Jan 25, 2015 | Uncategorized
167.
Open the door and let your neighbor
out
always somewhere waiting to be else
you know your dove by how the tail is
shaped
what will heather do when weather
changes
or rabbit in high grass or the four
rivers of Kailasa
where the wing begins to wonder the
chicks fly
thus go I clutching to the shoulders
of the world
around me wrack of history walk on
clean feet
feeding ourselves on what no man
knows and all women do
each polis had its cult and we
have none
the Reformation broke all that away
and ‘-ation’ made nonsense of what
was left.
168.
Be suspicious of Greek models we are
not Greeks
have no polis have no common practice
to the gods
education is sick with Hellenic
fundamentalism
Greek can be as bad as Bible for the
soul
yet the poetry of both perdures
illuminates
Dante is close because each walks the
woods alone
the matter world of things receding
tailor sitting on his table stitching
what we all must wear
the technology of magic haunts us now
to walk invisible in Google goggles
isolate
how soon Ariel goes into Caliban
when once before the magus left the
island to the sea.
Jan 24, 2015 | Uncategorized
165.
Or morning only comes when something
breaks
how to tell your mother you’re gay
the stains your pleasures leave on
you
the roof cracks the birds fly out
it was no house after all it was the
woods
only halfway through the catalogue of
sins
remember never to confess unless
confessing is a pleasure too
girl fell off the lighthouse made her
lover fall
both drowned our coasts unguarded
deep-rooted on a shelf of rock below
the sea
some sins will never wash away
one slight twist it comes off in your
hand.
166.
A wave is pure motion in substance
with no substance of its own
a brilliant shadow of a man at sea
left in a terra cotta lekythos takes
two to hold it up
ten to drink it dry not ten of our
kind ten of theirs
let Ovid tell the story his own way
forget the Greeks
they are not in your blood your
bloody veil
Mavors inside me made me leap three
times
over the solstice fire into the sea
of Seven Oxen
I swam to Venus though I cannot swim
walked gingerly on my friend’s
adventure
at the intersection of now and then a
yellow flag
come not aboard this plague ship of
love’s sicknesses.
Jan 23, 2015 | Uncategorized
163.
Hard to read the numbers in this
light
go by the feel of the machine road
through water
voices in the street fear of
believing
whatever they say must be wrong way
round
nobody out there speaks our language
urgent children touching in the dark
who are those who move around inside
me
she walks by with a woodpecker on her
back
to prove that language is a function
of the skin
because language is all boundary
a walled garden and a maze at the
middle
and a mirror globe at the center with
roses all round it.
164.
Collecting stamps and never sending
mail
nobody writes letters anymore
people are afraid of words in the
hand
let Bach tell me six times what to do
next
translate into something we can keep
inside
inside us or in our household god domovoi
Lisa’s plump white arms in Ivan’s
dying brain
we have to know though where
everything belongs
o Egypt I am weak the rolled-up
carpet weighs too much
all the streets led up to the castle where
no one lives
you have to keep it all inside la
musique
and when the morning finally comes
the string will break.
Jan 22, 2015 | Uncategorized
161.
I had a dream you told me you had a
dream about me
part of me on the other hand already
is a dream
how many do I have to be to be one
it is a question of what kind of blue
a flower
what kind of kind
when there was nothing but sea there
still was me
I am plenty of you
an unfamiliar bird just now Berlioz
must have been like that
little histories of what never
happened
country A beats country B but war
beats both of them
who are you crying to on your hilltop
the wind knows how to take your
breath away.
162.
Far pillboxes over the heel of her
island
sideways to wind sucks my breath away
all the familiars sieve through the
mind
into the dark of other people’s
memories
what I lose you find a carousel of naughty
children
seacoast is never far from mind it is
made of it
ocean our first brain
resemblance is a wilted flower
no one told me anything but you
the stone that sealed him in he
carries in his hand
every funeral seems to be my own
all religions are none I thought he
said.
Jan 20, 2015 | Uncategorized
159.
Binary as if a double star you are
two houses and two voices to proclaim
absolute and relative are the same
two doors to every thought like
Boston homes
the law makes difference the will
makes same
watch the sun rise little by little
the light says yes
the wind is always coming from the
night
the dark breathes for us
lost in childhood with a single book
greatness means to have no private
life
sun up now and here the great one
comes
all work is play at best.
160.
Ate roses from the rocks along the
shore
one day she’ll come walking over the
sea
to restore us to our original forms
we mild impersonators of another
story
cantilena of the obvious desperate for
theophany
pick the ocean up and do what with it
one crow before anybody
I don’t send news to the tailor how I
wear my clothes
but I tell every sailor where to
steer his craft
helmsman of absence monsignor of milk
scared except to be at home and there
too
we have come to the midpoint of time.
Jan 19, 2015 | Uncategorized
157.
