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O E T R Y
> Excerpts
from The Wanton Sublime
> Excerpts
from Darkling
> Excerpts from At the Site of
Inside Out
>
New Poems
It begins in a far meadow, a bright room, a hillside thick
with time
A woman in a field of flowers interrupted and carried away
A thick of meadow begins it in a woman bright with flowers and time
A room carried in a hillside interrupted a far field away
Had she kept a place in her mind empty to welcome a guest?
And so she played and plucked— lilies from silence
And so she in her mind kept a guest to welcome lilies and
A place empty she had played and plucked silence from
It is a lie that serves the truth
Beauty by nature rules over strength
The truth that serves beauty is a lie
Nature by its strength overrules
A thick silence interrupted in a field of time—a hillside bright with
it
Flowers in the mind—in a meadow a room
Is plucked and carried empty to welcome a lie. Her guest
Rules over strength and beauty. And so kept by nature
She had played Woman. It begins far away. She a truth
from a place that serves lilies.
~~~
Unarmed, unwarned
must she yield—
must she stop—
a gasp alas
aghast perhaps
expecting this—
(whose greeting sneaks
into her peace?)
at this moment
sundering syllables right
from his heart
Hail thou that art highly favored
just like that he arrives—
enters—
in to her —
unto her — in
barges in
just like that
comes in and then—
and now—
how can she duck
out of this—
alone— afraid—
poor duck
out of water
not yet known by man
forced here to stop—
(squalls in her breast
sudden twitches in
her groin—)
(shall she bend to smell the lily—
or sneak
another peek at her book—?)
IF I AM FAVORED
LET ME FINISH THIS BOOK—
(or bolt right
out of this place—
or look him right
in the eye)
Listen, you uninvited duck
winging in this way—
if I am favored
leave me be
—I’ve got things to do around the house
let’s put a stop
to this plot
sweat beads in her crotch
sneaks
down her thighs—
why me— why me what’s in
this for me—
(elsewhere nails drive in—)
(coo to her do to her do
with her—)
do by her—
right
by her—
do not toy with her—
(must he sneak
in on her between breakfast and lunch—)
poor duck
plucked from—
sucked from—
(what dreams hammer to a stop—?)
it is with great pleasure I tell thee thou art favored
(the looked-up-to turns away—)
favored, favored
for what—
(wanting to flee but leaning in—)
Mary Mary
not contrary
at Gethsemane your garden stops—
with cocky swells and modest belles—
what a fine crop—
right
green are the grasses of grief—
out in the yard a red-billed duck
takes off for the lake—
as in there was an opening down the road—
a sneak
preview of the way which is not home
that sneaks
into the scene
out of the distance—
terrain favored
with going on—
because of must
because of be
because nobody ducks
out of this Baby—
Mary it’s your chance to step in—
for the good of—
the need of—
(might even be fun—— right—?)
favored
chosen
oh finest fruit at full STOP
in the enactment STOP
this unraveling STOP
as it sneaks STOP in
through your favorite door STOP
raining harder now STOP so duck right
down STOP (or out) STOP
duck if you can STOP but you can’t STOP
now he’s come
STOP
~~~~
I
And what if a soul
fall into a body…
And if it gaze into pure light…
And if something grow into life…
As the spider spins its web
she spins him of herself,
AND LEAVES A MEMORY
life-bestower, nurturer,
agent of futurity
oh, woven child
you must not unravel
she webs and warps with finest, strongest yarn
II
Listen:
Thou shalt never forget thy mother and what she has done for thee…For
she carried thee long beneath her heart as a heavy burden, and after
thy months were accomplished she bore thee.
Three long years she carried thee upon her shoulder and gave thee her
breast to thy mouth, and as thy size increased her heart never once
allowed her to say,
“Why should I do this?”
She is and remains a mother
even though her child die,
though all her children die.
For at one time she carried you under her heart.
And you do not go out of her heart ever again.
ALL THIS NO MAN KNOWS.
