6 x 36 Nocturnes, VI, #25-30

[Cenacle]

xxv. Balance (for Lisa Marie)

"No way out but through"
—Robert Frost

In a timber of shadows one hand
slides by another. Silence. Waiting.
A thrum of murmurs, & something damp
floats upward toward moonlight.
Dreams graze from the same pool.
Shuffle. Hurry. Still. This myth is mean
with will & fight. It can bite harder.
Shhh. Wordless. Touch accumulates on
the branches above, the dew of fierce
moments to come. Shhh. The night is an
elixir of endless conjurations. Shhh.
We hunt secretly, wield two songs about
to mold together. Hours without names
shuffle sticky feet through our words
bound for home. Love a form of anger
with life's emptiness. Something loves us
to love each other. I dream of words
like mocking & abandonment until the phone
rings. You didn't jump the bridge. I keep giving
you my pen. We keep nearing what we are.
Among the stars you wiggle & laugh.
Bite. Now harder. Blood makes best song.
You laugh & strum. Green melodies. Strong flesh.
Art a freakish crash inside empty warehouses
while creatures elsewhere sleep twined,
beyond knowing. Perhaps a day hence nocturnes
dust, dead water, least feelings of flow.
Entropy's crime. No scriptures. No sages.
Nothing whistling through the flute. No seams.
Yet our new day beckons like a fist.
Give it seeds, ideas, & skin. What is passing
tonight the bonds of someone else's wish.
Something says: don't look back. What we shall
become explodes cleanly from the shadows,
collects its legs in morning rain, gallops wildly
toward the home it sniffs but cannot yet see.

******

xxvi. Healing (for Lisa Marie)

You hold the bag of fire made of starlight
& demons, carry it with you through the blind
countries of your despair, believe it an icon
or an angel, dare not ponder the blood it
sucks from you, how it taints your music,
a little now, a little more, how its face
snarls at your uneven footsteps, your notice
of tender sky or pale butterfly, how it mocks
& mutes your future with a plan you will not to see.
Once, twice, you drop the bag of fire & run.
You run toward sunlight, clean water, clothes
fit for your deepening, dancing bones. You run.
Open doors hint sanctuary. Open hands promise
healing. You run. Til across your path the bag
of fire, made of starlight & demons. It picks
you up with your very hands, & returns you back
with your very feet. But the pale butterfly remains
near, even now, the open hands & doors still & always beckon.

******

xxvii. Dislocation (for Lisa Marie)

Tonight, as ever, chasing angels.
Tonight, as ever, chasing you. . .
A dream so fierce it's made a world.
This world nearly spectral enough to resemble you.
Stars summoned for your healing, music for your heart.
Universe of trees, hear my cry! Grant her release.
Days spill & empty, sometimes only silence for songs.
A spectre in the night drapes along me: you?
Hunger & thirst & desire i beg maintain me.
A pilgrim walks & sings & shapes the road with his wishes. . .
My angel sleeps tonight wrapped in magick I conjure.
My angel sleeps safe in my will to adore.

******

xxviii. Anniversary (for Lisa Marie)

"Tell me of beauty beneath her skin . . . "

Tell me of stellar beneath her pain
of a first light never silenced
of a trust always being gained.
Tell me of a power in hazel eyes
& slow fingers
Tell me of a muse I've long dreamed
Tell me of a goddess I've forever known
Tell me of language fine as starlight
Tell me of music gone & come again
Tell me of the broken bones of silence
Tell me of her epics, let me conjure them.
Tell me of sacrifice, one for another
Tell me of freedom, a green embrace in the moon
Tell me of love, one for another
Tell me a new path, rock-strewn with wishes
Tell me cold daylight, crumpled blanket, a scrap
Tell me morning song, its feelers, its whimsy
Tell me how to take her hand without twisting
Tell me how she will lead, or simply to trust
Tell me she is the power, the thing I've ever followed
Tell me how to sing greater when the night
mounts a fury
Tell me how to preserve her above glory & wrong
Tell me how to worship, & worship, & receive
worship in return
Tell me the nocturnes are nothing yet
bid me keep writing
Tell me her laugh crumbles my pages yet
point toward my next lines
Tell me I am her muse, a like creature
in her longings
Tell me what songs, which elixirs, how to defend
without owning.
Tell me something brushes by, someone
calls my secret name
Tell me pens are bare branches while she
leafs out forever
Tell me fire, tell me ocean, tell me
how she preserves me
Tell me what good a song when
the universe splits forth
Tell me my hands yet mean something
toward a good undefined
Tell me the future bears her face &
tis mine to describe it
Tell me cages are for bones not for
creatures of gold
Teach me how to adore her, & everything,
& nothing
Teach me less & less, until I lay prone
Tell me of beauty beneath her skin
Tell me of beauty beneath her skin
Flay me, swallow me, own me whole
Tell me of beauty beneath her skin.

