cellar door.

IN A STATION OF THE METRO (Ezra Pound)
the apparition of these faces in the crowd;
petals on a wet, dark bough.

Icarus did not know such
suffering as the artists of
Florence during those great
“bonfires of vanities”.
Savonarola, silly religious
fanatic; all censorship,
heresy, dissent.
it’s a wonder how their
hearts continued to beat
after they tore
poetry from empty
mouths, set fire to
the quiet revolution
hidden in writing,
concealed amongst bookshelves
of fir and oak.
those authority figures don’t know
that the ashes of our literature will
feed the soil
and from the rich earth flowers shall
grow, our words will live
in their cells
and that is forever.

tales of the day


I am in the morning of silence, the drought of the first half of the
Western world; I look on the functions of industry from its variant
spiritual homes—places like Nikel, Murmansk Oblast, Russia,
standing in blue-black snow with the glitter of cobalt raining down
on me.
 
I am left panting—not out of breath nor drooling but out of thoughts—I am
asunder in the sea of mourning our world has wrought, from bombs to
plowshares and once again back again. Аппети́т прихо́дит во вре́мя еды́.
 
when seperated from our grand muses, we then find the subtle, the paltry, we own
the night because we were born to the northern darkness. we were born to a lacking;
and yet what a mess will make this whole, and what falling of books and crystal would
make you listen? and if Virginia is really for lovers, someone up there ought to have realized
what a treasure you are already. see, from what I understand, an F-16 crashed into the old
kitchen of your house and no one heard it, pilot ejected and the drop-tanks caught fire
yet that, thankfully, was put out by the fictional personage of the mammy in plantation
literature: with four-gallon buckets of water, Disney-like, she saved the day.
 
on a March night with rain driven to make highways into mirrors, I had dinner
with the National Security Advisor. She was late, but magnific as expected for her
office. emerald ring and gown of satin, Chanel and other assorted bling. And it's
all true, it's your own, my friend, in the morning when I wake beside a boy making
a space-opera out of his own addictions I reflect on Nikel, Richmond, white elephants
and white alligators. I want it all. and drink bourbon to them, Liza for having the balls
to cover a singer half or less her age and do it better, Laura Bush for wearing green worthy
of Jackie on mornings no flowers would bloom, Faye Wong for owning the islands like I own
the sky. all. all is dream and all is good, talked now with Koa over in Hawai'i and we prepare
a victory suite all our own again.

s w i f t



Swift as the elk they pour along the plain;
Swift as the flying clouds distilling rain.
Swift as the boundings of the youthful row,
They course around, and lengthen as they go.

—Thomas Chatterton

going

we say that we ”hop aboard” a plane,
most often though, more like we wait and wait and wait
then sullen and slow-tempo, we walk on the deck like
schoolkids off to lunch. it is still though, travel—
the giant wings and thundering jet engine that
spirit us into a sea-like sky via the growing loud and
powerful din akin to a chord change in the middle
of pop remix: this is the sight and sound of flight.

it’s a modern thing, a boyhood thing, I still want for a
scramjet, certainly, supersonic combustion below wings
carrying the massive plane at Mach 6 like some very
errant rocket yet in control so sublime, landing lights
blinking like a thousand fresh little kitten eyes in this
mighty spectrum of sky.

to where do we fly? —everywhere. the plane’s stolen
thunder not only from sailing-ship but also map.

nowhere is far anymore:
we’re everywhere now.

***

being

Truckee though hides from planes:
it’s a California that isn’t SF(O) or LA(X),
far away and covered in the most pure snow
ever, white perfect, as soft as fur, as crystal as
lovely glasses on the posh bar of the Empire Hotel.
But we are far from a New York, a London—this is
the other lands, the places not filmed or written so much
as this is wild places that have still brought in human interest, the touch of soft skin to rough land.
we go right over the top, we fly corsair over the snow.

I’m up, this is morning
and all around me is a devil of a landscape,
a perfect bowl like the one my grandmother had
Jordan almonds in, a sinister slope like the side of
an architect’s drafting triangle. Teeeeeeeeeeeeeerik:
I brought you up with me ’cause Ohio boys do know
their snow. only geography can ever get the best of me.

we fly.
this is ours. and we fly.

this is what I do best in life—
I am sorry it's not big money it's not history
it's not adroit nor the well of words at cocktail parties
but this is what I do best in life we do this as our love.

There is a reaper whose name is Death,
And with his sickle keen,
He reaps the bearded grain at a breath
And the flowers that grow between

"Shall I have nought that is fair?" saith he
"Have nought but the bearded grain?
Though the breath of these flowers is sweet to me,
I will give them all back again."

He gazed at the flowers with tearful eyes,
He kissed their drooping leaves;
It was for the Lord of Paradise
He bound them in his sheaves.

"My Lord has need of these flowers gay,"
The Reaper said and smiled;
Dear tokens of the earth are they,
Where he was once a child.

"They shall all bloom in fields of light,
Transplanted by my care;
And saints, upon their garments white,
These sacred blossoms wear."

