ETERNITY
We are the dreams
of worlds before
The worlds
of silver
and carts
and hoofs
flappers,
soldiers
and ladies
along the Seine
Trappers
and heads of state,
sculptors, poets
and fruit sellers,
merchants, mercenaries
and Futile Lourdes,
serfs, thieves and lepers,
robber barons, out casts,
monsters and maidens,
Dreaming of
electricity
humanity
mendacity
bombasticity
catastrophe
in the reality,
of entropy,
we are these dreams
of worlds before
Alas, in the next
when, after we wake
to a world of war less verse
and painless affections
Where one’s thoughts
travel as light
and the anatomy of midnights
are altered forever
A kiss
like the most still wind
makes no distinction;
no separation
and possesses
the absolute power of eternity
***
IRONY
Shut eye’d
dreams
lick
brailish auras
tremble
inside memories
of median light
Out stands
the colors
that lifts
blinded
from the blackness
Subtle senses
carry high
the soul
for flight
Alas is trapped
in the cancerous
carcass
where the skull
screams
empty soundless echoes
The shrined bones
lie in dinosaur’s dust
Finite tombs
Tinker
at the edge
of eternity
While wild children
scrum down
in torrents of
brown and silver sludge
they kick back
on engraved stones
and leave drippings
of wingless shoes
for to gather
their tender tediums
in the muddy wastelands
of indulgent youth
Dark clouds fill
the sky
and suck at
the last
most articulate
breath
of the poet
***
STATUE
Am I with you along side you in you
Am I?
As I touch you with my breath; lick you
with mine eyes;
You tell me not; your silence aches
my bones.
If I never know -
will you be laughing?
Shinning cold...?
Sit there
and let me ponder
least of myself.
Go right ahead -
won't be any different
than it's always been -
you there;
me here...
***
THE PEDESTRIANS
Simple, inane, left outside
Huddling in Rugby mud
The rain purifies
The deluge
The gray brown rust
Severs the green
And the everyday intentions
Of transience.
***
IMPROMPTU PORTRAIT
I feel myself
sitting often like Ingres
staring at the camera man
but not
my wrists twisted,
fingers splayed,
knucles white,
elbows bent for relief,
peculiar pose - his right hand has six fingers;
suspect am I
of its memory
and its reoccurence
in my everyday.
Perhaps I once was Ingres,
though I'm not certain
and then again,
I am certain
of the air there,
in the glass
of the reflection;
in his past;
his future;
and every time
I find myself
sitting and staring
at the camera man
my clarity increases
***
MIGHT THE THING
Might the form from which a thing comes
leap forward and meet you unknowingly
scar you with it’s feathers of steel
bring blood past the rim of you
or stop you at your trim
expose the back of you
and the underneath?
Might the content careen about the thing
such that it seeps into your veins
undeniably denying all logic
and meaning and then
to have in itself
the ability
of being?
***
OBSERVATIONS
Today I observed the rain, gentle and mist and hard
torrents from a fire hose; all at once, decisive and then inconsistent spatters. The
greens darken; their patterns like striated markings of a painter’s palms; the
thirsty yellow, brown blades drink so that we breath. Every green: Viridian deep and
light, lime hollow, green, sap, earth, yellow green, brown green. And moving still behind
the growing Dutch Yellow light weeds; the dark eyes of the doe staring, inquisitive,
glossy, mirrored pools of Ivory black. I slowly strike sulfur to surface; it’s nose
in the air like a debutante at a dance; it’s only thoughts are to instinct and
survival; and then with no further provocation, gracefully in one ballerina’s turn,
it leaps as high as the tallest weed and down again and then it was gone.
***
IMAGINE
I can imagine and imagine
that I am Imaging - a life,
condensed into a bang. BANG! BANG!
I’m dead! File drawers of underwear
crumpled and stained;
hidden away socks,
sticky from rain;
water sitting still in stagnate pools;
sated with micro - creatures and fools.
Magnified in one’s mind shows God
and his gods of the sea and bathtubs.
The beauty of the horror of the light,
smacking of the bum,
cracking of the crisp eternal silence of screams;
seconds in the scheme;
a droplet of dusty mildewed liquid;
liquid once a mighty state of gas
now pretends to plan to be a solid mass;
attend schools and find fellow creatures what would
join him at a dance.
Drink from bowls of glass; distinct, narrowed heads
of black, white and grey
cut with smidgens of crimson
reflect refracted rays of day;
as the willing and the wild distort
destructed constructions of distorted thought,
they swallow scum and fruity clumps
floating to the rim -
then plod and trip and strip and slither like sloths
to the beat and the beats of the dance and the din;
lock their horns
and arms amongst their legged limbs;
attempt to fly like dogs in the wind;
throughout and through
the cut - out window shades in planes of blue -
and gold
striking fleshy knees upon the rocks, the rocks of
old
bleeding green and yellow blood,
never reaching that destined flood;
always imaging the way it is;
never ever seeing the it or the is;
for the giants and the serpents have eaten the brains
and the image imagined
is all that remains.
