"Why are we here? Because we're here.
Why does it happen? Because it happens.
Roll the bones. Roll the bones."
—Rush, "Roll the Bones," 1992.
i. Psychedelic Dream
You won't know it by name, &
therefore hesitate to call it home.
You will slide about, the music &
shine sloshing around, the words
sticking deep then smile letting go.
The night will deepen, full moon
crack wider, stars jingle with a
leering brightness. Cosmos shivers.
You will wish to know more, marvel
at how much you are marvelling.
That pretty girl dancing. That old man
talking to the trees. Those shakers
& drummers rising that bonfire, what
years pass! What lets go. What resists.
A moment comes, without wind,
without cold. Passes, a regret, an instruction.
When the light moves in again, a stirring
in the many slumbers, some of the mystery
retreating, a recession in heart's long night
fever not sharply recked by your science
or your god, let memory's best ear come forth,
let your deepest song cry out, "This is,
this is, this is & ever is!" Let it cut,
let it stain, let it ever sheer a bit
from the claims of daylight & its men.
******
ii. Two Men Die in Bank Bombing
This morning there was a moment—
before you woke, before we planned,
before the tools were packed & the truck
gassed up—
There was a moment, a memory of
that day with the case of MGD & football
all day on the TV—lousy fucking Broncos—
That—& the strip club—you bought me
a whore—she laughed when we were alone
& pushed her fat titties in my face—
I was 18, smacking her around a little
made me feel good, better than cumming
in that used hole of hers—I had to think
of a cheerleader I'd bang a week before—
no condom & her a blonde begging virgin—
but you'd bought me a whore like you
daddy had done when you were 18 &
really were cherry—& I told you later
it felt good, I was a man now &
understood better what a man feels & why—
You laughed & said I'd be cracking younger,
better poon in no time—I'd paid that
old bitch an extra fifty to make sure
the old man heard her moans & whimpers
out in the hall where he sat smoking weed—
There was a moment, Pops, I haven't
called you that since I was 8 & you were
falling down drunk trying to teach me how
to throw a football like John Elway—
a moment, Pops, when I wish we could
have fucking stopped—figure out some
other way to get the money, to get back
at the sorry sonsabitches who put that
green metal box in our hands & that
bank as our goal. A moment, Pops,
when I would have given everything
to go back to the night of my 18th
birthday, watered drink after watered
drink, the ugly fists full of g-string cash on
every side of me, & the fat whore,
come on in, Pops, let's pay more & do her
together, & again, let's the three of us
get so fucking high we laugh & never leave this dirty bed.
******
iii. To An Unknown Lover
Cry out to your next lover, as you lay
there nude & loose in your bed, step onto
your porch like other full moons, the night's
chill touch not enough, not a man's big
hands, his laugh, his plea, the way each
one moves inside you differently & new,
at least for awhile, til your mind lingers
to another, to several, to how that
might feel, & one day your bed has
been empty for months, & awhile it's
OK, there's the spiny purple toy & the new
pink electric one, the movies with shiny
cocks & bad music, there's the men online
& then on the phone, fucking them by voice
alone, figuring out their dirty shames &
digging in to them deep, & then the phone
is dead & the night remains & you didn't
cum again & all you can do lying nude & loose
is to cry out to the universe. Cry out!
Something may listen, may heed, may give you a piece back.
******
iv. Lullaby
I was hurt & angry & my pain
was belittled or unnoticed for years.
A poor youth but happy, the rest a
heart's carnage of years, want & beauty
in wild mixture. I cry this to you
tonight because you feel it too, & may reply.
******
v. Inaugurate
How deep the poison's wild mixture
in our blood, want & music, how high
to reck the endless woods yearn through all?
World's puzzle disintegrates, reinvents
every hour, while many a man through
centuries will smile & think its formula
cornered in a doorway, close, so close,
soon to know, to tell all, till a slip,
or a jingle, or a thousand black wings
up & beyond that spire. Little answer
to this world but each touches each &
a mystery runs through all, now the hungry
woman who smokes in solitude's juices in
a bed that remembers twined nights of
blood & despair, now two tribes will war unto
annihilation for possession of a dead god's
graveyard, now a brave man who jolts
the world with its own abandoned possibilities.
******
vi. Steep
What else but the stink of old ideas &
ancient demons, enemies unseen in flesh
for decades? What else? I am a creation
tonight of dead days, long loyalties, old breaks.
