"She followed slowly, taking a long time,
as though there was some obstacle in the way;
and yet: as though, once it was overcome,
she would be beyond all walking, and would fly."
--Rainer Maria Rilke, "Going Blind," 1907-08
i. Waking the Lyre
The universe provides, I am told. Keep crawling.
The universe glows among ruins & blooms.
I will build you a new sky every day,
with ink, paintbrush, lyre, my heart;
what remains, what awaits.
Release tears you apart seeking you,
shears forged from heat cut light shaped by fear.
Bite of sun, bite of viper, bite of kisses.
The universe provides: keep this thought.
Tomorrow a new day, a new sky, nearer our departure.
***
ii. No Silence but Birds
Not a goddess but a girl. Both.
A brooding. A boiling.
Two stars fiercing for a god's single glance.
A bite, a squeeze, then an emptiness.
A finger-stained badge where clutch
ceases, continues.
She moves on, into the shadows. Beckons.
Bring lyre, bring love. Bring memories
of starlight.
Toward the grove that was not there,
past the eyes that mumble of daily things.
Two stars have collapsed the moon by way
of goodbye & greeting.
***
iii. What Transforms, What Binds
I feel you descend. What is twin, stretches.
Following silence with noisy steps, sniffing
the invisible, for human tangle, call it
love.
Doubt steams among branches & trees.
Sleep demurs by bones & burrs.
Still: a great song brushes through the thickening shadow.
Then a dream: a crown of sweetgrass,
scent of clarity & freedom.
Nightfall, ever. Beyond tendrils of green,
our strum shudders, remains. We learned
it well. Still: mist growls, gathers you in.
***
iv. Neither a Christ nor Pussy Sell Out Tonight
Burn what's left. Watch the strings break
among growing grass.
A party. A bonfire. Artful deafness
for restless dancers.
The night still grips me, the fat
of my loins, the soft of my soul.
Still I hear you crying. For an angel.
For a man. For laughter. Sweets.
Let it all burn. Move fast. Reckon
the wind. Pack trust.
Nothing moves but something wishes to.
Something stomps, shakes. Call it a moan.
***
v. Purgation
I do not know how to love without being hurt
I do not know how to love without being hurt
by sucking it dry with my thirst & yearning
I do not know how to love without being hurt
by sucking it dry with my thirst & yearning
for myth & dream ALIVE aware whipping back
I do not know how to love without being hurt
by sucking it dry with my thirst & yearning
for myth & dream ALIVE aware whipping back
& forth with flame & roar, how to love
I do not know how to love without being hurt
by sucking it dry with my thirst & yearning
for myth & dream ALIVE aware whipping back
& forth with flame & roar, how to love
without kiss then crash, how to love without
pound & slam & grunt & blackness
I do not know how to love without being hurt
by sucking it dry with my thirst & yearning
for myth & dream ALIVE aware whipping back
& forth with flame & roar, how to love
without kiss then crash, how to love without
pound & slam & grunt & blackness, music
that smiles brighter until it no longer exists.
***
vi. Numinous
Then she turns & looks within. The strum continues
as it always has. Vipers & demons bite only so
deep. Love, & love's nameless god, web fiercely &
finely worlds without beginning or cease. She
turns & look within. Something jumps. Clusters
of words break before heart's holy roar.
***
vii. Release (Paralysis)
Life is suffering. Blame a toad. List
the kings & demons, storms dirged
to the world. Books will explain it,
if you read them. Life is suffering,
so tales the law. Never a beauty
won't be squeezed. Never a field won't
be fought. Life is suffering, enough for art,
enough for polity. Enough for the rootless
siege crossing men's minds. Enough until
a warrior Dream cries "Enough!"
Hands flare, feet shout. A lordly
fire among trees. Where more powerful
magicks are prayed it begins to be
whispered: Life is rapture. Many
of the ones who especially listen now
say: Life is rapture. Her every heartbeat
chimes my name. Her secret happiness is
laughter on my lips. Life is rapture.
***
viii. Howling
The viper bites, & bites again. Make no mistake:
fear collects everywhere to trip the world.
Viper of bullets & bruises. Viper will rip ragged
your music & dreams.
She collapsed among her oaks. Something hard
pulled her away. Tonight I trail her still.
The viper knew her well. A shadow in
her daisies, a breath among her lace.
She told me of the viper, of how it knew her,
how perhaps she was its own.
I crawl for you tonight. I listen. Horns &
flaws delay me. Still crawling. Your howl beckons me.
The viper taught you its bite, its craft.
Raise a doubt to a mountain, conjure
old demons, link their claws, choke your
flow. Who is trying to break you? Who's bitten whom?
You reach back to me, a pearled string of
desires & cries. Stretch. Howl. It holds. It holds.
***
ix. Cradle
You shine the moon tonight, touch
me again with your laughter, reflect
& elude, grip my heart, growl your
flag, shudder along me, break a demon,
fierce among others, shiver. Retreat.
Come back, & again. Your love a fist
when it must. Your prayers & days protect
me, unleash your blood like knives.