And the mother gave, in tears and pain,
The flowers she most did love;
She knew she should find them all again
In the fields of light above.

Oh, not in cruelty, not in wrath,
The Reaper came that day;
'Twas an angel visited the green earth
And took the flowers away.

....




"Camp Creek Church, Clinch County, Georgia"


Unknown : Limerock was placed in the shape of a grave.
Unknown : here, just an old Funeral Home marker
and no information remains.*
beneath cypress and oak, a chill grows,
moist air surrounds, seeps in like a syrup
and in the thick of it all, it somehow seems
as if a very astute and useful dictionary
has been upended like a box, turned over, and
spilled forth its collection of words. so much so
yet I am wordless, in this place timesless —
nostalgia is for those in tea-houses, on porches,
in libraries and small-town Baptist churches :
nostalgia is the paper-back version though
of real history.

no place for paper words, we are by a poor
church and it’s only church and woods and
small rivulet by smaller cemetery : there is nearly
nothing here, but it is peace. this is no book-place
but real-place as you notice the loose boards, the
nails fallen off, the rusted bucket, the fence
half-rotted and no longer so much built as
growing by forest’s edge. I want you to know :
that’s how all the good parts of the epistles start,
you see, beyond the prayers and best wishes, Paul
will tell you what he really wants you to know.

I want you to know.

yet what of the unknown? even deaths can be
unknown, or at least it appears lost, to secluded
cemetery mired in endless miles of swamp.

* — these words were scribbled in a description of gravestones at a cemetery I read.

low night

(With Halloween on its way, I am writing some poetry inspired by traditional Irish and Welsh verse that tells tales of the little people, dark nights, and other spectral things)




Giodh dubhach ataoisi anocht : fog here
and hardly is the moon-light upon the weeds,
foul tall growth in ithloinges, loss of corn
and wanton vines in the hedgerows by far
fields, stone wall leading to small gate,
and it’s corpse-ways all from there on—
tainted places, gloomy moor, fog shadow
of no sound, nearly no sign but wet air
oh, but no bellow of the bull, the calves
on the far hill at bed for the night, owls
in their nocturnal flight, calling insects
now all but still in the Autumnal chill.

Gormfhlait, she knew it, pitied like a ghost,
a castle could inspire vain desires and longing
yet without him there, it's just an empty place.
blank as a field, gone like the corn, lutharnach
of forest untamed and cold like winter named
even in October’s warmest of early nights she
draws the cloak shoulder to shoulder and cries.

Ionmhuin,

I warn you thus, all that is, a sword can take
and all that was a book can forget, and all
you will ever be, another wishes to steal
from thee. God gives us not even a moon-beam
on a shivering night like this, and you gaze out
over the wall and fear to see the steel of a brand.

no moon I see in sky, unseasonable frost I feel,
and iron tools I place about the house, save us
from the Unseelie, a foot in the otherworld on so
vast a night.

( Collapse )

An edited version (as of 11/29/09...)

i am nowhere.
i am now here.

i am the howling of the wind
and the gentle tapping of the rain
against your bedroom window.

i am the smoke from your cigarette,
dancing a fancy ballet of pirouettes
until i part
into the chilly summer night air.

i am the overpriced coffee that burns your tongue,
and i am the quiet breeze that blows through your hair,
on a sweltering winters day.

i am nowhere.

i am disembodied, indifferent,
not held down by the weight of my skin, my muscles,
my hair.

not beaten into submission by a dirty look
or made guilty by a well placed sigh.

i am now here.

boyfriends


the agape as re-imagined at fourteen,
summer slowly coming, yet coming on strong,
school-year nearly out and frogs, bugs chime
like small festival bands from their ditches —
makeshift streams in the flow of thunderstorm
rains — this is where we begin, this is a sudden
door open unknown to the wealth of a spectrum,
the fits and starts of pure hearts towards a lofty sky.

in dreams, I seek so many things unsaid,
permission from your deceased ancestors
to say our love is sure, made of an ore robust
and clean like white linens — clean like how rain
washes the sand into awaiting river, the fair
dust dissolves into some untasted salt-flavor
as fish dip into the black warm passivity
of grace around them — as to quell the lust
between us.

keñvroad, keñvroiz: these are friends,
the prior literatures, the sightless trails
of love-concepts in words and sounds, mirth
of arcane letters and drawings make the
most supple language out of unknown
motions between two in the space of
this time.

***

some boy in France wrote these words
before me, someone in a rural town in
Texas did too, and some kid in Russia,
perhaps in Tomsk—in some place far—I
know he also penned such words, in loopy
Cyrillic in a worn black notebook as snow
drifted down past his window. for this is
nothing new. young love is a tale so old by
the fireside and lust-carved into the pines
. . .
bonfire lust and towering pines brace
against cold autumn winds
. . .
bonfire of maple leaves and sounds
of forest creatures moving in the woods
nearby

we move from summer further fall
to places where we speak of love, all.