A Rite

The ceremony’s

inner sanctum

is practiced death

within yours

yearning its way

into ceremony

crush the paper

in your fingers

scatter tobacco

for the waiting wind

“and it’ll last forever”

Culpepper says

though not where

and not for whom

their rush by lifting

the guts in their likeness

blood learning

their intelligent forms.

***

Spirit gets in

for better or worse

puts some form to work

any thought rich

with permutations

just squint along

the road as we walk

through the green

skies and blue hills

see, the way it is

where inside gets out

get a word out

and there we are folded in

walking past your grandma’s farm

under the father killing sky

that smells more and more

like Africa, now that you mention it

there was a Julius, Marine Engineer

who spoke German, or mother’s father

from Algeria–

things like that the words 

come out speaking, suspicious

sun rising in unknown mind

unpierced ever with glitter of sun-ray

the blind hero shining loudly into hell.

Indoor Poem

You convinced me these two plants

purify the air, until alone with them now

they rip their slow forms of pain within 

freedom to be else. Freedom from 

compassion. That is lost. The horizon

lost in their small tear that purifies

the air. But in this paradox the loss

of salvation is equal to their suffering.

2.

Dig here, in the balance.

Serpents still, this Vegetable Nature

owns the dangerous road back of us

trees brandishing knives at the crossroads

riding out for lucre in the loss we are

a world with no memory, no death

no where to go but going our science

true Hebrew a yearning to get home.

3.

They do purify the air, a missing third prong

to the paradox that makes a place

to save ourselves, jump ship, speak,

call the name you mean to me

to find the place where we live forever.

TAROT BY DANTE X-XI

TAROT BY DANTE X (While reading Kabbala Denudata:

The Hanged Man

The Sun

A twisted, curled tongue (of limestone bacon; or a long tendril of saffron flared into the eel of its aromatic shape). Meat, or flowers, or worst of all stone to be so deeply mistaken for. Disturbed. A bruise on the centering carnelian. Unpardonable art that’s seen us. It is a red banner curled along the black flagpole in the hands of the naked child, who sits wide to keep the back of a grey pony. Her arms and legs a star spread out in potential: who sees this sees a man in a fylfot cross, a clarity, concealing edge of depth. ARIK ANPIN or Macroprosopus, the Vast Countenance: partly concealed (negative existence) and partly manifest, “in Him is all right side.” So we go down or up against ourselves coming true. The sun tells me so when she looks at me over her broad nose– I am a naked girl. I don’t wish to be anything else. The Sun, hidden, is the right side of this countenance; The Hanged Man is a corpse stuck in a position of power. Not an image; an image never waits to mean. Not a vampire. Put your hand on The Hanged Man’s shoulder and feel the sunlight coming over the stone walls, through the sunflowers, the warm wind in its hands that move the child’s banner.

TAROT BY DANTE XI (While reading Kabbala Denudata:

Her hand

on the lion’s head

resting his head

on the other hand

his clubby hind-feet

we all carry with us

stumbling forward

to the given position

after dark rabbits thud

down the giant’s hall

fearless (possessed)

unharmed (therefore)

the giant’s taste

their own magnetism

a trail of ash (ablaze)

through the shuffled trees.

Scriabin’s Divine Symphony

Scriabin’s Divine Symphony

of round clouds full of stars

sheen of those bloodless

gentlemen we call music

part story and part machine

the friction within a single body

when “he walks into the garden,

she steps behind a tree.” Tom

said. Anything we make goes up.

And the stars twinkle because

they are far away. We are so smart.

2.

I too was such a cloud

whose stars are fixt, blades

bridges ever keen on the real.

Stars descend to the real that

twinkles with the eyes of concealed

lions, or lost rings, or was it

soul. I’m trying to read his text

but I dropped my stars somewhere

between the minds of others

and they partnered dazzling

letters from the other side of the end

of the world: see, through my empty 

eyes, they shine predicates that tell–

make sure you die before you get back home.

3.

In stories within stories

I can’t see behind this tree

to tell if this is divine, 

check the tracks of this image

sick with science. Despite my brazen

neglect to die, if we’re very quiet

the helpers will bring a mirror

to her folded within the forest.

4.

The clouds of those we were

surround us with their lawless bodies

music sounds like its ours

while they work to extract

their mortal loss. And they try,

we try a little too, to help

so I could almost weep for them.

5.

The ghosts of libretti in meter

flounce into the mind as if

to drown themselves; virgins

divine thoughts that would not be measured

who die in order to hold her image.

Lisp her name through the skeletons

of ghosts. Dawn lives in rhyming poems.