Studio8 - Uniting the Arts

Lasting

i. All is Forgiven

Once. Twice. Breathe. Relax.
Once. Twice. Breathe. Relax.
Once. Twice. Breathe. Relax.

Now conjure at will. Lights & hue,
make of them.

Easy. Let what flows, flow. Nothing
too late, nothing too soon.

Now a star, now a branch, now a dream
no longer dream.

Slip through crowds & silence alike, let
everything pass, there is no secret nor
bliss one is bound for. There is no path.

There are the steps you claim, mistake
for a life. There is the bed where new
things ferment.

There are old woods listening.
There are stars & wherefrom they dangle.
There is language hid along growl, within buzz.

When all seems like music, it is.

Once. Twice. Breathe. Relax.
Once. Twice. Breathe. Relax.
Once. Twice. Breathe. Relax.

Now accelerate. Now burn.

When all seems like music, it is, falling
in & through, a dance riddled with colors,
movement by melody & wind, within blown out,
laughter a hand flung into shadows, become
open water, more, stronger blood, more. More.

***

Something not yet word, nor yet shine,
yet beyond shadow, a dance & a blaze,
no longer blue fancy, remorse tugging
for release. I don't know. A game,

this cosmos? Time + play? Rhythm & ferment,
war & what strokes achingly along its edge,
something from somewhere, reclamation
of a dream, not yet word, nor yet shine,

no longer blue fancy. Once. Twice. Breathe.
Relax. Once. Twice. Breathe. Relax. Once.
Twice. Breathe. Relax. Now conjure at will.
Lights & hue, make of them. Nothing too late,

nothing too soon. A dream no longer dream,
what leads through crowds & silence alike.
Everything passes, no secrets budding, no pending
bliss. No path but diminishing echoes.

When all seems like music, it is, opening
out & out & out, dance riddled by color, movement
by shimmer & glare, what burbles madly in the woods,
galaxy, sea & dream. An ever craze for more.

***

Once. Twice. Breathe. Relax.
All is forgiven.

Sing happiness to a room full of dead
chairs, sing & sigh to a ceiling pulling
outward for more, out & out, out, for
more, all is forgiven. Hum. Continue.

Once. Twice. Breathe. Relax.
Let history's testaments fall to sand.
Let the trail of old blood diminish away.
Let deepest love cup not contain & thus
learn by release, flutter, renewal, blessing.

Alone, kiss the carpet. Shivering, kiss the sky.
Hopeful, kiss strangeness. Despairing, kiss your dreams.

Once. Twice. Breathe. Relax.
All is forgiven, even what pocks & remains.

When all seems like music, hold out
hands to catch some shine. Give over
to dance riddled in colors, to whatever
persists. To knowing, believing, what clasps
one to another. Breathe. Relax.

***

ii. Turning On

What lasts? Nocturnes, smoke, nothing.
A sheaf, awhile. Trees, ideas of trees,
fire. Stellar revolutions, distances resembling
slowness. Nothing, something. Nocturnes,
smoke. The hope of perhaps. Brighter hours
yet & to come.

What persists? Rhythm & ferment. Skies
softening, wet release, stars, silence.
Human music chasing the eternal. Memories
hung on sweet pikes, skewered through
heart's every content. Falling through water,
another life, a drifting gesture.

What now? We continue loving in the
distance. The obscure, the underneath.
Something pending, everything, again. Rhythm
& ferment, soon blaze, acceleration.
Pending rivulets shudder, provoke new songs.

***

iii. Firelife

Coins fall down pools of magick,
twist, dissolve,
hearts fall, meet & fall,
something remains, keep singing.
Several words, now deeper, keep singing.

Coins fall down, watch, the hope
of perhaps, love reveals, love explains,
something, everything, what flows among
the wires & chains, what presses laughter
one to another. How high yet to go?

Forever. Coins fall down, we love nearer,
she laughs, I follow, I sing, she
embodies, we love nearer, meet & fall,
hand folds into hand, breathe, relax.
Kiss strangeness, follow it through the sky,

the hope of perhaps twists, dissolves, keep
singing. I keep seeking her til she curls
along me, today, tonight. Forever plainly
known in the rising laughter of hazel eyes.
Hearts fall, meet & fall. Embody, sing. Near.

***

iv. Moonstones

But something else too, something furious
with its own existence, how to live,
how to live. How to live & why.

She shifts among depths, a glance
between walls, up toward leaves, she
hears music, quiet, pressing. How to live.

She knows. She tells me & my pen
hurries, becomes two, bounces, broils,
yes, I see. Tonight, love, I see. No how,

no why. I have no pen. There is no art.
Teach me. Patience, she says. We know
your hunger bears my name. We know.

She kisses my cheek, says feel my vow.

Tonight, love, I see. No pen. No art.
Clouds swish across fullest moon &
I watch, wondering toward your next lesson.

***

v. Veil

Walk in hunger, pray in hunger, love
in wild bursts, airless gulps. Feel what
tremors about your skin, what watches,
what follows. Sometimes spoken in the
pink of a wanting cheek, laugh becomes
moan, thicking clouds, unthreading

nests. Look about, the beggar & the king
equally slave to need's claw & sunset's
burn. Look about, let nothing be which
can deeper teach you that you know
nothing, & still you stride. Walk in hunger,
love in hunger, fuck in hunger. Fuck

inevitably, die in surprise. Submit to
wisdom in molecule & feather, let the
strange dogs within scream & cry, whimper
& weak. Let the world's hustles disappear
wholly into the sugar of thine heart.
Walk in hunger, thrash. Believe.

Say I love you: it matters. The world sips
at your song. Say I love you: she listens.
Within her a bell breaks & moans. Say
I love you to the night's banshees, to what
strokes with holy intent. Say I love you:
she reaps. The morning glows & she follows.

Walk in hunger, hurry. Begin everywhere, nowhere.
Sing to her the heavy songs, white
explosions, battering lullabies, loathesome
bright things. Sing to her of secret want
dirty & delicious. The gravity & whim of
biting wordless things. Teeth across her back,

caterwaul for dreaming's promised new
world. Raise her, shake her hard from
within, the room cutting blood & coarse
echoes for more. Nothing to explain love's
sweet whore grace. Submit, hunger never
ceases, immolate slowly with her. Squeeze, empty.

