Estrangement 2 (Acknowledgement, Desire)

There is

an unbearable existence

in words

an incomprehensible

torturous, elusive

poem

in existence

the poem

of anyone

the existence

of anyone.

Estrangement

January

wind, a feral motion

twisting in and

out between the days;

the days, suddenly

strange to themselves,

estrange themselves.

They turn

inward,

long fingers curling,

pale, digging into

their collars

and scarves,

to seek a warmth

not there.

Miserere

Oh God,

these pathless thoughts

and fruitless dreams encompass me;

be Thou the hope I cannot see.

Oh God,

my twisting lips

and hateful tongue destroy;

somehow, be Thou the word of joy.

Oh God,

my graceless steps

have murdered and entangled all my ways;

be Thou to Thine own Self the voice of praise.

My God, my God,

my soul stripped bare,

I lie unveiled to Thee.

My hope, my joy, my praise,

my prayer: be merciful to me.

Dry Oak Tree

dry oak tree

unlaminated

glistening

curls

a doorway of hesitant circles

low moan followed

clutching spasm

after slowly instantaneous

shattering of limb

her lying still

her turned words

and the darkness

like a sound of horses

growing rising bursting forth

descending out

from limbs and trunk and wind

a rush of wings

threshing of breath

harvest of caught eyes

outcry of blindness

fingers skittering across the stones

braided so deep into

the twist of height

becoming nothing

an arrow

splintering outward

from her break of bended bow

my bleeding temple

streaked across her spattered leaves

stirring against concrete

a new autumnal sound

as I go on

uplifting my destroyed wrist

and clear eyes

In Twirling Arcs of Soundless Light

There are spirits

like white foxes on the lawn,

passing through shadows and

becoming birds

who fall

in twirling arcs of

soundless light,

to land

as plastic bags

pierced through by headlights,

fallen angels or

the guardian stars

of wheel wells.

Withdrawn behind the silhouettes

of oaks and aspens

the moon remains

a coward:

setting--hiding--

waiting

for the light to go away.

Spring Drought Canoe

My yellow utterly incarnate tree bends to the wind,

trailing its leaves, like the wake of a trawler, across the glass

in the wall at the head of my bed.

A sunlit dress with a pale green fringe,

and narrow, deep-red veins,

drifts from a hanger on a rack of clothes

behind your name,

haunting the still air near my memories,

flirting the billowed breeze

beside my hopes.

My rising summer heart

and daybreak eyes

twist

into the fabric lines,

fingering knots

against the sight of naked limbs

reaching out to the wind,

answering the wind:

a dry and ceaseless rustling--

the planks of a canoe scraping against

the riverbed stones

in a spring drought.

My yellow utterly incarnate tree,

unravelling its solemn bough,

splashes its dress across the wall

and spreads a tide of dew before my dreams,

unclothes my dreams with names,

whets the abandoned channel of my thirsting dreams,

disturbs the sleep of the canoe

on the riverbed stones of that distant spring.

A Wingless Bird

God, I have nothing

to say to you. A beggar

shows the king his palm;

tumbles, a wingless bird

before the swaying pines,

and waits--unmoving, breathless, mute.

Glass Curves

She is receding

the memory in the dark

panels of hardwood

walls speckled

ceiling

altered, hung with

shadowed bulbs

broken

filaments

bouncing round the glass

curves

drifting slowly past

through walls

dwindling, receding

turning inward

forgetful

Vivaldi Summer

Vivaldi summer

horizon boils over

and over, replaced

endless succession

pure grace refilling the lamp

beneath the bowl

of clouds

The Year Ends (Mononucleosis)

And growing silently tall
in the deep snow, the oaks said,
And women?

Quietly, I gathered the snow in my hands
as, silently, the ground reached up
to brush the tips of my fingers.

And the oaks, astonished, lowered their leaves
to wreath me in a falling crown of gold.

In(carnation)

Opalescent glass
softly diffuses the light
as it enters the bulb,

spreading carnations
across the walls, covering
the surface inside.

A Tree of Dry Leaves (An Orchard Warmth)

Sinking, the pomegranate jewel dissolves
in an orchard warmth, extinguishing
among the dark roots of the good leaves
lining the curve of the bowl.

I do not want it to sink and die.
I want to keep it long alive and watch it
burrow through the stones and wood,
the endless lines of pipes and wires,
until this wet globe splinters from its core,
a dry leaf, an old ornament,
a long-forgotten fragment
reeling in the avalanche of space!

Drifting, the jewel settles
and falls along its course,
sinking into the rift between my hands
and my impenetrable hope,
burning until I break from the center,
a tree of dry leaves, an ancient ornament
dropped at the foot of a blank and ageless wall;
shattered and burned,
rising on the air, utterly still,
entirely at peace in the carrying throes
of the complete freedom
of emptiness.

A Piercing Luminance (A Soft Door)

It certainly seems that Lily will never bloom again,

God will never be resurrected from my death

and the light is gone forever.

I never saw the light die.

I saw the obscuring grief gather,

and it took to the edges first,

slowly absorbing my center,

which shone till the last, as if to say

"Do not forget, never despair, remember!"

I saw a naked statue today, her smooth stone body reminding,

her promises concealed by perfect vines.

