"There's no final answer."
—Dr. Timothy Leary
Radio interview, 1986.
i. "Are You Happy?"
That night we sat again watching that old movie,
with Bing Crosby & that young starlet whose name
we never knew, & you asked me the question—
& I sit here in the subway station with the trains
going by both ways, as though the choice is as easy
as the choosing, this way or that one—
& I suppose I could have looked up her name
in the time since you've been gone, but I haven't—
I sit here, again, watching & not choosing—
You asked me the question I am still not answering
after all this time, & I think: if I finally answer,
I lose you, for you will smile no matter what I say,
& turn away for a moment, & think of other things.
******
ii. How to Train Your Dragon
The dragon in the human heart urges
to fly again, & to blow out furious fires
of song. Housed in a body ever passing,
& a mind caged in motion, the way out
presents itself by tawdry principle, bloated
emotion, & the knife. The dragon bides, & bides.
******
iii. Old Man
All night I stared at him,
lying on his deathbed, eyes shut,
long grey beard tucked above his blanket.
Silent, still.
& I kept coming back, over & over,
from wherever else, a circuit
returning me to this slow dying,
in this strange place, locomotives & cypress trees,
far from where he'd ruled, where he'd created,
where he'd loved. Seemed a warning.
A warning. The years pass & I keep returning.
Still dying. Still the scents of morning
nearing. We owe the dead nearly all
but what to those dying in our dreams?
******
iv. Generate Silence . . .
The famous artist & his wife, she of the many
veils & scarves, led the golden tiger
through the town, its crowded parks of
pink cheeks & tossed balls. The tiger
padded along, noiselessly, a monstrous hunger
beneath teeth & tawn. Stopped for a word,
a photograph, an embrace, the artist
answered each time, "healing is hereon,"
gestured softly to his robust tiger &
then his pale wife, veils pushed back.
Later, perhaps, the tiger lounged among
frail bones & remaining bits of flesh.
To meet this hour's music, finally,
& follow its pathless course, you must
generate silence enough to blanket
the past's cries & moans. You must eat
the tiger too, in all, leave no bones, nor
even a scent.
******
v. Zublian
Pierre-Auguste Renoir, "Dance at Bougival," oil on canvas, 1885.
The bugs kept getting bigger in that studio,
a room & a window, & a toilet,
& there were of different kinds, some
like me, they knew my want for touch.
They laughed. I imagined them laughing but,
they laughed. They crawled on her skin,
her face & arms, never his, as they
danced in tatters on my wall. Never
his. Hung from her bonnet, peeked up,
peeked down, offered to tell, knew I'd
say no. Dancing close with her, holding her
hand, her embrace, he no more possessed
her than I did in my half-sunk chair.
They laughed. They knew.
******
vi. Distress
From the basement we protested,
it was tight & dirty, & I kept forgetting
against what. A bent idea called God?
The next king? I turned to one of the
younger bodies, warm lights still on her face.
She used words somebody else had said,
whispered in that dank of old blood, with
bookish fervor. Heated more on a distant
fire. Turned to an older one, his mind
a familiar scar from the many meetings
& scrambles through shouting hours that had
brought us here. He huddled me close &
said there was no more light up there
worth knowing. Memories. Eyed that younger
one with a lingering stroke. By last chance,
I turned to my own face in the basement's
half-remaining antique mirror. I saw nobody
else in its reflection as I dodged my eye &
face. It's been a rough stretch, I turned &
explained, hoping somebody was there.
Only the darkness & the thought of your
name, your smile. You were near. Nearer.
******
vii. Take Back Your Mind
The pencils soften during transit,
I noticed this the first time
it occurred to me to kill them all
& bring you back with me to this
hopeful new hour. You would like it
here, with your curiosity & dagger's wit.
No, that dog isn't quite a dog. He's from . . .
hereon, & it didn't quite work so
he's not fully here. It upsets him
that he cannot speak. We touch his
tawny fur, caress his warmth, love him
all we can, but he cannot say his name.
Yes, the pencils. I think it means that
when we go, we also don't return quite
the same. You'll see, your console is nearly
built. No, we cannot go out there, now
or ever. This room is safe from all but
the planet's own destruction. But we can't leave.
We can love each other, & the world, forever,
in the past, the future, but never now.
******
viii. We Only Live A Day
He had loved the law when a strong, young
man, how it flowed & changed through time,
how it emerged from men's hearts & fears
but also from the world around them,
if the land was hard or fertile, if the snows
came for six months of the year.
Supple & sublime, he called it, a powerful beast
in every crack & shadow, it spoke to him
of changing eternals, he dreamed it in his
bachelor's chambers, until on a street past
sundown he met a woman in a pink dress &
red bonnet. More supple, more sublime. His pages cracked.
On his usual street corner now, he fingers
the payphone for change, hikes the rope
of his oily trousers, mumbles to his blue doll
of the conspiracy between pink cheeks &
the ships overhead. I lean closer to listen
from an empty store doorway. I do not wish to become him.
They'll find nothing left when they finally
come for me. My books are gone. My health.
I'll crack open at first touch. Lizard bones in a desert sun.
******
ix. Remembering the Old West
The old argument between now,
tomorrow, & eternity, I've travelled
awhile & haven't decided. Back then,
I sang them spirituals & blues to keep
things close. I told them God rode
with them on their hunts, & a bit of God
fell when one of them did. It seemed fair
to say, if not true. They liked it, kept people out.
