New Songs (for Kassandra)
Begin
Rest aside her dreaming heat—
her pale-rose bone-contoured heat—
Call to love through the strange years
of trips & leaps, call, it listens—
The bites of remorse become history
as well flicks of kind, red moans & blow-outs.
******
Rouse
Twin creatures fall to their soft & grip,
pull & stroke, look for your god in the cloud
when proof & glory a million striding birds
through city, desert, crying seas, breathless
skies, twin creatures for the task of making
the land holy free for all, or choking it empty.
******
Two
We walk through night’s mists,
travellers in a strange world,
sleep together in crooked dreams,
nameless things within flare up,
seeming subside by morning.
******
Along
Along your flesh find silence.
Closer to release, closer to now.
Love bountiful but little known.
Sing slower, untangle its ways.
******
Noise
Love comes in great lights & murmured strokes,
come in the slow working hustle of days,
suddenly high now, pink & wild noise.
******
Jennifer
Dream of old cruelties, raised again
by within’s burn, a face returns to
smile & crush, take me close, bite &
bite again. Nothing near but dark & light
limbs, shame’s twisting soil. I wake to a
face gritless with adore, rainy window, unbroken.
******
Element
A grassy dream of clouds & accelerant,
of sun cast small between my hands &
understood, of a knowing that does not
make tough fists of the mind’s jewels,
& one day, & more the next, the world’s
leaves fell back, & a calm, & a music,
& a greater excitement, rang high, walked through.
******
Canticle
‘Make your meal, wash your plate,’ said
the dirt-man on the dead road in fullest
high night. ‘Nothing is real, chop wood,
carry water,’ he continued limping by
me, his cold fire’s try at rending my book.
‘Swim harder, drown eventually,’ I shot
back, & return from that year’s bite, its hoary masque.
******
Sunday
If god was answer enough, if world was high
enough, if memories explained or book
did not disappoint, if clusters of years
& bouquets of friendships didn’t
fall away, if any other knot had held,
I would not be singing to you, burnt, new.
******
Swathe
Breath of beloved, spinning dreams, shadows
of a moving instrument, the night’s ticking, &
worlds everywhere unknown & colliding.
Room’s stone walls white, poor recall of
human history, shed years easily, what
here came together, what here was riven.
Many covers against the damp coast’s
press, she breathes the hours close
to me but gone within, I follow too, gentle unveiling.
******
Good Angle
War trucks across a western desert,
slow in the crumbling dusk, men prepare
for the brittle night, its many tests.
A meal by starlight high & shadows near,
fraternity awhile, everybody made the day’s
end, fright in awhile, heart shot out &
it all stops. Hope looks far across the
desert past shrub & plateau toward a
wordless hour neither death’s cuff nor life’s blind.
******
What Still
Many things lost my faith, beloved,
cities’ cool alluring fury, seers’ upraised
licks, sweep of pending hopes in human
web. Pain more the body’s now, only rebels
strum my mind high. Still, love will not
go, & Art her partner grind & toughs me on.
******
Lean
The hours by acceleration & doubt, days
of a kind but not within, what persists
a smoke, rattles up a year & another. Sad
its shape does not keep too. This life a
room, read the spatters on ceilings & walls.
Each step about crushes the burn a bit, &
where & how & why yon closed window & door?
******
Sick
The world bears its cruel by every hand’s go,
none beauty washes out. Try otherwise or goodbye.
******
Beloved (20)
She is everything
I startle & awake
Everything still.
******
Terror
Hands frozen. Night endless. Awake
to the next dream. No music. No sugar.
******
Body Dread
Thinking: break down is all, is the sum,
the holiness to none bowed. Moving hours,
distraction, then another, truth without
soft cannot maintain. Hope wilds through
all, cut hand in the dirt, feeding beast
in the snake’s maw. Something raises again despite.
******
Revital
Strange grit of voices, foul gash of lights,
sometime desire for less & less, for little,
for none. Faith twitches brightest with
the few knots minds cannot unclench.
Where the soft, whither next? The days
still come on, a burden, a wing. What
of this grasping heart, that phantom limb?
Evening breaks sienna in the hustling
dust. The sirens gain their braided cry.
******
Then
Eventually several kinds of time, slip,
twist, none. Shift, angle, returns. Field
in fire ten years ago with high figures
falling, explain, she asks for a cigarette
a thousand times & smokes it through
her tears. Another dances, here, then,
always. Accumulation explains, entropy desists.
******
Falling Sharp
Collapse to whorls of dull, streets with
no curious ends, days flaked of high.
A beat, another, waiting. Where the inner
branching paths, the sudden fruits of music
in hand? Where anything at all. Some face
passes by the hundred. Hours the same. How long?
******
Stray Wise
Best mystery falls bloodless through
the fingers, does not sag & slop with
stormy portent, symbols hustled close &
twined up for easy use. What does not give
way leaves no bones to mark passage or
remain of any kind. Its pursuit a new world
from soul to soul. Of no kind another’s clue can bear.
******
Balance She Said
Spark believe me it’s in the blood,
visions & high splatter let fall easier,
the blood bears unfolded the crimes &
every ideal, memory loose & sugaring,
tis blood remembers you, blood will cross
the ground & recall you again from nothing’s tide.
******
Empathy
World’s hustle will squeeze a hand
crooked, blue an eye to the driving
heat of kindness, loons’ cry in the shadows,
what sweet potent when creatures feed
together & stroke the greatest moon’s night.
‘Ware the blood’s troubled signal of a nearing face
or offered offered purse. Sleep fully to dream’s
wise of stars. Wake wide to what pricks, what soft.
******
Sentiment
Ruins revive in dream, a tall clutch of
orange trees some mind’s scirocco night,
some years ago, some hours, low eyes advising
not deep but deeper, the music far on
stage, alone suddenly, call it the world,
climb up further, solitude beckons so, & sigh,
a fragile necklace of blue shells that life’s remain.
******
Limbs
Succor in the making impulse, raise up
hid worlds for a sing & a shine, counter
hours of dirt with carved pretties, twist
from flamed-out icons to what may yet
arise, old nights of dance sure built it
high, new ones the only chance awaiting.
******
Bond
Roots deep as blood, deeper, something
like fair dream of a private cosmos
& then behold! What leaves from love,
what fruit of desire. Deep as blood,
warmth in the night, sweet as power
when its coax & caresses a new world into being
******
Sorrow
The years take by sudden words, twists
through abrupt shadow, love’s survival by
move, rile, strange, pain dims novel
to common, live sadness then aging
sorrow. Remember the brilliant hours,
wings upon a golden sky, music flashing
your adored faces, childly ecstasy at
arrival, at departure, at the stars
themselves & their wild possibilities.
