6 x 36 Nocturnes, VI, #7-12

[Cenacle]

vii. Frigid

Something happened. A man walked
down the street, smiling at nothing.
Perhaps crackles smartly at the thought
of his true love. Perhaps trembles & stiffens
at the thought of trees dressed in flags,
winter puzzled over like a scripture by the hungry king.

Something happened. A pretty woman laughed
& teased the air. Wisdom sometimes best
collects in puddles & shadows. O yes.
The air white with youth’s hurry,
the frigid of solstice soil, hearts in need
tonight no matter the map or governance.

Something happened. A guru sat up
stiffly, a muse caressed & flowed,
the cold restrained its storm. Hunger
prepared her bed, drew her curtains,
I wielded my pen ever knowing not how.

Something happened. Do we know love
better or war? A kiss disputes
battlefield’s claims. Every leaf remaining
a remembrance toward the next green
world. Bundled & crafty, tonight
I choose to praise not dispute.

Something happened. Bald fires,
a warrior’s ideas. I keep wondering
what the trees are doing. I keep wishing
more of us would wonder. Then I hear
a woman’s laugh & the night is
full of hooks & tunes again.

Something happened. The pain of
every day since, every day ever,
love, love, rupture & gestation.
Yet tonight a reason to summon the coach.
A woman’s laugh, & the frigid diminishes,
& the trees still with us, & we’re learning to learn.


******

viii. Resistance

Sing a new world into existence,
no delay, no linger, sing!
A butterfly, a cannon, a smoke
of kisses. Make, destroy, your song
matters in this broken world. Your
doubt matters. Your hands. Your dream.

Sing a world wrapped in crimson,
drowned in thunder, crowned in green.
Now a rifle for your fears, now a baby,
now a basket of apples, now a cloud,
now a girl’s laughter. Sing with torch
of words, thump of flesh.

Sing your questions, then bury them
deep, close your eyes, feel creation
roar from your fingers & thighs,
sing! & sing! Where blankness shimmers,
utter a war, or a city, or a single branch
where nests a sparrow, growls a lynx.

Sing a wave to lead the outlaws,
pipes & puffs & leaping flickers to
oppose the king. Sing a better king,
a pilgrim unto cosmos, a leading
servant unto oaks & stars. Sing
a lengthless night of candles & eros.

Sing the wilder music no easy hand
may play, music culled from
desert & despair, music that clicks
with scorpion’s reach, music a rage
& ecstasy inside a box with no walls,
no sky, no earth, no scripture. Sing! Howl!

Sing a new world til something flickers,
a butterfly with fangs, a preacher’s
moan of woods & wings. Sing the touch
in darkness of one hand within another,
a new solstice, immolation. Drowned in thunder,
crowned in green. Sing until your glory catches.


******

ix. Winter Solstice (for Lisa Marie)

Burn, candle. Romance the night. Shatter
this song’s heart. Shatter everything.
Torch my fingers, call it love. Burn, candle.
Twist my heart with steel & mercy. Burn.
Help me unsheave the I in me, the us in me,
by rampage, by gleam. By whisper & roar.

Burn, candle. Teach me again the one true
note, the collision, the way, the end.
Shatter my fury. Shatter my empathy.
Make unto ash my memories, & those
of the world. Scorch the cold fields, their
murmuring seeds. Every army. Every dawn. Every touch.

Burn, candle. World brooding hungrily
about thee, dwindle its wish. Dwindle
& dust. Burn, candle. Brush flickers
by my love, her fingers, her laughter,
her magickal sight. Release her singing,
her ink & her moans. Tremble. Burn.

Burn, candle. Shatter my heart, shatter
my instrument, shatter my ground & sky.
Whisper fierce truths will melt in the spring,
leave their stain in the belly, thump anew
by full moon. Burn, candle. Melt fiercely
like new love. Glow strangely like true love.