Later, I worked with a rich man, found him
things, razors, talking pillows, he thought
I had the magick, no, I didn't, I don't,
I told him, I've travelled, the possible
& the impossible are not adjacent lands,
pointed to the sunset, try to keep it in your hands.
Since then I've just kept it all in my head
& looked for new work. These times
need a magick I do not have or know,
need a preacher & a prayer greener than
the ones around here. But I don't want
to leave. It's where I've been travelling to.
******
x. A Priest & a Rabbi Walk Into a Bar . . .
Only disbelieve in nothing, that's what
LSD taught me, in time. I said that
too, only disbelieve in nothing, & again,
only disbelieve in nothing, that night
in the TV news studio, as they dosed
my buddy & me for the cameras,
dripping it down our faces, saying
this was how it's done.
The man being interviewed, the expert
on this, he's taking donations &
signing people up. No trouble happened
because of any of this, he continues,
& I think: he sounds like he's been to the
future & knows for sure. My buddy & I
laugh, this is what happens when the experts
go on TV & start to explain.
******
xi. [untitled]
If I believed in god, he would look like a tree
& sing forever.
******
xii. Circulation Salves Distress
I met him at a party at a dilapidation
near the city of scholars & beggars. We were
both long homeless then. The party was for
travellers like us, at crossroads & tired.
The game going on as I arrived was a favorite,
simply called Chains, a reminder of
what happens when you stop moving.
The dilapidation had no roof to comfort,
or conceal, to lie that every soul tonight
slept warm & caged. There were the heady
local periodicals on plastic tables, dense
erudition made to capture a melodic fancy
& dissect a fang to its meaning. Amongst the periodicals
were squat jars of the dreaming juice.
You could tell its heavier drinkers by
their whispered song, "sometimes I am me,
sometimes I'm not, sometimes I'm arriving,
sometimes passing through."
He noticed to me the rhythm of the place,
its restive hum, how nothing here abided
agreeably in time. We huddled with others
near the wall & laughed at the film
about the crazy dog from the future,
never quite arrived. It learned, in time,
to croon its wish to land in music or despair.
When the soldiers came to stifle the
open-air sexcries that worried the preachers
& their nests on nearby streets, my buddy & I
left to travel on together awhile.
The morning was quiet, not yet sunrise,
between breaths of wind a silence.
We left the city of scholars & beggars
to its thousand-year decay, to what men
will think when none need crawl a thick tome
for answers, nor any need wish pages made better food.
******
xiii. Lithe
What the others come here for isn't
important. We're told to skin for devices,
the lower drawers, safes in the walls,
keep looking, in the laundry, the trash,
they're somewhere. This hotel is bugged as a
project high-rise, told again & again.
So we look, some of us, I think most
just need the job, & keep moving room to room.
We all have reasons, that's all. I come here
day after day to find you, to sniff you
out, sometimes I think I just want your scent
one more time, sometimes I think once
I find it I'll follow it back to you. If any man
could, it would be me. It was mine first.
Wasn't it? I think so. I let that matter
to me. I skin for devices, find them,
never turn them in, or give them to the worst
of us to do. I'm sniffing for you, that's why
I come. I tasted you in one of these rooms
thirty years ago, our eyes, one, watching you
above me, me below you, entering, entering,
receiving, no difference. "Yes," you whispered
& smiled. I'll find you. I'll follow you back.
******
xiv. Sorry Youth
When I think of you these many years later,
you're on your belly nude on that studio futon,
your look back at me a fang, fuck me, hurt me,
fuck me! Make me feel something, good or not.
So now I can answer you: panty up that pretty ass,
or let me for you. I loved you enough to refrain.
******
xv. Feedback
The madcap scholar laughed & leaned forward
on the couch. "The best mystics say
we earn free will, like some of us
learn to sing." My friends laugh, &
take pictures, it's a good night. The house
is run through with candles & pipes.
He follows me, for some reason,
down into a basement room. Several
of us are nude & making a film
for one of the girls, her dead brother,
it's a sad film. "Here's love," says
the scholar quietly. "For your path hereon."
Like the best parties, with great scholars
& all, there's a bomb. Two of us are
crouched over it in the tent, diffusing
it. The scholar looks at me, the best
of him in passing, says, "What for?
You tell me now." I nod toward the girls
dancing with each other inside the house,
up to the stars ever trying to get us
to listen to the answers being offered,
down to the pieces of diffused bomb
at my feet, & shrug. And nod again.
******
xvi. Ikebana
Dale Chihuly, Ikebana Boat, Wooden & Glass, 2011
The old rowboat collects everything
as it rides through the dead world,
collects what crawls from the black water,
what falls from vines overhead,
what is sometimes thrown from shore
by unseen hands, or paws, even fins.
The water is smooth, calm like death,
mirrors the dark sky where nothing shines
by day & nobody looks up to see at night.
You're wondering how I know, from where
I see this boat. He told me about it,
my brother, who won't sleep to see it better.
The back room is his whole quiet world,
where he shuns food, bed, radio, TV,
to see it better, to use his every sense to see,
use his tingling saggy skin, lays on the floor
in a cluster of pained limbs, fights through visions,
streets of skulls, shoreless ponds, children too.
I don't know if he knows me when I come,
shut the crooked door, kneel close to him,
see & smell & taste his sickness, sample his
current hour's picture, decide to stay or no—
He talks of the burnt umber tentacle,
reaching back, the dragging pink wing
feathering the water, the seagull's heart
a decaying stone in the chipped blue shell.
