Dec 29, 2014 | Uncategorized
I lag behind the utmost grammar
the truck squeals out when it backs
up
lost without prepositions if no
angels were
the operators do not believe in their
machines
a Vatican of leaks inside your
cellphone
but you don’t believe me when I call
because calling is its own thing,
calling is God
and you always think I have some
other motive
I have no motive I am motive I am
mind
so make room for me in the caravan
across the Sahel because I am also
salt
a word in your mother’s mouth you
hear in dream.
120.
Seminivores all over beaks and tiny
talons
when you see a bird in flight in
truth it’s flying through you
the hollow places in your
close-packed chest his fly-zone
so hurried and so gone by, a clifftop romance
the pale-eyed ghost sits on the
inspector’s lap
left alone the little dog howls
harrow harrow
moon phase sundial water from the
rock
endless embassies of birds at sunset
crisis
they go so fast no one knows where no
boasting
and if the mind be separate from the
brain how wise they are
and we too with our fidgets of the
flesh
inferring trajectories that lead
beyond the real.
Dec 28, 2014 | Uncategorized
115.
The priest slept through my
confession
so my words went straight to sky
the little sky inside the heart I
feel you here
the sentimental sinner cried the
ferry left
the harbor suffused with nightingales
from somewhere else
stop being continuous already the
truth is made of broken glass
rose petals we nibbled from the rocks
quotations from Montaigne a clamshell
cracked
a cardinal singing from what is that
an apple tree
the day left-handed the ragged sky
Guantanamo
clouds can only tell so much but more
than we
there is a cruelty in America we must
delete.
116.
Try against the cruel cry we have
rights but no right
what sunrise does to morning glass
you do to me
the sentimental agents spoil our feed
all that nostoc dripping from the
night
listen to the cupboard the dishes
tell the story too
the star-sperm settling slowly while
you sleep
and the cup left in the sink to soak
the herb stains out
each thing knows some part of the
situation
the battered hulk this boat you call
the truth
leaking its way from Portugal full of
opera singers
priestesses on hilltop canoodling
with the dawn
this vessel trembling in my civil
hands.
117.
This is the dawn of ceremony the
clement word
when all men and women open their
mouths and say
the truth that only they can know
each one a part of
we need them all we need them all to
speak
until every man and woman is a
prophet we know nothing
leave piety learn prophecy say what
you don’t know
each one has words enough to know
what he doesn’t know
they don’t all have to love you they
just have to speak
language will not really work till
everyone has spoken
then we’ll really learn what language
means
the secret god hid from herself when
no one created the world
back before even this argument our
life began.
118.
The hear of the message is
proportionate to the anatomy of the angel
or are there no numbers up there
or nothing but numbers in heaven
pause for breath even those who are
not breathing
she walks down the street and
everybody understands
that’s what a sky is for to trap the
light and spread it
so we can breathe, the wolf can prowl
the square perfect pixels make
everything unreal
unreal as it really is dream about me
in the long Pacific nights and I will
change
I will be whatever you intend I will
dig
gold plates out of your hill and give
them to you.
Dec 26, 2014 | Uncategorized
113.
I’ll know the question when the
answer speaks
if you say so darling I only hear the
organ
green and white the monks’ church at
St. Gall
remarkable country for being left
alone
whoever told you there are
alternatives
remember pennies not made of copper
remember the wolf in the driveway
mockingbird on the drainpipe
I have tried to deal with everything
give every weather its place in
history
for I was Waterloo and Austerlitz
Prince Andrei dreaming by his horse’s
hoof.
114.
Your money or your life enough of
meaning
I crossed the polished lobby to the
elevators
no one I knew could live in such a place
and so I rose through bronze doors to
family problems
my own estate the sky above Manhattan
and I owned Brooklyn too and east
beyond
but not out west over the river
Jersey and America
the sky belongs to me I say and on it
I take my stand no one else can judge
or smite me
though sometimes someone else will
touch my hand
and then the sky bears witness to my
purity
purity of meaning everything in this
single touch.
Dec 25, 2014 | Uncategorized
111.
If the loves you dream of dream you
back
shadows haunt the stuccoed ceiling
like small birds
and there are real birds too on
plaster leaves
baroque resemblances of passing time
your whole body safe in my arms
vertebral rosary that haunts the
hands
don’t say prayers be them
you be the god that answers them
everything is for being and willing
to be
and be for the sake of another, the
other
not much more left of the story than
that
so now at last the story can
begin.
112.
Pieces of fear in the room the child
sleeps
wanderlust of nighttime things
can you swear that chest of drawers
is where it was
sleep is the great healer of the
Irish
a physician who makes no guarantees
sleep lets the world around you
change
thing by thing like children on their
way to school
aftermath their heads are full of
fish
your uncle cleaning flounder in the
kitchen sink
what color blood did you think fish
had
red is always a surprise a wound of
tenderness
where the nice bear lumbers out of
the trees and hugs you tight.
Dec 23, 2014 | Uncategorized
109.
There’s a taboo against learning
history
tabu, to know yestreen spoils your
afternoon
everything forgets, pleasure is always
now
back then is all the pain and dark
and work and wolf
sunbathers wait for their Renoir, the
wind
drives them indoors, Lincoln dies in
fever
Romulus Augustulus leaves Rome to die
in peace
this is the empire — the sea’s been
telling us that forever
forever, no god and no czar, no
meaning,
no bible, nobody home, sleep in sun
on grass
I forget more than you’ll ever
remember
that’s why in sleep I am the same as
you.
110.
Ask the sea put on a coat and tie
wear a battered panama
we come close to the pylon where
chariots turn
fling into the home stretch at last
fat chance to be Rome without the
Romans
live in marble grandly with a purple
mind
the Jews taught us angels and never
forget
the root of ‘angel’ is the root of
‘king’
an angel is a message on its way
somewhere
no angel turns away unheard
but no one knows what language they
hear in
or if all our jabber is their arcane
philosophy.
Dec 22, 2014 | Uncategorized
107.
From the arrow that flyeth by day on
the south wind
protect the cradle of the infant
thought the blue trees
reach down to us to stifle unbelief
throw your fishing rods away your
lariats
because everything but what you see
is real
deep in the truth of the unthought
Lila the uncontrived with whom we
play
night more than day and the wind
knows it all
broken clouds your mother on the
phone in every wind
islands change their flags like
underwear
we belong to nothing but the sea from
which we come
religion is an ailment of the
mainland only.
108.
Hydrangea Himalayan flower favorite
blue
has blossomed early in Tara’s gentle
hand
I saw her tossing them on the
hillside south of Sonada
and here by the sea in Betty’s other
garden
a few blue already the many on their
way
always like that, profit and
followers, udambara path
assigning meanings to each thing I go
ahead
listening to what I stumble through
leave the self out
have no favorite flower no mountains
no name at all
the names are all asleep in you
that’s why you love us best
the colors you chose to smash over
the world.
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