tracks. I gaze a long time at the mournful detergent of setting gold.

I would be a good child abandoned to the jutting part of the high sea, little footman following the alley whose limit touches the sky.

The paths come after. The hillocks cover themselves in broom. The air is immobile. How the birds and the fountains are far! It must be the end of the world, advancing.

V

Lease me this tomb at last, blanched in the lime with lines of cement in relief, -- so far under earth.

I'm leaning on a table; the lamp is shining with such vigor on these journals I'm a fool to reread, these books without interest.

An enormous distance above my subterranean salon, houses are stretching their roots, fogs are assembling. The muck is rouge and noir. Monstrous city, night without end!

Less high up are the sewers. Around me, nothing but the thickness of the globe. Perhaps gulfs of azure, shafts of flame. Possibly it's on these planes that the moons and comets, seas and fables meet.

Through the bitter hours, I imagine balls of sapphire, metal. I am the master of silence. Why would the image of a basement window blemish in the corner, the vault's?

Rimbaud After the Flood

As soon as the Idea of the Flood was becalmed,

A hare halted in front of the esparcettes and the cowbells, moving, and said his prayer to the rainbow stretched across the spider's web.

Oh! The precious stones that hid themselves, the flowers that were watching already.

On the dirty board-walk, stalls erected themselves, and people were dragging barks out towards the sea rising out like engravings.

Blood flowed, at Blue Beard's, in the slaughter-houses, circuses where the stamp of God blemished the windows. The blood flowed, and the milk.

The beavers built. Capucinos foamed at Starbucks.

In the large house of glass still rustling, grieving children were watching the marvelous scenes.

A door slammed -- and, on the town-square, the infant twirled his arms, comprehended of cocks and of tower-cocks all, under the thundering downpour.

Madame X built a piano into the Alps. Mass and first communions published themselves on the hundred altars, cathedral's.

The caravans departed. And the Splendid Hotel founded on the chaos of ice and the night of the pole.

After that, the Moon heard the jackals singing in the deserts of thyme, -- and the eclogues in clogs groaning in the green. Later, in the violet pine-grove, bourgeoning, Eucharist told me it was spring.

The deaf, a lake, -- Mist, roll over the bridge and pass above the wood; -- black sheets and organs, lightning and thunder, -- Climb and roll; -- melancholy Elixir, climb again, and mass the Floods.

Because after they've dissipated themselves, -- oh, the precious stones that are hiding, the opening flowers! -- It's an ennui! and the Queen, the Sorceress who illuminates her brazier in the pot of the earth, will never want to tell us what she knows, which we ignore.

Homonculus (Revis 2/11)

Reading all these poems and musing
However to write myself, and that ineffably
A poem is about the unity breaking a father
Free of the mom into gemineyed peaces,

Monstrosities dazzled, bejeweled -- in short, be-
Lieving, bereft of my riches, it gives me some comfort
To think I can write damn well whatever I
Please before I die; and then, homosexually, that

There is something erotically slender and frail in the slackening
Tide of black fathers, who bathe like a hand in the slap and whorl
Of that slithering fountain, whose whap is a purified pleasure

That always knows what it means. I want, then, not a little death,
But a great, big, monstrous death, a plethora of depths so big
That it swells like the ravishing flood and devours horrified me.

Homunculus (Revis. 2/10)

Reading all these poems like a poem, and thinking
However to write myself, that ineffably
A poem is the union of breaking a father
Free of the mom into gemineyed peas, says

Monstrosities dazzled, bejewelled, in short be-
Reft of my riches, it gives me some comfort
To think I can write damn well whatever I please
Before I die; and when I die, I will think homosexually

Something erotic, and about as frail as the slam-
Black unions of fathers, who bathe like a hand in the slap
Of that slithering fountain, whap of a purified pleasure

That sees what it means. I want, not a little death,
But a great, big, humongous death, a death so big that it swells
Like the ravishing flood and devours primortally horrified me,
// like the brilliant morsels of birds, the bee.

Homunculus

Reading all these poems, thinking about
How to write a poem myself, that inevitably
A poem is in the union of the father breaking
His mom into gemineyed monstrosities,

Bejeweled, bedazzled, in short,
Weary in riches, it gives me some comfort
To think I can say whatever I damn well
Please before I die, and when I die

I think there's something homosexually frail and erotic
About the union with the father, who bathes like a dark hand
And slap in the slithering fountain, the whap of that purified pleasure

That always knows what it means. I want, not a little death,
But a great, big, humongous death, a death so big
That it swells like the primordial flood and devours

Me like the brilliant morsel of fading feasts.