"Sometimes the boat is moving slower,"
he croons, & I almost touch him, refrain,
remember another time. It was bad.
Walking back into the shop where the patrons
beg for books of easy treatises on God
& cartoons of lovers from their hearts'
forbidden chambers, I stop. I stop.
I wonder again if this is my brother's
boat, if his onion-shaped bullets, &
wooden bells leaking fuel oil aren't this world
a level or two below, moving even slower.
******
xvii. Way of the Creatures
I follow the Way of the Creatures
which is no way but to sing & sing
which is no way but to love & pity more
which is no way but to know a little
in the big mirror
which is no way but to watch & wait,
& so much unknown but there's light
& there's breeze, & maybe someone nearby warm
which is no way but to see the stars
& decide will I go with them high or
will they see me here down low?
which is no way but a pinknosed white bunny
flashing past, a cackling imp crying
more play, a sleek panda bear dancing
by, the urge to include all, & especially you.
******
xviii. Let Go
So let's say there are three friends,
nice guys, & here's the twist:
one is gay, & another hates gays.
Hm. How's that going to work.
I had a dream one night that the
gay-hater took a long knife to
his friend & cut out his heart.
He showed me & I smiled at him.
The moon was just a slice as we
buried our friend. As we sang glorious songs
about suffering & buried our dear friend.
******
xix. White Tuxedo & Black Top Hat
The dice rolls six & I look out
the long window. My father laughs,
knowing things I do not. Better answers,
no answers, I can't say. I turn back
to him, to the others, to the gas pump
I can't figure to operate. My father
nods & we each take turns. This apartment
will need everyone's help to make a good go.
Sophia, I love her name most of all,
she calls it a cat's name & says no more,
smiling. She picked out the furniture,
all of it, blonde woods, old, needing
work, hands on, love. She found curtains
in thrift shops & sewed them back together.
Eventually, I have to go. Parties like these
come to their dreaming end with
the dawn, that chilly morning breeze.
I look at my father, give me something before
I go. Go on, fucker. Give it me. Now he's
not smiling. "Stop singing from your knees."
I nod. Because what else would a dream
worth recalling have to say?
******
xx. Glaring Lights
My bike in pieces on a long table,
laid out in plain intimate detail.
One of those single bulbs lighting up the garage,
& so quiet. What's funny is what moves
a heart, in moments, through the years,
how it receives & releases & changes shape
again & again. Now I'll tell you that my
my music took the form of tools & sweat
until we were riding again, what keeps the years
& close by is a tangle. I've let enough go.
******
xxi. Idée Fixe
The sweet, strange lights at street corners,
tonight, the luring shadow past each
face, the thought of maybe, new thought,
or old thought in new dress, yes,
maybe a chance to steer for shore
again, a moon cracking open mind's flat skies.
******
xxii. Another Way
We stood, my brother & me, regarding
the pattern on the wall, the labyrinth
fading, right to left, how to travel
that one? I noticed his fingers tapping the tune,
the one in my mind too, & a few steps
more to daylight, if not answers, numberless
paths, if not a way, & the next day's chance.
We nodded, went, maybe the fading labyrinth
our clue that letting go the map is hard, best chance.
******
xxiii. Wider Foam
Nod, burn the canvas, there's new music
in that smoke. Or let it stay,
mix in some more blood, let curious hungers sniff.
******
xxiv. Winter Island
The preacher stood outside among
his stars, arms held out to his god's
lights, open, open, waiting, smiling, waiting.
And nothing. Minutes, the hours passed.
He returned inside, his immaculate rooms,
his plain, narrow bed. Closed the drapes.
Walked the rooms, wordless, still listening,
still out there among those lights,
so close, waiting. In his study, its walls
ceiling to floor in books, there in the corner,
three small dead rats. And, look, out the door
races a cockroach, shiny shell, see it go.
Walked outside again, now shedding clothes,
mile by mile, to the far end of the island,
the lighthouse, the rocks below, evening seas
thick with fog, arms out again, far out.
No why. No why & there never was. How beautiful.
His god had not descended, neither taken him
away, explained nothing, remained. Oh my.
******
xxv. To brother afar
Some eat others, because they can,
because they will, because for a
blinding instant the suffering you
are causing now is newly electrifying
the wire to the suffering caused you then
& worlds & time smash happily,
& let go, breathe out, let the common blood settle.
******
xxvi. Decision Tree
Extracting the poison from its mash,
converting it to the honied drink
we'd dreamed, smiling & mindless its tasters
& soon the end of this world.
We'd go into classrooms, meet families
in their homes, it would take awhile.
Yes, they found me though my love
remains free. They'll burn me &
bury me miles in the earth tonight,
as though flames & shovels may undo.
My love knows better, watching those
who drink the honey, smiling & mindless
they leave this world, melt clean through,
the hardest human idea a clod in the stream.
My love knows you will drink this honey
& let it go at last, whatever it is,
& as you do, & as it goes, your senses
will new wild to the sunshine, sounds
of water on metal, the smells of those
blooms as you go, & the happy, happy dust.
******
xxvii. Bursts of Darkness
Another dream of forests, & worlds of text,
the orgasmic light of every creation,
& the old, old things still soiling my corners.
I've never believed in redemption as a way
to efface the hard past. I say:
wear the tatters of your years, where
they stray to mere threads, where
ugly, where they hurt, & you hurt,
& everyone hurts. Wear them.
