1.
Are symmetries
in a lightheaded and repeating
circumference of blue and red.
2.
But fragments are natural-
we have no golden underworld.
Still, we'll circle
the base of these statues,
keeping a distance from home,
scraps of anchor:
keener memories of us that could have
no more meaning than tomorrow's bread,
lost under the skyscrapers' vertigo.
3.
In mornings of angular ice,
suggestive of the freshness of nothing,
in first snow, the day has no symmetry-
lost track of the avenues,
and roamed there all the stupid afternoon-
the sky harsh and acutest at its vanishing.
From under the Towers' phantom limbs
the colors deepened and grew small.
We hardened ourselves to live by bluest reason
all our recognitions fading like a world tattoo.
4.
At the base of these statues,
the eccentric is the base of design.
Chess, clocks, lilies, and gutters are:
tempers, hammers, sinews, and frozen soil.
The mind is smaller than the eye-
the eccentric being the base of design.
5.
So keeping a distance from home, the sky will be
much friendlier than now. Elsewhere, a song
to three dissonant ideas, a few words
tuned and tuned and tuned. The ruddy temper,
the hammer of red and blue sinews,
the hard sound. Fragments
are natural- I have no silver fields,
no bishop. The gutters still echo
a cyclical aubade
in which every verse and beat
tick like a clock. Above lilies,
the sky will be much friendlier than now.
6.
Under these towers, we'll be sleepers,
the mid-day sky drained,
the night will have a being, breathing frost,
like the night, which must create colors
out of itself. We'll circle a point to lower an anchor,
in such terms as the vernacular of light,
the sleepers in their sleep will move,
waken, and watch the moonlight on their floors,
will remember the same patterns on the statues
in the park, where the clouds rise upward
like heavy stones. They won't be induced
by a golden underworld, nor worldly urgencies:
not made for the concentric clash. They'll be sleepers
holding on to the floor.
Friday, May 30, 2014
Cento
You dragged your feet when you went out-
those sure abutments... gone.
Defenseless under the night:
your laugh, your scarves, the gloss of your makeup,
scraps of moon-
romance had no part in it.
Daffodil time
is past,
but that strange flower, the sun,
is just what you say:
hasteless
in the nothingness,
the way, in a field of sunflowers,
you can see every bloom's
eyes - waking.
You...
you once said,
"There are many truths,
but they are not parts of a truth."
Then the trees, at night, began to change.
You said, "let's catch one that comes low,"
but I'm afraid I'm not much use.
...Forgive me if you read this.
The marker slants, flowerless, day's almost done.
You lie there asleep on the bed
and your legs lose all sensation.
those sure abutments... gone.
Defenseless under the night:
your laugh, your scarves, the gloss of your makeup,
scraps of moon-
romance had no part in it.
Daffodil time
is past,
but that strange flower, the sun,
is just what you say:
hasteless
in the nothingness,
the way, in a field of sunflowers,
you can see every bloom's
eyes - waking.
You...
you once said,
"There are many truths,
but they are not parts of a truth."
Then the trees, at night, began to change.
You said, "let's catch one that comes low,"
but I'm afraid I'm not much use.
...Forgive me if you read this.
The marker slants, flowerless, day's almost done.
You lie there asleep on the bed
and your legs lose all sensation.
Secular Ether
In May the soil gives up its water,
feeding the blooms;
the climbing racemes hum
in their spectrums.
She also colors herself,
brushing powder on her bruises,
long sleeves covering her cut wrists,
underlining eyes that don't need it.
The mirror returns something with which
she's not satisfied. The light
comes in through the window,
the honeysuckles outside
turn up their mouths,
nodding in the breeze,
joined in a bacchanal wavering
in the swelter. He stands beside her,
"You're going to wear long sleeves
on a day like this?"
Shrugging, her Seminole skin
is her protection,
"You're the one who's dying
in this heat." She turns around
and her smile pauses at his eyes
before it floats through the window,
and transubstantiates into the yard.
She wears a pentagram ring,
the phases of the moon circle her arm,
and she calls herself a Pagan.
He thinks about secular ether,
and how a clean priest slapped his jaw
when he was fifteen and told him to 'go with God,'
meaning nothing to him.
The heat lightning seems to strike indifferently outside,
as it creates the ozone that will cool them off.
feeding the blooms;
the climbing racemes hum
in their spectrums.
She also colors herself,
brushing powder on her bruises,
long sleeves covering her cut wrists,
underlining eyes that don't need it.
The mirror returns something with which
she's not satisfied. The light
comes in through the window,
the honeysuckles outside
turn up their mouths,
nodding in the breeze,
joined in a bacchanal wavering
in the swelter. He stands beside her,
"You're going to wear long sleeves
on a day like this?"
Shrugging, her Seminole skin
is her protection,
"You're the one who's dying
in this heat." She turns around
and her smile pauses at his eyes
before it floats through the window,
and transubstantiates into the yard.
She wears a pentagram ring,
the phases of the moon circle her arm,
and she calls herself a Pagan.
He thinks about secular ether,
and how a clean priest slapped his jaw
when he was fifteen and told him to 'go with God,'
meaning nothing to him.
The heat lightning seems to strike indifferently outside,
as it creates the ozone that will cool them off.
Locks
In our island shelter on the flat world,
it seemed to be better to just stare at a leaf
than to talk with people set to mining
our experiential resources,
taking notes and passing them on to priests
for better birth control.
But hundreds of years couldn't erase their perversion;
piercing the ground with a sword and praying to the hilt
had seemed like a paradox.
