Third Wheel

I am your shadow, chill on the grass,
A wordless echo who won't understand,
The perspiration that sticks to your cheeks
And reeks. What you want,
I won't let you have; I will stay with you
Like a foreign tongue, I will cover you like a tomb.
If you struggle, I am dumb -- already a corpse, already
An unflinching doll. Can you see my face?
There are strange tears dripping like glue,
Pursed lips guarding an unspeakable wish,
An expensive word.

Towards a New Lyric

Is it possible to speak without betraying myself,
Or worse yet brooding on a midnight
That will never come? Poetry, I am now convinced
Should be a clear and pleasant stream,
Easy on the heart and lungs, compact,
Because the cup of dilute measure
Pollutes the brain, while a shot of eau-de-vie
Quenches every thirst and leaves the vision
Lucid and the heart dissolved from pain.

Port Morning (Samain)

The sun, by degrees emerging from fog,
Gilds the old tower and height of the masts;
And, casting her net through the darkened waves,
Makes the sea sparkle with argent mesh.

Here surge, touched by a far-off ray,
The porticoes of marbled architecture;
The wind, spiced, makes reverent adventure
In the limpid clear and fine of the morn'.

On the arsenals palpitate standards deployed;
And the petite children, whom petty games joy
Recall to the current the rings of old oaks,

While a stately vessel, blushed azure and purple,
Bounding and light in the sonorous spray,
Transports himself, with rippling sails, into the day.

All humor perished from my exhaled blood (Verville)

All humor perished from my exhaled blood
Leaves me parched, while the spirit in my heart
Extinguished of an excess spleen, in my distress
Forces on me melancholy's (oh!) extreme effects.

Ha! Almost all around me, raging in fury,
Perished, broken, 'rept, weighed down with time,
I have care, I have spite, I have horror and fear –
Of your eyes, of my bad, of death, of life.

Ha! If in your hearts you have some idea
Of the desires you have etched upon my own
Have pity on one dead who hopes (and for your sakes) to die.

Or in order to rend my death an even better time,
Vow sighs that in my am'rous pains
I draw that thing which makes me languish still.

Mirrors

If I had an axe I would cut until blood, precious blood,
These drippings like rubies of ravenous intensity,
Soaked the slaughtered earth. Craven would I watch,
Saliva dripping and slipping into reveries, until the clocks
Changed gold and breeze of freshness blew:

Fresh breath, why is the world soiled and bothered
With their vexations – why do they eat, why do they breathe?
I need a perch on the golden boat, a prow away from the muck,
A respite of boiling oil from grief. Because I am changed,
I am mixed! This cupid boy hath mixed me, this boy,
This variance of a mingling progeny, dance of the craving earth,
Glutton of time and youthful dreams I watch.

Why can't my body be yours? Is it because the lens of the mind
Settles deeply upon me, because I telescope and spy
Through a veined glass? This vanity of the winds and scribbled speech,
Of salt-pools limpid in forever won't keep me. If I could have your body...

But is it given to touch an immensity? No, it is not given –
Rather taken, erept, forsaken. Why will I tremble in agony,
Wishing for an adze, an ax, to end other people's (and I mean my own)
Misery? Forsaken is the mind, and stained and wilting glass.

Propertius Elegies 1.1

Cynthia first seized a woeful with her eyes,
Me not 'fore touched of any lust.
Then fell my lights of constant pride,
And love pressed head with straddling buck,
Until he taught disgust for chastened girls,
The proveless! life without a plan,
And lacked me rage not through fulfilling years,
All more I felt beheld of adverse gods.

Milanion by fleeing never (Tullus) pains
Confounded Yasid's bestial harsh,
For now in lecher wand'ring Parthen caves,
He met and saw the hirsute beasts;
Then even struck was (splend'rous) by the wound
Of a Hylen ram and wounded did he groan
Through Arcan caves. So he could lord
The velocitous girl: only in love do prayers
And benefactions move. As for me

Late love no urges arts, nor 'members
Noted as before to trek the ways.
But you, to whom deception of deducted moons
And labor to sacers pray in magic hearths,
Behold, come now, convert our dominatrix' mind,
And make it so the more she pales upon my kiss!
Then will I believe that you can stars
And Cytaeanous streams deduce with songs.

But you cry lapsed but late, my friends,
Seek now help for no sanish heart:
Rather the beast we'll suffer, bestial fires
If only for the liberty that loves in rage to speak.
Bear through extreme gens and bear through streams,
Where nothing of a femme can know my way:
But stay – for you whom gods have nodded
Easy breath – situate and ever in bewatched lovings
Safe; in me our Venus drives these venal nights,
And nonce a time is vane kept back amore.
This (I beg you) evil shun: each one's care
Will loiter him, nor will it change a place
For 'customed love. Which if any will advert
His tardy ears from monitations, 'las
Will such a grief bring back my words.

A Marceline Desbordes Valmore (Albert Samain)

Love, whose other name on earth is grief,
Made thine breast a flowing source;
Thy voice was sad, thy (charming) soul,
For from thee sympathy divine a sister keeps.

Inebriation or despair, impassionate slash languor,
Thou spouted cries of gold amid the gale,
Which verses burned upon thine lover's lips,
Took rhythm from thy beating heart.

The Just today, becoming to our voice,
Calls, with palm in hand, upon thy bust,
In order to proclaim thy glory to a Flem' old sun.

But better tender bronze to tender charms:
Perhaps it will suffice – some night – simply
For belovèd negligence to come, and throw

This tuft of flowers trembling with larmes.

