SCULPTURES

Emile Gouche once hand-painted

            his own cigarette           hard-broiled heavy

toxic Magnum Opus          Press the snooze button

We share the same separate journey

      Cobblestoned stretching         I could be a wedding

crasher            at my own wedding

Tonight's weather: veiled purring       The earth growls

     speaks confidence like Bogie: 

                 "She tried to sit in my lap while I was standing up"

(like that)

Let's flee the retro-chivalric worldview

We are both sheltered             closeted-in       Brandy

       is on television showing the world her

high-heels             in her house-sized closet       I "made no bones"

          about overhearing negativity about my "status"

Some people in my family are carrying around

          Incredible Hulks in their guts                   I stir it all in a pot

Clay-form         At ease in my space                 like a poetic body

"There are no gray areas"        Either you love

           or you hate          Foliated ketubah

with your name written as if eyes taste words

           "flatten out the extra air"         ignoramus

Muses you're not            I miss you & I have never met you

QODESH

I wag my finger at a Red Light

               I'm a gleaming-eyed fish

            Today

                feel hurled from

the highest turret

of Cortachy castle

like the Earl of Airlie's 

young handsome musician

    

                       I just want to be packed into

                       a musical instrument

       Invisible drummer boy

I want to be caught writing poems

about death          A corpse bird 

tapping on the window              My guardian angel

with a mighty sword 

                     shrouded over me

light of qodesh         relieving 

                              mental contents

             I don't want to regret

             never touching this light

             like Hawthorne regretting never speaking to

             or touching the familiar spirit of Dr. Harris

 

WELCOME

          to my science lab

I should receive a "Good Neighbor Award"

                  Let's play "frisbee physics"

        on this color winter night

somewhere near a seaside cresting with the waves--

    lilies that can sprout

through ice-covered ponds          listening, even

through broad-expanded cold 

for the stirring of an insect

             Welcome to my unraveled yarn

     

     The greatest ideas & thoughts

manifest when the lights are out 

          

     The mind, like burning logs,

surrounded by layers of familiarity,

builds up      when the lights are out 

"Ha-ha" once meant "any unexpected barrier, a dead end" 

          perhaps like the struggle to burst

          from a cocoon 

                               or an unwelcomed villain cowboy

                               bursting into a saloon 

unable to straighten his arms

Welcome to my Black Sea

already underneath your skin

       idyllic garlands & vivid harvests--

tongues of former poets buried in the land within, 

      a whistful gap where you shall

not find me...

UNSEEN BODY BOUQUET

                                                     Consider too what the breath is: wind--

                                                                     and not even a constant, but all the time

                                                                     being disgorged and sucked in again.

                                                                                                    

                                                                                       ---Marcus Aurerelius (AD 121-180)

                                                                                       from Meditations (Bk. 2.2)

To go back into the past (pollinated to glow)

& discover one's body, shelled, the way snakes

throw their skins, locating the intricate axis, leaping

through extraordinary light, shadows' light, of

machine-like discovering. To find every path of

one's former existence as great lumps of frozen

pixellizations, hovering pixellated fragments

of every note, ends & innards of the body: feet, hands,

eyelids, the rows of upper & lower teeth, jaws, nerves,

veins (rope-like), muscles, partial segments of parts

undiscernable, &c. all stripped of emotion. To travel

even further into the past, finding one's body

fragmented to the extent of observing portions

of the body dislodged, characteristically free from

all logic, yet removed as if a place had wrecked,

throwing its parts hundreds of feet in every

direction, frozen mid-air, conformed to its space

as if permanently positioned. Fragmented, like

computer files, yet with unlimited perspective, slowing

down the territory. The traditional injunction to

"know thyself," in this instance, is a verbal corkscrew;

a visual somersault, a certain familiarity that

stands resolutely; seconds pass, leaving the conception

of the physically Unseen Past as blemishes

on the dust of one's incomplete accumulation.

If one were to walk into the future, however,

one's body, like an illuminated outline,

empty husks of a cage--a nerve-center of birds,

of boundless energy, vacuuming-in the coming

velocities--would be forced to the violent spasms

of nearly exploding, but at the great cusp of eruption

our present body enters into that space, each second,

before the future "gives way" like buildings accepting

the uplifting drafts of wind from the pull of a tornado,

scattering Hours like raw materials. 

 

TOGETHERNESS

"Togetherness" means something different
for everyone.

A tsar sighs each time a lie is found out,
spellbound by a discovery of enormity,
like Christopher Columbus's eyes,

like bubbling hot springs, can still be felt
in crowded subways.

"Karma" upsets the one that doesn't fiddle,

that waits too long for something to happen,
until one's face turns to bone.

If you x-ray this air, you will see me, in repeats,
slipping soundlessly in the whirling sparks of my               Body,

blown against the grating, as if I were within
an archaeological dustbin--dust, itself,                             clashing
like the sudden ring of hoofs upon tilted tables
of ancient granite. 

