12. the great good use

new monster

nude and vibrant silence

silence

spread round like sour milk's hot press

(locked, all doors locked down)

silence no longer the absence but rather apotheosis of sound, silence a feeling, lappable, a discretion of tastes, a fever

silence the gathering and the prophecy

(i will do such things, such things, such open-sound things)

(i cling to
your shirt as if
to the petals
the stamen
clings
fearful of
bareness)

raucous freshness

and too, hands, eyes, words and names of things from out the concrete heart, each like lace, with holes in a pattern

(i stood on your porch and i smoked a cigarette.  the sky was night.  and it smelled like the lawn.  a man in a jacket.  there you were.  and you remarked on a choice.  above night circled.  the eyes of my face circled in, falconlike.  you you you

later a woman gave me a deck of tarot cards.

i was dizzy with you.  and it was cigarettes near the lawn.  a choice you made.  later my heart beat with it.  you you you you you)

my veronica, you stood apart, hanged in constellation like the lover of a god.

dearest

light of love
lingering, glancing like sun off the water
scatter of luminescence
the palm of the hand
hitting the water

the water is permeable
wide with toothless mouths
a thousand floating wrists
a thousand limp hands

i will factor this in, dearest, in gratitude.
you put the light in my hands and
when i smack the water it's for you

for you my love loved one with
eyes like sunfire

for you my loved one for the one i love

roses

we were on the front porch and BLOOD the night was warm and the scent of the grass FLESH

i set my teeth against memory.  memory is BLOOD nothing but a FLESH

veronica how i want you.  it's childish to BLOOD
childish to FLESH

foolish to crave in words childish to BLOOD FLESH AND BLOOD

flesh, bone, and blood
hey down a down
flesh, bone and blood
hey down a down

resonance

kettle full of thorn diary chapter and verse:

the sweat on your hands like a sun disc
like a sun disc the rose in the fire
the rose in the fire like a deer in the wire
like a deer in the wire the femur the spire

the femur the spire like the house of the moon
who came to there came there too soon oh too soon
who came to there came there too soon oh too soon
mourn mother the moon mourn the shatter of beams
mourn those split unborn stars as if they were anything

ich grolle nicht

sway
of
sound

sound
straight through

still behind every cell i look for you
look for you behind every shadow of beating vein
within each fountain of the eye, within each whitecap teeth

i pound of sound

my love my love my love
it is a kettledrum
my love my love
it is a sleeve,
a hide hiding mountables
the soft sinkable things
the soft vulnerabilities

kettledrummed i resound
reresound  beating beating out the tender vein
thick-knuckle down the fountain
the giant envelope of lovesong
a wave so deep i could curl up in
and ride  filled, annihilate,
gone

.  .  .

veronica

i was cloth
woven
to catch
your face.

did you see
in me
that shape?

nothing else perhaps
no mirror

could give you

what i could any clearer.
all blinding

white, all gold,
all flowers
teeth-grit with

opening fold,
all spring
pushed out
as if it were summer

not
seasons' betrayal
but
to find
an owner.


i shudder
for a limit
and find
white only

and gold
all-flowering--
a god

that lonely would have
me heal, that

gives nothing away.

zinc metaphor

it was a layer of zinc i acquired
willfuly
caked deep
down into the skin
until
i was a different me.

as if in every cell
this my sick white fought
with your fairy coin.

so that when i creamed
sound
it glinted lamp-gold--
that is,
a glittering expulsion.

posessed:
your
fist.

reposessed:
my dirt
is
zinc caked nail-thick,
zinc in the vein,

poison, yes,
poison.
sweet poison.

i wept in a dream

drop, tears, down deep
through the caverns of my sleep

to the river underground
deep and dark past any sound

where the water ceaseless flows
without break, but undertow

dragging down to leave your trace
featureless at its deepest place


somewhere i'd tried to escape.  had tried many times.  my hands
shuddering, unable to hold
anything.
but it was a harvest, and i will tell you why:
at the bottom of the river, a door was available.
i had been waiting for a door forever.

it was a train that took me away from here
and a train will bring me home.

milton

heartbeat a face
image from out the waves,
veronica
looks at me still
i imagine,
a star
in the sky, shining
like sun on the water

a million miles away.

i don't need to remember
what i can't forget, a feeling
lodged
so deep below
the surface
it turned the whole breadth of the fountain
to gold, to one gilt object,
as water piled upon water,
sweet blood washing the vein, red
with the breath
i drank
of your face.

so far away
it was a dream:
the chalice,
the tower through which
the blood trails
like a white sleeve,
the point
that pinions
everything

worked free
the door to the tower
opening
onto something
less imaginary.

it was a train that took me away from here
and a train will bring me home.

quietus

i was a magician, a master-weaver.
snakelike, the rhythm to you and i
that i wove again and again.

no escape from the outcome,
as any gambler knows,
but for one shaking minute,
shaking like the leaf of a deadened aspen,
the sequence itself can change,

for one cheated ray of light
the sequence itself can change

like jenga.

patient in pale state
my hide in tatters
(it does not matter)
i wait   for my breath
to   rebound
what i never
had, what
i   always   had never had.

meditations of the beast

variance, the jacquard rose,
against red another lesser red,
next to yellow another yellow.
each color holding its other
still, too still, as if
against the line of time itself.

groundless, as if  colors only,
regardless of form,   without
any  abstraction, that
nexus  into which    this
damage  was
pressed   i break
all ways 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