Cry out to the sky. Let its silence tend you.

***

vi. Lovers

You crawl toward daylight, bearing an
instrument hardly yet played, a heart
barely sung. What pulls you back flares
& gnashes. You gnash back harder, become
a soft fist in heat, a butterfly spark
in a doorless room.

A beauty, first & last flower of
the world. A true note, plain & golden,
more than crawling toward sunshine,
flickering past wicked days, pulsating
creature, teeth in my flesh, fury in
my nights. A cry, full, empty, dawn's

new life between us. Faith: beasts ranging
across a landscape, tribal noise
passing as survival, unto music.

No answers to blood's tumult, nor
the thrashing question of kings
& preachers: How long?

A thousand years lain among stellar
rubble & strewn grace. Gourds of
language. Useless among the dead &
the yet. Stripes of fire conjure in
forests of sentience. Waiting.

Waiting. Samely crowds of jerk & color. Scriptures
of excrement lead armies fang-wild
& scholars airless & sure. Nothing.

Then morning a cry, full & empty,
a vow, tears, dawn's magick grappled
& cast. Rain. Forgiveness. Blessing.
Something. What crosses what. Begun,
deepens. Crawling, now walking,
now you arrive, now we continue.

***

vii. Reverence

The music of silence. A tremble, a flicker.
Dream raises liberation, caterwaul, a leap.

Nights tremble with vow, rhythm, blowing things.

Reverence: where one rests around dawn.

***

viii. Drift

Hush. Reckon a rising world around that
charred figure chanting goldensong.
Hand conjures hand, make broad stains
unto a landscape, new rivulets through
the cosmos, greater songs ferment. Drifting,
dashing gestures. Hush. Eventual sunshine.

Bells, birds, yet still withal the heartbeat
of waiting. Branches shimmer with plainness,
prayers old & new blow by, days reach
taller with mystery. Hush. What opens
out, blows up brightly, cries, squawks:
truth not extant in sugar or machine.

Hush. World fattens with miracle & woe,
strangers cross in dreams, trade words
like fidelity, possession. Notice faith
walking misty night streets humming
songs of stroking stars, cascading kisses.
Hush. Passions again accelerate, twinings

like leaves & fruit. Among goldensong
your name persists. Hopeful, heated,
you know & receive.

***

ix. Guerrilla

Believe everything, beyond the capacity of
lung & will. Heed fire in the air, brilliance
in your veins, cosmos in every hand. Believe.
Despair. Between: breathe harder. Bellow
in an empty street toward a diamond hope unknown.

Believe. It hurts. Now, in places lined with
placards & bells. It hurts. You exist:
choiceless, eager. Pulled forward, outward,
you resist. Death ever sings a sugar song
along your skin. Believe & moan. Again.

Resist, submit: Anarchy murmurs in the heart.
I know you know. Alive, thus restless.
Music calls you alive you listen. Drums join
head to heart to thigh to beat. I know
you know. Dance harder within, it hurts, it frees.

Believe, vast trees, full moon, the yes & beyond
of night's music. Laugh, call it faith.
A charred figure chanting goldensong. Hand
conjures hand, makes broad stains unto a
landscape, new rivulets through the cosmos.

Greater songs ferment. Believe with
music, something like a lingual dance,
fire in the air, brilliance in your veins,
cosmos in every hand. Beyond smile &
yes, need's need. An open field, ascending

bonfire, freedom a thousand bodies & still
opening outward. A full moon, where the
many prayers pass through & back, I know
you know. Anarchy murmurs in the heart.

Resist, submit. One true note, deeper,
higher. Music resembling home at certain
rising hours. Resembling love, clarity.
Holy emptiness, laughing. One true note,
& a persistent fancy of her dancing: cyclone, fury.

Believe everything: smile, sigh. A myth
beyond this moment, its maybe, its
volition. Accelerating, again, with greener
truth of trees & constellations. These words
suddenly erupt, again, in music, & somewhere I explode.

***

x. Agape

Dream moves us persistent within the stiff ground,
now resembling play, now wreckage, now
glistening night. Music shimmers greater
between us, we sum to other than one or
two. Now past sleep, emptied of bed, what
remains a leaving shaped by hazel eyes,

a thrilling twist of eros & agape, a rhythm
chanting hope's choiceless spell.

Eros: delight's rootless bells conjure your
voice, the palm-shaped softness of your
hands among mine, our kiss imploding
us into something greater than one or two,
your sigh blood-badging my deepest recoils
into solitude's fears.

Dream moves persistent, through fake
daylight calm, through night's years
of skyless joy.

Agape: loving souls ringing in the barrel of
a half dead world, what kindness means
when everyone at last is drowning. Your absence
sometimes twinkles, a message by wish &
flash, my lost nights rise up with a cry,
spit your name out, choiceless, tender.

Dream betimes bears a rank beast, call it
despair, nosing about my heart. Day's silence
knows no comfort, calls night a dead vine twisting nearer.

Eros: I love you. This leap, moan, this bleed
unceasing. Then somewhere you laugh.
Something jingles within roaring populace
of wounds. A grace persists. Though tethered
it sings. Loyal misfit days pass comfort between
us, by stars, by scraps.

Dream rouses me with a kiss, a blessing:
hope abounds. By wave, by clot, by flicker.
Bear this like a charm.

Agape: faces dirtless with irony say
keep the words back, healing is for
children & fools. The king preaches
agape culled from scripture & hubris.
Resistance chants up a bright endless
parade.

Dream's wealth burrows a poor life, collects
its stolen fruit: my pen conjures hands
tending those who whimper alone.

A growl deep among trees, hunger or
recent feeding, the pond nearby a crazy
rhythm of watching bubbles, the limbs
above feathered with the perpetual
offices of nurture. The world's pulse plain &
golden save among men where a coin

or a god or a hoary myth interfere.
Explain. Delude.

Dreaming still the kind mystery walking naked free
among us, here it pools & shines, there it
recedes to a whipping thirst. Now it throbs
irregularly, a beat, two in chime, more,
like our palm-shaped grasp, like a song of faith.

