Across the Silence
Poems by James David Audlin
Smashwords Edition
Copyright © 2011 by James David Audlin
All Rights Reserved
Cover photo and design by the author
Smashwords Edition Special Note:
Click on the “N” near each poem title for notes on that poem.
Click on the “T” near each poem title to return to the Table of Contents.
At the end of the book, you will find clickable indexes of Themes, Titles, First Lines, and Last Lines.
Smashwords Edition, License Notes
This ebook is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. This ebook may not be re-sold or given away to other people. If you would like to share this book with another person, please purchase an additional copy for each recipient. If you’re reading this book and did not purchase it, or it was not purchased for your use only, then please return to Smashwords.com and purchase your own copy. Thank you for respecting the hard work of this author.
Names, characters, places, and incidents mentioned or described in these poems either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual locales or persons, living or dead, is purely coïncidental.
“Sonnet I: Stillbirth”, “Untitled Years”, “Sonnet III: Poem Found in the Earth for a Man Killed by Lightning”, “Instant Coffee”, “Nineteen Seventy-Four”, and “Assignations” first appeared in Sophia, Vol. I, No. 1; copyright © 1974 by James Audlin and David May. Reprinted with permission.
“Somnambulance: Morning”, “Cats Know that Stones Grow”, and “Song of the Radical Left While Landscaping a Field” first appeared in Sophia, Vol. I, No. 2; copyright © 1975 by James Audlin and David May. Reprinted with permission.
“Morning Star”, “Written by the Wind in a Year of Pale Roses”, and “By What Charming Thought” first appeared in Venture, Vol. XXVII, No. 1; copyright © 1977 by David May. Reprinted with permission.
“This is Friendship & Brotherhood” first appeared in Circle Church News, Vol. XIV, No. 10; copyright © 1982 by James David Audlin. Reprinted with permission.
“Ode to an Astronaut in Winter” first appeared, excerpted, and part of the translation of Rimbaud’s “Villes” first appeared in Circle of Life, copyright © 2006 by James David Audlin (Distant Eagle). The partial translation of “Villes” reappeared and the complete “Ode to an Astronaut in Winter” first appeared in the revised and expanded edition, The Circle of Life, joined by “Song of the Radical Left while Landscaping a Field”, and the first publication of “Orbit”, “Concentration Camp”, and “Where I Have Yet to Go”, and a quotation in the notes to “Where I have Yet to Go” was taken from the revised and expanded edition, The Circle of Life, copyright © 2006, 2011 by James David Audlin (Distant Eagle). Reprinted with permission.
“Les Pendus” comes from the novel The Productions of Time, by James David Audlin, copyright © 2011 by James David Audlin. A passage quoted in the notes to that poem comes from the novel A Mirror Filled with Light, by James David Audlin, copyright © 2011 by James David Audlin. “Traductions de l’Anglais” come from the novel Palindrome, by James David Audlin, translated from the English by the author, copyright © 2011 by James David Audlin. Reprinted with permission.
All rights for the songs included herein are protected by copyright, including performance and recording rights. For permission to perform or record these songs, contact the copyright holder.
All material quoted, translated, or paraphrased in brief excerpts, as part of a new creative work or for illustrative purposes, under the fair use doctrine of American and international copyright law, is hereby respectfully and gratefully acknowledged. All translations are by the author.
Sonnet III: Poem Found in the Earth for a Man Killed by Lightning
Count Basie’s Blue Five Invites You All to Supper
Falling into Bed on a Moonlight Night like all the Stars that Ever Kissed Me
Mr. Whozit’s World-Famous Christmas Lights
Poem Written while Waiting to be Sick
The Hazards of Space Exploration
Dream with Music and Three Black Candles
Song of the Radical Left while Landscaping a Field
On Allen Hill: Three Small Slices of Poetry
“The island God was living on…”
Sonnet VI: Turning Down the Volume of Silence
A New Harvest Gathered on that Hill
“Greater worlds to live inside...”
Written by the Wind in a Year of Pale Roses
Boston · · · · · · · · · Night
A Circumnavigation of the Moon, alone
To a far descendant of mine, who will be named Eve.
Fragments: a rainy city night as I sleep
East Concord, New Hampshire 1979-1982
Terraces Beneath Cliffs of Prose
A Bicycle Ride as Night Comes On: Sketches Made on a Circular Journey
Zen and the Art of Being in a Boat
When the End Comes to the City
Sonnet XI: Sappho at the Cliffs of Dover
Another Revolutionary, Another Good Day’s Work
Les Pendus (fragments by Argent de Resznay)
This is Friendship & Brotherhood
North Madison, Connecticut 1983-1990
“Little boy blue, come blow your horn...”