La Toison d'or (Albert Samain)

Black in the blue night, vogue Argo, double-timed.
The lords, from dusk evocative of home
Are sadly lain, asleep. Jason upright
Lone patrols, pursues a vane, intrepid dream.

The Lyre of fired (flashing) pegs, and fulgent is the gloom;
An infinite silence trembles! ...And Eson's son
'Pon 'rizons saturate' amasses pride, and flares
Aloft the Colchis' rose;

But! While he lushes ruminant by prow,
Below Medea, fiery of a carnal lawn
Feels flesh resolved in Asia's tepid wind ...

And now, 'der black eye of the quivering Dragon,
Destiny, preparative of antique frenesies,
Mixes with the golden fleece a sombre smell of blood.

Three Haikus

Glass beads falling on
A bedrock carriage bubbling
With the fresh spring's tide.

The plunk of a stone
Splashes spray and ripples the
Cistern of cool walls.

Somewhere a rainbow
Shimmers on the red face of a
Sand-dollar like a mirage.

Someone had better be prepared for rage

I saw a child, a half-bald little Chinese boy stumbling through the library with both hands in his mouth and perturbed eyes absorbing everything and I thought of the newness and hunger of his youth; he was a little copy of his father -- he was going to be his father. I wanted to smash him against the display case where someone has set up a series of stupid post-modern pieces illustrating an even more senseless poem. The dignity of poetry and poetry workshops, having a "thesis" for your poem, saying "something", I want to vomit all over their pretentious little round-table (round because everyone's equal, of course). Shouldn't we destroy meaning along with our children? Isn't this stupid little Chinese boy the seed of all our problems? Aren't we growing into the same wars, anxieties, and heartbreaks? Oh, the poet moans, humanity is a tragedy! Oh! But we can do something about it. We can grab sledge-hammers and smatter all the streets with the blood of our children -- that would serve everyone right who ever winced comfortably at those made for TV compassion buffets. Then we could grow old, suffer, and die. But no more youth.

Cuff-links floating in a drop of milk, dilating with the sponge
Of a giant space, gnawed fingers, ten, half-crowd a little throat,
As he would eat himself -- the jaundiced boy, sanguine,
Whose father sits, serene, and gluts himself on treasures
From my education's hoard of crumpled words. This whelp
Awes at an alien cavern of conjoint bricks and titan shelves,
Cases carefully sating N. Calloway's art, vane prints
To illustrate some cardboard-scribble senseless, expressing,
Just that. What the poet wrote his workshop mulled,
Carefully -- due credit to the artist, to his rituals, meticulous
Symbols, genius jagged ends, all very peculiar wings (oh so dear),
A little bird prepared to chirp some edgy tune for the people,
Really spiritual people, to understand. Save me, the illiterate
Chink leans at his father's knees, whose sledge hand
Absently caresses a few ragged weeds, rubs his dull scalp.

Relatavism

Relativism lies besieged on every side: what recourse is appropriate
When doctrinaire philosophers (and theologians) assault
Her feeble frame? 'Truth', they say, 'is everlasting,
'Herent in the flux of bodies and the shifts of time. Either
Through tests assiduous and gatherings of much, we can uncover
Under aggregate equations all future combinations, or 'dress
A sturdy law: "All apples course unto the earth, the sunlight by its girth
Warps space and time, all favor-less, unlucky lives decline" –
By thus confining matters to the bounds of truth, we prove
Able legislators, and every beast on earth, all fowls,
The clouds, the blinding sun, air infinite that blasts
The planet's face, will cater to our laws, all caper
At our whim.' 'God's whim', the theologian replies,
'For Mankind lives in revelation of the truth, and reads
In heaven's book the pacts on which to found a life, which,
In accordance with a deity's word, grows strong, but in divisions
Of an unpurged sin, wrecks in itself and falters, trusting
Overmuch to feeble strength.'

How can we reply? Is there a narrow channel
Gracious to life's end, along which thought and action
Ought to wend? And can the tides of truth's vast ocean
Erode a wicked earth? Am I subordinate
To hegemonic laws, and leading into dark horizons,
Margins obscure with the twinkle, slight,
Of unknown stars? Is truth this great reunion
That awaits us, 'gulfs us in our sleep, and clears
Like dawn's accumulations from a sun-drenched eye?
Is there a sisterhood of stars, a winged conspiracy
Past the ether, holding the world to an upright fame?
Regardless I reply that here, on earth, we do the best
We can, consider every argument with sharpened wit
And often, as a blade grows dull in repetitious use,
But shines when burnished to an obtuse grit,
Test ourselves with every strange assertion, use our thoughts
In all preposterous 'climes, until we reach that height
Where we observe first glimmer of impassive light.

Our relatives are wisdom, honed maxims to the changeful shapes
Of observation, molding and evolving as conditions
Ask: it is polite, and life is our reward, lest,
Clinging to presumptions, idle images of God,
Unbending in the ceaseless squalls, torrents of an age
Unschooled in virtues, bent on our destruction,
Like the oak we snap 'neath beating storms.

Letter April 22nd

I thought I’d write a letter, by way of introduction,
To thank you for your greetings, interest, and convey my pleasure
At a sympathetic mind (though as for your body, well, we’ll see in time).