******

xxix. The Weight (for Lisa Marie)

Love beneath love sucks the bones
dry of despair--
Dream within dream preaches strange fires
found atwist in new fingers--
Frenzy upon frenzy point toward our
distant island's jutting hulk--
How these songs still trail your crimson
strands, hail yet your secret caverns--
How what approaches a fist, a fleet,
a creeping & a howl, magick to
shatter swarming cages, human beasts--
How yet pages shake & sum, fingers pray
to branch & starlight--
These weighted days will sink to fragments.
These fat hours will wither to blue music.
Love beneath love stokes new fancies.
Dream within dream murmur of damp merry games.
Frenzy upon frenzy live the happy mad artists.
We curl toward each other, a great desire still unnamed.

******

xxx. Terrestrial Music (for Lisa Marie)

"Let the beauty we love be what we do.
There are hundreds of ways to kneel & kiss the ground."
--Jalaluddin Rumi

i. Manifestation

Blue fancies stray through dawn's silken
quiet, love atwist with grief, a lowing
breeze, crumbling sighs. Fist, then fingers,
seek among dreams, now hold a fragment,
now possess a message. Follow today's sun into
the sky, clad with pen & faith. Resume. Go!

***

ii. Softly

Cry out, softly, til something, somewhere,
responds. Sweat every love with open hands,
raw want. Beg, chortle, no way out but through,
a path of nails, skies ever fierce, dreams
like trenches. Sleep on open ground under minty-
bright stars. Cry out. Loudly. Open hands.
Chimes, butterflies, rusting lillies--something
somewhere will respond. Life's countless
brawls, quick & slow, & what tempered light
may emerge from life's beatings. Become
a vessel patched with music & empathy. Thine
heart greater without, deeper within, abler for every mending.

***

iii. Wilderland

The water's rustling speaks your name.
Speaks mine own. Speaks what persists
between us. No binding ring. No fat quiver of miles.
Persistence. A fat drunken man watches the sun
set over the water. Hums & believes. Persistence.
Unpretty magick bent on enduring the harder years.
I love you. Thus truth poisons my heart & I speak.
What remains, a deeper glitter. What persists,
a fistly shine. Tapestries of silence wove for
walls receiving no beam. Hazel eyes near me
& I flinch. You are not real. This but a dream.
Another claims you. Cloudy laughter.
Just the waves tell most what to do.
Their merest song, a dominion's bedrock.
Their human trade, their finnish play.
Few afloat still remember: how deep they sail within.
Another claims you. You wish him well.
The water's rustling dims, a newly checked tongue.
What passes for knowing resumes its chuckling hurry.
Warriors plan, deny dreaming of elves.
Persistence. Whichever the river, whichever
the bed. Persistence. That last dream in the night,
teeth hardly loosed by the morning.

***

iv. Unassailable

A star, a fist, an unloved corner of history.
Our branches shine tonight but some exceeds
them still. Where our humility? Where our pity?
We live on tonight to love like a better wisdom.
We live on beneath our roots, beyond our leaves.
We live on to kneel, to dance. To kneel. To dance.
No fist between us, no knot, skin rathered to cloak.
Sunshine enough to blind & reveal. Text. Roaring.
Nothing less than everything to come beckons.
A star, a fist, a tremble where the songs cling together.
With trees to learn to sing again. Hands near
me quietly too. Soon easier to kneel, easier to dance.
We live on tonight pocked with secret knowing.
We live on tonight suddenly high on leaf & starshine.
We live on tonight perhaps some study our writhing's example.
Nothing divides, the night breathes us back & forth.
Even sunshine slows us as many count toward one.
Nothing bright with colors. Nothing blue with music.
Nothing brings a center, floating, ever nearer where truths abound.