Burn, candle. Burn! Forests & herds, silos,
& small beds. The dull faces of pilgrims,
fresh-fucked with prayer. The glee & softness
of lovers, wet among berries & lace.
Candle, burn, candle, preach! Suck the air
of the king, same as that of the outlaw.

Burn, candle. Watch us move in procession,
in pairs, in gangs, & alone. Gentle our
flight with thine glow & thine light. Burn
as we do, like a fist, & then teach us
let go. Teach us to shatter our song
as we sing it. How to blank past suffering.

How to blank everything.


******

x. Winter Solstice [continued]
(for Lisa Marie)

How to bless everything. A craving, a vine
a candle. The spoken. The sung. The silent.
Laugh! Wakeup! Ecstasy!

Rhythms tap toward crescendoes, of light
& leaves. The actress smooth to the preacher’s
eye. A crisis in scripture. Her voice in the dark.

Night lifts & revolts, flame of lamps &
full moans. Bless everything! Burn with
faith from the ditch. Burn, candle. Continue.

Holy emptiness, the artist’s maybe. Then
three strokes light an eye. Three more:
a heart beating. And three more: a world cradled.

Cold fields, & murmuring seeds. Building
sunshine, raising song. Blood of panting,
blood of colors. Now running & rising.

Bless everything! Witches & crows. Laws for
love & believing. Now a mystery. Now a mercy.
What moves one toward another.


******

xi. Winter Solstice [concluded]
(for Lisa Marie)

Teach us let go, we do not know how.
Teach us to praise everything, the glowing
rubble in cities, the lingering music of
other days, prodding dreams, growling loins.
Teach us to shatter, eyesight & physics,
to believe beyond faith, crawl beyond
texts, wonder at ways of fur, leaves,
fins & wings. Wonder blindly & laugh.

What moves one toward another in the
heavy air & bursting earth.
Ask the preacher: he frowns & eludes.
Ask the king: he offers numbers.
Ask the artist: he slinks & hums.
Ask the muse: she smiles & stirs.

A greater music, a greater silence,
a giggling blindness beyond stories
repeated in castles & slums. One mind
dances, understands, tells another,
tells a third. Rejoice! All is maya!
Feed your best into the fire!

Teach us praise everything, we do not
know how. Teach us flow & discard
our thirst. Teach us blindness that
we may touch. Teach us that there
is no news, & never was.

What moves one toward another
a trembling heavy, sometimes light.
Light the candle: watch it hover.
Regard the landscape: its lack of lack.
Sing up to the sky in its completeness.
Begin to laugh. Begin to shimmer.

A greater music, a greater silence:
Contrive the thing you must release.
Til its dream no longer haunts you.
Til its fruit you no more seek.
Til it unclasps your hungry hold.

Til forgetting, a scrap, you careen off the path.


******

xii. Spectacle (for Lisa Marie)

“The secret of life is metamorphosis & transformation”
—Anaïs Nin


i. Remembrance

Dancing cageless in the full moon’s light, a butterfly,
a windraged field, a sometime preacher weeping
for entropy’s bite, a pair of lovers twined rootsy
& green, a harlequin disguised as a busy, buzzing
world, an ancient flame still whipping hungrily at the frost:

you will not cease with this world, nor shall I
quit along your path.


ii. First Dream: Always

We’ve known each other always, here in
dream, where morning light ever accumulates
to full moon. Sometimes hidden in the leaves
we sing without toes or memories.

“The world is perfect. The world is broken.
Repair the world.” So chant we with our children.

Once a manic guru hurried me from
your arms. Later a buzzing rage
shrouded you from me. Yet ever there is
union in our joined soul, our love imperial.