Sonnet XIII: For a Deer Killed at Night on a Highway
Sonnets XVI, XVII, and XVIII: For Love of Writing and Writing of Love
The Very Sad Story of Rufus O’Shea
The Catskill Mountains 1997-2010
Ode to One Beautiful and Young
Tout Torope Trop (traduction d’un tétral traditionnel de Martinique)
Appendix I: Song Lyrics 1971-2011
Enamorada Tímida (Timid Lover)
Appendix II: Doggerel 1974-1987
Country Matters: Ode to the Farmer’s Daughter
Preface
Click Here for the Table of Contents
This book does not contain every poem I have ever written, for the simple reason that most of what remains is in need of considerable work if not terrible beyond redemption – but so many years have gone by since I wrote the versions I have that it would be impossible for me now to rework them. In fact, I have staunchly resisted all efforts to “improve” my early poems (other than obvious spelling and punctuation mistakes that I would have corrected at the time if I had noticed them), but to let them stand, flaws displayed, as a token to a young poet slowly learning his craft. Since not every poem written is contained herein, only some of my numbered sonnets are included.
The poems are presented in the order in which they were written, from 1970 to the present. To establish any kind of thematic order would be more artifice than art, and, besides, some poems would go nicely into more than one thematic section, and many poems would not fit into any such section. What I have done instead is to divide the book into sections based on where I was living at the time; place seems often to have a lot to do with my poetry. The endnotes often offer some allusions to thematic connections among not only my poems but to my prose works as well. A thematic index also presents a means for exploring this approach to the poems.
I include two addenda: some of my better song lyrics and a few favorite examples of my “doggerel”. I do not intend that the former be taken strictly as poetry, but since they are verse not entirely devoid of literary quality, I think they belong in this volume. The “doggerel”, very light verse written more simply for the sake of humor itself than even as poetry in a humorous vein, are not to be viewed as part of my more determinedly poetic œuvre; still they add, I hope, to the pleasure I hope the reader has in reading this volume, and prove the point that poetry doesn’t always have to be so so very serious.
At the back of the book the reader will find lists of not only titles and first lines, but also last lines. I have never seen this done before, but I find that what I think of first when remembering poems, mine or others’, just as often as the beginnings are the conclusions.
As mentioned above, I have provided some endnotes on each work. The “meaning” of any poem, mine or others’, is entirely personal, and to be found by the reader in the process of reading, rereading, and meditating on the poem as a gift from Spirit, in the same way one might meditate on an ikon or a spiritual chant. For in that sense the vaunted poet is not the originator of the poem but merely an amanuensis for Spirit, and the poet’s understanding of the poem is only equally as significant as that of any reader: once the poem is written, the poet becomes a reader; in the process of reading and meditating on it, the poem becomes every other reader’s as well. Therefore I leave the interpretation of these poems up to each reader, since, at this point, I am a reader with no more special insights into the poem than any other reader. However, I do give dates of composition and some background notes or stray comments of my own which some readers may find interesting; it is absolutely not necessary that one read them, and I would hope that this book is entirely enjoyable without looking at the notes.
The work of a poet (as indeed of all artists) is to put a window in the walls of our dark finite world; that window properly serves two functions: to let light into this world so we can better find our way through it, and to give us a glimpse of the greater world that we will enter once that way through this world has been walked to its end.
Thus it is that a friend once wrote: “Poetry leads us past the indescribable and submerges us in the experience.” That is as good a working definition as any, even if the goal itself is, appropriately, impossible. For poetry has an asymptotic relationship with the unspeakable truth: even the best poems only come close to the truth, without sullying it with their mundane reality. Just as the mountaintop has a natural affinity for the sky it cannot touch, so poetry, as the highest form of word-art, has a natural affinity for that which is beyond words: beauty, horror, love, the sacred, and so on. Perhaps the commonest (in the sense not of ordinariness but of frequency) of themes in my poetry is the relationship between the ephemeral and the eternal: how quickly one vanishes into the other, how indeed the ephemeral – Thomas Gray’s evening, for example, or John Keats’s daffodil, Ginsberg’s generation – actually calls forth the presence of the eternal; by so doing it suggests that an ephemeral poem yet speaks eternal truth. And of course overall is the evanescent nature of this life and this world; today, as we stand on the verge of destroying both, we need ever so much more to head that eternal truth toward which poetry points, like Gautama’s finger at the moon, like Han-shan’s reflection of the moon.