***

v. Undulation

The world rough & round, a quaking of movement
& pain. A rocking cage through which music
shoots, flares, aches, frees what it can,
comforts the rest.
I think of wife & daughter, loosed from time,
walking with them in a talking forest,
one bids me chase, the other bids me run.
Returned here, wherever, warm still, I resume to
poking in darkness for some staying essence,
an oak leaf perhaps, your moan, your laugh,
a within beast bowed, a fist uncurled. Sugar. Haven.
The world rough & round, countless paths of
sea & dirt. Legs hurry. Fins splash. Feathers
cut. Here, wherever, there, where you glow
womanly fine, something upholds all.
Truths sweep past, mistaken often for something useless.

***

vi. Her Aura

Half moon. Terrestrial music leaves no
heart unchanged. Wind traces out the notes,
blood gives them trajectory. Half moon.
Tonight my dreams will be a heap of
gleaming pebbles. A rumble of blinking chants.
A bouquet for muse & her pilgrim. Under half moon.

***

vii. Ceaseless

Whole moon. The light covers you in
my dream's eye & I think: Worship?
Possession? No. Something more willow.
Deeper unending. You dance nude with
the light while I sleep. Whole moon.
Tides of love. Hazel eyes swish my cheek.

***

viii. Mint Rhapsody

The world exists beyond contusion. Beyond lesson.
Beyond what's missing. Beyond what's music.
The world exists in spaces untouched & those
abused. An unseen glance at evening's wane.
Words scattered across a golden field. Honey & fruit.
The world exists beneath soil & stars. Leaves
tossing toward freedom, the light devolving in
spatters. Memories dapple the grass. Hungers
arise without names.
The world exists & I love you. Another confession.
Burn it. Make another. Again chasing angels
we again near collision. Dreams braid our nearing
world. A forest of magicks, tall skies of fecund
spells. Songs for a bed unlaid & its laughter.
The world exists in its most denying shadows &
troughs. In moments looking past your obvious
smile. When you confuse me with a history's
foulness & fist. When the soul we share forgets
its power, its will to joy & abandon. The world exists
& I love you. See how we near. Feel what we are.

***

ix. Desert Wish

An urge to stray beyond mourning, burn what
remains, gestate anew. Bubble & scatter among
tunnels deeper within. Everything passes, touch
twice & gone. An urge to hollow out the sky,
drink her waning elixir. Flatten cities & try something
else. Kiss absent lips with desire's fingertips.

***

x. Incandescent

A pen sought a butterfly with words
of shivering air. Sought with words candy
& true, sought to build her a song
of woods & waves, promises to sink
soil & hold, know her secrets without
saying, without taking them away.
The pen kept on writing: how to live
in this world? Nights answered:
harm noone. Nights answered: serve
her. Nights answered: be the flaming
thing you are. Be high. Be higher.
Dance til nothing's left.
Love rightly. Love noisily. Make an
art of your kiss. Brightly, brightly,
wrote the pen, no plans, just a wish.
The butterfly neared, & still nearer.
The butterfly filled a field, & now fills the world.
How to live in this world? Build it well. Give it love.

***

xi. Nothing

Dance til nothing's left. Maraud the night.
See her rise in your sky. Accept this praise.
A path burns before you. Walk it with cold
steady steps.
Dance til a flicker settles atop your head,
maybe it sings, maybe it keeps you awhile.
Her storm gathers you wearing a
gown of dust.
Dance til your icons & pathway rise together,
the sparkles & substance maybe suggest a world.
See her rise in your sky. Wish to praise & know
her. Climb her pattern. Try her songs.
Dance til everything matters. Then release. Again.
Nothing's left: try her songs. Nothing's left: see her rise.

