It is late.
The light is gone.
I snuff my candles and
Prepare to dream.
There are worlds and worlds of traveling
Between days.
But I have seen a blue
In the great day of my life
That out-blues the blues of
Dream.
The Island is a body,
And Its blue is the water of the world.
I have swimmed it; I have waded it;
Its density has held me up to air.
No bird speaks;
Only the liquid rush of tide,
Shuttling in and out like
All the worlds of form.
I go with the water.
The light is all there is.
Thursday, January 20, 2005
Days of Seasons of Days
One of your friends has died
After a long journey.
He never brought any Ring to
Mount Doom,
But he did open your heart for you.
That is enough.
Today is the last day, after which
Sunrise will draw the ocean.
The dead one will be remembered
In all the ways you do that,
Until it’s done,
And it is the last day.
Then you don’t need to
Pine away the forest
In a world of leaves,
No matter what the season,
For the season is itself
Days and days and days,
Each one the last
Each one the first
And each one between
Days of seasons of days.
In the hour of our passing,
Like days to days,
We will navigate the night-time
With the vessel of our
Heart-open attention
To the shifting of the seasons.
After a long journey.
He never brought any Ring to
Mount Doom,
But he did open your heart for you.
That is enough.
Today is the last day, after which
Sunrise will draw the ocean.
The dead one will be remembered
In all the ways you do that,
Until it’s done,
And it is the last day.
Then you don’t need to
Pine away the forest
In a world of leaves,
No matter what the season,
For the season is itself
Days and days and days,
Each one the last
Each one the first
And each one between
Days of seasons of days.
In the hour of our passing,
Like days to days,
We will navigate the night-time
With the vessel of our
Heart-open attention
To the shifting of the seasons.
How About a Nickel?
How about a nickel for every time someone tells you how they are unhappy
In no words at all?
“Well,” you say, “nickels are relatively worthless.”
“Yes, but if you add enough of them up, and
And
And
And
And
There is only Happiness,
In no nickels at all.”
“Your words are worthless,
Beyond adding.”
“Yes, they are.
And
And
I’m Happy beyond words.”
*Plonk*
“Stop throwing money at me!”
In no words at all?
“Well,” you say, “nickels are relatively worthless.”
“Yes, but if you add enough of them up, and
And
And
And
And
There is only Happiness,
In no nickels at all.”
“Your words are worthless,
Beyond adding.”
“Yes, they are.
And
And
I’m Happy beyond words.”
*Plonk*
“Stop throwing money at me!”
I Am Not a Poet
I am not a poet.
I inherited this language.
It writes and says its way with me,
Flowing from the Who-Knows-Where
With degrees of speed and notoriety.
My sieve may have some holes,
But it’s what I have and use.
Words come to here,
No matter what the weather or
Degree of internal heat.
Anticipation makes me melt,
So I freeze the water and wait.
But under the ice is movement,
Which trickles and sings down to earth,
And waits for the thaw from above.
I cannot break the ice;
The weather must do it.
And I wait for the
Bird who will fly through my holes to the
Sky.
I inherited this language.
It writes and says its way with me,
Flowing from the Who-Knows-Where
With degrees of speed and notoriety.
My sieve may have some holes,
But it’s what I have and use.
Words come to here,
No matter what the weather or
Degree of internal heat.
Anticipation makes me melt,
So I freeze the water and wait.
But under the ice is movement,
Which trickles and sings down to earth,
And waits for the thaw from above.
I cannot break the ice;
The weather must do it.
And I wait for the
Bird who will fly through my holes to the
Sky.
Every Form of Mother
How many times does the trail rot away from your feet?
To what end do you climb any mountain?
The end is the top, and then what?
Do you lift off into space,
Or go down the other side to a life that is
Similarly different
Than the life you left?
The snow covers all sides
And the peak.
Footprints remain no matter where they are stepped.
Shocks slide down the mountainside,
Bringing a symphony of falling, of gravity.
Odes to all the natural processes have been spoken by
Every form of mother, even mountains without mouths.
Winter takes place on the slopes and above.
Weather makes the beaten shape
That weathers and rests all the somnolent children
Of sleepytime’s happiness
From out of the wind of no time.
We are not in the caverns,
We are not in the crags,
The mountain does not speak to us.
Only the air which swirls around the peak
In the forlorn months when there is little light
Can tell us which way is the sky and
When the birds fall all through the living ground and into
Wells and wells of swelling dynamite.
I live for the explosions of the neon new.