Of course these themes appear in prose, but there writers can describe events or feelings on the part of their characters, with which readers can identify indirectly; poets, at least the best ones, seek actually not to describe but to evoke directly these inexpressible matters, to make them real for us even when they are not otherwise a part of our experience; in seeking this goal poetry has more in common with magical incantations. (The only genre of prose that comes close in my view is that of science-fiction, for what could be more impossible than for a human, in a human art form, to portray convincingly for us the reality of the Other unknowable by humanity, the utterly inhuman, the utterly alien? It amazes me that some people think science-fiction by nature cannot be poetic; I like to think my science-fiction novels are not lacking in verbal euphony, and I take some pride in the science-fiction poems included herein.)
Another earmark of poetry (need I qualify that by saying good poetry, or is it self-evident that “bad poetry” is merely versified prose?) is that it improves with age and repeated appreciation, like a fine wine or a well-made violin: the more one reads a good poem the more insight it provides to the reader; indeed, more than any other word-art, it draws us back repeatedly to read it, to read it aloud, to linger yet again before its beauty and marvel at its wisdom. And, finally, as someone (I don’t remember; it might have been me) said, “Poetry is the art of breaking words across the silence without disturbing it.” This is so true that the title comes hence. For good poetry – unlike prose, which tends to revel in its own loquacity – economizes to the point that what little is said does not describe, as does prose, but points to, just as a finger points at the moon; this Lessing correctly pointed out with his own finger is the métier of all great art, for silence is as asymptotically close as we humans can get to the perfect truth. At least with my own poetry I think there frequently is an inverse correlation between length and quality.
Each poem finds its natural place somewhere between the two poles of perfect communicability and perfect beauty. If a poem is only comprehensible to the poet (and perhaps certain friends or relatives who are in on the “inside joke”), then, beautiful though it may be, it says nothing. Yet, at the other extreme, a poem that is completely comprehensible in meaning is uninteresting and unlovely. Most poets, I think, tend to stay near a certain point between these poles; my poems, however, seems to find their proper balances at several points on that spectrum.
Sometimes when I read the works of the greatest poets I despair at the thought of mine being compared with theirs, but then when I look at these that came to me I am reassured to find that they are not that awful after all. These feelings are rooted in my belief that for me poetry is not only the most sublimely difficult – since not only every word but its placement on the page and its sound in relation to the sounds of the other words must be absolutely perfect – but the most deeply personal of all forms of word-art. Like tightrope walking without a net, there is the greatest potential for supreme success and for abject failure.
This collection therefore seems to me to come close to an autobiography of not the outer events in my life, but my own inward spiritual growth. Definitively explaining how these verses came into existence is beyond my capacities, other than to point at the Sacred Muse; I prefer to let each poem speak for itself.
TYPOGRAPHICAL NOTE for Smashwords Edition: Since Smashwords doesn’t allow tabulation or multiple spacing, a small symbol (·) has been used in some poems to position the words correctly. Please ignore this symbol when it appears.
The Finger Lakes 1970-1975
Click Here for the Table of Contents
Click on the “N” for Notes on each Poem
Click on the “T” for the Table of Contents
The utter fastnesses of my soul
of jagged mountains deep clothed in black
and rocky plains and cold stars above
a wind lonesomely moaning
as I stand naked,
dwarfed by the mountains
and shivering as I gaze solemnly
being whittled by the alien wind
until I am all sharp and pointed
such that I bleed when I rub my hands
together to warm them
but the blood disappears in the wind
and I have no more
and I am as cold as the lonely land of my soul.
And the stars come and the momentous
feeling crying from the overflowing
Never has my mind hoped for love
in the remembrance of sonorous soft
why do they trouble my opening
childlike abandoning of little hopes
In squalor the demand for a really
perfect hope and feeling comes into being
always in the indigenous eternal (songs
that remember the hope of time) why does
it follow the never of anywhere is it
because only nothing has life that
cannot be realized shock of hope for
the feeling of sadness oh my God
Sharing a nothing that if we only
had a never oh yes we always don’t
come into the presence of yesterday
Why don’t we wander at another thing
like tomorrow. Heart is overly singing
to a kneeling polite little sliver
of exacting purple magnificences
Why does a little child come every day
at the old and new to search for an
answer to something that was never there
To come again in the little each why
of a not especially new opening and
each of us winds up a song of nothing
that we opened in ourselves because we
cannot even see a spirit that takes a
hope soon into its own hopes
and waters it for another year.