***

xii. Homeless

Now just a wish for a bed of simple
dreams after a deep bowl of heat.
Now just hands wanting to do more than
cower & defend.
Now just a creature too long among stones
& lies.
Beloved, turn my way with your rags &
prayers.
Beloved, see this magick I bear in
clean water & soft words.
Beloved, submit finally to the freedom
which watches about you.
Crawl if you cannot walk. If you cannot
move: just ask, I will bear you.

***

xiii. Sinking

Little has moved since our last
rambunctious hour. No new counsel
from leaf or dream.
Steps offer no third way. Pursue or
desist. Things light & laughing in
this world still press, elude.
Our next hour nears, behold its
powerful tread. We know each other
better than the world. Right now
this wears like a curse. Pursue, or desist?

***

xiv. Rising

I met a city man who'd fallen & bled. Now he
was laughing. Muddy night sky. I'd been
biking & praising Art. His temple bled.
It dripped. He smiled & tried to explain.
He smiled deeper & stopped trying. I thought
of you after & sang aloud, biking,
through my open heart.
I met a man with an inquiring jingle.
I'd been hoping not to crash. He took
my coins & nearly looked at me. I said at least
neither of us is bleeding. He nodded &
said amen.
The police surround everything. The king
touches his chest. The preacher diverts
with a smile. I biked til I met a wall
of words. Now walking, now crawling. Now
words, now better. A cafe crowd drinks
coffee & sings happy birthday.
You rise again within me. Choiceless, happy, I pursue.

***

xv. Conjuration

I begin to sing a different song, to entice
& woo you from the within we share. Half-
light & lingual magick. Conjuration. Release.
Sliding along the hum of the hidden universe.
Lap at your hair with a wind from my afar.
Conjuration. Romance of a roused & muscular
love. Dream of the moon: slowly. I receive
you with warm red oils & teasing insistent chords.
This is what we do, are, can be. Squeal. Scream.
Approach yourself again, beginning on the day we
crossed, the moment our love blew up. Kiss the moon.
Receive me anew. Conjuration. Closer to sane.

***

xvi. Residua

Approach yourself again, beginning on the day
we missed, the moment your love grew off.
There. That moment like a rat or a roach,
first of a countless. Now. Speak a spell, loudly,
& see that moment throttle green & go. Speak
again, a few stumbling words of love laced in
freedom. Look. The sun is shining. You made it.

***

xvii. Damage

Now awake. A dream still looped in your
curls, keep it, shhh! keep it. A glint in
hazel eyes your locket, mull it, sing to it,
touch its fur. Its feathers. Its skin. Sing
to it, slip it when fearful between your breasts,
pour candle wax over it. A burn. A memory.
"Nothing really. Nothing." The wind knows better.
Each noticing tree as well. Shhh! Comfort
this tiny world of its woes. With casual fingers
& giggling hums, comfort it til night's crown
sits upon you again.
Later awake. Later entice this dream further into morning.

***

xviii. Weightless

To refrain & await you. To walk steadily
in the meanwhile. To sniff & nudge a world
yet to be. To guard, to dance by its laws.
New songs inside an egg's dreaming. What dreams
ponder, & summon when hopeful.

***

xix. Nothing Less

Singing costs it all. Beasts feed at my
despair, their offer of help.
My mate tangles in a dream neither
day's nor night's--
My mate wonders at how tightly I still
hold her within & beyond--
My mate wonders. Sleeps in murmuring
darkness--
She feels like the universe's first child,
blinking in a bright field of spells.
Something between beasts & the greatest moon,
perhaps told more bluntly by the trees'
blaring wind. I don't know. I sing.
I say I love you. It costs everything.
The beasts feed. I don't know. I sing.
I dream my mate is stirring. She drifts,
& breathes my touch.

***

xx. Haven

She rides along the train & smiles.
Dig a blue mountain passing by. Scoop
the puffy sun, really do. Trees dark &
thoughts flaxen. This is what it's like
when a song opens up again, returns.
Within bubbly with hope. Love me. You still do.