Maybe beyond the end there will be
forests & worlds of text, & redemption
of some plain or ironic kind, but,
not knowing, what you have is
what you are, & the sum of it all
might be no god's to account but
your own, how you best wore the worst of it.
******
xxviii. Blood Canvases
An old, small figure hurries through
streetlamps & hard pour, bent spine
like the question bodies form young
& minds keep asking until old.
Keeping along with this figure, step
into a lit shop & the jingling jostle
of others, the question on the shelves
of goods, answers on the labels,
among the pages, answers in long rows
of auditioning come-hither carnies,
& which to choose, which to choose?
Or select a few & mix up a stew?
Back in the rain, no less hard,
hurry, the figure is diminishing
with a sack & the strong wish to be alone.
Into the building, the many steps,
the tilted door of home. Ahh, sounds
of deadbolt & latch. Now open the sack,
take out the answer, only one was taken,
& lay aside the question, chipped
from spine, just to see, just to see.
Consider, yes, yes. Turn off the lights,
try candles. Some music, there, that
old song of skeletons in moonlight. There. Yes. Will do.
******
xxix. Kindness Most Binds
I learned a lot that summer, living
in the drainage ditch by the sidewalk.
At first people just stared at me,
unable to parse out my angle or shill.
Eventually they made picnics nearby,
not too near, but enough to call me a neighbor.
The mayor appeared, a man in a waxen
suit & linen moustache. Several bigger men
flanked him, looking for my bigger men,
studied the security details of my ditch,
frowned. The mayor, I think it was him,
I'd like to think it was him, smiled,
urged an alliance. Gestured around where
we lay together. All these picnickers . . .
By summer's end, even the older dogs &
butterflies were going or gone. I felt ready
to stand up, move along, it had been
a good run. The brown grass beneath me
would green again, it always does.
The molded form of my body would remain,
oh awhile, & then it too would go where
everything goes when gone, but not forgotten.
******
xxx. Seeding
"It's just a ride."
—Bill Hicks, 1993
What if you realize, one day, that
everything is alive? Not one, as
many the guru would say, still many,
but alive? All alive, the easy of this
watching your love stirring the dawn,
walking the pathless trees of an
unnamed wood. The hard of this,
when looking at the worn out things
of men, lost of shine & purpose, gummed
& greasy, broken last hour or longer.
Mapless, following this thought, you make
along as before, step high enough among
the daily prejudice & bored laughter, but
now uneasy with your own movements.
Do these live things know & accept their
ends? The jar of vegetable paste, even
the half-crushed moth on the sidewalk.
Is the first glad its contents now
spent out, does tossing the other
from sidewalk to bush reck its passage?
The questions are ridiculous, remain,
widen to include paper clips & tree branches
part-severed by the night's thunderstorm. Where
does thought & feeling end, how to know,
are the usual borders even most useful?
This electing of men, getting of coin, washing
every new soul in a half-reverence of
the world, yet still the numbers measure decay
by the years, still the promise rusts pretty by.
Some say dispose things better, some burn
it all, some include us too. This world
little worth a sober god's remaining glance,
or cleansing stroke. Such a loathing
that the dead are boxed well & imagined
free to sing unsheathed of mouth & bones.
Some say there are answers to this world,
every fallen icon & twisted bone in the red dust,
but later, love, later along the tale.
But say: Everything is alive, made to find
its function & receive its due? Aren't
the massing murderous ways of men
enough? Why worry the dark light bulbs
& steers to the knife? The fate of snowflakes
& old wrecks in deserts & rivers?
Do some empathies lead nowhere but
lonesome dream corners of the fancy?
I have surely wondered all this,
as you do tonight. Felt the chasm
among each & all wide & bricked as
though by stone. I've wondered too:
why feel but only so far, why
imagine but with an eye on the clock,
an ear for the door? Tonight, perhaps,
we ask this question over a distance
wider than the world. Wonder, hopeless,
yet still, does paradise not steam
from the shit as the sonnet, the burning,
the breathless, as every new psalm of smoke?
******
xxxi. What Will You Do Now?
Jim Dine, "Two Big Black Hearts," bronze, 1985
He'd built long ago what I'd found half-sunk
in the snowy wood, two great black steel hearts,
cried from his shaping tools deep in molten flesh,
the air buzzing around this work still,
nature not easily accepting it back.
I push away what I can of its icy crust,
study his symbols. The ones I know,
hand, knife, bed, bowl, while others remain
his secret tongue, now dead with him.
One heart tells his youth, romance, full moons,
song. The face turned away from him in dance,
even as her hands cling to his neck & shoulder.
Speeding carriages, city lights, the hours when
a curious god traced closely through him.
That great tree, her light breathing,
nearly weightless things expiring in his grasp.
The other heart tells of dust, a violent hour,
endurance later. Too many words,
too many empty beds, the wane of faith
in the words of books & living men.
The lost symbols no longer step lightly,
turn in, turn bitter, find nights only wanting.
Forest & time obscured his tale, years taking
back as they do, & every spring exposing,
inches upon feet, what upheld his great work,
going, it was even then slowly going.
And more since I've seen this work, or
thought on it, until this morning when I woke,
through a dream of birds, clouds of them
about my room, flying my mind, calling out:
"Why are you leaving me here? Will you abandon
me to be consumed? What will remain of you then?"
