GRAVITY FEED Part Sixteen

16.

And down it sinks

the thing you mean—

no names please

we’re all lovers here—

don’t you think pronouns are beside the point?

GRAVITY FEED Part Fifteen

15.

Not sure how to spell that

would you repeat please

(engine running driver asleep

hedgerows full of gorse and fuchsia

how the rain brings the blossoms on)

not sure if it was wheel or wither

was it wheat or west or mill,

truckload of apples, Avalon?

Are you sure?  Does it bite?

Take off your house and wear the sky,

I know you’re shy,

keep talking fast, they won’t see your eyes.

GRAVITY FEED Part Fourteen

14.

So something has changed—

the wave curled in at Brighton Beach

minutes after Rockaway—

we intercept our fates

traveling perpendicular

between Jupiter —that tyro star—

and where we are.

A line of fate

runs down the palm—

my head anyhow is full of Gypsies,

I am the tower of Babel

I am in heaven

you are angels

staggering around—

or is fate somehow

different from what happens?

A secret elsewhere buried deep in here?

GRAVITY FEED Part Thirteen

13.

Her  body changed while she was away from it.

When she came home

the legs were longer, the floor

seemed a long way down,

thinner, less interesting.

She bought a book

to tell her what to do

but all it said was I love you,

a useless sentiment at the best of times—

She dreamed she was a chandelier

and streamed light down to fill an empty room

by then the ground was really far away.

A VOICE FULL OF CITIES

GRAVITY FEED Part Twelve

12.

The sly beauty of the actual,

that’s all.

Leave behind you bits of paper

scribbled up with writing

they’ll find the right ones

eventually,

                             your zettelbuch,

you can be sure of that—

nothing is ever lost, alas.

GRAVITY FEED Part Eleven

11.

Think of it as an art show

an opening,

                             you’re standing

around waiting

for the pictures to open,

you understand the brie

on the gluten-free cracker,

sipping Saratoga,

is that

supposed to be a cow?

And there’s a woman with green eyes

how well the artist caught the fear in them.

Or is she a man.  Or is it a mirror.

GRAVITY FEED Part Ten

10.

Pay no attention when

they talk about the world.

Nothing to be said about it

it didn’t already say for itself.

So shush, hush,

talk about something you

well if you don’t understand it

at least you want,

or want it, or even

remember,

                             say the taste

of fish after you cut yourself on the can.

GRAVITY FEED Part Nine

9.

But it all comes down

to coming down.

Standing is more exhausting than walking,

when you walk

you lift the world,

snatches of levity

hoist you before the fall,

red books on a lazy table

students hiding from whom they read,

peeking sometimes through masked eyes,

they know something’s

buried in there.  David Jones,

George Barker, Thomas Vaughan,

Thomas Browne.

                                      The alchemy is all

                   in the waiting, in paying

          attention.

In the athanor of the skull

a deathless peace.

Soul by soul the world escape.

THE LANGUAGE OF EDEN

THE LANGUAGE OF EDEN 
is now available on Metambesen:
http://www.metambesen.org/books/

GRAVITY FEED Part Eight

8.

Well it usually does begin again.

It wasn’t what he thought

but what he made you see,

Brakhage, that genius,

changed the way the world

knows how to come at us,

changed the time of seeing—

Hall’s Burning Glasse lights up the mind—

speed was the trick

you can’t see at all

if you don’t see quick.

GRAVITY FEED Part Seven

7.

Phantasy integers

keep the machine happy,

you?

           Numbers count nothing,

they are the dried stains

that colors leave

on the mind, the

“angstroms of affliction”

he called them

before he went away—

hespera men ên

evening and the conspirators

split blades of grass

and whistled through them

till the whole meadow

squealed and shivered—

go ahead, hurt my feelings,

punch the air.

GRAVITY FEED Part Six

6.

Hobbyhorse for rent

that’s me, ride me

to your quested shore

and I’ll be boat again

to take you there,

your secret place

doesn’t even exist

till we arrive—

an old word means

to come to the banks of a river,

stagger ashore—

now no boat, no home, no me

he said.

GRAVITY FEED Part Five

5.

Tamas has it too,

the names he knows

now of many things

so listen, sister,

the song says.

