NIGHT CADRE

Like a Basket

We knew enough to begin with
but after awhile we didn't
know enough anymore so
we put what we did know
into something like a basket
with your arms for handles
& my feet to steady it in case
it had to be set down suddenly.

What we didn't tell the basket
was where to stand ...
by the time we realized
it was necessary to do so,
it had run off with everything
we knew to begin with and
most of what we'd found out since.

The general opinion was
that since the feet the basket
ran off on were mine,
it befell me to track it down.

I agreed - but since I had no feet
it was obvious someone
would have to carry me.
You declined because
you had no arms.
Love is like that in the City.



Prelude in Limbo

After passion is revealed
as a fluid medium capable
of limited transformations
in service of its
not so secret self,
a blue fish on a blue plate
looks across the table at me,
neither with much appetite
though hunger is never entirely absent.

I hear whispers.
What has been said?
I hear laughter;
a soft door shutting.

How to speak other
than through things
understood as understood?

Spirit aspires to mythic,
seemless and solid as sound,
sinking into sensuous water
naked from the crown up
touching cloud with a bald eye.

Here is a mountain.
I see that it is you
and walk around it
since it must consume
all breath to climb these things.

You, knowing more than I
on subjects of your choice,
would never think to comment.
The rage of such a silence!

I take in. I put out.
The path of inclusion
as it whispers forth a seed.

Here is a jungle.
I see that it is you
and skirt the edges
knowing how entry
transforms those who dare
in unaccountable ways.

Take this - leave that;
calculate the terrible
margin of drift...
passionate blues
and sweeter oozings,
honey and mint plucked
under an ecliptic moon.

Value For Cold Cash

This is the instant
that follows you,
the sweet modal coda
between infernal catcalls
and catch-all reckoning
where wierdling creatures
either side of twilight
bend to hear your reply.

All spending is spending
of heartbreak's finest gold;
inarticulation brought to full
fruition in the modulated wail,
spilling over of emptiness,
shaking, trembling and
the mortal rigor of thick
beatitudes obeying laws
neither of life nor of love,
only appetites and tendencies
across a yawing gap of void.

In the revelation which
peels back the scalp
and lifts the brain aloft
like a trophy awarded
in a game depending
more upon chance than
on any conceivable skill,
all spending is
spending of the soul...
and Hell is a stingy place.

As They Lean to You

As they lean to you,
the small folk inside the
picture tube or the breaded
face in the shaving window
glowering over the sink,
cutting itself while you bleed,
fronting a museum of prescription
vials, potency long expired,
brewing obnoxious odors
beneath childproof caps;
as they lean to you,
overlooked and overlooking,
lost driver's license used
as a bookmark in
a mouse-nibbled edition of
Jack Abbot's touted diatribe,
another link in a chain of lost faith
which will never be a necklace;
as they lean to you,
the missing .32 mm wrench
from the box of sockets,
carborundum skillsaw blade
and the tube of white lead
left over from a painting
which showed a skill for framing
but none for portraiture;
as they lean to you,
shards and shapes of passage,
bits for the complete collection,
replacement parts for
things themselves replaced,
hinges for where there is
no longer a door - stationery
embossed with a monogram
too formal for the letters
you thought about writing,
glass casters for a roll away bed
jammed with strands of
chartreuse from a rug green
as a field of emeralds in memory;
as they lean to you,
with the force of living things,
mute, beseeching, exuding a
kind of sentimental horror,
fellows of your escapade in time,
you wonder: do they adhere
to you from habit, sunk into
a static continuity fully
as valid as your own...
or because they love you?



Exploding Diamond Blues

Scalding steam from
a broken pipe plays the
tune of our rendezvous
from the second story of
the floor above our cellar
in the dark downstairs.

There's a saying here
in the catacombs where
the soup is stirred with
human bones and they
beat away the dark with
the soles of their shoes:
Daddy's got 'em
Mama's got 'em,
and Baby
you got 'em too...
Exploding Diamond Blues.

Hoping to ease
the cold a bit
without giving up
too much warmth,
our conversation
is to the point and
never exactly news.
We talk all night
exchanging views but
when it comes down
to decisions we never
know what to choose;
Daddy's got 'em
Mama's got 'em
and Baby
you got 'em too...
Exploding Diamond Blues.

Is it only at the point
of death we discover
this isn't a dream at all?
I know a place we can
go and talk when it all
seems too confused:
in the catacombs
on a pile of bones,
cut through to a
couple of truths:
Daddy's got 'em
Mama's got 'em
and Baby,
you got 'em too...
Exploding Diamond Blues.



Sonata #1

A person is present,
never mind if she be
water, wind or desire
departing for inaccessible
places between the worlds;

she has braided my hope
in knots of shadow with
implicit knowledge of me
I cannot hope to amplify.

She gave me this hat for
the pleasure of watching as
I cut a small circular dry place
in the thickness of the rain.

Do I see her clearly or just
extrapolate from star charts,
something seen escaping,
in the guise of someone?

What of the moment
when attentiveness yields
a little light from some
non-obvious source?
Though representation
continues as before,
that moment of meeting
seems free of the flux
like a hermit sunbeam
in a small tent pitched
at the edge of the garden
easing away to midnight
under cover of cloud.



Windowdressing

There is no time for this
other passion
reduced to numbers
red numbers on tile
knowing how prose can
lie and how poetry cannot
although the same symbols
of nature recur, recur, recur
and how if I never see
another sky this twilight
will stand for all twilight
and how all these moons,
monumental or morbid,
are phases of the same orb
and of course there is
no other time but this,
colorless and forgotten.
Windowdressing for
the ages of a stone.

How like a winter she
became the mainstay
of my veins, appearing
to circulate - I, who
am dissolving along
with my terror, along
with my reluctance,
into the trundle bed
of the dread core
minus the thick
gravity of continuity,
prayer escaping like
a gaseous diffusion.

How might I
attest to this?
There is no way.
Association assumes
something to relate to.
Purity implies the
dross of defilement.
All light is fire and
some of it is cold.
The sorrows here
are only tears of
empty expectation.
What would be
wise to believe?
For Instance

this way and no other
except there be few
for instance alive
naturally I falter

this is also no longer
having here the result
for instance opposition
wedded in rude bliss

a step and a slide
bordering dance
in frozen motion
for instance forever

by jingle made barren
your body and mine
for instance inside
water is not wetter

contracted in distance
like other alikes
seeking its own most
nearly opposite gender
for instance heaven



Night Cadre

No one in sight, only the sound of
Hooves and horses, clattering wind,
Broken bones and harrowing cries,
Trumpets blown by fleshless lips,
Choir of arrows shot out of the dark
Striking targets that gasp and fall.