What then is tonight's chance, its reason,
it reward? A craft or planet hung low
in the sky when the fog passed through
& mystery descended into the streets,
spiked the talk outside bars & coffee houses.
The sky's shroud pushed the question
nearer, no evasion by a wondering gesture
to the stars. What else but the old stink?
Not by faith, not by love, not by any reason
to lean on & walk the streets, both clash
& partner men in the market place. No.
It's a peace unfound, a victory to gift those worst days.
******
vii. Stink
A daze, a dream of beauty, hard world
cracks before this dance, & praise
where there had been stunted gestures.
Wait. Start again. A daze, dream of beauty,
the world a waste, spark it new, now
time itself will burn. Wait. Start again.
******
viii. Dream of Beauty
Cry out! Something may listen, may heed,
may give you a piece back. Would you
have younger blood & bones, a lighter question
of God astride your heart? Another chance
to breach that cherry cunt with less reverent
words, surer touch? Does love teach best
by variety, excess, or absence? What would
you have back, which moment, what word?
Another hour with the dead, another with
youth's lost brothers, another with a pen
& a book, hours raising music in that
shadowy green courtyard? What's broken
what's gone, what beliefs simple & discarded,
only dreams, death, & a surprising hour return anything.
******
ix. Surprising Hour
High on labyrinth, a dream of beauty,
endless desert to go, a daze,
a drink of moonlight in an hour
of despair. High, on labyrinth,
a dream, of beauty, endless desert
to go, a deep drink of moonlight,
another hour of despair. High.
On labyrinth, a dream, beauty of
endless desert, to go. Now breathe.
Will it come again & never, never know.
******
x. Deep Drink of Moonlight
There had been the day's now-forgotten
politics, excitement of a new film,
a recently found constellation. Usual
movement of men & beasts. Night came,
this was years or decades ago, yet still
the same chaos, music of starlight
on earth, her face. Her voice on lost
matters, the nearing moment she would leave.
Years or days from now alike, it was
love's ceaseless glaring pitch that killed me.
******
xi. Ceaseless Glaring Pitch
The way is dis-illusion, til bones &
bloodless in the earth, or dust &
free upon the wind. All crooning
together, nobody & nobody & nobody
alike, past life's many stinks &
its surpising hours too, its dreams
of beauty, its movements of men &
beasts. Beyond labyrinth & desert,
love's ceaseless glaring pitch, & o
sure, safe relief! Yet still upon
this oaken chair, still each a slave
to his going heart, still asking why
of books, starlight, seeking it in a preacher's
cries & a lover's loins, Still here,
all alone, all suffering, yes. And yet.
Down that dark street, a murmur,
a reply. For all gone, all yet to come,
what was just said? In that shadow? Just now?
******
xii. Down That Dark Street
"He who makes a beast of himself
gets rid of the pain of being a man"
—Samuel Johnson
A dream of beauty, on long nights,
hard world cracked before this dance,
I knew better each day this world
a lie, yet fell with breathless croaking
want to this dream, its endless dance.
Come the weird years & their many
miles, I fall again & again through new
uncaught music's to a hard lovely
place I know only through distance, memory,
absence, impossible stuff of happiness & forgetting.
******
xiii. Accumulation
Anguish decades old burning still
in me, distant hours throbbing for
a sate I cannot offer, nor lover
nor elixir give; small ulcered
cataclysms, hungry loins, hungry starlight,
damages to the world because I suffered &
yet sing. The waste I shape to song.
Yet each new day will beg its childly
due, little knowing every previous,
uncaring all that was lost years ago,
how the bastards laughed & moved on.
Got old, or got God, or fell on their
own thorn on hard hour & sure would
give me or any other a hand now.
New days come & still matter, wildly
matter, new bastards too, & lure
with me with weird musics beyond
my deep corrosion's will to douse them.
******
xiv. Some Blues
Which will let go first, the bones, the blood,
the breath? Or the belief that tomorrow
might surprise, blow up in new hunger &
novel sate? Hurry & slow of hours, next mile,
I wonder at my strange, ragged fingernails &
the unknowable torsos colliding around me.
What persists is the murmuring slow drizzle
from places my heart yet distantly dwells.
