book 1 of these poems, "a poet's love," comes out of the schumann/heine dichterliebe mixed with p.j. harvey's album dry. poems got wrote along the lines of schumann's arc (in theory), while listening to the songs on dry (1 song per poem--basically).
book 2, "veronicae," is a re-exploration, pretty much, of the ideas of round 1: a retelling of the story, not of dichterliebe, but of round 1's dichterliebe-inspired stuff.
book 3, "the unpaved," is one step further removed. as the title might suggest, it's going down a road that doesn't yet entirely exist, but it's the same as the first two insofar as it's a road that travels through the same basic territory.
book 4, "prayer-within," is about something, probably. looking back on a turning point and looking forward, and acknowledging both actions to be kind of the same thing, isn't simple, but it's necessary.
book 5, "blank and full," is when i began to look at the bigger form-picture. i realized i need to write 12 sets of poems in order to truly turn their repeating titles into acrostics. the titles have no special value, except that the form makes them acrostacizable. the poems are like breaths, sustaining the structure.
book 6, "red earth," is written to the strains of an incredible composition by elizabeth kimble called autobiography of red, itself a setting of text from the ann carson book by the same name. there are 15 parts to kimble's composition and only 12 titles available for poems, but i'm not letting that bother me. the parts are not looked at sequentially.
book 7, "still life:" i tried to write the whole thing to the song "wildgeeses" off ida con snock, but was wildly unsuccessful. i thought i'd be able to control the repetition this way, but it didn't work. the whole thing broke away from itself.
book 8..."the tic begins." this is a lyric from a helmet song off the album betty. you are welcome for this information hour!
book 9: "arouse alive / a suffering" is from june jordan's poem "queen anne's lace," the second stanza of which goes, "You (where are you, really?) never leave me / to my boredom: numb as i might like to be. / Repeatedly / you do revive / arouse alive / / a suffering." because, hell, i've already abused the creations of artists from richard wagner to harry nilssen; why not add june jordan to this list?
book 10: the structure and sequence of restless mouth is in large part a coping mechanism--that's what keeps it full enough to sustain motion, like a sail in a very specific wind.
book 11: not sure why the titles of these things began to become quotes, but this quote's pretty much from cocteau's opium, a study of a cure that's almost as rigidly formulaic, in its own way, as this...body of whatnot.
book 12: "love is the great good use one person makes of another (daughter polly of the strawberry letter)" is, in some sort of line-ification, a quote from one of niedecker's jefferson poems. i had that book but i lost it.
i thought that the poems might arc back around, as the dichterliebe do, schumann's creation, from what i understand, of a man healed by suffering. the healing i drop into though is not an arc; it is a recurrence, a boundlessness--to feel the same pain over and over, but from a boundless angle, like that one creator's mask in hellraiser. i am a nothing, a substance only; it's pain that redefines me, a whole sanctity of it. schumann's speaker found the weeping flowers, and extrapolated wholeness from them; perhaps this is me doing something similar. even in darkness, something gets done.
when this restless mouth is done, i'm rewriting it, based on the organizational principle of one music album per book (often albums seem to arrange themselves into near-12's, which is convenient). i expect it to start out very similar, to come from the same 12 poems, and then branch out from there. the book names will be the same, or similar; the poem names will be the same. the image would be of a honeycomb, or a library in a borges story.
the poems are organized simultaneously in two ways: 1., vertically, in terms of their being sets of 12 with larger cycle-titles, and 2., horizontally, in terms of there being whatever number of poems that all have the same title. you can scroll down the page and read them top to bottom, or go to the "links" section on the right hand side of the page, and choose a title from it. i used to think this organization was fairly incidental, just something that had happened to make itself available, but now i think it's more than that. still don't know what it means, though.
the awesome image of the tiger above is taken from this deviant art page: http://northmansoatmeal.deviantart.com/art/Tiger-Painting-117868815. because it'e either the tiger or the ladies.