******
Intensity
What cold, what cruel, how the moments
rise up in a fist of light, awareness throbs
in witness to high green & raging pink, again
& again the stone impediment, night’s wild urge
scatters in sunny markets & calling
faces. A man awoke from his crash &
named himself nobody, began his new
crawl. Harder still to refuse such lure,
to take the bite & burn, respond true & twice harder.
******
Map
That night in high neon, street corners
multiplied the city’s fury, four ways &
more, breathe hard & slow, this feeling
of magick surge is ten thousand years deep,
I will accelerate by this music raising me,
I will sit in this rusty cafe divan & my ink
will be night’s high neon mixed with my crazy
heart’s full moonlight, & I will sing, &
I will fear, & I will remember for when
the crippled hours come around again.
******
Turn
Sky departs & the years weird into smoke,
cities flicker by, faces in a moment but I
learn to avoid names, best to let mountains
& streets pass wordless too. Suddenly, a
moment, music high enough to pillar the
universe & its every creature. A laugh,
this hour, this seat, this stroked bit of
green. Gone again but for its clue, its
breath through the veil a moment, turn,
just turn! Sky returns but what of all
the passage since? What fades, what remains.
What runs through strong enough for
sentiment & war. Turn. Just turn. Just turn!
******
Yield
What reminds of the treed courtyard days,
mind later singing faster than the moonlit
train, dancing with the dirt road aliens, graveyard
spooks & their obscure sweets of comfort, grinding
the last of night’s potent in a bed of dust
& wires, dreaming the walls throb with
golden snakes, some pretty coming tomorrow
maybe? That was long ago. The western air
rouged with promise, brushed taut, sheens
through my eyes & hands until choiceless
my old woes & other years spasm new music &
less deny their muscle & bone to these fragile going hours.
******
Accelerate
Pain rife through the blue land, no electric
finery can dim, hurt untold by star-readers
& idol hustlers, the day was high with numberless
cruelties, night brings cover not relief. What
hope, greater potent than coin & tome & fist?
Twist elsewise, there’s play in the bonds, &
other hands groping too. Stories of a better
breathing world outside the city’s flu, call
to raise the unseen & feel the jostle among
dreams, hark breaks in the days mono
passing. Not men saving the world nor world
salving men, what survives the blue land is
passing through now, waving clover in a roaring stone canyon.
******
Wild Lands
Buried in this day’s hunching music,
what chimes unheeded in the coarse
wild lands, what magick loose in shadows
of shadows, what missed by minding
the talky noise & nearer hour’s glint?
Stretch toward dream antipodes even as
they snap with daylight’s oncome, as
no faces in the carriage or market to
confess the great terror and seduce of
everything. Pretty masks shine with lights.
Blood & the mystery of all this, a day’s
snare in youth bloats into years, a forgotten
soul’s great will becomes history’s steel titan.
Whatever grace or moonlight reveal, will you
trudge by nonetheless, nobody’s slave but your own?
******
Tenderness
Not enough the past a slough of
remember & regret nor each day’s task
to spark a new fire, deeper-boned way
of kindness. Not enough. Freeway’s night
herd ever coming, acceleration without escape,
what drags along, shades & stumps alike.
Not enough. Cries by tinkers & godmongers
alike over steel & green dissolutions, worlds
of peril, sure only of blade or beaker’s
counsel. Not enough. More bearded, ragged
figures in the rain. More rain. No tremble
in things at new year’s best answer.
Not enough! No bars drawn but what
a heart concedes, no past’s shadow but
a soul still leaning back. Whatever remains
to service or slave, call tonight brutal
with new, let its blood & matter wild
the world or bury in daylight’s next swallow.
******
Missing
Your absence a flu vining through
my heart, hard twist of quivers, shouts,
calms, & night’s great conjures fever up
restless & subside blank. Low I await
your sliding touch, blue-eyed intense,
nimble laugh, gaze loving into my dust,
fingers wild & slow til I tease back
rowdy live. Old shades never far,
pains raise new spikes & lash through,
thin comforts recall lesser days,
dark hours tangled lost & foul. Twist,
quiver, rough pass, another, still love
in me greens toward your light,
we swim a twining flow to a rich high
of fruiting melodies kind & luscious.
Random the world kills one spark &
bloodies up icons for another. By what
softs & shines creation, I pledge myself to you.
******
Coming
None else but to sing true, sing true,
songs like shaped winds of joy, music higher
than coins, playing is conduit, secrets
sought dissolved in melody, power of green
more rhythm than evolve, the gift sparkles
in dreams while the suffering wonder how long.
******
If (et tu?)
If high was not enough, no sunrise again
salmon & a calm, no touch what inner
deity wishes, if the green could not salve
by seed or shade, if music dissolve
by its own seductive sugar, if
dream tonight could best offer a
coffin & a forgetting, what remain wild &
unseen & laughing, blue & raw with bliss?
******
Hearts
Death somewhat depart again, & here is
love arrived past my break, from sing to
careen to sing anew, raise the magick
root & spread it high & long, a thousand
words to ask why the universe, why desire.
Thousand thousand & little through the
window, more leaves for the resistance,
more drums for the dance. None love
the fist of war but few hark the kiss of
peace, & I sit here tonight within elixir’s
farther reach, falling to dream of our
carriage & a path seductive with brighter trembles.
******
Strange
Lean my arms til heart burst,
call it birth of a cry long borne,
smear it pain across the night,
hark new sparkle in sky & soil.
Break the binary, highs forever rave
through the universe on broken, bloody
feet. She flushes berry as we vine
& moan, love’s music the world’s oldest growl.
What answers yet untold to sore yearn
in flesh, leaves, summer’s brittle buzz,
biting snowy dusks? How deep the inhale
of world’s breath, how far heard its beat,
how great its song? Love she preys
on my hoary want, new thrills my
roots, thicks my fruits’ honey. Worst
careen yet came, & I nearly fell.
What held, universe? What held?
******
Aver
Strange too, heart burst not my own,
its cry carried through me & along
the brown surf, riddles of gaunt fields, &
follow with blood’s believing grit, something
matters & I do too, something matters & you
do too, fear the old bones a greening world
feeds. Dream tonight like a new universe
aborning. Love tomorrow & tomorrow til the most
rubbled face sheens with surprise & new want.
******
Lost
Raw sky flicks within & remember,
many streets then & high among the threads,
the one-legged prophet in his crown of sage,
redbearded antichrist roaring through trash,
his touch jarring soft, his long tattooed
lover with dripping brush & fell gone
melodies, shops & cities unknown histories,
how the hours recline & diminish.
Lost it hurts but sudden moments of miracle,
left glints, right caresses, shaking wild
the web, what’s this face, why those words?
What the surface, which the dream?
Countless carriages, countless love, call it
all a freak’s happy ride tonight & swing on,
your home no longer a from but a to.