******
xv. Urban Pastorale
The lunchroom preacher talked of God
& the devil, the one of open hands
& mystery, the other of lure & craft,
& his ragged listeners nodded & ate
the food he'd bought them all. Paused, stood,
he leaned over another, snoring boozy
in his seat. Preacher held his hand,
fetched him food too. The man took the
sandwich, ate sloppily in a half doze,
neon & liquor collding his mind. Preacher
smiled, collected phone numbers from those
with phones, departed with a straight back.
The ones remaining grumbled, nodded off again,
til the lunchroom manager emerged, pointed to the door.
******
xvi. Drizzle
Said nothing goes away, nothing returns,
yet the bastards between the beats & breaths
would will we live otherwise. Two clashing whys
for every blow, every bloom, the long hungry
cries of a thousand distant nights. Would bid
us believe one hour brimming virgin's eager
juice, purposeful stars, & men untied to
the collected wounds we call history, while
another hour the next step in world's long
story, its perpetual construction by a god
or genome. Yet ask whatever's true but
yearn for truth itself?
I remember a large cat with sickly
yellow eyes, his paws too weak to wave
of my watching, let him die alone. I crouched
in vigil, an hour, part of another, & that
was all. I learned nothing in seeing
him go, neither where he went nor what
I should do next. Was this, I wondered later,
all the lesson there was to get?
******
xvii. Love's Clasp
Sickly yellow eyes of men's greed,
men's indifference, scorching fear
driving one to deny another, consume
another; yet remove from this an hour
or more, without time, without news,
clasp lover, the wet smacking music
of endless kisses, the needful coupling
animals know without an art, like
a drink of sunlight or river water;
what this world might yet mean
by a strong enough will, tending sickly
yellow eyes to health, clasping love
for powers known & further mysteries
to broach. All these centuries of men
& nothing learned? Simplest hungers
remain unsated? Clasp love deeper,
heal men's sickly yellow eyes, now,
see the world without illusion, perfect,
listen new, hear its clear bells ringing.
******
xviii. Bides
Cosmos shivers tonight, what possible
you or I could do? Nod down the border
to Dreamland, til little & none, shake
old thighs new & strange. Use some
other word for want, for love, marry
that word to a surprising gesture, & now
what ripple begins that should not; if
where bound the sealed box or dust on a
whipping current, the remembering friends,
the few words, then why not jerk the path
there, why not steer life's sting outward,
why not turn that sting's poison to honey
why not nod & feed the world its fill?
******
xix. Shelter
What of these daylight concerns of men,
the hunger for meat & coin,
a reaching hand, a breathless word?
The hour's politics, maps & markets convulse
& conspire, a few freaks 'demn it foul,
the rest hold out a bowl.
What then. A man slumps in a dirty red jacket,
cussing the preacher, the nurses,
the grey spring hours of his city,
the need to be helped, the wait.
The wait. His teeth hurt when he shouts,
yet he shouts again & again.
"It's a game. A fucking game. Who the hell's winning?"
******
xx. Revolution is Now
A chandelier, many bookcases, the chairs
of a slower century, an airless room.
Sunlight through shaded windows, a body
prone on the crimson carpets, remembering.
The songs of branches without, melodies
twined soberly with the careless breeze.
A car passes, a radio, a shout. The body
does not move, stilly tries for a place
beyond movement, beyond choice.
We know what we know by elimination,
laze toward the yes or no, learn poorly
the lessons of beat & breath. The silence
between each is the freedom few remark,
swathes of unfinished music, rushes of light.
******
xxi. The Tell of a Bare Thigh
What's prettiest about regret how it folds
into new forms. Each new blossom dipped
in an old skin of gifts, hours, what came,
what didn't. How that day feels now,
the ways memories will whore to keep life
when their lesson & loss have both long wrinkled dry.
******
xxii. Hope Like Liquor
Watch a tall man, brave, gesture higher,
brand his words with a blood music
urge armies to lean back, urge for more room
in the ship for all. Some brighter course,
bring closer the promises of men's olds gods
with sweat, hard counsel. Hope,
the old liquor, how it bites what's young
in every heart, & another please,
oh another. Tonight, men are choosing,
arraying wherever the powerful & the humble
each meet. The gesture stands plainly,
how will world's restive blood respond?
******
xxiii. Humble Path
No less hard fire tonight, dreams still
burst in crimson juice & exploding time.
Everything still matters, less & more.
Hunger for the next working hour &
the next climaxing arrival. Sentiment
is never enough, not bones enough
to bridge the years' long arc. Still
to walk with a world's wish & my own.