***
STONE LIKE PAPER
Stone like paper floats
Fluid as oceans cutting teeth
Exposing life as it were
Of traveler’s many skins
Smooth silken pristine sheets of sand
God vessels carrying seeded men
Severed from their homes
Swallowed whole by mystics
They reemerge clean care filled
Amidst volumes of cursed current
Muffles of thirst-less tapping
Quiets the sounds of distant ships
Where a soul’s heart
Is heard as it tears itself
From it’s granite bed
Draws a molten breath
Thrusts through the temporal tides
To seize the floating print
And is all at once the day
With the promise of new
***
MORE DREAMS
Where is it, the forgotten steps
The sounds of echoed feet
The dark memories of yesterday
Why can I not see my fingers
Splayed out before me
Oh the evasive immediate past
How it confounds me
Was it not ages ago I dreamt it
This thing of words and dilemmas
Can it be so special now
That it needs a voice and then pictures
And why is the real of it so uncertain
If I wrap my legs around it and fuck it
Can I call that my dream and then wake
Into the real, the real picture of harmony?
***
NORMAL DREAMS
Normal dreams end each morning before you wake
before the whole entire world forces it’s way
into your marrow and if you have the courage
to stop to question the validity of either
you must not deny some extraordinary possibilities:
that your life is but a vapor covered by dumb flesh;
your dreams are codes from another far off place
where everyone screams the truth in muffled voices;
your dangling limbs grope at the air in a feeble
attempt
at deciphering the language; you yearn for the
knowledge
just beyond your grasp; you stumble and fall;
the seconds tick; every moment becomes more aimless;
the vaporous spirits
tear at the layers of suited flesh; your normal
dreams cease to be normal
and your life is opened like the seas of a cracked
earth; monsters stream
from every portal; serpents gauge out your heart;
angels with grimacing faces
sing haunting sonnets to your non existing soul; you
are alone and nothing is like you.
***
APPLES AND ORANGES
Amidst apples and oranges
Rolling thunder
Whirlpools
Onion peels
Thought
Left behind
Shudder
With hope and anticipation
Coming dream
Dissolving rock
Ledge, edge
Affirmation of
Desperate uncertainties
Ambiguous paths
Crossing
Tender of a woman’s thigh
Hellacious scents
Meander like vines in a vineyard
Flesh is filled
Ravished
Yet still
Spirit yearns
***
OCEANS OF PARADISE
Oceans of paradise
Roll over till the moon comes
And the stars explode
And the glimpses
Of days gone by
Hold ones heart
Still in a bear’s grip
Gauged and swollen
Pumping and bleeding
For the sins of man
Knowing not
The wind and the rain
Or why the storms fade
Or why we never learn
And the glory of truth
And of innocence
The suffering to be loved
Falls short in spite of
And because of
It’s power
***
NEXT MOMENTS
In the universal soul
There swells
Champions of drift
And high seas.
Their currents
Draw eternal the forces
Of everlasting light.
Absent the minutia
So well manipulated
By the earnest artisan.
Traversed o’er the memory
Of its instant history.
Propelled into oblivion.
Spiraling; sleeping
Into the next moments
For eternity.
***
LIKE THE WIND
Forever,
Haunting mistrals
Whisper
In foreign tongues
Chanting;
Premonitions
Of the ungraspable;
Of the beauty
Of the music
Of the wind.
And that perhaps
I am already the wind
And can only see;
Can only feel,
From henceforth
Through the music
This truth.
And it is to listen
To all ends
To hear
The distant middle
To seize the life
Of memory.
And like the wind
I tuck under
A flat shelf, swirl there,
Then thinly
Disappear;
Tumble
Inside a ball
Of weeds
Until spent.
And then rest
In a dark place.
And when I rise
I will yearn
For a place;
a mountain side; an old villa;
To hold my life still for eternity.
And then a moving carriage
To take me home every night
Ecstatically
To tell of my stillness.
Does the wind answer to anything?
Such arrogance the wind.
***
GOOD
What mystery is greater than you?
One flash and you’re gone.
Leaving a trail a mile long.
Does your conscience speak
At night in the quiet room
Of secret deals in desserts doom?.
Your partner squeals
Of dreams he had.
Of missing ships
Of being bad.
Why then do you persist
To eat the hearts
And parts you kissed?
How can you expect
Us to trust
We’d return
From dust to dust
Never ever knowing real.
Having truths
Like onions peel?
To see the worth of you
Beneath a stack of rolling eyes
That smacks of tracks
Of railroad ties
And fleshy facts
The truth belies.
For instants
In our experience
Exist only to
Recompense.