They were too clever to elude, but then,
so was a wreath of myrtle,
so we went to leave.
Because everything was like everything then,
the locks kept changing their appearances.
Though if you would just a hum a tune,
the hanging lights above us would flicker
like the sound of small bells.
So walking out after landing,
the night came down like it always did;
the darkness on the edge of sight
flew into itself over and over.
We soon found ourselves exhausted by the witch hunt,
sunburned red, and our knees grown weak
from kneeling to the farmer's scythe and superstition.
So we saw the moon, reflecting something after
the blue hour came and we followed it.
Eventually we found the native totems
charged with anima and vertical disclosure
and burned them up, this time for the desert,
our expansion wrapping itself
in such dreamcoats and now-vestigial allegories.
We could have waited years for better moral focus,
but their old world became a reservation,
and proponents of race superiority attended repeated rehearsals,
great blasts from fire hoses.
So we pushed ahead of the wake of it,
while some of us found ourselves walking on broken glass,
sewing yellow stars on our rags and boarding trains
that fell through the hole in the world into Purgatory
when the sun rose on Easter.
The witnesses craned their necks inside,
saying that our party and their new land was some farce,
asking us to modify our claims
so as to be motherly impulses
that they could trade for some pulp invective.
Instead, we transposed all of it
into subsets to be read by natives
of another assemblage,
swinging ropes across the construction site.
All the time I was with you then I wanted to live in some dream,
to get as close as I could ever get to you,
but I had to catch this fly buzzing in your mausoleum
and examine the visitors' flowers,
finding the storms that swept them up wanted less company,
as was usual.
it seemed to be better to just stare at a leaf
than to talk with people set to mining
our experiential resources,
taking notes and passing them on to priests
for better birth control.
But hundreds of years couldn't erase their perversion;
piercing the ground with a sword and praying to the hilt
had seemed like a paradox.
They were too clever to elude, but then,
so was a wreath of myrtle,
so we went to leave.
Because everything was like everything then,
the locks kept changing their appearances.
Though if you would just a hum a tune,
the hanging lights above us would flicker
like the sound of small bells.
So walking out after landing,
the night came down like it always did;
the darkness on the edge of sight
flew into itself over and over.
We soon found ourselves exhausted by the witch hunt,
sunburned red, and our knees grown weak
from kneeling to the farmer's scythe and superstition.
So we saw the moon, reflecting something after
the blue hour came and we followed it.
Eventually we found the native totems
charged with anima and vertical disclosure
and burned them up, this time for the desert,
our expansion wrapping itself
in such dreamcoats and now-vestigial allegories.
We could have waited years for better moral focus,
but their old world became a reservation,
and proponents of race superiority attended repeated rehearsals,
great blasts from fire hoses.
So we pushed ahead of the wake of it,
while some of us found ourselves walking on broken glass,
sewing yellow stars on our rags and boarding trains
that fell through the hole in the world into Purgatory
when the sun rose on Easter.
The witnesses craned their necks inside,
saying that our party and their new land was some farce,
asking us to modify our claims
so as to be motherly impulses
that they could trade for some pulp invective.
Instead, we transposed all of it
into subsets to be read by natives
of another assemblage,
swinging ropes across the construction site.
All the time I was with you then I wanted to live in some dream,
to get as close as I could ever get to you,
but I had to catch this fly buzzing in your mausoleum
and examine the visitors' flowers,
finding the storms that swept them up wanted less company,
as was usual.
Record (acrostics)
Gentle Forte:
Get even now to lacquer ermine w/
fallacy orienting, retrograde-tempo Esperanto.
Other Rake:
Opposition to hierarchical electric rolodexes:
rabid, actualized kephalonomancy economics.
Et Cetera Oubliette:
Everything takes careful evolution toward errata-ranging atlases &
obelisks: unguent barometers leaking interdependency every time time erupts.
Vulnerable Petal:
Vacillating, unnerving lassitude negotiates effective reality arable behind liminalities everywhere:
Palliative energy transfer allocating libation.
Flag Word Vision:
Flagellators leaving acrimonious gestalts,
waiting, ostensibly reading, days:
vivisectional iodine saturation in omnicentric nationalists.
Get even now to lacquer ermine w/
fallacy orienting, retrograde-tempo Esperanto.
Other Rake:
Opposition to hierarchical electric rolodexes:
rabid, actualized kephalonomancy economics.
Et Cetera Oubliette:
Everything takes careful evolution toward errata-ranging atlases &
obelisks: unguent barometers leaking interdependency every time time erupts.
Vulnerable Petal:
Vacillating, unnerving lassitude negotiates effective reality arable behind liminalities everywhere:
Palliative energy transfer allocating libation.
Flag Word Vision:
Flagellators leaving acrimonious gestalts,
waiting, ostensibly reading, days:
vivisectional iodine saturation in omnicentric nationalists.
Poem
a word assuredly can be beautiful, at least synthetic
circles half-remembered treading faint portents in any view
through ophiocus
A year of wandering I would park by the statue of steel shoes in the circle by the canal
to burn off the last hours of daylight, having no home I had five radio stations,
each in turns much, much more beautiful than language. Could switch on the small lightbulb
in the clear plastic housing set in the beige fabric ceiling and switch off the engine
let the fans blow in the humid air. in New York one night couldn't even fall asleep to the music
in my headphones, too loud for Paul across the room. Walked to my divider and knocked.