******
xxxii. Empathy
Before the sniff of your skin, taken
by my genes through my nose,
before the shape of your breast,
already cupped, worried, had hard
& soft, your eyes. Oh yes, I go for
your eyes, not because I'm in them
for you, or will be, but because I'm in them
or me. You taste a little salty,
like every woman, like one touch better
than another, like every, carry your
secret place without borders, like, you are sweet,
as you pass, smiling with your friends,
bound for laughing what now or brooding
what later. Bound with the glances that salve
& those that stripe. Bound, to how the glances
fence & fill in. Which words, how many,
who far—
I lean back, as I let you up, straightening back
into your clothes as I do not, wondering
what we did in my mind. How was it.
That moment in passing, carnal weighted,
as I continue helping you dress, as restoring
you to girlish order matters most, seeing you
on your way, a young night, your friends
pointing to a door. That's where we're going. Hurry!
******
xxxiii. Cumulation
Not from the strength of it
draw what you need. The brutal places
of power & beauty. These pass, one to another,
nothing more than leased to know,
& the earth takes back by shine & soil.
Would you know power, you would know
your weakness, chase down its hours
& rivulets, face its pains. Acknowledge its pleasures.
Nothing builds long & true that does
not root in your soul's deep earth,
climb from your dankest places, learn
how to root among others, what binds each
to the wheel.
Find it there, where looking is the hardest,
from its clay build not a world but
the steps to one, would you carry on still true.
******
xxxiv. Mist on the Mountain Top
Mist on the mountain top &
so much to explain.
The ways men lean, & clash, &
crush to know each other.
Mist on the mountain top &
how to explain.
The dig of desire in these daylight hours,
its claw through the glances & limits.
Mist on the mountain top &
nothing to explain.
If you have someone to kiss, then kiss.
If you don't, reach a hand for what
you can. You are loved more than you know.
******
xxxv. After Rothko
The space between you & me, wide as the
wide midnight sea. Close as the breath
I will squeeze in your lips when one day you
are dying & I am come to say goodbye.
Many of our borders are spiked, but one
will soften, as you die, as you let go,
as I watch, an empty shore come dawn.
******
xxxvi. Hylozoism
"Change rooms in your mind for a day."
—Hafiz
Hurry, say the word empathy, the worlds
wait & you are near. You are loved more
than you are known sings the moonlight's
soothe, worlds wait, hurry, say the word
empathy. To become known you will reach
your hand into the dreaming darkness,
its snapping depths, soft thigh's croon
for an hour or more, hard things thrashing
for anger's relief, some god's secret conjure
for release. Hurry, say the word empathy,
loved more than you are known, you will cry
into brilliant eyes, the lights, the trees,
everything exploding with this feeling too.
Worlds wait, you are near, & the remaining
question, when harmonies of stars thin,
& the predawn chill sweets in, would you choose
to be loved or to be known, if but one alone?
******
xxxvii. Love Dogs
There were two tomes. One told the sky.
One sang the earth. Was this a choice?
Like left hand or right, & dispose the other.
******
xxxviii. Turn in Musics
Five white oaks & a prone, cold body in the sun.
The meadow waving riot to any story
one could tell of this. Only breaches in the web.
******
xxxix. World is Not Conclusion
Breaches in the web, look through
& see the rain falling on other worlds.
Go on, there are no answers here but patterns
of bird flight & blood on the lips at waking.
No answers to this curtained savagery,
just tonight's fears blooding tomorrow's canvas.
******
xl. Idiot's Song
No answers here but patterns of bird flight
& blood on the lips at waking, from dreams
of heaven where lines form & no good answers
come anyway. I turn to the one behind me,
a girl whose ass I would have hungered
in that other life. "Me too" she says.
Of course there's blood. Blood is the hardest.
Returning to the festival, I see that new.
The collected wounds erected as tents &
shaped in flames. Next morning, see what
remains, fill in the rest. There'll be rains
to wash the worst, & music of course for rags.
******
xli. Dark Patches
We each know the dark patches,
yet still dress apart & walk wordless
astride each other, keep the roughest ache
close, love it like very life, like it will
release us to flights arcing over this how,
this why, a secret crucial bridge
to some other beginning, new knowing,
wild forgetting, a medicine come from stars,
grown within, like a healing fruit,
discovered solely searching inner forests,
this balm grasped in both hands &
with a hungry cry bitten into, how fierce
its pains yet finally, fucking finally,
the way two arisen become one, not
the drinks we took deep of books, their
waters discovered at last poisoned,
no, this knowledge, its cost, but yes!
a name for what gives breath like song
to all, a name! waiting to love you
all our lives, wake fearless, undefeated,
& an hour come to show you my dark
patch, my love, my two loves, my many loves,
reveal me as you know but far more beautiful instead.
******
xlii. Holy! Holy! Holy!
He said our world is made of language,
it's what we know, & nodded. I say let me
soothe your heart & change your mind.
I say I'm dragging my long history & yours
along, yes, & the generations of white oaks, &
the million gnats egging up tomorrow, & the stars
exploding in tonight's blessed skies, & the centuries
of centuries past & many times that to come,
the air too cold for thought & the poisons
subtler than that, world is made of language
he said as though no crazy cock in my or wild cunt
in yours, colors I look through for, old smells
that hunt me, tastes I'm deeply unsure of,
my tongue, my touch, when I've been fatter,
when I've been hurt, sometimes my metaphorical
heart but sometimes worse, those hours empty
of dream & do, but now let me soothe your heart,
let me change your mind, I too would forget
every shift contacts every other shift, & me too,
yes, in my lowliness as you in your certainty,
my times of loathe, yours of grind & cry, are they songs?
