"done" while listening to some friends ("No Signal") play all manner and degree of unplanned/planned music
Easy likes the orange room
Butter wax melt suave down
Lest the floor come up for air
Smooth my space
Leave my face
Intact
Reflect the world outside
Window to the traffic passing by
Where is all the complicated complication?
Blued to the walls by
Saxy sounds
***
1960s tv
Love-Boat
Claude Bolling meets Chet Atkins
On a posh tropical island
The survivors of The Poseidon Adventure
Have managed to forget their ordeal
And sing to the waves now
From their loft on the beach
Above the sand
In the sounds of clubby excess
Done to the rhythm of islands.
Don’t worry, be happy
What color is the sky
How many books were left to drown
And now we dance
It’s a good thing that piano was nailed to the floor
Otherwise there’d be
Everything left
***
Tap my toe
Brazen fountain
Cool water
Lick upside my face
To north of verbal mind.
The underpants of infinity
Play for spare change
In the corners of lost rooms
Where only singing is remembered
And the walls
Breathe the blood of stars
From out of their own histories.
Meanwhile, there is this
This
Singing
From under the door
And a light to
(Dimly)
Light the way
***
Doorbells
Bong
Dong
Let the carrier in
Let in the fly on the window
A monkey in velvet
Pants?
But I must continue to wash the dishes
At three in the morning
Left over from the ache of my day
So that the sun may rise in the morning.
My leg is alseep
But the pins are needling
Flesh to attention.
I can do all manner of chores this way.
And now I must dance to my
Perceived obligations
As the world rattles the windows with all the
Small insistence of birds
Pecking feed at feet which are
Awake
I dance
To light
In the domestic morning
My ankles know so well.
Everyone is asleep
But I am
Alive
***
A Spanish-Arabian garden
Painted by Edgar Meyer
In the foothills of Tennessee
Mom,
Elvis doesn’t live here
Anymore
And there is all of this
Beat
Flying around
Smacking the hills
With its wet-dry smile.
The sun shines green
Through the mist on the horizon
And makes my doorstep
Cool and warm at once.
I have raised my life here
With the rocks and trees,
Grass and lilies,
Colors of years
Moving
Always moving
Thursday, October 18, 2007
Mapmakers' Dreams
“done” while listening to Bloch’s 1st Piano-Quintet
There are sounds which come from other worlds. There are winds that blow from under the earth, where time does not go. Wishes hurt your skin. Singing bends your outward soul into blissful pretzel-shapes. Saturn rings its way around the sun, seeking its own starlight within fractions of birth which are done by multiplications of split-times-tables from every classroom placated by juicy, downtrodden minds of men (and such) from the very first. These drank deeply from the rivers of mystery and set up shop at the top of the galaxies, before there was the need for hope. Before the glass of misery was fired by every lidded gaze that fell on all the whithering shapes of moon-minded, forgetting beings stuck out here in this outer realm of yellow and red.
These wisps of roaming shape cloud down from air’s vestibules above the space of scent, where eyes cannot even go, and risk their way down into the breaking ground until the upward furnace relishes their reliquaries in the blue upper continents of Canada and the other northern lands. Where the sky is brittle and a fractured blue, shaving the light from the sky in thin swatches a flower could not even wrap around itself like a blanket. And all the people turned, as one, into this condensation of mirrors, and sylphed their lidden stares into all the upward stairs facing the hillsides of Norway and Finland and Canada and Greenland and the arctic ocean, roaming with ice, taking time prisoner within their complicated sisters of southern ambition and pride. The grass grows greener here, but with an elfin lightness that cannot be breached by the land of the sun-away. The sky floats above Easter.
The bastard tribes from out of Carolina bring with them all the mixtures of bright red living hatred and war, sending it on the land in growths far from the levels of freedom which they want at heart, far from the laughing mouths of the always-eating universe. This company brings down from without its particular haze of forgetting, stirred into a soup by directionless passion and eddying anger, but what is this, a ship from the east? It catches the light like a cut in the fabric of time, and sits on the water, idly watching the silly wars of men that do their own colors to the water and lead into unknown territories better off not smelled. The blood of birds drifts down out of the zoning sky, and the water of all the fishes’ blood smears into even all the smiling smurfs let out of their cages this side of the ancient battling grounds raised by Paradise before even a word was spoken. And exotic birds trail the sky, falling over each other in their race to own the flotsam and frothing jetsam left by the cracking pirates of all the owned lands which are free before everyone’s birth. Those tribes dance out the night into spots that are so bright and level and spiked with dark that they cannot even be thought about by the Carolina bastards without their eyes bleeding into the ground over all those northern countries. And the sailing ships continue to rise, and the birds continue to fall, north and left and hither and thither, until all meet at one place neither sky nor ground, and form a new and powerful, enigmatic entity previously unshared by the sun, whose home this is. And, strangely, there is gladness in the air; the scents of barley and hay, of earth-wood and oaken cabinets, of feathers and pine and the mists of sea, drift to level down, lighting all into shapes heretofore unthought-of except by the pearliest of precision-mapmakers’ dreams, when they sleep apart from their creations and in that space untouched by direction and lived by the alabaster mystery done up in ribbons and not, all at once, for the sky has turned white and I can see forever.
And there are birds upon birds, sanctifying the sky. The dome has been breached, but by love. This sound comes from under the earth, under the whole earth, itself, which has no top or bottom, which is only round, only round, spinning its green-edged song louder and quieter all at once.
I listen with all my ear of listening-heart, this story of love’s own breach of time. It has sanctified the wilderness, loving it to be as wild as the universe, itself, the mad, endlessly-creating-and-destroying One that can never not include every seeming-single one of us. My hands are finally happy: the map has been folded. I listen to the sky unfold. My heart skips no beats, at last, but can be heard to resemble the flapping of wings.
There are sounds which come from other worlds. There are winds that blow from under the earth, where time does not go. Wishes hurt your skin. Singing bends your outward soul into blissful pretzel-shapes. Saturn rings its way around the sun, seeking its own starlight within fractions of birth which are done by multiplications of split-times-tables from every classroom placated by juicy, downtrodden minds of men (and such) from the very first. These drank deeply from the rivers of mystery and set up shop at the top of the galaxies, before there was the need for hope. Before the glass of misery was fired by every lidded gaze that fell on all the whithering shapes of moon-minded, forgetting beings stuck out here in this outer realm of yellow and red.