In the spirit the magic sleeps
in an apple movement comes
into purity comes thought
and all is the same.
Sometimes I can’t feel another
sometimes we’re alone together
sometimes I fear we are lost
but it is not so;
Soon the time will come together
soon He’ll grow us leaves and flowers
soon the children running laughing
and we will be each other
The old woman looked up from scaling fish in the morning.
– The sea is blind, she mumbled, her eyes looking toward but not at me.
I suddenly noticed that there were no waves; the water was like glass.
I walked down the shore, skirting clumps of beach bushes,
Watching my feet sink into smooth wet sand, leaving an uneven line of little puddles,
Or watching them make mist of drier, hotter sand.
I didn’t look up at the gulls, though I could hear them wheeling in the sky; I could almost hear the sky itself.
I started picking up pebbles ground shiny by sand and water, but in a while I dropped them; I never caught the sound of their touching the ground.
Feeling chilly (I suddenly noticed it was evening; the sky all red and ultramarine), I went home.
For a long time after that night I carried with me my reflection in the water.
The Anything Man
Last night when the fire burned low
And only the advent candle warmed the ragged fingers of the night
The Anything Man came.
He laughed in a quiet way, running his hand on the windowpane to feel the roughness of the frost
and smiled as the candlelight sparkled on it.
He touched the Tree to feel the needles’ green and looked out the window to watch the moon turn their green to silver.
So he swiped a doughnut and, as his glinting eye winked at the cat (who smiled wisely), he went away.
The Prophet
See the prophet, the patchwork man, as he strokes his iron rosary,
See him talk with the strange floating words
Watch his hands as they weave a scene I cannot see
Strange words, strange ways
I listen but I do not understand
(follow his words brothers and tell me his thought)
The dust floats in the hot sunlight
It settles on his ragged garments of weeds
Though I look down at the far away hills
I see this man stand tall before them.
He looks strange does he not
he is dark like the men of the south
he never smiles he doesn’t mind the insects
didn’t he come on the west road
the dogs won’t leave him alone they do not trust his smell
His words are strange, telling of death and birth
(death and birth; why not birth and death like the others?)
his words are strange brothers hear them
We find that the sickles slip from our hands after we return to the fields.
We tell ourselves to work and we work, but sometimes we look up and someone is just standing, lost inside him, and then we too remember.
But we are an adamant folk and we soon pick up the sickles again.
Yet we think to run after him and ask him what he said,
But the day is ending and the harvest must be brought in.
Then we will think.
Is it true that birds do fly
so high
They cannot view the beauty of the sky?
Sonnet I: Stillbirth
Zero hour, nothing day; I walk
Upon the hollow earth to feel the world
Now empty, now a vast and endless plain
Of glass, glass that mirrors stellar darkness
Strewn with the fires, the broken bells of time.
Above, the endless arch of heaven’s womb
Mirrored in binding, finite curves below;
Above, the stars; below, their former selves.
I walk and find nothing; that gnawing pain
Within me grows. Within my mother’s womb
My child, dead, and conceived dead, born to death,
Conceived to know but the sere painlessness
Of death: I walk upon the hollow earth
With emptiness, death, within and without,
And dream and fear that day of issuing forth.
I am sky and you are earth.
Feel my tears upon your brow
Upon your hills and vales my tears
And my sunlit smiles and
Let me brighten your day with
The vast blue of my archèd vaults
And watch and cover you at night
With my dark shining eyes, the stars.
I watch your moods, your seasons change,
Watch you suckle them at your breast,
I wait for the budding grains,
For the autumn harvests,
And bread and wine placed for us
Upon a wooden table on a hill.
With you, to eat, to kneel and listen
At my feet washed by tears, with me; consumed.
I am a child of mortal winds as are you
Humors that lash me with an impending death.
I call for you to wait with me, to wait for me,
But you sleep, my love, in Bethany.
Yet fear them not I say I shall return
To meet with you as seasons turn,
And kiss your lips ’midst Joseph’s flowers;
I’ve risen, for the night is done,
The sun is rising in the east.
This day, this meal, is spread, is ours;
You too, you too, my love, must come
Unbidden to the feast.
(for Percy Bysshe Shelley and Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley)
ό δ’ ένστροφαλυγγι χονίες χειτο
μεγαλωστι, λελασμενος ίπποσυνάων
– Homer
Boating on the lake
in the rain wet rain
gliding past the towns and churches
in a hazy window
rain upon my pillow
speaks gently of the
present moment at
the turning wheel of fire.