Let them, & some more, they could become nocturnes
architected from dreams of ice & sugar, first orgasm,
next orgasm, best orgasm, sing with me! Know less
& less, & sing! Singing grasps it all & language
just the visible exhaust, oh, I pray for you
with your books & podiums & houses easy
to burn in the cosmic sense, but say tonight
may the universe yield you better too.
******
xliii. Song of Ragged Claws
I met you in a dream of desolation
& later knew you better. In the dream
we were young, combatants with big ideas,
singing, ragged figures in the rain, you said
"a game, this universe?" I nodded from atop
my great railroad rock. "Time + play!"
Later you were on cassette tapes, made because
you were cowardly & far from me. Better beers
in Germany than England. Better whores in Thailand.
You'd given my a device in that first dream,
it would attach to your strange cassettes so
I could play & listen. Then began the new songs.
Imagine wordless crooning begins, low as ground,
one quiet thing among many, but rises, yes,
at some point rises & is now for attention,
still wordless, but yes, you were recalling
the dream to me, the one of desolation, yes,
& now there were words I remembered,
"Ragged claws, ragged claws, a mind sliced
away & revealed, ragged claws, ragged claws,
those walls aren't high enough to protect
the world from me, my music is bark
& root, I'll travel by the soil, sup on the starlight.
Ragged claws, a mind sliced & revealed."
They kept coming, these cassettes, one labeled Vodka Notes, another Labia Dreams. Once blank
& I listened through twice. Less filled each time.
You were confessing it. Minute by conceded minute.
I told noone. I have lain wide-eyed in the sweetest
breathing breasts & said nothing. You were hid in my beats.
The cassette labeled Last Songs came to me,
too fucking easy this, after another of those
dreams. I was him again, the one who finds
the freak beast in the prettiest girls, coaxes,
coaxes, coaxes, holds the mirror high until mirrors
is all there are. Sweat, snap.
I don't drink anymore & I go to my old bar.
I go to my old table to listen, order nothing,
say nothing, go there to listen from
the light of a city in autumn's clean unfurling
into the smoldering poisoned dim, go there
to listen—
I don't know if you'd call them songs, & the cassette
is gone now. Was he in the desert? There was hard wind.
Maybe ocean? His voice sounded wet & far.
There was the squalling of instruments or
electronics, a band? Words emerged that
I knew. Ragged claws. Time + play. Slower.
I played it again, like I always did,
but it sounded different, it was melting
the player you'd given me, melting it in
my hands but I kept listening as the goo
rotated in my hands & onto the table.
Not desert. Not ocean. Meteors. Leaving.
And I'll just ask you now & plain,
have you discovered & lost your best friend
in a dream? I'll tell you this much:
it wasn't until that morning that
I finally came off that railroad rock
& conceded the world, walked out that
barroom door, cassette player bile on
my fingers, into common day.
******
xliv. That Sensual Music
"How can we get to know each other?"
"By abolishing frontiers between states."
—Tarkovsky's Nostalghia, 1983.
There is no higher & there is no ground
we kiss. Across the abyss. And you are
mine once more. I wake. And, no,
you're not. Your ruining kiss, your eyes of
sky above me, among the stars, that's how
this was, cars passed your window,
endless traffic, I watched you breathing
& dreaming. Your skin in simple yellow
street lights. I was moaning.
There were three of you that first day, just
pretty girls splashing their faces in the fountain
of that square. Bold & young, you sat on my bench
& asked me whose letter I sat reading. You among
the three watched my eyes, followed them not to
your blouse or legs, or the others, but to the
fountain. You came back later, alone, knew I would
be there still, knew the letter wasn't from a lover,
as I'd said. Love sniffs for good soil that way.
A new dream. A bigger dream. No longer
a dream at all. Forgetting what I was
in becoming what you wished. That first
night we shared your white blanket
with the touch of elephant tooth yellow,
I did no more than hold you, like who
I would be would do, I discovered him in
your eyes among the stars, biting & laughing.
Discovered I liked your moan, you out of breath.
No other. No other. Your breath. Your moans.
Your sigh. Your kiss. I'd sit by that fountain
where we met & your words would slip
in seeds & leaves from the sky & I would
let them scatter round me, cover the bench
where you & the others had sat looking at my
letter & considering my face. They said later I looked
lost but you didn't think so. You knew
I lived on that bench not in your bed.
"Remember everything but lightly"
you told me near the end, you'd brought
the other two around, ready to share
me as I was leaving, taste him,
taste this, this is how it was, this is
what he was to me, it's not down there,
you won't find it doing that or touching,
or showing him what, here, smell
this white blanket, it's in the yellow threads.
There is no higher & there is no ground,
drink the fountain spray before we kiss.
Across the abyss you can see what I've seen
all along, the nothing of cum sprayed
in your friends' faces. Drink the spray,
& you are mine once more. Now, eventually,
you see me as I was that day, & always
been, your eyes closing, you see me
underneath, now smiling, your lips
moist with spray, your ruining kiss,
yes, receiving back & back into you,
back & back, no higher, no ground,
kiss, across the abyss & I am yours once more.
******
xlv. Iconic Square
It was years ago yet I wonder if they
do it even now. Say what you will, someone
did dose the fountain waters of Iconic Square
with LSD. Lightly, like brushing the drums
of many minds, not pounding them awake.
I watched. Many many days I watched
as people dipped dry hands or dusty feet
into those waters. Those pretty girls splashing
their faces & laughing. Old folks tossing up
pennies & smiling into the spray.