These wisps of roaming shape cloud down from air’s vestibules above the space of scent, where eyes cannot even go, and risk their way down into the breaking ground until the upward furnace relishes their reliquaries in the blue upper continents of Canada and the other northern lands. Where the sky is brittle and a fractured blue, shaving the light from the sky in thin swatches a flower could not even wrap around itself like a blanket. And all the people turned, as one, into this condensation of mirrors, and sylphed their lidden stares into all the upward stairs facing the hillsides of Norway and Finland and Canada and Greenland and the arctic ocean, roaming with ice, taking time prisoner within their complicated sisters of southern ambition and pride. The grass grows greener here, but with an elfin lightness that cannot be breached by the land of the sun-away. The sky floats above Easter.
The bastard tribes from out of Carolina bring with them all the mixtures of bright red living hatred and war, sending it on the land in growths far from the levels of freedom which they want at heart, far from the laughing mouths of the always-eating universe. This company brings down from without its particular haze of forgetting, stirred into a soup by directionless passion and eddying anger, but what is this, a ship from the east? It catches the light like a cut in the fabric of time, and sits on the water, idly watching the silly wars of men that do their own colors to the water and lead into unknown territories better off not smelled. The blood of birds drifts down out of the zoning sky, and the water of all the fishes’ blood smears into even all the smiling smurfs let out of their cages this side of the ancient battling grounds raised by Paradise before even a word was spoken. And exotic birds trail the sky, falling over each other in their race to own the flotsam and frothing jetsam left by the cracking pirates of all the owned lands which are free before everyone’s birth. Those tribes dance out the night into spots that are so bright and level and spiked with dark that they cannot even be thought about by the Carolina bastards without their eyes bleeding into the ground over all those northern countries. And the sailing ships continue to rise, and the birds continue to fall, north and left and hither and thither, until all meet at one place neither sky nor ground, and form a new and powerful, enigmatic entity previously unshared by the sun, whose home this is. And, strangely, there is gladness in the air; the scents of barley and hay, of earth-wood and oaken cabinets, of feathers and pine and the mists of sea, drift to level down, lighting all into shapes heretofore unthought-of except by the pearliest of precision-mapmakers’ dreams, when they sleep apart from their creations and in that space untouched by direction and lived by the alabaster mystery done up in ribbons and not, all at once, for the sky has turned white and I can see forever.
And there are birds upon birds, sanctifying the sky. The dome has been breached, but by love. This sound comes from under the earth, under the whole earth, itself, which has no top or bottom, which is only round, only round, spinning its green-edged song louder and quieter all at once.
I listen with all my ear of listening-heart, this story of love’s own breach of time. It has sanctified the wilderness, loving it to be as wild as the universe, itself, the mad, endlessly-creating-and-destroying One that can never not include every seeming-single one of us. My hands are finally happy: the map has been folded. I listen to the sky unfold. My heart skips no beats, at last, but can be heard to resemble the flapping of wings.
Glass Ceiling
Fusion faster than focusing frees the brain from rain. To dance faster than light will life your dreams to outer worlds where they can be seen by other eyes than yours. The last spell of draining can turn the moistened, dew-filled yard back into a wonderland of touch, without all the stuff that gets piled on land by our working, dirty hands and as it is done by nature-apart-from-us and has been since the beginning, whenever that was. Whenever that is. It is now, right? The beginnings and endings of thought? The pace of it, before time begins to slow or speed, before your tongue tries to match it and your hands and feet try to match your tongue? It is all of a piece. No difference at all, no lag of any kind. Just furniture in the spaceship, couches covered in mold but easy to clean if you can see the outside, the earth-world, the shapes we know and trust. The figures of our imagining. They help, they taunt, they laugh and bleed like us. They throw parties on the rings of Saturn and invite the whole neighborhood in, as the best parties do. I want to go. I am there now, even before I want to go. (How does *that* work? I don’t know, but it does.) How many apples can trip up a banana before the banana has time to reach up into the tree and grab the daily newspaper from out of the upstairs window where it has only recently been situated because of focusing on the sky and not on the land? There used to be a door to the cellar; now there is no cellar, so no door, no need for one. We used to have a back room; not anymore. Huge chunks of the house are missing. Or are they just invisible? Can something you can’t see still provide shelter? A glass ceiling, perhaps? A small, silver rope the thickness of a fishing-line waaaaaaay up in the trees, above where you could possibly see it?
The world is held together by these things. We see them sometimes. Mostly we don’t. And the ones we see are different than we think them to be. Count on that. Everything you think you know will be transcended next week if you just keep with it, even the knowledge that everything you know will be transcended next week if you just keep with it. How does that make you feel? How does that affect your sense of smell and touch and breathing-from-the-heart? What you see can’t hold you up like what you can’t. This goes against all logic, but it’s true. On the scale of importance, the material world, so-called, is of minor significance except to the degree we feel implicated by it.
Meanwhile, a lunch with friends is delightful, whatever the weather and wherever the land and however many houses are reaching the sun and cleaning their rooms, fluffing their pillows, using all the furniture, and still finding time to write the names of all their inhabitants on the walls in the very styles in which those people would do it, themselves, if they could see beyond the walls. If we could see beyond the walls. Because words are stronger than the hands that write them, and they may bring down all manner of dwellings.
The world is held together by these things. We see them sometimes. Mostly we don’t. And the ones we see are different than we think them to be. Count on that. Everything you think you know will be transcended next week if you just keep with it, even the knowledge that everything you know will be transcended next week if you just keep with it. How does that make you feel? How does that affect your sense of smell and touch and breathing-from-the-heart? What you see can’t hold you up like what you can’t. This goes against all logic, but it’s true. On the scale of importance, the material world, so-called, is of minor significance except to the degree we feel implicated by it.
Meanwhile, a lunch with friends is delightful, whatever the weather and wherever the land and however many houses are reaching the sun and cleaning their rooms, fluffing their pillows, using all the furniture, and still finding time to write the names of all their inhabitants on the walls in the very styles in which those people would do it, themselves, if they could see beyond the walls. If we could see beyond the walls. Because words are stronger than the hands that write them, and they may bring down all manner of dwellings.
The Crossing-Stream
Far to the bleating gone is the crossing-stream of endless strifes and fifes mixed with music along the banks of a river lost behind the stars but in exactly the place it needs to be for explorers other than you to find and redirect from the shouting, mad gazes of the mostly-population with all of their shopping and teeth. I own square-acreage on Jupiter, I think. In the eye of the storm, which can fit something like a thousand earths, so, you know, that’s a lot of backyards in which to play, even if you can’t see the sun and the wind is blowing at ten thousand miles an hour. It’s still all about the little things. Be grateful for what you have.