Her body spoke virtues: sacrifice, gentle forgiveness,

an invitation and a healing love.

God awakes in my body,

a piercing luminance breaks through for a moment,

a secret blossom trembles in the leaves.

Stay, my hope from God! Beloved,

guard yourself for me: unfold, enfold, in season.

These seasons never last, and Spring is close.

So begins lovemaking,

when my hope folds in the edges

of the world upon me,

closing a soft door on the past.

Clean Edges, Tall Glass

I appreciate tall windows with clean edges,

as I love beautiful women in passing on the streets.

Clean edges, tall glass, what do they know?

I look through them; they never see what I see,

unless the light glows from my side of the pane

and the other side shines darkness.

But windows aren't windows

in that case;

they're mirrors.

Women are mirrors, mostly.

Their bulbs burn out too quickly,

especially when they hang down

from the basement ceiling

on a wire,

without a lampshade.

Impenetrable Silence (A Low Flame)

It's not enough, said my simplicity,

that you loved her and today

she isn't gone at all but lives at a distance;

what reason to grieve?

It's not enough, replied my incredulous tears, that the pieces of

her little sounds once fit together into parted lips,

how her lashes brushed as she would close her eyes

against you, wrapping the bulbs within a darkness

as she bade you enter that impenetrable silence where

the light burned near behind a thinning shade of separation

that, bursting into a low flame, cast from two hearts at once

a single cry into the corners of the night?

*

Oh God, whispered

my shattered

being

*

Oh God, breathed out

my wounded simplicity,

don't say that again.

The Phoenix

This golden vessel weighs creakingly

upon the crux of the ancient wooden structure,

soft and damp and feeble.

This tall sepulcher glows a little from its mouth,

this ancient wooden structure prone

behind its dead tree scraggle-roots and thorns.

This golden vessel rests in the midst and shines through all,

this little precious empty thing, long longing to be filled brim-high.

It turns the water of the eyes to wine so lovers can be drunk on loneliness;

it widens and is large enough to bathe in,

if you know the words to say:

Oh God.

God has not forsaken the vessel of his making;

that which no one values gathers dust unhindered.

This golden vessel weighs creakingly

upon the crux of the ancient wooden structure;

this heart leans heavily upon

the dry beams of a love once new.

Make of a love a crucible,

and the vessel will emerge from flames

bearing its ever-truer form and face.

Oh God, this ancient wooden structure!

Who could have imagined

such heat from an old flame?

*

The truer form is stirring in the glowing ash:

an indistinct, beauteous shape

like a bird with new, clean wings.

Hallelujah in the Dark (Bright Spots)

Hallelujah in the dark, hallelujah as it sings from every flicker of every naked bulb.

Hallelujah for the 60 watts of clarity, hallelujah for the endless chiaroscuro.

Hallelujah in the highest, which my head bumps into

if I do not stoop too low.

Bright spots danced down from my eyes, across my fingers,

and they wet the dry, black powder of the shadows,

the shadows that traced swinging words.

God, write more with this torrential bursting forth,

God, drown some uncertainties in the rippling hardwood!

God, let the planks grow some new leaves;

so old, so dry, do they even remember?

God, let them twine through my nostrils,

let them encircle my wrists and cradle my neck,

and let them flower lotus blooms between my legs,

naked in the dark, revealed.

Take me back to the beginning,

give me back to me, to You, to Om;

oh hallelujah, save our souls!

The planks rend and the soul blossoms.

I Saw My Heart in a Pawn Shop

I saw my heart in a pawn shop and bought it back.

A bell-sound washed across the clerk, said: Free, no charge.

I cradled my repository close and wept him:

Damn you, liar! Damn you, liar!

They moved the chairs at the cafe. There is a long table there now.

How little it takes to slay an old thought, a memory!

Such gold would melt between cold hands.

I wonder sometimes who gets letters now,

whether you've run out of ribbon yet

on someone else

(oh God, God, God.)

I passed your old flame in the hall

and shared a glance:

you too, me too?

We burned low.

I don't know if your letters smell like you anymore.

I cannot find them.

*

I'm sure they do.

*

The clerk said, A beautiful girl

who smelled like letters

walked into the shop the day before you.

He said she looked sadly around

and walked out.

Remembrance Asleep (Echo, Echo, Echo)

"I can't tell you the pace or direction
taken by the guiding traveler beneath my breast,
and what would you say if I could?"

I might have tried to follow the beat,
played double-time, caught up to it somehow.
I may have proved less wanting than I'm proven now,
thinking back in preference to waking up.

We Sang Our Songs (What I Will Be When I Grow Up)

I'm so afraid that everyone I love will die
and I will be left alone in a too-small box,
knocking on the lid with my nose
in a silent place with no good smells.

I don't know why I live so timid, never intimate,
claiming instead to be encircled
by enormous tall oblong protruding pastel faces

of animals leering sexually and wondering

half to themselves, aloud,

what I will be when I grow up.

I know how to sing! I know how to play! I know how to write!
I know how to walk around without my head in some damn cloudbanks,
looking down the wet slope of a murdered bridge.

Stop telling me I don't!

I'm not from where you're from!
Where I came from, we sang our songs
because we knew them by heart, not by rote.
Stoppit, damn stupid condemnation evil notion, confusing the two!

I won't listen to you. Goodbye!