And if we wake
Into something new
Might we have another
Name for you.
***
THE BIG ROOM
I walked into the big room yesterday,
this morning, last month, tomorrow;
I ate breakfast, then fasted for days,
all the while moving inward like a stone;
inertly contemplating the composition
of the walls; the airwaves;
the creases in the slivers before one steps;
the distances between rungs on the closest
of homemade ladders; and the notes.
The notes that hang around, lie there, seep,
infiltrate,
destroy and rebuild as do the spirits;
somewhere between grandeur
and obscurity; so close;
like red madder, alizarin, viridian; pale riders,
riding with Aristotle’s heart; Socrates’
soul;
impacting backbone at the lower lumbars;
never looking back.
I stepped around the parameters of the place
in spaces with no room for feet; I lumbered
through on knees un like my hands
knocking about at the rice papered furniture;
I browsed the library for books but found none.
I found instead an elegantly embroided,
jewel studded, Toreadors cape, black as all hollows.
A deep vermilion cloth peaked out from under the
flogging robes
hidden in a clandestine compartment so that the tip
of it appeared there,
dripping like a smatter of blood.
As the cape, under its own spell, carouselled through
the air
I plummeted toward sleep. The bulls laid beside me.
We shared snores and rubbed each others bellies.
The several hooves to the groin were not as violent
as expected.
I woke with my spine curved and brain full of holes.
I sat up and forward in my way;
I imagined and acted at the same time, my self
a gold leaf and silver dancer splayed in midair;
legs parallel to toes, the floor nowhere in sight,
in perpetual motion, not ever once considering
movement;
resting for an eternal instant; just the way one does
in the big room in their skin and their being.
***
THE WALK
walked upright strident on a day when the heat was
unfamiliar
we did;
we talked endlessly about art and how art does not
exist any more
than life;
and in the protons and electrons of atoms of thought
with which
we sported;
we came to very little; nothing conclusive;
everything hovering,
breathing
down our necks; sweating profusely we showered and
redressed
in our ambiguous clothes;
we smiled in our breathless laughter bent and crossed
each other’s paths
realizing the absurdities:
how art is a word like god invented by man that is
meaningless
without life;
that life is a vague generality we all take for
granted and thinking it is only this
a life
that will always be the same; the same as you see
with eyes and plastics
and signs
to tell you the way; we’re not prepared for all
that is true being erased like a drawing;
a drawing erased more beautiful than it’s former
self takes a mind expanded
to see;
programed for art over life; to talk about art before
life;
to imagine art as life;
discussion of family with family about apple pie and
rude squatter’s lack
of appreciation;
appreciating the trees as art and the stones and
cringing at the flocks who gather round the thinness of life;
the poorly painted purple and black and blue horse
biting at it’s tail;
the black velvet africaness with her slight lean
against a violet chair; her brown
colorless skin;
flat like the cityscapes with their static roves
sitting there laminated
waiting to be licked;
we slipped in drool and hydroplaned through the
former art world marveling at it’s apparent reconstruction;
we traveled through the art of air discovering
nothing that was on display
to be more interesting
than our own discourse; no closed doors; all ears
hearts and minds, sieves
we were;
him, young and green not old enough to be my father
but with the naivete
of kings
and I, as old as the winds and as hollow, in a house
counting it’s days
before the fall;
we moved as one, never looking back; no apologies; we
ate and spit and swallowed every smell
every taste tasted like oak trees and sushi and
squid; like water and sweet air
you breath at the dentist...
when the walk ended we flew home and we
both decided
it was a very exciting time to be living.
***
FLEETING
Teeth, feet, brain
Heart – put them in there
Somewhere so that
It bites and moves
Thinks and feels
Chatters and sweats
Twists and soars
And goes on
Till it is no more.
***
UNSPOKEN
That deep
Deepest guttural moan
That bellows from galaxies
Inside our cells
Beyond words
Behind nerves
In doorways
Alley ways
Cradles
In mother’s arms
In father’s grave
The eye
The heart
The tears
Come
From all of time
Forcing it’s way
In an instant
Echoing
And taking
Everything
With it
***
MUSE
She sits crossed legged
On the opposite side of the room,
Smoking heavily,
Clad in dark ash
A pencil drawn door appears
Incised in the space around her
A transparent idiom
Of a rectangle
Frames her perfectly
Enveloped
by her own
ethereal nature
Burning upward
Into the walls
She cackles
Like the heavens
In her throat
Sarcastically
She sighs assuming
Her work is done.
***
TRANS-END
chant at the grey taught day
make small steps of brilliance
change spheres of light
spit liquid sighs
heaven on earth comes
one’s body flattens
beyond the great mystery
spaces of work of passion
fall away into black
bring forth the face of man
sneer into his eye
bite out the iris
wear lapis lazuli
arrive half full
drink in celebration
leave empty
|
