Apollonius on Snakes

Weave golden letters

onto a crimson cloth.

It can’t resist

its golden scales

sound like bronze

beneath the earth.

The unprefigurable beast

can’t resist

it reads

and falls asleep

the bearded head

oddly heavy in the

palm of your hand.

Nothing is innocent.

With axes and spells

they chop off its head.

They take the eyes.

The eyes that will never

cease to scan from the

crest of wake and sleep,

hard as jewels

some say

with the power of the ring

of Gyges. Invisible body

from which they trek

across the letters

in the Indian’s palm

the mill of skies

the letters that throng

in conclusive rain

the streets of dawn

its wise denizens.

They’ve given up

building and just live in it

now. Study all their strange work

by the luscious measure of 

themselves. This the snake

reads, its eyes the door

the missing beat

that have an 

“irresistible power”

for there is no teacher

and no listener

no subject,

no content.

You can sing

on your long guitar

of mountain goats

and its endless skin

of skies like sandpaper

in a wallless room.

The eyes awake

its missing body.

When you can hardly 

stand amid the animals

crowding around

the boundary stone.

It’s body awakes.

A release

in the guts 

of the mind.

from Philostratus' Apollonius of Tyana

They were traveling in full moonlight when they encountered a phantom, a vampire that changed into this and that and yet was nonexistent.

The bed will tell you what’s hiding underneath.

I can hear their generalities again

the lie of their arms and legs

don’t fall for me, they cry

look, look at our false movements.

If you experience lust it is the work of  phantom, phasma.

The curve that is not the road bewitching you

down the hillside. Up the hill.

All the ways away from home

that crowd around the door

if you experience lust you are almost home.

Through the bodies of demons I could even

touch your hand.

The thing about phasma is you have to fuck your way through

himself rebuked the vampire and told the others to do the same, since that was the way to counter this attack. 

The vampire went off gibbering like a ghost.

Dragged back.

Gravity is a wave too, like light

strange solids we can never quite grasp

never follow either.

waves cresting on your mother’s shore

just loud enough to wake 

too quiet to remember.

All phantoms are vampires. Rushing towards you with your own blood. Daring you to dream, wake your birds into the shapeshifting sun.

After Aeschylus

The Understanding (After Aeschylus)

Will they understand these lamentations

in our foreign language?

Athenian actors speak their best Persian over

black sheep and knick knacks in the shallow cunabula.

He meant the distance between worlds is one of 

understanading. 

I remember 

the actors then had to be prompted by lately conjured Darius,

who they thought too divine to address (anymore).

No one wants to be understood.

Words would keep understanding away. Only when the gods

are silent do we tremble. When all the doors

swing open and the corn rustles in.

Who’s speaking anyway?

Voices have a way of hiding in you.

Perhaps that’s all I ever have to say.

You already know everything, and poetry is how I listen

chip quietly away with you, undo what there is of me.

It is a sin to have two of anything.

Requiem

Requiem

If it comes through the window   the music’s bad

arrange the mirrors yourself   in mind’s gristle

for a door in   its serious business   of making something

up   a city   they walk in   called music

you always knew their names   my shadow of shadows you

Plotinus wasn’t sure what   magic is   but it happens

between two people   who know the same thing   surrendering

their branches their trees   the squirrels fly

through empty dawn   its busy hands our hands

push the border they are   please just read the stupid poem

the angel cried   a stone   a phone   a bone  whatever you see

you’re all that matter   hyle matters   now drift across the eye

that pours   a bell to meet the thick light   calling us awake.

For Ashley

For Ashley, on her birthday

you were right to look in here . corybantes and the purr of tiger’s breath . heavy as the shade . animals come near in ways we’ve forgotten . their brave soliloquy of mind

when I say in here I mean the locust grove where you stumble over christ and he smiles at you like any shoe-lace 

 pheh! stubbed toe we cross by . bury the cross . the cross in matter the obstacle . bury your beast tooth in the soft skin of the earth . 

die Ungedanken  .  the stone

and where necessity digs into freedom there’s . the centurion’s tent . (gay Oedipusi?) there’s gold and forgiveness . a christ you can’t follow . in a good way . die Kraft the force of the craft . tongue buried in the parable of formica . 

speaks to the hand . hard . halting virginities . the great dragon of animal’s heads whispers its secret syntax . throw the locked doors away . he said . wise with herself . put your hand in my flesh .