2.

Far too late we’re already

redeemed, shale hewn of 

shrieks of whales and fish-stink

I’m here for the Cretaceous Seaway:

Magyars scared of grass, of green

mincing dwellers we are graduated

unwitting of ground’s preparation

what light means one never knows

lost in heaven looking at the sea

it isn’t there; the rocks laugh and laugh

all the wrongness of our wide night

poetry got us banned from seven kingdoms 

Thomas says, one day the lions forgot my name

I turned on the lights but the tables were still there.

Totentanz

Totentanz

The obsidian sky whacks Kansas

with the broad of its sky broad

steel: enraged, wives sail from

windows with obsidian patience.

I mean obsidian wives sail past

the farcical sky, as the sun struts

behind its grey mask, the way you

sit at the table with the lights off

(though they are on). Kansas first

of Blood, then the Movie. Theatre

of images, of serpents of the blood

no good at pretending, though

the lights are on. A place fictive

but for the movements of death

that is not death, but what’s there,

like any place. Details details

turn the lights off the wind howls

but the trees don’t seem to notice.

So it’s just us did I say Kansas

I meant where you are plain or puszta

your feet the floor a little dust in the corner

the coyotes trot by a horde of welsh mice

ravishes me what doesn’t, showy rural 

prude: the sea came away in your eyes

is that what they call a color?

Cactus snagging my pant-leg

totentanz macabre as plants embracing

whoever they want us to be.

From The Papers of Previous Tenants, Undated

Lamb from lamb’s ear

animals erupt toward

night murmurings, without:

stalk, descentless, supposing.

In waves’ glister, flee

into forest bath, or sky.

And the new come. Newly

as star, as living lusts, grace

the leafy night of blood alone: that is

subterranean, regenerative, nosing.

Watered coffee from a churlish 

hand, you are my mother!

Or sent by her. And the tree full

of contradiction, those

unread newspapers. I watch the out-flux

for my chance down the subway stairs.

Advent of the Ghost of Carl Sandburg

Advent of the Ghost of Carl Sandburg

Sunk in the Freight castle of teeth,

sunk in Chicago shouting at an empty

sky, city is all that remains, scream

faltered and fallen back, combustion

and confabulation! A world of outrage on the ears!

Trapped in laughter and gnashing of teeth, the high voice

of the unpreferable mountain, a blue flash

sees the fruit-sellers’ acts redound here and there

and beautiful silent Pharisees, Chicago never been

of Ketchup and visions of a forgotten cycle.

Yet here it is! Willow Street, because in

every city, to the Do, follow the sixth line

to will and council (of gods?)– to there this common street goes

and is. Standing through it, in long flesh, in duds of dust

the blue ghost of outrage watches over his autobiography.

from something

§

Dymaxion misunderstanding

a man wit cement shoes

sunk away from the aria of my love.

*

Ditched body in the voice,

Boss. Pluck open your doors

Bluebeard is architecture, sunk in.

*

Power, first things, that

old story, arche, placate

idol for luck. Give the walls something.

*

Tobacco or corn

the red mother

parthenogenesis of joy, beans.

* 

From toucht dust

virgin spring,

casual, openly.

*

Speech a prophet

cured of apoplexy.

Ecstasy this cup,

*

Minimus:

the tiny hands of everywhere;

giant buried in the water-table.

*

Under high sun the flotilla

peaks the vocable crest.

Beans I’ll be.

*

Prick across the real

wood with joy

at the passing trees.

(....)

re Jacob

Vainglorious man, who mistook grace for triumph, and thought to be the sun itself, until your hands were full of nonsense. The words move to their place in a sentence not this one leaving landscape to call your name, a wheel in your hand to remember that other as it sinks into the earth, is interred among the vegetables, dragon waiting for some hapless farmer, waiting in your ice-box to unearth her. Look very carefully. 

summat further

The freedom of motion twins its stationary contender. I finally get a car. Wheel grace for god-thought, I cup my left breast, I sit still and go everywhere, catch earth up into new wholeness I dare, despite myself, vociferate wheel faster than contradiction. Manta ray, palm down, sky’s jaw I wheel forward, am not her but the four horsemen of. In her attention cruise recklessly through the deer-trails, wind-paths, local fates of rust and mold and beloved mosses. Now must I love you from afar, no longer imprisoned and no longer among you, I caress you with the tenuous hands of this radiant metal reflector, the just waking light-mingled tress call out my name. Jacob!

A wee summat

It is all for lack of wheels, when the Solar Wheel is Taranis, Jupiter or Roma, swarthy, suspicious beneath their cloaks clutching scandalous rondure. Daring to touch.

Their wheels catch the Adamic hay, standing and fallen Williams calls it, anything but description, standing in the skin of the soul, sun-huddled, unpained from what one is.

Standing and fallen, language in its trenchant drift to thee, it is the wheel-people who savvy, patteran the very leaves, who dare to tell us what everybody knows. 

Black as clouds, blown where be may what be, I’ve heard the movements in their banter, as if the speaker had jumped from the tower and the angels on the pavement ran from a directionless menace (excuse me for existing, they politely say). 

I’ve heard the voluptuous map of motives deploy its lambent delegates in the simpleton’s simplest sentence, and I’ve seen him forgiven, so long as he kept talking.