falling asleep
in sheer exhaustion—
not through exhaustion
as normally experienced
but by
collapse
of the imagination,
of our desire—
a lashing, lacerating wind,
moves Paradiso’s breath along with it,
leaves earth unable to inhale
for we are dead asleep
who have in no way died
but by the death of others
and even this untrue
all elegy abolished
and overridden
for the whole history of these
our disciplines
“going on future now,”
they need to keep on claiming—
unknowing wherewith “go.”
moment
Who have never died
have never lived
A moment at the heart
parent to all of time
wakes at a certain hour,
a certain second
could not have been predicted
by “all the wise of China,”
wise of whole universe.
Wake! Wake!
for love of all you’ve ever been.
Remember to remember
there is no other space,
no other time you could enjoy
or truly live—as if a flower,
let’s say my great white spire
unearthly high (tall as yourself,
tall man, sharp tempest)
of white Delphinium,
had stood beyond all reason,
had not been broken down
by winds of such violence
as no year in this place had blown
with such fury, such indignation
that you’d forgotten how to still
the suffocating mind
and now recalled seasons inhibited
by far too little patience
for anything to matter
more than twin stars recalling you to life
the sister brides
like two white flowers this round
among n-thousand more
inside that burdened heart,
holding the body to its daily day.
a spider’s prisoner
Far from this house
empty of visitors:
no roads,
rivers, canals
in the surrounding mountains
to bring them in,
an empire surfaces
through mist and cloud
invisible at first—
valance-buried spider
becoming fat on tribute—
from his spiderlings.
Each year
manifests news
from very distant places
of imperial triumphs
and the establishment of spiderlings
on available thrones.
Their webs now cover planets.
They even reach into this place,
gardens around this house,
We swallow bile and poison
bowing at undiluted shadows,
indebted since childhood.
Throughout our time
the house’s memory has faded—
behind the curtain:
that primal spider window.
Why do you write of it
even now forgotten
way back at birth.
How do you manage to
remember?
veil
Behind this,
way, way, away behind
this, we may guess,
it’s termed...
this veil
this all-enveloping
gray veil
fusing all life to ash
(even the
“rose:”
mother infinity,
angel of color
circling infinity),
worn night and day
of every day
of every holy year
and each unholy—
what is the difference!
Behind this
way way way behind this
veil
adhering to the skin
erasing a whole life
night after night—
no remedy to pull you through
but endless work—
the whole darned voyage
What is this thing,
unknown, hence unrecorded,
completely lost to any sight of ours
anything known as sight
even in Paradiso—
(you call this Paradiso?)
if not some thing we’ve heard
evoked
but never understood,
thing “happiness”?
the price
The thought of beautiful women
opens the eyes of mind,
burns to the bone as well.
Bone: they too will earn
in the last accounting,
get thee... a nunnery,
bone turned to ash in fire,
red shift moves out forever.
A single fraction of this universe
now visible—dark matter and
dark energy—dissolves the beautiful.
Black holes swallow.
Then there is the thought
of those who are not “beautiful”—
women and men
who run the mortal risk
of never opening a life.
But who can measure
who is and who is not
in any eye believed accountable?
Leading, again,
to the innumerable lives,
open or closed, each lived itself
alone, trapped, doomed,
never to be another than themselves.
This will break breakage. The
galaxy explodes; the fate
of any joy there may have been
in gambling on humanity
fades incommensurably—
cannot be bought or sold,
not even told, not paraphrased,
not even parsed.
angels
Trained from the get go
for flight against all gravity—
bars, mats and wooden horses
under their feet and hands—while mathematics
default to access flying,
their whole existences
like those of vestals
unable to enjoy anything else
outside the years of training, the
cruel, barbed, the unrelenting, training:
all smiles when winning,
and idolized by the accountants,
tears streaming when they lose
left out to weep in the arena’s
traps, without a thought
for their short shelf-life else,
life of caged birds
feathered before their time—
the daintiness of debutantes.
Then—flowered and bemedalled,
numbed in those interviews with the accountants,
bathed in the blather of triumphalism,
rehearsing the same batch of words,
over and over like machines
what!—some two hundred words! no more!
the high-pitched soul-less voices,
the same dead vocab the culture mumbles
all the way up to Power and beyond:
its dumbed-down populace all ears—
(Bumper sticker:
One Nation ... Under-Educated)
while other nations wonder at
which mindless generations
they will be led, exterminated, by.
thing
Passing from time to time—
so if you think the pass is timeless,
you have
one more think coming:
for pass, known as “eternity,”
the dead call time.
It is not possible
to hold in head, to
get one’s head around
the notion of
a timelessness, even as
it is not possible
to totally ingest the thing called nothing,
to totally imagine lack of thing,
of anything
you could call thing
so as to have in mind
a hold, a touch, or a caress,
or pure punch in the throat
“of your worst enemy”
and then behavior.
Even by the attempt to stress
to overcome unthinkables by stressing
as in, say,
“nothingness of nothing,”
still you will not defeat
how long a life will take to live,
on the only hand.
maya
Figure her turn of neck
bringing the head round,
fixing the eye’s position,
as it looks down on the embryo,
or small child alongside.