The Third Existential, or, Influence

What did the original poem look like when it crawled
Out of the sea? A blooming anemone, blue as the briny darkness
From which it emerged? It was not a seagull, articulating dips and turns
Of fanciful flight, that's for sure; it was certainly not
The incarnation of the sea as a river itself, flowing upstream
Into torrid climes. What was it, then? What was the poem
Into which it came? Enough of these seascapes,

Dreamscapes into which or from which the broken mind
Escapes things. We know that the aether did not, of a sudden
Intent, coagulate into fire; we know the slopping ocean didn't
Amass itself, like so much air: nothing was born out of nothing,
But everything came from itself, out of and back into the earth which was
(And is) a mass of its own indivisible self. So stop preaching

The holy fire that could consume this incarnation of the earth,
Or the ages, a sentience wholly beyond any anxiety, but still
Generated by its death, still produced by the very act of production
That succeeds it. If poetry came out of the future,
Like a gull borne on the heavy tide of the horizon,
Then who glimpsed it, what geographer or expeditionary
Mapped out its cartography, prevalent in and of itself,
And who was he apart from it, what mark sufficient to himself?

Tossed Cup

Is there anything more beautiful
Than a stream of lucid water
Hurtling through the air like a rocket,
Falling through itself like drops
Congealing on a sieve?

La Coupe Jetée

N'y-a-t-il rien de la beauté plus plein
Que, de l'eau lucide, un fleuve
Jaillissant à travers l'éther
Comme une roquette, tombant
Entre soi-même comme les gouttes
Dans un tamis coagulants?

Poculum Iaculatum

Estne pulchrior nihil amne
Qui aere per lucidus similis telo
Currit ut rores coagulantes
In cribrum inter et occidit ipso?

Sirens

Last night, on the dance floor, I felt it:
A curious urge, this need to belong
To somebody, or several people, possessed
To be had. Slick bodies dripping with sweat
The way ice slips down crags when it melts
Had me, faces thrown back to the ceiling, rearing in pleasure,
Had me, but what had me most was the swollen throbbing
Of nipple on nipple, jean against cock, bronze necks rubbing
Like pieces of chalk. Dancing alone, or with desires as crippling
As a three-hundred pound, black drag queen, it was difficult
Not to wobble all over the place, barely touching, brushing
The forbidden, not daring, weaving to a music
No more subtle than the pounding of a beat, but woven,
Spun around, and twisting like a puppet in the hands
Of my clumsy desire, their strain pulled on the feet.

Bulbs

These corpulent corpuscles inseminate their mystery
Into an immensity of fertilizing sand, where rocks
On the verge of breaking yield
Their nutrients and nutriment, allowing them to burst

Still further in gluttonous, gyring scope, a breaking from nothing
Fiercer than the dawn-light when atomic combustion
Explodes over arid mesas whose cold-blooded peaks
Grow livid in the impress of his pounding, stellar

Heat; but these are the hungry ones, contained in the seeds
Of their own making, always sucking sharply at air,
Rooting themselves so deep you'd have to tear out

The heart to free them, free yourselves, and when they transform
The pearls of the sun's fulminations into ecstatic
Transgressions of fiery blossom, the rage of the world blooms.

Revision 2 (2/2): The Second Existential

1.

We need food -- barley cakes,
Skinned fish, boiled, molten, rushed out,
Gutted, for the gut, and cuts
Of succulent kine, rolling the plate
Full ruts. The mind
Needs it too, not of the mental
Kind but rather flying through veins,
And bits of digestion must reach
Every extremity of being. Without

A serving of cake, a generous portion
Of steak, the hills cease to roll
Into mountains, rich in the purpled glare
Of dawn, the rippling green of the sea
Greys, all things drain of their color, the sap
Gets sucked out of life, even the eyes
Drop and fix on the dirt, the body stales,
And the mind on a tumult of doubt
Fades. Neither is it cause for surprise

That Virgil -- plump on harvests
Of Ciconian olives, Sicillian grain
That the hard hands of maidens
Calloused to bread for the fires, dough
In the moltens of iron -- forged
Dreams of home and steel, perfection
Of stolen In riot, and every drop of wine
Lengthened into lines, half-lines
Fed on the whirling Tiber's

Crop. But while he lushed
Silence for the farmer, sibilant leaves
For the cycling seasons, the beggar
Whose eyes are penury begot
Half-forms, grimy fledglings sopping
With a semen coat of slick
Sack to mold as the years molded him
Before, becoming the semblance of human
Being. So Zora Neale

Hurston, hands chopped and split
Into wrinkles of sunset
avenues, foraging up spit nickels
For tips on suds of saliva
And hair, complaints and a fridge bare
Of any cheese, pressed ululations
Of bread, crumbs chipping and chipped, barely
Squawked the mountainous life-cooking
Braid, a swan-song collected from tatters
Like a rag-patch silked
Together, I can't say how:

2.