******
xxiv. Psychedelic Dream (ii)
Arrival is falling, the music lets loose,
a cascade of faces, these woods go on
& on, I understand this fire. Here I stand.
It is years ago, & tonight, & I am buried
too. Water in my hand, a stranger's
blithe smile. Grateful I never held
God in a tome or temple & left the world
out. Here I stand. I understand this fire.
Arrival is falling. All the worlds burn tonight.
******
xxv. All the Worlds Are Burning Tonight
Always another word for want,
in the tell of a bare thigh, regret's
many unfinished music’s, how some
hours will not rouse but to a remembered
voice, scent. And yet others that greed
for the stupidly, stumblingly possible.
A night, hungry like this one, as familiar,
as alien, a barely known girl met
in a theatre, years when I watched all
with every door open, soft of knowledge,
hard for learning. I walked home
that night believing in many worlds.
Someone burned a tenement for the money
& the theatre went with it too. What
I've become isn't surprised. What I've become
believes the girl's memory tastes better tonight
by how I don't remember her name.
******
xxvi. Old Gods
Arrival is falling, into the basket,
into the graveyard. Old gods persist,
as the moon, because a better bullet,
a brighter machine, a greater lifetime
cannot better defense the human heart.
Arrival is falling, into the world,
into the myths, the ways young ass
will be molded & sold, which sufferings
the books & newspapers will soften
with a song, a pride in the sacrifice.
Old gods persist, young ass will be
molded & sold, arrival is falling.
Old gods persist, as do promises
made by powerful to humble that a
reckoning to satisfy abacus & soul
alike, will come, now join in, sing the song!
What's due will come with morning,
a better tide, & the old bells breaking.
******
xxvii. A Fucking Game (Love Song)
Loving all the worlds is a hungry garden
in the heart, wanting water, wanting light,
wanting the unreasonable imagination,
what jumbles up news paths to happiness
when buildings filled with boxes prove
empty of music, what makes worlds grow.
Loving you, this world among worlds,
this fucking game, the how is keep moving,
the why is both full moon & unknown.
From my dreams on out, my needs some
not driven by cock or stomach, how
the old gods teach me nothing, remain near.
A world among worlds, a fucking game,
the many love songs. The hungry garden's
many needs will never cease, never sate,
wanting water, wanting light, wanting
full moon & the unknown both. From my dreams
on out, my best long ago & strangely still to come.
******
xxviii. Ceaseless Song
A blood canvas painted years ago, later
sold at auction for minor coin, lost when that
old tenement burned. A ragged man stands,
center foreground, looking distantly toward
a temple, hands folded against his chest.
Nearby a squirrel & a crow war & play.
They circle round an oak tree until one
cries & the other breaks for the branches.
He watches, an hour, & part of another,
the world agitating round him. The temple
is old, sickly yellow eyes loosed in dark seas
etches upon its iron doors, the legend above,
"some eat others" & below, "all the worlds
burn tonight." This was a dream I'd had,
when found that morning, whimpering
of bugs. I wrote this before waking.
Finding the world mapless, its why both
full moon & unknown, neither men's lies
nor their truths can finish this song—
******
xxix. Avenue Dusk
Faces hurry past as leaves fall—
as though destined for somewhere
else than the earth.
******
xxx. Every Evening's News
A just & peaceful world does not speak
wistful of words like justice & peace.
******
xxxi. The Exchange
[Jean-Baptiste Oudry, “Chienne allaitant ses petits,”
oil on canvas, 1754]
Four walls & a roof, a castle or hut,
the world will keep oncoming, slowly
& by surprise—oncoming til you leap
into it or let it take you—
& even then what reward? Oncoming,
til you feed it all, your tits, your pups,
the last of you & gone. The world takes back
what you borrowed, called a life.
******
xxxii. What Lesson
[Claude-Joseph Vernet, “Nuit,”
oil on canvas, 1760]
I was a man of reason until tonight,
a man of science, unmoved by the bricks
& icons & shrieking women of the church.
While on the sea I read the latest journals
& wrote letters to colleagues. But the dreams
of singing, when I would awake choking
on images of sea-water, & the moon,
how it shown brighter every night!
I did not become a man of God tonight,
as it is said some do when they think
their death’s hour come. To the last, I try
to understand. So close the land, yet sinking,
not enough time to get us all to the lifeboats.