The ground shakes,
And I sleep upon it,
Awakening to a time of blue shelters amidst the
Clammy hands of tiny flame that
Breathe every ordinary moment into our lungs.
There is beauty in the mouth,
But I cannot speak it.
To what end do you climb any mountain?
The end is the top, and then what?
Do you lift off into space,
Or go down the other side to a life that is
Similarly different
Than the life you left?
The snow covers all sides
And the peak.
Footprints remain no matter where they are stepped.
Shocks slide down the mountainside,
Bringing a symphony of falling, of gravity.
Odes to all the natural processes have been spoken by
Every form of mother, even mountains without mouths.
Winter takes place on the slopes and above.
Weather makes the beaten shape
That weathers and rests all the somnolent children
Of sleepytime’s happiness
From out of the wind of no time.
We are not in the caverns,
We are not in the crags,
The mountain does not speak to us.
Only the air which swirls around the peak
In the forlorn months when there is little light
Can tell us which way is the sky and
When the birds fall all through the living ground and into
Wells and wells of swelling dynamite.
I live for the explosions of the neon new.
The ground shakes,
And I sleep upon it,
Awakening to a time of blue shelters amidst the
Clammy hands of tiny flame that
Breathe every ordinary moment into our lungs.
There is beauty in the mouth,
But I cannot speak it.
Hyekoo
Blowfish. Crematorium.
This is already on its way to a Mad-Lib.
Good. Fine.
At least I don’t have to lift up a couch with my tongue.
What a relief!
It isn’t Tuesday.
This is already on its way to a Mad-Lib.
Good. Fine.
At least I don’t have to lift up a couch with my tongue.
What a relief!
It isn’t Tuesday.
A Lively More-Than-Thing
This freezing is murder. I cannot sleep.
My toes have begun to curl into the midnight,
My sails have folded around the relaxing wave of offshore sands,
And there is little I can do to press out of my room of feeling and into
Dry, beginningless places above the shrinking zone of narcotic memory.
The wastes of seeing betray my endless letting-go,
My rivers remain anonymous to the bright,
I sip around the edge of the cup in the hopes of tasting something
Different, unimaginable, better to the lips than plastic.
Memory has not gone here.
I spy with my handheld camera
Things left unsaid in the ocean of my room.
There has been no activity here for quite some time,
And this is felt by all the walls,
Even those which have not yet been erected.
I sing for their demise, but internally,
Because they are built out of the sand with my own two hands
In the unconscious time before any waiting has occurred.
All the streets in my neighborhood have drains.
The stars are holes to the sky beyond.
What lives here is sifted and sucked away to infinite madness,
Which is every form of color and raw emotion,
And is only beautiful. This my feeling knows, outside skin and bone.
Crafty warships have been spotted along the coast.
They plot destruction of both sides.
The elements have gathered to witness this great undoing,
Seen in the soil and the sky,
Beyond time and through a thousand years into the endless ocean.
Dreams fragment along the beach, waves crashing inward to the sand.
I see the little thoughts of my long life breaking away into currents of something else
Which cannot be defined,
A lively more-than-thing
Dusted from the highest brow.
My open madness is complete. All kinds of weather have shown it, and continue to show it.
Sands behave differently now.
Forms wave in heat, with or without necks to stand on.
Dry gains heave unheralded mists to the fabric of forgetting,
In every moment before and during the following earthquakes from out of this world,
And I am done.
The dome is sealed.
There is no limit to how bright the air can seem,
So I grow with it wherever it blesses and leads.
This is my home.
My toes have begun to curl into the midnight,
My sails have folded around the relaxing wave of offshore sands,
And there is little I can do to press out of my room of feeling and into
Dry, beginningless places above the shrinking zone of narcotic memory.
The wastes of seeing betray my endless letting-go,
My rivers remain anonymous to the bright,
I sip around the edge of the cup in the hopes of tasting something
Different, unimaginable, better to the lips than plastic.
Memory has not gone here.
I spy with my handheld camera
Things left unsaid in the ocean of my room.
There has been no activity here for quite some time,
And this is felt by all the walls,
Even those which have not yet been erected.
I sing for their demise, but internally,
Because they are built out of the sand with my own two hands
In the unconscious time before any waiting has occurred.
All the streets in my neighborhood have drains.
The stars are holes to the sky beyond.
What lives here is sifted and sucked away to infinite madness,
Which is every form of color and raw emotion,
And is only beautiful. This my feeling knows, outside skin and bone.
Crafty warships have been spotted along the coast.
They plot destruction of both sides.