For so slickly food changes moods, begets
And breaks on the temper of time. Art
Supposes an order, demands the complacent
Body spring and spin, like a child that fools
With a top; the impudent mind awes
At the dizzied horizon, dyes in calamity
Of whirling motion, cries for the dance,
And the dance, dance, calls outraged like a fat
Old miser demanding his drink, metallic thud
Of the goblet on hard, but the service
Will not be provided, neglect
Wrecks the insolent household,
The feast is abolished. Pity the minds

That think through a heap of material
Goods, struggling all the while
For a pile of trash into the sky, tottering mix
Of wealth, whether spurting
Immortality, a marbled, soft-lined
Coffin cool in the shade of luxurious
Lindens' sagging yellow limbs; or others
Who glory in books, even fine
Verses that teeter and ring with a gentle
Tone, the serene mutter of a well-placed
Rhyme. Meanwhile they seize for this
Garbage, felicitous rot, toil to bind and weld
Rusty scraps of iron to bronze stained
Sprays of silver, glutinate gold; but trapped

In the saccharine mist of aggravations, the whole
Rumbles a foghorn, blares like a violent
Forecast of horses, war drums, shakes, and rather
Than beat to these thrums, they hack bleeding
Limbs, torn off fists in fisticuffs, trying to seduce
The immense mess of quivering scraps to their own
Genius, impose or oppose the impeccable tune that they've
Borne from this crap. All things are a wretched pitch

But just themselves, and when a storm
Rips the air like an old rag shrieking with shock
At the stretching heat, tremendous armies collide
In the clouds like crags or continents grating
On bare wound of the swollen earth:
The planet bleeds a tremendous flood, also many sparks,
Colors we don't or can't attend to, wild thrill
Of lightning that orbits vermillion and blue
Through the burning forests, phantasmagoric splendor
While we implore the teetering heavens for help.

Revision 1 (2/2)

1.

We need food -- barley cakes,
Skinned fish, boiled, molten, rushed,
Gutted, to the gut, and cuts
Of succulent kine, rolling the plate
Full ruts. The mind
Needs it too, not of the mental
Kind but rather flying through veins,
The bits of digestion must reach
Every extremity of being. Without

A serving of cake, a generous portion
Of steak, the hills cease to roll
Into mountains, rich in the purpled glare
Of dawn, the rippling green of the sea
Greys, all things drain of their color, the sap
Get sucked out of life, even the eyes
Drop and fix on the dirt, the body stales,
And the mind on a tumult of doubt
Fades. Neither is it cause for surprise

That Virgil, plump on harvests
Of Ciconian olives, Sicillian grain
That the hard hands of maidens calloused
To bread for the fires, dough
In the molt iron furnace, forged
Dreams of home and steel, stolen perfection
In riot, and every drop of wine
Lengthened into lines, half-lines
Fed on the whirling Tiber's

Crop. But while he lushed
Silence for the farmer, sibilant leaves
For the cycling seasons, the beggar
Whose eyes are penury begot
Half-forms, grimy fledglings sopping
With a semen coat of slick
Sack to mold as the years molded him
Before, becoming the semblance of human
Being. So Zora Neale
Hurston, hands chopped and split
Into wrinkles of sunset
avenues, foraging up spit nickels
For tips on suds of saliva
And hair, complaints and a fridge bare
Of any cheese, pressed ululations
Of bread, crumb-chipped and chipping, barely
Squawked the mountainous life-cooking
Braid, a swan-song collected from tatters
Like a rag-patch silked
Together, I can't say how:

2.

For so slickly food changes moods, begets
And breaks on the temper of time. Art
Supposes change, demands the complacent
Body spring and spin, like a child that fools
With a top; the impudent mind awes
At the dizzied horizon, dyes in calamity
Of whirling motion, cries for the dance
And the dance, calls outraged like a fat
Old miser demanding his drink, metallic thud
Of the goblet on hard, will not be provided, the cause of his
Insolent neglect has wrecked his household,
And the meal never comes. Pity the minds

That struggle across a heavy wreck of material
Things, thinking all the while that somehow
A jump of the vortex, a shredding rip
Of some great matter other than, god
Can deliver all troubles, still the resonant,
Rumbling world. But better to strike yourself
Against the harsh bells of the earth than wait
For heavenly tunes; the clanging cymbals
Can't stop, and the mind is forced to yield
To this music. All things are a wretched pitch

But just themselves, and too when the storm
Scatters the air with shrieking heat and tremendous
Armies collide through the clouds like crags
Or continents grating on the bare, swollen
Planet, there are also many sparks, many colors
That we don't or can't attend to, the wild thrill
Of the lightning that orbits vermillion
And blue through the wrecking forest misses us
While we stare to the churning heavens for help.