Briefly wondered at the fire on that distant
tower & I know the meaning of loneliness,
what drove the ancients to conspire
their punishing afterlife of flame.
But the moon—the full full moon!
In & out of clouds it strides the sky,
above the waves that drown us &
the waves that sink our rescuers.
The beauty of this world that had eluded
my reason not in its moment of creation
but in how hard it is to let go!
******
xxxii. After Museum
I love the hands that made the art,
even the pieces I do not know &
feel close. A sympathy between us,
how impossible to be alive &
not make something in response, & again!
******
xxxiv. Solitude in Park
Hunger passes in its thousand thousand flavors,
the blooms that explain everything in their scents,
if there was that right word for distant rhythms
in colored shadows.
******
xxxv. Americana
[Albert Bierstadt, “The Trappers Camp,
oil on academy board, 1861]
Only one of us had books in his bag,
& him only two: a bible & a journal.
The bible he’d get out on or near Sundays,
read us something with God & gore in it.
The other he’d write in from time to time.
For a believer, he hated preachers, said
the country’s ideals would always tinge blood-red
if studied awhile. He loved the beauty in things,
trees, sunsets, the animals we took when
we could find them anymore. He said America
will always long for a king to make it right
between what we destroyed & the cosmos.
Said he knew an old soldier who limped
by a cane given him by a slave. A magic
stick for healing, carved in glyphs & animal symbols.
Ate the food I handed him & looked up
at the moon. “We all need a stick like that.”
******
xxxvi. Could It Be
[Jackson Pollock, “Sea Change,”
oil & pebbles on canvas, 1947]
The theory goes: there is no center
to break nor edge to run over.
All goes on & on. Time neither recurring
nor beginning nor ending. All is,
continuously. Before, there is another
before; after, another after, & so on.
A blighted theory, some say, for we
men & women live mortal, come & go,
watch each other come & go, so praise
& mourn & mark our passing days.
This theory leaves us small, powerless,
our glories & decays less important.
An addendum to the theory reads:
you will live forever, you will one day
become that glaring violet sunset
you watch tonight, & then you will be
watched by another, & play his clue & key.
******
xxxvii. After a Day Away
Even wings have weight, cave the shoulders
with the years. Flying pulls on gravity’s dour
fist, bends it unwilling loose by its own weakness.
Singing will hoarse a throat & some will mutter
that isn’t any music. One man’s sweat & craft
will wrap another’s dinner bones & he will lunge
for the stinking truck to take it away.
******
xxxviii. Wistful
Now what. The ocean, some say, is turning
an old, far color. Others begging in books
for a burst in the world, a burst through
the world. Some always beg.
Others cluster around ideas of what men
might do, feed the old demons a killing plate
of machine & reason. Force God or just
that hunger from its close fissure within.
This world is child, will take our strokes
& smacks alike as due, rare protest enough
to change men’s rhythms. One day far
from now, but there are many steps.
This world is mother, offering us her
beautiful songs, some cautions about
poison plants in the heart, gravity,
glowing eyes in evening canyons.
Men will ever rage & recede like their gods,
& most will fall to earth unhearing
the celestial hums or even the hard
beautiful music in the freak thing of mortal lives,
the rawness, the spasms, each a confession of
what was & what almost was, each a song,
& what goes when each is gone.
******
xxxix. The Trouble Was
The drinks in the motel bar were fun,
she said so, she laughed, she finished
his too, she wanted to fuck &
when it was brutal she wanted more.
In the morning she was still talking, laughing.
******
xl. City’s Tale
In a night so many faces will pass &
recede. A spilled drink, an apology,
a laugh. When the lights go out in
the tavern, someone knows how
to imitate old movie actors. He
does Bogey, Tracy, Groucho Marx.
There was the sky too, today, tonight,
the clouds thick, bubbling like eager
flesh, crossing skies pink with life’s
deepest cries, & whatever it meant,
whatever it was, “tell us about
those clouds, Groucho, go on!”
So many faces in the dark, listening,
as Groucho says those clouds were
damned pretty, like a girl in lipstick
& a yellow skirt, & everyone laughs
because it made sense, Groucho’s
clever, & the lights come up.
Everyone looks around, up at the TV
& its game, at their phones, at their
dates, at other people’s dates. Nobody
is saying who was Groucho in the
dark & those clouds seem pretty
far away again, whatever they were.