new monster
zinc-white and subtle,
the drag of a blunt nail across a lower lip--
the purples and sables
of your dress--the sineal curve
of your hair
tossed into the wind
that touched
your face.
i stood behind you and that same
wind blew
against me.
remembered perfumes, later,
bright in mind as colors.
lips pressed into a palm like milk.
lips lapping each other.
i said your name
and reached
inside.
raucous freshness
that hot concrete,
minute in detail, by turns sharp and smooth--
i crawled after your shadow.
i was glad to grovel
in the day's sun, which was gray, almost,
in your presence.
i had been tight within myself
always, tight as a seed.
but a hand reached out
of that fiery, turgid depth.
it was a shaken and pale shoot
and it was mine.
i looked at it. it plunged into
the presence of you as if
into water.
look at the cracks in that road.
palpable almost to the eye
in your light, that blue shadow
edged so deep.
like my joy.
watch this hand shake,
with those deep eyes, watch
how you
unfurl me.
dearest
as if i were
a self-planting furrow,
layers of deep earth
folding in over themselves:
in the warmth, i feel,
like your eyes,
rich as dirt.
one time i weeded on an aunt's farm:
the fineness of that soil
it got everywhere. and its moisture.
in the sun it looked deep and endless.
and when touched, it was warm
even in the dark places
warmed only by the sun.
how much warmer i
under your regard?
roses
another word for red
necessitated
by the look
of your mouth.
redefinition of sensation,
my lover:
my eyes change color.
exquisite awkward words:
you understand them all,
doves, flowers,
other flowers,
thorns--
your lips displayed like fruit:
apples, pomegranates, plums.
ruby-red, wine, blood,
breath, saliva,
teeth.
let me redefine
your mouth.
resonance
the waves frequent westcliff drive,
the beaches there--a slow furl, seemingly,
of heavy, heavy water.
that curve mirrored
in the taut lines of roller coasters
at the boardwalk. the curve moves longingly,
as if it were the peel of the air, drawing itself back.
i was shuddering at the top of that spinal
curve, and then plunging down
through air as if it were water.
and after i
got off,
i thought that
these paradoxical
movements
skinned from time
all were once
or would be
yours.
ich grolle nicht
there's nothing to blame,
my dearest. nothing to
it's just that there's so little left.
if i were a god i could write in tongues of flame
and i would say in letters a mile wide that it wasn't
...what i thought.
the taste
of a shadow is
something vile.
as if you were vile,
lover,
as if in the depths of your eyes lurked
white, warped things
that not even the sun of your face
could burn away.
white as zinc.
the flavor of a girl.
no longer to taste
the gravel
your steps
touched.
veronica
this strange building
rhythm, sinuous and
cracked as
a misspelled word.
asleep in the red caverns
of your heart
was a jewel the size of a fist.
it was my love
but it was cancer.
red and ravenous
with jaws like door hinges.
my love,
i wipe my face
on your empty shirt.
zinc metaphor
the equation is simple:
you never existed.
i never
touched your lips.
and i never fit
against your side.
and i never breathed
in
the scent
of your hair.
crawl in, something else,
and strip off this sick zodiac
whiteness. sounds
choke in the mouth;
their zinc white
burns
in the throat.
i hardly can stand this thing
with its weak blue veins like a starved delta.
its thin, thin scalp and
the broken roots of its hair.
the way it flickers
in the mirror
and i see you
sumptuous
there.
i wept in a dream
to think
that
at one sparking moment
in the stream
of the past
i put my mouth
against your shadow
and
that at
one white point
in the night sky of the past
my face rested
against
a wind
that had curved itself
against you.
lover, i hold out my hands
and nothing comes into them.
lover, i hold out my hands and
nothing
comes into them.
milton
i dreamed that
you told me to stop
wiggling my tongue like a snake
in a garden.
and i dreamed that there
were five steps to heaven.
all of them were made from you.
