HOLD BACK THE NIGHT

 

You think your

luck is bad, but,

actually, you 

should have died 

about seventeen

times at this

point.  You’re

really the luckiest

man on Earth,

but you won’t

know this until

you’re dead &

looking down

on it all & you’ll

say, “those were

the days,” because

the afterlife—

that’s when

you’re really

gonna get it.

OCEAN OF TEARS

 

Spider-faced in the river light,

that old brown river is a glistening

vein.  No shape out among

the popping lights, the engine

of a conch speaks to the ships

out to sea.  

 A hundred landlocked

days, the river  like a letter,

rolls up to the disintegrating

house, a brass key in its mouth.

The magician looks out

through the glass walls, the silence

that is the last song of water.

Glass hands to pry the fissure,

the whole trap falls like a man.

Mister Miracle—not what

the audience really wanted;

a puddle that seeps through

every floor, down to the bones

in the ground, thrown up

when the ground cracks too.

The meat of the nut, the hammer

& the anvil of sleep

where the children sway, a forest

of leaning kelp.  The river folds

into itself, the oily waves being

a tired song.

NO SAD SONGS

Cease to dream

when awake, nothing

to lord over the temple

of breath, moments

not squashed a victory

of sorts.  Take it easy

or die, attached to

nothing but the salt

earth, sea, the great

destroyer--destroy me;

green mouth that drinks

crude, needles, all

the lost, all the shriven

mendicants. 

Purr or roar, wrap around

the last real darkness

like god: that placard

at every fucking funeral;

at last she dissolves

all those goddamn footprints

in the sand.

THE LOOP

Pumice for a brain pan
a head full of green wax
box-nosed like all the ancients

the vibes are hollow
bones for some unreasonable
bird like an oil well

indefatigable as the worst--
who are never definitive
fate accompli: lousy apprentices

all anyone seems to be
a phalanx of halfwits
circling the alembic

where they were told to stand to await
further instructions in the form of cold, hard cash

24 HOURS A DAY

 

A clock-face for every nightmare

& a ruler to which the dilation

of daffodils does not confirm.

Crucifix of sentience, one hand

is small & the other large

but no head or heart at apex,

just a gluttonous wedge; money,

essence, tide—only one

chisels holes in the limestone.

Bilateral symmetry or a binary?

Only one alights, craw

of the Green Man who bids

all stalks arise & cannot give you

the time of day.

OF HOPES AND DREAMS AND TOMBSTONES

 

Variations within

established parameters

mark the cloud

of possible outcomes.

Like pages or teeth,

at last to go on

occupying space as names

are recycled—

death at last eats

the advertisements,

as such is

my hero.  You of no

commercial value,

unweave the grid

like a head of hair,

at the very last

you will be my friend.

The flags you tear

for shrouds, when erasure

is the only

recourse to a murmuring

text like an ornery

mountain; no less

than we deserve.

A sign post

the grave of an empire,

the shrill horns

like cicadas

melting into the heat.

An absolute love

purer than religion;

even in the supermarket,

the department store,

the shopping mall,

there is only

one.

GREEN DOOR

Into the side of a hill

into the sea

into algorithms

into spades

into supplication

into arithmetic

into tachycardia

into basalt

into state animals

into adumbrations

into unto another

into bees

into erasure

into benzene rings

into stage directions

into endpapers

into lachrymarys

into ergonomics

into abrasions

into outros

BARI TRACK

The register:

who calls?

Who responds?

Truncation

of the telegraph—

sparks down a line,

a poltergeist

is not a ghost,

can touch you;

oh haunts of the past,

visceral & glowing,

it was the machine

all along.

A foghorn, up & down

the scale. We blame

the messenger

when we blame

the banshee;

a thousand revenant

canaries will go easy

on us just because

we’ve got so much

in common.

CONCERTO FOR JAZZ LOVERS

Cauliflower ears

of the lotus-eaters;

their bouquets

of blind eyes, prorous

gapes.   