******
xli. Cafeteria Window
The poor girl in denim rags, her hair
tails around her shoulders, her hair
the soft color of rust, feeds her dog
from a plastic cup, her dog a skinny
handsome husky, I wonder what sympathy
she would accept, what rose would not
briefly crisp in her heart, or choke it
in spines of mercy & lust. The avenue
grows dark, her grubby companions laugh
& smoke cigarettes, too many, tomorrow’s
another hustling day. She watches her dog
eat, & gathers to go. (Your life has no center
to break nor edge to run over. Tonight
I will dream of your dog singing to you.)
******
xlii. Advice for the Hungry Girl
If you talk to more strangers
your world will burst into hungrier
hours.
Your skies will fill with what
strangers say.
Your dreams will find colors
plain & golden
that you did not remember
ago.
If you talk—
******
xliii. Midnight’s Question Again
Will you know that hour when it comes?
Will it be a death? A break? A fall?
And will you turn another way from your shadows,
nod them off, finally, & now the untried road?
******
xliv. That Confession
What beauty passes stately by
mixtures in me a carnal thought,
what years gone in two or three
steps, what fruit & flesh untasted,
& how I rarely say the daring word
any more than the slate faces I despise.
******
xlv. Thorns for Roses
How to exchange my heart’s thorns
for roses, pitch myself through murk
to a tall, quiet sky, hear in every voice
a flicker of its secret music, nod to
its want, allow for what it alone knows
even if we never speak. Allow for its
truths, the fine tangles of its mysteries,
& shape a prayer that many or some
or at least one vital face will mourn
its passing, still listen, hungry &
believing, when this voice is no more.
******
xlvi. Philippic
Once, some say, there was common purpose,
when there were fewer. The men killed the beasts,
the women cooked the food & bred the children.
Myths explained the suffering, what life gave,
what it took, & why it then took more. If myths
ever explained true, what did that man cry out & run?
******
xlvii. God Isn’t Change . . .
Why did that first man cry out & run?
Something, blood, sunshine, pleasures
without words in private hours.
Something, the disappointment in his
laughing father’s voice. The press of teachers
for him to believer them, blindly, hungrily,
believe like a slave in the mirror would.
Newspapers with arguments for facts.
Those private pleasures, touching, the voices,
some of it dreaming, he never knew.
He ran. Someone would have come too.
He knew that. He ran because he
had to, & nobody had before, so he
ran alone. Stole an icon from the temple,
some thought to desecrate but, no,
it was his god too, at least those first
nights under stars.
They found the icon in a clearing,
half-burnt, wrapped in an animal
skin. He was not seen again, a story,
a lesson, a warning that what cries
in privatest hours wills each most to run.
******
xlviii. God is Cash Money
What life does not give—
What cannot be taken—
What outreaches coins—
Staying moonlight, youth, weightless want—
Myths breathe by the men who believe,
& expire when the last one falls.
******
xlix. Tonight I will Dream Your Dog is Singing to You
A slow revolution bides the world,
beneath the mathematics, the wine,
the cry of tall preachers to mingle nearer,
the sham gurus with hallucinatory songs
of end dates, tomes upon tomes liberating
the cunt of obligation & ecstasy alike,
a slow revolution, a smiling green pulse,
neither leaf nor root. Touch a thing,
call it a name, feel the power coming
on, know it limitless, & you won’t stop
now, you’ll never want to stop. Now again.
******
l. Persistence of Memory
There is no center to break nor edge
to run over. There are two temples.
There is the temple to joy.
There is the temple to sorrow.
Between them bides the human heart.
Centuries go by, believers waver like grass
between them. Some gird power,
to take the center, some make wildly
for the edge. But there are only
two temples, to joy, to sorrow.
******
li.What’s Coming & Gone
High on labyrinth, endless desert
to go. A body thirsting & hungering
to its last hour. What God could explain?
******
lii. Sacred Fragment
I ask the Universe: why suffering &
why its glorious songs? Three stone geese
in repose before a matron goddess, icon
to patience & mystery. Seen through a fence
whose rusted metal sign warns of dogs &
plague. Bells ring in the dusk as a
hundred curtained bodies rush in fluttering
to kneel & sing, of suffering, in glorious songs.
******
liii. Psychedelic Dream (iii)
When did it matter the most?
When I smiled at another & believed.
******
liv. Perfect Song
Would the perfect song end questing
for the next, that hunger, that wish,
or would it get a greed, new its own,
to now make many perfect songs,
conjure a mathematic, teach another,
& then a mass will come to know?