He told me what matters in blind purple
rants, she sundanced out his rhythms with
flaming ropes, how the hours rise & play
blood better, lost when home no longer a where
but a why, tonight every tree & alley
sparkle with hunger to give & give & teach others how—
******
Raw
What matters is when they bite you hard
you bite back harder. When the days taste
poison you spit them out & stop swallowing.
When love crushes, you crawl away fast.
When love flares again, you cackle & praise.
What matters is that you never look into
your glass & think: “shit.” What matters
is if you do, scorch the world & raise anew.
******
Cut
Call it dreamlinger, tapped darkness within,
how teeth & claws snaggle private song, drag it
near, the tearing face, biting wings, wait
til it sleeps, wait til it sleeps. Monster’s fade,
lift loose & gone, cling lastly to life’s bastard hope,
when you flew between trees, conjure hands & go:
Hope calls two stones together a foundation.
Hope recks highest moon its true companion.
Now wake: let it follow your day, still
sleeping, let it near, no fade, no fear.
Face of torches rub you feline, urge you
hard, move you off a step, another.
Push back. Give it night’s furious breath
from your depthless golden sack. Seize your song:
Spark up worlds unseen again & call it Art.
Remember wherefrom with spiking’s rhythms of dignity.
Day’s long grapple how it cuts at dream’s
lingering vein, mocks by blind feeding
wire & clownish trade. How the faces bleat
quietly til a brightly goatish laugh & the day
shivers with brittle awe. What now, what next?
Life’s fidelities seem much a brutish scatter:
But wailing swerve the golden crumble & neon bite.
Caterwaul prayer beyond jagged houses of habit.
Dusk spread by patches with a rust’s creep,
by puddles with a ghostly prowl, come wilderland
of truths to city & ville alike. Shaped metal
bumped back by conflagrations of wood & rhythm.
Every flesh is lightning, ready for the wild
swing out & breach new the space within:
Now break it wide with want’s raging torque.
Now the old mystery is anew: water & how you came to be.
Endless nocturne of abandoned roads &
trackless sky, collecting fragments of
God, heart bearing its scarves of hope,
tending to where mercy hoards & what pity
forgives. Wavering hands & leafless trees &
raw fear of the cage & grave too:
Dream leans you toward what leans toward you.
What’s rising will bear you along until you learn how.
******
Rejoice
Path from I to we, through vines & sea,
through masques & blend, loud shows & Zen,
from I to we, sugar to ease, mutts
& dollies, freaks & lollies, neon umber
to petal rose, higher & higher, cliffs
& does, papers that blare, badges that sin,
what the exit out? Love’s long fall within.
******
Rejoice!
From I to we & again, grace both
neither & whole, the waking in kindness,
the blackout of cruel, small tails,
small hands, famous eyes, herds of
play—great men smile & climb lower, What
rests lightest is wisdom & spends just like sunshine.
******
Corona
Blue taxi blows green sparkles at my
low shamble, cold rains cut the night wide.
Again I am in love & know how to hang on despite.
Nocturnal music traces through neon & then oak.
I’m finding selves old & new within, again.
I am in love & ten men could not beat it off me.
Roads go nowhere til someone takes a new
step, nods, & a next one. I am in love
& can’t tell my oldest brothers, they fall apart
in many of my dreams & urge nothing anymore.
As dogs we ran, chasing scent, calling
it song as men do. Where that scent now?
Raise it, that grace within your chest,
up, up now! Let it out. World howls truths
everywhere. Let it out! I am in love & trust you will do well.
******
High Road Over Water
These nights through my heart toward
older nights, starry clouds churning up song
among them. We still bloom, the stars
& books & wants & I, still careen the long
trails of hope on slow dank carriages,
watching wasted fences & men’s fears aflame.
Still bloom, conjure scarlet fancies for maiden’s
sigh. Still bloom, without root to worship
or demise yet known. Streetlights low on
highways accelerating press by huts of
half-dead souls, soon dream of what’s gone.
These nights befriend without counsel, &
daylight come, secret fellowship dispersed.
******
What Bend, What Break
They brought him for powers he carried,
an odd human magick to shape words &
move souls. They crowded toward his hands,
offered their sugar & their sex, wished
also to see up, over, & through like him.
He inquired no names. At winter solstice
he punished the village by his absence.
By spring few remembered their older
sturdy days. Midnight bonfires devolved
to ritual, orgies fewer, mere ceremony.
Will crushed by devotion, old trees halved
for passing furies, birds & wolves gone
but the fullest moon. “You must believe!”
he cried through the cracks & the blood.
Eventually, nothing remained but the net.
******
Slave
Elusive sweet, seeds on a fading breeze,
what lips touched upon its highest hour &
still long keep, love in strong wood before
the first cut, what old clowns reign the
heart, what pines for our pining, how faces
seen at rest are going blurs of yearn, slaves to
what? Cries in the leaves wish but do not explain.
******
Maul
Fingers vibrate toward dusking night,
eyes less glaring, melodies cherry up again,
the long scar of years gentles to a pocked scroll,
my beloved turns to me in the crimson air
between us, hand to my face, heart to my yearn,
moon to my inner tide, roots to my new day’s high.
******
World
Hand’s shaking spoon raises the sweet,
his brown shoes gleam, his memories
warm with a secret day’s kiss, the oils
smooth along her crevasses, flesh turns
to dust & feeds the world anew, spirit
pocks & breaks it a little more, whatever
god does creation’s work smoothly between them.
******
Rough Circuit
His face a scarred bib tales of his many
raw hours. His bowl of leaves quell what
shaking loose within, a taste of water, still
hungry for a new friend. I want to tell him
no hour waits without mystery. My love
sups upon this feast without a passing word.
******
Remember
A few hours, a few faces, what blows
back in dreams, & again, some tavern’s
thrashing joy, how love awled a crimson
scar, & another, remember in ink but
the prettiest notes still bear life’s frail
stink, deepest rhythms will never undo,
today will join those days in dust & last forever.
******
Traverse
Wilds in the travelled heart, where foul
from old dreams sunk in pitch, where growth
most ferocious no steady patch to stand—
Love become a fine sweet roaring, her touch
true sky to roots, danger to sadness remain,
stir to power within, prayer the universe may yield.
******
Beggar
World boils in broken blood, put a coin
in his hand, merchants wrap the stench &
call it a prize to the morning crowds, kings
sober to its many centuries while assure
to the steady thump within, musicians find
its potent a knot with rhythms to wrestle,
melodies to lure rawer lovers into high
moon’s dance. Put a coin in to his hand,
you have never lived before, your gestures
are your own, drive on harder tonight,
say no more to broken blood, begin there
on Pine Street by way of hope’s insist you will,
a coin in his hand, a hand upon his side,
tap the light softly, perhaps its petals will
undo, world boils in broken blood, nod &
desist. Further along Pine Street another &
not turn away. Not again. Not for coins,
not for anything. Beggar what possible & reveal what else.
