HEART THREAD Parts 105 & 106

105.
Hammer heavy but I can judge the
sound of competence
and he’s not it, a father trying to
fly kite for kid
but there’s no sky, Chinese dragons
slice
one another’s guide lines up La Salle
above the river
yea Lady the same river the two-faced
blue-eyed water
writing is a way of doing nothing but
keeping time from passing
or lets time pass but makes it leave
behind it
shadows on the little world people
hold in their hands
stare gently out the window thirty
years
Pound’s kulchur stares back in we
live paideuma
the wolf has turned himself into the
door
he lit the fragrant peony in the
Western mind. 
106.
How can I be at peace who knew no war
the Brothers Grimm are my grandees
their angry soldier only in exile
find the blue light
I follow the bright lumen to the cave
mouth of my sin
there is a first place to
wander from
in Adriatic mist and summer storm
pale Rilke fiercest thinker of his
day
adding the one force Nietzsche
missed, the sentiment of love
and to do no more than tell the truth
invented poetry along the way
this new organ in our flesh of meaning
things
a word like children screaming in the
rain.

HEART THREAD Parts 102 & 103

102.
If it said anything it said blue
I walk with you around the ancient
hill to water
am all air and leave it to you to be
fire
there are people such that being with
them all elements complete
that’s why I run out of breath
ascending
the air I needed left behind with
earth
I make noises as I arise they are
words
you hear these sounds as touch
for every singular is plural I am the
frantic chorus
heavy hoofed uphill clamber reach the
top
your house in the sky I trumpet my
residence
you knew right then we’ve always been
together.
103.
I am no meaner than the mind next
door
the swan on the hood of a Packard
tells the time
long kinship with owls for crying out
loud
a ghost train rushes past the slaves
are freed
from one master into the clutches of
many
the salary of circumstance please
tell me what to do
I want to talk about the moist
details
the lug nuts down below the arm-break
crank
slowly unpack all the details blue
glass seltzer bottle
call it vichy in Dubrow’s early
edition of the Times
I don’t think the subway ends here
but I’ve never gone beyond
it’s hard to stop being credulous
about the real.  

HEART THREAD Parts 100 & 101

100.
All those things let go
one fish could be a hundred of them
rule by rhyme
you don’t see the anchors you see the
hulls
moth flies out of the fog the sun
easy weather for an alchemist
the brutal heteros all asleep
why do I love music music is always
somewhere else
back to London or Lascaux or on to
Jupiter
things shouldn’t lead to anything
things should always follow
there should be a cute lieutenant
leading them
into the cloud castle little darling
you woke up just in time to be
me. 
101.
This is our hour
the first of the last time
the lion comes out from the hill and
claws those Christian garments off
battle at sea between the waves a
wave is war
the pull of gravity meets the push of
current and there you are
loud surf all night and the lion
looking at you
naked as the afternoon shingle beach
a cry
a gull and a lion and our time has
come at last
seize and be greedy there’s nothing
left but praise
and where bestow it this tawny
sunrise this mandolin plangent forenoon
all the subjunctives gush over your
lap
sea syntax one same as different as
the mother.

HEART THREAD Parts Ninety-Eight and Ninety-Nine

98.
A little bit of legal left I call it
mist
you call it sun in water vapor spread
honor Brownian movement throw old
letters away
don’t let me into your archive
a rat in grammar
in mesh of syntax mother-naked
the one foundation of your house
Szymanowski’s lost novel an alchemy
of sound
or sugar candle in the god wind
whoosh
Zuk he did it and bade me to                                    L.Z.
less pants more paunch more tune than
tenor
the Romans had no word for it or kept
it to themselves.


99.
Sea pink was his poem                                  I.H.F.
and a stone so stood                                     J.M.
braving the Pacific calm
Hebridean storm St. Kilda’s poisoned
by birds
my week in Scotland original
Annandale
no need to tell you circus tales
sex on the floor while Abbot Sturlo
watched
a fish in the sky its shadow a
cathedral
did you remember to count the waves
they too have a cycle surfcasters ken
home in wee hours with creel asquirm
this is my theory of poetry.

HEART THREAD Parts Ninety-Six and Ninety-Seven

96.
Loud sea last night I hear at dawn
new sun caught in sugar
else all grisaille the fog of morning
have we done dreaming yet or is
that gothic stonework still in place
the crowds in Latin
all the discontinuities make also a
continuum
as a hand makes everything it touches
its own
this bird all birds squeal a
blackbird in Ireland
land of tuneful sleep more sheep than
men
as every island is the same island
except Manhatta
a place where fish were never
plentiful
but from the ferries you could see
the sleek seals play.
97.
To be long as an epic and nothing
happen
boy with a lyre the size of an oak
tree
hands busier than the wind in its
strings
all words and no meaning
sex without babies
the first posthuman rises from my
couch
sonless in brightness and every girl
his daughter
the Touch Me Not of risen Jesus new
explained
because a story binds us to our
culture
and a song cuts free
all Coleridge no Wordsworth
the fable peters out in song. 