Gesamtkunstwerk
Sipping the drinks from out of the sky sends my left brain into oblivion. Trading the wind for the water, the sea for the air in a cave, the last supper for a holiday meal, the moon for her ancestors. Roman Greek Aztec Toltec Maya Gesamtkunstwerk. All of it is a blessing in color, in disguise, in language, in love. What other kind of blessing can there be? The smile smiles and fades the outward-bound, denim-clad legs that walk and walk to endless oblivion and create their destiny along the way like all of us but with more clothes to hide the sun. Skin must breathe. Toes must. Ankles. Eyes. Every surface of skin, whether penetrated by consciousness or not, must be laid open to the air and the water and the breathing that takes place under our awareness throughout all of time and even under time, itself. This travelling is done without any bags, with no knowledge but the certainty that the trip will suffice, and that it never ends, and that the usefulness of it lies in the endless transformation which feels light and feels heavy and dark but is the transformation of the only Light that ever is or was.
Sit on the Sun
Slouching slinking burn-victims
Spread all over the sea
In the nitroglycerine tides
Falling all over the world
Making it the doll of
Never-kept sunrise over
Blooming pavilions of all kinds of flowers
Felt out to hands
Left out to dry
Undone by reeds in the wind.
The way the universe smells today
Reminds me of a cat I had in 1977,
The day I was one year old.
I can’t remember back that far in words.
She lasted until I was in high school,
Then went the way of all beings:
Away from here.
How can all the feeling in the world account for
Such regular, run-of-the-mill
Tragic losses?
Where must we sit on this train to enjoy
The most spectacular view
The sun in our eyes
And ears
And skin
Not letting anything else perpetrate its
Vision on “reality”?
Maybe sit on the sun, itself.
That would do for feeling.
Spread all over the sea
In the nitroglycerine tides
Falling all over the world
Making it the doll of
Never-kept sunrise over
Blooming pavilions of all kinds of flowers
Felt out to hands
Left out to dry
Undone by reeds in the wind.
The way the universe smells today
Reminds me of a cat I had in 1977,
The day I was one year old.
I can’t remember back that far in words.
She lasted until I was in high school,
Then went the way of all beings:
Away from here.
How can all the feeling in the world account for
Such regular, run-of-the-mill
Tragic losses?
Where must we sit on this train to enjoy
The most spectacular view
The sun in our eyes
And ears
And skin
Not letting anything else perpetrate its
Vision on “reality”?
Maybe sit on the sun, itself.
That would do for feeling.
Chicken Couch
Cluck cluck cluck:
Chickens on a train.
The day that starts
Will never end
While words fall and fall
And dribble and poop and
Pop and splash from your
Always-moving mouth.
And me without my earplugs.
Who cares if you live in New York?
“I need to get this couch I saw
At this shop in SoHo.
O
M
G
It is so great.”
I’d like to put you into a couch.
I mean with needle and thread.
The kind of activity you didn’t learn in Home Ec.
But I’m vegan, so I
Try to tune out
As the train takes her to her furniture
And me to quiet at the end of a vomit.
Chickens on a train.
The day that starts
Will never end
While words fall and fall
And dribble and poop and
Pop and splash from your
Always-moving mouth.
And me without my earplugs.
Who cares if you live in New York?
“I need to get this couch I saw
At this shop in SoHo.
O
M
G
It is so great.”
I’d like to put you into a couch.
I mean with needle and thread.
The kind of activity you didn’t learn in Home Ec.
But I’m vegan, so I
Try to tune out
As the train takes her to her furniture
And me to quiet at the end of a vomit.
White
What kind of a laughing furniture is this?
How many petals of bright pink roses can be glued to whitewashed walls?
The glue is white, too.
The hands doing the glueing wear white gloves.
They have also spackled all the corners,
Caulked all the bathtubs in the house,
Resized all the computer-files so that their Grandmothers can read mail
Without having to worry about porn.
Family is what we make.
Vanilla milkshakes to the sky,
Opaque gorillas in their feelingless chambers,
Ratchet up a notch to
Never needing walls again,
Color or not.
How many petals of bright pink roses can be glued to whitewashed walls?
The glue is white, too.
The hands doing the glueing wear white gloves.
They have also spackled all the corners,
Caulked all the bathtubs in the house,
Resized all the computer-files so that their Grandmothers can read mail
Without having to worry about porn.
Family is what we make.
Vanilla milkshakes to the sky,
Opaque gorillas in their feelingless chambers,
Ratchet up a notch to
Never needing walls again,
Color or not.
The War Inside
Crazy
Comet
Cupid
Credenza
All inside a plastic fork
Jabberingly jabbing the
Tiny eyes from
Out
Out
Out
The tiny sky that
No one can see
Because of the lazy tarp
Crawling upon its back,
Blotting out the sun,
Crazing into the yellow fibers that
Stretch out above space and time,
Yellow,
Bent to wishing backward,
Smithereens of leftover color
That have swum out of existence
Before there was any
Caring;
Crumbling,
Dainty deeds done to
Time and
Sticks and
Elbows withered by worn,
Warm
Welcoming
And Wednesdays spent in the sun,
All day in the sun,
Carrying back all the dishes done
To this side of
Eternity.
All the mothers flock like elbows inside a pantry.
All the widows walk to war
Inside their chewing cheeks.
Children pass on by
Inside,
Leveling their bubble-gum at the
Outsiders
Who only want to
Play
Their
Games
And
Win.
Comet
Cupid
Credenza
All inside a plastic fork
Jabberingly jabbing the
Tiny eyes from
Out
Out
Out
The tiny sky that
No one can see
Because of the lazy tarp
Crawling upon its back,
Blotting out the sun,
Crazing into the yellow fibers that
Stretch out above space and time,
Yellow,
Bent to wishing backward,
Smithereens of leftover color
That have swum out of existence
Before there was any
Caring;
Crumbling,
Dainty deeds done to
Time and
Sticks and
Elbows withered by worn,
Warm
Welcoming
And Wednesdays spent in the sun,
All day in the sun,
Carrying back all the dishes done
To this side of
Eternity.
All the mothers flock like elbows inside a pantry.
All the widows walk to war
Inside their chewing cheeks.
Children pass on by
Inside,
Leveling their bubble-gum at the
Outsiders
Who only want to
Play
Their
Games
And
Win.