******
Tribe
Sunk in flesh among hours, its snarls & mews,
watch two pups hurry in rhyme to a master’s click,
I pass hungry for meat & tired of truth.
******
Grace
Flesh not dreaming of mountain or high book,
pink & green torrid for this sniffing, swallowing,
moment, trailing raindrops on a labia bloom,
three fingers against a cheek’s shadow, moan
it harder, flesh for spiced fruit & jumpy
bourbon colored skies, sans a rule or a wrong,
only knots of blood remain to trace & call
history, flesh isn’t listening & you blow wide again.
******
Trance
Most hours a blunder toward suck or sup,
pass of dirty floors & wrecked hulls, & a
hundred dull eyes patter down & move by.
Then a causeless slip into the hidden sugar
of creation, what danced first & will shine last,
wings arc through amber skies & tangerine leaves—
Some face turns near or away. Brute flesh
raises corona of cries, howls from the war &
bed’s empty dreaming. Blink, roar. Crumble & submit.
Beasts herd into boxes of knives & there is
no why but hunger & meat.
******
Liminal
Long piss toward the far ether,
good greeting from the grass & passing
bodies, hot arc of years caterwaul
choiceless cling to this globe, nights
sweet when sips of spark & blooms,
foul when skin withdraws to olden soil—
when little difference seen between what
sings out one end & shits from the other.
******
Mending
Mending continues in the morning cold &
light, by drop by drop world accumulates
& exhausts. Roads crack by noon, burn, cities
follow. Kings & ways. Empty dusk instills the
desperate vigor of loss. She mixes berries with
moonlight & we eat—on night’s lovely indifferent shores.
******
Vagabond
Raise it up again in your sweat & rags,
more of the olden song, still pushing
out the green buds & biting pink fruit.
Call it blood’s deep thrash & no way out.
No way on. No way at all. Reck dusky light
curling round spurting leaves, the world’s, your own:
One hand bids cross. The other blinks cease.
Yours yet to rouse up the third, & swing it hard.
******
Conspire
What new earth dreaming nearer tonight?
What restless among babes & blossoms,
signals by oaks & across seas, who
expires grasping the extra word needed?
Nets in the sheen & veins high toward
explain, which rhythm brings us nigh?
Who born tonight knowing both war & its resolve?
******
A Fierce Wash of Clouds
“Where was I hiding out,
where did I bury myself?”
—Wislawa Szymborska,
“May 16, 1973,” 1993.
The hardest strums through the heart
came first, echoes running alien wild
through later years, strange melodic worlds
born of old hurt, forgot rails, a violet
hairbrush, & brutal indecision. Even now,
these nights of blowing crimson blossoms.
Hardest strums came first & reck their
echoes tonight, rain through a lover’s
window feeding brightly where another hour’s
like fang to flesh. Raw crowds in the
high moon leap toward them, dark nut of
deep forest burst with a thousand groping cries.
Hardest strums through neon desert cities
strange as chocolate, most visible from
afar, we heave, fall back, then another
morning, we break to fragments, liquid
to light to aching chalices of blood,
no explain better than memory’s brutal freight.
Strum, strum hardest, bear the danger
within how you will, its endless question,
ceaseless yearn, bodiless laugh & yet
a fragrant promise in your passing
flesh, scrawled with scant instructions:
here comes the echo, here comes the strum.
Here you are still, not dead, finished, nor much begun.
******
Comfort
The mesmer of dreamless yearn, a hand
relaxes in mellow light, no result but continue.
I am wishful of friends in the long terrestrial night.
******
Impact
Marry her touch of adore
to thoughts of least & less,
& call next moment by its truth:
a mystery, a vein brutal with flow.
******
News
The war first came when one man leaned
on another man’s breath. Share the air or
seek its rule? Every hour newly decide.
******
Lesson
Desire the fruit of heat, love sets
all alight. The trinkets governing
the streets boneless to a soft, hard, first kiss.
******
Reveal
Each day sheds its hours like none before
nor any to come, this grass lord of all
green, that sky a god to all wishing
crimson’s true glow, stars secret sheen.
New with breast unstroked, fruit just now
falling, egg’s hatch, & hark that first new song!
******
Erotic
Strums of fingers to moonlight’s
window falling. A hand where a
heart needs it most. Where the break must heal.
******
Promise
By day I waste among coins & crowds,
become a freak’s charnel of whiffing wishes,
fed to sunshine by toothed branches & burs—
By night I fall wide, slow & sudden
the pink flash, new fuel tumbles in,
hope’s great careen, music’s lawless surge—
yet what by morn remains of dream’s brilliant harass?
******
Thrash
The world’s fleshly cage or a more primitive
spark the foul tether? Lawless wilds of
desire or the trail of crimson blooms unto
the straight costumed fury of settled men?
What skylines would blithe let burn for
another hour among violet shadows & wordless books?
******
Many Sweets
Desire flutters in the shadow of a branch,
where a hand unnoticed reaches, less inches,
my nods between our words when I decide
(& decide again to be sure),
how walking together more we than astride,
& I don’t know where from or why,
from a linger to a lasting, a billow to a tide.
******
Footballer
Not that crushed blood mountain night,
last, little memory, nothing to the high
moon’s walk in the swamp, its neon cowboy
we saved, several worlds we blew up in song.
******
Wine & Women
Sweetness, I hope you're balling someone
or something good tonight. I hope you
supped with golden gladness, danced
with the free fury of an oft-dead soul, & on
the dawn swim where happiness mirrors the sky
******
Braided Rings
Her book told it sad & too long I listened,
molten slave on late night trains over high bridges,
why was this so? Music’s sex & teeth remain!
They call it our wedding. Wings explode from
a crossed heart, the rude meat of those
gnarled hours gives over to hearts arriving ferocity.
******
Will
No hour to king & coin without a slave’s wince,
will you shake & sing true? No world endless
by men’s simple, brutal reckonings. Will you
let dream raw tonight anew? No love which
does not break & bury & raise. Would you be
free as the green beneath your feet? Will you?
******
Space
Little words, I meant them, let them go.
Each hour still glistens, on humility’s prow.
Sweetest music passing, I mean to follow you.
******
Maya’s Lament
Tis a perpetual cauldron boiling ‘round
the heart, thicking quiver of grinding passions,
aching nebulae of tangled faiths, frantic
run of wresting desires, a soup hoarier
with any life’s summing fractured hours,
churning with dreams of that last great burst.
I water nothing & bear its growth as mark
upon my own. I break no rocks with my
arcing sweat to build up new. I sing
helpless with rushing black ink & wait the
words enough to crack this life of its rotted
shell, reach the root of its withering caterwauls.
Come high enough to breach its ever waxing shine.