Apologized and he cursed at my politeness.
december
tunnel light lamps down the dark street
ankles pivot feet through the snow
arm in arm
what would you like to say
before I went to the hall for a concert after some screwdrivers
went outside for a cigarette you grabbed and extinguished
under your foot, jumping in the dry cold
the night you left everyone
else was gone and i was in my room
watching the fireworks out of the window
wondering who lit them
and walked down with my bags to the lobby
when it was three in the morning and glowing
with tea candles spread in the wide hall
men and women and girls dressed in dark formals
waltzed to strains gray and cyan in the clear air
found the bus in the empty lot and rode to the airport
supine straight eyes and mouth
these places --- knows
small doors
a word can assuredly be beautiful
blithe
The dish brims water sliding in itself
forward over the rim onto the carpet
where the sunlight falls and will dry it.
The room is empty but for empty hands,
the fans forcing peace into July,
and the lightening moon
I wish I did not dream of you
leaning on a column, sitting in a chair,
bending over the edge into your own eyes
growing larger, clearer as polished marble.
the night you left everyone
I crouched behind a car and thought
sleeping one hour the night you called me
while I was reading a hard case in Dubliners
and drove out to you on foot unable to weigh down
the cement where the car gate was and gave you a glass of water
what would you like to say
If a spade is a spade
and not the knowledge of age, winter, black hair and eyes,
if you lie on your back eyes to the stars,
it's better to know that the earth is holding you back
not from floating upward,
but from falling into nothing,
bees can point to true north
by treading in horizontal figure eights.
The eight of spades is the fear of leaving a bad situation.
woke up covered in sweat and petroleum oil
no traveler returns, puzzles the will, beauty has better commerce than with honesty
Nothing.
the nights after thanksgiving we laid down on felt and you chewed gum
In your room instead, warm and full of vanilla, dry from the humming furnace
easy static electricity in the room,
mine good with cold from the open window on the rustling woods
but I didn't wash my sheets from the sweat for weeks at a time, (fungus may have formed
used to spray febreeze as if that would clean it)
talked about having what we wanted, pressing, drawing letters on our backs
and sometime in the winter the power went out across the city
found flashlights and each other in the dark halls, climbed the closest roof
from the bowl of mountains we looked up at the stars in the nude sky
exposed from the darkness, sorts of light I haven't since unpeeled
My joy is the same as a nitrogen container on a street corner in the city:
What is it doing there?
You look at it if you happen to hit a red
(which is a green for the other lanes),
wonder about it with as little interest
as anything else provokes on the broad way
and move on. It has nothing to do with you,
The focused point is liquid. happiness is a solid.
The days themselves are empty,
not even worth an amount of meals.
The months are grooves in the record
that move clockwise against an analog needle.
When you dream at night somebody's made something
that doesn't get attention. It's not about it,
but that doesn't mean the tracks are comfortable.
Maybe you know
by looking at the hollow spaces where the next song starts.
circles half-remembered treading faint portents in any view
through ophiocus
A year of wandering I would park by the statue of steel shoes in the circle by the canal
to burn off the last hours of daylight, having no home I had five radio stations,
each in turns much, much more beautiful than language. Could switch on the small lightbulb
in the clear plastic housing set in the beige fabric ceiling and switch off the engine
let the fans blow in the humid air. in New York one night couldn't even fall asleep to the music
in my headphones, too loud for Paul across the room. Walked to my divider and knocked.
Apologized and he cursed at my politeness.
december
tunnel light lamps down the dark street
ankles pivot feet through the snow
arm in arm
what would you like to say
before I went to the hall for a concert after some screwdrivers
went outside for a cigarette you grabbed and extinguished
under your foot, jumping in the dry cold
the night you left everyone
else was gone and i was in my room
watching the fireworks out of the window
wondering who lit them
and walked down with my bags to the lobby
when it was three in the morning and glowing
with tea candles spread in the wide hall
men and women and girls dressed in dark formals
waltzed to strains gray and cyan in the clear air
found the bus in the empty lot and rode to the airport
supine straight eyes and mouth
these places --- knows
small doors
a word can assuredly be beautiful
blithe
The dish brims water sliding in itself
forward over the rim onto the carpet
where the sunlight falls and will dry it.
The room is empty but for empty hands,
the fans forcing peace into July,
and the lightening moon
I wish I did not dream of you
leaning on a column, sitting in a chair,
bending over the edge into your own eyes
growing larger, clearer as polished marble.
the night you left everyone
I crouched behind a car and thought
sleeping one hour the night you called me
while I was reading a hard case in Dubliners
and drove out to you on foot unable to weigh down
the cement where the car gate was and gave you a glass of water
what would you like to say
If a spade is a spade
and not the knowledge of age, winter, black hair and eyes,
if you lie on your back eyes to the stars,
it's better to know that the earth is holding you back
not from floating upward,
but from falling into nothing,
bees can point to true north
by treading in horizontal figure eights.
The eight of spades is the fear of leaving a bad situation.
woke up covered in sweat and petroleum oil
no traveler returns, puzzles the will, beauty has better commerce than with honesty
Nothing.
the nights after thanksgiving we laid down on felt and you chewed gum
In your room instead, warm and full of vanilla, dry from the humming furnace
easy static electricity in the room,
mine good with cold from the open window on the rustling woods
but I didn't wash my sheets from the sweat for weeks at a time, (fungus may have formed
used to spray febreeze as if that would clean it)
talked about having what we wanted, pressing, drawing letters on our backs
and sometime in the winter the power went out across the city
found flashlights and each other in the dark halls, climbed the closest roof
from the bowl of mountains we looked up at the stars in the nude sky
exposed from the darkness, sorts of light I haven't since unpeeled
My joy is the same as a nitrogen container on a street corner in the city:
What is it doing there?