i dreamed a streak of red flourescence
across your forehead--as if i'd marked it
there with a light-laden thumb--
i dreamed only your eyes and mouth
and then dreamed only your sides
and heart.
my limbs twisted
like sounds.
i wondered why
i was the only screaming thing
in a river of fire
that shimmered silent
as a mirror.
quietus
my heart like
a split end.
trim it off
with the fat of memory.
throw it away
and watch the arc it makes in air
as if of your hair.
it wasn't you,
lover, that crawled out
into day,
white skin pimpled with shock
beneath a blue sky.
as if i stripped you even of skin
and wore you,
huddled
within.
in the sanity of moonlight,
moonlight dripping memory,
i draw a zinc-white thumb
across a lip
and wait for night
to dry.
meditations of the beast
beautiful scraps like
the fleeting repetition of a smell:
the sable arc of your fur--
the scarlet of
your curved tongue--
the waft of your breath
as if it still carried
on some honey breeze
into these depths
as if you still
meant
something
inimical--
as if your image
still drifted
on the mirroring shimmer
above this cracked red lake:
skin, or reflection
of heat.
but it's quiet.
my hide in tatters;
this does not matter.
suspended
as if in water,
i wait, patient
in pale state,
for the next scent
to bring back
what i never
had.
new monster
thick white metal
in which i coat myself
thickly: zinc a nail deep.
as if
sheltering
within poison--
my lips a snakebit red,
their juices surging
just under skin,
for you, my spice,
dried in hot memory:
equatorial baking
of your face, your voice--
i slam husks of you against a stone floor,
hoping for shock, to force a chill,
but all that breaks is
my voice--
and it speaks your name,
lips wet
with juice.
veronica. veronica. veronica. veronica. veronica.
raucous freshness
digging toward center,
the seed i
swallowed: your image.
every goddamn root
splits through my red and black--
veins, arteries, corpuscles,
the machine of the earth allegorized in flesh,
the raw root-network of pulses
that unfurls, monstrous, of its own accord,
my body, become your ground.
eyes beating blind, vision ribboned with the
impulse
of your juice:
this
very heart
is yours.
dearest
self-furrowing, these sloughs i dig
through skin.
i vision myself as dirt,
ploughed, the motion of heat in air.
the hot taste of essence-laden breath
hhhhh from upturned earth,
the grinding of the plough.
bah! you were never all i wanted,
veronica.
to turn you inside out,
magma spilt and roiling, blazing surface like a sun
hot on the tongue, eyes stretching,
each eyelash suddenly irradiate,
cheeks scored with fire
under the pressure
of that hot vision--
white to black like the plough of a scream through a throat
and vision a blank and sacramental taste:
veronica, i make myself your earth.
(lover, i hold out my hands and
nothing comes into them.
lover, i hold out my hands and
nothing
comes into them.)
roses
the only thing i remember from a rather insincere study of william carlos williams:
the rose that
drops eternity off
the edge
of each petal--
dripping, eternity comes, sliding thick
from the mouth of the rose and all down its stem.
i push the rose into my mouth
to taste eternity, crystalline like sugar, salt--
it's something to savor,
the absence of
decay, the absence of
the moment,
subsumed
in a lush satin swirl of petals.
my mind, too, can be dirty for you;
watch me contort:
i can douse the rose
deepen its color with moisture,
make its new scent
that of a profound and secret blush.
see how i can make myself
your own, see how i set my lips
into the cavern of your doubled hands--see
how i set up an echo
like the stain the rose traces
on a piece of cloth:
see how i repeat.
resonance
stretch of hand:
the winter-sallow skin,
dry-run, its minimal geometry
broken in light--
the spreading muscles
spinning thin.
over and over--
its involuntary dance
under-familiar.
i plumb myself but find
only freshness.
endless freshness, raw as unspun silk.
the rhythms i knew
gone
the breath that flies my taut chest
broken
like a line of teeth.
what happened to
the things i knew?
scrabble
like mouth on rock,
like seed on the bone-dry plain
to press my face
to the memory of you, but
as everything, shadeless in this newness,
you peel away.
ich grolle nicht
veronica, my star, my sun,
veronica, my root, my heart, my white, my black, my red,
my gravity, my time and space,
my cat, my dog,
my and and the,
my it, my h, my r,
my, my.