~~~~
That which installs itself in the mind embraces sound
Rebounding,
rounding the fecund earth
Birth, as in what is not, as in one makes one,
is a mighty absence to understand
(and there are those who fail to get their lessons done)
Dun is
the color of submission
Unfledged, she leafs through what has been nothing never
Never to be what she is/ or could /or hope to be
Bewitched by dictions (fictions) on the surface—
Face naming that which she must save, polished like an apple—
Apple of the eye, amour of town and street, apple of the cheek
Eaten with a dab of honey for a sweet year
Ear to who am I in the suddenly-arriving what-comes-next
Next to being, next to delivery, next to undergone
Gone parenthetical but now revived as her eye
Spies the sudden trespass of his unexpected welcome—
Succumbing, coming unto him in full sun this morning
Mourning what she need not beguile or lie beside
Inside: a story —
inventories,
incidents —
pleading
to be flossed
from
the teeth of silence —
Leaching congealed vowels
lately
of / longing for / words —
Explanations not yet factored into claim: —
this
is this —
that
is that —
As in first annunciations/ as in debuts
for
old roles /
as
if to atone:
yes,
I love you —
Namers courting drifting sands,
fated
to root heels,
Toes into dunes rampant with consonants of
Unreachable destinies,
lonely
nouns of hearts
Pilgriming to wished-for places
on
the verbs
Of desire —
destinations
where nothing feels
New but an aching need to shout out.
Again and again the narrative howls for words.
Circling, leaping into
/
out of / shade, but it makes
Only wrong turns —
how
can it say the right thing? — shall it
Pledge never to do that again,
to
be good next time?
—
a daughter
Parents —
blooms
at the edge of a small scream —
In the beginning is the end — words and more
buds —
fingers
knotted / throats
Choked —
syllables
scuffling for a spot / patient for a time
Entropies, upstretched vacancies,
delays
Grazing sound —
too
soon for /
in
the aftermath of / being —
Amok with what is unseen / unsaid: love me,
Touch me, make use of me —
preludes
as
in dawnings,
distances
as
in prayers
Ensnared at the main gate —
and
now —
and
now—
oh
god —
they’re
dead.
| Thesis: |
black
holes / white holes / wormholes / origin and
fate — they’ll last
me a lifetime sans regret:
what I know I cannot know, I need not forget. |
| Hypothesis: |
prior translations
sprout on scattered tongues;
hear
me’s moss in bloodless mouths: what they
didn’t want to remember, I’m unable to forget. |
| Ein
Sof: |
root of all roots:
cause of all causes: unreadable,
unknowable,
except to itself: speaker in numbers:
what I cannot know, I must not forget. |
| A priori: |
an infant universe
of ten dimensions once ripped apart:
remaindered:
reality: three dimensions plus time:
a man, a woman, dimensionless, crossed the sea to forget. |
| Note
bene: |
they include time yet
they are timeless: they contain
the
world, but the world would not contain them;
what I’ve come to note, I must not forget. |
| Cosmology: |
the world is names,
the names numbers: Isaac the Blind,
unfettered
by terrestrial eyes, saw ten digits without end:
how do I quote names I can neither recall nor forget? |
| Insight: |
chapters locked in
time: shredded Torah scrolls,
sacks
of flour poured on the road, posterities of pine
flamed to ash: I’ve come to know; I must not forget. |
| Empirical: |
what is admissible:
her knee nudging
the sewing
machine lever, his gun-shot leg:
that which must be scavenged, because we forget. |
| Numerology: |
arms assembling / reassembling:
number my
stars: number my
grass: number my blood: earth
deafened by ciphers indecipherably quiet. |
| Themes:
|
the narrative reveals
hints of what it was / is / should /
could
have been: their sisters and brothers read
haven anywhere: even remote islands chose to defect. |
| Premise: |
black holes roam enfoldments
deeper than fears
trapped
in their eyes: never-to-be-known
scenarios sentenced to decomposed alphabets. |
| Understand: |
I am trying to get
to the bottom of things;
I
am trying to open the folds, to unroll the bolts;
I am trying not to forget. |
| Leitmotifs: |
this meal with the
foretaste and aftertaste
of
not knowing: these entrees sauteed in unbuttered
sounds: this meat-starved, chipped-plate banquet. |