Hannibal once fell on Rome, they say, with thrice a dozen elephants:
This is something like the weight of duties, papers, books
That I have presently incurred. Weekends I work libraries
(Where I am writing presently) and clean the puke, blood,
And beer from off the SU’s walls and floors. When I’m not stacking
I read volumes – Das Kapital des Kulturs (not by Marx,
Of newer and more English fame, in fact a canon whose sole aim:
The recent Culture Wars), Virgil’s Georgica, the Preludes,
Several idle compilations, butter-flying fancies, meditations
On The End (I’ll only give a hint, a German author who laments
A vile and Germanic war – not Aristotle, nor
Some fancy Stoic art, Chryssipus, Alexander, or one of those
Precocious modern upstarts who sing of accidents or incidentals
– I prefer philosophy, like my breakfasts, continental).
I write poetry, too, the fruits of which I serve before you
Gen’rously, and whether they be fresh or rotten
I supply abundantly; Horace of old, and I think Dante too
Composed their epistles in bold measure (ancients had the leisure
To take careful count of words), and so it feels appropriate
To scratch out thoughts adorned at least (though they be in all else
Scattered nothing, dense, obtuse) in golden rhymes. For dithyrambs
I have a lyre or winsome silver flute with which I play
My praise in Echo’s halls. Occasionally, as tempers fall,
I while away an hour with a friend, or dip and bend
Beneath a disco’s lights. There I yearn for bodies
Slim and crowned in double sunsets narrowing to muddy,
Drunken cogitations. I dream of orgies, or betimes
A hand or arm, a frame to which my lithely form might bind
As round an oak the ivy raps, rewraps, thence to drink the sap
Of flowing love. But these thoughts succeed
As swiftly as a cloud, some sun-pierced cirrus of an azure day
Departs the sky. Now you have something,
A too deranged and formal aspect of my thought; I bid you well,
And leave you with this half-formed, broken thing I’ve wrought.

Letter to Home

I'm exhausted. I try to keep myself alive; nights, at home
By stocking sandwiches, and showering, and climbing into bed,
Then waking to a buzzing phone, the rush, the busses' drone, days
Enclosed in class-rooms or the fat, grim biblous sanctum.
My only pleasures are composing verse, and reading
Wordsworth, the swelling of whose lines, especially his Preludes
And liberal meditations, is like a clearing flood, pouring from a spacious urn,
That in the torrent of its grace, purifies my hands, freshens my face,
And seeps into a much besiegèd mind. For Greek I am assigned
Thrice doubled pages on the Odyssey, but I (and more than Wordsworth)
Hath exceeded the charge, so that the stack accumulates
And now I burden empty words on something like twice eight --
Nor can I drop the load, as long as an even virgin cranny of the text
Feels unexposed. In Latin I slog through Afric wars, and view
Jugurtha, hot child of the sun, who rich with gold implores
Rome's general ruin; Sallust's style limpid makes one to forget
The tribulations he describes, or yet ascribes, and interrupting from the clear
Is here or there a well placed jibe. I think I'll write on his biographies
Of notorious personalities, descending by degrees, from virtue, to licentious,
Then beset on every side or (worse and minor) merely rude. But as these idle rhymes
Cheer an indulgent whim, already the moon sinks, already angry Tithonus spurned
And his willing consort dawn in concert plot to bring another day, and haste
Another looming deadline, with his chains cruel, his barbs that strain
Already anxious brow, and his long shadow, stretching more
Than morning's dials or of aging noon. So as this letter wings to you
'Cross thousand miles carried on a limping thought, bethink yourself
To good replies -- economies, the business of our house; the weather,
School, and pleasantries; and, of course, our residence in Taos --
Even paltry things, the state of our dog's tail, just anything to lift my cares,
And by delay bring slight refrain to a perilous grief. Good night.

A Heap

Passing loose meadows that were just beginning to to be turned from spring glaciers, I came upon a heap of old manure, a rotting specimen of compost giving its foul scent to the breeze. It made me retch, I felt that all my senses were on fire at this spectacle of failure; I tried to console myself that from this heap came the strength of a new nature, but nonetheless was overwhelmed in tides of revulsion and fear.

Passing loose meadows just beginning to be turned
In the glaciers of spring, fields gaping in their hollows
For a hungry seed, ravenous and craving, consummate sign
Of a spring strength throbbing in the soil, waiting to overthrow
A blanket of glassy pearl to replace abundant winter's veil,
In all, calling and begging under the playful rays to be sown,

I saw an old smoke-stack of manure, discharging wretched scent
So vigorous and strange, repast of a thousand retching loins
Hitherto buried, hidden in the frosts. By what providence, what divinity
Gathered it together, unless foul things seek like, and misery
Is politic? This was the testament of ancient battles, creation
Consuming its own limbs, resuming its very waste,
Reproducing for this vile heap's mere sake. A whiff

Put my head to flames, flooded my eyes, upturned my spirit's beat;
My legs became a trembling, the citadel of my corpse threat'ed to tumble
O'er a worm-worn sole. It was the reverse of an ecstasy, epiphany of Hades,
Th' infernal stream run round in a fettering thrice triple knot, lymph'ic lump,
Node where all things crawling feast and vie for such meager sap.

Philosophic I began, "But nothing comes from nothing; all things fail and rot
Only to be recompiled, not themselves, but, like this compost, the seeds
Of their own renewal. Life is an exchange of infinite capital,
Perpetual in distribution, complex refining of the whole;
These monuments of time are features of a single face, whose appearance
Might elicit calm; let beatific solitude compose you then, for such is the expression
Of nature's peace." I spoke idly, for then a wicked breeze stirred up the heap

Into a new life. The mass groaned like a displeased stomach, and,
In present copulations, split. A tide of maggots and greedy ants
Shuddered above the revelation of its wide trunk, teeming
Through the idle earth, and settled like an echo of the thing
On either side. A black stench feinted through the air,
And I grew sick, and turned my neck, and hurled.