They Drink Teardrops
I can’t see through the water on my glasses. It is the same as a sheet of white paper. Opaque, lensed by reality, siphoned into the interrogator behind all closed doors. I look for beyond in all things. This scrap of words has led me to here, where the speaking is undone to shelves of stale toast above nature’s last martyrs of the sun. They drink teardrops. I cannot see through the water. Divine, cyclical paroxysms undo my mind. Flash. Flash.
Seaweed.
All is well.
Seaweed.
All is well.
Haiku from Near-Away
Blip. Blip. Blip. Radar.
Forest. Dung-beetle. Where are
We at any time?
Where is the “my” earth?
Selling its secrets to sky?
Rain falls: the way in.
I have truth to give.
It is slightly battered, but
That’s from being held.
Planets are always
Whispering to outer space
“We don’t need the sun.”
Where will weather form
If all there is is topsoil
And no atmosphere?
Forest. Dung-beetle. Where are
We at any time?
Where is the “my” earth?
Selling its secrets to sky?
Rain falls: the way in.
I have truth to give.
It is slightly battered, but
That’s from being held.
Planets are always
Whispering to outer space
“We don’t need the sun.”
Where will weather form
If all there is is topsoil
And no atmosphere?
The Doors That Close
Hardly a day goes by when the hills don't see the crazy in your eyes. This is a combination of many things. The ground does not weep for stones. Higher up than plum-trees navigate, we join forces in the sky and take to the lake's last trellis on the arbor the gleaming condor of rope's rampaging real-time heat and rage, the unguarded smiling done behind closed doors, the lazy, melted love that melts and leaves around the heart for the protection of no-protection, and for that I am here, but not to be protected at all. The heart goes to light, the space to the right, the bright, the one who shines and bites the white space whole again from the inside out, from the top down, into the toes, and here I am. Wash me as I leave all my doors open to the wind and no footsteps travel through my mind to seek out doors that were never closed.
Boss
You are a good boss.
You fire people in person.
“Does not meet expectations”.
Escaping into other people’s lives.
I accuse you.
Make it better.
Stop sleeping in the couch in your office.
You don’t need my advice about anything.
You fire people in person.
“Does not meet expectations”.
Escaping into other people’s lives.
I accuse you.
Make it better.
Stop sleeping in the couch in your office.
You don’t need my advice about anything.
White Christmas
Written while watching “The Jacket”.
The doctor is keeping him alive so that he can do experiments on him. The soldier had died, but not completely. He was just lost to the world.
But he came back. And everything is a dream.
(In the mental institution, he met the killer who had been known as Michael Myers. The Halloween killer. Myers escaped; now he is lost to the world. Nobody knows where he is.)
Have you ever been buried alive? Have you ever seen snow from a distance? Let me out of here. Integrate. Show. Slow. Dynamic. Breathe. Blink if you can. The world is a grainy kind of gray, with flourescent lights.
The experiments are about claustrophobia. Can you take it? How many layers do you have that may be peeled away? How many lives, how much feeling, to the raw nerve? Let me out of here.
Jacob’s ladder. Rope. Raw. Breathe.
Blink if you can. Merry Christmas.
What is warm, what is bright? What melts the snow? I mean, really, what? What is heat, what is light? Not “what does it do” or “what is it made of”, but what is it? Can the answer even be known? If so, what knows it? What is “know”?
These experiments were not covered in medical school.
What have you done with the soldier?
The drugs are to keep you calm, the doctor says. I’m sitting next to Moses. The hospital is full. The patients stroke their own arms. Those little fuckers are everywhere. I’m one.
One flew over the cuckoo’s nest. The grainy, gray world. The snow lands on you like birds. You are covered.
Have you ever been buried alive?
The tomb of the unknown soldier.
A womb-like environment. I must be the crazy one. The doctor is the only family he remembers. (His secretary’s hands are covered in wax. Shiny. They go other than where she tells them to go.)
No one knows how the soldier died. This is a restricted area. The patients follow him, as in a dream. He walks in a field of snow.
Nothing is resolved, except that there is light. There has always been light. There is only light.
I have seen a time that is not this time. Anything can be taken out of context and made to sound mystical. The future doesn’t look different. Not everyone in this place is crazy.
But white. And white. And bright, white light, falling from the sky, landing on you like birds, light as snow. Merry Christmas.
You look like you’ve seen a ghost.
Can you imagine a state of permanent seizure?
The Iraqi boy, the one who shot the soldier, is alive. The doctor is dead. The soldier is free, though not alive or dead. He goes with the birds, into the dream, awake.
Go play in the snow. Do not read this until it is finished. Stay with me. Don’t slip on the ice, or it will be the second time you die.
The world is lost. Everything is lost. But where? Everything. What is the location of everything?
The sun has come, though I can still see snow in the distance. I slipped but am alive.
The experiment is over.
Breathe.
The doctor is keeping him alive so that he can do experiments on him. The soldier had died, but not completely. He was just lost to the world.
But he came back. And everything is a dream.
(In the mental institution, he met the killer who had been known as Michael Myers. The Halloween killer. Myers escaped; now he is lost to the world. Nobody knows where he is.)
Have you ever been buried alive? Have you ever seen snow from a distance? Let me out of here. Integrate. Show. Slow. Dynamic. Breathe. Blink if you can. The world is a grainy kind of gray, with flourescent lights.
The experiments are about claustrophobia. Can you take it? How many layers do you have that may be peeled away? How many lives, how much feeling, to the raw nerve? Let me out of here.
Jacob’s ladder. Rope. Raw. Breathe.
Blink if you can. Merry Christmas.
What is warm, what is bright? What melts the snow? I mean, really, what? What is heat, what is light? Not “what does it do” or “what is it made of”, but what is it? Can the answer even be known? If so, what knows it? What is “know”?
These experiments were not covered in medical school.
What have you done with the soldier?
The drugs are to keep you calm, the doctor says. I’m sitting next to Moses. The hospital is full. The patients stroke their own arms. Those little fuckers are everywhere. I’m one.
One flew over the cuckoo’s nest. The grainy, gray world. The snow lands on you like birds. You are covered.
Have you ever been buried alive?
The tomb of the unknown soldier.
A womb-like environment. I must be the crazy one. The doctor is the only family he remembers. (His secretary’s hands are covered in wax. Shiny. They go other than where she tells them to go.)
No one knows how the soldier died. This is a restricted area. The patients follow him, as in a dream. He walks in a field of snow.
Nothing is resolved, except that there is light. There has always been light. There is only light.
I have seen a time that is not this time. Anything can be taken out of context and made to sound mystical. The future doesn’t look different. Not everyone in this place is crazy.