***

xxi. Full Moon Over Willow

Our dream is a recurring insistence,
leaves & petals, dawn & lightning.
Our dream swoops with song & moon.
Our dream is high above, deep below.
Our dream resembles a fist, tall
grass, a blank hungry canvas.
Our dream is a thrashing press
against our many hands, our
shared heart, a mean throbbing,
a soft ticking, denial & futility
a dingy fuel, call it love, sketch
it like a red balloon, on & on it strides.
Our dream is patient as a nocturnal
prowl for living meat & giving loins.
You rule me with a chime of laughter,
several furious words, a lingering further
in than blood. I rule you with hard songs
speckling pages. Our dream concedes nothing.
High above, deep below, butterflies
without, claws within. A red balloon,
a noisy bothersome thing. Patience.
Our dream pricks the moonlight,
licks its shine, probes its worth.
Our dream sleeps between us, keeps
us flicking & wiggling, builds a world
from the starlight, sings of ecstasies nearing.

***

xxii. Fidelity

I think some call it bright faith.
A hunger becomes a path, a hurrying
measured in songs. Fidelity. What
clings, what sinks in, what is discovered
there already. A leap no longer dream,
no longer moan. Fidelity. A leap. She knows
my bright faith & upholds me.

***

xxiii. Bright Faith

Fidelity more a taste than a feeling.
Something low, between the veins, a breath,
several, where is it? Where did it go?
Yonder. You'll see it. Past kiosks & signage,
vendors for & against. Yonder. You'll
see it. Wait. Let the crowds pass.
Wait. Leaves stir. Always with you.
Ride on.

***

xxiv. Juniper

Sometimes another nears. Laughter
resembling us. Aloft awhile. Another
moment, & gone. We persist, nothing
more.
The phone rings, you listen. Rings,
I wait. Rings, we long. The worlds breathes
& burns slowly.
I was with your juniper. It tells me
what you think, who you are. Counsels
me simply: persist.
Your voice bright in my mind, knowing
mine bobbles too in yours, jitters.
Others speak of us like a beast they fear.
A pressure they witness & desire.
We persist, nothing more. Nobody else.
The phone cringes between rings.

***

xxv. Unto

Build a life toward the castle of trees we dreamed,
morning sunlight knocks & whispers, rings of kisses
moving quickly & slowly. In waking I'll moan toward
you. Seized, you'll smile & preen. Beauty shines for
its master ever newly. Rawly. Build this life from
surf & mushrooms. Distance & drive.
Scars powerful still but abstracting like myths,
corrode lessly. Pen at rest, cathedral of embrace,
I'll study your heart. Learn its liquid noise.
Castle of trees to come, dapples childly days,
names of things yet unpossessed, heave &
flow of dawns spent twined.
In waking I'll writhe & bite, kick & grasp.
Bitten, you'll laugh too. Desire triggers its
own laws. Faith loosens the fetters. Defended,
you'll finally believe. Castle of trees,
the way through clear at last. Til then, something
persists, call it love. Love will blow up with joy.

***

xxvi. Underworld

Light flares across the dead sky,
rocket fast, honey slow, then gone again.
Music grumbles up, now strange, now sweet,
now promising, but again an inner claw
calls for silence.
Better to thrash with hope--blood-blind & cringing--
dash for the next rock--, or mock the sacred
within & without--nights open-eyed & counting--
body numb as a drowned land's crown?
I dream of you. You are surrounded by
the spikes you have wrought. I am through
calling, no more calling. Turned toward you, then
away, I listen.

***

xxvii. Scorch

Let the crowds pass. What remains? A lock
of hair, an old letter. A giggling photograph,
a scrawl about fidelity. Close the curtains.
Sleeping cat on the bed. The radio's silence.
The phone rings. Ask: what remains? Days
pending conjure in the privatest shadows.

***

xxviii. Dispossession

Always with you. Days accelerate, I fall
with them, neon passages through autumn
leaf corridors. Kings wager coolly the greed
& fear they see around them. Stars rain
forever on a cosmos sung from nothing.
Afar from me, perhaps you laugh. My cup
trembles. What awaits? Always with you.
Friction sparks the gap: a bridge? a wall?
Do you still sway with me toward magick
conjured from chimes & butterflies?
I keep asking the passing nights:
Another world is possible, but who have
you become? I keep pitching into the
music. I keep transmuting my despair
& love to song. Keep radiating from
my night's long twisting heat. Seeking in
coming days what rewards the mystery bears.
Always with you. Faith growing into something.