Heavy

rain in the bell

of a saxophone;

steel sutures of this

land, the metal skeleton

that upholds

the green goddess.  

Crops rotting

in the fields, even this

flower of our breasts

is shellacked.  Other

children will bury

our progenitors.  

We give away nothing

but that that has

value, lord over

a mannequin

full of bad air,

melt down books

for fire to torch

the libraries.

MY ELUSIVE DREAMS

 

The point where grass bursts

from ground, a follicle

for those blades of the blood

of the sun.  It’s all about

scale—the Atom will tell you—

the emptiness that is

the lattice of experience.

A point on a line, losing

everything from one moment

to the next.  The sky

is blue or black; clouds

are grey or white.

Only so many

days available, only so much

time to think of

the available days.

Like extensions, the time spent

under the star of the mind,

my elusive dreams:

metal flowers of ships

melting into the sluggish sea,

a constellation seen from  above.

How everyone winds up there

in the end—the dead, the living

& everyone else. 

THE WORLD AGAIN

As though they would exhale

cabin air, the valkyries

of the future,

which continues to shrink,

distill until you begin

to doubt it is there at all. 

An angle against the sun

to mark time; the sun 

just a lousy orange, a porthole

into the place you were

promised.  At last, there’s nothing

out in space at all—

its limits irrelevant as is

longing flapping like a carp

on the cratered surface

of some aptly named moon.

Names deflate in space,

crumple into fists, each one

raised against the joke

of the air, just a skin

like any other skin, hiding

nothing, certain of its

own boundaries, the atmosphere

crushing in is more

than you could imagine.

SUZY'S SERENADE

A smile of transistors

began to speak

            of great unity 

in cerulean light, an unreal

harpsichord tinkled

            with lightning. 

To this end

none could be left

             in the gunmetal haze;

the pregnant, stenciled-on

            eyes watched

from the periphery,

            with no need

of clarions.  The baritone

            footfalls

were just as foretold,

            except we

were happy, marching

            into the sea,

our thinking

            done, our suffering.

Like animals,

            at last; all

we wanted & more.

            The static world

left to inherit would greet

            the nova, would be

the tickertape

            of our pyrrhic grin.

LOVE ON A MOUNTAIN TOP

A thousand stones

in the sky-

diadem, unidentified,

strobing, errant superego 

parts the cumulonimbus

like a curtain of hair.

Long ago, we gave

these bodies to them.

Skies throbbed

ecstatic.  Nothing but

barbed wire to helix

this coil now.   

The Caduceus

shoots a flame

for purgation.

Serpents squeeze 

the barrel, the herm 

squirts petroleum

& lucre.

That which cannot be owned

abhorred.  Skin soft &

smooth for encoding,

the name branded, the price

too.  The oldest trick

a lame duck

bookless until the universal

language can only say

check please.

HANG UP YOUR HANG UPS

 

A nation

of trouble

erroneous

genesis

censors

censure

in the stocks

& on the lawns

terrible

arpeggio

in the dreaming

a bad bone

flexes

its narrative

what they knew

would be

all along

the awful

seminal

crooks

lay down

in worsted

grey hair

the old speech

still holding

oceans

the feet

of braves

over sickly

flames

WHAT'S IT GONNA BE?

A landscape unrolls

A knot of roads

A basement, a telescope

7 flowers of the prism

Gap-toothed compass rose

Constellations wheel above

Roots gather below

Vintage in the cellar

Ghosts in the furnace

Skeins of tragedy, motes

Of comedy, so long

Since we gave names to homes

Or lived in them

HOLD ON

Though another imagined end,
     a row of nosegays
erupt from the buried
     clavicle, debris
dances to fill
     a vacuum, water to fill
the hollowed-out
     temple.  8 or 9
clouds to fill
     the droopy head.
No rope
     trick, just a yellow
balloon.  Microorganisms'
     parthenogenesis, a lifetime
of 2-minute songs
     stacked end to end
to end the dance
     of Maya, illusion is
as hands must be
     hands
to get the record flipped.