***

xi. Home

Again throbbing absence, a flu of want.
A faith weighted with faint joys & bending plaints.
Wishes nurture, & constrain. Old paths obscure.

My pen grabs me & hurries through clouds
of thicking human idiocies.

I love you: I am breaking.

***

xii. Insurrection

My world empties. Yours fills. Smell the poison.
My life corrodes. Yours glares. Lies upon lies.
My hands flail. Yours busy with baubles. Crumble, resist.
My body aches & presses. Yours silent, a doll. Our want still scirocco.
My heart insurrects. Yours shrieks in the dark. Smother, breathe.

A new world still murmurs. You're still dreaming my face. Love's deepest treasure.

***

xiii. Nada

Chase her among the beats, stellar
music tightens sad, releases joy,
melodies of knowing & nada through

the mist moving all things. She nears
again & the why breaks into branches &
windy petals, among the beats what's

obscure flickers open, love plain &
golden. From a life's anguish shudders
out a dream, now glittering, flare, explosion.

She nears again, among the beats, &
I cry faith! fidelity! Receive me your every
terror I will quiet you. Burn our ruins to

cascade night's pathless woods. Home
a chase among stranger beats now, awhile.
Faith, fidelity. What must love become to

endure? Dream me, kiss me, make it hard,
make it hurt. Beat my will into a weapon for
your worship. I will be the lasting instrument

strumming you, stroking you, blowing
out the rhythms & melodies your heart
bears but hardly still calls its own.

***

xiv. High

Whatever restrains, let go:
You are not high enough.

Whatever devolves stellar music
to dumb habit, let go:
You are not high enough.

Where grey's plummet presses out
thine vista's green twining, let go:
You are not high enough.

Free howling rapture become
sensation's clumsy greed, let go:
You are not high enough.

Whatever, whoever, wherever crushes
& bruises with a distracted glance,
let go: You are not high enough.

When letting go itself abandons what salves
the torn & tender within, hold on.
Reckon daylight's approach & summit's nearing.

***

xv. Lateral

Snowstorm in the mountains. A carriage
awaits passage. Someone speaks of home.
The wish one suffers and sings for. One & many,
slow & hurry. Someone speaks of home, rising evermore.

I think of one girl, then another, past, present.
Spell, shaping. I think of trees along a snowy
road. This yearning's diminishing music. Hope direct
& lateral across the heart.

Someone speaks of home. Other days will bounce,
scatter shivers through flesh thin with happy
memory. She resists departure. I allow, she
denies. I look elsewhere, she follows, comments.

Derides what is other, less. I'm dreaming her
again. Then I dream other things. Nocturnes
rush & recede about her. Still. Golden hours
gone. A thousand miles from anywhere.

Snow a deep wet bell for hope pliant to
burrow. Hope: your face, your eyes, the blooming
scent of your abyss. I love you. Everything
shifts. Little lets go. Noise of nature's morning prayers.

Springtime snowstorm. Child wailing for home.
Words flatten with longing, something,
someone. Anywhere. You. Forlorn, I tap a wing,
await a companion. Think of music's restless crave.

***

xvi. Kneel

Golden hours gone, nocturnes rent with
cold burn, a thousand miles from anywhere.
Tonight music shudders briefly, & again,
lashes nada's spectacle, dead rhythms
kicked for whatever convulse remains. Nothing
true here, just days pricked for coins. Call it a life.

A passing carnival of blankness & deed.

Something yet dances out there in the shades,
dream stroke of a leaf, flame of a thigh.

Call her bitch. She responds.
Call her angel. She responds.
Wake up. To her bid a name less yawning.

Kneel. Submit. Love's immolation. Liberation's
ash. Wield the flame anew, call it music.
Dancing power aroar with the night.

Touch her feather. She responds.
Touch her leather. She responds.
Wake up. Someone else's world is
eating you while she arcs & corrodes.

A rampage, a terror, the night's floorless
embrace. Perpetual.
King's broad minions, preacher's tome of
nots, we listen & still slowly crack
wide. The artist barks tunefully, rests
later with cleanly brushed fur.

Kneel. Submit. Trees burn up in truth
where men mew & flee for anywhere.

My heart spits wildly for just a little content.

***

xvii. Sorrowful

Empire, relax. Blood bounces through the streets
again. Small things fallen lay open. Talk &
songs celebrate, lull, submit. Restless wonder
finds no home. Convulse, drift.

We want. We want. Something. Then something else.
Desire. Glare across a tome, wither of persistence.

Empire, relax. Casual tinkerings busy most.
Life eaten walking a path which does not arrive.
A world crackling its news tonight by bullet
& feather & spasm. Soft tightens around hard,
baubles & shrieks vie for believers. Kings
gallop over deserts a thousand years in forgetting.

In dreams I am chimes you steal from market,
the music in your satchel & scent. One heart
dreaming another.

Empire, relax. Hark human noise ever
burst out with melody or smoke. What great
passes, what small lingers. What little coming reveals.
Choked roaring with emptiness, years mount
& mock. The olden crumbles, retreats, reforms
elsewise, presses harder on. The olden lives
in tonight’s kiss. Leaden blow. A rising thrust
within a quiet wood, still felt by a far
city staggering. Someone says quietly: we
all share the same soul.

In dreams I am your tinder, your scripture,
your flu. Conjuring me from hardly a parcel of
words yet see me appear. Itching & bruised. You make
me appear.

Empire, relax. All glory passeth, tomorrows &
tomorrows & tomorrows too. The world’s
remains surrounds king’s winning horn in
fullest of moons, the waiting dust of
brother for brother. She conjures. I arise

Another path beckons. Empire, relax.

***

xviii. Crippled

Once. Twice. Breathe. Relax. Now conjure
at will. Finger the shimmer in things.
Raise a telling strum, fail. Raise, & again.
Shriek for a swathe of yesterday flesh!--
an angle receding no magick can rightly trace.
Great eyes were praying kind to a moment.

Where is it? New pilgrims ride on. Join or
be damned. It hurts. Raise or dwindle.