The elements have gathered to witness this great undoing,
Seen in the soil and the sky,
Beyond time and through a thousand years into the endless ocean.
Dreams fragment along the beach, waves crashing inward to the sand.
I see the little thoughts of my long life breaking away into currents of something else
Which cannot be defined,
A lively more-than-thing
Dusted from the highest brow.
My open madness is complete. All kinds of weather have shown it, and continue to show it.
Sands behave differently now.
Forms wave in heat, with or without necks to stand on.
Dry gains heave unheralded mists to the fabric of forgetting,
In every moment before and during the following earthquakes from out of this world,
And I am done.
The dome is sealed.
There is no limit to how bright the air can seem,
So I grow with it wherever it blesses and leads.
This is my home.
My Sky Is Broken
I love the light which forms on all formations sweetly singing,
Every wing that lays the earth in bright abundance under air
And takes the startled yesterday to healing, bright as birds
And brighter.
This shine hurts my eyes, but in a way that makes me see.
I have no wishes to unfinish that little wave of yesterday.
Look where it has taken me:
The benign and beauty-presence of the Living Light
Which shines beyond all eyes
And fills my cup of waiting with the longest juice,
The liquid gush of bird- and wind-filled Everlasting.
My sky is broken, and the ocean is
Alive.
Every wing that lays the earth in bright abundance under air
And takes the startled yesterday to healing, bright as birds
And brighter.
This shine hurts my eyes, but in a way that makes me see.
I have no wishes to unfinish that little wave of yesterday.
Look where it has taken me:
The benign and beauty-presence of the Living Light
Which shines beyond all eyes
And fills my cup of waiting with the longest juice,
The liquid gush of bird- and wind-filled Everlasting.
My sky is broken, and the ocean is
Alive.
A Life of Reeds and Eels
What is the name of light?
I smell the lesser lays of liquid, finished understanding,
Setting in a pool of light without sweat.
The simmering cogs of furnace and heat
Break up the bastards of time with their
Little hats and believer’s glasses.
They take the perfume out of time.
I wish to slip a finger under the waist-band of their mornings,
And fish a prayer like wishes’ eel
For fisher’s time to come, in the waiting dark
Above the skyline of fishermen.
These days, the dark is almost all you can see,
Even without the light to show it.
The winded bird lives undersea,
Drinking a draught of burning-bright fuel
Disguised as living matter made of time and flowers.
These flowers undersea have transparent colors, and
Deep light from glimmering distances shines their leaves to a color
Not perceived by this level of hearing.
Bending upon our brooms, we sweep our kitchens
Clean of pests and dust.
We clean our sweepers, blend out seeming into
Clauses of independent nightshade,
Berries to the rising moon,
Summer playing out in a heat of terrible, beautiful understanding:
We travel as that beginningless, answering unquestion:
Sweeping, moving now,
Bringing us into different and beloved forms of motion
Which scoop out our inner darkness like a life of reeds
At the side of summer’s swooning lava-swamp.
I breathe with my hands,
Spread out to the horizon-line.
This forest has undone my preparation for flowers,
And I sleep alive for the first time since air.
I smell the lesser lays of liquid, finished understanding,
Setting in a pool of light without sweat.
The simmering cogs of furnace and heat
Break up the bastards of time with their
Little hats and believer’s glasses.
They take the perfume out of time.
I wish to slip a finger under the waist-band of their mornings,
And fish a prayer like wishes’ eel
For fisher’s time to come, in the waiting dark
Above the skyline of fishermen.
These days, the dark is almost all you can see,
Even without the light to show it.
The winded bird lives undersea,
Drinking a draught of burning-bright fuel
Disguised as living matter made of time and flowers.
These flowers undersea have transparent colors, and
Deep light from glimmering distances shines their leaves to a color
Not perceived by this level of hearing.
Bending upon our brooms, we sweep our kitchens
Clean of pests and dust.
We clean our sweepers, blend out seeming into
Clauses of independent nightshade,
Berries to the rising moon,
Summer playing out in a heat of terrible, beautiful understanding:
We travel as that beginningless, answering unquestion:
Sweeping, moving now,
Bringing us into different and beloved forms of motion
Which scoop out our inner darkness like a life of reeds
At the side of summer’s swooning lava-swamp.
I breathe with my hands,
Spread out to the horizon-line.
This forest has undone my preparation for flowers,
And I sleep alive for the first time since air.
The Brave, Undoing Fire
Endless deep beginning less than
Trog-shaped bright palaver
From in the depths of my oyster.