(veronica, i was wrong. i was wrong.
but spare me. spare me.
veronica, don't leave me. don't leave me.
think how much i say i love you.
think how much
i love you.)
veronica
drop,
words
down
after
her
as she
sinks
away.
i have not
yet
heard
one word
hit
the
lowest
depth.
zinc metaphor
i like to think
myself
present
and i confess
that this is why
i address myself
to you
veronica.
(deep in the caverns
of my heart
there is a coin.
it has two faces
unchanging
and the metal
in the center
writhes
between them,
turned liquid
under pressure.)
i wept in a dream
beauty is pressure.
this is why, said the greeks,
we drew
figures
from marble.
this is why, said the singers,
we drew
notes
from flesh.
fashioning
petals
from parts;
the attempt
to compress
petals
into flesh.
this is why, like water from a well,
i drew your name
from memory.
milton
a rhythmic knocking
at the smoke-blue tower
of this dream.
i was curled
tighter than a fist,
pressed
closer than a seed,
immured
behind walls
thicker than flexed muscle.
when i breathed
the dream breathed with me.
the hilt of the dream
against my side,
the blade of the dream
deep within.
the tower was small
and blood trailed,
easy as tears,
down its stairs
like a face.
the knocking is
like an invocation.
the knocking is
like an invocation.
quietus
apocryphal intervention of the phoenix:
black hair, blue smoke
curling up from your cigarette.
i don't remember what you said,
but it comes back to me,
the porch light and the porch railing
and the knowledge,
forceless yet infinite, rising, catching fire,
that it was done...
that that which i never had had
was gone.
then i was
excoriate.
now i look at
the wound
and wonder
whether to let it heal.
like words scored
into a tree's bark--an easy if inept metaphor--
your mark,
branded to my tongue:
veronica. veronica. veronica.
meditations of the beast
i was looking into a window
at my own reflection
and suddenly
the smell of wax,
melting things,
and i saw your image
standing behind me,
Veronica.
The window cracked,
shattering
down to its lintel, reflected light
littering the ground,
and
i turned
and
saw you.
new monster
new monster
there is no revelation
besides remembrance.
there is no tide
aside from blood
and all about
in the sick dark
there is a pull--
as if new beasts
stretched their mouths,
there is a rhythm
to this rotted-sweet
lack of light.
raucous freshness
this is a story i have told myself already:
but a hand reached out
of that fiery, turgid depth.
it was a shaken and pale shoot
and it was mine.
i looked at it. it plunged into
the presence of you as if
into water.
as if
into
water,
distilled
and shattered
against
a pit
of glass:
smooth
and clear
as inverted
sunlight.
my love demands
what it can:
this
very heart
is yours.
save
me
from
my own
flesh.
dearest
thickset stalks of memory
fold against each other,
something improbable
slithering between
the upright sheaves.
i weave my image
with broken thread
and i weave with
sounds like
cold glass breaking
in heat. so that
it shimmers
so that
i need not
see
the thing
that waits
for the harvest
to show.
roses
push the sweet dank rot
out the red lips
coated like with lipstick
and we pushed
together.
fold, please--
re-pleat. please.
fold.
resonance
dear reader,
i am writing words
for the express purpose
of turning off
my mind.
my hands have
shaken other hands
and shaken by themselves:
the above exemplifies
description.
my hands have turned
like leaves falling from trees
into words in my own hands
and this is how
i have
and will
destroy
my own self
and not wait
for winter
white and cloudless
as raw pelting grains
of white rice
to do it for me.