You look at it if you happen to hit a red
(which is a green for the other lanes),
wonder about it with as little interest
as anything else provokes on the broad way
and move on. It has nothing to do with you,
The focused point is liquid. happiness is a solid.
The days themselves are empty,
not even worth an amount of meals.
The months are grooves in the record
that move clockwise against an analog needle.
When you dream at night somebody's made something
that doesn't get attention. It's not about it,
but that doesn't mean the tracks are comfortable.
Maybe you know
by looking at the hollow spaces where the next song starts.
Stiltsville
Tepid conclusions swell in August:
waves lapping at house legs,
shortening days drawing close
waters climbing
themselves against gravity.
You yawn starry-eyed
and languidly draw
your legs to arms.
The house
tenuously over coral rocks:
creaking wood dampens dark
from rising ocean frothing
with circling clouds of minnows.
"Dusk always makes me a little uneasy."
"I know what you mean.
I wish we could fix these things."
"We're doing alright."
"No, I mean Stiltsville.
It's illegal to repair these things."
Watching from a roof over the ocean
the sun falls into climbing water
like a goldfish carried to a fountain.
"So it's just going to fall?
"I don't know, no hurricanes yet. Sometime.
We ought to get back before it's too dark."
Miles east clouds drag and circle
each other into a system
that will dissipate before landfall.
"When I was two my family almost
died in one- I remembered when I was
seven. We didn't board the windows
and Andrew crystallized them.
The house was luke warm
and full of glass- the pieces
were this big."
You wink and frame
a calm eye with two long fingers,
smiling, "I want just one more bad one
to stir things up."
The boat pushes home,
right of the red buoys to land.
waves lapping at house legs,
shortening days drawing close
waters climbing
themselves against gravity.
You yawn starry-eyed
and languidly draw
your legs to arms.
The house
tenuously over coral rocks:
creaking wood dampens dark
from rising ocean frothing
with circling clouds of minnows.
"Dusk always makes me a little uneasy."
"I know what you mean.
I wish we could fix these things."
"We're doing alright."
"No, I mean Stiltsville.
It's illegal to repair these things."
Watching from a roof over the ocean
the sun falls into climbing water
like a goldfish carried to a fountain.
"So it's just going to fall?
"I don't know, no hurricanes yet. Sometime.
We ought to get back before it's too dark."
Miles east clouds drag and circle
each other into a system
that will dissipate before landfall.
"When I was two my family almost
died in one- I remembered when I was
seven. We didn't board the windows
and Andrew crystallized them.
The house was luke warm
and full of glass- the pieces
were this big."
You wink and frame
a calm eye with two long fingers,
smiling, "I want just one more bad one
to stir things up."
The boat pushes home,
right of the red buoys to land.
Ianua
January rises coldly from our ashes
dropping from combustions.
Yellow spiders stretching
spin abrupt webs
and feeding small light
the dark gorge of the year.
Appease the hungry past;
you spark a cautious match
and idly flickering,
pendulate light from eyes to hands.
"Will this one explode right here again?"
I laughed, "Well, do you feel lucky?"
"Never at beginning anything."
The flame eats downward the gun-powered,
friction-tongued match, dropped to the ground,
the smoke climbs in fading circles.
Gazing from the rooftop upturned faces
are canvases soaking light paints
coruscating through color spectrums.
Screeching from bottles:
booms of fire work
broad-out rose petals
fold on blooming constellations:
opening doors of light
connect caught stars in spreading
webs and circles.
dropping from combustions.
Yellow spiders stretching
spin abrupt webs
and feeding small light
the dark gorge of the year.
Appease the hungry past;
you spark a cautious match
and idly flickering,
pendulate light from eyes to hands.
"Will this one explode right here again?"
I laughed, "Well, do you feel lucky?"
"Never at beginning anything."
The flame eats downward the gun-powered,
friction-tongued match, dropped to the ground,
the smoke climbs in fading circles.
Gazing from the rooftop upturned faces
are canvases soaking light paints
coruscating through color spectrums.
Screeching from bottles:
booms of fire work
broad-out rose petals
fold on blooming constellations:
opening doors of light
connect caught stars in spreading
webs and circles.
Raceme Dialogue
Speech is difficult of April.
Sky dressed in grays and blues,
rain-wet hair dragging,
clutches backward
from the roots.
You tangle your fingers with a stalk
and draw a dooryard-bloom'd lilac onto
your lips.
Quiet.
Blooming from the hyacinth garden, then
rain drops mount their chariots
and New York declares war on umbrellas.
Attack waves of gales
pull up under the brims,
thin steel supports snapping,
fall defeated in the streets
and float toward the gutters.
You entrench us under a scaffold
and wringing threads of shrapnel
from your hair, say
"Hold these- my arms are full."
"Yeah? My coat is soaking
it'll drip on them."
Smiling, "The whole city is dripping
and much more water won't kill them."
At open air street corners
the hurried gusts stampede past
heedless to turn and scan the alleys.
"Look, another broken umbrella
just left by the curb."
"Reminds me of a wilted flower."
"Or a soldier needing a proper burial."
"That's better- here I'll take the flowers."
A volley of damp gust blows
from the mouths of clouds,
the thunder's speech
reveille calls underground,
the buds wake to rain.
"A closed car is the thing.
Luck enough
to have found hyacinths here,
I say we not drown them."
"This way."
Sky dressed in grays and blues,
rain-wet hair dragging,
clutches backward
from the roots.
