…It seems lunacy to me
to spend your days
going up and down the staircase of yourself,
gymnastic delirium. And to do it,
Valéry cautioned, armed to the teeth,
lunacy. Better be hollow.
Hollow Earth theory should really mean
there is nothing inside the body,
just a central sun peopling vast emptiness.
how precious the sky is,
it keeps us safe,
the trolls inside me can’t handle light,
only in the parking lot understand
the meaning of the place you’ve been,
mall, market, club, cathedral,
all the cars roasting in the moonlight
for all you know having the same dream.
Be different. Look up and dissent.
Nothing lasts up there,
the words dissolve in mind
and we are meek water again —
You never know the distances
love must travel
those who dare to speak of love
as if we all know what it means
yet must be told
over and over again
by voices plodding through time
soft as marimbas
in a beastless jungle
No punctuation darling
it’s so overdetermined,
nothing lost between the words
let them breathe themselves.
As in a chapel
no gap between the building and the cup,
you drink the architecture too,
is there life beyond oxygen?
seems such a simple thing to ask
the temples come crashing down
isn’t that what Samson was
a blind man’s question
that broke the building down,
say the word and the city falls.
You go to a surgeon to get something out
go to the movies when you haven’t seen enough
why do you write me the letter you do
if not for the only answer I ever have?
Write the words down and follow them home.
We live in the age of names —
sticks and stones will break our bones
and names will surely kill us
because there is no answer to a name,
it deals a fatal silence.
It says John.
But what about the word on the other side of a name
it names an action or a thing,
isn’t it fatal to say arise or a rose?
Thinking crash lands in a name —
but something slithers from the wreckage,
free from depiction, beyond the boundary,
a hint, a yen, a glint, a go.
And it begins to know.
Compliance is sensual,
it’s being with rivers
it’s riding time’s back
and being friendly with the night.
I hoped I was listening,
dawn a spasm of gentleness
pale through trees —
the witches have done their work again
and foiled the bosses a few more hours
look around, look all around
they whisper, watch us
rinse into the sky what is not color yet
watch and do nothing but be.
I could sit here and hunt for dawn
comes easily these days
or sleep my way to Jericho again
Where Moses’ daughters rise
a cunning school for love’s diplomacy
and otherworldly wisdoms all combined
they let me in some nights
let me interrogate them
in my broken Hebrew to learn how,
just how. For they know everything
again. Small school all white adobe
shadowy within, we see by skinlight,
read by the light left in our eyes
by years of looking outward.
You can tell he’s near the end
he’s starting to make sense
abbreviate the obvious!
The leaf covers itself with gold
I call it dawn rain birds in a bush
things that mean little last forever
lost on the railroad like Bruckner’s hat
found on the shore like a baby seal
I can show you pictures of the world,
priest carrying the sacrament to a dying man.
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