Fragment

This bulk wrecks through the gloomy lanes
On a night held airy of furrows, lapped
In shores whose occasional, calming ripple
Explains the double dimmed light of the moon,
Sapping the eastern rise of her summit
In glistering crowns through tides obscure,
Vaguish and wand'ring, shadowy listener
To the late night's not yet news. This behemoth
Rumbles into port and docks, wraiths
Fasten her with knots and cables, clasp escapes
In a self-tripling prison of rope. Like an eagled cage
She squats over the shore, and menaces
Long bars, the leaning slant of tap'ring poles,
With precisely looming prow. Insects creep
Across the clipper's wings, bearing loads of encased mass
On their stooping backs...

A Lament for Literature, Lately Slain, With Subsequent Ode to Her Saviour, Brian Vick

Literature was sick! Byron, despair,
All ye wilted laurels droop
In Wordsworth's hair,
Whitman's freedom is confined
And sage-like Milton lately rhymed
In an upstart Asian scholar's lair

Where he, or, more justly, she
Dissects them with torturous cries
And consigns them with their race to die,
Last of their self-willed, magnificent creed
From up whom sprang -- and with them dies --
That upstart poetry.

What maladies, muse, invest a blanching face,
What nightmares hold your craven gaze,
Have rose imps mocked and torn your fair,
Lithe frame? O mourn, all ye rustics, for she
Hath lately lost her frail and sickly fame!

But wait, comes a hero from the West,
Delicate, sensible isles far,
Of pen-sharp hand and subtle mind
To venge our maiden's fall, all while
He guts the oriental prince
Of her extravagant affair,
And clears the air
Of lit'rature's singed flesh.

Hail, Vickers, noble Brian, who abides
The lofty peaks, and gazes down the ignorant tides
Of rotten leaks, that threaten to consume,
With ravenous flair, our damsel in distress,
Penelope fair. Yes, string the bow, vicious Vick,
And shoot the suitors numerable down,
These hordes that hoard and feed
Their wretched frames in ignorant sleep.
Once literature is saved

Oh the bells, the harmonies we'll play –
That one man, glorious man, lacking all pretense
Bent only to the highest aim, the greater good,
Married text to common sense
While all her scholars lately wrecked
Furnish forth a double wake.

An Ode

Is there anything more wroth
Or wickeder than Wordsworth?
What we have here is the English language splayed
And fopped about hundreds of pages fulfilled
With his vain illusions, less eloquent than prose --
And little more at that -- But the rhymes!
-- But the babbling brooks -- those quiet nooks!
And in an age of such moment, that man
Could content himself of trees and beaks
And those grass-hoppers that grate on
Through the whole, wide container of the earth,
A kind of peace...

Spirit of the evening
And quiet strolls before car, bus, train,
Leisured contemplator, conversation
Of life, nature's purple royalty, inventor of a verse
Splendid as Appalachian cataracts, but calm,
And the eddies of lakes, and the slight whorls
Of a skiff's prow dipping into the brine:

I'll forgive you, Wordsworth, voluminous,
Brimming, if, when so many poets entice
With their heavy liquored draught
Of wine's honeyed sweetness,
You bring the dilution of good, pure springs
To our ravening banquet.

Images

My head is lazy, I have a lazy eye,
My brain and fingers steep
In a dreamless doze, a tepid slumber,
Crawling sleep through which
A tickling image creeps:

A harbor of digammic voices,
Spreading in a furrowed wave;

A mountain abruptly capped
To form a piddling peak, where trees
Stab and seek the ink-stained sky;

A vault of pages inscribed
Of her vermillion hand,
And signifying some deep
Secret, exclusive and obscure;

An article of high adventure, neatly pressed,
An undergarment or
The silken simulacrum of
A female breast;

Tattered, black paper cuttings laced
Into a helix of sundry lines, and finally the swell

Of budding limes. So the dancer arcs and tumbles
Like the northern lights, a fog of precipitate clime,
Unreal, evasive skein, fine shroud of a middling night.

De Rerum

There is no capable destruction of literature:
Literature is what was always produced,
This orchestra of language, unconducted
But conducive of every thought, grammar of saying
Replicating itself, whispering, chanting, braying:
Who we always were and what we will become.

No, literature cannot be destroyed, language becomes us
Too deeply; it is only a matter of fragmentation,
Collections, acquisition and numerous borrowings:
Language itself turns into a pronoun, and we return to it
From our fiery meditations and mathematical precisions,
From eighteen, fifty, a hundred beads to the heap, sorites,
Inductor of numberless words, ink blotched into obscure tides.

Can I transfigure the world in these figures? -- I'm in a new place;
A place grown steel, a place of iron and predicates,
Technical, lofty, and maximate of craft -- this machinery,
These words, the ineffable ghost and her utter speech.

Portrait of a Lady

A wayward string of pearls:
Proof, however brief,
Of her infamous soliloquy
Which she delivered to the breeze,
Before she tore at her empty beads
And jumped, leaving those orbs to please
Whoever saw them in the trees.

The House

What is this sadness that lurks, that lurks
And lurches along the cold stone
Steps and climbs into the vestibule
Of cracked ceramics and flaking
Paint? It is the house abandoned
Of fluttering moths and parchments, drifting,
Habitual to creeping mice and chirping clocks,
In sifting shingles shifting northerly winds
While evening clatters on the streets
And the moondish rings the clinking
Knives of stars -- and the clouds, they gather
In a thick soup and pour down pea-sized
Clumps of snow until, like table scraps,
The earth is covered in a molting mass;
And on the hill a stippled church-bell chimes
The midnight's vesper, but the dusty desks
And chairs are moldy, heedless, and the night
Folds silent wings across the wings
Of her silent charge. Rest, sleepy house,
With your broken eyes, moss-stubbled mouth,
Age-ridden, gang-stricken cheeks: sleep
Through the restive gales and winter's drought,
In the emptiness of an unfulfilled number,
Forgotten words. -- These ruins bring to mind
Long plains of desert gloom, an undiscovered country
Prodigally vast, invested beyond memory, that,
Lacking only interest, sits patiently and waits.