All is sonorous silence now,
Full breast of battle wrung,
Gluttonous moon in a sated sky,
Depleted stars subsiding in
Scant light of encroaching dawn.

Cold weight of helical chains
Link the field of battle to the
Arms of a foetal sun reaching
To embrace blood damp earth
Drawn like a thirsty cup
To the lips of morning.


-


Rainwater Sea

Humanity without allegory,
man his own metaphor,
a quality transparent
as Heaven at apogee
revolving in silence
over a broadleaf tree
where rainwater rivers
run side along side
down to a rainwater sea.

Memory of memory
resurrect the core
of original blue from
harrowing skies above
rackety rooves of tin
where rivers of ruin
run brackish with slime
and we slip on the
banks and fall in.

Last Spring - or was it
the first Fall of forever? -
candid as all innocence,
without mercy for me or
my circus of antique blue,
you were the fury of witness
slamming the door of a cloud
to awaken the sleeping sky
and wash me away like rain.

Memory of memory,
resolve this fact to a
circlet of blossoms on
the brow of the bride to be,
humanity without allegory,
unbespoken beneath
a broad leaf tree
protecting and silent
where rainwater rivers
run side along side
down to a rainwater sea.



Full Moon Café

Welcome April diners to the Full Moon Café;
wrap your jaws around knuckle roast of memory
garnished with blue headed bats castrated by
small white ladies who lie on the table for mats.

Cheer the return of the flesh wearing ghost -
refurbished and bearing the throbbing post
that tickles, torments, taunts and guides him.

Make way for Dirty Old Adam,
cold as the devil's prong and
long as a widow's memory.
Whatever he said before
assuming corpse position
should never never be
confused with a simple lie;
truth is in the telling -
the specific subject and
predicate are only a prop.

This is the way the dead man rides
thump, thump, thump,
with a shiv stuck into his hump
and his feet in a bucket of brains.

Welcome April diners to the Full Moon Café.
Maybe the wine is not so parlez-vous
but it does what wine is supposed to do:
lets you get reasonably drunk without
throwing up or going blind. Wherefore we sing:

Here's to the ladies we all adore - and to
Dirty old Adam who sleeps with a whore.
Here's to the lady with sugar plum breath
And Dirty old Adam who screws her to death.

after this
it all gets ugly -
good to stay away
hmmmm a couple or three dozen years
let Elizabeth
get on with the dishes

Adam Kadmon born of dust,
raised in scandal, wed in lust
hanged, shot, stabbed & drowned
stands arisen duly crowned.

Welcome April diners to the Full Moon Café
beneath a perpendicular shaft
of tumescent lunar light where
the prodigious promise stands erect,
topped off with subversive purpose,
red eyed and anatomically complete:
the resurrection of human meat.



Aladdin's Night Light

Caught in the zipper
heading places I swore
I was born to deny,
so little space to fly
between grillwork
and radiator -
finger jammed
on the repeat knob
replaying attitudes
I can't disremember,
transform or trash;

stealing a little liberty
to undercut rationale
for the sake of sake itself,
Aladdin's night light
casting giants against
the tent wall of the
circus of the small.

String a hammock
over the chasm and
try to get some sleep
with neither the deaf
nor dead to pacify.
If it is not your time,
nothing you do
can make it be so.
If it is your time
not even your death
can make it otherwise.

...Hush.
The moon is
three days dark.
Nothing more
will fly tonight.
Good Tequila.
Bad salt.

Old am I only if all time
is not one and the same,
length and whiteness of
my beard notwithstanding.

I had need of believers;
I called and they came.
To each was said what
was wanted for belief.

In salt and silver
I took from them
income adequate
for my needs.

My reserves were never large;
what could be carried running
and the sack to contain it.
Other than this I valued nothing.

I have no more need of believers.
Let them find another to beguile them.
My faith, grown peculiar,
suits none but myself alone.

I have only loved the one
who was here before me
and is further removed
than simple distance.

I peer through a keyhole
into another room where
I see myself gazing,
long into the night,
at a scrap of paper
whose words my other self
surrenders the breath of life to know.

I rattle and knock to no avail.
Stop it I cry, it has no value!
Words are worth nothing!
My double will not look up
and I cannot look away.

I have no time for believers.
My faith suits none but me.

Serve up a platter of
slight silver minnows
in white wine sauce;
lay out a brace of quail
shot from the sky with
number 9 shot and tweezers of
Swedish steel to pluck the lead.
Then bring on a slice of the
beast slayed honor intact by
Manolette in Mondrian blue,
juices streaming.

O hear the pipes of Ramadamding,
the pots, pans and kettles that sing
with squealing oil of broiled brains
sauteed in the skull of a chimpanzee.

Finger a bowl of mandible fruit,
sluttishly lush by twilight
while an Ethiopian wind plays
cherry wood viola brokenhearted
in the amethyst rain.

Say nothing of yourself
except as it relates to me.
Let me see myself alone,
in light of you, until I feel
I know you better...then
tell no more of yourself
than fails to bore me.

Remain a mystery
until the very end;
never reveal the fact
that you must kill me.
Do not apologize before,
during or after the act.
Not only does decorum forbid -
t'is not your own will you wreck.

...Portia your name
is reminiscent of water
splashing down stone steps -
or a silk scarf stolen by
a scurrilous breeze, perfumed,
still, with tender bosom heat
inspired in passing... who but you
could be my deadly valentine?

Lovely
to await the consumation,
the approaching chime of
the Seraphim clock while
drifting a finger in wine sauce,
and stubbing a good cigar in
scraps of fat to savor the scent....
luscious!

I asume you agree
the meal was all
a meal should be,
sufficient delight
without surfeit...

and now, padrone:
bring us a full blooded wine
from your most secluded cellar,
the one that runs beneath the
Cemetary of St. Magdalen near
la Villa De La Rosa....
then bring us the check
and prepare my cowl
taking care not to crease the hem
or drag the hood in common dust.

Attend now, Portia my fate,
to the strike of the clock,
the pulse of the ticking,
the creak of the gear.