You tangle your fingers with a stalk
and draw a dooryard-bloom'd lilac onto
your lips.
Quiet.
Blooming from the hyacinth garden, then
rain drops mount their chariots
and New York declares war on umbrellas.
Attack waves of gales
pull up under the brims,
thin steel supports snapping,
fall defeated in the streets
and float toward the gutters.
You entrench us under a scaffold
and wringing threads of shrapnel
from your hair, say
"Hold these- my arms are full."
"Yeah? My coat is soaking
it'll drip on them."
Smiling, "The whole city is dripping
and much more water won't kill them."
At open air street corners
the hurried gusts stampede past
heedless to turn and scan the alleys.
"Look, another broken umbrella
just left by the curb."
"Reminds me of a wilted flower."
"Or a soldier needing a proper burial."
"That's better- here I'll take the flowers."
A volley of damp gust blows
from the mouths of clouds,
the thunder's speech
reveille calls underground,
the buds wake to rain.
"A closed car is the thing.
Luck enough
to have found hyacinths here,
I say we not drown them."
"This way."
Five Dreams
1. Ankher and the Ladder
"Please come in Mrs. Ankher
will be happy to meet you."
Inside the floor is large-checkered blue
and red and sinks to crater-dimples.
Old Ankher's twin heads are mute-
she sits on a bench at the left wall of the room.
It's dusk and the house is beautiful,
but at some perhaps-price, it is falling-
the east wall is raised by chains
and the acrylic floor slants hard to the ocean.
Children pass through the rooms in slow blurs
and my guide is calling to them.
They go on in circular motion, sliding down
the slick, thick, color-checkered floor
like a spectrum of pawns on a wilting chessboard.
Some do not run out from the water
to complete their circuit.
I descend to the shore with my guide
and we do not talk of a number of vague portents.
Later it is late and I sit on the same bench
in a different house at a different wall.
Some crowd the bench with me, some I know, all
having arms and necks and some peep out
from below the bench where the legs would be
one whom I know narrows eyes at me from the bench leg
and I am suddenly at a great height on a slanted ladder
whose steps then collapse flat.
2. A Bobst-Diver
The Kingfisher mounts his perch and dives
from the top floor of the Bobst library, No-Houston New York,
toward a three-D illusory Escher ocean floor.
He could imagine his vertebrae would divide;
separate to separate continents under these marble cubes,
to donate mangled wings to the university.
He passes the stages of youths of alternate lives
(in some he lives and others, dies:
entering the whirlpool)-
distracted, he has lost his winging at a crucial moment-
Gentiles and Jews passing through the turnstiles.
One cries out in surprise to see a sea-bird
rushing down to pluck a live fish right from his hands.
3. Tom, Ghana, and the Guard
A large lecture hall, nearly empty.
The professor speaks in mumbled gibberish as
the door opens at the hand of Tom Eliot.
He mounts the stair coming to sit
at the chair in front of me.
His head is grown bald and
on it is tattooed some four lines in Greek
(perhaps those of the Sibyl in a jar)
and a horizontal arrow,
crossed diagonally with another.
"Do you know of Ghana?" turning, he asks.
"It's in Africa."
"Some very interesting things there."
Some time has passed as I walk to my apartment.
A fellow in a gas mask stands guard outside;
I greet him and he removes his apparatus.
His eyes are circles of black void
that contract like the aperture of a lens.
4. Wires, Milk, Figure, Flood
I am weaving a length of fishing line
Through, that is, around my fingers
And under the cap of a glass soda bottle
A friend sits next to me
A girl, blue eyeing, across:
"This milk is already ruined."
"Already?
It's just fit itself into the glass."
"I don't think I'll drink it."
"That's because it's ruined."
Fishing wire under the cap;
My friend excuses himself.
The waiter sets down a flotilla
of jams and preserves,
"well look, maple, blond
blueberry, dark marmalade."
...
A figure is silhouetted, suspended,
floats in a dark ceiling alcove
behind a curtain threaded through
glass blue beads.
A strand is loosened, waves,
falls as is seen from above
onto the side of the body, passes through
the nude abdomen of the outlined figure
painlessly.
...
An outsize kitchen of dark granite and tiles, long
tall windows set into the wall without break
are a gallery onto the sea outside.
In the space of a moment
it rolls in, delicate against the glass.
We stand calm, in a row.
Backbones of fantastic creatures
slide out of the slack flood.
The sky thickens heavier with water,
falls clotting the swell purple.
Humongous jaws tear at necks and spines.
At once the whole of them rise bolt upright
and wobble like saws or storm flags.
5. White Room
An interior white space of indeterminate size. A blond-haired
girl in a white dress stands facing the mind's eye at a fair distance,
holding something delicately in two hands. She's told to walk
through by a distant, unheard voice. The girl looks behind her,
'I always walk through and it always gets wet,'
turns again and, seeing from the back now, she walks
forward, carrying an object, small and knotty with penitence.
Seen from the back her figure slows and her hair floats, then
(seeing from the ceiling) turns to four ruddy, groomed dogs
come to the threshold and gaze to her with still bodies.
"Please come in Mrs. Ankher
will be happy to meet you."
Inside the floor is large-checkered blue
and red and sinks to crater-dimples.
Old Ankher's twin heads are mute-
she sits on a bench at the left wall of the room.
It's dusk and the house is beautiful,
but at some perhaps-price, it is falling-
the east wall is raised by chains
and the acrylic floor slants hard to the ocean.
Children pass through the rooms in slow blurs
and my guide is calling to them.