ANGEL BABY

A crystal comma
       in a silo, voice
like tinkling glass.
                    Dendrites
a thousand pins,
       verdant cloud mycelium,
its shadow
                   on Earth
       describes a map
of ill-omen.  All our thousand
       cherished nightmares
boiled to gleaming--
       chromium flames
in the central eye;
           the eye of the lion
                  in the agate,
the aperture opens
       like a double axe;

       redacted pages
                  coagulate
        as punishing wings,

pinions up against
        the heavens'
autumnal orange
                   scratch commands

on the retina,
                   dilating time,
the rise of the apocrypha
                   as margins begin to

      overwhelm the page.

PARIS BLUES

Ghost Braille 

of rain

on sfumato smear

of tram windows. 

Sun staccato 

through same.

Angled shadows, 

fallen brows.   

Time is the gun

of gravity.  

Everyone on Earth 

is a stranger

on the train, 

in the end

everyone leaves. 

Everyone

gets off.  

At the same stop,

though destinations

differ,  I don’t

think you’re 

my neighbor,

know you 

from anywhere,

wonder where

you’ve gone. 

All the eye 

sees, closes,

forgets.

SISTER LEE

The pages gilt

only in the shut

book, the ground

the speech

of objects. 

Analog bilateral,

the volume of the

metalspot,

the pawed moon

in the lazy creek.

Stand-alone

tomes slough

off, a hunter

in a boar-husk.

In leaving behind

the boom of the beat

skin, the ghost

of the animal

is gone, the sweat

streaked serif.

A shroud

of zeroes drops

a flanged cube,

each thing disintegrating

into data.  The lay

of the land snatched

out too slowly,

the flasks shatter

& sway.  I am going

away into the sleeve,

the shelf, the tire-

marks all the day

long, the long day

with no sun or moon

that hovers, a bottle-

fly above

a wound.

PANIC

Bola of the mind,

bola of the body,

o to drive a pile

in the chronology

still the roots climb

up to the limbs

of the banyan;

the armored seed

drops on the bog

& the eaters

in the silt.

It’s a tale of water

& sand, what goes on

in & around these walls.

Stuck fast,

make a wish

on your own bone,

or knit the clavicles

of the genii.

I guess that’s it:

escaping

the house on fire,

the tumbling train,

now that fetching

carbuncle will have

to wait

until the knife

is loosed

from the vertebra.

September 26, 1182

Like Jesus Christ in the garden, the Church

is in anguish, stumbling, deflowered:

the moors strip her from the south 

and a savage bear claws her from the north.

            By cruel hands her sons are snatched from port,

while winds blow all of the heresy 

and vice and sin the world creates

as rats begin to devour the dead.

            God halts all with lightning from his left hand,

observe the wounds of his sacred Son,

from which flow four fonts of paradise,

which can still replenish the world:

from on high He sees

Saint Francis born in the city of Assisi.

Barcelona, May 29^th 1895.

Jacint Verdaguer, from Sant Fransech: Poema

AT SAINT BONAVENTURE

 

To write well of the angel embodied

would need another angel;

oh You in whom Francis seems revived,

            return & in my self dwell.

Once again, please, beat your heart

            once again strike your lyre

and light the angelic spark, 

Assisian sun, that inspires your songs

and I’ll lift my winged love to fly.

 

fron Sant Francesch: Poema by Jacint Verdaguer

THEY SAY

Quills on

the pronominal orchid—

what has not been said

of I? Phenomena

beget Them, all around,

in their hovels, eating

their food.  What once

was We scoured & sewn

with shards, Your boon,

the colors running off

the synthetic oriflamme

into sticky pools, enamel

clawed off the sun-painted

moon—work all of the day

& into the night, to know

its secret, Us, held low

in the dirt.  I am going there,

anyway, to do what You

should have done, We

can never recover, can

never go back to the sleeping

little streets or the corner

store totems, a standard

of flypaper to which I

am adhered & held above

like a snake head.