The spring is very old,
wrought from a coil
of maiden's hair,
a saint, I'm told,
who spoke to flowers.

Time is the least of what it tells.

again it is the reasoned tide
well soldered to seamless
except in her pretty petticoat
lap of the last discharge
why effort is reprehensible
for more information call

dissension over slack snake
bleeding well into the wind
glorifying the asceptic wand
invested in foreign soil
slit wrist to ambivalent
keen to be saddled raw

impervious to slight
wish responding to weal
lack of erotic subtext
clawing again at night
whispered hand signals
ratio of nine to none

quibbling in semaphore
lynx among the lions
incorporeal frilly apostles
wobble in corpulent sea
soaking dry or what have you
churning in shuddery climax

full felt fury subsides
pray and become a cube
apparent wiles of weakness
chewing on breaded brick
consumed by another day's
glum tidings of grim joy

challenge but no retort
amateur bedside manner
fatted with glee of remorse
one less is half of another
concern subverts context
but no is not a number
Deuce is Good for Jacks

The problem is
5 tons of redheads.
Of course I read you
but only in paperback.

Can't say I
thank you much
but then again
secrets are just
a state of mind.

These exotic facets
prove no obstacle
to the conquest of
Everest barefoot.
Do they help?
Why ask?
It all creeps out
in the angle of a
dead man's eye.

A thousand weeks
reaching toward a
way to conclude
...or some of
the ways said
to lead to it...

Fall light
peels away.
S'Winter
I fear.

Nothing tonight for
the hungry heart but
an actress in tight jeans
getting more out of a coke
than was ever put in and
other creosote dreams.

The last day of winter
has left a whole string
of unanswered calls and
the threat of the equinox
lies heavy on your heart.
Seems something should
be done about spring
other than leaving the
phone off the hook.

All this inconsequence
harks back to subtle
miscalculations
in your master plan,
such as it is, making
much heartfelt concern
seem odd. Reductive.

So you retire to read
hoping that you and
the word can arrange
a tender conspiracy,
however brief.

Only within a context
of significant choice
does freedom merit
the fuss and bother.
Or so it says here.

The remaining question is
whether to go for anything,
considering the stupendous
possibilities of nothing at all.



Warmup

forward action
until with time
begins to fall
a little music

sensible to
the anxiety of
so much need
to express

the difficulty
as it happens
lies in the ease
of rejection

like syntax
there is no
framing its law
without its aid

the shape of it
like a hand
approaching keys
to strike a chord

it is a matter of
some importance
that thought resolve
in metaphor

and that the metaphor
be flesh and that the
flesh be warm although
not necessarily tender.




As Though As If

Tomorrow has no choice.
Be its reason or its ruin.
Love's body is tortured
for secrets none possess;
only what is best forgot
seems worth remembering
as bitterness can testify.

Dowsing for a daisy
with a sprig of mint
I find only orchids
on the veranda,
orchids in the swell
of the queenly hills,
orchids on the roof of
the hothouse pushing
purple faces through
drifts of impeccable snow.

Tomorrow has no choice.
Be its reason or its ruin.
Forgive these lifelong suicides,
you who jumped in the river
with no second thought
to rescue the reflection
of a drowning sun.

That was the winter he almost died.
This is the winter he almost did not.

A year separates these things
during which reality wavered like
a heat mirage on the highway
and a clarity was conceived
owing nothing at all to vision.

Strange to walk in the old skin,
feeling the cool new coin clasped
in my own warm hand as a promise.



Architectonic Scale

Deciding to salvage
this bright occasion
apprehended only as
rare eyes in the snow
- endorsing no
blatant nakedness
in the orangery w/
prophets and poets
false or otherwise -

steering well clear of
talking clouds over
the beam of blue ash,
begging
my own indulgence
as though of a stranger,
to discover if
love has a body &
if so, to embrace it.

Leaving my head in my hat
so it won't lose its shape,
knowing it will not be worn
again these thousand years.

Coltrane said: you've
got twelve notes in
the scale - you might
as well use all of them.
With an attitude like that
you could use your
nose for an eraser,
beginning at your feet,
leaving only a clear
outline of light where
you were said to stand.

Here is the
beginning of the book.
All lines are the
beginning of the book.
I thought I had more
to say about this but
apparently did not for
here the manuscript ends.




C'mere

'C'mere' she said,
eyes flat to the floor.
'Not again' I said,
hair slicked tight
to my upper lip like
a lie waiting to be told.

'I have a good idea...'
she said, clinging
to the linoleum like
the shine of a summer
sun involved in rayon,
'...this time I'll try
to be more accurate.'

'This time and how
many others?' I say,
unwilling to be fooled.
'No fooling' she says,
which poses a problem:
I wouldn't want her
to go unbelieved.

Least of all that.

'I'll solve it' she says
and solve it she will or
die trying one time more
than the heart allows.

Too bad about certain things
which should be built better
or not at all. Like lo and behold.

Have I told all?
What haven't I told?
Who is to be believed?
No one I know. Is
this true of the others?
'C'mere' she said.

Mark this for reference
lovelorn blender of
midnight color in
every unstable gender

beguiling multiple reflections
from a variety of mirrors
- gilded gothic to pocket

listen:
there are children
raised by wolves
who never learn to speak

who discern
in your words
only the meat
on your breath

shifts in perception shatter
all vessels to splinters;
no one escapes this generation
with immortality untarnished

...fragments
invade the bloodstream
through soles of the feet;
lodge dangerously in the
porches of your heart

bearing bits of the
message in a bottle
you dropped into what
seemed an infinite sea

now found to be
small, circular &
not particularly blue:

your own words with
no redeeming context.

---

Her drop she glove,
crywent, went, went
long time than go.

Out of her cry come
knock knock knock
as sadly she roam.

Friends yak bibulous
affronting with cash,
slyly insinuate also.

She in she out she
turn up a rock to find
she glove froze erect

finger at Mars pointing
some Sunday and went.

Slides of adagio glimmer
up a trail of clock chime
to the thin paper dome
where I sit in your
hard red chair for less
than a lifetime and wave.

I read you in school first
and once and awhile in life.
Spilled coffee on your cover,
wine and tobacco between lines.
A hundred bookmarks could
never find my place in you
or uncurl the turned down pages.

Enduring only as
no single lesson;
cracked open to
let the marrow show -
and still the savor seems
reluctant at one remove.