Original

We need food -- barley cakes,
Skinned fish, boiled, molten, rushed,
Gutted for the gut, and cuts
Of succulent kine, rolling the plate
Full ruts. The mind
Needs it too, not of the mental
Kind but rather flying through veins,
The bits of digestion must reach
Every extremity of being. Without

A serving of cake, a generous portion
Of steak, the hills cease to roll
Into mountains, rich in the purpled glare
Of dawn, the shrilling eagle
Loses the hare, the rippling green of the sea
Greys, all things drain of their color, the sap
Get sucked out of life, even the eyes
Drop and fix on the dirt, the body stales,
And the mind on a tumult of doubt
Fades. Neither is it cause for surprise

That Virgil, plump on harvests
Of Ciconian olives, Sicillian grain
That the hard maidens' hands calloused
Into bread for the fires, dough
In the molt iron furnaces, forged
Dreams of home and steel, perfection
In riot, and every drop of wine
Lengthened into lines, half-lines
Were fed by the whirling Tiber's

Crop. But while he lushed
Silence for the farmer, sibillant leaves
For the cycling seasons, the beggar
Whose eyes are penury begot
Half-forms, grimy fledglings sopping
With a semen coat of slick
Sack to mold as the years molded him
Before, becoming the semblance of human
Being. So Zora Neale
Hurston, thick in the grime
Of other people's moldy sunsets,
Barely chimed her swan-song on the hair
That flows through the ridges
Like wind-blown silk, somewhere, lost, flutters
Of a tattered dress, I can't say how;

So slickly food changes
Moods, begets and breaks
On the temper of time.

A Dialogue

Scene:

The Reed College Student Union, wide wooden
Lodge. An angry FLUTIST pipes at a calm breathing
SMOKER.

FLUTIST:

The beams are resonant, the wood absorbs the twittering tune
And multiplies silver tones, sound refractions
Denser than the light that yawns through the windows,
But not as thick as, purer than the air, this choking mulch
Of smoke that fumes your breath, that rots inside
Your lungs -- you treat them like wine sacks! -- a disgrace
For the pungents of poison your veins all carry around to ruined
Brains, conflagrant skulls -- but not for the vim to yourselves,
So much as the harm in the vigorous breath, which by steady pulses, gulps,
I'm trying into music. Can't you see how the aether might dance?
Or are flares all the mind in your ranks? Coruscating laws!

SMOKER:

Twirp, not a twitter, your complaint whines on unrelenting
As your savage twitch. Metal, that flute? Becks of oats,
A rotten rill, guttering air in a stench that bloats the head,
Pounding far more on the ears than ever in our rusting lungs.
Rusted your playing, rustic, the growl of the wolves set to strings,
At best harsh springs, bubbling sulphuric slime, and the crime
Of your cat gutting song only harps on the tune of your blame,
Squawking plaint; so we'd rather smoke hay-stacks
And set the choking walls in bleary-eyed conflagrations
Of sweet tobacco, harsh weed, than tolerate
Your lymphing strain, which strains on
Our peace. Go play in Prexy, a haven for hummers,
Free from our mutterings, mouthfuls of smoke,
Good for your lungs, but better for everyone's ears.

Now look, I may have
Screwed up in all that
Screwing, as you say,
With a knife twist
Turn of the screw or
What have you, wrenching
Deep into the gut until
I drew the spurting blood,
Delicacy of time. So?
A man can take his pleasure,
Whether her blood is still
Dripping from my veiny cock,
Or I've ravaged the race
Of women, like cropping a
Lush fertility. Simply put,
Woman, I tricked you: my seed
Is already deep-burrowed in you, you
Have become apart of me, or I
Likewise, we've grown into
Each other, the same sap of pain
Confluence of our being,
Which was already being, so
Everything I've taken
For me, for us, for all that
Grows into the fatal earth.

When he left, the room
Grew longer in the twilight,
The bookshelves slanted
Like the shadows' slant,
The twitch of the leaves
Patched brightly on the walls,
And a warm breeze
Whispered the lucent remains
Of a sea change into my ear.
Sidereal waves were rising,
The night's flood sucked at my heart,
As if I were a conch shell,
Spit up by the tides, abandoned
To the whims of childish ears.

