from CALLS

I pressed the eject button, put myself to sleep.

And there you are again,

lost brother, woman cousin, inconnue.

So many animals in my zoo

with me, and I who own the lot

live in the smallest cage.

Jone’s Bienenkorb and we have heard her hum.

He said, and I supposed the lecture ended

but I was still talking:

from CALLS

then something happened

and beauty lasted longer than itself

and gave us to think.

There are not many roads to silence

and music is the sweetest of them

though the longest

with pretty girls and boys along the way,

fangless wolves and paper forests

a pirate ship in every bathtub

and no more war.

I touched my hand

I wondered who it was.

We don’t have to know all the names

but they all are blessing us at once —
what else is a name for?

from CALLS

It’s all a fugue and everything

has to come

again and again through all the doors.

Look out all the windows,

sleep in all the beds,

hide in the cellar and run out over and over

because that is the nature of nature

the minute you let it

turn into the oldest music.

There was no music before Bach

or maybe Biber,

just people being beautiful out loud

then something happened

and beauty lasted longer than itself

an excerpt from CALLS, a long poem in progress

Byzantium rises again,

post-Abrahamic, luminous and blue.

Am I the last pagan or the first?

Open the Questionary and slip in,

they’re all there waiting for you

and you are their only answer

Charlie Chaplin eats his shoes

St. Apollo hides the moon

if you listened more I’d talk less

isn’t that what witchcraft is,

your skin slick with Oil of Listening

HEART THREAD 323-325

323.

And if it rains we say some other thing

and if the sparrows drown out timid raindrops

there’ll be some peace at last in this cartoon

forgive me my investigations a bee has to live

the drones hum around the hive those artists boy-band poets

I’m just the wrong kind a man I couldn’t find

honey in a honey jar how strange the world is

all contents and containers and a bird going by

knowing no more than less

voices of the cyclists wheeling past

chatting loud as if they’re standing still

the slender miracle of mind we all can hear.

 

324.

I climbed in winter up Glastonbury Tor

stood in the ruins of St. Michael’s Chapel

peered up through the roofless tower to watch

the original star from which we fell

you and I slept together on the Hill of Tara

peaceful in cool summer

right beneath the Stone of Destiny

we live our little times apart

Himalayas blue flowers too

where is there for us to think

but this half-acre hot summer

birdsong almost too many leaves

very green, this place, here.

 

325.

No lingering slumbery rubato flaunted coda

without slowing down it simply stops

Stefano Greco plays Bach’s unfinished fourteenth

he has a theory I guess I never understand

I think silence is the best philosophy

those empty minutes that we long to touch

I fill them here with ambrosia

a sappy word that meant in Greek what does not die

life, that limitless cliché

o love me as much as I love you

you can do it if anybody can

you are the only one who understands.  

END OF HEART THREAD

HEART THREAD 321 & 322

321.

A troll is not a little thing it’s a living stone

a stone that knows how to move

a stone with hands and only the huldra tames him

or so I read in a book I wrote

I found it on my phone faces made of shadows

light itself is made of their soft fur

they’re all around us their breath the thunder

all summer I’ve been translating from the birds

now who will be my dragoman

and guide you cleanly through my cloying text?

it’s done already! you’ve read and understood!

what else is there to tell but the sound of it?

 

322.

All that’s missing is the rain of gold

on Danae’s spread self, the blue flower

clinging to your fingertips the crow calling loud

right overhead to tell me what’s what

the time has come he says kairos

like a glee or a gospel anything you choose

long as it has a tune in it

the watchman on the roof stirs in his sleep

the trees wake up and tremble at that song

you wear your clothes woven from the stars

I know who you are but with all

my talk that’s the one word I won’t say.

HEART THREAD 317 & 319

317.

So what if her skirt is made of flowers

his skin was made of ocean

people grow old with what they hold

all that holding hurts

pain of a violin how can I sing with something in my head

the pale arm that calms me so many nights

all a step away from mania

where does the sound come from you rub on your strings

consider the pain of all I give you

is all forgiving blue light of the other

fills the whole body the way sound fills the ears

only this and nothing else. 

  

319.

The bowl of night beleaguered me

then airless dawn we read about in books

written by frustrated selfish young men

there is always air enough for women

even poor Salome here I can breathe! but night

had other plans and other selfish men

the one who wouldn’t kiss her one who killed for kissing

o it is strange to be a woman in this world

to have made all this then see it turn against you

boy by boy until the mean old men enslave you

I wish I could do something to change or help

but I’m a habit man mechanical like all the rest.