Sevens

Sevens, for Rk

1.

Wash the cup and lose your ring

these chores and rules and being born,

I’m missing one and then the seven

Pauline upper lights heavenly gifts by which

I stand and hope to get clean

poor dirt it’s me again can’t find

Chinese court dates where we all confess.

2.

Cover my feet and I’ll still walk

shoe the earth and that’s me too

so now why are you questioning me

certainty all around you’re free to go

thou rogue theologian but the damage done

a comedy of errors a blank page

tools dancing to the white of dawn.

3.

What plant calls day its variable measure

inspiration then sleep, the taste of almonds

who told me it signifies eternity, sarcophagus,

somewhere to go or someone to be

how meanings thrive in such hazy soil

only a little left until I’m free

another image both leading and eating you.

4.

Typical of moths or lights or candles

just like me happy to follow you

your whole life unnoticed not alone either

our names are Peaseblossom, Mote, Cobweb, Mustardseed

Venus crying out of your rootbeer float

numbers are an easy at-home science experiment

leave one out and see what grows.

5.

There’s a herd of cats my lord

your silence said it all at lunch

only I stand between them and wine

patterns that determine the distribution of particulars

shells, foam, to each its assertions follow

glittering sea-spray and the ship continues

syntax like waves can sort itself out.

6.

The lights shine on me, li altri

someone else, the anyone, the other here

so don’t expect any me from me

while maybe deer in this blue fog

I can’t wait to tell you about

ago from me as you are now

these hungry roads nosing through the lawn.

7.

All I meant is it’s tomorrow already

this small applause that nuzzles your ankle

with its lagomorph teeth and oblique stare

whatever you did is what I wanted

even the porch whistles in this wind

light telling me to go to sleep

the way you whisper yourself a secret.

4.5.17

Bellini’s courageous horns will tell me

about that vaguely arabesque window

on North Market street

–who owns this pattern?

Memory’s dust on it

brood of the heart, it sings

in its nest, its dust

coeur’s hearty sound, the skin from

projects my finest glaze

mapping onto the grid, the vision

of thinly disguised pure color.

This window with its rosy cross,

Jerusalemate as the heart insists

finding in its beloved forms memory’s 

memory

just follow what the words want to describe

they all go back to who

the heart sounds

from the other side

like Wagner’s knights

but its Li Puritani instead.

Never for itself, these horns

that woke me, yelling to you

something about seeing a robber

frightened to finally find myself at home.

2,3

2.

I heard

cosi, thing

Donizetti’s

I want to

in the soft ground

Roses of Sharon

is how I say yes.

Cuarto creciente

but all month long

is violet. How could you

accuse me of style

while I’m still asleep.

Little flowers perk up

Siberian squill

at your presence

ink just barely dry

in the dusty tome

our mothers write.

There is effect

and nothing else;

the woods weigh less

without me in them

my science, my measure

substance intellectual

the organic contribution

us immortals make.

3.

Your nothing and my nothing

only the skin of things

keeps us

from each other

those whirling wheels

behind the sky.

Dream

here, this thin meeting

word to be devoured

whose skin too

in the eating 

gets spoken.

This skin

my only argument

the closer

to bone

to none

the less truth

the more yielded

this lie

I am disorder

false door

of dream’s

random adventures.

“No such thing

as random”

another hexagon

has entered

language

the house

its schematic

a trestle-board

devoured

into this 

projection:

six-sided room

somehow

a metamorphosis

of the distances

the presider’s

senses

sense

in us

officiate this 

refinement

of the plant, 

where they call 

my thinking 

matter.