the above
exemplifies
metaphor.
ich grolle nicht
strange
this search
for a word--
the word
of
looking
gilt
in its face,
or that
of fashioning
guilt
into some sort of
mirror.
i've cracked
in a space
delimned
by waiting
and shards
have fallen
to a pavement,
they refract
light, like
sun on lips,
and the light
shines up over
my face--
almost as if
i can feel
its glimmer,
the image
of
guilt
is my image
and my image
silvers
gilt's
visage.
veronica
veronica
but no one thought
and no one guessed
what the cloth caught
when it took his impress.
and no one heard
and no one saw
what the cloth learned
when it touched to his jaw.
my lord i begged
to be thrown away
but i received your dregs
and so i was saved.
my lord i cried
to be left unannealed
but away i was prized
and so i was pealed.
my lord, it was dark
in the place where i lay
until you lifted me up
into the light of your day
and blinded me to all but your way.
and bound me, bound me, bound me to your way.
zinc metaphor
(deep in the caverns
of my heart
there is a coin.
it has two faces
unchanging
and the metal
in the center
writhes
between them,
turned liquid
under pressure.)
turn away,
turn away life
and re-trap me
in the cypress' bark
and come aground,
the stopped heart,
come aground
and bear me
in your crucible
of unbreathing blood.
deep between
the walls of two visions
unfolds
a plane beyond time
weaving itself
of motion and desire:
spill me there,
white heart,
away from the bone depth
of your helpless drought--
spill me out apocryphate,
beyond sight,
splitting
with wetted sound,
at the least,
at the least,
self-enfolding.
i wept in a dream
"i want to put my mouth
to the comet's trail
and dye my hands
in fire," she said,
and i cannot do so without you.
and i cannot do so without you.
her insistence on my presence
is why i put my hands in hers,
though her skin chills
and her teeth glitter
with something
that looks like blood.
there are comets
in the early morning
for her to mouthe
and she brings me with her
and she plunges me into fire.
everywhere my skin touches, i feel you.
every place my blood beats, you are there.
at least you are there.
milton
crush
flesh
to dark
ness.
the tower
built
of raw dark
the up-
thrusting
thing
against
its ideal
turn it
real
taste
of yellow
roses
the stalklike
mark
on creamy
forearm
i was in the darkness, though.
but it was a meat darkness.
i pushed my way out
and there was meat for days.
quietus (in translation)
i see your face
as if transient, in a dream,
my first and last love--
the retching
stickiness
of memory
and the wrench
of distance
a hand that wishes to
hold nothing
yet
lets nothing go
a wretched
and circular
desire.
a wretched
and circular
desire.
i read your face
as if in memory
dearest
i read and rend your face
as if from memory.
a hand i once held
is over-full of memory
and my own hand
is over-full
of shadow--
substance.
i was robbed
of substance.
substance.
i was robbed
of substance.
fullness--i was
robbed
of fullness,
and hang,
sick,
like a crescent moon,
somewhere between day
and hungering night
while night
empties her budget
into her own
hollowness.
hollowness.
meditations of the beast
earth and sky
unbroken, tight
and unceasing as shackles--
air, light, dirt, everything,
unending, massed hostlike,
the press of hot things,
bodily and burned sacred.
break and writhe,
you, uncleanly thing,
and befoul heat itself
with your strangled release,
and you, dark receptacle
and you, dark receptacle
cleave to yourself
cleave yourself
and break yourself
and break yourself
for everything else
is too ready to spill you
if you dont spill yourself.
unbroken, tight
and unceasing as shackles--
air, light, dirt, everything,
unending, massed hostlike,
the press of hot things,
bodily and burned sacred.
break and writhe,
you, uncleanly thing,
and befoul heat itself
with your strangled release,
and you, dark receptacle
and you, dark receptacle
cleave to yourself
cleave yourself
and break yourself
and break yourself
for everything else
is too ready to spill you
if you dont spill yourself.
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