I'm a small, gray bird with intuitive sensitivity,
but do not be deceived, for my heart is strong
& unfearful, like a man that takes out his own
tonsils with a cactus. 

_______________________________________________________

In the 15th & 16th centuries, it was believed that the mentally ill

were possessed by devils & that touching the patient's body 

would force the demons to seek shelter elsewhere. Today,

they are pushy & insistent. "Everyone needs help." Pharmaceutical

companies are spaniels. We're all terrorists, so they say. 

Every bed-happy government is bent on mythology. Narcissistic

pandemonium. "OUR PUSH-BUTTON HEAVEN." Blow everything

away unless it suggests intimacy. I peep forth laughing from 

amid the watermelon-pink flowers. I stomp a mud-hole in every

comfort-inducing gadget. Underneath my clothes are mountains

of cushions. Underneath my pillows are images that no camera

could capture. I hide my head there, like digging for diamonds.

THE NEW SEED BLASTS

upon the vine. I find you

when it is I that I find--

heart of eutexia, of your eyes

that move me like

heliotaxis--accentuated lush--

curve of Irish lilt--any "tongue," 

any sound heard like a composer

wrapping his body around 

the music like a ballet dancer--

bursts from brass wind

instruments or a "brass" wind. 

Flaming love, not a stuffy critic,

has no "elect"--but with

its variety of masks & creases 

of misrepresentation, emerges

truth, unconcealed, in fullness. 

II

Phenomenons not. Knots

of touching, greeting, protecting;

love doesn't "see" in lobes

like not allowing the right lobe

of the brain to know what

the left lobe thinketh--no,

ultimate love derives from

"The Prime Mover of Motions"--

no suspense of maintaining pressure. 

III

A love, vast & gushing

through the channels of the heart,

revived the moribund banks of

one's delta, hovers in the moist air

of the soul, through the eyes it flows,

the tongue it speaks, never chased away

by an echo that emotes of which

Death may eye to obscure. 

IV

Love's vision, sharper than the

eyes of Leonardo--gentle as the 

vivid hues of a peacock's fan--

ignores the force of gravity, unseen

but seen, instead drapes us, in rapture,

in admiration, like currents of vapor

or moving arabesques of cloud, borne up,

flexed, and played with our Wanting,

our Yearning, our pre-programmed wiring,

by brisk winds of Man's ancestral genesis. 

EGGS

"Hurry & get pregnant

Your eggs are getting older      maybe stale" 

a 38 year-old woman said

to a 37 year-old woman

                 I need Binaca

"concentrated golden breath drops" 

           Golden eggs

Breakfast is never the same

My sister is grossed out

because my uncle said, "it's unborn chicken"

             The truth grosses out

             everyone     an unimaginable key

in a real-life lock

             Every egg is "advertised"

proximity of watchwords

            An egg's fertilization in the animal world: 

Overlook a hunter's home

A wealthy home

     Pelts of polar bears      beaver       tiger    & jaguar

overflowing the floor      On the walls

moose heads sing censored things

Put me on a collapsible cot       Eggs of a new

Civil War linger         "I could have 

had children with Peter, Jim, Kevin or Charles"

the 37 year-old woman responds

      A nuptial chamber explodes

I study the menu: 

           Eggs any way you want them

Inward eggs

Sanctified

           Nevermind the "mortifying lingo"

of women your age

           Nevermind a Madcap mistress

           young & whelped by lust

Eggs       Your eggs are pictorial with

              -in

              Your eggs "good 'til the last drop"

______________________________________________________

The way 

       that a musician

       may "pick"

his guitar

So does 

      the poet

      that reaches up

& picks the stars 

________________________________________________

There are formless furrinesses in Codes--

"that willing suspension of disbelief" (Coleridge)

fraught with psychological luggage. Who is

liberated & who isn't? "You know, I don't

think I need cash anymore, you know?"

Think in diagonal. Early December, 2010:

Delta plane sliding in Minneapolis, "a moving

impression of grandeur." Take the whiskey bottles

from the hands of drunkards, return them emptied

& ready for the insertion of a ship.

Never expect cracks in the edifice, just lick

the cow-lick of exuberant optimism

the way birds hop & sing beneath leafy branches.

Mammock the mammons, sloppy-loppy tongue

of "loose sentenced" lies from the inveigher;

"kick the possum out." Spiritual invalids

as pursuers of fantasies. I'm adrift

on an ancient sea, but an ocean of renewed

fruit. A city will rot to the core that a pinch

-penny community cannot afford; garish, pre

-tentious, dull, meaningless, inhuman, drying to

the consistency of beef jerky. But the same city

of your mind, of your heart can become a

complete garden city of peace by receiving

Yeshua, who'll renew ya. The cat moans

& shakes in sleep. I'm soon to wear the powder

of snow. Winter presses: unleashed chests compressed.