STRANGER IN MY ARMS

No good comes from a vanilla

flash, the frying skies; don’t

look above where the wheel

in the sky spins a lathe. All

through the night until the brown

sun dawns.  Stanger, stranger,

make a brooch of your falling

teeth, the beaks of doves;

who can sex the bare skull?

A mandala of chrome rings

& the rain stings, what creature

sings when a house falls?

Everyone into the street

like a party, the wily styles

of the plastic bags,

face-huggers, concealing our last

nakedness, all I see

can’t be true to life.  The last

movie was us, the camera

high above, a roman candle

spits chromium sparks

through the seaweed-

green.  No identity: my body

is a pixel.  Not even data.

We were dancing.

Wailing came, a rook

out of the shower-

drain, our pipes far below

the buckling ground.

They erupt like bones

& spew blabbering

the black water.  It will wash

you away.  A splat of black

feathers is punctuation,

full stop the needle

pops & clicks & pops

& clicks in the groove.

HANG ON SLOOPY

 

In the empire of the greys

disappearing by degrees

snow in your face, please

I must get in to see

What your daddy did,

the other two

fingers, what I can remember

a washboard of blood

Siren’s song played

backwards as I forget

the spokes of the saw-

mill, the tongues of bland

cards & their cancerous lines

of fire ants

blat blat blat of a rubber

bulb horn, as long

as I can remember, in nested

circles in the twilight

hood, the town’s bad parts

exposed for pleasure

The stiff weeds that are a line

down the rickety

street like a torso, talking,

limbless in there where

cymbals bleat go ahead

make my angel

food cake for the host

of lost days, a grey metal

table & cloth that rips

like God, everything

I can remember, exposed

out on the floor

a red stair, a rubber

mallet, a sinister form

I can’t

fill out.

Wassily Kandinsky: Far Away

Blood moon,
       reflected in dark water,
skeleton of an
       alien algae
blooms on the dun shore.
       Steel horizon line
hulls
       the heavy
night.

Franz Mare: "The Dreaming Horses"

 

A grey ray from the east

      the dream is a

blue sheen       does not 

      interact with planes

but an orb is 

       the penumbra

regards the mate

       standing beside

eyes closed awake

       under Eden

feeling the side heave

       listening to lungs'

ocean crash

 

Moccassin

This plane
never leaves;

walk on the ground,
human,

brothers & sisters
will look up

to you, Kirlian-
prints on the ceiling,

something
to hold

onto,
you,

kept from drifting
away,

gravity is
the love

of the dead
from the rocks,

silt, veins
below ground,

harder stuff
still

at the still
center, to

which we are
all implored,

held fast, to the flaming
core, perhaps the furnace--

heaven what's
above,

clashing strata,
the heaving planks

of home, we are
chucked

like funeral dirt
by its shrugs.

Walk on
the ground, human,

burier,
holding true

to your roots,
or to the roots

of sturdy trees,
stay close

to your bitter name,
feel it

convince the spine
of its last

home, the long stint
below,

in the hard garden
that shouldn't exist

at all.

NaPoWriMo

It's that time of year again, National Poetry Month, variously beloved and maligned by poets themselves.  I will be participating in the NaPoWriMo festivities, as usual, by posting a poem a day.  Some of these will be for my ongoing Northern Soul project, writing glosses on songs associated with that cultural moment in the U.K. in the late 70's - early 80's; I will also post some of the translations of Sant Fransesch: Poema by the Catalan poet Jacint Verdaguer that I have been working on, as well as miscellaneous ekphrastic things as I write them.

I've done some housecleaning on this blog, as you can see.  Since Facebook has all but replaced Blogger as a social networking platform, I've eliminated the links that served that purpose from the blog, and devoted this one entirely to my own work.  I'll be blogging on my other blog, Ashes Ghosts Rubies as a more traditional "blog," and will include some links to poetry-content sites that I read frequently, as well as some links to commercial presses.