They go on in circular motion, sliding down
the slick, thick, color-checkered floor
like a spectrum of pawns on a wilting chessboard.
Some do not run out from the water
to complete their circuit.
I descend to the shore with my guide
and we do not talk of a number of vague portents.
Later it is late and I sit on the same bench
in a different house at a different wall.
Some crowd the bench with me, some I know, all
having arms and necks and some peep out
from below the bench where the legs would be
one whom I know narrows eyes at me from the bench leg
and I am suddenly at a great height on a slanted ladder
whose steps then collapse flat.
2. A Bobst-Diver
The Kingfisher mounts his perch and dives
from the top floor of the Bobst library, No-Houston New York,
toward a three-D illusory Escher ocean floor.
He could imagine his vertebrae would divide;
separate to separate continents under these marble cubes,
to donate mangled wings to the university.
He passes the stages of youths of alternate lives
(in some he lives and others, dies:
entering the whirlpool)-
distracted, he has lost his winging at a crucial moment-
Gentiles and Jews passing through the turnstiles.
One cries out in surprise to see a sea-bird
rushing down to pluck a live fish right from his hands.
3. Tom, Ghana, and the Guard
A large lecture hall, nearly empty.
The professor speaks in mumbled gibberish as
the door opens at the hand of Tom Eliot.
He mounts the stair coming to sit
at the chair in front of me.
His head is grown bald and
on it is tattooed some four lines in Greek
(perhaps those of the Sibyl in a jar)
and a horizontal arrow,
crossed diagonally with another.
"Do you know of Ghana?" turning, he asks.
"It's in Africa."
"Some very interesting things there."
Some time has passed as I walk to my apartment.
A fellow in a gas mask stands guard outside;
I greet him and he removes his apparatus.
His eyes are circles of black void
that contract like the aperture of a lens.
4. Wires, Milk, Figure, Flood
I am weaving a length of fishing line
Through, that is, around my fingers
And under the cap of a glass soda bottle
A friend sits next to me
A girl, blue eyeing, across:
"This milk is already ruined."
"Already?
It's just fit itself into the glass."
"I don't think I'll drink it."
"That's because it's ruined."
Fishing wire under the cap;
My friend excuses himself.
The waiter sets down a flotilla
of jams and preserves,
"well look, maple, blond
blueberry, dark marmalade."
...
A figure is silhouetted, suspended,
floats in a dark ceiling alcove
behind a curtain threaded through
glass blue beads.
A strand is loosened, waves,
falls as is seen from above
onto the side of the body, passes through
the nude abdomen of the outlined figure
painlessly.
...
An outsize kitchen of dark granite and tiles, long
tall windows set into the wall without break
are a gallery onto the sea outside.
In the space of a moment
it rolls in, delicate against the glass.
We stand calm, in a row.
Backbones of fantastic creatures
slide out of the slack flood.
The sky thickens heavier with water,
falls clotting the swell purple.
Humongous jaws tear at necks and spines.
At once the whole of them rise bolt upright
and wobble like saws or storm flags.
5. White Room
An interior white space of indeterminate size. A blond-haired
girl in a white dress stands facing the mind's eye at a fair distance,
holding something delicately in two hands. She's told to walk
through by a distant, unheard voice. The girl looks behind her,
'I always walk through and it always gets wet,'
turns again and, seeing from the back now, she walks
forward, carrying an object, small and knotty with penitence.
Seen from the back her figure slows and her hair floats, then
(seeing from the ceiling) turns to four ruddy, groomed dogs
come to the threshold and gaze to her with still bodies.
An Interlude
In March winds oscillate toward thaws:
pulling curtains outside of windows:
eyelids rising and dropping,
careful gusts catch
fallen lashes
touching circles to street puddles of frost.
You lift the window curtain
and calmly suspending yourself,
lean over the fire escape.
The alley
shelters sky-sections
that walk path-stone rooftops,
tarp-lift for the sun,
hushes avenue audiences murmuring
above passing subway trains.
"I wish we were higher up."
I nodded, "I'd like the quiet too."
On Thirteenth and Sixth the streetlamps linger,
keeping lit long into the morning. Fire-
escapes gleaning such glares
lean over the playhouse.
"I like the noise from down there- isn't it
romantic to live ontop a theater?"
"Why be higher?"
"We would catch more light."
"And I could stand below the fire-escape
and call you the sun."
You raise the corners of your lips
turned downward almost
into a smile.
I step through the window,
"Is it over?"
"It's intermission."
Inside the actors osculate,
change,
and watch quietly the dark
back of the curtain.
pulling curtains outside of windows:
eyelids rising and dropping,
careful gusts catch
fallen lashes
touching circles to street puddles of frost.
You lift the window curtain
and calmly suspending yourself,
lean over the fire escape.
The alley
shelters sky-sections
that walk path-stone rooftops,
tarp-lift for the sun,
hushes avenue audiences murmuring
above passing subway trains.
"I wish we were higher up."
I nodded, "I'd like the quiet too."
On Thirteenth and Sixth the streetlamps linger,
keeping lit long into the morning. Fire-
escapes gleaning such glares
lean over the playhouse.
"I like the noise from down there- isn't it
romantic to live ontop a theater?"
"Why be higher?"
"We would catch more light."
"And I could stand below the fire-escape
and call you the sun."
You raise the corners of your lips
turned downward almost
into a smile.
I step through the window,
"Is it over?"
"It's intermission."
Inside the actors osculate,
change,
and watch quietly the dark
back of the curtain.
