And where do these answers come from?
The ring of pointing fingers pressing attention
to a wrecked, twitching harlequin, calling it
news, wisdom, instruction, love. Squads of
preachers & merchants gird the king, frowning, pointing.
A few disbelieve at cost of ease or blood.
A few carry pipes & herbs, pamphlets of kisses
& comical scribblings, feathers from burnt
forests & bracelets from struck tribes.
Where, I say, do your answers come from?
Does the elusive crone with three green twigs
& three quiet words know less? Will a
tavern's comforts taint the last juice from
your dream's moans & urges? How deeply must
the king's ranks & rants chase to corner &
pluck the last of your sex, the last
of your savage?
The ragged few minister to needs impolite,
to the fierce twitchings of the mind, to the
wordless growling down below. Three abed
lick thighs & hum. A dozen more drum
in a field lit only by full moon & blaze.
Maybe there are few, maybe there
are more. They say the end hurries
toward us with a rage & glow. I say
not a single one of us knows.
I can only wield my power tonight by
letting it sing me true. I can only shamble
on doorless to fingers, feathers, breeze, &
verbs. I can only say in every way:
let's save the world. It's easy. I can only
agree that both mocking & reverance belong
to every calling. Yours, yours, & mine own.
******
xiv. Frenzy (for Lisa Marie)
She dances nude in the highest moonlight,
cries, sings, summons. Love is to her blooms
upon a hill. Your war cannot fragment her,
cannot dissuade her bliss. What rises
round her has always risen, on such nights,
round such frenzies of liberation. Watch.
Mount her lace with your fear & with your
arrogance. You take little. Go again with
another. You take less. Try a third, one
who mistaken adores you. Nothing. You take
nothing. Bullets kill. Blossoms wound. What
blood would you raise tonight could you truly choose?
The king yowls with power. He barks
the preacher's false language of the dead,
he gestures to empty spaces, calls
darkness a squirming danger, ranks
mystery with the foul & the foreign. The king
is noone. Say it again.
Another locked gate, explained obscurely by
polity or principle. Walk further along,
step through the ragged response of
shadows & laughter. Step through. Honor
thyself, honor all. The king yowls with power.
Some respond. Shadows. Talking. Study. Remembrance.
Believe in everything still for no damned
good reason. Dare sing. Dare grieve. Dare
live. Let no other do your fighting or
your bleeding. Release to your curiosity,
to the fangs of your want. Believe with
arrogance. Wake up. Believe with humility.
Watch her dance, watch her dream,
watch the universe watching her, watch
the universe watching you. Join her
soon. Join us, here, upon this hill &
below. Everywhere around you. Your war
cannot dissuade us. Cannot touch our bliss.
******
xv. Perfection (for Lisa Marie)
Serve the muse, with fiery branch &
roaring texts, with a sparkle of blurring fingers,
with a faith rooted in wind & starlight,
with the power of healthy, accelerating
memory, with the wiggle & flair of hearts
divinely twined. Serve with knapsack, boots, &
a long spray of hard-working days. Serve with
hustle, dream, frenzy. Serve her in secret &
in thrash. More colors. Wilder music. The beginning
of a new freedom. Regard thine steady
shoulders, few tools of experience & survival,
basket of scars, bells, burs, fists, dried leaves:
The cloud of birds on eves of perfection.
The raw lash of beauty against pressing hides
of control.
The warmth, delight, music of soup as a
sickness bites & wanes.
The alley of poor ones sliding through visions
by afternoons & midnights.
Restrained, hurried by a thread beneath awareness,
crisscrossing every star & seed.
Perfection: four fingers & a bloody stump.
Moldy volumes of myths, old news
of wastrels & kings, ancient cities
smouldering beneath the seas, countless
languages of warning burble dying near
the tracks of tanks, clean flags, sodden
polity rallying festivals of forgetfulness.
Perfection: defeat, assault, a grimy
fist raises a stolen vessel, desert lips
drink a coveted wine. Hurry: the mystery
ever evolves & eludes. Hurry: pick
a king, align with a spirit, mend tonight
& ready for travel. Hurry. Everything is moving.
Serve the muse, her gentle fingers,
fecund soul, constant dance. Her
new fire, its purpose, its doorway.
Serve her without following, little
slippage, no wane. Serve the muse,
& what she serves. A task bound in light.
Beauty & power. Oak leaves among torchlight.
******
xvi. Broken
Wage Beauty. Open thine hands to the
burn & cool of mystery, to the fear in knowing
what trees worship, what holiness does not
yield before calendar or hoard. Gather your
gurus & burn them. Can you? Wage Beauty,
a first time, a next time. A flaring, falling
way of life. To tumble, to elude, to seek
a pipe's understanding & then the need
to walk away. To grant the king his crown but
deny him all else. A life watching broken
souls lean against each other, upon the
billions. Call it history, or resist.
Wage Beauty. A signal between muse &
pen, a crackle, lamps, books, the motions
of a train car tonight as I try to remember
everything. What remains a nameless bite,
a fugue of moments & shadows & sheaves of
notes. Clocks on unknown wrists. Hurry. Regret.
To know more understand tonight's trembling knee
than the thousand nights of coffee cups
& chess grudges. Forever someone from somewhere
& never otherwise. I camped by another's
starlight. Someone chose to let me be, see
what might come of it all.
Wage Beauty. The clenches prayer on
tonight's train, the sweet juice among
crowds & young. Yes: I sang here
many nights. Yes: it mattered. Yes:
my going is something's mourning. Something
will remember.
Wage Beauty. Wage Art. Find her brilliant
face, at last, & wage the rest. Every
path now toward what she is becoming,
toward what a life's true love must be.
Spectacle, hint. Glory, drool. Unbrushed streaks
across a dusky wall. A wild of furred & winged
stories. The summons greater than years before.
******
Vigil (for Lisa Marie)
A night of restless hands, hurry, shake, crimson
music, ravenous, bowl of berries, vessels of thirst,
hurry, shake, who moves, hustles, & feeds among
us, what thrums, what smokes, restless hands,
tonight, wonder beyond words, confessions
told with crimson music, hurry, shake—
Spirits enflamed with flesh, yes, & what
do we do now? Ask the trees. Ask the stars.
Ask the preacher. Ask the king. Or tend
the seed within, call it faith. Tend it
among nightmare, among slippage. Tend it:
she is watching now. Tend it: something matters.
Crimson music, shape it, call it first
song to her. Crimson music how it shines
now, how it resembles her. Crimson music,
not a belief but a twinkle. A movement
where before there was none. Words beyond
wonder but now not quite so. Who moves,
hustles, & feeds among us? Who? And what
then? Who shares in vessels of thirst?
Who offers? Who receives? I wish her
to sing to me, sing to me, sing to me,
toss me sweets, bed me down in fur & riddles,
clothe us both in oak leaves. Faith in shadows
& in sunrise. Faith the world, though askew,
for now remains. Faith in berries, faith in
thirst. Who redeems? Who remains?