The girl in you becoming a warrior,
a wizard. A forest, a pack. I begin
to think of you as goddess, your love
a force within which I rock blindly.
***
x. Release (Waken)
Desire flares suffering. Moving bodies in
the firelight suck jars of elixir, still fail
to merge but crookedly. Drummers crowd
& romance the biggest moon, talk in
the rhythms of ten thousand years of hands;
still their feet snuffle in the dirt, still
a moan & collapse to silence. Still a silence
only men hunger to name. Suffering
builds castles, pushes up libraries, anoints
kings & jihads. Suffering fetches meals
by the slap, teaches children by the herd.
Suffering adores small gods & idiot passions,
receives twigs as meaty bones, acknowledges
departure as power's gift. Release & reward
from shovel & boot. Kick the earth. Ignore its reply.
She dreams of green leaves & other live young
things. She whispers "desire" & "rapture" into her
damp pillow. The trees nearby listen, & beckon me hurry.
***
xi. Law of Love
There is no law. A white blossom thrusts
from river's trembles. The golden seer
teaches pretty children the old songs he has
traveled all his life. Sunshine & oaks
nurture & jostle.
Open your eyes. Everything has moved again.
Sunshine & oaks teach pretty children songs
only their skin will remember. Some become
golden seers with few books & silken smiles.
They teach when offered white blossoms to
empathize, submit.
Open your eyes. Life yet. Work to do.
Hunger the familiar tone, centuries pass,
perhaps there has been law. Some adventure
in sacred geometry. Some point outward &
say nothing. Perhaps laugh, rile up the drumming,
dawn, hours later.
Noon against the crown. Afternoon against the collar.
White blossom opens along the evening,
tolerance reigning toward release, midnight
unto love, rapture breaks widely, beauty
proclaimed by pale-eyed conspiracies.
Hunger roars, spears apart hard secrets.
Open your eyes. The pretty children aren't sleeping
anymore.
Some law lingers, quickens, unwritten but
observed. Golden seers each contain a bright
season, some fine shaping gesture, something
kind, empathetic, love fiercest in dancing
fingertips. We listen with creaturely attraction.
What can anyone see ahead? Resolution riddled
by evolution.
Remembrance of white blossom opening
at dawn, &what yet clings to the eyes at
day's height. A golden seer hands round seeds,
leads rushes into oaks & sunshine. Nearer
seeing now. Smiling & singing.
Nothing's changing but the tide. Open your eyes.
You're awake now. There is no law.
***
xii. Sacrificial
The candle burns this morning as a tribute
to the dawn.
I watched you through the night as your
dreams touched my face.
What climbs between us is a magick,
a healing carol, damp wings.
Our minds slip through each other,
hurry & lurch like humans, laugh & pray & build
.
What's left behind less matter & sentiment than
rust. Love is the only law. Law collapses to the free.
Take my hands & find release. We'll return as stolen
children to the night. Older songs & slower hours await us.
***
xiii. Release (Mending)
A singing in the heart. Your beauty that of
trees, & wind. Language in the blood, the heat
of desire & doubt. Daytimes of silence, what
happens irrelevant. Nighttimes of prophecy,
fists hold a heartbeat. Dread explains hurry.
You breathe for my safety.
A singing in the heart. Regard my hands: they make
for you. Were they branches, thus fruit.
Were they silence, thus wisdom. Hope explains hurry.
Daytime mere sugar, a fruitless passing.
Something stares bluntly from your want.
Possession. Faith without expectation.
A singing in the heart. Spires fierce, damage
real, love is mending. Traffic muddies the
resolve, awhile. Pain explains hurry.
Eventual days dress for union, &
nights for shadowless vows. You sniff my
music, feel me coming. Our trial will never end.
***
xiv. Bountiful
Something loves us to love each other.
I sleep on the ground near pears & ink.
Our love becomes a soil where unbidden
things grow.
These days erect colossus, wanting & warm.
Some text jointly composes our dreams,
nib of starlight dipped in flame.
A necklace of songs strung between our hearts
holds secrets yet beyond our ken.
***
xv. Rising
The lyre becomes sabre, the backbone
armor. No way out but through. The road
covers miles of grit & speculation. What
approaches confrontation, a park, two shadows.
(Meanwhile days cluster, rally green & red
closely.) Perhaps clarity's kiss. Hands fierce
for truth. No way out but through. Love
bites, doubts, perhaps braves it secret war.
***
xvi. Chasing Angels
Chasing angels, hurry, flames, shoot the pipes--
Chasing angels, adventure, willows & creatures
beyond fear and time--
Chasing angels, she swings into my face
like old--
Chasing angels, she swings away &
I hear "follow"--
Chasing angels, trees tall as stars,
kisses imagining new worlds--
Chasing angels, sabres and sweets, "follow"--
Chasing angels, drink elixir in the carriage,
squirming in shadows, mumbling holiness rants--
Chasing angels, I watch the sky broaden,
begin to whisper sugar into my sleeves--
Chasing angels, begin, continue, a pebble
etched with hope--
Chasing angels, I carry your heart around
my neck, and a rhythm of your sunshine--
Chasing angels, the days have no weight,
the nights no touch, the growl within me
nears the surface--
Chasing angels, I call you wife, tell you
"follow," you tell me "follow," we are soon
colliding, a truth with teeth, a maybe no more.