The Muse Demands Her Service -- in a Tinseled Bowel

Oh the hours! -- I can take no more of literature...

So you have come, so you have finally come.
Good. Come here, Aeolus, keep the stallions, look,
His mane is whipping frail, and the incessant north
Incurs the oaks' destruction, timber
Is gathering in the clouds; between the voyage of the moon
And Aurora golden dawn will be weary,
If you don't rein him in.

That business -- sorry.
You came by foot? What penalties incurred? Worn shoes,
Ragged feet. Well it's no matter -- look at this chaos,
A weary marksman couldn't shoot the distance to the edge
Of the throbbing skein. Bleeding pierced fingers? Well the warp
Is in the woof; every-thing's changing, it must constantly be
Re-sown. That's why we need you: quite a good stock,
I'll take it down like a rose vintage, encrusted in the age's
Salt, vinegared, though it retains that sparkling thrust
That boils the mind. Smell. Ah yes, there's a good burgundy for you;
Drink: these are the streams. So you can begin work
Immediately? Something new, something new (muses) -- well we have plenty
Of death, something closer to life's core? Ah, a few volumes
Of philosophical wit; no? Doesn't suit
Your taste? Would you like to see language disfigured and refigured,
Moon-changed, vagabond, fugitive of conjurers' tricks and spelling itself
At every turn in a newfound disguise for your indelible surprise?
Hmmph. Love poets: A clime of Phoebus settled in her crown,
And expelled, through jeweled minstrelsies,
In the forlorn flicker of her eyes, or Shed
The deeper darkness of your soul to my light touch,
And let me keep the hidden parts, and munch over these delicates,
This tender bone? Prattlings neither? Well the orbis terrarum is, by no means,
Expunged, and she propels all flowerings and fruits from fatal branches,
Scathing cities in her silken sinuosities, triumphing of towers,
Piercing the aether, fecund in the silence of space. Leave? Don't leave!
Did I speak harshly? Aether, azure, axes, will you not delight in orbs,
The vault, double-arched ceiling of the soil, dirty earth? You can't
Leave! These musings caged, you don't understand how their sparrowed song
Leaves me harrowed and weakling in the evenings, torments me month by month,
Pleading, begging for morsels, many lies, and truth. Lie for me, strum, strumpet,
Sing -- but you can't leave. I'm afraid of the dark, and the long moans,
The mist that settles on the mire for a banshee's cry, forlorn scream
Of a murdering indulgence. Aeolus! Bear him in the western wind, then,
Scatter him like leaves! This furnace cannot be ignored, our rage
(Of which we required volumes) inextinguishable pursues you to the ends
Of earth, yes earth, our earth, however withering spectacular
You might become. The muse requires service, not of one penis
But plenty, for she is vast and engulfing, she is a goddess hungry for our tales.

O Corydon, Corydon, quae te dementia cepit!

I fled to the wilderness' edge,
And peered through deep thickets:
Flowers were blooming the field o'er --
Supple of stem, rich, bending to the newborn kiss
Of a morning breeze. The air was slick with the dew
As a weanling calf, soaked in her mother's tongue.
Milk! The air was thick with milk, porous,
Laetitious of spores. O take me! -- I was old.

The sweet juice of seasons hath retained my flesh,
So light, so young; and then I grew dry.
I hardened like a sapling in the world. Pleasure's havoc!
I remember butterflies, once they clattered to meet
Me, crystalline indigo shining faint sprinkles of sunlight.
Hues! Hues have betrayed me, I am hewn merely.

So I rest in slimy reeds, swamps where wild
Oleander mingles with the thorn. I am of a pedigree
With the exhausted creatures of this earth,
Whom our mother, giddy with fresh enterprise, refuses to sustain –
She turns an aspic nipple, desiccated teat
To the forced weanling, supernumerary, one
By one too much. I thought I could sip honey
Suckle, frolic with the fauns forever, and the fields
Would always bloom into a silver sky.

Still I strew girdles of flowers, still I cover myself
In the chaste mantle of time, but the ages are barren now,
And of the nymphs I am forgotten. To be hidden,
Childless with rage, thirsty for silks and pale shadows
That float through the streets like petals fallen in the early dawn:
The overripe moment, concatenation of wilting things,
Retrograde and spoilt, the whole desert world

But for those flowers! How the lily torments me, the amaranth
Drips, one enchanted nook, a starveling corner bathed in birdsong,
Sole symphony in this rutting, cacophonous earth.
Oh desiccated mass of all colliding, mere calamity, and chaos strain:
I am of a genesis with titans, and, having seen and fallen from the sky,
I riot in this ruin. Pile mountain upon mountain,
Unearth this soil swollen with feckless dirt; my age might be ruined,
But my plans are fecund: to steal heavenly fire, or if I cannot
Divert a stream of nectar in a moonbeam, then surely manic blind
I'll roam heaven and earth, tearing at these emulous garlands for sport,
Despoiling the altars of Bacchus, and spitting with a tongue parched in,
And at, my decadent lusts. I swear, lady of rose-petals and wanton lief,
I'll make more stems to fly, I'll strew the world more
Than a cherry spring. For the furnace of my heart is charred,
And charred, and worn, the pale-smoldering face of our mother earth.