| Sixth
sense: |
Safed: in the presence
of absence, saying little, intending
much,
Isaac ben Solomon Luria spoke to the speechless
birds: black are the holes’ cavities, awesome the glister
of jet! |
| Ergo: |
we die into life; we
live into death; printouts
torn
and seamed, ravelled and patched:
nothing is chaste. |
| Ontology: |
hollow bowls (graves)
of when beneath crazed plates (fields)
of
where beside empty cups (houses) of why :
their tables were set. |
| Furthermore:
|
they wrote letters
begging to be read, and got no reply;
pried
open windows of windowless rooms, rubbed out
their eyes with failures of light; swallowed gruel and grit. |
| Gnostic
moan: |
why did you forsake
them: why did you retreat
from
your witness sky, your righteous world unbuilt?:
must their candles perish because they’re unlit? |
| Epistemology: |
theirs is not stillness
unnoised; theirs is silence exiled from
sounds
of uncountable generations: theirs is language
with the grammar beaten out of it. |
| Rationale:
|
because they inhaled
the air, because they exhaled the air,
because
they occupied space, slept and ate and walked
streets, because their eyes were green, blue, sometimes violet... |
| Mandate:
|
see to it that nothing
is lost or forgotten...record...and collect!
but
their history was ending, their families erased:
they sealed their lips and left me to imagine what to forget. |
| Affirmation:
|
let the poverty of
my words not be abject; let them
persist
in making and remaking, shaping, reshaping:
to name, rename, unname: not to forget. |
| Nomenclature:
|
for a world never to
be repeated, only to be archived:
trying-to-enter-the-thing,
trying-to-name-the-loss words;
survival not as a desire, but as a duty to celebrate. |
| Destiny:
|
a community in the
van of the East...a land set for a halting-
place of enmities, a neutral ground...wilderness
become
a pool of water and the land no longer termed
desolate. |
| Belief:
|
they didn’t believe
in God; nor that they were chosen
as
models for the gentiles; they understood suffering,
otherness: tattered clothes: how well they came to fit. |
| Inquiry:
|
why? was it because
their language was never spoken
by
anyone with power, the only tongue without
a vocabulary for war: merely howls and ash to record it? |
| Rebuttal:
|
when you have a
great and difficult task...if you only work
a little at a time...without
faith and without hope, suddenly
the work will finish itself. But will it be free and I free
of it? |
| Tautology: |
singing your song without
singing your song:
dashes,
dots, commas, deflected threads splicing air:
to disclose what it would impoverish me to forget. |
Hypothesis
cum plea: |
what I know is what
I need to unknow and reknow:
a
sea of syllables frightening to swim,
bent on utterance before I forget. |
So little cause, and illusions of meaning withdraw.
O little cause of timetorn torntime motes in time,
Little can they know trapped in that time,
In that abyss of history when wordclaws
Tear at their throats, when an alphabet —
hell-sent
To taverns of steaming samovars, hell bound —
Lies in wait, not knowing when, how, why peril may sound —
Elbows into the marketplace, jostles the remnant
Crowds — Moishe the Barber, resident now
of silence,
Apostle of naked chins, shaves the peasant faces,
Unbeards the Jews who have strayed —
Simon the Merchant mans three carts at once —
Edifice of fur hat, hill of velvet frock, pyramid
of boot,
and
in New York “Little
Flower” reads the comics, swings a baton at Carnegie Hall,
On his motorcycle rushes as if tomorrow can be stalled,
Rushes in his sidecar to the latest fire, has faith that evil,
Culpabilities are temporary alliances with darkness,
Antipathies slated to be erased from the moral terrain,
Rounds the corner on the glittering, unstoppable wheels of better
days
On a roll, on the march, speeding through expectant, hope-doused
streets —
Little causes: skullcaps, sideburns, leaning
cottages on chicken legs —
If we forget— lest we forget— O scattered sheep
exiled to lost roads,
Nuggets of piety cling to their coats, on their brows they glow
— O
Guardian light — on the floor a child writhes, the rebbe's
in the stove —
Slumber, landsleit doze — long live this drone,
this
winterdark of dregs...