Asprawl on lawn in the pose of
Titian’s Danaë in exiguous bikini
she welcomed the island weather the
sun knew her deep
and I looked away at all the other
pictures on the air
every mistake needs its own footnote
everything means he said again
if Offenbach can be a Jew then I can
too
the gondola took all my doubts away
I too heard the dead contralto singing
from the wall
and all my tragic love affairs are
comedies
the Muse told me stick to the skin
you know
the giddy surfaces of human life,
skip the abyss
forget silly Scamander where silly
heroes fight and die.
158.
Only in the heart does the blue
flower grow and tells the one who finds it
climb into your body and drive to the
other side of truth
someone is waiting there and always
for you
the sentimental abstract blood
trickles sweet bite
grasses on the high moors unanimous
in wind
nothing can live at this altitude a
steeple
I want to be at home as things are
but that’s a kind of cardboard Africa
live where no one ever imagined
is that the famous blue flower
or the White Rose of national decency
for which the young students suffered
and died?
Jan 18, 2015 | Uncategorized
155.
This still is Eden but who’d believe
me
I meant only to complain the
lawnmower erased the cello suite
but then the sun suffused the fog and
no one listened
to anything but the noise that
silenced me
this still is Eden some of us never
left
a flaming sword that keeps you out
lights us to our beds
because we sleep in matter
mind has burned away all its guesses
too much weight groan of a physical
world
the wind in Eden my mother crying
or a story she could understand when
I had come
beyond all stories to the untellable
itself.
156.
One of those days when all music sounds
like church
the wind is up to something
breath tries to remind us to let go
it has no natural end no golden
fleece
only the dragon car on the
merry-go-round
I rode it pompous to ride with Medea
the invisible beings who guide and
protect
y ddraig goch for instance small monster in my blood
enough of Being it’s time for the Is
the self-existent the shadow of a
woman the mother’s dream
Amphitrite comes before all and Ovid
names her first
goddess of the ocean from whom we
come and we are hers.
Jan 16, 2015 | Uncategorized
153.
A man’s voice and a woman’s voice at
once
I have to check these clues with my
therapist
my vow stands beside me and saves me
from myself
leave your letter in plain sight to
baffle the police
bird further away the hill to hear us
one day I swear it they’ll come out
from the hills again
cleanse us of this debt-crazed world
whip the money-makers out of this
temple world
how dare you listen to music doesn’t
it tell you something
fragments of silence all we need at a
window
to believe we are the only ones is blasphemy
listen to those who walk invisible
and talk to them too.
154.
Quiet describing landscape never seen
by names alone a wind comes through
the fog
the way a wave moves through the sea
displacing nothing
matter is not the same as what it
does
there is a mindful moving in all
things
but talk about love instead the
cellist’s bare knees
press the earphone closer to the
silence
wanted to sit all day and think but
not think thoughts
just the ordinary mistral just the
light passing by
impossible angles the edges of lost
things
they scare me more than a half-eaten
apple
Eve’s disobedience still not quite
complete.
Jan 15, 2015 | Uncategorized
151.
Anchor lights the masts are gone now
blue collisions in this fog
a master of humility aquifer unsalt
me
cleanse me of all matters till I am
matter alone
much so much to ask an alchemist
chewing roses the taste is late to
flower
then from every taste you’re in the
sudden garden
Gan Eden where the atmosphere stands
guard
our other planet we are programmed to
forget
each one of these must be at least a
stone
how they look beneath an inch of
clear water
how they look when you see me in her
dream.
152.
Time a shadow cast by heavenly event
name me in your sleep
for when I sleep it is a fierce and
silent place
I don’t know how to touch you there
and then the birds are slow to sing
at dawn
birth cry of a lone old man hoarse
mourning dove
I move my head the face in the mirror
doesn’t move
at night she can’t escape the color
of her dress
it makes the sun keep rising
everywhere she goes
I dare you not to look at me I am a
mirror
I wear glass wherever I go no wonder
you’re silent
not even the morning has so much to
say.
Jan 13, 2015 | Uncategorized
149.
So some words banish us from us
and some are singing as they leave
the park
maybe a story is a wicked thing
tell what happened but not the
happening?
better the man alone in a room
music comes somehow in
and nothing said or said not much
just let us look at a man all by
himself
a woman sitting in her house alone
what kind of story could be better
than silence
as if in Ovid a girl is changed into
a girl
and there is no self to distract us
with green leaves.
150.
No special moment for the clock to
stop
o I’ll get a headline out of that
you hear me better when you aren’t
listening
government a fancy word for the
police
anybody knows what you mean but not
what you say
saying is dark dark a tree lost in a
forest
pluck this fruit and name yourself
again
a nobody slipping under the giant’s
reach
Polyphemus is radar crouch to be
unknown
miracle of neglect the oil of absence
sweet
and so Blake seldom saw the sea and
if he did
its size itself dissuaded him from
the transports of love.
Recent Comments