Mar 9, 2015 | Uncategorized
245.
Where is this up I asked you to use
me to
a seashell in the sky a grammatical
awkwardness
Bruno’s cavatina in music someone’s
bound to die
we all are victims of perceiving
but what image lingers in the dying
mind
that is the real question about death
what do we go out with
wearing our curious inherited
garments
what symbol nestled in the socket of
the throat
so many things to remember only one
to carry with me
what is the mind before perceiving
the deep and simple well in which no
star shines.
246.
Day of knife angry dreams the crowded
train
never any clear way to get home
leaning on the woman till he fell a
statue
live in slo-mo with your eyes on fire
Schlomo, the king with a wife for
every night
but only one wife for all his days
married to wisdom with a golden
lariat
fine-tailed doves fly up into green
fronds
all this happens only because you’re
watching
if we didn’t see it wouldn’t be
language is the alley of dead kings
lets you speak without opening your
mouth.
Mar 8, 2015 | Uncategorized
243.
All the definitions are now in place
revise the animal feed it from your
lap
a bee knows by
the is the center of the maze
woodpecker gospelling a dead tree
bird bath tepid on the lawn
be quiet we are someone here
try to be as quiet as it is
we are not meant to live together
each human is alone with the earth
the earth my only wife
touch me if you can.
244.
Don’t worry about the numbers
John Muir told Emerson they keep
house by themselves
I teach the interpretation of mirrors
the calculus of skin
how many contacts in a sleeping life
don’t wake up for me
for I am sleeping too my music snores
gnats bother the porches of mine ears
how dreadful is the natural
give me the word that flees its thing
let me go to the country music goes to
when it fades away
let me live on the ashes of what
someone sang.
Mar 7, 2015 | Uncategorized
241.
And so gave up Jerusalem
want the trees before the clearing
no temple’s worth a living tree
let alone fifty acres of English oak
culled to craft one warship then
days you could still see the goddess
in the trees
before the parsons bored all life
away
in windowless senacles clustered
round guilt
grrr I will wolf this land anew and
lie on it
I thought you said you had no enemies
no I have no war my enemies are
friends
I do what you tell me who else is
there.
242 .
A lyric absence though birds mute
trees
lyric means doing something to the
air
lyric means the right to be wrong
keep company with dumb ideas
sailing paper metaphors around the
room
lyric means knocking on a wall and
crying Open
lyric means being baffled by an open
door
lyric love is not like other kinds
flowers bought in the supermarket
the old mast of the Ernestina lying on the dock
heartwood still fresh after a hundred
years
lyric means the heartwood of a living
tree.
Mar 5, 2015 | Uncategorized
239.
You knew theology had to come of this
what else is interesting but to speak
of gods
translate sex into language yields
theology
discourse on the knowable written
with your mind on something else
poetry at least is always about
itself
but the poem has no self it is pure
act
hence more or less useful to
everybody like light
even in the dark you think about times
you saw
and if I die before I wake
drive a red car to my funeral
do Beethoven with blue flowers
call me by your own names as you
mourn.
240.
But each of these is many more than
one
time to talk big so I seem small
radishes from a lover’s garden
dense symbolism of the subway
Muscovite manners how soon they
forget
I’m not complaining I’m admiring
a Renoir walking out of the loo
a cynical note a poke at Uncle Toby
I had no war of my own
my mental strife was all with me
I despair of the city he said
the city did this to me.
Mar 4, 2015 | Uncategorized
237.
But I can only be the same as me a
little while
Gettysburg grandfathers battle scars
isn’t it enough that we still are
begin by blaming money the opposite
of language
blame mathematics and greed and value
then blame the summer stars for being
many
anxious sperm that quest the eggs of
mind
always trying to mean something in me
blame mastery and alpha and volcano
the love that hurtles through the
woods of Ireland
the ones that we cut down to reach
the sea
but never blame the sea.
238.
Revise my chapel of this local stone
build the sky into the window
let it have edges but no walls
change the images of gods displayed
change the gods
fill the pews with ocean
no prayer on dry land makes sense
stand up to your waist in water
recite the alphabet
variations on a, b, c
this is your liturgy your people you
I am the altar but don’t look at me
taste the water now and then listen
to what you speak.
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