• 
  

  ---

  
  
  The Conquest Of Spain
  
  While duration is
  part of the equation,
  a touch of Venus
  multiplies premises
  and more cats
  climb out of the box
  than climbed in.
  Spain is too big to
  conquer in a morning.
  We must mow her
  like a pasture and
  lay the clean cut hay
  in bundles first, then
  we may persuade her
  to surrender - not before.
  She has other loves to die for.
  
  
  
  Jaaz #1
  
  Twelve dependably
  unsteady tones
  ready to appear as
  action in jazz
  for the duration of
  one solo on the
  crumpled horn
  blown inside out
  like a warm puddle
  sliding down the
  ladder of the blues.
  
  Swallowing, stabbing,
  loving en brochette,
  shades in the wings
  like ravens whisper,
  coaxing consumation,
  sincere sorrow,
  sighs, smiles and
  shudders of delight
  out of the glass zipper.
  
  ...ways it comes
  into the ear
  before rolling
  out of the head...
  saw a map of it
  on a poster once
  but it gave no
  sense of scale -
  
  had all the earmarks
  of a context including a
  catalogue of set attitudes
  like: haven't we met
  before in the gutter
  with our throats cut?
  
  Not enough in common
  to peg it as any kind of
  definitive movement.
  Wait a minute -
  they do all wear the
  same kind of shoes...
  
  Neologistic.
  
  
  
  
  Noform on the Soangso
  
  I postulate I with bristling spears
  against a horizon so vast I almost
  fall off the world in order to
  wade the seashore ankle deep.
  
  Thicker than weeds
  noise firming to fully
  conditioned usage
  regretting endlessly
  the unfortunate need
  to expire writhing
  in the shadowy grip
  of enormous torque.
  
  Udder than that what use
  this sodden erodic pignik
  smoking and drinking and
  telling you what I think
  until the root of my tongue
  swells with the pressure
  of what cannot be spoken
  in the act of telling it.
  
  Did I expect to catch you
  dead in your cradle like some
  babyface cop shot in the sinus
  by an opprobrious gangster?
  These are fetid times with
  cark and care roiling like
  slime from Undine's breviary.
  
  To get that fine interest back
  is the sensible occupation.
  Bundles of joy in ectoplasm
  circulate essence of nocturn
  in non musical framework
  but only the breather sings,
  throbbing and exhaling
  wealth of erogenous detail.
  
  The act of attention focused
  on something yet unknown,
  exercise of such attention,
  suffices for content, never
  mind the thing examined.
  Remark that it is entirely
  something else revisited,
  diminished until design is
  noticed and accepted as
  interchangeable with content:
  The curl of the cloud,
  the sweep of the sea,
  the dreadfulness of tigers...
  
  A thing worth saying
  is worth saying badly.
  Details too finely riven
  consume tack and tactic
  leaving no porosity for
  the alephs and addenda
  to attach and magnetize -
  to attack and criticize -
  to relax and sympathize.
  I mean: the sun is not a star.
  
  
  
  
  Made Drunk to Love You
  
  Made drunk to love you,
  Sober to fit your curves.
  3 o'clock and the stars shine
  But the moon is under the hill.
  
  
  
  
  The Door to the Sea
  
  From others clustered at
  the sea wall without song,
  lacking means of consolation,
  shying from interpretation,
  but themselves worthy of study
  
  we learn to question
  as if a proposition were
  actually presented which
  seemed to want an answer
  ...ostensibly from us while
  
  sounding an unseen hall
  suggesting great distance
  and lending roundness to
  pronouncements which
  invite their own imitation...
  
  You were mute until the gods
  spoke through you making
  the air shiver and shade
  into heights of violet utterly
  invisible but felt to be stunning
  like a rose cut glow in the vapor.
  
  It's tempting to dance the rebel
  in such moments of freedom
  but, considering the condition
  of the door to the sea itself,
  the results cannot be expected
  to be particularly everlasting.
  
  
  
  
  Three Legged Mare
  
  More skies than stars tonight
  with only a hunk of
  dim equivocal moon
  to split between them;
  one sided conversation of
  shifting continental crockery
  extending the faultline near
  enough the border to hear
  strains from the strange cantina.
  
  Far as I can tell,
  the sky starts right
  over the roof and
  goes nowhere, so
  Heaven must lie
  below the rafters
  but above the eaves.
  
  Beneath the chowder dawn,
  tied to a pillar of fog,
  snorting, steaming,
  ripe for the road,
  impatient hooves stamp
  variegated snowflakes into
  identical patches of powder.
  
  Too much talk of nuance
  where actual facts are few.
  You love or you do not love.
  There are no shades between.
  
  Bridled and brindle,
  blinkered and sway,
  hobbled and hamstrung,
  no more nor less than
  a three legged mare,
  the horse is yours.
  Always was. Ride her
  with bells in your heart.
  
  
  
  
  Sense of Option
  
  Exercise of option
  casually minus
  all but necessity -
  symbols for delirium
  love alone evokes and
  fires gracious enough to
  declare us ash without
  the need for incineration...
  
  You are to be forgotten -
  who are in essence
  so unforgettable -
  by actions such as this:
  consuming a dish
  I detest enough to salt
  thickly before I eat.
  
  Of full fledged consecration
  in a suppositional setting
  reflected against blinding sun,
  I ask in honest bafflement:
  is there an ointment to revive
  the sense of vision in these things?
  Or is this darkness absolute?
  If so, I salute beauty as a
  necessary delusion whose
  factuality need not be challenged.
  
  A lot of unexamined things
  are known to break the surface
  of the syntext like waves,
  preserving some hint of pattern
  from the discardable content.
  One can't be ineffectual enough.
  Try! You cannot, can you?
  
  There is no anodyne to this
  but the curious ululation
  called music in the jungle
  where we live firm in the faith
  we can count higher than five
  althought the need does not arise.
  
  
  
  
  Mandrake's Patchwork Orchestra
  
  She does not dance.
  She dances.
  He does not paint.
  He paints.
  
  I, too, paint: circles
  on a ballroom in the rain.
  Nothing here to plunder but
  the consciences of thieves.
  
  Marriageable meat
  in the freezer,
  Iona's boneless roast
  complaining in the stove,
  a question of the cost
  of replacing the lace,
  handmade in hell,
  that crumbles to confetti
  with one hard glare
  from the cat's blind eye
  as I relax in the bath
  squeezing strawberry soap
  to jelly for the exercise.
  
