In a timber of shadows one hand
slides by another. Silence. Waiting.
A thrum of murmurs, & something damp
floats upward toward moonlight.
Dreams graze from the same pool.
Shuffle. Hurry. Still. This myth is mean
with will & fight. It can bite harder.
Shhh. Wordless. Touch accumulates on
the branches above, the dew of fierce
moments to come. Shhh. The night is an
elixir of endless conjurations. Shhh.
We hunt secretly, wield two songs about
to mold together. Hours without names
shuffle sticky feet through our words
bound for home. Love a form of anger
with life's emptiness. Something loves us
to love each other. I dream of words
like mocking & abandonment until the phone
rings. You didn't jump the bridge. I keep giving
you my pen. We keep nearing what we are.
Among the stars you wiggle & laugh.
Bite. Now harder. Blood makes best song.
You laugh & strum. Green melodies. Strong flesh.
Art a freakish crash inside empty warehouses
while creatures elsewhere sleep twined,
beyond knowing. Perhaps a day hence nocturnes
dust, dead water, least feelings of flow.
Entropy's crime. No scriptures. No sages.
Nothing whistling through the flute. No seams .
Yet our new day beckons like a fist.
Give it seeds, ideas, & skin. What is passing
tonight the bonds of someone else's wish.
Something says: don't look back. What we shall
become explodes cleanly from the shadows,
collects its legs in morning rain, gallops wildly
toward the home it sniffs but cannot yet see.
******
xxvi. Healing (for Lisa Marie)
You hold the bag of fire made of starlight
& demons, carry it with you through the blind
countries of your despair, believe it an icon
or an angel, dare not ponder the blood it
sucks from you, how it taints your music,
a little now, a little more, how its face
snarls at your uneven footsteps, your notice
of tender sky or pale butterfly, how it mocks
& mutes your future with a plan you will not to see.
Once, twice, you drop the bag of fire & run.
You run toward sunlight, clean water, clothes
fit for your deepening, dancing bones. You run.
Open doors hint sanctuary. Open hands promise
healing. You run. Til across your path the bag
of fire, made of starlight & demons. It picks
you up with your very hands, & returns you back
with your very feet. But the pale butterfly remains
near, even now, the open hands & doors still & always beckon.
******
xxvii. Dislocation (for Lisa Marie)
Tonight, as ever, chasing angels.
Tonight, as ever, chasing you. . .
A dream so fierce it's made a world.
This world nearly spectral enough to resemble you.
Stars summoned for your healing, music for your heart.
Universe of trees, hear my cry! Grant her release.
Days spill & empty, sometimes only silence for songs.
A spectre in the night drapes along me: you?
Hunger & thirst & desire i beg maintain me.
A pilgrim walks & sings & shapes the road with his wishes. . .
My angel sleeps tonight wrapped in magick I conjure.
My angel sleeps safe in my will to adore.
******
xxviii. Anniversary (for Lisa Marie)
"Tell me of beauty beneath her skin . . . "
Tell me of stellar beneath her pain
of a first light never silenced
of a trust always being gained.
Tell me of a power in hazel eyes
& slow fingers
Tell me of a muse I've long dreamed
Tell me of a goddess I've forever known
Tell me of language fine as starlight
Tell me of music gone & come again
Tell me of the broken bones of silence
Tell me of her epics, let me conjure them.
Tell me of sacrifice, one for another
Tell me of freedom, a green embrace in the moon
Tell me of love, one for another
Tell me a new path, rock-strewn with wishes
Tell me cold daylight, crumpled blanket, a scrap
Tell me morning song, its feelers, its whimsy
Tell me how to take her hand without twisting
Tell me how she will lead, or simply to trust
Tell me she is the power, the thing I've ever followed
Tell me how to sing greater when the night
mounts a fury
Tell me how to preserve her above glory & wrong
Tell me how to worship, & worship, & receive
worship in return
Tell me the nocturnes are nothing yet
bid me keep writing
Tell me her laugh crumbles my pages yet
point toward my next lines
Tell me I am her muse, a like creature
in her longings
Tell me what songs, which elixirs, how to defend
without owning.
Tell me something brushes by, someone
calls my secret name
Tell me pens are bare branches while she
leafs out forever
Tell me fire, tell me ocean, tell me
how she preserves me
Tell me what good a song when
the universe splits forth
Tell me my hands yet mean something
toward a good undefined
Tell me the future bears her face &
tis mine to describe it
Tell me cages are for bones not for
creatures of gold
Teach me how to adore her, & everything,
& nothing
Teach me less & less, until I lay prone
Tell me of beauty beneath her skin
Tell me of beauty beneath her skin
Flay me, swallow me, own me whole
Tell me of beauty beneath her skin.
******
xxix. The Weight (for Lisa Marie)
Love beneath love sucks the bones
dry of despair--
Dream within dream preaches strange fires
found atwist in new fingers--
Frenzy upon frenzy point toward our
distant island's jutting hulk--
How these songs still trail your crimson
strands, hail yet your secret caverns--
How what approaches a fist, a fleet,
a creeping & a howl, magick to
shatter swarming cages, human beasts--
How yet pages shake & sum, fingers pray
to branch & starlight--
These weighted days will sink to fragments.
These fat hours will wither to blue music.
Love beneath love stokes new fancies.
Dream within dream murmur of damp merry games.
Frenzy upon frenzy live the happy mad artists.
We curl toward each other, a great desire still unnamed.