Where am I, where
am I going to reach her now?
Arms out at reach,
reach, I see my face,
silver, her hand,
black.
Boating on the lake
in turning burning wind is
eating sleeplessly at
my time, my lord is
gone, my feet lie cold
and wet on the gunwale.
Oars burning my hands,
oarlocks grinding a
bitter worship of
metal and stone
circling the window
metal and stone
circling the window
let me through to
you.
Untitled Years
A burning galaxy of cold-lit fires
flung alone, hung upon a vestal sea,
with burning black arcing at the edges,
a black that sips and sifts, illumining,
that steeps unknown inchoate vesper cold,
beyond the misty hitherlands of on,
to take the stars to be his very own.
The galaxy bends æons overhead
to shift and measure in celestial score
a pattern, built of hardness’ glinting ice,
which sinks in sagging folds of unlit cliffs,
the black that shapes and whispers, that surrounds
right on the shore of every pointed star,
and every shape, and sort, and molecule.
To sink in storms of ought, for in my mind,
around each synapse, a cold unlightning black
that touches, takes, and holds its own within
its own uranus night. My galaxy.
Sonnet III: Poem Found in the Earth for a Man Killed by Lightning
Gentle worlds are lives to live inside,
And falling leaves and petals in my hair
Are sonnets to my eagle’s soul. I died
To light, a burning laugh, a skyward glare.
In all the vales of home I slept the sleep,
Though agonied by laughter in the night;
Began to live my life, so long to weep,
When struck to earth by a mirthful bolt of spite.
I dreamed the T.V. coughed; the message wept
A million sets, a million words, a million furry tears;
Although beneath the sweet moist earth I slept
And dreamed, began with falling leaves the years
Within; although I died to heaven’s mirth,
I’m not a stranger, not upon this earth.
Instant Coffee
“...moons spinning in the yard
and time raged, well,
took to me meaningless,
postured and foolish,
and all quite the same:
I lit a cup to my brow
and tore at it, in my way,
spurning her tumbling answers.
She’d invited me in
her little dirty hole
she kept for strangers
downtown somewhere,
but I stayed out
in the rain somewhere
to catch the birds.
“...look, she touched me,
but the coffee did too,
wiping my brow with it, I
took to meaningless bite
and I ran, with
coffee boiling on my face
like ugly thin brown blood...”
Stand in line and watch
the parade of troubled heroes
lose
their purple togas
to mad kindling Bacchæ,
time’s hairlong sons.
I was a king well loved,
and my mother was a saint;
the stern calling broke upon me
and now to rule myself alone
on western shore, and what a
wounded name (things standing
thus unknown) shall live behind me.
Roman fathers borne my line
past the years of chinas glory
in being dreamed, to what they
thought was death to me;
the twelve around me fallen,
they saw myself fallen
as lightning from heaven.
My mother was a saint;
I came back from the West
that other time: but not now,
it is no ending, here to alone
on a blank pacific ocean, and a
california for the soul’s bright waves.
Give me the cup; by heaven I’ll have it,
but in terms and ways alone.
Those east of me in life watch and pray
for an ending,
and there won’t be one.
you are walking on a dream
dawn cast light
on your
troubled sleeping eyes.
pearling before me,
wisping
in the night
above my head.
stars bending
cross-trails
behind my eyes, i am
alone and ugly.
how do you talk
to an actress in a
dream?
Count Basie’s Blue Five Invites You All to Supper
peanut words
sing you up
an eat you up,
like fartin
golden trumpet
swingin all
aroun in
shiny black
hands
dancin on
ivory keys
like stubby
marshmallows,
licorice stuck
in streamin
slick hands,
a clarinet
with fat jelly
bean keys, an
jellybean eyes
bouncin in the
head that plays
that
sax,
oh man, an cats,
marshmallow cats,
watchin
fo when
they throw
the bone.
Falling into Bed on a Moonlight Night like all the Stars that Ever Kissed Me
falling into bed on a moonlight night
with the poems that wrap me in their sheets
and cover me with all their many eyes
as they wander through me like gentle winds
on a desert pathway carrying dreams like leaves
to brush against the solitude of the hour
the midnight love that basks her hand in mine
and twinkles a smile in her sleep like dreams
that cover her and me with nightingale wings
that wasp and whither softly on our eyelids
and come from the sandman’s deserted castle
to wrap our bodies in furring blankets
and drape our eyes in weighting lids that drop
and hold the streams within us like a dream
and in her sleep she holds my hand to warm
my love with blankets deep and royal gems
that fall from her moonlight eyes to mine
like all the stars that ever kissed me.