But white. And white. And bright, white light, falling from the sky, landing on you like birds, light as snow. Merry Christmas.
You look like you’ve seen a ghost.
Can you imagine a state of permanent seizure?
The Iraqi boy, the one who shot the soldier, is alive. The doctor is dead. The soldier is free, though not alive or dead. He goes with the birds, into the dream, awake.
Go play in the snow. Do not read this until it is finished. Stay with me. Don’t slip on the ice, or it will be the second time you die.
The world is lost. Everything is lost. But where? Everything. What is the location of everything?
The sun has come, though I can still see snow in the distance. I slipped but am alive.
The experiment is over.
Breathe.
Red Parade
Decorate the bright red bricks
Lash tomatoes to the treetops
Just in time for seven parades to
Tumble down the streets
Ahead of the wind.
They examine the streets, wondering
With their painted mouths
If they can afford houses in this neighborhood,
Where tornadoes often come
Despite the ready, open windows.
A series of arresting images that are
Spoiled by the intimation of meaning
Yet are still incomplete.
They aren’t colorful enough to
Paint
With
Though the all-seeing eye
Glows with their embers.
Lava
Hell
Disaster
Roses
Love
I love
I love a parade.
Tomato soup.
Sunset on Mars.
A lantern at the bottom of the ocean, lit by
Demons and beautiful,
Breaking hearts.
Lash tomatoes to the treetops
Just in time for seven parades to
Tumble down the streets
Ahead of the wind.
They examine the streets, wondering
With their painted mouths
If they can afford houses in this neighborhood,
Where tornadoes often come
Despite the ready, open windows.
A series of arresting images that are
Spoiled by the intimation of meaning
Yet are still incomplete.
They aren’t colorful enough to
Paint
With
Though the all-seeing eye
Glows with their embers.
Lava
Hell
Disaster
Roses
Love
I love
I love a parade.
Tomato soup.
Sunset on Mars.
A lantern at the bottom of the ocean, lit by
Demons and beautiful,
Breaking hearts.
Emo "Dice" Buddha
-Why?
-Why what?
-Exactly.
-I don’t get it.
-You’re not supposed to.
-Stop playing games with me.
-What else is there to do here?
-Contemplate Infinite Mystery
-You forgot one.
Fuck.
-Why what?
-Exactly.
-I don’t get it.
-You’re not supposed to.
-Stop playing games with me.
-What else is there to do here?
-Contemplate Infinite Mystery
-You forgot one.
Fuck.
Pilgrim
For Angela, for her trip into the heart of the world. September 2005.
Fly
Wind
Walk
Bend
Go
Forward and up
Over and out
Inside
Through
Between
With
As
As
Be It
Fly and ground
Low and round
Arched around the sky
Like all the rivers
Made before you thought you couldn’t do it
Which was never,
Not with these eyes.
Your hands and legs,
The mountain.
Your eyes and ears,
The rivers.
Your heart,
The sound of thunder in the East.
Your friends,
The milestone-markers
On your way to everywhere
And home again.
You have never left.
Fly
Wind
Walk
Bend
Go
Forward and up
Over and out
Inside
Through
Between
With
As
As
Be It
Fly and ground
Low and round
Arched around the sky
Like all the rivers
Made before you thought you couldn’t do it
Which was never,
Not with these eyes.
Your hands and legs,
The mountain.
Your eyes and ears,
The rivers.
Your heart,
The sound of thunder in the East.
Your friends,
The milestone-markers
On your way to everywhere
And home again.
You have never left.
Five Plastics in a Fife
Freak the breaking sheepdom,
Five plastics in a fife spread all over kingdom come,
Laxative to infinity, a burst of speed,
So hard to seed the galaxy.
Lead the immoral river onward to the dust,
Wetting and rewetting like the last lakes of out the trees of life,
Letting the last shakers soar with the vermin over the
Spreading caves of coral under the sea,
Leaking the separate sprays of swag and kilter to Shetland and back.
They do not come up over the tops of water.
They stay down below,
Muddying swaths of felt and tar and
Poison in their broken beaks,
Licking the wounds of their endless relatives
Until the end of time.
Foreshadow the blistering heat that has crept under the earth,
All billowy and crepe-papery in the dust of the morning sun,
Lashed to the farthest sails of the most drifted-about ships this side of
Ending, of
Anchor, of
Place.
The wind,
Ballast to the morning’s prayers,
Frees the sky to fire.
Five plastics in a fife spread all over kingdom come,
Laxative to infinity, a burst of speed,
So hard to seed the galaxy.
Lead the immoral river onward to the dust,
Wetting and rewetting like the last lakes of out the trees of life,
Letting the last shakers soar with the vermin over the
Spreading caves of coral under the sea,
Leaking the separate sprays of swag and kilter to Shetland and back.
They do not come up over the tops of water.
They stay down below,
Muddying swaths of felt and tar and
Poison in their broken beaks,
Licking the wounds of their endless relatives
Until the end of time.
Foreshadow the blistering heat that has crept under the earth,
All billowy and crepe-papery in the dust of the morning sun,
Lashed to the farthest sails of the most drifted-about ships this side of
Ending, of
Anchor, of
Place.
The wind,
Ballast to the morning’s prayers,
Frees the sky to fire.
Five Minutes
Rays of sun aren’t all fun. Dress me on your doorstep; that way, the neighbors will crowd around their telephones and spread the word of sheepdom. How interesting can we make things around here? Whom can we interest, whose tongues can we poke out at our living? It’s the finding-out of that that’s fun, no matter what shines from above or wherever.
Days can be dark, too, and you can still eat a pretzel and forget about what just happened five minutes ago that might change your life five minutes from now. These obligations to infinity are plastic, spreadable, not like the way we make our napkins and dustrags, all ready to sop up something that has spilled all over.
Days can be dark, too, and you can still eat a pretzel and forget about what just happened five minutes ago that might change your life five minutes from now. These obligations to infinity are plastic, spreadable, not like the way we make our napkins and dustrags, all ready to sop up something that has spilled all over.
Ondine
I cannot surf the unseen fathoms. The water is too bright and reflective for close approach. I must sit on the surface and wait for the depths to disclose something of their costumes, some kind of a color or two that can be irradiated by a touch of my hand to the surface of the water. Has this ever felt true? The last investigations of a twirling nebula in the outer rim of some galaxy that has been explored only once or twice, and even then at seeming gunpoint?