***

xix. Careen

Sought singing light within shaped flesh,
knowing's greater fury, open-thighed cry
of bright meaning, among ancient branches
of heat & wonder atwist making language,
songs fruiting as language's bloom & bleed,
giving drizzle sense & the invisible intent.

Become now a careen of willows & wings,
unclosed circle of despair. Numb, twitch, numb.

Convulse & small barks for return, someone,
anyone, unto the moment blossom with touch,
cease of wishing's begging gnaw, this time she
will stay, this time she will stay, this time
she will stay. Hurry & limp toward shifting
something. A life summing in songs & squalor.

Radiant chance crossed by paths of ache,
flashes of joy, her useless tap. This morning
found me strumming again.

Now chasing a way found by other creatures or
kind, less grit in the melody, a singing
without divide. Brutality left to sun & years.
A cough of stars tonight & pressing noise
the world offers as magick to those quiet &
intense enough to translate.

She will stay. She will stay. She will stay.
Someone, anything, will matter again.

***

xx. Bound

The green world persists snarl and hum.
What blooms keeps and embodies its day.
Breath a choiceless pully. Flow a making
of tide and will. Released in moonlight
to greater sobriety, reckon what doesn't
cower.

She nears again, drowning magick, verdant
tug. I call this nobody's song against
her coming maraud.

Memory charges the present with its woe,
its sickly tale, its consumptive caterwaul
for some greater kind of devotion, love without
breath, prickless passion, a wider world's
womb. Green traded for a promise, some
curved intent. Reckon most who sings for noone.

She nears again like a butterfly's wing across a
glaring fell hour. The several dumb melodies of want.

Something alights me, a word, a strum,
green, taut, ablaze for its time. The making
persists, through rust, through fade. Breathing
for the verdant within, give to sadness its
song. Hunger its flicker. Desire its dominion.
Ecstasy its chance.

What's bleed will bloom again because
it can, because it does. She nears again
& I divide against myself. Make ready
for furies unknown.

***

xxi. Yearned

"Yet when the angels swoop to pick us clean,
they shall find that all our fruits are green."
--Rainer Maria Rilke, 1903.

She sleeps in silken pocket of stars,
dreams within a holy emptiness, girded
by my many songs. A cry equally ours
unstills the night, its echoing mate settles
again beast & leaf.

Love blows up again, helpless, wild, she
knows my bidding & wonders how, I pass
miles in a word & remember why.

I remember a day & the tree you embraced--
all my life led to this singing for you.

To love you is forbid you nothing, cup
your glare when it nears & dances, watch,
sing, let you go, keep you, find a harder
wisdom past either. Offer love of the
nest's kind, safety between flights, or the
way the tide swings to shore & away.

Love you & thus the world. Sleep, angel,
while I conjure a truth enough to raise you.

Love blows up again. I've become this
singing for you, this true note plain
& golden. This forever greening to keep
you asleep on high. Wake you to a
greater world when at last it beckons.

***

xxii. Crush

Become this singing, this man raised from
dreams with a fury, this fat blur wielding
magick at green's bidding, this hope a skirt
of foam near & away, this hard crying
against the softer choices, this charred figure
chanting goldensong, this singing from a hovel
half willing known again to its wider bed.

Become this singing, anarchies murmur in the
heart, days by cower & empty salute, nights
restless with obscure stingers, dreams plain &
golden, muscular beyond many songs, faith
the rain, & its cease, & its continuance, hope
ever the tide, the fire measured by men's
blunt savagrys & miraculous innocenses, this
singing less beacon than stampede.

Become this singing toward a greater music,
greater silence, flicking conjure of the healing
prayer at the heart of the universe, leaves
grumble again with teaching green, continuing
flash of skin for skin, wing for wing, fur for fur,
this singing's moan for dust's keeping union.

Become this singing, melody's devilish liquor,
rhythm's alluring bamboo bed, ever a muse bright
secreted in pink, dancers bid deeper joining
with exploding muscles & stretching bones,
a moment wild with hurry, every moment's
ever wider yaw, this singing beyond choice,
beyond purpose, the greater when no power
nor shaping is refused.

Become this singing, this willing, this
submission's pleasure-awled trance. This
mother of every touch, father of every
throb, tribes gathered from & through &
among this singing. Heal what can be,
I pray everywhere. Give me to this. Tonight
I disappear unto a thousand open delights.

Become this singing, lastly & again,
the hiss of every choosing's mystery,
what saves me to my bed another day,
what tickles me into sunlight,
what I dream for all with daisy petal's glow.
This singing for you, accept it, it matters. Respond.

***

xxiii. Rave

Make something new of the old wood within,
melody of tinder, break the warped & tired
of its weight, sort new hungers from old
afflictions, find muse in singing itself when
no bright hand near & knowing. Wield new
fury with a softer heart. Ache alongside all.

Another day, another rain. Press for new songs
from the grievous familiar. To the dance & sway
caused by sunshine in pink vessels add a
greater litter of peeps in the darkness, green
knowing, sky's teaching muscle. Greater sway,
greater dance. Rhythm & light. Rousing moon.

Make new toward the trembling, find its music,
carry it elsewhere, not yet where trees await,
nor the green shooting through every blood,
still behold a new fury nearly past man magick,
burst through throttling dreams, candied moments
of accelerating heat. Spiralling hooks between us.

Another day, wind, dance & sway. New fury,
softer heart, leave back study of wound's
every contour, the facile songs of soothe &
others. Blossoms of blood relieved in water's
perpetual massage. Tonight implode tonight
endure. Outlaw wishes shape a path for the brave.

Make greater music, reckon wider sky,
play deeper magick. Make from love & thus
birth many truths. Enough lasting for the
brashest & kindness of gestures. Palms outward offer
trust to moon & men & dreams alike. The world
receives its kisses to a ceaseless memory.

Another day, & now its night, & a scribbling hand
pursuing song through trance & gleam. Make something
new of persisting flesh & its throbbing wisdom.
Find muse in singing itself. Wield new fury with a
softer heart. What remains, what returns, the why of
spiralling hooks. Ache alongside all toward a nearing elseway.