“Repair the world, with pebbles & wings.
Repair the world, with chance & delight.”


iii. Dance

Your face implodes my old dreams, leaving
a corona of butterflies where scattered
papers yellowed last night. My journey
to you that of clumsy harlequin, blue suit
& stale beard. When naked I fall into
your bed, behold a torso flaking with

hunger, see the chamber & the world darken.
Reveal me to your heart & the open
window, wield my praise, steal my hands,
pulse between my breaths. With your violet
sheets & pink lace, your belly & soul kindred
to the green things of soil & sea, smile once,

twice, as I bring you men’s news which
is not news, & learn in time to bring you
honey & milk, apples & lullabies. Learn to empty
my sack of dust & dismay. Fill your empty
emerald bowl with clean water, & relax. Take your
hand, learn to dance, neither leading, neither following.


iv. Second Dream: Alone

After you left, the day devolved to silence,
the opaque fatness between minds &
world, among minds themselves, wherefrom
spring creepers of sadness, fierce bullets
of bone. I kept singing the old one I’d sung
to you: the old man, his diamond, his daffodils.

The carriages were crowded & slow,
& my shirt later dappled with marketplace
mud. The silence demonstrated its complexity:
the way a stray apple fell beneath a
leather boot; the way two men who could be
twins waited at a streetlight but never spoke.

I thought of you as I collected quills,
paper, my father’s birthday canvas from
the vendors. I thought of you singing
to our child, of men in red robes holding
hands, the seeds & instructions they bring:
Repair the world. Dance cageless. Smile.

Wake up! Happiness . . . bowls of cream.
Flick away the darkling creepers. Crush
the stunted bones. What lies before us
is where we begin. What lies behind a
rest, a requiem, a useless dismay. What’s all
around the spectacle of hurry, no truth, safety, home.


v. Lock of Hair

All alone. All suffering. Yes. Then a slave
ducks into a ditch, a ruckus of
sparrows above, lovers exchange words
unheard, the sun moves among the ragged
clouds, a new pattern emerges. Retreats.
Is remembered. We remember.

He holds her lock of hair, guards its
scent hungrily. Scratches poems to
her on rocks, in soil, into his arm.
He remembers. He dreams. When
the moon is full & someone asks, he says:
“Yes. I love her. Her eyes are comets.

I see them always.” He allows word
to spread of her, by laziness, by urgency.
Perhaps there is more than one of her.
Perhaps more than one of him! Us!
We remember! Sometimes. Still he
sniffs her lock of hair. Waits. Time cruel, time kind.

Time not a relevance. Time a thin
storybook, fading illustrations, easy
rhymes, the illusion of explanation
when read or sung night after night.
But now the slaves whisper for more.
We want to remember! We want to dream!

We want to do more. No longer adhere
to the solemn fixed dance. No longer
worship the pattern for its easy safety.
No safety, no time, no pattern at all!
So we let him teach us. . . . And when he fled us,
& the hurtful ruckus, we kept her lock of hair, but let him go.


vi. Third Dream: Whirlwind

I alone remember the ruby hummingbird
in a time obsessed with war. Fists & eyes
were ablaze with symbols, while we watched
more lights blink & windows cloud.
The ruby hummingbird was quick & vulnerable. I remember
no dreams. Just the ruby hummingbird.

Some sang toward a new world, sought
the language of oaks, composed a new
alphabet of stars. Some men queried
the hearts of their women, the giggles of
their children. The ruby humming bird led me off
this path, to what fragment or song I alone could make.

A day, a night, a magick. A problem complex
with wings barely seen. Could I know this
unmoving moving thing? This disappearing
creature right before me, aweight
with sweet drink? What thoughts, what
tears? Mine, hers? Whose dreams? Whose?

Days passed harsh with blaring colors,
kings disputed loyalties to martyrs &
texts. Crowds shook easily to simple
tunes, shiny rhymes. The ruby hummingbird
came alone, in threes, sometimes not at all.
I learned what few songs I could make & what many didn't matter.