What kind of a symphony plays in those spaces which go undetected even by sight and feeling? What kinds of feelings show themselves to the fleshest skin this side of a rainbow and the rainest ribald sky the underdone color of a fortune-cookie that has been left out in the frying sun for too many days? The kind I can show you if you just look, is what I'd like to say sometimes. Most of the time, though, I'm content to day through my days in the ways I have done, the times I try and don't, the people I have and don't, the ones I have seen and felt. These things are what float to the surface when the mind is undone, like Ondine in the waves and her lover in the deep.
What kind of a symphony plays in those spaces which go undetected even by sight and feeling? What kinds of feelings show themselves to the fleshest skin this side of a rainbow and the rainest ribald sky the underdone color of a fortune-cookie that has been left out in the frying sun for too many days? The kind I can show you if you just look, is what I'd like to say sometimes. Most of the time, though, I'm content to day through my days in the ways I have done, the times I try and don't, the people I have and don't, the ones I have seen and felt. These things are what float to the surface when the mind is undone, like Ondine in the waves and her lover in the deep.
The Worst Island
O...O...the others...Foundlings in the sea. I can’t reach. Their arms are drowning. The island in the sun, the little winds above, the fortress, all clouds. The lists go on. Save me, they say, and I cannot do it. The worst island in history, except for all the beautiful and rapturous things there, the land and her birth and all the green thriving. All these things are immaterial, but they matter more fundamentally than sustenance. They are more fortunate than air. Sea wraps around, and I cannot see the foundered sky through the gaps in my hands, which are like a roof in the rain. I can see through the rafters into what the smallest space was five years ago. Before it was an all-of-it island offered up to the sea.
Free hands. Further. Dynamites and wrath. These tidy quicksands. Pull my breathing into a stretch. Save me. I cannot do it. Hell-bent for arms I am, and ready, and breathing. And love longer than the stars around this place. An island, yet.
Who knew?
Free hands. Further. Dynamites and wrath. These tidy quicksands. Pull my breathing into a stretch. Save me. I cannot do it. Hell-bent for arms I am, and ready, and breathing. And love longer than the stars around this place. An island, yet.
Who knew?
Forks and Color
Forks and color
Breath and small things clattering, unseen, on the roof.
Fresh hollers, dynamite twirls down the mountainside
That can be heard by the filling valley.
Smoke lends it lectures to the sky.
I try the trade elsewhere,
Begging off the bending bursts of seven single railways to the sun.
Fly to my every bedside,
Last and East to hope,
Lest the least become northeast
To Easter’s lasting time upon the slopes.
Frail whiskers
Faint whispers
Black under the tamed ringside,
Left for free at the floor below all feet.
Salamanders swing the lightest: all their limbs grow back.
Breath and small things clattering, unseen, on the roof.
Fresh hollers, dynamite twirls down the mountainside
That can be heard by the filling valley.
Smoke lends it lectures to the sky.
I try the trade elsewhere,
Begging off the bending bursts of seven single railways to the sun.
Fly to my every bedside,
Last and East to hope,
Lest the least become northeast
To Easter’s lasting time upon the slopes.
Frail whiskers
Faint whispers
Black under the tamed ringside,
Left for free at the floor below all feet.
Salamanders swing the lightest: all their limbs grow back.
Sing
I hear singing in the wind. Stop. Listen – is that what you hear, too? The sharp of whistling through high branches in lost yards in small towns settling into dust? There is singing there, too. Howling, even; over the glittery tops of ocean waves far in the middle of the nowhere out to sea, seen only by other waves, and no land anywhere in the four directions. Pull yourself together; listen to the singing.
To what heights can this sound go? What is at the top of the world, where there is only wind? Or is it spaceless and calm, like a hair in a mineshaft falling outward to rest in the stars at the center of the earth? This can be done; I promise. And you may only sing. This is what to do.
Come alive again. Please. And I will show you the singing. It is everywhere, but I will show you. Just rest here awhile, and listen to the cracks in the earth through which the possibility of sound arises. These are the holes in the world, like those holes in our head. Listen. Play out your part and leave it to rest in the backyard to be carried off by the breeze. Sing the brown world off into air.
To what heights can this sound go? What is at the top of the world, where there is only wind? Or is it spaceless and calm, like a hair in a mineshaft falling outward to rest in the stars at the center of the earth? This can be done; I promise. And you may only sing. This is what to do.
Come alive again. Please. And I will show you the singing. It is everywhere, but I will show you. Just rest here awhile, and listen to the cracks in the earth through which the possibility of sound arises. These are the holes in the world, like those holes in our head. Listen. Play out your part and leave it to rest in the backyard to be carried off by the breeze. Sing the brown world off into air.
Chosen Birthmarks
Slinker slider slither sludge
Landing near the tops of fudge
Down the back and up the side,
Where do chosen birthmarks bite the tide?
Fat the crimson Denver in the wind,
Bend the britches frozen by the sand
Between the icy toes of all the beds
Of Easter, loving, lest the rain be driven by the praying hands
Down
Back
Under the Easter-tide but always
Up
To
The
Sky
Below my hips and sunk into my eyes.
I pray for rain.
God, I pray for rain.
Landing near the tops of fudge
Down the back and up the side,
Where do chosen birthmarks bite the tide?
Fat the crimson Denver in the wind,
Bend the britches frozen by the sand
Between the icy toes of all the beds
Of Easter, loving, lest the rain be driven by the praying hands
Down
Back
Under the Easter-tide but always
Up
To
The
Sky
Below my hips and sunk into my eyes.
I pray for rain.
God, I pray for rain.
Emperors
Ways the wetness ended
Sneaks upon the last broom from out of the closet of my childhood.
And I never drank the nectar, but always let the last lights seep
Out of the back door and onto the willows,
Which crawl downward up the street to the back-place of every friend I have ever known.
This is my history, out of talent and predisposed to despair. I cry to no one in particular, but to the colorful breeze which lands in my hair like a bonnet of reeds.
Fluffy, daybreak, letters to the wind. I smoke occasionally, but don’t inhale.
My head is topped open to the sky, and wind
Shears near here, freer than the everglades where the Trumps live.
All those golds to the sky, and I sit and sip margaritas with the chosen ones,
Chosen by their own breaths and nobody who cares.
The reaching emblem, the dessicated space, the clamoring specter of line-driven snow
And powder of fine silked clothes which used to be worn by emperors who are now dead and
Naked as they ever were.
Sneaks upon the last broom from out of the closet of my childhood.
