6. red earth

new monster

sick and feeble and
slinking
away from all i had known

i looked back at time and
wondered

i wondered where
the beginning had
gone

and

i wondered why
everything always
was new-
begun.

my bones felt
like matchsticks
under a blazing sun.
i curled myself upon
rock

as if
i could truly
shade
the ground.

the only
left
thing
was the bone
and the blood--

the rest i
shed
like a breath

the rest i
shed
like a breath

the rest i
shed
like a breath

raucous freshness

i have handled worse than these,
you say to yourself, and say it freely--

the beauty of a saw
scraping the wood away
from itself,

as if your words
are a heel
scraped
on concrete--

the words would be
truer yet if you
had the breath
left
to say them.

dearest

and was it so
bad?

when you ended
up
with such smooth
fingers, your
mind
a merry
oyster

and glistening
within,
the pearl?

tell me, you, have i
never expressed my
gratitude?
through teeth chipping
and yellow like
old paint
have i
really never
really never
when the night has come
and the land is dark
and the moon is the only light we'll see
no i won't be afraid
no i won't shed a tear
just as long as you
stand by me
stand by me

roses

meditations of the beast:
i stare into your fire, red rose,
your heart like lips and your lips like blood,

your blood on fire.

against the ground
it runs
gathering
dry things
to itself--

determine the blaze, rose.
taste the meaning
of the blaze.

taste my meaning,
take it in your petals
and know
until the end of time
how you loved the smear of it,
red rose,
your heart
dry and chapped
as a
thirsty
mouth.

resonance

i will never be spent
in composing your elegy,
your elegy of red.

if i were to embroider your face
i would embroider in red silks,
on cloth dyed red.

i would dye the cloth myself
with a long hair brush of my hair,
with handprints of red,

with red i had made myself,
and when i had finished sewing you
i would undo

every
last
stitch

ich grolle nicht

the issues are complexified
by facts i cannot go into right now.

but for an instance:
that labyrinth borges harps on about.
where what's mirrored is wilder
than the image it projects.
and at the same time every double
is as real as that which it has doubled.
because according to some other beautiful culture
there are ways
to get behind
the image
and see the image
behind the image.

my thoughts pathless,
writhing
like a tangle
of black
harp strings.

veronica

i held you closer
and closer
until
nothing
but cloth
divided us

i invited you in
i let you turn me
like a season

i turned you like
a season i turned you
sharpness to shadow
pleasure on pleasure.

as if we were yellow
as roses, i invited you in,
i let you turn me
like a season.

from spring to summer
i turned you forward.
a poppy bloomed
in the dooryard
of your bed.

from spring to winter
you turned me; you held
my face
against the time
and you turned me.

zinc metaphor

love

love is

love is tied

tied up

up in

tied up in pain

like

like fat

like fat ties

ties up

up the

ties up the vein.

i wept in a dream

but i don't know what i saw.
i lay ont the ground with geryon
watching the wickedest arrow
dive into
st. sebastian, the patron saint
of love

and we felt for resonance we felt for it together

but instead
i reached inside
and pulled

and pulled
and pulled and

(as if one barb
could be turned
into a full bloom)

i saw blood
eventually.

milton

geryon lay on the ground.

above and beyond him, around
the tower and the column of his breath
grew roses tangled
like hair
dragged through earth.

the roses had their own pulses
against the gray and blue sky.
they marbled geryon's sight

and he thought that if
he could just dive into pain
once again
as if into clean water

wash the moment
of his being
clean
of itself

wash himself clean
of himself


but expurgation was
an impossibility
so geryon looked
to the ribboned
rose-rimmed sky
as if to a knife.


but it was not a knife
and nothing
was safe

quietus

geryon was a monster.  everything about him was red.

i was within a cosmic self-friendship,
something casual.

but the blue world
turned me into a battlefield.

i saw red-running hands
their red turning to silver

in water and the water
turning red.

the moon trailed a path
against the lake

and there was nothing left
to view through the window

nothing left
so the glass shattered.

when i thrust
a fist
against it.

meditations of the beast

meditations of the beast:
carve time and space
out of what is available

and leave
what can only somewhat be
behind

to strip the ground
and grow,

its waxen leaves
reflecting moonlight

and when broken
loosing
finest
sap


are there many little boys who think that they
are a monster?  but in my case
for better or for worse i am right.