Nov 14, 2014 | Uncategorized
47.
Keep your glasses on tonight you’ll
see me in your dreams
because I walk with feet of stone no
one can hear
you will hear a ship crying out to
the fog
you’ll see my breath condensing on
your mirror
don’t worry I’ll be everywhere
keep your white noise machine on all
you like
I too am a sound that makes no sense
relax I’m finally talking about
myself
you’re safe as long as I go on
talking
an apple or an orange is also a
machine
no moving parts but you and me
alone at midnight in a broken
world.
48.
Man with three hearts
shown on the stone altar by three
birds in flight
sky is always the same as your body
that’s how you know where anything is
how anything means
I pray to the weather to exalt the
day
god heart beast heart and one more
the heart I gave you was not my own
I offered the whole city to the holy
ones
anything you can conceive is yours to
give but not to take
what kind of birds are anything
a crow a jay a mockingbird none of these.
Nov 13, 2014 | Uncategorized
45.
Ogmios tongue me what to tell
halfway to hell I dare make
invocation
inspirez-moi the Temple must be built C.G. tenor solo bare rock in Judaea
teach me how to do this thing you
make me do
the hymns of Milarepa thrill from
strange obedience
teach me to tell what I don’t know
learn from the babble when you sting
my lips
strange means an unknown woman
coming through the door arms full of
flowers
I can’t understand a single thing she
says
I have no choice but to write it
down.
46.
Draw a picture of the Temple here
as you imagine it so it shall be
here is a photo of you building it
here is a rainbow to wear around your
neck
keeps you safe in battle with the sky
who taught me to work this damned
machine
all moving parts are still only the
electrons move
rich men keep getting richer as
drunkards just stay drunk
there is no doorway to their castle
a house goes on forever like the old
Winchester place
money has no natural frontier
the violin mourns the new-fallen
king.
Nov 11, 2014 | Uncategorized
43.
Various various a book in the wind
the birds are reading me as best they
can
slow down little language I’m only a
child
aftermaths are written long before
just find the right page and squeeze
it tight
don’t let anybody see you walk that
street
it goes to the hospital where they
park the mad
those who released themselves from
the ordinary
and wouldn’t you if you could get
away from it
the badgering of business the noise
of news
and you alone on your phantom ship.
44.
Through the skirl of the Elgar violin
concerto
I hear seagulls squawking over the
Isle of Wight
it is 1954 I’m going home at last
the island mentioned in the sea
and every nineteen years at summer
solstice
the god dances in the sky above his
ring of stones
a temple built from time alone
or I am the one who dances there
me can you imagine me prancing in a
cloud
yet he’s there and she is with him
and the two of them inhabit me
if you dare look inside yourself
you’ll find me there.
Nov 10, 2014 | Uncategorized
41.
Run far enough but do they listen
give them what they want and they’ll
come back
fierce dangers of getting what you
wish
these are my Moralia guide for
the oversexed
lost in the Middle Ages now
re-upholstered
in glamorous satin language America
America
I call you empty so I wade ashore
open the downturn invade the nucleus
Lincoln enthroned like an emperor
eagle talon’d held together disparate
republics
the cure almost worse than the
disease
almost and Miss Odessa’s black chess
pie.
42.
The one good thing about the Bible is
footnotes
commentaries hum like flies in the
butcher shop
every decent word breeds scores of
annotations
the simplest human sentence needs a
Mishnah of its own
and then they write that down and
before you know it
we need eight billion people on the
planet
to pronounce all the declensions of
that first verb
volo was it or nolo or gimme or I thirst
write it down as if the flowers might
forget
or Egypt turn wet again and Pharaohs shout
and mothers fret about their
adolescent sons
and Abel has a secret wife who cards
his wool.
Nov 9, 2014 | Uncategorized
for A.M., 1946—2014
In the stillness
of his embedded craft
something always left
between the glittering tiles
the shadows of Byzantium
before the terrible differences—
Meddeb is dead, the last
Mediterranean, the last who knew
white desert with kind hands,
the peace of God that only
men disturb, calm
Tiamat coiled behind heaven,
to mourn a decent man
is almost blasphemy,
his life a precept
to be followed not discussed.
And yet, many grains of sand
in the desert of the mind.
Grit in my teeth
women waving
white sheets from their balconies.
Nov 7, 2014 | Uncategorized
39.
