HEART THREAD 239 & 240

239.

You knew theology had to come of this

what else is interesting but to speak of gods

translate sex into language yields theology

discourse on the knowable written with your mind on something else

poetry at least is always about itself

but the poem has no self it is pure act

hence more or less useful to everybody like light

even in the dark you think about times you saw

and if I die before I wake

drive a red car to my funeral

do Beethoven with blue flowers

call me by your own names as you mourn.

240.

But each of these is many more than one

time to talk big so I seem small

radishes from a lover’s garden

dense symbolism of the subway

Muscovite manners how soon they forget

I’m not complaining I’m admiring

a Renoir walking out of the loo

a cynical note a poke at Uncle Toby

I had no war of my own

my mental strife was all with me

I despair of the city he said

the city did this to me. 

 

HEART THREAD 237 & 238

237.

But I can only be the same as me a little while

Gettysburg grandfathers battle scars

isn’t it enough that we still are

begin by blaming money the opposite of language

blame mathematics and greed and value

then blame the summer stars for being many

anxious sperm that quest the eggs of mind

always trying to mean something in me

blame mastery and alpha and volcano

the love that hurtles through the woods of Ireland

the ones that we cut down to reach the sea

but never blame the sea.

 

238.

Revise my chapel of this local stone

build the sky into the window

let it have edges but no walls

change the images of gods displayed

change the gods

fill the pews with ocean

no prayer on dry land makes sense

stand up to your waist in water recite the alphabet

variations on a, b, c

this is your liturgy your people you

I am the altar but don’t look at me

taste the water now and then listen to what you speak.

HEART THREAD 235 & 236

235.

Of engine what to speak how things are made to happen

Persephone herself bent to retrieve

sky color from earth color

our first ethnographer she is taken

taken in by what she investigates

and lords it later over the dead and not yet born

Hades’ house is not just for the dead

it is the queendom of everything unseen

she ladies it over hell where we all are fat

swollen with pasts and lives to come

all for the sake of one blue flower and no mother

she is her own mother now. 

 

236.

Now light your heart and be another

time is weary of this mask of yours

melt the wax of it away in seventh-month heat

be free of this prison thee

I am little but mythological chatter

break the light a little and come home

nothing happens on the other side

until we wake again with human faces

I look more like you than you believe

finally divided sunlight into heat like a message

someone sends you find some shade and stand there

there is a Golem in all of us a servant heavy slumbering.

HEART THREAD 233 & 234

233.

Measure not pleasure

the ripest ambiguity high priestess

golden color quiet lioness

heel heel great varmint of the sky

soon it will be your turn, wheel

can I ever other? Bruno argued yes

I rage at how they fired him

restoring him to his elements

yes change your horoscope revise the sky

the people waiting for you are hiding in your sleep

take the iron road that ran right in

crying his name she came to herself alone. 

 

234.

And that was how she was a Tarot card

naked visible through a brick wall

a window where none was possible

she made the light and he brought the air

the wind was seeing her with his pale eyes

she breathed in being seen and so we move

to the next gallery every image is a room of its own

come live me inside the image

the deeper in you go the more space there is

we come through a small door into a big world

in this way we enter every image

hold the image in your mouth and taste the remember.

HEART THREAD 231 & 232

231.

When I said enough you weren’t listening

a phone rings far away and only there

why do we care about the colors aren’t they the whole story

all the colors of the 21 Taras the single blue of the Medicine Buddha

look around you’ll see them everywhere

on different instruments how can one note be the same

or there is no such as same

when the mind is busy we are no years old

night and morning fragrant linden flowers fade now

lindens and cicadas and sunspots who else is there

tiny homeopathic breeze to make the skin joy

color is the other word for it. 

 

232.

Does it even sound like this

is it music or does it mean

he asked an anger like layer of low cloud

but there was only blue and shapeliness was you

there is no plausible verb for being

too many people were far away and didn’t care

the pink and tinseled rider in the circus

who knows from where such people come

if people they are if come they do

I started watching as a child and never stopped

in the barnyard with ruddy feathers

the names of creatures are the same as fate.

HEART THREAD 229 & 230

229.

But from its top I can behold the sea

across the street our little stream in spate she said

ironies and departures

you know how to get here start from here

a little movement in the leaves says I’m alive

everything I give you is a sign

this’m is the blank sign

carry it with you till rain or sun

shadows the blankness with messages

then think they come from me

who have nothing else to give you

just one word after the last word. 

 

230.

Pause in the middle of meaning and mean something else

there is no road or rule just treefrogs singing

just blue sky gleaming through dense green leaves

everything is an interruption

the newborn innocent screaming

a day red in the face angry at wordless men

they try their ruler games but weather is god

I’m not saying I’m just saying

if this is not me talking then who are you

from the torn purse no gold coins spill

long low quiet run of Avenue R

civilization is built on personal discomfort.

 

HEART THREAD 227 & 228

227.

Of course do it for the other the hot blue sky

what hurts us helps the corn

protein the decisive factor in cultural history

egg white is intellect tempera and madrigal

for I was another country when I slept

and now am you

Interdependence Day each man a king

belonging to one another we are spoken from Being

he was the only one who made a little sense and look what happened

marauding mind trapped in a stale idea it had

horror of hurting another for the sake of an idea

Bruno burnt among flowers.

 

228.

You don’t need me to tell it is never right to kill

Holocaust or unsolved murder

only the numbers are different

to kill one person is to kill the world

capital punishment corrodes the state

to kill one woman destroys the human race

Jesus was a man murdered by the state

that’s all you need to know about the government

no one ever has the right to kill

this is the only thing I know

and out of it I lift stone by stone my feeble tower

to make a work where all of you are safe.