***

xxiv. Manifesto

Sing not to mystery for what it knows
but where it beckons, path more wind
than words, words splint til they are
consumed. Holy emptiness rides through
the heart, shades chant living bell's rise,
some hundred green leaves conjure from
dangling words & greater power still. When you
follow bring nothing but careening wish.

Sing not to mystery of grey clouds & lament.
What shines, what you follow, is not root
in daylight's numbered throbbing nor midnight's
robust thrashings. Nay. Words surround it in
corona's tribute, beauty of girl & green scarve
its passage, the giving way heals, mercy
in release, in remembering without leash,
in foretell without cringe.

Sing not to mystery with a hustle to
preserve or grow or resist. The blunt ways
of men crumble among the stars. Kings &
preachers blow with the detritus. Lovers
find trenches where hearts so high once bleated.
Artists may join the whirl, the hurry & flow
from empty roads & contrived baubles, or lurch
back to inconsequence. Follow or diminish.

Sing not to mystery for the succumb of
that which lords. Manifestos residual of
empires forgotten, & music in persistent
rhythms & hard making beats. Each new
bursting seed rejoins its every brother.
What cozies tonight's rain about me, what lasts
carries even the least along. Follow on until
the remain of these truths gives way.

***

xxv. [untitled]

A rupture & gestation, awake, how it glows,
lures, leads, smoke, steam, a flu, oh my,
one finger, two, ten, a dozen, rouse, seek,
hurry, it has come, a song? instruction?
gas? geometry growling? fragrance of sorrow?
Petals of fist. A rapid fiercing through the heart.

Call it spirit, a muck of sacred & mud.
Awake, be conjured, intent of genii within
molecule, rouse, the deep nears, myriad of
none, spell? impulse? dangle? I stare
down at it. What's ridden through the heart
returns ever again. Living bells sing of the damage.

Two armies of tinder cross on the plain.
Golden words cried the king learned from
the preacher eaten of his lord. Fingers
trail through ruin, thicken with seed,
a shimmering mass, muck of fable & bone,
some line trying to win my way. A bleating.

A remain. An acceleration. A greater power stirred
in dust's rhythm & melody. Nothing breeds
from mischief & yearn. A speck, a world,
a hard thrashing felt everywhere dreams
unease & cajole. Some near the music,
feed the green. Starlight & drums pounding

confess the night. I look down at it,
ruin? tinder? golden? Spilling yet still
afraid, fistfuls of protecting membranes,
crumbling, swing & blinding for nearer
still, best truths shed easily, husks,
happiness, new day cracks open still greater.

A queer remain called history. Diminishment
to certainty, the release of lasting into
hum, living bells now call it merriment.
The residual is comfort. A free sigh among
the monuments, heat now sated. Breathe.
Relax. I look down at it. Shit is beautiful.

***

xxvi. Prelude

Hope again in revving sheets of fury.
New gusts croon tears & plans. Soon
daylight & again ride on. Again.

Hope come in a green field one day. Neither
beginning nor end. Yearn & song surge
higher by quick moving blood. Ride on.

Again the tug. Sometimes hands, sometimes heat.
Sunlight in a rose. Moonlight in an eye.
Ride on. Again heart tremble with sky intimations.

Save a stranger's life tonight. Bend what you can
his way.

***

xxvii. Bare

Anguish. I sing from everything gone by
toward everything waiting to be. Too dreaming.

Cry for what's gone by. For a younger heart,
a lighter day. Lone girl on a bench with
her book of lingers. New warriors with strange questions.
Cry. Heave out the crushed & the worn.
Let go what cannot replenish. Let it drown
back into earth & air.

One night in a carriage I forgot every melody
but one. It kept beating. It insisted.

Release the songs of cracked matings, the woes
of once-stood & used-to. Anguish. Cry. Heave.
Remaining music will salve familiar despite the
tripping stars above, strange convulsions within.
As queer my stroke, weird my word, tis dreams &
tools of green shape the music, its arc & thrust.

Where dreadful & delight conjoin, the world
is churning wildest. Groves, cities, horizons.

Anguish. Singing to breathing to heart's
steady fist. The brown lands within flame
with slant purpose, croak something like
hope. Too dreaming. When lowest, conjure toward
hard thrums of sunlight, green's madness to
make, pink's bursting rhythms--

Just hold close awhile til the music cracks wide,
& a new plenty reveals.

***

xxviii. Ardor

More call for songs of light, for a world
fluttering with better frenzies. For a high beyond
path, beyond gleam, beyond way. The mornings
peal with a blank delight. A petaled
ecstasy. Face turns to dewy face, fancies
elastic & lingering. Songs of light nearer

this year. Many prophets say so. They say
let it go, let it be, the music will shatter,
hearts will remain when bones are no more.
Let go, let be, shatter, unto the last,
those promised songs of light, nearing
like seeds on the wind, a kiss, true &

wet, nearing. Others just say love, only love.
Urge it by governance & holy malingerings.
The sky, night's ocean, brilliant smoke
of hookahs, the rising arc of a moaning
back. Love in spinning, shaping fires,
shifting glitter of something desire, urge

to crack songs of light from shells wild
of make, big with knitting hum, happy
conjures. There is no world. Every song
of light will confirm it so. One simply persists
with the ardor of a wish, the truth of a hint
remembered in a dream.

More call for songs of light & I believe
the hands will multiply toward the
task. Yes by neon & unraveling mesmer.
Let go, let be, shatter. What will
open many hearts, behold awful & raw,
cut without mercy, a raving brute bounty.

***

xxix. Trans

Persist now from memory's tossed honey
& lost paths of twined flames. Persist,
a beat, another. Largest moon crosses prairie

cloud. Somewhere, a new strum, curling
growl. Love binds among fingers. Even
its rot conjures newly. Every pain is shaman:

Too deep for blood or bones to chase, the heart's
music traces its song harder than cross, crown,
& coin. For the slaven touch of love a blossom,

a manse, mutation. Hearts fall, meet & fall,
cry out to the sky, resist the brute bounty
within. Oh, for that lighter day. Plain &

golden. I've left those snappy mountain
winds, careening coastal lights. Another
day to mock & gallop there. Tonight she

dreams our goodbye, wakes to its sour
truth, its lacking reward. Its gape. Tonight
I begin anew, everywhere & nowhere. I urge

my one true note to gaze on, a beast well
enough again for the new hunt.

