X.

X.

I.

Don’t believe words. Not suggestions nor the

body proffered you. But listen, serve them in

their sudden turns, away from what you know

a distance opens between you and your loved

one before the vanity table in the 18th century 

of looking words are not & suddenly sick at 

the touch of you– always something else.

The predictable circumlocute: that is a fake rhythm

direction given by the word held back. When this 

is true it doesn’t matter what you say to say.

The snake is a hoop & the lion jumps through.

2.

I couldn’t have made it up. The ink is ground 

obsidian. Black Aztec mirror though I use it

like any slav-face cardshuffler born in nyc– 

I see you walk through the shrub to a Yazidi temple 

on the high plateau (it’s all the same there’s an 

image of a snake by the door) and the door

constricts behind you– I mean you pass the 

apparent and enter pass the temple to the

great indoors light a fire you get the unknown 

there on a stake  light a fire around your spine

and see what shadows come direct.

3.

A pneumatic tube you climb on board the dusty

wooden car where does it go does it go echoes

have they been expanding the lines from under

Broadway all these years finally make it to

Harlem and beyond– but the tube is done– ripped

up by the subway– the air-trains take a

different route (non locus/omni loci: what do

we have but perspective; what are you anyway)

they’ve expanded the route nomadic as day

the trains route direct in the shadow of the flame

depart from those white & blue rocks blazing in your

head the corner of your eye teases you with upending

anything you see is the suggestion of this other side.

4.

Everything you see is the shadow of the unseen,

the words are their own masters and guide

you through this logic. The Poet might have said

(this feels familiar the same things come out the

shuttle returns). One abducts god with such

reasoning. Virgil knew the form, knew the trivium

before the trivial. That the song moves through 

the arm and makes men. That a man is what 

washes up and begs her to explain him.

5.

We make so little of being underground

pneumatic color comes to her cheek

that she of her in whom the story is

so many shipwrecks those poor windswept

cry out to her absconditus clambering over

each other as the waves come in, the way

they do, no matter how far from land.

You climb the steps to so-called here

the map of your dream city elaborate

as necessary your arm itches & you stiffen in

the cool night air St. John of Patmos rigid

in the work,

                   a fire materialized down from the

sky. You strike the so-called men at the moment

of their creation & a world staggers toward you.

6.

And who is You I awoke in this cavern

so I must have a word, a burden, what's

around me only a you can relieve. Let me be direct 

speak the bones and broken pots & the kelson

red dragon stretching back into the earth

cars let them be birds in their far off

sirenage (for I have been dead a thousand years)

let them creep in with the speckled light. Open

mouth let there be speckled light the

word you come for is complex beyond itself is 

not the world but acute imagination. I, Antero Vipunen

maw of the earth shaman barrow shadow repository

let this old word-horder tell you his tales

(& swallow you, both listens and speaks,

double-edged) let me be what your eyes say.

Come into me & take my words my goats my

barren cows take my breath away 

all things have their use I want you to make

this is what make means not all things but their use.

7.

You can’t trust words they’re heaven on earth

they’re the other here you follow them to the

structure (the empyrean I mean) a 

man sitting on your stoop writing in the dark

it can only be spells or love letters (blackmail

with a chance of either) what does he know about 

the structure you go up to him, touch him, lightly, 

shoulder, here for me?, or throw that stone

the nerve, what are you trying to say 

he’ll think, and it’s an eerie feeling he gets 

maybe years later, of another world skirted by.

 “Antero Vipunen: a shaman whose barrow grave Väinämönen visits to top up his repertoire of magic […] Vipunen has become part of the landscape.” –Note for 17:13, Kalevala