And I never drank the nectar, but always let the last lights seep
Out of the back door and onto the willows,
Which crawl downward up the street to the back-place of every friend I have ever known.
This is my history, out of talent and predisposed to despair. I cry to no one in particular, but to the colorful breeze which lands in my hair like a bonnet of reeds.
Fluffy, daybreak, letters to the wind. I smoke occasionally, but don’t inhale.
My head is topped open to the sky, and wind
Shears near here, freer than the everglades where the Trumps live.
All those golds to the sky, and I sit and sip margaritas with the chosen ones,
Chosen by their own breaths and nobody who cares.
The reaching emblem, the dessicated space, the clamoring specter of line-driven snow
And powder of fine silked clothes which used to be worn by emperors who are now dead and
Naked as they ever were.
All the Other Floors
Can I find the strength in politics?
Can I cull the good from hands that shake?
The latest trills are done in cities wide
With strength to underhand the folded sky.
My bedroom is three floors above the street.
Some days, I fold my sheets and clothes
And drink a glass of water from the sink
And bake three trays of cookies for the ones
Who live in all the other floors
That I can never reach.
Friends are here.
Friends.
These are all.
Can I cull the good from hands that shake?
The latest trills are done in cities wide
With strength to underhand the folded sky.
My bedroom is three floors above the street.
Some days, I fold my sheets and clothes
And drink a glass of water from the sink
And bake three trays of cookies for the ones
Who live in all the other floors
That I can never reach.
Friends are here.
Friends.
These are all.
Crystal-Clear Balloons
Wings darting to and fro,
Ballast to the mother’s oysters,
Listening from the crystal-clear balloon
High above the earth’s blue field of air.
Families size up the plots,
Build their testaments to length,
Slip the knot of grease into waiting arms
The size of candy and the
Shape of hope.
We drag around the seafood from another place
To sell in our front-yards
And people buy,
People buy;
Well, one has to eat.
Right?
Argue that.
Pistols show up next, weapons of
Proximity.
Fates are done up in ribbons or
Layed out on the cool ground like
Flags.
Cloth is also used to bury.
We take these aims highly, as in sleep,
And cover like no other in the yard.
Our houses stand as long
As we can see them,
And we mortgage snowflakes from out
The Easter-sky
To all
And only
Ourselves.
Ballast to the mother’s oysters,
Listening from the crystal-clear balloon
High above the earth’s blue field of air.
Families size up the plots,
Build their testaments to length,
Slip the knot of grease into waiting arms
The size of candy and the
Shape of hope.
We drag around the seafood from another place
To sell in our front-yards
And people buy,
People buy;
Well, one has to eat.
Right?
Argue that.
Pistols show up next, weapons of
Proximity.
Fates are done up in ribbons or
Layed out on the cool ground like
Flags.
Cloth is also used to bury.
We take these aims highly, as in sleep,
And cover like no other in the yard.
Our houses stand as long
As we can see them,
And we mortgage snowflakes from out
The Easter-sky
To all
And only
Ourselves.
Sellers of Area
Nomads have failed where the light has risen. They bring ceilings and trapdoors, spinning past the ramparts of born breathers and Beethovenian causes. These last thoughts die out of fright, because the light cannot support such travelless wishes, the kind that get spray-painted on your grandparents’ old station-wagons before even your first trip to the sea. The last trip to the last house on the outer turnpikes of your memory have made a selling here; real-estate is huge in the land of dreams. Paper cannot account for it.
Fast times beat about the razing delirium finished before the times of cuted rainbows used as symbols of assumed freedom that has, it is thought, to be bought rather than lived right now. The sellers leave their theatres to witness the spectacle of destruction and the water coming in and liberating all in spite of themselves and how many bright trinkets they might want for their grandchildren.
Fast times beat about the razing delirium finished before the times of cuted rainbows used as symbols of assumed freedom that has, it is thought, to be bought rather than lived right now. The sellers leave their theatres to witness the spectacle of destruction and the water coming in and liberating all in spite of themselves and how many bright trinkets they might want for their grandchildren.
The Flying Remembers Her
This I wrote after seeing my grandmother, Ethel Plaisted, alive for the last time.
My grandmother lies in a hospital bed, looking like a bird taken out of the air. Her eyes, I try. Her eyes. I cannot look into them for too long, those pools of blue on three hospital pillows, or my heart will crack and I will fall to the floor. But I hold her hand and rub her skin and tell her that I will ask a Blessing for her from the Light of lights, so that she may fly again, in whatever form the Light is moved to move her. I know, no matter what, that she will no longer, then, be, strictly speaking, my grandmother; even my heart must let her go, so that she may fly. She must move on, in whatever shape or shapes or states, and I hold her hand and tell her that she must fight this disease, but that, when she feels with all her might that the fighting is done, she must relax into the process with full feeling and let go of everything. Even the lights in the room, all her people, me, all history and time, drop it like a hat on the floor of a temple, and fly, free of all wings and direction, to the breathing crest of Infinity, which holds you like a lamp, and there is no crying involved except as release, so I breathe it through, and out through her, and her into me and out again, like the being my grandmother was to me in life whom I loved with all my breath and heart, who did her part in the taking care of me and of all my people. We are all there with our grandmother, and aunt, and mother, and teller of stories and provider of afternoon snacks and blankets and Don’t jump on the furniture! and countless banana-split cakes and knitted things for our warmth and protection.
I look into her eyes. They are frightened, like the eyes of a bird who has been taken out of the air. I cannot look away, but I cannot see because of tears. Just a blurry shape, a blob of a head on pillows and leaking, hospitalized body, though she has said she is not in pain. But of course she would say that. I touch her shoulder, the top of her head. Her hair is thin. Her feet: alone together below the hospital blanket. She wiggles a toe, and smiles, but her eyes do not. But they do say “I love you” with more force than any bird of any air, the force of no knowing, even after such long life, what anything IS, what even a single thing IS, including this life, this process, this turning, this wonder of transformation, this small room with all the cards and flowers and loved-ones. I squeeze her hand and tell her I love her, though my voice barely makes it out of the sentence alive. Three words, which devastate the being by filling it with Light, and it’s all right, you know, I tell her. You fight it, I say, but then you must surrender from the heart when it’s done. You’ll know it when it’s done. And the love will never leave the room, because we are here, holding you, letting you go on your free way wherever.