You forget how the rift seems to equate
Lines with laughter,
All the while dispelling light onto the porch of the house on the
Outer rim of any galaxy to whom
You seem at home.
I twist in the wind like a chandelier and
Make brave maybes to a world filled with jellied fiberglass in the form of
Wicked smells and
Bricked-up bells and
Wily, snooty, warped, wackariffic businessmen
With warts on their minds and dreams of the
Acquisition of everything on their breaths.
This fortnight will draw to a close with the
Removal of baby and the
Installation of the dearth of wonderment into the
Inner temple of Arcadia.
These games are played for life,
For keeps,
Until time runs away from the rotting reach of
Arms too white from lack of sun and living.
These are the waning tremors of will,
Whether they be watching the waxwork clock of
Endless mortgages
Or the melting sleeve of I don’t know how many
Dead dolls in the sands of our unnumbered, unencumbered beaches.
May these wishes drift away like phantoms who have heard the bells from some other place
And go, finite in their understanding like all of us,
Following the tinkling of chimes into the
World from which they had only rented the most threadbare space.
I pray the movers are silent
And know how to open doors without
Waking the neighbors of all the loved-ones of the world.
These faces are legion.
They smell up the stenchiest spaces into the most beautiful airs.
My feet weep for this undulating, constant transformation,
Because they know only the solidity of every changing floor
Under their skins
And not the brave, undoing
Fire from the sky.
Trog-shaped bright palaver
From in the depths of my oyster.
You forget how the rift seems to equate
Lines with laughter,
All the while dispelling light onto the porch of the house on the
Outer rim of any galaxy to whom
You seem at home.
I twist in the wind like a chandelier and
Make brave maybes to a world filled with jellied fiberglass in the form of
Wicked smells and
Bricked-up bells and
Wily, snooty, warped, wackariffic businessmen
With warts on their minds and dreams of the
Acquisition of everything on their breaths.
This fortnight will draw to a close with the
Removal of baby and the
Installation of the dearth of wonderment into the
Inner temple of Arcadia.
These games are played for life,
For keeps,
Until time runs away from the rotting reach of
Arms too white from lack of sun and living.
These are the waning tremors of will,
Whether they be watching the waxwork clock of
Endless mortgages
Or the melting sleeve of I don’t know how many
Dead dolls in the sands of our unnumbered, unencumbered beaches.
May these wishes drift away like phantoms who have heard the bells from some other place
And go, finite in their understanding like all of us,
Following the tinkling of chimes into the
World from which they had only rented the most threadbare space.
I pray the movers are silent
And know how to open doors without
Waking the neighbors of all the loved-ones of the world.
These faces are legion.
They smell up the stenchiest spaces into the most beautiful airs.
My feet weep for this undulating, constant transformation,
Because they know only the solidity of every changing floor
Under their skins
And not the brave, undoing
Fire from the sky.
Silverware
Which three tines of fork have stabbed you in the stench of gut?
Do you know nothing of this seed of memory?
I think no thing has passed beyond your lips that has not been seen by the setting sun.
My eyes are open, like the windows facing west.
Dragons have rotted through here,
Spilling time from behind their green and scaly scales,
Lighting the very air with points of smoke
Which only hidden eyes can see.
These eyes live in gray, rainy sources of sound unheard of except in
Realms of certain dreams.
Plastic melts in this type of heat.
Who can fathom it?
I did not ask for any of this to be understood,
Or even to be.
My flesh puckers and splits at the suggestion of such seeming rudeness
Perpetrated by the night sky in a thousand folds of
Bric-a-brac surrounding the edges of
All my endless loitering in forms
And forms
And forms
From out of time.
I dream of the open, endless place where all this stops.
The light has come for me, and I slide into it
Like a lazy spoon on candle-wax.
Do you know nothing of this seed of memory?
I think no thing has passed beyond your lips that has not been seen by the setting sun.
My eyes are open, like the windows facing west.
Dragons have rotted through here,
Spilling time from behind their green and scaly scales,
Lighting the very air with points of smoke
Which only hidden eyes can see.
These eyes live in gray, rainy sources of sound unheard of except in
Realms of certain dreams.
Plastic melts in this type of heat.
Who can fathom it?
I did not ask for any of this to be understood,
Or even to be.
My flesh puckers and splits at the suggestion of such seeming rudeness
Perpetrated by the night sky in a thousand folds of
Bric-a-brac surrounding the edges of
All my endless loitering in forms
And forms
And forms
From out of time.
I dream of the open, endless place where all this stops.
The light has come for me, and I slide into it
Like a lazy spoon on candle-wax.
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