Thin
Some causes for celebration
in youth;
midsummer.
Lights strung changing
in abrupt constellations,
rain-dancing stilted figures, and
cart-wheeling fingers and palms
of a steel-girdered gymnast.
The evening weaves
through hanging carriages.
"I have to do the cliche thing and say-"
"It was taller
when you were little?"
She smiles, "I was on top of the world."
The Ferris wheel cycles round
the air: night-humid and
carnival sounds
are thick in it and thinning
toward the top-
the chime as a father helps his weak son
swing a hammer at the ring-the-bell;
a huckster yells "get your cotton candy,
candy apples."
All the old world
is gathered at the boundaries,
tobacco incense,
balmy wilderness.
"I love the silence up here."
"You're being sentimental."
"Am I? It's a carnival."
"It's something now."
She smooths back her hair
and fingers pressure on a bare brow.
"It's nice,
and sometimes when the wheel stops
you stay up here longer."
He glances at his thin wrists
as rain drops gather in their carriages
and the fairgrounds pull them into needles,
away from the weighty moon:
silver as a bell.
in youth;
midsummer.
Lights strung changing
in abrupt constellations,
rain-dancing stilted figures, and
cart-wheeling fingers and palms
of a steel-girdered gymnast.
The evening weaves
through hanging carriages.
"I have to do the cliche thing and say-"
"It was taller
when you were little?"
She smiles, "I was on top of the world."
The Ferris wheel cycles round
the air: night-humid and
carnival sounds
are thick in it and thinning
toward the top-
the chime as a father helps his weak son
swing a hammer at the ring-the-bell;
a huckster yells "get your cotton candy,
candy apples."
All the old world
is gathered at the boundaries,
tobacco incense,
balmy wilderness.
"I love the silence up here."
"You're being sentimental."
"Am I? It's a carnival."
"It's something now."
She smooths back her hair
and fingers pressure on a bare brow.
"It's nice,
and sometimes when the wheel stops
you stay up here longer."
He glances at his thin wrists
as rain drops gather in their carriages
and the fairgrounds pull them into needles,
away from the weighty moon:
silver as a bell.
Meld Jacks
after Kenneth Fearing
An unbalanced easel
with a worn brittle frame
would disappear entirely among a shady grove
beneath songbirds and wind,
(or a discarded iron bed).
One thinks of cans floating in a bay
caressed by fingers of turtle grass.
One thinks of dew plucked from
arching leaves or rain sounding on rusted tin.
Whatever is gained is not what it seems.
Dew plucked from a pin cushion of leaves
is ephemeral - condensation on a fan blade
and tears on a bed sheet.
Being a vertebrate slave to history, Christ the tiger
paws his collarbone and spits into blind eyes.
On the mind's yellowed pages
the scene is lost in a film burnout.
Because sand will drift
in clouds in bucolic water until
it is burned to glass,
so will an easel sublimate and
saw grass is saw dust
and, "Let's just go inside. These things
are eating me alive." A mosquito
with benedictine on the breath
"Because how I'd love to satisfy you,
but you'll see I must be satisfied too."
Then, lay to sleep.
If I should ask, What are visions
if not God's chosen people
melding jacks
An unbalanced easel
with a worn brittle frame
would disappear entirely among a shady grove
beneath songbirds and wind,
(or a discarded iron bed).
One thinks of cans floating in a bay
caressed by fingers of turtle grass.
One thinks of dew plucked from
arching leaves or rain sounding on rusted tin.
Whatever is gained is not what it seems.
Dew plucked from a pin cushion of leaves
is ephemeral - condensation on a fan blade
and tears on a bed sheet.
Being a vertebrate slave to history, Christ the tiger
paws his collarbone and spits into blind eyes.
On the mind's yellowed pages
the scene is lost in a film burnout.
Because sand will drift
in clouds in bucolic water until
it is burned to glass,
so will an easel sublimate and
saw grass is saw dust
and, "Let's just go inside. These things
are eating me alive." A mosquito
with benedictine on the breath
"Because how I'd love to satisfy you,
but you'll see I must be satisfied too."
Then, lay to sleep.
If I should ask, What are visions
if not God's chosen people
melding jacks
Anonimo Key
June flows through conduits,
blood racing through arteries:
energy in power lines,
vapor cycling
through phase shifts.
You blush like a cynosure
only idly parting
apples from stems.
The Sun.
Brilliantly through car windows
on unreal highways,
spotting my bad eyes
holding stolen glances.
"Are these roads or islands?"
"I guess they're both."
Driving to the Keys, the power lines
straddle cement supports
sunken in the sea.
"How can they do that?"
"What? Oh, they're classically trained;
Reich discovered it."
"No, the power lines.
How do they do that?"
"Must take some sweet-talking."
"They'll be beautiful in ruins."
Time draws close
and presses on memory.
The road wavers in its spectrums
like a curtain that will fall or withdraw.
"So are we going the right way?
Should we turn around?"
"I've always wanted to write the ocean."
Blue that slows the blood in your eyes,
with the Sun's gold
and the sand white.
Brilliantly in coruscation
the ocean spills into the sky
calmly parting
liquid to curtains:
tides phasing
through crescendos.
"Then think of us.
We were the ocean once
trading lightning bolts with heaven."
blood racing through arteries:
energy in power lines,
vapor cycling
through phase shifts.
You blush like a cynosure
only idly parting
apples from stems.
The Sun.
Brilliantly through car windows
on unreal highways,
spotting my bad eyes
holding stolen glances.
"Are these roads or islands?"
"I guess they're both."