Of all colors the dense lore of
them the black border
hounds the white page o the demands
on order
one two three hide in order
four five six seek land
where the hill breaks where the shore cubes
the borderland
where looted harbors where long ago
dolors of gold ore
refused to melt ingot upon ingot loaded full
on board
how shall I bore into this who has
bored
out of this please give up your cool
from where border
patrol forces have sped I will not ignore clamors
of language or
disguise myself o the hooded roaming
in short order
the order to flee the ports jammed
where the borderlands
why these doors where the subject/subjects
where land-
ing holds its breath on the spot
it is inscribed we all land
together we’re in it together o
the fictions stored on board
“to think is to fail” “in it together”
they sing no idea borderlands
o resonant lanes o corded woods
the weird boarders
whose untold parties discarded rooms
numbing disorder
out of which due to which on
stage we must reor-
der out of frayed shawls
erased disclosures and/or
filthy fingernails the palm roars in the mind
aborted land-
ings where folklore shrieked to a halt
where the new order
silenced metaphor where original lacunae climbed
on board
where the temporary name themselves where the
border
takes its memory where its pulse cannot be found
borderlands
what will it take the opaque brittles
the night-baked borderland
where candors sprout from rocks where characters
cannot oar
out of estrangements the darkling of that will
you get bored or
angry being neither here nor there to have clawed
to land
where fish are fowl where it is not manageable to
be on board
hating the mirror and inking your face out of photos in order
to tell less than you know where
there is too much to order
where seams gape and hems weep where sleeves moan
borderlands
where space is mute where the volume is low where
board-
ed-up orifices mourn walls of ships of state unmoored
of rumor
of absence of digging of plowing
of people of no-one’s land
of the tyranny of denial of the monarchy of doubt
of the border
hoarding more borders the record
defiant with emptiness of the order
to land before the final history once and for
all to the borderland
quick to the core where first traces storm all
aboard going aboard
Then, she says, a penis is needed, female
artists almost always can use one, taking
charge with tools like brushes and palette knives to
build
up their pictures,
bold as men are, spraying great skeins of yellow,
cobalt blue, and crimson across the canvas,
rage or quiet made at their will, exploding
measures
of failure,
risking planes, dissolving full spaces, Bluemner
hurling turquoise clouds on a purple field as
blackbirds wheel in formation, Hartley sculpting
skies
out of granite,
oil as cloud made palpable, air as breathless
form accreting mass in its own defense while
ends begin and boundaries disappear.
This
is how men die.
Now, she says, O'Keeffe is my point, consigned to
desiccated bones smoother than silk, unblemished
petals, lilies swollen in heat, faint tensions
vectored
through tunnels,
warm vaginas, moisture of vulvas, furtive
stand-ins, meanings plain as your face: a woman
minus penis making art with her body,
trapped
in her body.
1.
From the top of her head to the black coagulation
—
If you think she's floating you're right,
right over slippery scales of graphite.
From the top of her head to the black coagulation
—
her throat slit by the hyphenated run.
If you think she's floating you're right,
right over slippery scales of graphite.
From the top of her head to the black coagulation
—
her throat slit by the hyphenated run
impossible to subdue once begun
If you think she's floating you're right,
right over slippery scales of graphite.
2.
Trust me. There's nothing unusual in a lost face.
Dismemberment gets to the parts (heart) of things:
what bleeds, what cannot; what seeps, what clings.
Trust me. There's nothing unusual in a lost face,
severed between points, dismantled, erased.