Womb for the ferly folk my mind by
day
your old days come true again be born
in me
bread broke open to show a beating
heart
Saint Mila showed to show that all’s
alive
cistern broken but the water rested,
tree
fell but the leaves stayed in the sky
perfect in their dispositif origin of
stars
I was Melchizedek who priested in the
rocks
I sheeped along among my little goats
try to make hale and holy what you
can
for this is sparrowland the good
this is sky with stones in it and all
of us.
40.
Actinism life reacting to the sun
as if a schooner came in your
childhood
with a pretty nursemaid on it
taught you her language and took you
to sea
and you never came back, that would
be me
water is your only comfort aren’t I
slow drip of language from the rock
my father brought me to a mountain
spring
who knows where Castalia I think
and when you drink that water you too
are sea
and everything is river ever after
now you are everyone because you
watched her lips.
Nov 7, 2014 | Uncategorized
37.
Be self-indulgent while a self
persists
the birds are gone but men flee work
the tiler has a clipper the hedge is
thick
angry voices of the pilgrims bother
us
my roof needs re-thatching who are
you
are you Madeleine after all all
history in your hand
they showed me so many things I took
the oath
I felt the sword blade across my
Adam’s apple
hoodwinked gladly in the name of love
all our businessmen in masks and music
a secret society made entirely of you
chain the bike and ride the almond
tree away.
38.
Cast among minnows the maiden
floundered
out of the little brook baring a
message
all is revealed we’ve known all along
water drips along the shank her arch
is high
light shows through the least of our constructions
only a pyramid can hold all that dark
there’s still some ink left in the
world
inscribe yourself in the family Bible
use your Hebrew name
hemlock branches make good torches
renew my membership in France
for I was born before the poem ended
the children were still struggling in
the apple tree.
Nov 6, 2014 | Uncategorized
35.
Am I clear yet of the old diseases
it’s always too late to begin
to be a bird
a story out of a different miracle
pay me for what I don’t do
all poetry is blackmail she was sure
always a veiled threat
dangerous scent of wild roses
do something to something it always
says
I am what the author left out
more of an answer than a question
like most philosophy
what we don’t need is more
answers.
36.
Least eider paddling along the shore
find the secret roads in running
water
it goes by but they stay on
in the dark every house Altamira
walk with me the midnight hallways
down the cliffs and over sunken
meadows
and never reach the bathroom door
moonrise in the kitchen sink
Uncle Charlie keeps his specimens
awake
I rinsed the city and flew out to sea
Bristol of my fisherfolk Sandford of his
song
be my ancestor honey be my Palestine.
Nov 5, 2014 | Uncategorized
33.
The French called them enfances
stories about the childhood of great
men
heroes before they could lift up the
sword
we are infants too and we have swords
we call them memories to use against
the world
is what just seems to happen
remedium amoris remember the last time
the taste in your mouth the nasty
telephone
things never change the way you do
cause without effect tugboat awash in
storm
I love the taste of what won’t let me
be
thighs of a scarecrow feathers of a
clock.
34.
Take a long time to work it out
merciless mankind at the mill with
slaves
of course I remember my masters
John O’Clock and William Psalm W.S.
brown Thomas and the Jewess of
Baltimore T.B. G.S.
I am the Middle Ages born again
reviver of dragons mountebank of
miracles
three drops of my own blood in the
snow
and I was the woman I was the lost
Christ
I was the ship to Marseille and the
cave in the Vaucluse
I was the stone he stepped on
I was the crown on the soft hair of
his head.
Nov 4, 2014 | Uncategorized
31.
But to throw all that away like the
sun setting
who knows what will come up again from
the sea
the only monstrosity is me
a two-headed boy with hands on fire
then the mist calmed in along the
sound
you can remember an oriole above the
deck and not much more
spilling aftermaths the custard we
think with
in Vienna the central Peace Yard in
snow
no peace only a relaxing
drumroll and the horses you never
knew who died
until they came to life again
Sunday morning in the park and no one
there.
32.
These things at work again and who
can say
blame the otter for the beaver’s dam
we are so bad at causes and effects
time to go to there is no school
and sit there all day dreaming
naked teachers stroll around the room
daring you to see them as they are
the words slip off the meanings
the sun keeps rising all day long
you’d rather be home a book in her
lap
why don’t you read me like you used
to
how did your father’s car get so far
up the tree.
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