Driving to the Keys, the power lines
straddle cement supports
sunken in the sea.
"How can they do that?"
"What? Oh, they're classically trained;
Reich discovered it."
"No, the power lines.
How do they do that?"
"Must take some sweet-talking."
"They'll be beautiful in ruins."
Time draws close
and presses on memory.
The road wavers in its spectrums
like a curtain that will fall or withdraw.
"So are we going the right way?
Should we turn around?"
"I've always wanted to write the ocean."
Blue that slows the blood in your eyes,
with the Sun's gold
and the sand white.
Brilliantly in coruscation
the ocean spills into the sky
calmly parting
liquid to curtains:
tides phasing
through crescendos.
"Then think of us.
We were the ocean once
trading lightning bolts with heaven."
Reflecting Hurricanes
It's a city of warmth
that's only cool on my hand
passing quickly over the street,
and the street is quiet and dark
creating itself where headlights reach,
Or where slowly-flashing yellow
illuminates the rain
and drains the mind of sudden speech:
the rhythmic streetlights, each to each
a common thread, a golden chain
we circle round our hands to pull them closer
when the street is brushed over with wind and waves
and the lights disperse in blind retreat;
the city darkens in sudden squalls.
We gather each other in the gathering gloom
and wait in warmth in our rooms and halls
while the sun steps in, circling the sea.
I draw my hand in close to me
to dry the palm and raise the glass,
spotted now with moving mirrors
that bend the leaves that slowly fall
to cushion our steps through circling trees
on the leaf-broken sunlight grass
pulled gently from the ground.
Careless of all
we recline, our fingers entwined
in conversation with the new day near us,
beside the days that came to call
our reaching eyes to glinting windows
to find ourselves outside our walls
that can advance, compress the air,
become self-portraits to empty eyes
until winds strike in crumbling blows
to strip lifeless art from gilded frames.
We view the scene, our thoughts the same,
though different storms will bring them near
to memories of peace and chaos:
the balanced, careful loss and gain
that echoes and bends in clear reflection
like the sunlight on waters
that deflects toward our eyes.
It's a city of warmth
whose every window is a mirror.
We forget about semblant reality,
but see ourselves in every blade of grass
that reflects back the sunlight in warm greens.
We hear breeze rustling leaves
and hear the listening-silence thoughts we had:
remembering where we were
when we remembered the same sound of the wind.
that's only cool on my hand
passing quickly over the street,
and the street is quiet and dark
creating itself where headlights reach,
Or where slowly-flashing yellow
illuminates the rain
and drains the mind of sudden speech:
the rhythmic streetlights, each to each
a common thread, a golden chain
we circle round our hands to pull them closer
when the street is brushed over with wind and waves
and the lights disperse in blind retreat;
the city darkens in sudden squalls.
We gather each other in the gathering gloom
and wait in warmth in our rooms and halls
while the sun steps in, circling the sea.
I draw my hand in close to me
to dry the palm and raise the glass,
spotted now with moving mirrors
that bend the leaves that slowly fall
to cushion our steps through circling trees
on the leaf-broken sunlight grass
pulled gently from the ground.
Careless of all
we recline, our fingers entwined
in conversation with the new day near us,
beside the days that came to call
our reaching eyes to glinting windows
to find ourselves outside our walls
that can advance, compress the air,
become self-portraits to empty eyes
until winds strike in crumbling blows
to strip lifeless art from gilded frames.
We view the scene, our thoughts the same,
though different storms will bring them near
to memories of peace and chaos:
the balanced, careful loss and gain
that echoes and bends in clear reflection
like the sunlight on waters
that deflects toward our eyes.
It's a city of warmth
whose every window is a mirror.
We forget about semblant reality,
but see ourselves in every blade of grass
that reflects back the sunlight in warm greens.
We hear breeze rustling leaves
and hear the listening-silence thoughts we had:
remembering where we were
when we remembered the same sound of the wind.
Fovea
The bottom of a ceiling drops out to pallid clouds
(not yet attired in mushroom cap and gown)
a silver cyanide pill that Einstein coughed up
when he was Heimliched by a tyrant's fit.
If we were to create a desert we would not deal in lead
but dress in it.
Las Vegas glitter in vitreous detachment
and Einstein would acquiesce that the Earth is shrinking
like a stack of chips,
a marble buffeted by walls of numbers,
slowing in orbit.
Because with our hands grasping the golden handle,
we assumed we could spin on red and black spokes
like the stock ticker in Times Square
that moves faster than the clouds, ticking away time.
At midnight we land on double zero
and you place your coin-jangling hand in mine.
I press in your new eyes until milk-clear clouds
spill over the flood gates.
My head swims in the shallows,
spinning like a roulette wheel,
igniting before contact with the night-cold concrete.
(not yet attired in mushroom cap and gown)
a silver cyanide pill that Einstein coughed up
when he was Heimliched by a tyrant's fit.
If we were to create a desert we would not deal in lead
but dress in it.
Las Vegas glitter in vitreous detachment
and Einstein would acquiesce that the Earth is shrinking
like a stack of chips,
a marble buffeted by walls of numbers,
slowing in orbit.
Because with our hands grasping the golden handle,
we assumed we could spin on red and black spokes
like the stock ticker in Times Square
that moves faster than the clouds, ticking away time.
At midnight we land on double zero
and you place your coin-jangling hand in mine.
I press in your new eyes until milk-clear clouds
spill over the flood gates.
My head swims in the shallows,
spinning like a roulette wheel,
igniting before contact with the night-cold concrete.
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