To write to you long and far away from the stillness born of despair: Look at the troubled silences, look at the majesties broken. All the gems of farther beauty are here with me now, and I write to you on the wings of stillness. My grave, my hope, will be on the peak of the highest mountain, then thrown to grow in the sea. Flowers will spring forth at the touch of my words, and golden children will play in the cedars by the shore. Try to think not of me but of the golden children; they need your love and your beauty spent upon them, for all the people yet to live. Give time to the troubled masses and speak openly to them of a second birth and another age.
These are the times that try us, and we must melt the amber resources before they grow too old to be hoped. Smile at the world, smile, and do not shirk the waters poured upon your breast. They are yours to breathe, to keep, to bless, to bestow, to catch up in hands for all those who need hope found in ages.
Waters bent and broken are the greatest waters, and dwindling fires are my greatest hope. The work is best kept in being given.
Mr. Whozit’s World-Famous Christmas Lights
Blinky light bright lights
swinging around my house
so many they got to be
noisy,
so golden delicious I can’t
sleep,
the neighbors squeak:
oh sing to me singing carolers,
hop for me, hopping santa,
glow you goddam frosty snowman,
and lights giggle my christmas
just for me.
Damn tourists hell just my lights
goddammit let me dammit go to
sleep.
The art of delusion went out with yesteryear,
the midnight troubles you have do not exist for me,
and to tell a broken tale of woe to me is thought
ill-spent, like packaged sundays, like diamond frost
on an abandoned road. I walked that road, but no
one came to me; I left the road and wandered
past dragons sparring like frigid forms in a field.
They did not see me as I walked by. Another day
I wandered quietly through the mud of an orchard
and found the sunset caught in the lower branches of
a bent and curling apple tree. I pulled it out and
set it loose, but it only sank from sight through the
frigid earth. Despair set loose, I entered my house,
and bristled sullenly in frozen cords. Tea that brewed
from a bitter bark roared like winter in my hollow cup;
I drank it and turned to stone. The dragons came and
stared at me with solid, furious eyes. Their flaring
breath struck like nimble fingers among the cords. I
awoke and found around me a field, where I paused and
waited, smelling a cache of decaying plants. Other
thoughts and other loves pressed at my mind; I threw
them out and waited loosely for the day to break.
Beneath my feet a violent shaking woke me from my
heresy of terror. I stopped and pulled. Within the
flaming earth I found the sun.. It flew from my grasp
and rocked above me, another day. Dragons around me,
staring and sparring, drew tight the questions I
surrounded like a fist; their breathing flared on me
like agonied wisdom; I broke from all my ties and flew
like madness, faster than the speed of light, to worlds
wandering like serenal light on the strings of
goblets
hung on the waste of tomorrow. Then I awoke, and left
the dragons, putrid, corpulent pigeons that they were, and
walked home again, a real home, and no dragons curled
by the fireplace. The art of delusion is dead for me.
Poem Written while Waiting to be Sick
Laughter echoes far from
my spirit
longing for the burning flow
the bitter broken laughs of
sins swept
from my brow, sweat curling emptily
like orville sausages. Look at me when
I sit greenly
over a pool of muddy water; I am
your lover, a duck awash, amidst
broken eggs
of dreams brought to me in despair.
The wine of despair, the wine of
despair,
brought to me like floods of hurt
spilt over the day. For four days
disease
has been nurtured by my spendthrift
body, a turncoat mother that
fights
my chaining mind. And
in time will win. I wait, like
emptiness,
the wringing of my soul in
the spinning of my body. In
time, I no
more, but words breaking silence
all around me, all around me.
Look at me,
I am your green lover.
Away you fools and count your paper plates
and pigeons
before the coming of the end.
The stars will drain from the
sky like
water, the moon will bury herself
deep in the shoulder of the world;
I warn you,
I am a sign myself of the passing
of things and the coming of
the end.
Water will taste like wormwood
for all as it does for me, like
gall and spit
trailing from my mouth. My tongue,
a rusty sword, burning hotly with
death that
is stinging me like roses.
My soul is being swept away
by inner fires,
broken saturns of despair, rocky
madnesses chopped into little
squirming bits
and dropped one by one into the
bucket that raises its wooly head
to kiss
my aching christian lips.
Nineteen Seventy-Four
Like gentle brilliance
the lady watched the day
whisper
to the singing sun at midnight.