Suppose that the gown were made of flowers
Grafted with flowers, woven together
Into the skein of a flower, really a blooming symbol
Of bloom. Now suppose you showered it in living,
Wore the petals down, dragged the clustered hem
Through shaggy walk in closets, long, dimmed spaces,
And every night a hundred strange embraces. Gradually the blue,
Embroidered, buried in the dirt, of course comes grey
And black as earth; but the memory of the dress,
-- Is it wilting in the back of your mind, or folded
Into some remembered drawer?
It is probably all a matter of air -- and time.

The Walls

Walls beyond the dawn, silent
In their need for silence, themselves stone
Perched on mortared stone, define a space
Of creeping shadows, echoes
And the voice of echoes, which is the night
Sobbing, a clamorous exclamation of surprise
Spilling across stones, voiceless
Keepers of the night.

Lecture

Is
And is not
Will
And will not be
Form a curious web
Of logic, hanging from a thread
By language, whose dual capacity
Equals reality. You’ll see
That a proposition is true
Or false, that it is,
Or it is not.
When we fix the meaning
Of words, the polarities of doubt
Collapse, and everywhere we gaze
On the immense structure of truth.

Take, for instance,
The logic of material things:
In a moment I press into your open hand
Something, not physical,
But prefigured in physicality, an intellectual
Proposition, at least
In language. This is an example of a showing forth,
Clear seeming, and it shows that everything
Either was, or is, seems or will be. You become the dream
Of your own reality, which is at least a reality of mind,
In the mind, reminding you again of the split
Between you and physicality. Now take the soul:

Imagination is an enemy -- it yields to the confusion
Of is and is not, which is a proposition
Of the will, which wills it so
Or not so, and the farther things fall
From duality, the less they prefigure reality.
Imagined pain is less than pain, but more than pain,
Likewise imagined death is more or less. The moral being

If you consider words there’s only empty seeing.

The First Existential

Crystal isolations, whole solicitations
To a state of supreme being
Where nothing is supreme: think

The vagaries of your own experience
Into a cold conscience, which grasps hold
Of the iron bonds and twists them into an imagination,
Or at least the palpable possibility
Of an imagination, or even then the barest shadow
Of such an imagination, which becomes an instant,
Instantaneous with the moment, of momentary
Significance. You're still locked

In the cave, a cavern more hollow
Than crystal, more crystal, blue shadows, cold fragrance,
Than hollow, but in all events hollowed and hallow,
Which is the space not of imagination, but the preconception,
Before any reception, of reality's womb. Locked in the immensity,

In the enormity, in the monstrosity, which is a monstrous omen
Of birth, a showing forth that conceals, a concealment that hides,
Cringes, and still conceives and deceives
New valances of beauty, there is some stirring,

Almost like the beating of a breath, almost like the breathing
Of a wind, the winding of curves and twists
Into hearty knots. No motion is possible, and the antithesis of motion

Is silence, quiet waiting, but a waiting that prefigures
Action, or an action in the waiting, since the cringing weight
Won't fall, but hangs suspended in the possibility, the elaboration,
Configurations of time refiguring, calculating, planning,
Clever and dolous, doleful, dull in traces
Of smooth silver, granite silver, pomegranate silver

Tracing the reciprocity of the prison, of the season, but most like a lesion
Or a leech, sucking the dry entrails of the great
Beast, reborn and renewing when the day renews, when the moon
Sheds moonshine like a woman emerged from a pool,
Sheds starlight like the beaded drops of sweat
Shooting out over the horizon. There is one image facing you, a face

Who imagines you, and all existence resolves
Into the mysterious glare of a light
And the singular darkness of those bulbous eyes.

If only there were something real, muse, a crystalline valley
Brimming with golden light, all colors, rapidity of hues
Autumn in their beauty, long and lolling waves
Of summer bloom. When lumber falls
(And only here through muchness
Of foaming springs) grey moss gathers
With mushrooms and clover
In gardens of grey antiquity,
Perfected, unsparing of succulent mists.

Instead there is the work:
Accomplish the brown little dregs
Of work, smash yourself in the red-forging
Flames, cook yourself all carmelized
Species, groan and rull
With the waves.

Pleasure I want,
Not rivers boiling over
In slick oil, rimming
The soiled banks. There is nothing,
Muse! in which mortals won't use
Their advantage: interest accumulates
In piling pages, and burns through the gloom.

So I'd rather be dead,
Engulfed in drifting flowers
Than live with livid flames.