******
Wrack
What fury tonight in old letters, crackling
liquid talk of spiky brothers & pinkcheeked
others, nothing bites like old hunger, how a
year or an hour shone with softer, swifter
light, what remain? What remain? Stains gone
by, stains to go. Other nights by taller starlight
will reach past again, better explain why.
******
Murkier
What was that strand riffing you
years ago? Old city streets, their
evening flashes of blue, riled spring
lace & whole nights crumbled to a
bare moment’s sparkle, its lovely idiot
remain. What can memory do but suffer
your wither, bear your fractured bonds,
lean you past mind’s tangle to a rawer hue?
******
Through
What was that strand riffing you
years ago? Old city streets, their
evening flashes of blue, riled spring
lace & whole nights crumbled to a
bare moment’s sparkle, its lovely idiot
remain. What can memory do but suffer
your wither, bear your fractured bonds,
lean you past mind’s tangle to a rawer hue?
******
Sky Song
What higher living than among burs & beams?
Just look up! A freak’s hunger for fruit made
this world, scattered things cohered into night
& tree. Now look down! An unknowing leap brings the
best song, faith roar greatest when belief but a tendril.
******
Among
Swarming suns over sprinkling plains,
what yet hid below in the bent empty
house, some other year’s bright, broken plan?
What mornings watch brown hills twist
with fire, slower hours drawn in lavender
dusk, dreams of cities depleted to a raw few
merchants of plastic moonlight & crumpled meat?
What looks toward where the traces fall,
wilderlands remain, rutless beasts bound free?
******
Absolution
“Our only guide is
our homesickness.”
—Herman Hesse,
Steppenwolf, 1929.
Sing yon blood-glow of moonlit ardor,
tonight’s growling dream nearer our restless
fecund, & want better of time than its
brutal leavings, night’s anxious wane through
daylight’s familiar oncome, sudden a flash &
one set on by two, common wrong on a crawling street.
Sing & we deny trigger’s cry as this world’s
farthest truth, dare another way & later
come the numbers. More watches us kindly
than we know. Such the blind man & his
stick’s snuffle down the street, warned by an
alley’s breeze. A lost brother nods & remembers.
Sing while men divide the wilder lands into a
here & there, naming what they do not know,
missing the tongue of spark, of waver, of wane.
Soil will swallow the great wall & the ode’s
reaching hand alike. All soaks empty in moonlight
upon its hour, climbs its beam, falls untold within.
******
Wrack
What fury tonight in old letters, crackling
liquid talk of spiky brothers & pinkcheeked
others, nothing bites like old hunger, how a
year or an hour shone with softer, swifter
light, what remain? What remain? Stains gone
by, stains to go. Other nights by taller starlight
will reach past again, better explain why.
******
Murkier
What was that strand riffing you
years ago? Old city streets, their
evening flashes of blue, riled spring
lace & whole nights crumbled to a
bare moment’s sparkle, its lovely idiot
remain. What can memory do but suffer
your wither, bear your fractured bonds,
lean you past mind’s tangle to a rawer hue?
******
Through
What was that strand riffing you
years ago? Old city streets, their
evening flashes of blue, riled spring
lace & whole nights crumbled to a
bare moment’s sparkle, its lovely idiot
remain. What can memory do but suffer
your wither, bear your fractured bonds,
lean you past mind’s tangle to a rawer hue?
******
Sky Song
What higher living than among burs & beams?
Just look up! A freak’s hunger for fruit made
this world, scattered things cohered into night
& tree. Now look down! An unknowing leap brings the
best song, faith roar greatest when belief but a tendril.
******
Among
Swarming suns over sprinkling plains,
what yet hid below in the bent empty
house, some other year’s bright, broken plan?
What mornings watch brown hills twist
with fire, slower hours drawn in lavender
dusk, dreams of cities depleted to a raw few
merchants of plastic moonlight & crumpled meat?
What looks toward where the traces fall,
wilderlands remain, rutless beasts bound free?
******
Absolution
“Our only guide is
our homesickness.”
—Herman Hesse,
Steppenwolf, 1929.
Sing yon blood-glow of moonlit ardor,
tonight’s growling dream nearer our restless
fecund, & want better of time than its
brutal leavings, night’s anxious wane through
daylight’s familiar oncome, sudden a flash &
one set on by two, common wrong on a crawling street.
Sing & we deny trigger’s cry as this world’s
farthest truth, dare another way & later
come the numbers. More watches us kindly
than we know. Such the blind man & his
stick’s snuffle down the street, warned by an
alley’s breeze. A lost brother nods & remembers.
Sing while men divide the wilder lands into a
here & there, naming what they do not know,
missing the tongue of spark, of waver, of wane.
Soil will swallow the great wall & the ode’s
reaching hand alike. All soaks empty in moonlight
upon its hour, climbs its beam, falls untold within.
******
Habit
Glance compelled & again by hard hips &
steaming metal, whipping rhythm & cries for
promises near or worlds buried. Every face
its name yet knowing fruits little. I remember
ragged nights, wet leaves blowing off the sill,
knee to knee with him, her, we, hearts twist
for warmth, high complex of matter. Wracked
blowings, seeming gone. A shine & a tale, seeming gone.
******
Lorn
Dream a sun of flesh & flame,
its buried scent in my blood, its memories
how I watched breezes of daisies
in a half-moon’s light, its given some
spectral new world I cannot imagine,
its home where desire at rest, smiling to stone.
******
Gaol
I dream the cage within the cage
& humble pass in & out. The water
sparkles like kisses from a trusted
mate & yon smoky white god points
not up but around. A sore vow among
kind leaves remains: to sing & love.
******
Compel
What convincing to live in a men-hewn world,
coin’s twist & bullet’s bite, kings lord orchards &
direct vengeance, which small kindness beats back the bomb?
Crumble in every fist too, ancient kisses remembered & sung.
******
Helpless
Call it God when the hour rests soft
upon your cheek, the faces laugh &
everyone kisses the stone pipe in great
fraternity. Call it God when sunlight
tips every heightless wood up there,
when the air itself weaves sugared
song through this hour rests softly
upon your cheek, faces touch &
withdraw through swathes of darkness
& call it God as familiar bed becks
with its sweetheart smiling through
your webs & chaff, knowing truer
the wreckage of your heart fine
& holy, alive, grateful, take her
hand, let life’s glint of a dream
draw you pictures of the possible,
call it God as new day streaks
through them & something else reveals.
******
Weightless
The wall of beggars longer every night,
nearer the sleep of merchants & preachers,
where heat & bread kept & counted, longer
every night, jungles flare, canyon rivers shout,
longer every night, books of belief prophesy
from the distance of tangled words, longer
every night, those whose dreams bite &
bite again, longer every night, soldiers
watch through cracks & speak low, the
wall of beggars longer every night,
more lose a mother, a heart, a shop,
a job, longer every night, the king
thickens his wall & smiles from ever
more afar, longer every night, feel
it, nearer you, eyes you cannot avoid,
drying mouths, hands clutching for the
same air you’d share, but is there enough?