                             Love the new poets

answering the ocean,

knowing the song’s

not in the throat

                   (that’s opera, bud)

but in the mind.

GRAVITY FEED Part Four

4.

Didn’t mean to let the world back in,

it has a habit,

                             a history jones

she called it in Detroit

                                                a habit of needing       

                             and wanting,

          the names of the dead who did this

to us,

             our ancestors the fish, the founders,

Olson had it,

                             knew

          the so-called facts

                                      of times and places

are song enough

and what they did

is what song says,

a roaring metabolism of remember.

GRAVITY FEED Part Three

3.

You saw them then,

                                                the material

encouragers,

                             whiffletree between

weary horses, cart

full of cauliflowers,

plodding through the harrowed

fields, glebe they say,

of memory,

and maidenheads for sale in frightened countries,

Eighth Avenue in evening shadow,

eggplant hurried supper

seminarians back to the book,

book,

             that sly theology the eyes believe—

and dear god the things we do to each other.

GRAVITY FEED Part Two

2.

Wait for it is what I do

other for the other,

                                      the others.

Bathing

                   Beauties of Rockaway,

the spill

of love left over when Time is done.

GRAVITY FEED Part One

1.

Gravity feed the maw awaiting —

think of clever things

then think away.

                             The sound you hear
                             is all you are.

OF THE ALWAYS Part Ten

Verbum ut pictura

See through what I say

to what it is saying,

tell me to tell you

a wider story,

one with monsters in it

things to look at

but bel repair,

a mother who grew

flowers from her secret places

and you have to understand

because I don’t,

I’m just an ambassador from the night

making girlish scribbles

in my father’s ledger book

some words intruding on your breath.

FIN

OF THE ALWAYS Part Nine

Equivalence is all—

find something you’re equal to

and sleep with it

where else could dreams come from

or come true?

And when I say you it’s art I mean

who else would put up with my prattle?

You were on an island in the Indies

reluctant to be

                                      O be there not

but it’s hard to leave

a place you aren’t really at.

OF THE ALWAYS Part Eight

If only I could sing that

purple kaddish for the living

but none of the words

taught me tune—

the always

was still waiting

still heavy on my palms

fruit overripe

here, I give it to you

sir or madam on the other star

I mean coming down the stairs.

OF THE ALWAYS Part Seven

Because it still is there

it still is them.

In the movie nothing moves

but colored light—

everything you think you see

is me.

And Pilate wept

his wife clutched her temples

the Sabbath crept upon them

wrapped in ignorance

to give them ease.

Give them peace.

8 September 2014

Supermoon tonight

and it looks up to see a Superearth—

that’s you and me, darling,

alone among the apple trees.

OF THE ALWAYS Part Six

The evidence accumulates.

Sun on the terrace

on a different planet

we have not yet organized.

When you get worried

recite Saint Paul:

Do not accommodate

yourself to the system

but renew the way you think

and then he’s young again

old house new skin

badminton court out back

two maidens clad in white

a flying shuttlecock.

OF THE ALWAYS Part Five

Each part

the history of the whole world

each line

                   an epic

a movie in 4-D

waiting for the aisles to clear

when angels

saunter by to sell

those special cigarettes—

you have to see them,

it’s not enough to listen to me,

the fives are strife

of one color or another,

the girl has a sword

clutched between her knees

it’s as real as a cartoon

a word’s a proffer

invest in it

                             a word’s a door

yank it open and disappear.

OF THE ALWAYS Part Four

Indecisive disclosure

a mind without a zipper

the purse-seine savages the sea

and there were words in it

this time, Antietam,

bone,

this time Actium

never now.

History is a lizard basking in the sun.

OF THE ALWAYS Part Three

 As if a window on a falcon

open the way

light lures citizens

by surfaces to sin

swim slide glide

sunwards into the Danger

I hear the radiants

talking to me

at least I think it’s me.

OF THE ALWAYS Part Two

The advantages of blundering

midnight beneath the streets of the forests

cloacal cathedral

stained glass translucent leaves

because they fell

and the trees’ amber ruin be

fine spectacle

leaf veins of innocence.

OF THE ALWAYS Part One

  

The always

on your hands

are in your hands,

the lost grammar pf Gan Eden

a language made exclusively of pronouns

and the names of things

were still asleep.