The bonfires in empty fields raged and roared.
all night, I hid til the ashes hardly
trembled at dawn. Reading what I
could, collecting strums, leaving more behind
than I took. One morning the ruby humming bird
came, but I did not, my final song complete:

"The perfect world ever coming, the perfect
world ever here. The perfect world
a sad funny myth. The perfect world a
whirlwind one can only grasp in hovering
moments, a passing nectar of memories sweet,
a mystery shared with an absent companion,

a miracle experienced by twined hands, wondering face
to wondering face."


vii.

My blankness. Your blankness. The pain
which hovers above the brow, a winged
darkness, a tiny burbling beast. A dread
flickering. A frost snapping at any lonely light.

My blankness. Your blankness. An old carriage
travels a man & his decisions. Nearing dawn. No language.


viii. Fourth Dream: Shrine

. . . listen for the many musics between sweetness
& flail . . . listen for what is listening to you,
how it watches you clenching tighter while trying
to let go . . .
“repair the world . . . let it break . . .
repair the world . . . let it go . . .”

song of the shrine, shells on its brick wall,
new powder on its empty path . . . “repair the world
. . . . let it break . . . let it go . . .”

coming to this clearing for a long reminding scent—
an absence—a stillness—relief—remembrance . . .
surely this shrine by a steady hand will one day smoulder . . .


ix. Miracle

Honesty til raw: I love you.
Honesty above all: the world of man
is in pain.
Honesty about war: only kings & slaves
crave it.
Honesty about the earth: she moans
ever, ages past, ages anon, her prodding
fingers against ruin & greed.

Honesty about Art: the best set blaze their
words & dreams alike, burn it all
for a strum, a song, three fingers of true pink shine.

Honesty about Love: the days cluster like
blossoms, a toothy shadow fanging about
only sometimes.

Honesty about Death: the argument set in
the way of something bright, a thing barely
glimpsed.

I love you, with open hands, my craft
aflame within your constellation.


x. Vanilla Lace

Two trees atwist, once stars, once butterflies,
once lovers, once children. Once music.
Always music. A moonwrit scripture ever
completing, a grainy memory where two hands
touch, the helpless romance of quitless love,

while today our hearts still ring childly new.

Sniff the ancient in what we are, sniff the
future in what we hold. Receive history
of our wherefrom, news of our thence.
Beg not our mystery speak its name
aloud or ever, dance cageless, my love,

as stars dapple your cheeks, & vanilla lace
swings from your shoulders.

We mull among the leaves, planning beauty,
sharing need, exchanging pain. Trills
& barks around us, eyes & wings a-sniff
with awareness, we settle awhile with our
need to make, our hunger to change, to hurry

the morning light, to hatch Paradise from
three green twigs.

Only dreams return us to our roots & seeds,
to an endless bath of stillness in sky &
earth, to sunshine’s warming song, to midnight’s
healing scent. No beast or possession
disturbs us, no word cracks or corrodes our embrace.

We sleep without want. Perfectly. A bell & her echo.


xi. Fifth Dream: Miracle

To play one. True. Note. Muse. Wife. Moonlight.
Slow to a hurry, vibrations more lilac than
copter. One true. Note. Moonlight sipped
from a vessel of remembrance. Stirred of
many strums, fireforests of rhythm, shreds
of melodies, both childly & crone. Maidenly too.
One true note, undulating. You appear. Miracle.

To play one true note. You appear. Miracle.
Thereafter to know you will not cease
with this world, nor shall I quit
along your path. Slower still til along
the path home disappears entirely. Vessel
of remembrance now dust, dust’s dream.

One true note, perhaps rather an agony
of power raised, uprooting of oaks,
the hands of men rendered boneless to
build & change. Danger allowed in jungle
& den til neither flesh nor enemy
remains. What suffering truly fears.

You appear. Miracle. Laughter, fertility,
want. The blade & the seed art thine
burden & thine hope. You appear first as
mountains of light, then a winged thing
rapidly clawing dirt. A dark lock of hair
shining in an empty cave dwindling to a fist.