***

xxx. Moan

Go moan for masters. It’s racial.
Another cry, whatever clock,
whatever clime.

Moan. You want to. A shiver, a knowing.
Bones will twist & ache for some, too
kept reduce to order, fancy a god.

Maybe sum it in candles or the great-flying
shape of the night. Moan. It hurts.
Good. Now slower next time.

Again moan for masters, up high & now
higher, give out blindly. New worlds
without end. Breathe. Relax.

Moan. Shhh. Little sweets without sting.
Tonight’s tumble is green, feel its caress,
feel its slide. Shhh. Remember this high.

Music now to lift but something, what to
sustain? Feel it hard. Feel it good.
Feel it linger. Stop moaning for masters,

take the instrument, bear the blade. Little
holds against a true stroke. Another night,
its coming ray. Another world, its coming gone.

***


xxxi. Frail

So many names for beloved &
a few, hundred excesses of praise
chime & miss wide. Unto dusky
sky music sung in peached cloud,
ruffled as a morning bed. Poundless
lay of rapture over a wall of tomes

vetting no, & how. Sting. Another cry.
Sweetness. Whatever clock, whatever clime.

Beloved, remind me to mercy, world's
crown & flute. Not history, its clasp.
Nor power, its thwart. Mercy. What strikes
every night at its softest. Holy lingering,
green promise, a want for content.
Sweetness for all. Wish to stay.

Many names for beloved. Mercy.
Frail. Revolution. Now. Sing higher.

Beloved, what persists in autumn's
multi hungry colors, what presses &
jerks toward a then where sweetness
feeds what costume & habit fail?
A world sum to greater than a guru's
bone-empty directions. Holy something

in every moment. So many names &
a few. Among leys & lines & stars
I breathe me out slowly. Gone & anew.

Beloved, does this strange world sum to
emptiness, a happy human burn
of whatever falls? What other mystery
astride, what steps toward finer way?
I breathe me out slowly. Holy something
in every moment. Many names & a few.

Beloved, I vow to sing higher what is passing,
give over to mercy. Sweetness. Revolution,
alway. Some pestering new world aborning.

***

xxxii. Abide

Would you know better, listen twice.
Where to, how from, ask other, not
enough, sing. Your history is manacle,
your sacred a cloud. Live it out,
or let it blow past. Would you know better,
listen twice, & sing.

No less than everything matters, now,
let if off, now, no less than green
is enough, no less than craven to be
fell, kick the coward within. No less.
Some pestering new world aborning,
in arroyo & lingual beam. Listen twice.

Sing. What remains, what persists,
a long remembering night of petaled
ecstasy. Feel it hard. Feel it good.
Feel it linger. It hurts but you know:
Every pain is shaman. Live it out,
watch it blow past. Tangle tails

with it all awhile, burn gurus, wake
up! Happiness. There it goes, dust
on a shell, nocturne for nobody,
pink flickings in a stranger's dream.
Would you know again, & better, sing.
Dab lips twice to the ground & cast on.

******

xxxiii. Eros

Kassandra, hear me, song unto you.
My pen presses to sing me greater,
to meet you high in flaming places,
remember, renew, become a stronger
back & dearer toward all effort to free.
Hear me, my will to adore you

a greyhound's wingless careen, pepper's
bite on tongue, caterwaul from ruined
days. I was another name when want
last opened through me, Kassandra.
Eros become the blind-high firework of a
lost limb. Its pained call from a heap.

Eros in the sucking bottle not tit, &
mourn's long climax to indifference.
Eros snaggled among nightmares
follow all day. I don't know how
it stays or goes. I don't know of
any near its kind. Kassandra, stir

me again to acceleration, to nights
blown wide in happy cries. Healing.
Love unto greater real. Never high
enough, Kassandra, & no creature
undeserving. Where such as kings elect
otherwise one day a crush will fall.

I call it all eros. Sweets to a needing
shadow. Song & fruit & water simple
power in feast or lack. World's helpless
scar of wish unhealed by preacher's
fleshless conjures nor bullet's relentless
beat. Hardly crayon marks on cave walls.

Eros, Kassandra, how we must begin to
heal the world. Thrill of returning pink
jollity. Song & water & fruit. Kings returned
to men lame from crown worship. Preachers
renewed to lead into high forests, curl & croon
everything is safe, everything immeasurable.


Warriors aplay in the night sky, divide
again to smiths & teachers & statesmen.
Great trumpets for all that walks &
creeps & wings & blooms. Artists dispersed
to every luring wind & bright tremble.
Green truths settle on every new-opened hand.

I hardly have nocturnes tonight, Kassandra,
to sing clean the wider foul of loneliness
& bully. I hardly see but what would
entirely drown the world. I hardly
can say love, what is it in the ceaseless
bleed & familiar woe?

What runs me hardest flares from
joined will. Devotion from very bones.
Pain burst into empathy. Empathy
gathered for the next & next day's
push & work. All this directs my old
pen to you, Kassandra, ever & again

you rise what still flashes too hard
in me to snuff. Gesture toward
the world’s needful path. Yon hands,
leaves, feathers, purr. You gesture,
wave & pass. You take me as you must
& mold me anew.

******


xxxiv. Twist

Disappear into the music again, twist
through thump of words, torch of
flesh. Open out wild, beyond the crabbed
fools of death & desire. Let it,
feel it, disappear through melody,
shake, thrill, carry the rhythm, make

it work, excite, uplift, stretch, &
feel me disappear long away &
hardly known, & quickly going, strange
like stars, soft, it matters, it matters,
now it doesn't. Told love raises the world,
bark twice. Told kings reign the land,

throb greater to beauty & hurt no hand
wrought nor heals. Told the man is
everywhere, better shift & slink by him,
sing, hard touch in darkness of one
toward another. Depart this narcotic
delusion of lights & hurry. It matters,

it matters. Now it doesn't. This press,
this fierce, this run wild with its
many mangey matters. History's ill
platter of mangods & godmen. Merchant's-
rich offering of diseases guised as path,
like wisdom. Flowers & melodies & thighs

shilled for value false to their beastly
beauties. Moon but a symbol. Tit
a symbol. Suffering & obeisance but pages.
Death's throne presumed. Disappear
into the music again, no longer knot
to loneliness, hustled through by

harking gurus & careening whores. Bound
to nada, flushed out to something's skies,
glory catching, past what moves one toward
another. It matters. It matters. Now
it doesn't. Greater music, nigh greater silence,
contrive the thing you must release. Then

gone the hauntings & the dream. Gone the
night's heavy fruit, undone the honied hours.
It matters, it mattered. It never did.