And now for a short interlude (Coffee)

R1

Coffee, how sweet, coffee, now coffee
To trickle in my brain, combobulate
Intimations, dissonant strains, O stealthy aching
Of coffee! -- A word -- dissolute into the long
Ing eve, breathing the beat to dance coffers
Of midnight and everything's same, who stretches dark
With the dripping of coffee. This blackness,
I could find myself in 't, swimming in seas of coffee,
Where each waves repeat their self and everything lathers
Thick coffee, oh echos chocolate, oh jade, ineluctable
Brew harsh vintage of the dawn, sapping tongues,
Wrecking havoc for teeth, coffee staining about
The rimmed eyes in brewing, boil'd soliloquy,
And everything becomes sick sleep, everything strips
Down in torrents of soul, molasses thick,
Lets Lethe syrup our sleep dissolved
Into brimming mustards of steams, spiced,
Seeming evanescence coagulate of matter, rich,
Sublimated in voluptuous temptations, our volucrous,
Oh for a siren song of yourself, and will
In her screaming! Sing: coffee, sing coffee!

O

Coffee, how sweet coffee, now coffee
To trickle my brain, combobulate
Imitations, dissonances, stealthy strain, oh coffee!
A word – trailing into the long, beat the beat,
Dance, and the coffers of midnight
Where every-thing's the same, and stretches dark,
Dark with the dripping of coffee. This blackness,
I could find myself in 't. Swimming in seas of coffee,
Where the waves repeat themselves and everything lathers
Thick coffee, oh echos chocolate, oh most ineluctable brew,
Harsh dawn's vintage, sapping the tongue,
Wrecking havoc on the teeth, coffee staining about
The rimmed eyes in brewing, boil'd soliloquy,
And everything becomes thick and deep,
And everything drips. Drip down in torrents of the soul,
Molasses thick, and let Lethe syrup of our sleep
Dissolve into brimming mustards of spiced steam,
Seeming coagulate evanescent of matter,
Sublimated in our rich uolupting, our uolucrous,
Oh coffee, for a siren in yourself, and willing song
Singing in the screaming sing! Coffee, sing coffee!

Song of Kirke (Part IV)

For nine days we sailed along, grieving in our heart, plunging our oars into the wine dark sea. On the tenth day, when primal Dawn had arched her fingers through the canopy of the sky, we drifted in a mass of fog until the keels of our ships touched the breaking shore. Tincture of rose-mist dispersed through an island's extent, now incandescent and shield-like under day's jealous glare. Desert beach mounted on desert beach, rising into rings of rugged cliff upon which perched, then fell, strands of lichen and moss, silver and glistening with the damp of precipitate streams. Cliff leveled into green mesa, an ocean sown of sun's violet embrace, flowering into blooms of evanescence, traced by and tracing split currents of light -- which seemed to recall to the surrounding clatter of waves echo of their own hum, abuzz in the thickness of a stupor through which glowed, or upon which prevailed, a clarion sharper than the human voice, but more expansive too in lotus luxury.

We beached our ships and left the keels to dry on the prowed and patterned shore. Men clambered inland, seeking out fresh streams for weary limbs, fell goats by the puncture of spears. Others coerced the silicious fire's seeds on appendages dry from the forest, and lit a lusty scorcher for the service. They split carcasses from legs, poured libations, and feasted on entrails of beastly flesh, brought brimming-fat bowls to boils of sputtering grease, and ladled into their bellies concatenations of wine that flowed into dissolutions of strained arms and strewing legs.

But I stood apart, watching, always watching the sea, violent mother of earth, temptress of glittering skiffs, siren of maritime whorls and rip-tides, shore-ward bending, pregnant of rocks, the destiny of hollow barks, rind-some, of surfaces scraping their nothing folds, delivered and delivering in labors, calling harshly under horizons' bloom -- for seagull, missive stork, the razor's ternful moan, for the black and thin, crag-perched, brooding furies and wayward returns, boding the margins of sunset's eye, licentious waves flocking in moon-tide mass.

Poseidon, earth-shaker, how you have harried me! -- over and beyond Ismaros, bending the Cape of Maleia, and past Cythera too, beyond all care of mortal men. Most vengeful of the gods, consort and bride-groom of death, tireless, boiling wrath of storms, sea-squalls and hurricanes alike, your respite was the Cyclop's eye, Kalypso was your pity, who hid me from the earth in numberless, taunting waves, a sea whose floods abated just to make way for my tears, and most unjustly at that. Yes, king of injustice, you who ruminate on rage, wide-wanderer whose gift is the driving of ships past all bounds of civilized thought, great skulker of the deep -- how you have harried me! Oh, how you have harried me! I am weary.

I was weary. The day exhaled numinous stars, sighed out his misery, bewailed pearly radiance of moon, a sharp crescent, cutting tear, most cold and fiery-distant car. Cruel Artemis drove her chariot higher, whipping the steeds without leisure, the stallions of her marbled pleasure – then, when she reached that height of the aether that perches above Atlas' stooped crown, she reigned them in and paused, lengthening midnight's labors, beguiling her flaring consorts all eager to nuzzle Aurora, fearing the lingering caress of the dawn. Her downward gaze was all air and searing wind, cold and the north-breathing gale.