I watched the years of watching turn
toward wanting again. Old gleams. Old furies.
Return of violence, return of tenderness.
A medicine come not from stars, nor from dreams,
but within, where there is no higher & there is no ground.
But more. Iconic Square's in a major city,
I won't say where, & surrounded by government
offices & corporate headquarters. That spray
touched important cheeks, drip dropped from
the hands of diplomats, into treaties & disputes,
what abiding fears blooding tomorrow's canvas.
And I wondered. Sitting on a bench, shadowed
by an oak tree, watching, dosed high on
the sunshine & the smiles & the sweating musicians
who played better & weirder through the afternoon,
music the rags a poor man will wear proudly,
music is heartache at rest, playing less & less
for coins & bills, more & more for sky-smacking bliss,
fuck I wondered. A light dose if it touched
your skin casually. Enough to change a mind,
soothe a heart, jar a sure hate? Breaches in
the web, if you believe in webs & who does—
No, it wasn't me. I wasn't so brave, or connected
to the powers over the pipes. I found out by
accident on the day would have been my last.
I drank there while going. A bridge in my mind,
a note in a plastic bag in my pocket. Drank there
on whim, twice because a tug in my heart
still saw a chance the rest didn't. Wavering thing.
I'd known the place I'd be going for a long time,
good to be able to arc over this hour to where
you will end & some other beginning, a bridge
not too big or trafficked but it was high, so high,
oh so high, look at the sky high oh so high—
The river below forgotten I looked straight up
& kept looking, crawled off the bridge into
a hidden grassy area, tugged there by my heart,
& kept looking up, twisted around to see better,
this is what I'd wanted so long, to look up
from this place. Become a mind as common
where all are welcome. Heartache at rest.
When had I stopped looking up? What day,
which hour? Whose word had made me
look down & never quite so up again, was
it hers, yours, my cum still on your lips,
saying you loved me & goodbye, still nude
with me on the floor, still taut for fucking?
"I'm not fucking her, you fucking dreamed her!"
Was it him, you, that letter you wrote far
from me, coward, about your disease &
your decision? Your cassette labeled Last Songs that I listened to the night
you passed from me & the last of our hungry
hours arguing if God's best final proof
is music, oak trees, or fine young ass?
There were other reasons & many excuses
& every last one fell unnoticed from me
as I watched the sky into its inexplicable
dusk, into its crying passion told each night as
stars, I passed through seeing up & was up,
became up, finally up, swinging high, oh so
high from the strands above the stars
that dangle them down so low———
Dirty, broken, remade, smiling, I swung
until the dawn, finding myself where
I'd ended & begun in a new way, unexpected,
fine, & I knew enough to trace a path
back to that fountain, those few splashes
of sweet drink, & I returned to marvel.
I didn't leave for a long time, though rarely
drank again. When hunger got me &
my cup was empty. When it got cold &
I chose not to tent with the huddled rest.
When my dreams obscurely advised & my heart
lightly tugged & then tugged a little more.
When I left it felt tragic. A car wreck
full of burning bodies large & small.
The delighted king when barriers to
his blood lust fall, when his word & fist
sum to first & only beautiful truth.
I left & am now far gone to that fountain
in Iconic Square. I dream on it still,
on weak nights, & wonder who opened
the taps, how did they find the way to
let the elixir in? How? Why the light dose?
Did anyone figure it out like me?
Does it go on? Are the grim men on TV,
at podiums, doubting a little? Are tall buildings
governed by secretly grinning goofs?
There are only two tomes.
One tells the sky.
One sings the earth.
Are there fewer fists in the world
tonight? Does it still try to save us all?
******
xlvi. Red Scarf
Pierre-August Renoir, "Dance at Bougival," oil on canvas, 1883.
Tis the red scarf brings you to this café ,
it belongs neither to the dancer nor her mate,
tis the red scarf made the rest alight,
for tonight would have passed on another,
tis the red scarf you can thank, for the staying
hunger of cheek to cheek, hand upon hand,
dark blue, labial pink, trees, drinkers, this wide world.
******
xlvii. Nomads
Claude Monet, "Grainstack (Sunset)," oil on canvas, 1891.
Nomads live behind those grainstacks,
the kind that dance at dusk, who kidnap
scrawny gypsy girls & raise them up
or sleek dancing wives. With their wives
& pipes & strings, their tents & hand-made
rock knives, they live behind those grainstacks,
the weeks & months before first snowfall,
sing hungry songs of jiving asses & dangling stars,
pluck toe-less sprites from deep cattle dung
to squeeze & fire their dreaming brew,
rest lidless atop those grainstacks & laugh
at the cosmos' descent in sparkles & stones,
disappear with the snows, leaving only
the tokens of the scarves of the gypsy girls
mature enough by new year to wed & bed.
******
xlviii. Shorelessness
"What's missing in this canvas," he said,
"is not the shore nor the sky, as some say,
nor an appreciative human bias to keep
matters of nature subordinate to men,
nay, what's missing here is the crippling flaw
of seeing in time &, when challenged
to elaborate this ambiguous philosophy,
he propped his elbows on the hoary, twisted
frame, pulled his legs up in a diver's crouch,
& completed a splashless fall within.
******
xlix. That Book
Washington Allston, "Moonlight, 1819," oil on canvas, 1819.
It was as he'd read to me a year before,
in the book we'd had to burn, mail its ashes
to the horseman now before us in the great moonlight.