Her hand now reaching down
as if from sky to earth,
the badge of ownership,
label of one lifelong possession
linking the two divisions,
(as by crab pincers),
of all our knowables. He,
meantime draws an imprint:
birds’ feet on sand
message transcribed in letters now,
burnt into memory. They meet
where the nature of stars,
fierce fire of stars,
flames time into earth’s surface,
recites the chemists’ formulae
for all of movement
as if they knew (intimately)
the child’s decision as it walks
nobly, nobly it must be sworn,
into the future,
where, in another text,
it would be walking into
a solitude enduring
into the fading of all worlds,
the end of history.
Therefore the flower.
Therefore the bird.
The universe.
Therefore the crab’s
persistent pincers.
Therefore the void.
The moment.
books falling
From the ultimate skies
books made of light
fall toward earth
asteroids in suspension
taking incalculable years
to reach their breath—
from which they waltz
interchanging colors
at every cloud
into the throats of angels
knowledgeable seraphs
singing a
music heretofore unknown
life lived in secret thus
until receivers wake
among the earthly landscapes,
gather the books as visions.
Receivers still as mice
at their own altars
put life in balance
reciting the books
as if they were to lift them,
they the receivers,
into the living skies
and clothed in feathers
from immortal birds,
these same receivers
now fly to friends on high,
begin to sing their recitations—
no further help from books.
anomia
The only answer
to all this madness
(you know which madness)
is surely to lose
the order of the mind.
The fall has been occurring
it seems from the start of time—
while there was one break
at that very start
involving single skull
ensuring language.
And loss began:
word after word
precision strained for,
then, when not reached, name,
name, a dozen names,
name after name
until the conversation,
like a field
parched by the rarest drought...
and the mind itself
could not ensure
an order more, any distinction
between its sound and none.
Only the trees
offered suggestions:
that whole vast cape of verdure
chevelure of earth,
the very icon of inheritance,
a silent concert very loud—
but plants not trusted
to know the truth
with no one ever sure
of his or her name’s nature
of its exact, its proven definition.
sleeper
Now, she is quiet now,
inordinately quiet,
sleeping in fact—
sleep of the just—
among the longest shadows of the land.
The language sleeps
she is not there to speak it,
it is forgetting
word after word,
soon there will be no tally
to say the possible,
to sing the wakening
which needs its music.
Behind the lids seemingly closed
the open glare
of human heaven
stares on continuous,
waiting for the conception,
the embryonic start-up—
its light already reaching
for flags and banners,
black weapons, propaganda,
gold acid, cloth for burials,
green monuments,
food for the saved
(burned or alive),
the haunted faces of some children
rather than others.
arrival
It is the casualness of death
entering now, yesterday, tomorrow
so unimportant,
so without airs and graces—
surprise
that it could happen small now
and any time close by
instead of some big happening
shifting whole life to grief.
“Who have never died
have never lived:”
a moment in the heart
parent to all of time—
waking one dawn, unshaven,
so undetermined in the maze of days.
What’s wrong with the word “dying”?
That all the noodles have to “pass away”:
my wife “passed” yesterday, my husband...
maybe he “pass” tomorrow:
imbecile fate of our whole language.
Illiterates “passing” us all.
Or “Mother Nature.”
What’s wrong with plain old “Nature”?
&nbs
p; Who in their hell of hearts
without more euphemism
ignores nature as Mother?
As close to you
as the wrist watch
on your own wrist:
time tells the twisted story
of a departure for no arrival,
a song for no one singing.
heart. mode recall
Sign: Cancer
Heart. At the everyday,
at every hour, at every moment,
shattering out
of branches:
lobotomized and shell-shocked hawk
in every which direction
knocking its head on walls,
mirrors, ideas of every kind,
and cannot fix on any vein of prey.
Called down, hushed, pacified,
from sky to sea—
from sea metamorphosed:
crab-shaped,
enabled now
to hold each universe,
in its perfected pincers—
heart peaceful rests,
in very center.
Every and any thought come up
are calmed to wakefulness.
Everything else at the circumference:
that other ghost
all reason day and night,
incapable of any show of heart
afraid, deathly afraid
to acknowledge love—
so left you in a heart attack,
sin of tautology:
(mute, amicable friendship).
Circumference you said moments ago:
there, there, in perfect circle
round the unmoving silence,
a motionless, immobile, back to roost,
this heart of all the hearts impossible
never to perish.
Your Paradiso, born to annihilate
immense outlook of hatred,
itself now wakening:
(endless acres of snow),
now breathing easy
until the only miracle
this earth has knowledge of—
the single ivory shoot
rises once more. All smile and domicile.
definition
What you are put into
without permission asked,
and taken out of
without permission asked
What is never explained
neither for a before
nor, more importantly, an after—
so that the purpose of it
never revealed
haunts the whole pass called “time”
in this you are supposed
to find the thing called “joy,”