My grandmother squeezes my hand on her hospital bed, the way a bird might lightly grasp a branch when it is just about to fly. Her face is warm. She looks up at me, the lone bird in the first tree ever grown by nature in its house among the Light, taken out of the air, and those pale blue eyes are no longer afraid. They have seen something. They are seeing everything, I feel, as they begin to close. Her grip on my hand suddenly relaxes, and I realize she need not worry about remembering how to fly: it is the flying who is remembering her. The flying remembers my grandmother, and me, and you, and all the people who do not know that they have wings, that we are already fire in the sky.
My grandmother lies in a hospital bed, looking like a bird taken out of the air. Her eyes, I try. Her eyes. I cannot look into them for too long, those pools of blue on three hospital pillows, or my heart will crack and I will fall to the floor. But I hold her hand and rub her skin and tell her that I will ask a Blessing for her from the Light of lights, so that she may fly again, in whatever form the Light is moved to move her. I know, no matter what, that she will no longer, then, be, strictly speaking, my grandmother; even my heart must let her go, so that she may fly. She must move on, in whatever shape or shapes or states, and I hold her hand and tell her that she must fight this disease, but that, when she feels with all her might that the fighting is done, she must relax into the process with full feeling and let go of everything. Even the lights in the room, all her people, me, all history and time, drop it like a hat on the floor of a temple, and fly, free of all wings and direction, to the breathing crest of Infinity, which holds you like a lamp, and there is no crying involved except as release, so I breathe it through, and out through her, and her into me and out again, like the being my grandmother was to me in life whom I loved with all my breath and heart, who did her part in the taking care of me and of all my people. We are all there with our grandmother, and aunt, and mother, and teller of stories and provider of afternoon snacks and blankets and Don’t jump on the furniture! and countless banana-split cakes and knitted things for our warmth and protection.
I look into her eyes. They are frightened, like the eyes of a bird who has been taken out of the air. I cannot look away, but I cannot see because of tears. Just a blurry shape, a blob of a head on pillows and leaking, hospitalized body, though she has said she is not in pain. But of course she would say that. I touch her shoulder, the top of her head. Her hair is thin. Her feet: alone together below the hospital blanket. She wiggles a toe, and smiles, but her eyes do not. But they do say “I love you” with more force than any bird of any air, the force of no knowing, even after such long life, what anything IS, what even a single thing IS, including this life, this process, this turning, this wonder of transformation, this small room with all the cards and flowers and loved-ones. I squeeze her hand and tell her I love her, though my voice barely makes it out of the sentence alive. Three words, which devastate the being by filling it with Light, and it’s all right, you know, I tell her. You fight it, I say, but then you must surrender from the heart when it’s done. You’ll know it when it’s done. And the love will never leave the room, because we are here, holding you, letting you go on your free way wherever.
My grandmother squeezes my hand on her hospital bed, the way a bird might lightly grasp a branch when it is just about to fly. Her face is warm. She looks up at me, the lone bird in the first tree ever grown by nature in its house among the Light, taken out of the air, and those pale blue eyes are no longer afraid. They have seen something. They are seeing everything, I feel, as they begin to close. Her grip on my hand suddenly relaxes, and I realize she need not worry about remembering how to fly: it is the flying who is remembering her. The flying remembers my grandmother, and me, and you, and all the people who do not know that they have wings, that we are already fire in the sky.
Questions
How many colors can you wear before your face is not seen? Does light inhabit you, or do you inhabit it? Does the shine that bites the brow of winter from the lower trenches reset all your desires at the chiming of the New-Year’s clock? Bastions of creamy white smooth delicious wet memories of sound? Seething, barking, little-friend-befouled and -squashed buckets of lame pipes all ratty with rust and hinges that open on nowhere but a door to a wall of an empty, dusty house in the middle of the remotest exiled land? Do you wear where you live on your sleeve? What color is your skin because of this? How can Angels be brighter than the decimals of earth’s resounding creations when all worlds exist simultaneously and forever, or forever even if they seem not to at the time?
Lingering Sherbets
Twist the lingering sherbets into downright shapes of cackle’s mourning before the summer can crack your drying eyes. List as many fans of broomdom as you can in the space of nine times the outer, willowing lengths of computer-trails in simmering, blank darkness outside the laziest eye. Who are your neutrons? Save the blighted whale from its counterparts above the stream, staple the last buffoon to the party’s roof, but never cry for the always-ahead, for they have done up their buttons to the nth degree of burning intensity. Flames should lick your hair for nearness.
That these things happen is the indication of the fearlessness of the universe. That you happen is the indication of the fearfulness of birth. What is done when trying to outstrap unlogged particles from out of their air-earth shapes? What is lost in the endless, palavering translation? Beeps and broinks, steps and nodes, flippers and tongues to the outside: these symptoms of unrelease stipple the mind with razor-wire and sluice the gloaming canvas from out of the Spanish mimes put on the flowerbed of all our forgotten mysteries.
And the soap has finally dried, and my skin. Your skin. Let out to sun-in-rain.
That these things happen is the indication of the fearlessness of the universe. That you happen is the indication of the fearfulness of birth. What is done when trying to outstrap unlogged particles from out of their air-earth shapes? What is lost in the endless, palavering translation? Beeps and broinks, steps and nodes, flippers and tongues to the outside: these symptoms of unrelease stipple the mind with razor-wire and sluice the gloaming canvas from out of the Spanish mimes put on the flowerbed of all our forgotten mysteries.
And the soap has finally dried, and my skin. Your skin. Let out to sun-in-rain.
Eight Times Seventeen
Eight times seventeen puts out the lights;
Sixty burning bridges see the sky.
Laugh out loud for all the birds to see
And let your yards hang down from under high.
This last bend in seeming lasts to one,
And only wants to list the ways to lie;
Do the furtive timing till it’s done,
And let the earth breathe fire while we die.
Werewolves prowl the darkness underground.
Bats seek out the light from out of lives.
All the people look to out for prayers.
All that’s left is failure to survive.
Creatures crawl and dawdle over trash;
Let their hands lie burning under forks.
Whatever else the dying burden asks,
Replace his outward singing with your
Alabaster sighs.
Sixty burning bridges see the sky.
Laugh out loud for all the birds to see
And let your yards hang down from under high.
This last bend in seeming lasts to one,
And only wants to list the ways to lie;
Do the furtive timing till it’s done,
And let the earth breathe fire while we die.
Werewolves prowl the darkness underground.
Bats seek out the light from out of lives.
All the people look to out for prayers.
All that’s left is failure to survive.
Creatures crawl and dawdle over trash;
Let their hands lie burning under forks.
Whatever else the dying burden asks,
Replace his outward singing with your
Alabaster sighs.
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