Call it song but what do the days
call for? Lose in the pretty & call you
that a God? The wall of beggars longer
every night, low heads mask childish
memories, of sky, space, small kindnesses
by big strangers, longer every night & when
the whelm comes it will be those who
sided coin against heart, iron against
wood, army against soul, you will be
buried, forgotten, lost, mounds of brutaled limbs.
******
Holy (i)
Between two shadows, up above a call
from one to another, & here drifting near
dream's moonlit curtain, look, there! Away!
******
Holy (ii)
Secret nebulae swept full into a
lost, light gesture, memory blood-foe
of every king. She smiled, called nearer.
******
Holy (iii)
Every petal a note, every note a face,
every face gentles into dream & slides
in with all, sugar's best sweet, a moment or more.
******
Stump
Halo shrouds the going & gone,
corona of great leaves about a
departing thing. What radiates describes
secrets born in all come & coming.
******
Arc of Ray
Trail fruits off many ways,
high & out & other, fronds & webs
blow back the wind, & the cross
between here & hereon is complete
to the savage, calm mind observing.
******
Sway
Gather the hour sweetly near,
surf piling diamonds on the green shore,
lone gull near & fed, far hills & the
elusive question we ask them. Wooden
totems scattered, sun & sea-hewn, wishes touched.
******
Zero
It was crush sun by sun, flaw &
distort & jerk. The grey building heaped
coin through wires & cracking blood.
Moons & truths gathered up to its door
& perhaps smiling I let a few pass in.
Some bastards won't break without breaking you too.
******
City
Something lost here, left back here,
come back here, years later, where
is it? Ratty kids yell gleeful high
from jacked wheels, cruisers drift
by watchful, there's where I sat
with a poorfolks sandwich & a book
urging higher by its tale of something
lost, left back, now here again &
what of it? Streets cross ghosts on
tracks & beat sleeping corners. Music
here still? The night won't tell,
just push along with humidity's
gnats, stars by pines by memories
unraveled, & know something lost
here, blinking traffic light spots an
old Sunday paper, left back here,
four youths scream for their best hours,
come back here, finally. Nothing here, nothing here.
******
Raise
What of the past? How it sticks,
how a guru, how it betrays. Remember
everything, but lightly. Feel its flutter.
Know its pierce. Morning come, now breathe,
relax. Beck the new hour with all you will.
******
Fury
Among lorn faces want for balance,
its high & lower strums, sun's assured
arc into dream's pushing ripples. Grit
of memory in every seam, faster swim
strangely follows lesser, & on, now all
rests in a mold of memory. Fury, waver.
******
History
Fragrance of want in a night
wracked & blue, what hardly smolders
secret, flesh's godly cry for taking,
what blows countless by raw second & century.
******
Power
What cross between humble & thrust
will blow out the great green sparkles,
will bring a properity's shimmer near &
worth swinging & suffering for? Faces tangle
between wish & want, hunger swarms by
noon, the night eats every weak impulse blood & bone.
******
Shadows
When blood knows not blood, when fists
gird squalling streams & manless acres,
when the common high is crushing another's
path with scythe of coins, run, stumble, &
run again. Nightmares plenty await for every
laughing vengeance, mirthful stories of ruin by tavern's blur.
******
Weird
Longing not a ceaseless in same
waters, more a doe among ferns &
away, a cloud's violent hour & the night
cooler for dreams, a memory hooked around
tight, an else, a nothing, an all. A face
explains, the moon shines smart & detached.
Two walk among vines & swamp, everything
listens as they speak nearer to the core
burn, raw smolder within. "He meant it.
I wish I'd believed him." "They took the
rest. I remember everything." Tell it all &
what left but infinite remain?
I don't know any of you now or ever.
Is this chasm mine or ours or everyone's?
Touch tries, & for a passage there is calm
& common. A song cracks the worst of it,
laughter bites in tandem, hope blurs up, sharpens,
leaves in this grove seem a loving shade of green.
Can it? Maybe? Again the unclench tonight
into dreams where why & nonsense dance their lesson.
******
Doctrine
Romance the hard rhythms & reck the
change, conjure from the brightest of small
fingers, & something lost in wide, bracing nights,
raise it by scalpel & song for what affronts,
when someone says the war is endless,
reply that peace is longer. Love is great & small.
******
Brutal
Dream that man's death tonight, be a
welcome the world forgets to bestow,
there was kindness, there was water,
there were prayers & kisses, he wondered
about sky & soil, & reck how bullets
stripe fruits & no better. Reck how kings
wish for rows & silence. Reck how preachers
keep God safe in books & under rooves.
Dream that man's death so that he
does not die alone, be his carpet, be
his flower, will him an after for the
pain of his end & for the child who
roared because every hour was still to come.
******
Nearer
Find God in your dear forgotten hour,
among shadows & scarves, the news
of despair by numbers, there, trembling,
not a shape for music or wish, closer,
less clinging than a feeling, not hardly
a thought, there, that juice, bare, spiced wisp.
******
One, Again
What crosses tonight in blood &
metal badges this place in memory.
Call this a lord's training house or
starflight's origin's, reck the want
of beast for beast a code's key or
waiting transform, these hours open
with no promise to any creed or creature,
& nay beholden to the land's fattest grasp.
******
Ruin
Old songs, new songs, what sings higher
than drums & dust? Why here tonight?
What falls truest through the heart lands,
softly, as Art, but still: Why here tonight?
Home the remain where thoughts cease, its city,
its lover, its patch of green, slice of moon, ask:
Why here tonight? Old gods, new gods, faith a
crooked spasm within, love a mold around the
heart, its poison & cure. Why anywhere tonight?
Faces snap in the fire & neon, faces lean on the tired
carriage, faces bulge the frame, faces ripe dreaming's
wilds. How will I lift the bent & lorn ones when
I've lost how to rise? That's why still here tonight.
******
Remnant
What trio of hours to burn for new light,
tap which bloom within, call for its feathers &
its shake. Nights remembered by nobody.
What to burn. I asked. I offered. It mattered.
******
Remember
Learn nothing from your driving miles &
wet angry hours but this: kindness swathes
many gaps within & love breaches what none else can.
******
Grateful
Another dream of loss, then angling for any
hook, better a shackle & whichever face than
these fields, what they say too bluntly. Wake:
she breathes with me through trouble & hope,
she walks the pines & blooms we call our path.
Grateful on this carriage midst its lorn creatures,
one for every seat.
******
Purpose
What purpose to trick from life
when the heart curls in toward its
memories & darkness? A checkered
child dances in the wind, wide
baskets of succulents, the glare of
crowds & talky avenues. Happiness
a sugar among doomed choices, disease
of desire luring the hungry to cry & crawl.