Dismemberment gets to the parts (heart) of things:
what bleeds, what cannot; what seeps, what clings.
Trust me. There's nothing unusual in a lost face
severed between points, dismantled, erased,
flesh bone dry or cloyingly moist, whatever the case.
Dismemberment gets to the parts (heart) of things:
what bleeds, what cannot; what seeps, what clings.
3.
Look, her lips couple with nuance ardent for things
to say,
and under the text of her brow note how the eye,
spangled with lust, resets the margins of desire.
Look, her lips couple with nuance ardent for things
to say
about hermeneutics parsed in foreplay
and under the text of her brow note how the eye,
spangled with lust, resets the margins of desire.
Look, her lips couple with nuance ardent for things
to say
about hermeneutics parsed in foreplay,
language dandling codes fervently relayed,
and under the text of her brow note how the eye,
spangled with lust, resets the margins of desire.
4.
Adamant colors breathe deep, sustain your duress,
Eye, stick out your tongue. Shake up the old domain.
What is given to understand consorts on new terrain.
Adamant colors breathe deep, sustain your duress,
Fondle nails, ears, sweaty feet, punctuate each caress.
Eye, stick out your tongue. Shake up the old domain.
What is given to understand consorts on new terrain.
Adamant colors breathe deep, sustain your duress,
Fondle nails, ears, sweaty feet, punctuate each caress.
Lick the bottom of the bowl, sweet eye. Yes, oh yes,
eye, stick out your tongue. Shake up the old domain.
What is given to understand consorts on new terrain.
1.
Then I will deliberate with the bones of earliest
memory
And I will revoke fields of sown obligation
I will demand a site-specific locale for the face en face
And I will disarm dialogue with splintered phrase
And I will needle zeitgeist with parody
And I will backdate the check I’m to sign in the morning
And in the evening I will revise the beginning because its end is
everywhere
Yes, I will plunder residues to state my case plainly
But I will be ambiguous as the distant horn of the barreling car
So, where will you find me, where will you find me
2.
Yes, I will fly solo to the bones of earliest memory
And I will stow seed revoked from fields sown with obligation
And I will invent cosmic order for the face en face
And I will arm concept with splintered phrase
Yes, I will needle agenda with parody
And I will decode the check I’m to sign in the morning
And in the evening I will emulsify the beginning because the end
is everywhere
Then I will plunder dream to state my case plainly
And I will be distant as the horn of the barreling car
So, how will you find me, how will you find me
3.
Yes, I will fly solo to deliberate with the bones
of earliest memory
And I will run rife with seed revoked from fields of sown obligation
And I will make actual a site-specific, cosmic order for the face
en face
And I will disarm concept with the dialogue of splintered phrase
Yes, I will needle agenda with the zeitgeist of parody
Then I will backdate the recurrent code of the vintage check I’m
to sign in the
morning
And in the evening I will revise the emulsified beginning beginning
to end
And I will plunder dreamy residues to state my case plainly
And I will be beholder beheld, ambiguous as the strident warning
of the distant
horn
of the barreling car
Try to find me, try to find me, try to find me
1
That somber greens — ferns, conifers, cycads
— flittered
with fruit and bloom
That the earth’s face pinked, reddened, honeycombed
glow
That angiosperm came to outnumber gymnosperm
That they seduced insect, bat and bird, flaunting
colors
and
smelling good
That they multiplied, hybridized, colonized east to
far,
north
to near, valley to peak
2
That brush crowded out burr oak and big bluestem grass
That weed evicted sweet brown-eyed Susan
That buckthorn unseated cream gentian and violet bush clover
3
That there had been prairie-fringed orchid, Indian
grass,
large-leafed
aster
That there had grown starry campion and bottlebrush buckeye
That there had flown great spangled fritillaries,
Edwards’ Hairstreaks
That Cooper’s hawks, eastern bluebirds, Appalachian
browns
had
manned the trees
4
That what was mis-taken reappeared
That flowers strummed in the trees
5
That they made it and made it, new, now, and again
That it is possible, possible, spreading, and so
So you wait, so you wait,
One hundred years you trance,
Marrow smoldering in your bones,
While queen and king, commoner
And knight snore decades’ snores
And winters turn
And then return
To nothing new.