It whispered magic snowy things
about lives;
I overheard from where
a god had hidden me
and remembered.
And now suns are biting eachother
like worms in heat,
circling in infinite wonder,
catching the bizarre splendor
of the firmament
in a golden ring of suns.
The furry reality of New
York City, an immense
chuckle emanating from
Walt Whitman’s beard,
“the show, case for the
mod-ern worrld...”
A nice little section
of several realities.
Han-shan slept in the bones
of a stream this year
as he does ’most every
year, and I go out out
out of the world.
And then I bend and watch the earth
tremble
beneath my funny feet,
it wakes and shakes
and opens its liquid eyes
to smile a water smile
at the secret depths
of simple space.
The coat I put on
remembers me,
my blanket says hello
at the end of day,
my little year that I feed
always licks me
like a lover.
Little years are perhaps
the best,
like little months
and little centuries.
A country year, like
singing or kissing.
My year has watched
over me like a blanket,
it grew its flowers
and spread mysterious
suppers for me to eat.
Every day when I died
again, my year brought
me surprises to live.
“Frank,” it cries deep
in my hand, “Frank, a smile
that cracks your silly face,
you eat up happiness
because it’s all around you.
Shirley comes drifting in
your arms, Shirley,
you smile gently like a
too-wise angel.
Martin, an endless
movie of real life,
keep talking about
platejobs until
someone believes you.
Chris, the mathematician,
some day a girl will
call your number.
David, you know the
throbbing of harps
in the singing of
a moon, you can
spill it over in
words like a cup.
Lisa, you were the
secret that opened
like a dream, the
wonderbox of dreaming,
the orchard of sweet
wines, you know, I
do not need to say.
And Jim, my Jim,
my lover hidden,
I sing in your hands...”
Wait, wait, my year,
don’t say good-bye to me, you
don’t have to go, I get
tearcoated when lovers
part forever, and
I love you, I do.
Wait, simple furry
little year, I have
a pocket I will hide
you in and keep your love
close to my skin, closer
than a whisper, and
take you out from
time to time and look
at you and love you from the future.
(California bounces on the
lips of the west,
I don’t need to riddle
you anymore, you aren’t
there to end me,
go to sleep.)
The Voice is starting
to bend its broken messages,
and quake inside the
grainwaves of the masses.
Ångstrom units do not serve
to keep its hairy messages
down, it tows the light
around, and dances with light,
though light is unwilling
and light on its feet.
I listen to the Voice, it
speaks just as if I were
listening. It says to me:
“Who is Inevitable Sam?
And why is he so inevitable?
We probably could evit him
were he Joe.
But America needs Sam, my botwink,
a Sam in every pot,
a Sam in every shop.
Have International Sam
start the cry for Inevitable
Sam Assistance for Sam-deprived
nations. And listen here, my bubsqueak,
Sam is Mom, and Apple Pie, and
best of all, I say,...
Sam is the All-American God!
Let us join our hands and
pray that all the world may
have their Sam today, but in a hurry,
because the year is going.
Hurry, Mom, have your Sam
before you cook, hurry lovers,
have your Sam before you sleep,
and Inevitable Sam All Together!
By the left flank, Sam!
By the right flank, Sam!
Everybody, one, two, three,
Everybody Sam!!!”
But I wasn’t listening anymore
because my little year is
squirming in my hand, and
it isn’t time to be silly.
Year, year, be good.
Go ride the sun, go greet the moon,
they are your brother and your sister.
The lady walks away,
the day is going,
the sun is long gone,
and shadows are growing like
unwanted children, like
hairy weeds. I come out
from where the god had put me
in time to see a fleeting
whisper arch across the sky
and disappear like dreams.
But I knew, and there
was a warm squirming
near my skin, where
I knew my year lay hidden.
All this that wanders in my
glowing head in a little
hairline crack between
the years, a crack where
empires and lovers lie
hidden, a crack that grows
deeper in the depth of
scope, the lesion of time.
My head grows dim, I take
it out from cotton and put
it on the shelf where the
cat eyes it merrily. Lisa
takes the question seriously,
but life is still a blue smile
in the gauzy air of twilight.
I feel life against my skin.
Midnight.
The year is gone, I guessed
it would. The year is gone,
but I keep it in a secret
pocket. It was, after all,
a little year.
I ran out
in haste
to strike
the morning
sun.
The door
clenched shut
its awkward
face
behind me.
The
sarcasm
of a dream,
ha ha.
The Hazards of Space Exploration
They come from far
bearing lamps
suffused in magic,
brilliance
disguised as night.