******
Blues
Call it freedom for an hour's slow stroking
& a shadow's calm explain. Tonight
the lights blink go & slow & no, I ask
for another. Mouth to mouth, thigh
upon thigh, born to breed breeders, suck
one last & die. A sentiment called history.
Call it freedom with a slave's love for tune,
for the wind in a thin skirt, for how
dreams will mock any trembling day, for
the lure of elaborate suffering, is
every pain your own too? Is any? Mouth
to mouth, the late hour's searching blue eye.
Call it freedom if it's pretty & rattles
sense or senses. New pebbles arrive on
shore & each carries first conception
of the sea. Another new one up & shining,
today & today & today. Elsewhere tonight,
going, where the knots loose or reveal.
******
Perfect
Raw climb through brush & shadow,
swathed, embraced, alone, peaking,
each fade sudden or gradual a blink
like the last & the next, thumb, tentacle,
stardust, arriving to the last hour,
next dream, first quest, broadest dawn, final why.
******
Redux
I've learned little more than this:
every flesh & eye tapped ever by
the long ruinous hand of memory.
Try it some olden way, by a pill's
twist or machine's jerk, nothing really
goes away & nothing ever returns.
******
Walking Fair
Bare comfort in careening years but
a lost sugared hour by a thrashing tide,
half slippings into secret knowing. Little,
less & less, then a dear hand freely covers
that wound, the world shifts as it cannot
toward peached light, new music, clearing path.
******
Mortal
Will it come with relief or sadness, with a
yearn for high cypress in winter, for a thousand
thousand bodies wracked with rhyme, hope
that what beholds tells of all gone hard
by, was it truest when it bit or when a
strand licked near a smile & a curled scent of
want opened its petals & naked gave its song?
******
Sheer
Toward a want clear of stricting noise,
sniff it pink & high, dream it, take it,
accept it, poison more in old gods' tamp.
Want is mind's yea to flesh, to world,
to like creatures equally trembling
with blood's hot smack, lone cries from each to all.
******
Flesh & Stardust
From the brief spectre of a nameless glance,
what this world? What clapped once, twice,
& bid it be? Lights leaning ever nearer,
the books now an endless glare, printed
noise, gesture & distract, how came that dented
face, that soft empty one, that hurt ever-
asking one? Or find answer with the
swooping creatures for a raw bite & a wordless
fuck & quick cease? Range the mansion &
the mountain & the lightless howling
canyon, find what? Event, reaction, more
hours. Sleek carriages crowd the freeway
& flame the sky. Look! How her lace
to a heavy touch falls. Listen! The fat
dark birds raucous meet the new sun. Wait.
Flesh & stardust: no difference. The music
in our molecules hustle up the making more.
Flesh & stardust: only a fool or a liar preaches
to men alone, won't explain to dogs & gnats.
Flesh & stardust: lights leaning ever nearer,
maybe tonight's dream will crack & needless to return.
Flesh & stardust: while here less to knowing's
ceaseless feed & more to empathy's great push.
Flesh & stardust: swept into one's deepest
blackness, wish for nothing, break what remain.
Flesh & stardust: what this world? Clapped
once, twice, bid it be? To whom its burden, its praise?
******
Faith
Not to cease the song til every creature
his tendering note. Not to cut dream & wake's
plotless cycle until all bear kindness' touch
& follow love's true gesture. Not to let go manacle
nor wing til neither are this one's or that
one's rare path. Among faith & justice a happier call.
******
Nocturnal
Neither lord nor king in this late petalled hour,
not the brutals nor sweet fierces of daylight's straight trade,
what remains, & rules, is her voice. Reck freedom. Reck it hard.
******
Wrack
What fury tonight in old letters, crackling
liquid talk of spiky brothers & pinkcheeked
others, nothing bites like old hunger, how a
year or an hour shone with with softer, swifter
light, what remain? What remain? Stains gone
by, stains to go. Other nights by taller starlight
will reach past again, better explain why.
******
Music for Noone
The night curls around a warm cup &
the sad memories fewer til I notice my
foot's goofy dance to the tune at hand &
there's little left but everything hungry remains.
******
Death Fragment
World prophecies nothing I wish to
know tonight. Blood squirming, another
fist brushes something soft. Barks before
dawn, everyone up, three trucks &
another braindead flash of conquer. We
have learned nothing from our hopes &
fears, from trees, from children. We've invented
good gods to ignore. Carry on—
******
Day Labor
Nothing reveals fully, scummy yellow leaves on
wet trees, pink trinkets in the empty shop, sloppy
day, sloppy heart, sloppy world. Someone gifts me
an explaining word, the bus driver smiles, I scuttle back,
this hour passes with little rise, a little wrack.
What moves us along? Is it memory, hunger's clue?
******
Acoustic
World revealed by its puzzles, answered by
its wonders, found simple in its fragments:
the solution is love, yes, the solution is death,
yes, the solution is conquer, yes, the solution
is God, yes, the chorus twists & magnifies & calls
its ruin of bones civilization. Builds blind anew. Yes.
Then a few tinker & poke at ancient pebbles,
study calcified wings & a telling fracture of spoon.
Dig into smaller spaces, the mathematical wilderness
of atoms, the secret humming tracts of molecules.
Closer? Yes. There? Never. A relativity only by
dance or fire or high song revealed? Yes & yes & yes.
******
Harder
Some nights further than dreaming,
there was soft, open code in the broad
night’s flames, translation home simpler
than time’s bitch try, the drums cleared every
mind, this was not another tough explain fell by
the easy word god. Every rude flesh vibrated to know.
The skies read the hour’s drama & slipped within
the rhythm, moon sleek with pull & pulse,
stars their long message arriving, some nights,
dimensional attraction, the same red cosmic
tangle engulfing all, taste it in the dark
field’s clover, how the happy lunatic traces
laser beams into trunks. Some nights voices
broke of their drone, daylight’s entice to lean
& seem to know, fell open, the wider cry,
the crossed red moan, behold the ticking
chug in every moving soul, now reck beyond too.
Some nights truer no matter this lean carriage
of hours, worrying tatters, muscles working a climb
over a least bare hill. Behold a year countless
before you woke & wanted, & another remembers
you with a leaning stone. Some nights further
than dreaming, no other ride to reach for, &
many years gone just a prod toward knowing to come.
******
Through
With the years a black sentiment, a lean
back to soft old songs & howling brotherly
nights. Two great tankards smashed in a
blinking street. Called it Art. Collision
of flesh & want, called it love. Now look through
for what remain. Less & more, by fury & release.
******
Want
Strum it once. Now again. Ceaseless in the years,
one hand to the next, great tomes of wood
can’t sop it up. Touch begins life, & never lets go.