Be careful of being fleeced; "professionally

mechanical in the face." In time I will

fly away, & come to think of it, where is

The Flying Car?

NEWSREEL

The newsreel ends where one sticks an oar into cranes

    The old street cries     but not like dreadful months

in a war in Moscow or Siberia    but instead a street

that cries in New Orleans        Jazz has become a

young man with heavy eyes     Nothing ever returns to normal

like a flashback     Shrimp vendors  sing new songs

to housewives & children in windows above

    Does youth ever tire? Does an exhibited painting

"show itself"?   a code that is erased is a silence

   that drenches a city where the ripest young things

break into adorning shrieks over hoodlums, drunks,

rednecks, hazardous strangers--this "thing"

a Ding an sich    tip-toes around the future visage

   of an age-wrecked composition     A life-span

is the living language of a land clotted in

communities    with heavy emotional freight

to set oneself apart that excites the blood beyond

98.6     Mediocre or Meteoric      The newsreel begins

where privacy is a palette for concentration

   A wild impulse seizes me   Does "skill"   

spontaneous skill       communal skill    settle into

general ease or private discipline?    Is it much more

   appreciated? Like the dashing off of a parody

with heavy alarum    or not exacting the submissive solitude

to write but entertaining the tremor of a piano

   but unable to play it well     or a talent for

dabbling in paint or decorating a home

    Becoming "acclaimed" sounds eerie       I pierce

& press to extract the juice of "permanent errors"

    sacrificing seriatim    yolk of yore

Some houses        like city streets     are more jolly

   when silenced    where mottos are ghastly

pallor clings to every detail through thin air

    The newsreel shuffles     A poet malaxates

the carapace of continental exclusitivity

    A television scattered into fragments

This is to endure an unearthing of a preferred

    narrative    What you may prefer: watching a

German man observe his lover riding his bicycle

   along a country lane     or observing in closeups

simple pastoral tragedies     You want your life

   to be more effective    to see the "good" in

everything no matter the susceptibility or reluctancy

   like handing wilting daisies to bearded old men

that gestures effervescence like a spawning stream

   in summer's golden ecstatic lather

   Keep your Nomex on at all times so that no one

can burn you    chisel you into chiaroscuro

   Everyone wins           pass it on

PROTEST AT POZNAN FAIRGROUNDS, 1956

What of this ruthless shallowness?   history, dries,

lingers like ocean-erosion, then barren. 

       A photograph of a Polish protest, poignant 

       in this sermonized-like march. 

When officers fire into a crowd, every bullet sweats bullets; 

eyes of quizzical heroes-to-be sustain their standing. 

       On that bloody day, the way melodrama makes

       its own rules, demonstrators were driven flippo--

       they marched along Poznan fairgrounds

       chanting, "We want bread!"          Earlier, police

had let their force-field down & in unsustained 

suspense, spit fire across the Beckettian landscape

killing a 16 year-old boy.   The rioters

        dipped their Polish flag in the boy's blood

        carrying it high through the streets

        as if the land had turned into a suburb

        of Transylvania.  Attempts to desensitize 

the effects of power & violence.   To later soak

risk in water to numb the pain. 

        To weaken the sinews of tyranny,

        stretched to the steam of a singed teakettle. 

The skeletons of the Innocent belong to limbs & trees,

become balladeers, outspoken, overshadowing lands of malcontent,

        understanding everything.

EMPTY MAGNIFICATION

A camera         A camera that praises shadows

   instead of light       is a camera with insight

Or      cones in the retina      like enormous tracts of desert

scarcely satisfied      If a blindfolded society

    could thrive (without standing, moving) it would be

even more victorious with a double blindfold     

    Suddenly     dogs barking in the neighborhood

(two of them wearing red sweaters)

I watch for shadows underneath the door-slit    I am

a human flicker out of focus this day     the caves in my

throat sounding off like a quivering fog melting

    the way a particular street's ex-sewers   (a wave

of relief)     surges through me (the knowing of "little things")

The week of white-grey skies has diminished

   winter's colorless aluminum giving way to nonspectral

violets & magenta      browns & grays   

agglutinated with honey-light        Cat grooming on

the black-gray checkered blanket      fur like

paper-fine pastry       I could be shaving a swatch of

sandpaper         You seem confused but do not be alarmed

    for is the cuckoo bird in error when it leaves it eggs

in other birds' nests?      Were Michelangelo's raw

& oft bleeding hands nothing more than bubbling blades

of red-orange lava?     "Finely divided uranium takes fire

on exposure to air"     With eyes of angelic light   I could starve

myself to weightlessness     Look! in the sky!

          What you cannot see can track you down

snatched up with eager spite

          What you can see can make a sound

a diver floating in mid-flight

          Water splashes through words        A camera

's aperture    unconscious during every interim

I'm a human flicker out of focus this day

        "Empty Magnification" at my heels

like a snarling dog       the way Orpheus was snatched

from life's continuum