******


xxxv. Irruption

“In the condition of fire
is all music and all rest.”
—W. B. Yeats

Something matters. It must. Of course
it does. Yes: sing me, cascade through
dusk salmon-deep & granite-wide, again
nocturnes burn rhythms steep across
new skies, out, out, all trust, blow out’s
freak spectacle, coming night’s carnal

mutilation, spending raised fire’s twisted
pain, kneel by dance, confess among
crossed shadows, uplift with a wet
roaring cry, disintegrate when the
last raw bones chewed through.

But now slower. What the lessons of
humility. Let some furies awhile
abide. Let some heartbreak croom,
stroke a moment, & another, what
danger within. Still clench.

Now breathe, relax. Let some over to
the green. Let what can be healed,
the rest will strew along, what remains,
nobody knows, nobody knows.

And irruption: sing me greater, cold
char upon your trunk, ceaseless green
sex upon your shores, spectral winged
life within, demons for lash & lace,
for yearned secret collisions in a glance.

Wage greater your mere, something matters,
it must. Her kiss remains, finest
clapping note, new muse aborn, lorn eyes,
aqueous soul, fills space stars will
anon come. Mage of wing, leaf, breeze,
heart thick & airy with love’s heat.

Undoes another’s snaring conjures. Gentle
become claw. One bestial music then,
now another. Desire how race transmits core.

Become singer raw again, new reckon
kings plunder like insects on a splayed
fruit. Slaves, merchants, preachers alike
frolick for one lie & another, raise up
looted glory, live for a fierce moment
stars with god in their eyes.

Anon, slowly, die choking & surprised.

New hark nocturnes, yes, I recall these
hard mountains. Yes, & other years,
other weights. Idiot’s chase, my outspilled
moonlight. Still for an eve then shake it
harder, persistence bitch, call it
higher’s stride.

Open again tonight, sing like thighs
new & ready for the first hard take,
something matters, everything matters,
every passing moment implode &
then gone, new greening, ever & first
alike, universe perpetual moan & make.

Sheered from my dread, nearer the
wild one within, nay play it simple
through, nay run it down familiar,
nay rest by this night’s high music
or world’s bloodful fire. Shake it twice

& now higher. Whither new? Whither next.
Much remains. Nobody knows, nobody knows.
And irruption: burn it, burn it all down
again or else.

******


xxxvi. Cry (for Kassandra)

Cry out from this world's narcotic delusion,
ceaseless flu of want, once, twice, cry out!
Now breathe, relax. Reckon all's burst from
flowers of flame, & what lasting? Nocturnes?
White leaves on a tree made of music.
Drums & dust. Nothing. What abide, love?

Secret sugar raging creation's scattered heart.
Something, & how intensely still. What begins,
& a beat, & begins again? Everything.
Call it hunger, the clawing rhythm within,
maze of heart's ripe thirst & need's hard flail.

Learn it, if you would anything of matter,
what shaman in every pain & its sate.
Secret joys, within's within, light & salve
for a seeker's chase. Hark moments sweet,
desire's lovely acceleration, & a beat, & a crash.

Now behold ruin's potent, fist of nays
a skyless mountain tall, cry out til
the coil looses life again through the bite & burn.

Once, twice, what lasting? Breathe, relax.
Garden clues toward a bouquet of anwers,
sing them new, strum them high. Embrace them all.
Let them go. See what remain.

Just blue flashes cross the mind's troubled stretch,
til night flickers up, great flashing hours of root & roam.
Dreams climb high with the moon, trace Beauty's
darkling arc into the loam, roughest making stuff.
Mercy near, world's crown & flute.

A beat, again, now come-a dream of charred figure chanting
goldensong, his tune how love greens the brittlest land,
his urge to subtract everything from the world & reveal
God, his haunt what conjured steps to build up again.

Cry out with him, once twice, caterwaul crack wide
creation's sliding hum, its tart melody & lawless
careen of beats, unruly music struck from holy emptiness,
loosed as worlds without end. Feel it! The helpless want
for wordless things, ever squirm in the eyes & blood.

I know you know. Lean, withdraw, a beat, another,
let cry for your lost, nod everything lost but still cry
for yours, sure they for you, memory's skids,
blood's swelling tang, heart's wistful delusions.

Lights & hurry. Sad with a dream of vined unity,
a flesh, a spirit, slave to nothing. Say again:
all glory passeth. What lasting? Black ink on white char?
What abide? Love's freakest draws new from nada.

Smile. Wake up! Desire triggers its own laws.
Happiness, through riven by stride, sink, roar & fade,
raised for feed by kings & preachers & trinket-swingers,
still dream-a body ache ceaseless toward the flow.

Something greater, music hints, forests & seas, first kiss,
hundredth, cry out, truly, & heed what overruns senses,
what your cry has ever blown through your hustling fingers,
the hungry press of your laughter, what collects in your grief,
chimes in your dreams, sprays you wide, exhales your want
long linger, greater music, greater silence. A frenzied high called Art.

What lasting? Black barks on white chips of moon?
Sung spent years, their scald remain. What abide, love?
Its anarchy spits wild in the heart, poison to the land's
mass of moving men. What begins, & a beat, & begins again?
The singing, the squalor, spirit's craze of sacred & muck,
farthest hour's storm of drums & dust.

Rootless siege in the question how to live, how to live,
how to live & why? Hope like a spell binds the heart
to wishes, & then come a sweet thing into this raw stretch,
thick flicking dirge, her gestures mesmer like
a slow salmon dusk, her loving stroke true.
We skein home together after years in another life.
No more veils. Cry out!