  Just because no one
  offers to take the fall
  for me doesn't mean
  no one ever would.
  Believe it or beat it is
  the best advice for now.
  Sooner or later, they say,
  you've got to trust someone
  whether you can or not.
  
  Tiger after tiger,
  in a solid stream
  around the bedstead,
  melts into butter over
  a slagheap of eiderdown,
  speaking their essential names
  in rhythms which return them
  to the core of their creation.
  
  
  
  
  Meeting Webster at a Crossroad
  
  Where once the faucet flowed
  with frothing blood, oh ages,
  here we sip the milk of mares
  and watch a setting sunrise,
  flagrantly lubricious through
  fornicating trees, while at each
  and every midnight crossroad
  Daniel Webster sternly stands to
  grab you by the tie demanding:
  "How Stands the Union?"
  You dare not answer otherwise
  than: As she stood,
  foursquare
  and indivisible.
  
  It must be said - cannot,
  in the end, go undeclaimed-
  must be accepted, spoken and
  perhaps embraced, if not in the
  heart itself, at least in action...
  and this despite strangers with
  complaints no more valid than
  your own demanding the
  quotidian of vintage sympathy
  you reserve for self pity...
  
  Systems to defend,
  systems to destroy,
  systems to stand on end
  and shake until the nickels
  rock and roll across the floor...
  this is the dream
  the dreamer dreamed
  dreaming not he dreamed.
  
  How stands the Union?
  Why even as she stood,
  naked, with french perfume,
  wearing a most alarming smile.
  In the end she is as good
  a thing to love as any but
  who would dare represent her
  in this light to Daniel Webster?
  
  There are limits,
  as you know,
  to his democracy.
  
  
  
  
  Finch
  
  One colleague said to another:
  Finch likes his bread buttered
  around the edges.
  
  And the bells and the breeze,
  the wimpled waves and the seven
  girls with lips of blue concur.
  
  Schooners of thick lead winter
  scour the tundra with sails of thunder;
  pitch and roll wherever they choose,
  disdaining the truss of the wind.
  
  These are the times so near the end
  you can hear the rumble of the locomotive
  disengaging the last of its cars in order
  to couple directly with the caboose.
  
  All which is weird is found
  to be utterly commonplace
  and the unexceptional reveals
  the strangeness at its depth.
  
  And the sleet and the stars,
  the smiles of the sea and the
  true steady glow at the heart
  of the world know it to be so.
  
  One colleague said to another:
  Finch likes his circles squared
  and his corners rounded.
  
  And the kings and the queens
  of the countries between the
  head and the toes decree it to be so.
  Reservation for One
  
  Want to get ahold of the real stuff?
  Ready to toss aside those jawbusters
  and chew what the condemned chew
  to dissolve their cells in tangible light,
  send their souls aloft in satisfying
  shimmers of mystery through endless
  parting veils of swimming ocular motifs
  in a kaleidoscope of melting diamonds?
  
  Want to know what the old fart knows
  who sits in toothless delight absorbing
  angelic messages from sunbeams curling
  around him with the familiarity of cats,
  allowing access to winter constellations
  in the mid-day glare of summer?
  
  Are you willing to devour your mind for
  the pleasure of digesting those quantities
  of succulent but imperfect memories,
  delicate in flavor as the edge of a rainbow
  where it blends into invisibility?
  
  Then follow the clank of the granite banjo
  into the cavern and roll the great stone shut.
  The feast of familiar flesh is too often
  prepared for those lacking appetite.
  
  Is it the clank of the lead plates
  passed around in the chill dark,
  or the cllatter of bone utensils
  which so alarm them? Such a
  marvelous spread to be wasted
  on jaws froze shut in mortal dread.
  
  
  
  
  Revealed to Love Alone
  
  I or another like me
  hard upon midnight
  lie with a ripe love
  in foxglove beneath
  a chinaberry bough.
  
  A thousand years
  - then again none -
  crowd nearer my
  soul than the edge
  of a knife its blade.
  
  In sight of all
  a youth I came
  and as a youth I go,
  revealed to love alone.
  
  
  
  
  Judith of Twelve Summers
  
  Slight in every sense
  she came to sit by
  the well where I live.
  To sit, never to drink.
  
  If she felt thirst or
  how she satisfied it,
  never was revealed.
  Desire denied
  for the good of love
  may have been love itself,
  though each of these things
  is made small by naming.
  
  This dark remembers
  tones of a deeper dark
  when she who made no music
  vanished through a rip in a cloud
  with a sound like departing bells.
  
  Some summers ago I found
  a finger of her shadow,
  liquid beneath dry stone
  in a patch of sand.
  
  Gone beyond
  what is to come,
  absorbed in a silence
  unlike listening,
  yesterday's angels
  sail past tonight's moon
  so blue and shrill -
  
  come from the dark
  to speak of the dark
  as the promise of
  dusk fulfilled.
  
  Begin again. it must be done,
  if only to recover a lost sense
  of the fitness of going at all -
  
  not because there
  seems no real choice
  but because of her
  lips of shadow
  speaking from
  smooth stone at the
  mouth of the well...
  she who comes to sit
  sometimes and drink
  of the gathering dark
  and sing like a
  clear, small bell.
  
  
  
  
  Sweet Sawdust & the Hot Song of the Saw
  
  As little as long ago
  or far away as forever
  this is where we meet
  to celebrate what
  never was
  until it comes to pass
  
  There was a time...
  Start again!
  ...Ah, no...
  Twice told dissolves
  in the acid of repetition
  
  Not to establish
  a mere context
  for something else
  were the birds
  baked in the clock
  
  ...later to sing...
  
  -it is not within our range
  to be so monumentally sad
  about tracing a bit of flesh
  to the bicuspid -
  
  ...only for the sake
  of the moment itself,
  born out of sequence,
  in alarming wonder.
  
  Shameful?
  Why say it?
  
  
  
  
  Tango Hit Palace
  
  I am the blind assassin of love
  in a black hat without conscience,
  picking a few thorns from a tune
  called tango hit palace
  forgetting I ever knew
  any reason never to do
  the blue fandango with
  the girl in naked pearls.
  