In the elaborate elusion of a question,
I lose myself in lustrance, monstrances,
And remonstration. Everything seems real,
But a vague disquiet pervades
It all; the seeing image flickers like crushed
Candy on the edge of a knife, dull is a life
Blade skinning time and wrinkled tears
Off an onion. Things seem to come in pairs: good
And evil, being and death, time
And the absence of time, literature, its opposite, progression.
If only the sweetness of autumn fruit could dribble
On my tongue, I'd make some sense of the mess, the dirty
Piles of laundry, the quick-sand scraping the pavement,
The glass-like prisms and prisons of life. Most of all,
Existence would no longer be a game, but linger on,
The grandest obsession of all -- wings would move
In the scale, and the flicker of a lingering pine-limb would be
The most natural thing in the world.

Every Writer Has an Obsession

Paralyzed by the inconsistency of action
In an imperfect world -- or perhaps in a perfect world,
Silver globe by star-shine, by the moonlight --

But certainly weary, these verses come too easily
Of one thing, and then the contrary, synthesis
In contradiction, mind games, word games,

Finding and refining terms. Fatigue rules the brain,
Roosts on the higher towers, pulls on the steamer,
Runs through the engines, and his long laugh

Echoes across lanes. How can a course
Lead off course, the topic, off-topic, utopic,
Nowhere? Pigeons perched on 'sailed and soiled

Lines, sagging on long distances, drooping
Like lids, like mouths droop, looping
Through a limping tongue, and all my words are dun.

Horace, Carmina 1.5

What bright boy has infused you
In manifold roses and urges you,
With flowing scents, Pyrrha,
Beneath a happy cave? For whom
Do you bind up your tawny hairs

Splendorous simple? Alas,
How often he'll lament your faith,
His changeful fate,
Insolacely wonder at oceans
Wicked with winter winds

Who now harvests you in gold
(Oh credulous youth), who hopes you
Always friendly, always free, unschooled as he is
In the shifty wind. Yes, miserable are those

To whom, untried, you should shine,
-- Can shine. A wall sacred
For votive offerings witnesses
How I once hung my sea-sogged rags
To the ocean's potent god.

For Hemingway

That the hands would fail -- or not the hands,
But memory, that memory could forget
Not a substance, but a substance's
Extrapolation, that life could make
The last interpolation:

Feeble clouds the vision and the tail
Of the storm, an idle dip below the feeling
Sea, the rocketing motion
Of emotion, ever outwards
From the heightening depths
Expanding, recreating, all while immolating
The decayed journey of time, the expanse of a day's,
Or a thousand's, and the speck-like

Shores. All of life is just such a speck, or a shored up
Raft, a craft of which it is pleasure to make,
But which philosophy advises (and revises) is
Like any poison difficult to take.

Lisa came from away, clutching some secret
To her chest, about her like the box
Of carven wood she cradled at all times,
Caressing in a still born grief, always renewing, so her eyes
Were limned with tears, her limbs, her hands were weak
Under the burden, she often doubled over as if a great weight
Pressed her back, wracked in silent, triple pains, which she concealed
As carelessly as she was careful
Of the box.

The box was never open.

Murmurs curiosity evoked, scattered through the room like filaments
Of algae through a lake when the sun, effulgent
In the early glare of dawn, scatters the tatters of lichen that from twilight
Keep the sky in curtains, battered darkness, and likewise overpours
The minstrel moon. Some guessed
It was a music box, the figure of a ballerina
Carved in ivory kept to curve and sway in life-like grace, others tested
Letters, perfumed notes, the keepsakes of a lover
Lost at sea; but at least one woman suspected,
Old, and worn away like cliffs by time
In passing waves, collections of a life yet
Set in disarray, fragments of memories, photographs, candy
Wrappers, everything that might evoke the endless loss
Of emptiness. Miles heard these scattered conversations
While he tended guests; there was an especially hollow
Space where a grand log fire blazed
At every hour. Couches carefully arranged, end tables
And Ming vases, delicate tulips aided the guests
With a distressed, luxurious comfort, and often reclining on leather
They worried away the weather, rumors, providence
And pardons, and sips of yellow tea
Strained through yellowed teeth.
When Miles came to fill the stoved abyss
With freshening fire, smoking like a pyre
Of pinewood scent, he assented to ascend the surge,
The busy, wired rumors, humming from one end
Of the idle room to idyll galleries, on, so to speak,
The further shores; the tide of conversation
Crested in crescendo. Mrs. Foss, an eastern lady