Silence stokes the great stone halls,
The fire’s home is ash, and comatose,
You’re dead alive
Until the prince lopes in.
This time you know the score.
This time your eyes fly open before Charming
Plants his kiss upon your lips,
And when His Highness bends
To pluck you from your sleep,
Oh Beauty, how he withers
As you trap his tongue between your teeth.
A gust of blood puddles the rug;
roses dash in the other direction
where endearments are uppermost
but the true path ineluctably muddied.
Oh gods have you forsaken us now and for all?
Even the voyeur who is not a spy
barely sees what’s in front of his nose
though he peers hard with his ear and his hands.
Only one more shot remains on the roll.
In this art multiple charges pulse
with a gluttony sparked by starry skies
and the trenchant moon in its rigged figments.
We do not want our appetites made sport
or lapped up by wanton
winds’ digressions with rain.
We do not want our desires daunted that way.
We had hoped they would slip their tongues
into our mouths and cruise our plights,
quicksilver lusts hot to shimmy all through the night,
not these come-lately words
laid down by a celebrant lying in wait
for an implausible moment to pull out a pen.
All afternoon alterities advanced, afars abdicated
and
azure anons
abandoned
the air
and
Beyond blue–
betrayal,
blasphemy
brimstone
and bray–
blind
bards' bereaved ballads
beached
on bygones of bearded beliefs–
Could we have called for a cessation of clamors?
Could
we have cautioned
crimson
not to colonize its cakes
on
catafalques of
Dun– to defy the doomsayers–those deathdealing
dreaddroning
dreardoting
drillmerchants
of dark–
Entropy and elans of eclipse
emerald
and the envy of ecru
eternity
and the errands of em
Fractured fuschias fueled
by
frontmen flexed for the fray–
O
flash-frozen fullbodied futures
Gone glottal gone
global–
O
grizzly graffiti
grassed
in gray grammar–
O grim geography
Hounding the heliotrope horoscope–
hardworking
harbinger–
our
hyacinth of hope–
Inland incunabula infected ideologies
and
ironies infiltrated innuendo
inflicted
by ivory on inks–
January Juned–
jonquils
jeered
jardins
Knotted khaki and kohl in know-nows kow-towed
to
karma and ken–
Lavender let legions– lavender leered–
lavender
lured leitmotifs landward to
Mollify maverick mauves–
the marl and the maelstrom–
moot
mayhem of mainstreams
mazed masked
and
marooned
Neatly necromancing navy nostalgias of the
numberless
numerous
numbed
by the nonce of night’s noon–
Onslaught of ochre
ontogeny
of oblivion, oracular omens ogled by
Populations of paid product placement and puce pandemonium
polluting
the port–
Quotidians quaquaed quite quixotically
quests
quaked and
quinced
the quays–
Ruby rode rain–
Reader
is
this rhetoric
or
realism
reddened
and rouged–
Straphangers
are
we scarlet or sepia–
surfsurge
or slam–
ARE
WE SELLER OR SOLD–
Trophy the true
tango
the traipse
tidy
the taupe–
O
terrestrial tourists
Unumber ulterior’s unanimous urge–
Very vermilion the vacated void
valiant
the verge–
Weltschmerzed weathers
woundweary
whites–
whither
our
windows–our wardrobes–
our
warbles–our woos –
whilst
Xanadu xanthenes– and X xes X–
Yammer yes yammer you yellowedyearyesteryore yowls
yonder
yields yarrow
and
yodeling yews
yonder young
Zinnias zaffer the zeds–
O
Zeitgeist my zeitgeist– O zuppa di
zoos (Zeus)–
zero,
o zero, our zealotchoked zones–
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