***

xxix. Ministration

Persistence. Flames in airless vaults,
a press forward & a nevertheless, the very
darkling skin above us lit with possibilities,
persistence. Suddenly you listen. Worlds
fall away, you listen. Persistence, breathing
quickly, you listen. What matters anything
when a wished hand remains afar?
Listen, try a new way.
Another moment passes. Hunger, uncertainty.
Persistence wears a bright skirt, calls with
a quick smile for a touch. Something like
petals, feathers. O, persistence. A cement
bench, near a landscape freckled by mansions,
traffic warped & went. Someone with a child
hurries by, singing. My face in the moonlight
cascades your vision. We continue fruiting.

***

xxx. Radiance

Terrestrial music leaves no heart
unchanged. Chimes blow across the night
touching singers, oaks & slaves. Persistence
sometimes bursts for the light within
to crackle brighter. I leave a candle at
your door, feather in its wax. A few words
murmured in your dreams. Wonder over them til
later I explain.

***

[Cenacle]

Tonight added 6 x 36 Nocturnes, VI, #25-30, the underneath to these poems is the summer and fall when they were written some 6 years ago, I was living in one city then moved to another to be nearer beloved, and there were moments, still excruciating moments when I got close, when we were facing each other, when all seemed possible, and then the hour would pass and the distance would resume...I was playing live on the page, everything going down on it was happening at the moment, so the ink was fire and the page was kindling and the music resulted...

[mnaz]

No way out but through... non-elective path.
I read that awhile ago.

"Follow today's sun into the sky, clad with pen and faith.
Resume. Go!. What tempered light may emerge from life's beatings. Become a vessel patched with music and empathy"...

"Half moon. Terrestrial music leaves no heart unchanged.
Wind traces out the notes, blood gives them trajectory,
an urge to stray beyond mourning, burn what remains".

"Dance until nothing's left. Maraud the night".
Did I mention how much I love this?
Checking my notes.

[stilltrucking]

That was willow
I took a few notes while I was reading but towards the end I was too engrossed with reading.

Love a form of anger
with life's emptiness. Something loves us
to love each other.


Entropy's crime. No scriptures. No sages.
Nothing whistling through the flute. No seams.
Yet our new day beckons like a fist.
Give it seeds, ideas, & skin. What is passing
tonight the bonds of someone else's wish.





Tell me her laugh crumbles my pages yet
point toward my next lines
Tell me I am her muse, a like creature
in her longings




These fat hours will wither to blue music.

"Let the beauty we love be what we do.
There are hundreds of ways to kneel & kiss the ground."


--Jalaluddin Rumi

Follow today's sun into
the sky, clad with pen & faith. Resume. Go!

Few afloat still remember: how deep they sail within.

Truths sweep past, mistaken often for something useless.



An urge to stray beyond mourning, burn what
remains, gestate anew.


The pen kept on writing: how to live
in this world? Nights answered:
harm noone.


Crawl if you cannot walk.


Possession? No. Something more willow.

Judih had a GO called “reading poetry”
I think this was what it is about.

[Cenacle]

Thank you for the attentive reading of this work. It means a lot to me. These poems were not my first, since I had been writing poems for years before I wrote Nocturnes, but something happened in the process of writing these, I think. A deepening into the music? I don't know if that is what I mean.

Perhaps, because such a long series of so many poems, I raised up more and more within an argument which the poems then played at as different voices in a chorus. How to live and why? Other questions too, and many answers.

Looking at them recovers me to their days, and knowing there are dear people reading them in distant places renews them in unexpected ways.

So, put simpler, thank you. The grand finale is near.

[mnaz]

"Love is a form of anger with life's emptiness"..

Yeah, that one grabbed me by the throat too. It all seems verse born of highly personal experience (go figure), 'tho rigged with all of these lightning bolts to trip over..

"our new day beckons like a fist".
This one also got to me... don't think it can be read without some inkling of pain, the quieter variations.

"Few afloat remember: how deep they sail within".
I got lost in eastern Oregon once. No, I mean actually lost, atop the sagebrush sea from which the deserts were carved. I remember I couldn't remember exactly how deep I'd sailed upon that sea, within...