Jul 6, 2015 | Uncategorized
then
something happened
and
beauty lasted longer than itself
and
gave us to think.
There
are not many roads to silence
and
music is the sweetest of them
though
the longest
with
pretty girls and boys along the way,
fangless
wolves and paper forests
a
pirate ship in every bathtub
and
no more war.
I
touched my hand
I
wondered who it was.
We
don’t have to know all the names
but
they all are blessing us at once —
what
else is a name for?
Jul 4, 2015 | Uncategorized
It’s
all a fugue and everything
has
to come
again
and again through all the doors.
Look
out all the windows,
sleep
in all the beds,
hide
in the cellar and run out over and over
because
that is the nature of nature
the
minute you let it
turn
into the oldest music.
There
was no music before Bach
or
maybe Biber,
just
people being beautiful out loud
then
something happened
and
beauty lasted longer than itself
Jul 3, 2015 | Uncategorized
Byzantium rises again,
post-Abrahamic,
luminous and blue.
Am I the last pagan or
the first?
Open the Questionary
and slip in,
they’re all there
waiting for you
and you are their only
answer
Charlie Chaplin eats
his shoes
St. Apollo hides the
moon
if you listened more
I’d talk less
isn’t that what
witchcraft is,
your skin slick with
Oil of Listening
Apr 21, 2015 | Uncategorized
323.
And if it rains we say some other
thing
and if the sparrows drown out timid
raindrops
there’ll be some peace at last in
this cartoon
forgive me my investigations a bee
has to live
the drones hum around the hive those
artists boy-band poets
I’m just the wrong kind a man I
couldn’t find
honey in a honey jar how strange the
world is
all contents and containers and a
bird going by
knowing no more than less
voices of the cyclists wheeling past
chatting loud as if they’re standing still
the slender miracle of mind we all
can hear.
324.
I climbed in winter up Glastonbury
Tor
stood in the ruins of St. Michael’s
Chapel
peered up through the roofless tower
to watch
the original star from which we fell
you and I slept together on the Hill
of Tara
peaceful in cool summer
right beneath the Stone of Destiny
we live our little times apart
Himalayas blue flowers too
where is there for us to think
but this half-acre hot summer
birdsong almost too many leaves
very green, this place, here.
325.
No lingering slumbery rubato flaunted
coda
without slowing down it simply stops
Stefano Greco plays Bach’s unfinished
fourteenth
he has a theory I guess I never
understand
I think silence is the best
philosophy
those empty minutes that we long to touch
I fill them here with ambrosia
a sappy word that meant in Greek what
does not die
life, that limitless cliché
o love me as much as I love you
you can do it if anybody can
you are the only one who
understands.
END OF HEART THREAD
Apr 19, 2015 | Uncategorized
321.
A troll is not a little thing it’s a living
stone
a stone that knows how to move
a stone with hands and only the huldra tames him
or so I read in a book I wrote
I found it on my phone faces made of
shadows
light itself is made of their soft
fur
they’re all around us their breath
the thunder
all summer I’ve been translating from
the birds
now who will be my dragoman
and guide you cleanly through my
cloying text?
it’s done already! you’ve read and
understood!
what else is there to tell but the
sound of it?
322.
All that’s missing is the rain of
gold
on Danae’s spread self, the blue
flower
clinging to your fingertips the crow
calling loud
right overhead to tell me what’s what
the time has come he says kairos
like a glee or a gospel anything you
choose
long as it has a tune in it
the watchman on the roof stirs in his
sleep
the trees wake up and tremble at that
song
you wear your clothes woven from the
stars
I know who you are but with all
my talk that’s the one word I won’t
say.
Apr 18, 2015 | Uncategorized
317.
So what if her skirt is made of
flowers
his skin was made of ocean
people grow old with what they hold
all that holding hurts
pain of a violin how can I sing with
something in my head
the pale arm that calms me so many
nights
all a step away from mania
where does the sound come from you
rub on your strings
consider the pain of all I give you
is all forgiving blue light of the
other
fills the whole body the way sound
fills the ears
only this and nothing else.
319.
The bowl of night beleaguered me
then airless dawn we read about in
books
written by frustrated selfish young
men
there is always air enough for women
even poor Salome here I can breathe!
but night
had other plans and other selfish men
the one who wouldn’t kiss her one who
killed for kissing
o it is strange to be a woman in this
world
to have made all this then see it
turn against you
boy by boy until the mean old men
enslave you
I wish I could do something to change
or help
but I’m a habit man mechanical like
all the rest.
Apr 17, 2015 | Uncategorized
315.
I can’t help it if it tells the truth
the weather’s like that, breeze and
knees
there is waiting to be done because
the world
subways are so old-fashioned
we are children when we go down there
blue light in the Clark Street tunnel
the hardest is to be now at all
broken branches where the deer
browsed
I think of winter and of Scamander
the river rising to rebuke us
the gods of everything for
everything’s a god
not us though we’re on the other side
of that.
316.
In the completion things get in the
way
until it occurs to her they are the way
then she leads me to it and you too
the other side of everything and here
we are
I have to talk like this I am a voice
only what we say counts not what we
do
he said and climbed the rain-drenched
slope
into a Chinese dream he never wanted
did he
why all those fan-fold books peonies
and lexicons
of course he wanted to go there
provided it was here
only the voice moved drifting over
the hospital gardens
old man weeping on the marble steps.
Apr 15, 2015 | Uncategorized
I keep waiting for something
to crawl out of my right ear
and spread its wings and flutter
loud around the house crying
this is what you’ve been
listening to all these years
for I am music and a living thing
dangerous and beautiful and
who knows what else I bring?
Apr 14, 2015 | Uncategorized
313.
She was in him all the time
Rosa peregrina pressed between the
pages
so much talk the morning mower
break into an art beyond commodity
you pilgrim rose that took his hand
led him to color alone and left him
there
while she herself stepped up inside
him
castle of palaver beauty counts
on one finger the ruby of the setting
sun
we live again because we mistake
this art too beyond the financiers
life belongs really only to the
poor.
314.
Poverty is permanent is to live in a
physical world
endlessly interdependent dependent on
each puff of breath
each stone you stand on your will
contingent on the molecular
even if you think you’re not just
mirror neurons
just the habit of acquiring speech
because it doesn’t lead anywhere
it perdures or seems to as long as
you do
the world has never abandoned anyone
up to you to leave the world
naked towards the riches of the
unconceived
I love you she said despite all this
I tell
oiled wrestlers grappling with the
moment seems.
Apr 13, 2015 | Uncategorized
311.
Accidental purposes of Delta music
on that day women chase men or seem
to
they shall handle texts and not be
harmed thereby
they shall preach the good news
without knowing it
old battleships with concave prows
plow into tropic harbors bring truth
home
tapa cloth and Charlie Chan and Maori
skin
everything written was written to be
forgotten
forgotten deep into you and ripen
there
nasturtiums a little peppery in her
salad
mud fights in Oregon knishes on
Pitkin
if you think these are random think
again.
312.
Children in the cornfield who are you
now
furtive actions in the furrows
who knows what eating really does
two children lying side by side
hieroglyph of the space left between
them
every relationship makes its own sign
whole world a museum unknown curator
about whom we fantasize
theology philosophy history and
baffling pre-dawn dreams
where we are always in a far-off city
always trying to get home
so this planet must itself be the
distant town
the stewardess won’t let me on the plane
must be the fiery angel she drives me
off with an ear of corn.
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