  Not up to me.
  None of it was
  ever up to me.
  I was a tool.
  None of these
  things were
  my doing.
  I was broke.
  The road shined.
  I had
  nothing to swallow.
  Nothing to swallow it from.
  
  Headless. No mouth.
  Neither could I eat nor speak.
  
  so much wasted
  it's like a vow
  to waste no more
  
  Unable to clarify the mire
  of false beginnings,
  we are what we
  force ourselves to be,
  not what we crawl from.
  
  
  
  
  Search Party
  
  Abrasive darkness slipping
  skyward to storm, sunset
  reflected in damp leather
  heavy with trail, lowering
  brace of toiling clouds ram
  hope in a short brown sack;
  a meager finger of stars points
  southwest winding riverward.
  
  Thunder beneath the branches,
  rolling from dark summits
  of mountain or cloud range;
  hurricane lantern and cookpan
  loose in the bedroll clatter.
  Foul sweetness of a wet cigar,
  iron flavored gruel of necessity.
  Somewhere out there a child.
  
  
  
  
  False Title
  
  Cherry the hot tomato
  ripe as a fish breeze
  under a soft umbrella
  peeled to penumbra
  baring a cameo of cliffs
  to a bright set of stars.
  
  Rain rocks wobble between
  sheets tangled in dinnerware,
  plates and pillows entwine
  while lungs sift the air for
  the wherewithall to breath.
  
  For this to forgo
  mortal pleasure,
  to be as a stone
  among stones,
  cool to the outer calm.
  
  Find me a
  short duchess,
  I am no tall duke.
  
  
  

  ---

  
  
  Love Letter
  
  All the ripping and pawing,
  short sighted excuses and
  cold gleam of the peeled eye
  go into this envelope, sealed
  with the slime of treachery.
  A stamp of the bootheel,
  fresh from the muck and drool
  of an idiot martyr's grave
  performs the rite of postage.
  
  The venom of silted fangs
  enhances the salutation which
  lurches from the unfolded page
  punctuated in splintered glass,
  signed with the muted roar
  of distant waves collapsing in
  chase of an ever retreating shore.
  
  You, expecting a letter of love,
  have been handed a sandwich
  of salt and stone; find it more
  difficult to digest than it was
  to chew and swallow.
  
  Here is a flame which will not
  go out in the rain but extinguishes
  quickly when all is still and dry.
  How is it not a letter of love?
  Who would care to brew the poison
  of its ink with such meticulous
  passion if not a lover?
  
  
  
  
  Amphibian
  
  I liked the rust on the spotted rose,
  the taste of fate faded on wallpaper.
  Hands had to reach deep into
  the sweet bat-wing shadows to
  remove me to this other place,
  forbidden to crouch between
  the marble thighs of the goddess
  of twice sacred double darkness,
  she who terrifies the hopeful with
  the finality of outermost rhapsody.
  
  I understand their alarm
  but what is harm to me?
  
  Removed from prying eyes
  (all eyes are prying)
  a disintegrating glimpse
  into the rectifying passion
  circulating in the marrow
  is distinguishable from
  the reflected light of sun
  only by the presence of the
  roses that surround the moon.
  
  What poisons would brew here
  were there time to prepare them!
  
  
  
  
  Rose of the Occident
  
  I enticed you into the woods
  with thoughts worth dying for,
  dropped you on the daisies with
  praises worthy of the moment.
  
  I'd repeat the trespass if I knew
  the windings of your tongue
  but words mean differently now,
  weights have shifted from what
  they were when days as we now
  know them to have been began.
  
  It was never the concerns
  so much as the
  people who held them,
  calling us from solitude
  to seek a certain strain,
  Rose of the Occident,
  an accidental hybrid
  whose promise to open
  was its finer bloom.
  
  
  
  
  One Afternoon in Three
  
  Now seems a time not
  to decide irrevocably
  to chase down what
  cannot be captured
  except as a representation
  of low Heaven or high trees.
  Rejecting all spaces between,
  let us follow the example
  of the blazing Turks,
  rattling sash and sabre
  as they dash into the
  flame of the volcano.
  Let them say of us:
  they were like Turks
  riding into a volcano!
  A String of Jagged Peaks
  
  Cricket at damn past seven
  over the tin bridge to my heart;
  ever so often the roof falls
  allowing a little perspective
  before the ceiling puckers
  like a livid incision leaving
  scar tissue of Victorian wallpaper.
  
  A whisper inquires of each visitor,
  coming and going: are you my doom?
  Is it you I didn't know I was waiting for
  to the steady tune of a dripping tap?
  
  There is no conquering
  the vaporous foe which
  rearranges its features to
  resemble something known,
  customary unfolding of events,
  disguise of the commonplace.
  Is that what this war is about?
  
  Up the Perfume River looking for
  one of those blue porcelain bowls
  admired so much from afar on
  the head of a human cannonball.
  Human bodies can be repaired but
  there's only so much decent crockery.
  
  All night the wind ignored our hillside,
  seeking higher places,
  spinning confounding clouds
  around a string of jagged peaks
  in tightening concentric circles until
  sleep rode up on the back of a white
  snow leopard who lay purring in my lap.
  
  
  
  
  Side Away From the Sun
  
  Where is the place we leave
  without taking a single step
  yet cannot return to in a
  year's bright marching?
  
  Memory caught up in
  repetition of old songs,
  sudden loss surprised
  in a declivity between
  heartbeats while
  components of sensibility
  crash from the sky like
  Wormwood, scattering
  into remorse of detail...
  
  there is only the
  one ocean
  everything in it
  tastes of salt.
  
  Eyries everywhere
  from which swoop
  things which are not eagles
  as my mouth seeks yours
  with only a moment to linger.
  
  
  
  
  The Way of the Ride
  
  The way of the ride
  The way of the halt
  Ask no more of me
  I will lie down flat
  
  Wearing a loose tunic
  Weave, cut, color
  And stitch of flesh
  Warm in the heat
  
  And cool in the cold
  Down flat I will lie
  Facing east and west
  in a single glance
  
  None know less than I
  The unborn know more
  Nothing at all they know
  Less than a sky blue sky
  
  The way of the sand
  The way of the shore
  I will lie down flat
  Providing nothing
  
  More follow than song
  That is endlessly sung
  Let them lie down flat
  In the wash of a wave
  
  In the wheel of the sun
  In shallow holes
  Scooped from the sand
  Ask nothing of me
  
  Away I will ride
  Away, away
  Flat will I lie
  Ask no more
  
  Ask no more of me
  I will lie down flat
  On the breast of a star
  And attempt to shine
  
  What world is this
  Where dark dismays?
  It spins thus: strange
  And not so strange
  
  
  
  Insomniasonatina
  
  Fingers folded, too tired
  to pull back the covers,
  cynicism dismissed like
  a straw headed jackass
  to bray at the dead...
  dreamings arise
  faceless and brimming
  with implicit presence,
  obedient to fill any form
  I care to summon,
  summoning none.
  