***
xvii. Release (Witness)
Widening my ripple to meet you where
dreams shade into sun.
I bring my cloaks & cask of music.
The road wields me smoothly now,
no hustles, no lies.
You're a faith, a siege, a drift to better days.
What pilgrims find in marshes & mountains
I feel you breathing along my skin.
Air & water. Ink & candles. Love's furies.
Less hurry than will purged my home,
drove me toward you. What companions
me now a thrumming's acceleration.
Tridents of heat ride muscle & bone,
my cause a riddle preaching from within;
another hill nearer, neither hope nor fear.
***
xviii. Kiss (Breaking the Lyre)
Orpheus followed Eurydice into the underworld,
strumming pangs, oaths, & loving cries,
shimmying, stumbling. Blankness. A trail
he sniffed by the lingering rhythms of her
blood, nymph's liquid light, within elixir strange
& vulnerable to what drips ceiling to floor,
nothing to nothing. What brushed him on
the cold of rust's breath all around,
fear of fake idols of a fake release. Ceasing
to invent the world with his instrument's
tapestries of flame, resistance diminished to
the distracting talk of professors & politicians,
he could not play away what was gathering.
Burning tunic & lyre he conjured from a place
where silk & music still blend. Burning
released two fingers of dust & a cataclysm
of light. Eurydice appeared, impossibly far,
eyes closed, lips open, waiting, waiting for him still.
***
xix. Nearing
There is hope. Back of hills in shadow,
beyond jams of metal & flesh. There is
hope. Raw earthly dreams say so.
Secret persistent flames. What approaches.
What awaits. There is hope. Something
likes the world softly golden, greenly thrusting.
I make a new lyre & prepare to sing to you.
Within this instrument collected our thrash
& our sugars. The carriage grinds forth,
mile to mile, meal to meal. Comes a dawn
of wild orange eyes, landscape too flat
for telling, & I am nearly ready.
There is hope. A change of skies, from
crops to dust, the mind bounds ahead,
the heart crawls back. Agreement finally
by sage who pisses & smiles & says:
"No expection. There is hope. The child's
for knowing touch. The pilgrim's for kinder moon."
Who seeks whom, my love? Who rescues,
who receives? I hold this new-born
instrument & feel your raw want, the remaining
freedom of your dreams. Which music,
what kiss, will retrieve you? There is hope
as I strum & will it so. Grope. Trust.
***
xx. Release (Ecstasy)
Love is everything. Blossoms atop a bottomless
well. Sun nourishing utterly til divine & its pain
are abandoned. Rapture. Soul plus soul sum to soul.
***
xxi. Happiness
We will appear before each other again,
& touch, call the moment "release,"
& begin to climb.
The first time the world disappeared.
No underworld. No sunlight. Only love.
We agree: love is everything.
A kiss, & again. There is no world.
No music, no starlight. No blending.
No bleeding. Skin's nearness. Breathing.
We will appear before each other again,
& touch, call the moment "release,"
& in beginning to climb renew the world.
Where once doubt would have turned
us to look back, caught by teeth & fear,
we will kiss. Like lips to water. Hands to sky.
Love is everything. Become muscled, it runs.
Nurtured bones, it builds. Hearts gladdened,
it sings. Watch us marry, & begin the world.
***
xxii. Recursive
A dream so fierce it makes a world.
Blood & pain of a myth crawling into the sun.
Your love wields fist & light. Shaking. Power.
Your love will crush miles & hours alike.
This time you are the bite not the bitten.
I strum for you. Music dapples your path.
You hurry. No world. No starlight. You hurry.
***
xxiii. Acceleration
A sudden breath & the world newly opens.
Desire smiles & reveals slowly. Release
is near. Don't look back.
The underworld helpless heeds strumming
but not his. Hers. The myth cracks
into a wonderwall of notes. Strum. Faster.
No viper. Not anymore. A flicker of power
& the poison is gone. Never was. Who rescues
whom? The world newly opens. Don't look back.
Strumming joins strumming, love is kind but
hark its roar. The underworld diminishes,
is gone. Never was. A sudden breath. Desire smiles.
Love is everything, the only way through,
the only way out. Release in submission,
strum, dance. Hazel eyes fierce. Music begins our world.
A vessel of water, dish of fruit. This morning
is rapture, spirits & schemes. She laughs
past shadows falling. Call it a dream. Know it's more.
***
xxiv. Release (Celestial)
Something loves us to love each other,
some mad roar for Beauty that prowls
throughout the world. Something devastating
to order. Something deeper than every fear.
We persist. Our treasure. Our pain.
I carry you into the sunlight, finally.