Would perfection be enough, or the next wall?
******
lv. A Spider Hung
A spider hung from the garbage can roof,
spinning lightly in the cool winter’s
breeze, & I was so high & broken
I begged it to teach. “What would
you know?” “How & why?”
“Make your web, catch your prey,
have your fill.” “Men are more
complex than that. You didn’t tell
me why?” “Because you are hungry,
you need meat, sex, & shelter.”
“No.” “No?” “What about song?”
“Song is to lure another to mate.”
“Not else?” “What else?” “What of God?
What made the world, a why,
& one’s destination upon death.”
“What is death?” “It’s what happens
when I crush you, or to that struggling
mosquito in your web.” There is a pause.
The spider wraps & feeds. “Tell me!
What is death to you?” “It is nothing.”
“Nothing.” Another pause, my own. “Nothing?”
“No.” Years later, I’m still waiting better answer.
******
lvi. Hanging Bridge
Below is the past, & probably the end, too,
see how hard those waters clash & foam,
no answer in any of it. So look ahead,
another chasm to get over, & what unknown
green there & beyond. Make a choice in this,
a good one. Let what possible remain so.
******
lvii. After Escher (i)
[“Castle in the Air,” woodcut on gold-coated paper, 1928]
To look up there, in these nights,
how the music again is let out til
the weaker hours, new music creating itself,
new music creating the night, & in it
I find less the ageless cry for understanding
than for simple release, to the stars, to the rain,
I open my hands. I breathe with prayer,
neither from what’s gone nor toward
what’s yet. This music falls away with me,
what I never found moaning from my knees.
******
lviii. After Escher (ii)
[“Other World,” color wood engraving & woodcut, 1947]
To look out there, worlds without end,
& the choice to watch, to sing, to fly,
something else here loves the night & is not
afraid. Something else mocks time & miles,
there are no hours or distance, only the dream
of arriving, nodding, all is near, nothing
is lost. Out there, up there, in here,
sate the paradox & win the game.
******
lix. After Escher (iii)
[“Snakes,” color woodcut, 1969]
You cannot know what twines the dime,
what lifts the skin from soul.
Your mind unwinds to the rings in things
& tries to bind them whole. You catch the
breath of another’s death & shape your book
& wax your flame. The prod & nod
is not from God & seams of dreams
will tell you so. Your dearth of earth
is your worth of words & what once
was three is not a hole. A prime will chime
til years less clear make you pause for claws
your heart once chewed & chewed.
The edge of you, what crumbles from true,
& ugly to view, is yours to keep, to find
again in sleep, where the hungers gleam
in dream upon dream & you fall away,
say farewell to the day, going & gone,
& never was, & ever on.
******
lx. Hunger: A Song
“though sometimes it is necessary
to reteach a thing its loveliness”
--Galway Kinnell,
“St. Francis & the Sow,” 1980.
There was a brutal report tonight,
the story to do with violence & tenderness,
as most good stories do,
a heavy hand, a shred bit of cotton,
as most good stories do,
& we listened at the bar because, well,
fuck, it was Saturday night, look at the bunch
of us there, late, all the good-looking women
already being hurried home for fucking
or whatever, so we sat listening to this report.
He was a preacher, though nobody was sure of his name. That is, they thought he was this preacher who had hit it big on TV back when, but lost it to the usual devils of whores & cocaine—so they thought that’s who they had holed up in the motel room with the runaway girl & a lot of guns & bibles & liquor—oh, everyone leaned forward to hear—
What was being said now was that this preacher’d gone underground, maybe Peru, left behind the paid pussy & zombie powder, no he took to the jungles with the natives, really sunk in, nobody tried to find him after awhile—he had nobody anyway—seems in the jungle he’d found darker gods & mysteries—but this was speculation—
What was known, maybe, was that a preacher had emerged on the gospel tent circuit the kind of which had not been seen in decades—he collected no money for his shows, & never
stayed in a town more than one night, & never too big a town—it’s like he was a shadow
but what he preached & how he preached it—
There was a video, someone had snuck a phone into one of his shows, strictly a no, but anyway it showed the crying & the fainting, & then it showed him talking, just a clip before it was cut—
Talking softly, no microphone, we could hear him say, “There is violence in the human heart, & there is tenderness. What I have learned is that God wants us to crush both of these for him—”
There might have been more but we didn’t hear it. The report hurried on to the motel room & the girl & the guns & so on—the stand off on the TV
“Do you understand?”