  Hinge to a midnight
  door in the dark
  where small ladies
  with silver eyes
  bathe in the flesh
  of a luminous moon,
  melting into the stream
  of a strange little eddy
  which once was nowhere
  and soon to be a dream.
  
  
  
  
  Endless Parenthesis
  
  Anthems too dense
  for remembrance
  usher us in and out
  through fluid stone
  which hardens in
  the wake of passage
  in this case: ocean
  in that case: wind
  in all cases: world
  but not as we know it
  
  You hear the same sound
  going out as coming in
  the difference is that
  now you know it's music
  Dog Shadows Howling
  
  Not what I feared
  but what I had not
  thought to fear,
  
  like little windows,
  doll house windows,
  opening out of the air.
  
  My death is not that strong
  but nothing else could fill the
  empty space my heart is heir to.
  
  Opals. Frost flowers.
  A warmness like
  flesh to dissolve in.
  
  Not everything written
  in breath on cold glass
  is poetry.
  
  
  
  Whitlow's Tower
  ...for Robert Petersen
  
  Don't care
  for the moon
  when it shines
  too bright
  for what it is.
  
  Only at thinnest crescent
  does it hang right against
  the God-dripping void.
  
  There are shades
  beyond black no
  man has seen,
  not in imagination
  nor depth of trance.
  Christ did not see it.
  All he said was
  Jesus, it looks
  dark down there.
  
  The other side,
  compadre,
  a way away...
  source of the
  lesser darkness
  we call light.
  
  These eyes we
  grow in our
  cages of gristle:
  what do we mean
  when we say light...
  
  here where one brown leaf
  swallows Summer whole...
  
  what can we possibly mean?
  
•  

  
  
  A Clatter Like Fine Mist
  
  Tossed out of the shining,
  like a clatter of fine mist
  at the core of deafness
  between enormous bells
  
  ...here it is quiet...come!
  No, here is more quiet still...
  That silence is memory
  
  this an untainted hush
  without qualities
  in the wake of
  wonderfully audible thunder
  
  ...there you have
  the ocean's applause
  and clouds for critics
  ...here you have
  sensation and a chance
  to fall far enough to consider
  the possibility of redemption.
  
  
  
  
  Beyond Puberty
  
  Dark communion,
  strength to expect
  no spectacular
  fin to the beguine.
  
  What do you propose
  to settle the bullshit
  once if not forever?
  
  A feeling things should be
  more...copasetic?
  Suck the Devil's root!
  
  Conviction without method
  breaks wheels designed to avoid
  the ruts of this very terrain.
  
  Remove your succulent corpse
  from the table directly. We
  do not feast upon our fallen.
  One in a million is surplus.
  More than once there was only one.
  
  
  
  
  By Foot to the Moon
  
  Part of no man's suggestive plot
  Presence of something excitable
  barely containing itself in erotic
  hangings dripping from the rafter
  
  One perfect nuance welcomes
  whomever whenever before
  catapulting into caresses or stuck
  fronting a land mass on a deck chair
  
  Felicitous fragrance out of the
  throat of a dove reclining upon
  the shadow of a silent wing -
  Spring leaps sudden and terrible
  
  Nothing but wealth to exchange for
  bits of sea glass worn to a jeweling
  Eye of a sea bass pickled in brine
  A fistful of sand and another of salt
  
  Some journeys seem predestined
  This has no object but walking with
  one foot replacing another - fulcrum of
  some of our wants but none of our needs
  
  A basket of pears with freckles of sun
  Eye of a sea bass pickled in brine
  A fistful of sand, another of salt
  By foot to the moon and back before night
  
  
  
  
  Flora
  
  Flora by the river
  among the rushes
  in an Aberdeen shawl,
  grass green lovely thing
  embroidered with sheaves
  of wheat around the border,
  slippers by the shore,
  ankle deep in the shallows.
  
  She slips off her shift,
  white thing with brocade of
  whorls and angular curves.
  Hooking it on the overhang
  of a yew she wades out until
  her hair streams in the current
  like strands of river weed.
  
  Approaching sun reveals
  her slippers to be blue -
  first feelers of light climb
  into her eyes and shine.
  She returns to the bank and
  follows the hedge row path,
  carrying slippers and shift
  till her body and feet are dry,
  slips them on and enters my room.
  Still asleep I see nothing of this
  so it must be that I dreamed it.
  
  
  
  Oil Spill Sonata
  
  Ship filled to capacity fails
  to avoid a schooner trolling
  for grunion off shore of Italy.
  
  To exacerbate the dilemma
  reporters assembled for lunch
  on the west veranda overlook
  the site of the slight misjudgment
  and lose all perspective penning
  sonnets to blue black gushing oil,
  the gathering slick of slime and
  the sorrowful plight of seabirds.
  
  With a tap of the tambourine
  the news dismays the world.
  Not many are prepared
  to understand it was only
  a slight misjudgment.
  Could happen to anyone.
  
  When they seek incriminating
  circumstances they'll find them
  without any doubt - always
  grounds for prosecution - who
  can be on his toes all the time
  floating a million tons of scud
  ten thousand watery miles?
  
  Long haul mentality descends
  as soon as you leave the dock -
  a sort of amnesia -
  repetitive chores -
  sleep as much as you can -
  collect pay at the end.
  It's not enough, you know.
  
  Shippers control the unions
  and nobody in high places
  gives a hoot in hell so long
  as things run smooth and
  everyone gets enough gas.
  We know that.
  You know it too.
  
  So we hit a snag and the wrath
  descends on us, as though we
  designed these single hulled
  floating incipient disasters
  and personally thanked the
  Ayatollah for his petroleum.
  I don't even know the man.
  I never get off the ship in Iran.
  