To Come:

Clothes ripple in the wind
Men cold
Meditation on the companions
Awakened by the ghostly song of a maiden

Love

A soul for a soul -- merchant of souls, two
Blending together in a seeming whole,
Differences dissolved, absolved: this passion
Is life's completion, but perfection
Cannot bear itself for long; so from a finished life
Are borne anew and sharper edges, likenesses to be smoothed
Until they fit into the whole, at which juncture
Their conjunction splits apart, breaking and reforming,
Flowing ceaselessly into and out from itself,
Calling in each generation renewed and eternal anguish,
An original destiny manifest in all its instigations, reconfigurations,
In every separate ripple of the whole, and wholly pumping, heart.

Transformations

R1

So let me address you muse
In marigold spangles of twilight,
In silver reminiscence of the dawn, memories
If memories be water -- gathering, crying, suckling
In whirlpools of imagination,
In eddies of effulgent prayer, in real
And unrealized creation, syncopated or lapping
In the lines of meditations, red or blue alike -- red
Because the eye is robbed of sleep, red
Because the mind is seduced of its fancies, finally red,
The color of birth, the overcast shadow of death;
And blue to entwine them, bind them, blue to gather them all
Where the purple embankments of shadows lie, horizons
Sprinkling spice of paprika crushed clouds; blue to bud, yes, finally bud,
Into unknown fragrance of peas
-- Because the mixing of things is established and not the same,
-- Because the mixing of things produces qualities unmatched in anything known,
-- Because the mixing of things is a salvation, a tide more pure
Than the tidings it brings. So if we ring bells,
If we sweep the world in a horse's tail,
If we make or finally become electric bolts,
It was really only the rising, really and finally only
The gathering transformation of clouds,
The breaking and streaking of moonlit dawns.

O

So let me address you muse,
In gold spangling of twilight,
In the silver reminiscence of the dawn,
Memories, if memories were water,
Gathering, crying, sucking
In whirlpools of imagination,
In eddies of effulgent prayer,
In realized and unreal creations,
Syncopated or lapping
In the lines of meditations, red or blue alike:
Red, because the eye is robbed of sleep,
Red, because the mind is seduced of fancies,
Red, finally, because it is the color of birth,
It is the overcast shadow of death;
And blue to entwine, blue to gather them all,
Blue to bring the spice of purple horizons,
Blue to bud, yes, finally to bud into unknown fragrances
-- Because the mixing of things is the same and not the same,
-- Because the mixing of things produces qualities unmatched in anything known,
-- Because the mixing of things is a salvation, is a tide more
Than the tidings it brings. So if we ring bells,
If we sweep the world with a horse's tail,
If we make or finally become electric bolts,
It was really only the rising,
It was really and finally only the gathering transformation of clouds,
The breaking and the streaking,
Incandescence of a sunlit moon.

Song of Kirke (Part III)

For nine days we sailed along, grieving in our heart, plunging our oars into the wine dark sea. On the tenth day, when primal Dawn had arched her fingers through the canopy of the sky, we drifted in a mass of fog until the keels of our ships touched the breaking shore. Tincture of rose-mist dispersed through an island's extent, now incandescent and shield-like under day's jealous glare. Desert beach mounted on desert beach, rising into rings of rugged cliff upon which perched, then fell, strands of lichen and moss, silver and glistening with the damp of precipitate streams. Cliff leveled into green mesa, an ocean sown of sun's violet embrace, flowering into blooms of evanescence, traced by and tracing split currents of light -- which seemed to recall to the surrounding clatter of waves echo of their own hum, abuzz in the thickness of a stupor through which glowed, or upon which prevailed, a clarion sharper than the human voice, but more expansive too in lotus luxury.

We beached our ships and left the keels to dry on the prowed and patterned shore. Men clambered inland, seeking out fresh streams for weary limbs, fell goats by the puncture of spears. Others coerced the silicious fire's seeds on appendages dry from the forest, and lit a lusty scorcher for the service. They split carcasses from legs, poured libations, and feasted on entrails of beastly flesh, brought brimming-fat to boils of sputtering grease, and ladled into their bellies concatenations of wine that flowed into dissolutions of strained arms and strewing legs.

But I stood apart, watching, always watching the sea, violent mother of earth, temptress of glittering skiffs, siren of maritime whorls and rip-tides, shore-ward bending, pregnant of rocks, the destiny of hollow barks, rind-some, of surfaces scraping their nothing folds, delivered and delivering in labors, calling harshly under horizons' bloom -- for seagull, missive stork, the razor's ternful moan, for the black and thin, crag-perched, brooding furies and wayward returns, boding the margins of sunset's eye, licentious waves flocking in moon-tide mass.

Science (Composed)

The world was a harmony, God
Fixed in the aether
Mystic reverberations
Of crystal; fall, force
Where all the centers
Meet; the earth, and questions
Like elliptical evasions, the whole
Universe was dancing around
An answer. Glum:

Then they came with their tubes,
Protractors and contractors,
Their pressures and their chambers,
Looking for a measure, with every measure
Lost.

The arc of a risen and falling life became both sign
And co-sign of their verity, the very foundation
Of stable nations, a paradise of 'cumbers,
Light, abundant wild rice.

Some Scribblings on Science

Are we shaped? Are we formed? Are we
Informed? By what? Experience: experior,
To (trials) try.