“I don’t know.”
“Do you understand?”
“Please. God. What?”
“Violence & tenderness.”
“I don’t know.”
“I tried to teach you.”
“I’m sorry.”
“When you offered like that—”
“I—please—”
“And I asked if you had before—”
“I never did. I told you that.”
“Do you know what I learned in the jungles? Do you?”
“You said it was—life & death?”
“I saw worlds without end. I walked & flew & dreamed until I disbelieved in nothing. Nothing!”
“OK OK”
“I saw worlds born & others burn endlessly. I never thought I’d come back here until you dreamed me that night”—
She loved when the moon was nearly full, but not quite. Now we’re the same, she smiled, nearly full tonight. She left her window open & the crimson curtains drawn so she could dance as she did, clearing her room of its debris, its lacy things & trinkets, there was nothing but these nights & the rest was a mask for others. She moved slowly across her floor, more & more heated by the nearly full moonlight & she knew he watched, as he had long watched, & he was coming nearer all the time, she would dance for him & they would know a moment, her cries were an animal’s that night until she passed out, & finally dreamed his face—
The reporter was getting bored. Police had brought in a negotiator but they had been talking on the phone for nearly an hour.
“She won’t leave him. We don’t know her name or anything about her.”
“What about the noise? The cries? The motel called the cops. That’s why I’m here.”
The negotiator shrugged & was leaving when there was gunfire. Everyone ran for cover, the cops panicked & would have gunned down the door & killed everything inside if it hadn’t opened at that moment.
She came out, in a slip.
Hands timidly raised, barefoot.
Her face solemn, & unafraid.
No blood on her was her own.
The bar was closing, they’d let us stay to watch the report even after they killed the taps & locked the door.
“Wait. Is he coming out?”
“In a bag. It’s time for you gentlemen to get along home. You can’t stay here.”
“Why is it taking so long?”
I went to him when he came to my town.
I went to him knowing I’d never come back.
I dressed for him & sat in the front row.
I smiled but kept my eyes down.
He would claim me. I’d wait.
“Violence & tenderness,” he said over & over, & I saw how his face had thinned from the pictures I’d found online of his younger days.
“Violence & tenderness. God wants us to crush both of these for him, wants us to relinquish ourselves, our wills, whatever defiant hangs by our bones.”
I nodded & waited. I was not shocked as the others when he cried up to the skies, “No! I do so no longer! My last night of this! Fuck you! Fuck you! Fuck you!”
When he took my hand I went quickly, there were angry shouts. He was not being paid to cuss at God & defy, we left quickly.
He outdrove the few who followed. He told me quietly it would be easier to just get them another preacher than try to right whatever demons took my head.
The motel we checked in never saw me in truth. I don’t think they would have liked it. But I knew. I knew what my dancing & dreams & the moon had conjured.
But it went wrong. I mean there was a moment I thought, us sitting on the bed, him touching my cheek, breathing close to my neck—but then he said, “If it could have been anyone it would have been you” & when I leaned forward—
I bring everyone to my place because everyone knows I have the best hash & someone brings beers & a few girls, probably drunk, bored, & horny, show up—& we look online for the story of what happened at the motel—was there a shootout? Who was the girl?
The reports contradict each other badly. One says she was a runaway high school girl with a taste for weed & older men—others say she wasn’t that young or that innocent—like she was feeding this crazy preacher a line—so we smoke on it—smoke & smoke—the girls get high & want to fuck—the night passes—at least I get one who could suck cock pretty good—
Before she came out, he’d begun talking again & she believed again for a moment.
“Myths breathe by the men who believe, & expire when the last one has fallen.”
I look at him, waiting.
“I have no myths left. You were my last one.” I turn from him & I hear the noise of a gun. As I open the door & walk into the police searchlights I wait for the bullet to take me. It doesn’t come.
For a moment this bitch sucks my cock so well, I mean deep & rhythmic & hard, that I can’t see, I’m hallucinating, crying, there’s a thick smell, a smell like sex & trees & rot & fruit all in one, & while it lasts I see the preacher’s eyes bright as a deathly fever—
“You wanted to know”
“Yes—I”
“Let go”
“I—”
“Let go!”
There’s blood & cum everywhere.
It’s like I exploded all over the room.
All my violence, all my tenderness, was gone.