******
Surrender
to nothing. Again ride dearest hope on
trembling breath & away, look everywhere
now. Calm, calm. Help me, Universe, again,
great noise within, bright & flagrant to sing
as ever, arching with wettest cries, four limbs
smack & many hot reply. Sing me deeper,
strum me elsewhere, new, where long hair
& dreaming vines legislate, where hands know
& touch, true to every hour’s pink murmur.
This autumn wind blows stone & the world
twists warm toward mercy & dull toward gain,
feel it in the strumming pour & angry wrinkles
of the slurring beggar, pretty faces in plastic
chatter by. Help me, strum me, teach me
high magick in common spark, surrender,
Universe, to nothing, but breach city’s suck
& grind, dreams more with brick’s grit & neon
jibber, release without crack, faith with
open hands & eyes, new love over old wrack,
bulb & root of peace over spasming pounce of
conquer, help me, Universe, strum me, stroke
me, whisper what I love & do not know,
what craves me in petals & lures me in sky,
will to live in dearest hope & show others why.
******
Brief Funk
Where night’s farthest growl?
Is the hour to heal or to dance?
My hand opens. My heart clenches. Which?
******
Midnight Yawp
I am trying to know with all that
I am. I call this Art & breathing
both. Is there anything else? Love.
Love the remaining corrosion & clue—
******
Glaring
What rare-told revel swoons through common
streets & masking days, what enigma girds
& bears, what clue neither shadow’s nor
brute’s, streaming lemon dusk rimming
empty pale sky, what finale the old man
saw on his fall that night, what did not
arrive when a branch clipped his demise
but took a good toll of flesh for its mercy?
******
View from the Shore
Wield it finer, that rhythm & muse,
your thorns & lilies hardly sum a life,
hours when sugar dabs your fingers &
the light murmurs, “grace. . . fun. . . miracle,”
hours gnawing at heart’s nearest gapes &
night barking, “regret. . . wrong. . . waste. . .”
Wield it finer, do good now, rhythm folds
within a moment’s gasp, the muse turns
from you, passes through, singing without pause.
******
Night Flight
Rare hour, what magick blows wide &
subtle here, in the jet’s coarse humming,
now, when hardly imagine the world below,
this, the sweet between of mystery’s
perpetual flight, you, my glad partner
in scraping the pearls & twigs together,
me, raw singer of pretty tunes & tried ruins,
them, quiet strangers in this winged carriage,
something else, crying to jeweled awareness,
higher now! The earth bears all fine even now.
******
However
What was it like when this city was world
& home? Blue days lorn for a maiden, flushed
nights high in taverns, roaring brothers in
song, hours alone near an answer, many
books, the clutch of mysteries, their near sum
to —? I found new construction atop memories,
wrinkles & sentiment where another year would
lean, cut wild, endless hurt. Power fallen to treacle & ash.
******
Consider
Travel to a yesteryear brown to its soft
bones, sleep wild in crabbed universes &
wake with a terrified shout, what this place,
what its people, who are you? Who am I?
I live crooked among songs & watchful
among men. This yesteryear’s city held my
love once, awhile, forever, & gone. What resides
within still the feeding seeds below wounds & old grooves.
******
Softer
When will the mystery give it free or devolve
to scraps & stains? I ask, love it all
sloppy & music, learn little or less from
the hits & loss. Listen, the world is noisy
with urge & delay. Ask, the mystery high
with hard mock, lures every hunger to the next hour.
******
Only
Same park has bled through my years &
we arrive to each other still. The glare
of time this morning acknowledges our
bond, & too our eventual passing.
******
Sorrow
Not for the rusting downtown, there’s little
left here to go. Not for the years ran broader
through another world here. Not for the
unbreaking blue over bare skyline, sunset
an endless tail of glare. Sorrow for what
did not happen, yesterday’s many hands
gesturing toward paths never followed.
******
Strange Blood
Hard memories root below the belly,
crimson scars where hours bumped & bled,
feed still on thighs’ golden want & heart’s
disappearing paths. You, the roughest ache,
I can touch where you dwell even tonight. Call
you one name or another, brown eyes full
above, others in tart bedchambers, or the ones
I found mapless & tickless in my dreams. I call
you all strange blood, riding my later years
as hard as I do. You, the roughest ache, root
below the belly, connect one to another as much as
the ancient egg wherefrom & the glaring crumble to come.
******
Revive
Reaching in til scrape, & scrape again,
cross two memories, call it a new hour’s
song, reach deeper, sex together path from
wherefrom & hunger’s ever, this is
Art, chewing & chewing the mind’s bones
til a melody of dust flickers through.
******
Tavern Light
Another night midst the click & clink,
the dancer leaned near me & smiled til
neon birds puffed countless from his lips.
“There’s nothing but praise,” he whispered.
“It’s our only mission. Our only home.”
******
[to be continued]
New Songs (for Kassandra)
New Songs (for Kassandra)
Last edited by Cenacle on December 4th, 2013, 10:55 am, edited 28 times in total.
Tonight begin posting "New Songs (For Kassandra)," a series I wrote over the course of a year, dedicated to my wife, I wanted to write something very different from 6 x 36 Nocturnes, shorter poems, see if I still had power and worth if the poem was six lines or twelve...Tried writing a poem a day, after a couple of months found I was losing quality by the pressure, ended up with 180 poems, or about one every other day...here it begins...
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gypsyjoker
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Thank you for posting that.
That's all I can say.
That's all I can say.
Free Rice
Avatar Courtesy of the Baron de Hirsch Fund
'Blessed is he who was not born, Or he, who having been born, has died. But as for us who live, woe unto us, Because we see the afflictions of Zion, And what has befallen Jerusalem." Pseudepigrapha
Avatar Courtesy of the Baron de Hirsch Fund
'Blessed is he who was not born, Or he, who having been born, has died. But as for us who live, woe unto us, Because we see the afflictions of Zion, And what has befallen Jerusalem." Pseudepigrapha
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stilltrucking
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- Location: Oz or somepLace like Kansas
Great poetry is beyond entropy
Just as the entropy is a measure of disorganization, the information carried by a set of messages is a measure of organization. In fact, it is possible to interpret the information carried by a message as essentially the negative of entropy, and the negative logarithm of its probability.That is, the more probable the message, the less information it gives. Cliches, for example, are less illuminating than great poems. ~ Norbert Weiner
http://www.brint.com/wwwboard/messages/1532.html
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Doreen Peri
- Site Admin
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Today added New Songs (For Kassandra), #37-42, the lines I like best fromt these are:
"What matters is when they bite you hard
you bite back harder."
I had to keep this in mind this summer when I got laid off from a large company, so their bean counters could smile happier, and keep their own jobs. After a whole summer of looking, I found another job, but keep this lesson in mind for the future.
"What matters is when they bite you hard
you bite back harder."
I had to keep this in mind this summer when I got laid off from a large company, so their bean counters could smile happier, and keep their own jobs. After a whole summer of looking, I found another job, but keep this lesson in mind for the future.
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