Who'd amassed a western fortune, stayed a perpetual rent
On the second floor – a room of lush carpets,
Persian, peacock feathers, couches of feather down
And portraits of staid matrons, respectable, household appliances,
Faithful, reliable, as set as the cocker spaniel
Setting on her rug. A once society's matron, a woman of much power
And great pearls, long fingers curling to delicate
Nacreous edges, deep sunk eyes, her eyebrows
Ledges by the ledgers of her face, friendly, wasted by and
Wasting time, she made a practice
Of his guests, she met them, learned their stories, squeezed them
Dry like lemons of their juice,
Then let them loose. Not all, of course, fell under her familiar spell:
Honeymooners nervous to quell
The whirlpool of passion avoided her the way a vintner shuns
The shriveled grape; men of letters (and there was
The amiable, occasional Ph.D., on holiday
To study) hated gossip, avid only
Of long dead passions, famed conspiracy in well established
Books, and burning looks
In dictionaries, stationary holidays; and these,
Who talked of persimmons and parsimony, laws, symbolic
Larcenies, the aged mum avoided in the harmony
Of mutual and contrary persuasion. There was no occasion
For such tensions in her life, she liked predictable
Tears and tears, chamomile
And soggy pears. It was she whom Miles held
In peculiar confidence, and she appraised young Lisa
When she came, before she went.

Not that Miles was all about money.
The walls of the lodge were argent,
Argent, and flecked with gold
Mosaics of gemstone tiles, frescoes
In all their lush extravagance,
Paintings of precious metals
On stone, marble
The floors, reflected in ceilings, the whole hotel
An elaborate tomb
By the purring sea.
Miles was an artist of comfort, the inn
His masterpiece. Outside the front,

In bas relief, above the arches and the architrave,
The frieze, in frozen splendor
Matron of the island, mother
Of flowers. Her face was fat and thick
And rich, her eyes were glazed
With goodness, her complexion
Pale from chiseled cheek to marbled gaze,
A Parian nymph in palisade, watcher
Of the crashing shores, but only by the spectral vision
Of a floating ghost, an apparition
In the loneliness of flowers, a quiet circle of daisies,
Gold, her glowing hair, grave as the lakeside scene

Below: the queen, the mother of flowers, bold
In jade and retinue, strewing the seeds
Of anthoi by willows, flora to lichen
The dripping shores. Quite glum, or serious, serene
All touched their foreheads,
The faintest suggestion of hills
In lead, the somber tones
Moved only by a grace, a freedom from bone in the act
Of scattering flowers:
Jasmine was garnet,
The lily was ivory, the wild amaranth
An emerald amethyst; so perfect in cut, shape, and form
That it lightened the storm of nymphs, not mourn
-ful dryads in procession, weeping for Adonis' dearth,
But naiads in digression, pale among the sparkling bursts
Of flowers, springing everywhere flowers
In great abundance, regenerate hope.

Horace, Carmina 1.4

The winter in its sharpness is dissolved, of spring
And of Favonus through a gentle change. Drag
Machines parched keels, and neither does the plowman 'joice
In fire, the cattle in stalls;
The fields grow not albine with floury frosts.
Now the Cytherean, rising of moon, now Venus
Leads on the dance: the Nymphs with joined hands, the decorous
Graces tread alternate foot on the earth,
While Vulcan, with all his gravity, burns
On the gaze of his Cyclops'
Workshops. Now we should garland sheared skulls
With green myrtle or flora, which the freed earth
Provides. Also, it's right to immolate in shady groves
For Faunus, whether the young goat asks
Or limp lamb requests.

Pallid Death beats with an unconcerned foot
At the taverns of paupers and towers of kings. Happy Sestius:
The brief summit of life forbids one undertake
A longer hope, for presently night presses you, and shades --
Forlorn Proserpine host; where soon you wander
Will partake of the kingdoms of wine
With the dice, or will you lust after Lycidus, tender,
For whom now the youths grow all hot,
And after the Virgins will warm?

I think that we do judge poetry, and writing in general, by the ideas that it expresses and the clarity with which they are developed. Good writing is persuasive: it makes an argument and convinces, or tries to convince, its reader. Good poetry is doubly persuasive, because it forces us to take it in its own terms. Because persuasion is the key characteristic of good writing, all writing, and specifically all poetry, should be open to discussion outside of the context in which it would be read. Some have called this type of analysis "reading against the grain", but it is simply critical thinking, thinking of the type even readers of newspapers or magazines engage in when they write angry letters to the editor. Once you send a piece of writing into the world, it participates immediately in the game of critical revision and reconfiguration; it evokes a response, it is filed away, it is compartmentalized and defined in the reader's mind. But writing is like any remark in a conversation or argument: it intends, it signifies some movement of the mind or the soul intended to throw the reader, like driftwood under a wave. Only, you, the writer, have the ability to retract it, rewrite it, and submit it again, if you discover it has not the desired effect. Perhaps the writing process is a continual wrestling with and wresting of meaning from the reader, or a kind of battle between reader, writer, and poem. The best poems revise their readers even as they are being revised, and that is why they are so powerful and enduring. A classic is that which is infinitely subverted and yet, in the process, subverts. In any event, the development and substantiation of ideas is just as much the provenance of good writing as a certain felicity of form.