The boat was pulled ashore, its sail drooping
in readiness. We'd brought the child as agreed.
He might come one day too. I chanced one look
around, this was a beautiful place with its far
mountains & closer woods. Yet I didn't love it,
didn't love anywhere, or myself, or my close companion.
We were bound now to places where want & hunger
& the need to dress for a lover that he may,
pleased, undress you again, none of these existed,
& my only doubt was twined of the boy's damp hand
releasing mine, & the inhuman figure dashing from our boat.
******
l. Lost Moon
Hermann Dudley Murphy, "Moonlight, Woodstock," oil on canvas, 1905.
Was it guns or 'crackers we heard that night,
o we listened for hours. When the sky
grew bluer despite the night, & roughened up
like hard seas, & there were no stars,
as there were no clouds, just what I say,
the moon, tiny, weak, remained.
The brew of toeless sprites had been strong,
beyond bitter, but its teases, tossings, &
eventual turbulence did not explain. I turned
to my friends & nodded. When the last light
in the village in those far hills went dark,
it was time. No matter the frothing skies,
nor the labial pink lacing the fragile moon.
We would go, torn inside by days of fasting,
tipped hard by the brew, there, the last
went out & what had been solid earth
under our feet defined itself as a laid floor,
unattached to the earth, now rocking,
now rising, o, why did I still wonder
about the gunfire or 'crackers, the lost moon
in its crying waters, what else,
we are moving up, straight up now,
toward the secret see of seas.
******
li. Grass
Edgar Degas, "Girl Putting on Her Stockings," about 1877, monotype.
Every hour of the day is a tiring one.
&I hear rain, dream rain, rain has purpose,
I suppose, maybe several, float, fall,
&pond. My new stockings are taut,
like I was—oh shit. A knock. I ache.
&Dreams of rain & rest. Falling to grass.
******
lii. God's Girl
Edgar Degas, "Woman with a Towel" pastel, 1894 or 1898.
The new one says I have a fairy's face
& a whore's physique. His towel is thick,
woven with money, leers softly upon my
skin. He hears my talk of God & asks
will God keep me when my breasts sink,
my ass thicks or thins. When he sees
me reading my books, he laughs, gestures,
I come to him. I let him knew secret things—
******
liii. Occupy (i)
Go on, tell me I can't breathe here.
You've figured a way to govern air.
Go on, tell me I can't sleep here.
I don't matter & neither do my fucking dreams.
Go on, tell me I'm not fit to occupy.
There are many ways to burst heart & bones.
******
liv. 11/14/1981
The bloom I'd lay at your breast tonight
is & is not the one I held those hours,
touch, & there's still a tune. But if you don't,
as you did not then, there's still a tune.
Your young cheek, yes a bloom for you. My music,
no, I earned that for my own romances.
******
lv. PeaceLoveDove
You've become an open handful of light.
You've become a curled finger of ash.
You've become the star you always were;
A blue-eyed wink, & you are gone,
& you stay, & you stay, & you stay.
******
lvi. Tonight in Your Room
Later today, we will say our words &
bury your ashes. A dozen & a dozen faces
will gather who hadn't before, & you are gone
& you remain. Now it's 3 a.m. & cold in your room.
I lie in your one pillow bed, looking toward
the door you saw every morning for years.
Out there, your cherished ones. Beyond that,
the world. It's 3:02 a.m. & I weary.
Your guitars, your books, not a picture
on your walls. No curtains on the windows.
The light stirred you, woke you. Light &
some car swooshing past. You are gone,
those guitars now silent, this bed empty
but me passing through. It's 3:05 a.m. & one last.
Does a room keep its departed occupant
awhile? This building old, you weren't the first.
Did it try to warn you the morning of your
last day, or say goodbye, in a room's way,
bunching its air at the doorway, bursting
you through, slowing your scattered eye, your heaving breath?
******
lvii. Them Jellies
I don't hold evolution or just
a well-inspired cosmic artisan
to credit for what I witness floating
before me. I don't know what accounts
for its ligaments & lights. Many books
will explain & not convince. I remain,
by my preference, in wonder. And think,
more & more these days, how little
that matters benefits from tries at why.
Them jellies just float, in a tank
they did not make, for reasons they
do not know, they just light up & float.
******
lviii. Revelator
Letting you go, brother, is easy, because
you don't leave. A stretch of sunlight,
a horn from that attic window, words unsaid
in my head, laughing years & years old.
Letting you go to your fall, your ashes,
the molded paths preachers lure the
children in men by the fears in their dreams,
you dismissed it all but the tune. Long, lovely tune.
Letting you go to listening for your silent instrument,
ah, break my heart & you go on still. The spittle flies
as you cry it out, the strings bend & break,
the stars finally set & we all know how they return.
******
lix. Entangle
" the world changes
if two look at each other and see
to love is to undress our names"
—Octavio Paz, Sunstone, 1957.
You laugh. You're dust in a courtyard, below
a plaque, in a box waiting further dispersal.
You laugh. "It matters & it doesn't. The tune
of a lover's heartbeat when she's close. That same
music, years on, another's arms. Nobody's."
You laugh. Because you know I'll climb
from these depths again &, when exhausted, return.
******
lx. Leucocyte
"If you plant ice
you're going to harvest wind"
—Grateful Dead, "Franklin's Tower," 1975.
—there will be music, there will be green.
But the ones gone are gone, enough.
Learning to hear them in tonight's melodies,
& then hearing otherwise some nights,
& so finally lose the difference at last,
is the new work.