Mar 10, 2015 | Uncategorized
247.
Walk in the shade disprove the sun
everything has been said before so
now we’re free
the blue flower is a never-spoken
word
the color she bent down to touch
became her sky
culture is a long contagion
what can you do with a thought you
can’t think
the empty parable Satan’s answer
if I give you the desert will you
give me my emptiness again
all the jewels of the mountain red
gravel of the Irrawaddy
I had three homes none of them mine
my wife was mad at me and turned away
for me there was no deeper pit than
this.
248.
As if our business is to make our way
to hell
only that way is the road to paradise
again
who made up all these stories even if
they’re true
everything that’s told is true is
true enough
how much is there to know about you
look into my life to find you
a crack in the windshield makes the sky
belong to someone else
you found your way into my arteries I
breathe you in
cleansing of the blood miracle of
simple prose
grammar of the heart nakedness of any
window
we forget the important things so
they can happen
an image worn smooth by too much looking.
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.
Mar 3, 2015 | Uncategorized
235.
Of engine what to speak how things
are made to happen
Persephone herself bent to retrieve
sky color from earth color
our first ethnographer she is taken
taken in by what she investigates
and lords it later over the dead and
not yet born
Hades’ house is not just for the dead
it is the queendom of everything
unseen
she ladies it over hell where we all
are fat
swollen with pasts and lives to come
all for the sake of one blue flower
and no mother
she is her own mother now.
236.
Now light your heart and be another
time is weary of this mask of yours
melt the wax of it away in seventh-month
heat
be free of this prison thee
I am little but mythological chatter
break the light a little and come
home
nothing happens on the other side
until we wake again with human faces
I look more like you than you believe
finally divided sunlight into heat
like a message
someone sends you find some shade and
stand there
there is a Golem in all of us a
servant heavy slumbering.
Mar 2, 2015 | Uncategorized
233.
Measure not pleasure
the ripest ambiguity high priestess
golden color quiet lioness
heel heel great varmint of the sky
soon it will be your turn, wheel
can I ever other? Bruno argued yes
I rage at how they fired him
restoring him to his elements
yes change your horoscope revise the
sky
the people waiting for you are hiding
in your sleep
take the iron road that ran right in
crying his name she came to herself
alone.
234.
And that was how she was a Tarot card
naked visible through a brick wall
a window where none was possible
she made the light and he brought the
air
the wind was seeing her with his pale
eyes
she breathed in being seen and so we
move
to the next gallery every image is a
room of its own
come live me inside the image
the deeper in you go the more space
there is
we come through a small door into a
big world
in this way we enter every image
hold the image in your mouth and
taste the remember.
Mar 1, 2015 | Uncategorized
231.
When I said enough you weren’t
listening
a phone rings far away and only there
why do we care about the colors
aren’t they the whole story
all the colors of the 21 Taras the
single blue of the Medicine Buddha
look around you’ll see them
everywhere
on different instruments how can one
note be the same
or there is no such as same
when the mind is busy we are no years
old
night and morning fragrant linden
flowers fade now
lindens and cicadas and sunspots who
else is there
tiny homeopathic breeze to make the
skin joy
color is the other word for it.
232.
Does it even sound like this
is it music or does it mean
he asked an anger like layer of low
cloud
but there was only blue and
shapeliness was you
there is no plausible verb for being
too many people were far away and
didn’t care
the pink and tinseled rider in the
circus
who knows from where such people come
if people they are if come they do
I started watching as a child and
never stopped
in the barnyard with ruddy feathers
the names of creatures are the same
as fate.
Feb 28, 2015 | Uncategorized
229.
But from its top I can behold the sea
across the street our little stream
in spate she said
ironies and departures
you know how to get here start from
here
a little movement in the leaves says
I’m alive
everything I give you is a sign
this’m is the blank sign
carry it with you till rain or sun
shadows the blankness with messages
then think they come from me
who have nothing else to give you
just one word after the last
word.
230.
Pause in the middle of meaning and
mean something else
there is no road or rule just
treefrogs singing
just blue sky gleaming through dense
green leaves
everything is an interruption
the newborn innocent screaming
a day red in the face angry at
wordless men
they try their ruler games but
weather is god
I’m not saying I’m just saying
if this is not me talking then who
are you
from the torn purse no gold coins
spill
long low quiet run of Avenue R
civilization is built on personal discomfort.
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