HEART THREAD Parts Ninety-Four and Ninety-Five

94.
This is what happens to music when it
starts telling stories
how could it not be that’s why I grew
up with
Franz Kline sunrise over East River a
girl from Ecuador
I saw the color size of a man’s reach
stories fall out of the light
tells them into new situations:  these are the colors
all the way from red to violet and
beyond
I come from Tenth Street just like
everybody else
another fin another siècle the boys
come marching home
the girls run away through the apple
blossoms
nothing changes the sickle sweeps the
moon away
the dark mumbles stories to its lone
self.
95.
Lay so nary hiding in her underpass
heed here such traffic over who in
arches dwell
failing Lascaux, we did it for the
silence
no air no sound or molecules of meaning
less plausible than spirit kinds
some unregistered messengers of sense
I touch you now despite the faraway
for every skin is weeks away as India
no matter where the boat is going
there is a better way of getting
there
takes longer tastes more pleasure on
the way
queen of heaven in her mandorla slips
into every me.

HEART THREAD Parts Ninety-Two and Ninety-Three

92.
So while the wind away until it’s
still
all sea and no container everything
belongs to me
let the roof slide off the sky the
sleepers show
dare their dreams to stand up half-dressed
to walk outside like decent pagans
forget all the words nibble rosehips
and why not
education only gives you bigger hands
after all those meager teachers one real
thing taught!
look like you did last night golden
ocher
America sky so far away but let me
see
mind takes hold the shape of thing
but not the thing
excitement of all the pale-eyed
deceiving.
93.
Finches like apples so there
we can know nothing of his struggle                    E.D. on C.O.
to know the first time what can’t be
known
unanswerable question the fall of
light
from the top of the hill you see your
limitations
places you know and names hold you in
you are a hostage of the street you
live on
a seminaried priest of what you see
out the window
everything owns us
will there ever be enough of me to go
around
thousands of years people have heard
the breathing of the sea
it’s time to hear the word it
says.  

HEART THREAD Parts Ninety and Ninety-One

90.
There is a certain subtext to
humanity
they would never occupy this hill
this boulevard to heaven though I
have seen
the shapes of them more luminous than
light
sometimes by the Dogana or any
sea-touched hand
land they walk even when they’re
standing still
the form before form is a gasp in the
mind
to see such absolute a shape
dissolving matter
once you have seen such things you
can’t lose
ghost girls of the Janiculum laugh in
the cypress
a tree is left from their investigations
a doorway full of light that natural
house. 
91.
Venus as the bride of Christ he
taught
and every book their wedding gift
forlorn as a block of marble never
carved
insatiable as apple trees he offered
her
all the comparisons a likeness is a
kiss
sudden stranger on a midnight bus
nowhere in Nebraska the one I never
if they don’t live here they don’t
live anywhere
to know truth a little is to know the
heart
who knows the picture that was never on
my wall
I was afraid of images nothing else can
wound.

HEART THREAD Parts Eighty-Seven and Eighty-Eight

87.
Roar of the mirror whine of the hedge
ask nothing of me, disturb less than
one word does
noise left and right unending
no more nuisance really than the fish
in the sea
when I sit and look at surf rolling
in
as if I were part of something even
this
Battle of Actium before me surf
creams on shingle
Antony impaled and Cleo’s left breast
toxic-nibbled
and all the lovely stories end at
once
I spent my whole childhood believing
and childhood never manages to end
the waves her pure right breast, and
go weep.
88.
And have nothing to do but this
in the comfy prison of reality
no more work to do but make time pass
change the names of all those wicked
places
salt marsh no hay a bracelet of
Whitby jet
I went there for the sky the wet
horizon
timothy grass belonging from black
mud
weathered narrow boardwalk over muck
a thousand birds and only there ever
alone
and no room left to plant the lettuce
barely room for dancing with
Valkyries
high above the north sky where once a
city is.  

HEART THREAD Parts Eighty-Five and Eighty-Six

85.
Every page is precious especially the
blank
the story here is her round face her
round eyes wet
nothing more to say hence ready to
begin again
a man is a wheel on a mountain road
I’m talking tantra but to an empty
room
xenolith they built the structure on
as if to say
earth gives us something like a day
where is nurture in all this where is
Bernini
the woman shape that taught us how to
pray
boys in the clouds hair comes through
the hat
the sun moves secretly from house to
house
but no one knows the father.
86.
The breeze knows these
legends of the mother-house
her hands pressed firmly on the
territory
noises annoy her most
no one’s children clattering in grass
and in the sky they mow the clouds
the mother-house is guilty of the sun
she made it cooked it over pine cones
in her cave
till it glowed ardent hell and
hydrogen
then she sent it to the sky to
measure us
mind us little children and a rock
she spat up too
to light our nights from tryst to
tryst.