  They burn way too much oil back
  in the States and this slick is a sort
  of symbol of that, the way I see it.
  For me it was either dental college
  or the sea - my hands developed
  a fine tremor so I became a sailor.
  
  
  
  
  Tarbean
  
  The tarbean flatters sweet
  with a gentle punch that
  fractures you in centuries.
  Deeper than dry rot,
  more exotic than decay,
  poignant as a nova on the
  edge of interstellar space,
  the music of the tarbean flatters
  your sweet, sweet life away.
  
  It neither wrecks nor rends you,
  circumstances attend to that,
  but where are those years
  of confusion, grace and conflict
  resolving in remembrance?
  How has peace displaced them?
  How have heroic kisses
  smack on the lips of the moon,
  rarely recalled even in dream,
  confounded the texture of time?
  The music of the tarbean flatters
  your sweet, sweet life away.
  
  Harbingers of revelation,
  resolution and reunion,
  make some kind of song
  that will jab through the
  shit in our ears like a
  sharpened pencil point
  without piercing the drum.
  Teach us to spring from these
  placid traps like hurricanes
  while their sudden teeth
  snap shut on wind.
  
  Teach us to move like running water
  into a shiver of moonbeam,
  return with the face of a cloud
  and never confuse it with a dream.
  
  There are things which
  slip through our interstices,
  shades of intangible light
  reflecting alternate spectrums,
  wearing faces which dissolve
  our hearts in utter adoration.
  There are places seen through
  the squeak of a rusty hinge on
  a back door banged by a breeze
  fragrant with spice of pine,
  eternally summer afternoons where
  upon naked feet impervious to glass
  we follow a lucid fiber of silence
  like a homing beam through
  the thunder of opposing forces.
  
  Memories deeper than dreams
  gather our far-flung limbs
  beyond all facility of recall
  where skies of Neptune murmer
  and the flying swamps of Venus
  reply in thick, slow whispers.
  
  The music of the tarbean flatters,
  soothes, cajoles and murders
  the ancient infant in its cradle
  with suffocating tenderness.
  One swallow of our
  true thin wicked wine
  is worth a thousand
  empty bottles of eternity.
  
  
  
  Ypsilon
  
  Have you heard how Hannibal
  on the back of an elephant
  got from aleph to ypsilon,
  by light of a lullaby?
  What is the lesson here?
  Behind every legend something
  might possibly have happened.
  Read it each of a dozen ways
  until long about twilight
  what seemed a blur begins
  to harmonize, benefiting from
  less light, and each of your
  dreams come true, or could
  if you let your eyes cross
  and stopped inspecting facts.
  All but the one you hold back
  daring to dream at all on the
  chance something unexpected
  might prove the most desirable
  resolution after all - assuming
  there is to be a resolution...
  
  
  
  The Last Rhino
  
  You lay your best cards on this
  bone table among stars, unable
  to stand for yourself alone or go
  for a reduction into basic unity.
  Then it's time for a jazz break
  and oh what jazz it is!
  
  Half the keys are missing but you
  manage to muscle it into the clear
  by dint of an instinct for hyperbole.
  
  They say this is the maximum
  return on any investment but
  the fact that you are allowed
  to expect anything at all raises
  the suspicion you were led on.
  
  Somewhere along the line you
  have to decide what is meant
  by a sense of humor. Maybe
  it's something they keep in the
  back of the stacked refrigerator.
  Eat your way there and see.
  
  
  
  Bright and Blue
  
  If the sun were an apple bright and blue
  over the hill at Piggy's farm along about
  dawning over a perfectly placid Pacific;
  were all of these days to debut soluble
  and simple as this lipless messenger,
  muted and mild from black above blue
  ...for you...
  while for us they appear
  blanched in shades of regret,
  you alone awarding the moment
  innocent, obvious meaning,
  believing faithfully that this
  barely revealed earth with its
  cuniform shadows is the property
  of whomever attempts to decipher them...
  
  then accept and recover these days
  from those of us who can figure
  only workaday ways to use them;
  take them into your keeping with
  your assurance that you intend to
  make of their passing hours a song,
  something we can, ourselves,
  possess in full regretless measure -
  
  let the curtain of
  silvery bells be drawn
  in one sweeping jingle
  as we sink to our thighs
  in the promise of love
  without the trouble of passion.
  
  
  
  Open Notebook
  
  To speak from the place
  or near enough not to
  count as wholly foolish -
  what is ever near enough?
  
  Wanting suddenly to stop,
  rise from the desk
  and write the next line
  after learning to love again.
  
  That metal which
  is also like pearl
  can be shaped but not
  altered in any essence,
  self shining as it is.
  
  These lives I cross,
  more pure than mine,
  I maim unknowing and
  never find the heart to finish;
  blood of my arteries farflung.
  
  Is there at the top
  a crowning?
  For a little while;
  successive nights
  willowing through
  incandescent midnight
  into light of common day.
  
  Cease from failing!
  Cease, cease, cease...
  desist!
  
  ...for what is lost
  no more than for all
  remaining to be lost
  which is not lost yet...
  
  The shade if not
  the shine of glory
  illumines the reeds,
  uncontrived and ample.
  
  Within this grove
  I lay two apples on
  the ground set aside
  as sacred unto three,
  
  attempting to hold a thing
  unchanging to my heart -
  therein the vast impropriety.
  
  Time, take charge of
  these thoughts and
  stand them in my stead.
  I am fallen with my day
  and do not seek another.
  
  
  
  Holigomena
  
  We are the aftermath,
  better loved than loving,
  breaking bread with Peter
  and the other infidels.
  
  Innuendo is our mother tongue,
  a dialect of denial with
  a hundred words for hunger,
  a hundred words for yearning
  and a hundred words for love.
  
  From root to branch to cloud to sky
  and a step beyond, we seek
  the meaning of these words,
  finding only other words to mark
  the helplessness of longing.
  
  Outside the limits of our lexicon
  a few unclear pointings seem
  to recommend themselves
  through some obscure
  grounding in the heart...
  informing us beyond indifference
  but far short of conviction.
  
  Mistress of Mourning
  in the Valley of Reptiles,
  erupt from some unguarded recess
  of our incoherent souls to conquer us,
  despite reason, as we blunder through
  the sophistries of this and other ages
  
  attempting
  to speak truly
  if not
  truthfully
  
  about lost things
  in lost places
  with lost words
  in a lost song
  
  and somehow
  bring it
  to be found.