Story

"Lisa, come to the window. How long
Will you stare into the vague ocean
Of time spreading thick through your mirror?
Haven't you heard that I loved you, don't
You know you are beloved? Lisa, the waves
Are waxing with the moon, and a tumult's
Beauty-strewn across the beach. Dolphins
Glimmer in the moonlight, candles flicker,
Sputter, gush, all of this the rush
Of love. Come to the window, Lisa."

Like thin shavings of time, the paper,
Shredded, scattered in the wind.
The dock became fragments, the ocean,
Fragments; the sun an incoherent blaze
Of all that's incomplete.
Still the distant glimmer of a net
Spread under the current
And the splashing dip of a hook
Or a diver (the matter is uncertain)
Broke the quiet of inchoate waves.

The mother of flowers strew
Slight beads of color
Across the beach, and the turrets of sand
Were everywhere rising where urchins
Settled their hands. The women
Would continue, like washed-up
Oysters, to cook on their towels,
The brawny men wrestle
With foam. At least, at last
One thing was resolved, or rather
Dissolved, dispersed
Through every corner of the dream.

Returns

It's sad to come back, because everything changes.
Look at the sky –- the sky is like a river,
And the clouds are rusted sediment, sentiments
Changing. Similar faces, the clouds -–
It's sad to see them change
And stay the same. It reminds me of time,
Watching them, and I'm not even here
To see them. A ring of fog becomes a whale,
Whales migrate into dolphins, dolphins pass
Into slivers of glass, sun-stained, sea-stained,
The crimson color of leaves in grass. Figments or landscapes:
Autumn canyons, sandwich shops
In the winter, S.U.V.'s –-
All of these must change. Maybe it's hard to see
At first, like flakes of rust, crumbs and dust, or a fresh layer
Of lusty leaves, but the landscape changes
Only to become more like itself; only
We are different, we must change.

Dreams

I have been wrong. Swimming 'lusions,
A gathering cloud of waters gone to seed
In lilies, growing carnations, flower-beds
And riverbeds; dreams. Deeds
By the walking Milwaukee, cities by rivers,
Towns by rivers, waterfalls rushing over vines
Trembling, thatching the woods. A butterfly
Was jasmine, a haphazard collection
Of pearls and diamonds, her pinned up hair
Brown luxury, black demons of fragrance.

Heat and the river-swain. The river was swinging,
The milk-cows were singing, the river-swain
Pealed and the clarion call of unfolding fire,
Yellow irises opened sensational light.
Swan-song mixed with the cricket song,
Breeze laughed. These idylls
Farther of storms, father of storms
Brewing up fresh flowers, long waves
Of sweeping grass in the breeze, close breeze sing
Swimming river. Loose me from my bonds,
Great spirit, lose me and let fly a little,
Fly through the twilight of peace.

From Alencia Lysander:

There are no poets anymore, no philosophers;
Words have lost their meaning. Don't worry,
Do what I do and steep yourself in pleasure:
I fucked a fat strumpet last night, a nun, her wimple
Cast on a crumpled jock, a pair of dirty socks --
She had lily-white, fat thighs which she lifted
High into the air, while my penis fumbled
Here and there (I missed her juicy hole
As often as I came, fat as she was,
Across her virgin berth).
Afterwards she took a bath. I kept staring
At those ivory thighs,
The way she raised a swollen foot
Out of the water, sudded soapy toes. I was
Erect again, I dived into her
Intimate girth, she screamed,
And it was fun. It rained the day I met her; the gargoyles
Were sobbing on the street, the water was dripping
Down grotesque eyes, trickling from gaping noses
Curled into sneers not a mother could love.
What sculptor carved such ugliness, hoping for what
Salvation? In the church, they pray, the salt-smelling incense
Rises. Tears, tears, everything is tears,
The whole world is crying -- the fuckers. All they want
(And this I know) is to fuck and be fucked, 'cause I've done them all
-- And triple six times. Oh Lord, please fuck me. Oh Lord,
Shove the firmament up of my ass, split me Lord,
Split me in sin. Bah, the whole lot of them isn't worth
A spit: man's fallen, man's prostrate,
Man's up to his knees in fucking mud.