One true note & tonight a mercy shines
in the clear accelerating skies, to warm
my doubtful fingers, trill fiercely unto
my waning heart. You appear. Miracle.
Muse. Wife. Moonlight. Coven of the hungry.
Shells smouldering on a brick wall. Hints of love’s fury & joy.


xii. Sixth Dream: Suicide Bridge

Keep moving. Keep laughing. Keep drinking
water. Beg of noone yet open your hands
to all.

Keep a candle inside a box. Keep it lit
from the one within. Snowfall &
treebranch, wind & hurry. Nearing.

Because you did not jump that day,
call a young arc your finale, everything
became possible. What is holy shook fiercely.

Keep wiggling. Keep working. Stroke the soil,
caress the sky. Be a lover all the time.
Dare a bullet. Lick a dream.

Gather a sheaf of nocturnes for
firelight. Let the guru within you
live & die & die & live again.

Take the candle from the box.
Take the feather. Remove the shell.
Music in a vessel. Vessel made of starlight.

Keep shimmering. Keep raining.
Save a formula for belief, & one
for annihilation. Howls & blood are louder.

Light your candle & walk outside.
Learn again how to give away warmth,
how to sing with tapping rocks in streams.

Because you did not jump, with your
nocturnes & lace, something rust began
to moan. A hidden wound began to confess.

Keep dancing. Keep mocking. Keep the decorated dollar
that I gave you. Keep my heart. Keep
your own. Let me listen. Share it. Thank you.

Many candles, hear them cry. The night
is beating, all that hear it, sigh.
All that hear it, struggle. Here we are. Each unknown.

Many jump, every day. A tangle. A shotgun.
A snicker. A purr. Many jump, & jump
again. Snow’s still coming. Wake up now!

Keep one hand on the wheel, in case
of gophers. Keep one hand off, in case
of God. Be ready to shift between them.

Candles in the forest. Candles in the sky.
Candles burn the troublesome nocturnes.
Candles alight, & more keep coming.

Did I tell you that I jumped? Years ago,
another stanza. I learned how that night,
& thereafter. Love became a math. Art was a puzzle.

Keep loving me, keep licking & dreaming &
keep your hands open to all, & I will
learn too, & we will teach others.

Candles in tonight’s bedchamber.
My lingering voice. Let it touch you.
My hurrying songs. Slow them. See what they mean.

See what they are, these songs that
protect you, that guide you, that call
you their own. No more distance. No more worry.

Just two hearts that brave to jump.
Two hearts that brave to live.


******

[Cenacle]

tonight added 6 x 36 Nocturnes, #7-12, these were the last run of poems, not all but most, before I was crushed by truths I did not want to face...did, indeed, not face, maybe not ever...I've lived by Art's one rule: sing. Singing means whatever life brings, sing. High or low, sing. Whatever comes, sing. Single rule, a world to live by it.

[Arcadia]

thanks, friend!!!!!!!!!
a pleasure to read you!, always!!!!

[mnaz]

Cenacle, this is some pretty transporting stuff, as usual. Your poetic propulsion is a thing to behold; quite the ride.

"Regard the landscape: its lack of lack".

"'The world is perfect. The world is broken. Repair the world' So chant we with our children".

"What's all around the spectacle of hurry, no truth, safety, home".

Indeed.

[Cenacle]

Thank you Mnaz, Arcadia. That winter those years ago was a memorable one of which these poems are the best distillation. I was mostly jobless, living pretty isolated north of Boston, in love with a girl who lived 3000 miles away...the details don't matter nor should they to anyone but me...the poems survive, whatever they are, they stay...your kind words mean a lot to me

[stilltrucking]

Even one heart alone has to sing
even alone
it has to sing
even alone
it has to be brave enough to live

[stilltrucking]

It was a beautifull song
Thank you for posting it

"if i sang out of tune
I'll get by ..."



"something like that" (thanks mnaz)