Knowledge has something to do with it
Too. What? Knowledge of trials.
Trials? Not in their own right,

But the writ, culture as a kind of writing,
Laws. Laws? There are universal,
Theirs are universals: foedera, agreements,

Pacts: gravity, for instance (across all instances)
And death. That the wind fills a final sail,
Or a cup with water,

And streets with cars. But each law
Is particular, and in consistence with itself –
Rules were meant to be broken,

A hand can break the page. Change
Is the best consideration – take the stars:
The world was a harmony, God

Fixed in the aether, mystic reverberations
Of crystal; fall, force where all the centers
Meet: in the earth, and questions

Like elliptical evasions: the whole universe
Was dancing around an answer. A glum answer:
Then they came with their tubes,

Their protractors and contractors,
Pressures and their chambers,
Looking for a measure with every measure

Lost. The arc of a risen and falling life
Came into signs and co-signs of their verity,
Truth was to be the foundation

For stable nations, a paradise of 'cumbers,
Light, and abundant wild rice. It was not new:
It was not old. It was not a gyre

Waiting to turn upon itself – if anything
A tenor, a breath, a bird
Hovering in the air, protracting the up

By fighting down in seeming rest.

The Song of Kirke (Part II)

For nine days we sailed along, grieving in our heart, plunging our oars into the wine dark sea. On the tenth day, when primal Dawn had arched her fingers through the canopy of the sky, we drifted in a mass of fog until the keels of our ships touched the breaking shore. The tincturing rose of the mist dispersed through an island's extent, for us incandescent and shield-like under day's jealous glare. There desert beach mounted on desert beach, rising into rings of rugged cliff upon which perched, then fell, strands of lichen and moss, silver and glistening with the damp of precipitate streams. Cliff leveled into green mesa, an ocean sown of the sun's violet embrace and flowering into blooms of evanescence traced by and tracing split currents of light -- which seemed to recall to the surrounding clatter of waves an echo of their own hum, abuzz in the thickness of a stupor through which glowed, or upon which prevailed, a clarion sharper than the human voice, but more expansive too in its lotus serenity.

We beached our ships and left the keels to dry on the prowed and patterned shore. Men clambered onto the shore, seeking out fresh streams for weary limbs, fell goats by the puncture of spears. Others coerced the silicious fire's seeds on appendages dry from the forest, and lit a lusty scorcher for the service. They split carcasses from legs, poured libations, and feasted on entrails of beastly flesh, brought brimming-fat to boils of sputtering grease, and ladled into their bellies concatenations of wine that flowed into dissolutions of strained arms and strewing legs.

The Song of Kirke (Part 1)

For nine days we sailed along, grieving in our heart, plunging our oars into the wine dark sea. On the tenth day, when primal Dawn had arched her fingers through the canopy of the sky, we drifted in a mass of fog, until the keels of our ships touched the breaking shore. The rose-tinctured mist dispersed through the extent of an island, incandescent and shield-like under the jealous glare of the day. Desert beach surmounted itself, rising into a rugged ring of cliffs, upon which perched or fell strands of lichen and moss, silver and glistening in the damp of precipitate streams. The cliffs leveled into a green mesa, an ocean sown by the sun's violet embrace and flowering into blooms evanescent, traced by and tracing split currents of light which seemed to recall to the surrounding clatter of waves an echo of their own hum abuzz in the thickness of stupor through which glowed or upon which prevailed a clarion sharper than the human voice, but more expansive too in its lotus serenity.

Ens Hic Iam

Placidity: thinking no farther than the moment
And the momentary, and so,
Within these boundaries,
Feeling each thing together
Or distinctly from all other things. Here

Pleasure overlaps with the intolerable, the different,
And the merely good. The consequences of each decision
Ripple across the face of the present, leaving it altered
Though unchanged in regards to the whole,
As when a triangle chimes, but it is still a triangle:
It all reflects the tenor of something smooth, despite
Minute undulations, though these undulations
Are a part of the flickering eyes, which are themselves
The seer and the sea. This immensity
Lies under things, is their foundation and support,
Although it manifests itself by showing forth
Its contrarieties, as if some supervenient quality
Maintained itself quite separately from what it was, as if
The alphabet spelt out a word beyond its means.

So it is something hidden, necessary but denied,
Like the rock that gathers underneath the moss,
Quickening or silent, moving deeper and deeper into itself
Until it changes to a molten mass, until it transforms
Into a protean diversity, solely metamorphoses, and is
The double face of death and being.

I Have Walked Out in Rain

When will the world be clean? Meaning
Ordered and voluble: it isn't enough
For things to be particles -- particles of what? --
I ask. I suppose it's a problem of vectors:
Everything has a direction, but it's all going nowhere.
Nowhere is the only place to be.
And don't answer that pleasure has something to do with it:
If I milk the sweetness of a human conspiracy,
What becomes of the milk? Cache it in pails,
You'll say. Bottle it, vend it at the market,
Sell it in stores. Keep it away for the rainy season.
No, it's all highly improbable: pleasure
Balances against pleasure, but there's not much gain.
Everything still is, and even if I weren't, somehow
It would all be the same. Movement
Implies direction, within the fixed category
Of beings as they are, but overall
Even time is a station-less, unpurged moment.

O ambition! O folle!

Reconsecrate me, Muse,
Douse me under purest water,
Bring birth to a newer breath.

I have dragged this mortal sloth too long,
Too long the muck of this tawdry world
Hath clung me as deep

As a sucking sleep. Don't you have away
Vials of crystal, good flowering wine that's a sip
Of sharp nectar, buds of brew?

These barbaric shadows, lending and increasing
Like a beating wing, and the hum of the night
Scare me. Muse,

In the spring I was always your child,
About late-blooming poppies and incense
Of wafting thyme. All good things

Were violet and twilight.
Now is the world of daylight and harsh
Suns, now is the moment when pure is apart

Of a necessary past. You will escape. Life
Will be nothing more than these shadows. A few notes.
But can I trace nothing of the dance?