What conjure awakes this world's carnal dream music,
how to splay freer solitude's blue fancies?
Shake & deny, squeeze yesterdays loose, then believe:
soul plus soul sum to soul.

World something drones, null melody, it hurts,
I know you know, but little holds against a true stroke,
hum & mull it, how to build up again, wield new furies
with a softer heart, raise new thrill songs from
higher music within, crack harder bluffs.

Chase the green pulsing, seed wisdom's first verities,
follow into the pink currents, want's jittering play in
the maya, jerk, groove, careen. Nod everything lost,
caterwaul, & a beat. Reinvent & reinvent & reinvent.
Now breathe, relax. Nothing ends but faith in old costumes.

Keep along, many names for beloved, this one firmed
your bones, that one riped your blood. Others taught &
took in a week's snap or a year's awl. Where come the will
to accept? Countless rank aches til your raggy soul knows
to hark every new day's golden fineness.

Come a sweet thing thus love unto greater real,
stranger path, a bare pilgrim among adoration's
many musics. Once, twice, not enough, clench,
release, sing it new, strum it high, what lasting?
Black drizzle down white skies? What abide, love?
Call it first & last flower of the world, clue, harass.
Bed’s better dreaming, night’s open range lure.

What begins, & a beat, & begins again? Where creation's
savage engine, what its spark? What is? Whither next?
Does this strange world sum to nothing? Offer a piece
of cosmos for this song, sprung out in moving flesh,
stirring frantic & dull through memory's raw blood. Cry out!

Come a sweet thing, fecund wiggle, biting sauce,
golden word, brilliant kiss, smash to ruts deep within.
Twining's first moonlight, ocean's ancient promise,
love what matters & the will to accept it. Breathe, relax.

Raise her music by fidelity & stroke, conjure concert
of green by slow rhythmic devotions. Shiver, trust,
come forth buds burst of good song, hours atwist in
morning glories & whispering touch. What lasting?

Remnant stars in a blinding book of old dreams?
What abide but eros & breath? What begins, & a beat,
& a beat, & a beat? Someone passes smiling in crimson
skirt, another's eyes quiver crazy in his rest among God
& decline. What their yearn, what fulfillment? Turn,
restless smoke in the air, harsh strokes across the walls.
World drones, null melody, lost among the miles & years
a flatness hinting no world but beams & nots.

There is no world: i told me acid told me so.
No world but a squirming in the sheen.
No world: reckless flounder of drums & dust.
Plunge from nothing through sparkles of sensation to
nothing, gone, no matter the great fist swinging
in the night, high prayer firing through the dread house
of bent limbs, thousands glad yowling with heavy thumps
of song.

No remain. Neither tallest stone height nor
widest run of moving men & galloping machines,
centuries of throne’s blight, reverenced chalice of self
til blood’s crumble, no remain. Another rotted
goldensong strung through history’s lousy mane.

Empire, relax. Another will one day rattle in your dust.
Time’s clay makes & mauls fists & bullets,
maps & mansions alike. Grinds every tongue.
No farthest wall to defend, just a vastless sea
of lights & hurry.

There is no world: narcotic delusion.
There is no world: you are not high enough.
No world: become a fountain of blank sheets,
wet scribbling’s last dull relief. Wordless, faceless.
There is no world: whither next?

Your night shifts on hard remembering bones,
& these will melt too. Suffer years like a trial &
its end will never come. Or cry out tonight
because you can & you must, once, twice,
heed no fist’s press to mum.

Cry out! World’s restive spirit will & again transmute
your leaden dusk, slow siren into night’s glints
of greater evolve. Vined unity high, sweet thing’s
fine pink strum, here is everywhere, world’s drone
a lost scrap, something about to sing.

Shift, jerk, long for everything, high, higher,
berries sharp as laughter jitter about your knees,
this human night flails alone until someone close sings
“we are all cosmos, we are careening.”
Coins & clocks await the morrow’s bleatings of cheap hone,
another pummeled day of poverty & gunfire.

Empire, relax. The land’s blur of moving men will awhile
still moan for masters, hustle & praise their cheap scriptures
of capitulation, this messy coalescence. No remain: what lasting?
Scatter of noisy vapors, behold their great moment, a beat,
another, all blows by & is gone. What abide? Starshine
& cannabis? Green charms & pretty trembles? Ceaseless
flu of want, something dark in the sheen. What begins,
& a beat, & begins again?

Something true, healing prayer at the heart of the universe,
neither faith nor fact. Twas blue fancies raised this world
& others without end. Love of seed for soil & root for sunshine.
Wings for high. Fins for the deep. Buzz for nectar.
Fur for nipple’s suck. Mortal limbs for greater light,
life’s tangle resolved.

Twas music’s love to carve songs from strange contours
in the night. Twas desire’s happy ache for knowing its
one & many ways, soft, cling, soft. Twas want’s metallic
obsession & none other but this can please, have it,
love it, kill it.

Blue fancies caused world, no world, worlds without end,
found play for the child’s happy idle, fooled up clocks & coins
as finest measure of a man’s subtle worth. Blue fancies with
their choice for every soul: this world an enemy or call it home.

What lasting? The music of every open hand.
What abide? Love’s every pock, its countless tugs upon the fabric.
What begins, & a beat, & begins again? Hope, its mystery rise,
its helpless decline.

Cry out! What breathes worlds listens, & listens for you.

tonight added 6 x 36 Nocturnes, VI, #36, Lasting...this poem is 36 poems long, the last 36 of the 360-poem sequence, took over four years to write all of these... this last poem, Lasting, took months in and of itself, travelled with me across the country and again...the last poem of these sequence, cry (for Kassandra), was one i wrote and re-wrote for weeks, building it up and up and up out of all the poems that came before, and poems that came before that...was, in a sense, a culmination to the poems i'd been writing for 23 years at the point i finally finished...now over three years ago...i hope you enjoy...and thanks for reading this long, long series...

I´ll read them during the weekend when I hope not to have my mind so fouled-on-news!!!!!!!! thanks for sharing the amazing-beautiful serie with us, friend!!!!!!!!!!!

Excellent, Arcadia, best to sweep out the news of the day before reading news of the soul