I
float
clothed
in
a
deep
blanket
of
stars,
hidden
in
the
footprint
of
the
night.
Strange the sky,
below and not just above,
and no horizon
to compact my eyes.
Am I falling?
I don’t know.
I am a stillborn child,
my cord is gone,
the ship is gone.
Sleep in the arms
of the night, they say,
to the rhythm
of slow beating
and a gentle breath.
They are rocking me,
I am a child,
they are white flowers
on a black field,
the gentle fingertips
of a winter mother
that whisper to me
and stream
silver hair
in the courses
of my eyes.
Sleep in
the fingers
of love,
they whisper,
and I listen
to the
rhythm
of their
far away
fluttering
drums.
Dream with Music and Three Black Candles
O gentle death do not sing for me
your cruel sad song,
do not open your doors that cling
to drowning waves like beasts,
and do not light your candles, those midnight fires
lit to signal the stirring of your path.
Sleeping speaks louder to me than your dreams,
and I am not your tearful child
that I walk upon the waves and need the rescue
of your long drawn piano strain;
close your doors, unlight your candles,
and unwake my streaming eyes
for I am a passionate child, too weak to travel,
and too young to dream to come to you.
You are a Blazing Razor
You are a blazing razor
reading these
tired words,
you burn them
for me.
You are a slavering monster
tearing at the heart
of my page
and madly throwing
the pieces
around my body.
I pick them up
slowly
and watch you
go thrashing off
roaring
bloody praises
for my poetry.
Somnambulance: Morning
The portals of morning
opening on either side,
the shock of icy warmth
runs through my legs.
A gentle pastel day
is spreading like advents
of dreams, I walk alone
and very naked within
the sky, a vast tunnel
without walls, and its
gauzy familiar, a white
sun sparring the trees’
sky fingers, a simple vernal
eloquence of the morning.
Goosebumped chronometic hills
float in the choral air
like the kiss of a ring
of aging flowers riming
their pauses to the
dancing slopes. I slip
past the entrance into
day to morning, white-blue
sky, the night air still
there to sear my lungs.
Morning slipping slowly
through my sleep, I lie
in bed, warm, awake from
dream, watching it spread
like cold slow wildfire,
white light over the land.
Vision had at Morning
look,
the sky is a window,
a frame for the earth,
a monument of glass –
beyond, see unseen
the gears of creation
glowing silently
and turning deep
like caterpillars of time.
a boat for nobody in the sky
searching for the greenest
bones of winter moss,
escorted by the unseen
lamps of midnight, leaving
at my window pools
of wordless songs
that spread like water
around your eyelids,
leaving in my hands
a smallest drop of courage
to warm the warmest pathways
leading through a wet dark
night to your deepest heart,
a glowing throbbing moment
of stars in an orchard,
a simple twofold moment filled
with tomorrow and tomorrow.
o lord (if there be such a poem),
let happy honey flow warm down
the springtails of soft evenings,
let leaving swallows fly slow into
the verdant cloth seeping the night,
let ancient steel poems be gently
written in the drawling sky, lord,
and let the soaking moon float like
children in a sea of scarlet foam.
For if such a poem as you exists,
you would see the challenge of it all,
and dangle all your stellar feet into
the swirling blue confessions of the sky.
Cats Know that Stones Grow
(Cats know that stones grow;
that’s what they do when they lie
on top of them in the swimmy sun;
a good lesson for poets.)
Pebbles blink open their new wet eyes
at their Pleistocene daybreak,
and feed on air and spiderwebs,
chewing mama’s moon beams to
give them strength and character.
They roll slowly in dense streams,
developing the cool headiness of
young stones maturing at ease.
Moss and lichens grow long on their cheeks,
the young stones grow nascent into rocks,
tousled dusty heads for huge cats to lie on
and listen to the soft rumbling moving
of slow life within the sleeping heads.
Cats always like to lie all day on rocks
because cats know they are the baking
sunlit silent heads of buried giants,
and that some day, if they lie on it
long enough, each stone will crack open
and roar sleepy adumbrations at the sky.
every night its raining
even though its only january
its raining inside my shiny head
slowly stroking the shivering
heavy blue leaves, the caverns
of grey petals in the grass forest
somewhere inside my head, its
raining, ohhhh, and I am so little,
and the smell of the earth,
and the smell of the plants,
and the smell of the rain,
and its raining somewhere
inside my head, raining every
night, even though its only
april, I am so little, I am
so little, and its raining.