Sunday, May 21, 2017

Gem Panning

GEM PANNING
for Lila
Gem panning
your once dream
swish and sieve
hips wise arms wide
the rhythm of the act
is the rhythm of desire;

an image of what we
look like when we think
we look like something,
is the image, truest of all
gem laden mixture with
the world that is our love making.

Slanderer magic lantern man
I was once a teenage girl too
incense, aromatic herbs
I invoked long-winged baneful Dream
worker of slackened muscle
laying the tracks of the cows of the sun.

It’s not sleep we really want
not nothing but lord of all
that brings delight into activity
opposite of the soul’s energy
someone who knows better
their body there in all I do.

The birds cross in their quest
whatever it is I had to say
happy just to hear these syllables
salad, Horus, seeds for breakfast
I’m making it up but it’s really there
and you know it too now, bare meaning

delight in all that moves
nourishment runs to my thirsty bones
swift winds of the lower air
I mean wave giving birth to fish
thought giving birth to thing
and You, confederate, alchemist.


Together we can move one sleep to the next
dream tasked to define these terms
while its words slowly burn away
light for us to see, ourselves
lights stumbling on this dark field
scintillant jointure of minds on brain.

Hawks dung, salt, wine
anoint your phallus, excellent
dung of a hyena with oil of roses
breakfast at noon in the total sky
while cars flutter down the street
the secret to change is nothing has changed.

The wave is the description of a circle in time
thrushes come, wise to light’s drift
weep! weep! my car brought me here
to imagine universal sentences
more complex as you look
obvious as hieroglyphs

the dwarf god Bes lets you in
syntax swinging hermetic order
that sees itself in music’s pattern
another rash tree like myself
poor life tries to understand itself with
the Khyber pass lies open before us.

I’m trying to tell our destruction 
the black flower that faces the sun
but my number pours water
on the hieroglyphs of Venus Sekhmet
protector of kings, from the body
of Osiris Aphrodite is born

the pieces are lifted up
into orders upon orders
the simplifying face I cannot see
but you can hear below
the void of my sight my evil love
singularity’s hermetic grief.

Now what have I claimed my own
in this foolish quest to be remembered
rogue alien scouts war
on the submerged heads of their effigies
just look at the shape of the land
animals the clouds tell overhead.

Each word breaks my heart
and I heal it with the next
teach forget-me-nots to the bees
friends in paradise
there’s still news to bring
‘their very memory fair and bright’

the words we are that guide
by compassion into greater meaning
this poor boy to Hekate
the womb that holds divine intellect
levitated shadow
seed planted to make the past.

Desire, rhythm
the images that catch
I call them me,
shine of fire, salamander, gem
body sieves from its goddess waves,
whirring music before words.

Then it’s the best I can do
rugs and chairs against the wall
bring geometry back to number
a room of bees and glass
and other bones, the carriage
of the space of all you’ll do


the angel whispered 
to the other angel
across the strings a rumor
I heard of this skeleton horse
I guess the angel is my dream
the hand beyond the universe

my hand that stirs within my hand
to frighten the poor animal ground 
so you can see the sea again
wearing a crown of us irascible jewels
while we still remember these burning names
the moon caught in a thousand puddles.

I solved my problem just before waking
but now I can’t remember what it was
no token left for day, only this diamond 
with which Bacchus fought Perseus
Venus’ stone, that could kill even Zeus
this empty weapon of the center.

Today lynxes bury their urine
like amber, like lightning, Pliny says
to keep it from men
the hieroglyphs evaporate
once the priest has poured water over them
that leave salt in the lower kingdom.

Open the door all the birds are here
let us go a-maying
come now, slug-a-bed,
we wake the crown inside
this noisy church 
of wing and leaf light.

Then I remember to my shame
my mother named me Gabritius
and return to her Isis χημεία
gathered together cut apart
destroyer redemptrix I come to you
as my Persian forefathers have done


I lead the scattered chariot
and its pooled reflection
the chariot of the moon its thousand names
Isis is actually my evil brother
presiding over lions and Allah; but not Lila
night, where these dreams sing me awake.

See Bannerman’s broken castle is gone
but then why are we still holding hands
nothing is over yet o dear
look how green it is tonight
color is indirect light, le cri de merlin
you can hear still in these very woods.

See my home is gone
not much to do with relativity
see my number pours the water
that delivers the coessential beings
from this empty picture of being
numbers slice through her black and white house

suspect green things
where you can still hear the howl
that might have been me
if we can trust the likes of breath
dangerously unconcerned for the gems
that get caught in the numbers’ sieves. 

This talk is just what I think I’m doing
in the hopes that you’ll stop listening
and climb with me down this music
through the coincident frequencies of color
dip under this wave wide as horizon
into anonymous breath before desire.

I say this stuff to keep your mind clear
true spring in our deep sea haven
Harmonia, we were holding hands
and then I was not Cadmus
we were dragons all along
just beyond the universe.


Two angels whispering across the lyre
our voices mirrors of our larynxes
in which dance the shadows
of our expressive bodies
a seed within a seed
that activates the dark of matter

into conscious black sulfur
(or was it conscious before us?)
the Black King sits beside
a veiled old woman, the devil
and his grandmother: Perkele!
the Finns shout on evil days,

to this personified prima materia
maybe Bergman had in mind
sun’s living shadow that plays
recurrent tokens of death’s desire;
not death, sister, but something saying
ourselves the furniture to get it across.

but if the road never ends
then the car is not really moving
this was the lasting Egyptian magic
water leads us through all its forms
change me to what I’ve always been
the sun’s shadow is within its rays.

This one nuthatch sings your symphony
on its way between emptiness and repletion
this same thing I have to keep saying
move my hand just like so
for each living bird that comes out
and flocks to other poems.

In this dream I don’t switch on the light
bump around the gnosis
of night’s endless house
a black sun that hides
an infinitesimal point of light
anywhere among its rays.


Shklovsky and Michael Maier 
disharmony is within rhythm
is the reinvolution
meaning needs
for the disharmonizing
called poetry

sister to suffering
and maybe its own evil brother
while within the rhythm
desire is a preemptive speech
a landscape, blossoming
from your father’s shadow.

As the fires dance across your sight
you’ll know what it means
scraggly fir on its way past
we all talk to and agree
a voice comes back
though the original was never here.

Sulpher is lingum, wood
the linea vitae line of life
which is the fourfold correspondence
of the four elements
and the spirit of life
is renewed from it.

Lingam, folded flower
a storm gathers in my hard-on
I misread and now can’t recall
what it is you really wrote
what meant for me to be
obliviating bloom of you.

I am bad for you
I know because I said so
sulpher that is itself sick
medicus, creature of darkness
optimistic it will be medicina
Hermes god of Reason and Paradox


the Christ in St. Ambrose
he called pharmakon
poison and antidote
those Greeks bearing Germatria
and New Testamant, chaos within order,
flowers from the moon.

Lead is a madman clothed in rags
said Wei Po-yang
I say the mad dog dead in the river
was in the aquae inferiores
from the beginning
the chameleon that is water.

There are gems within this slush
a mirror of body
harvesting its effective grace
a hand that pushes through the dirt
offers you the otherworldly stone
you and You lovers in the story

the story is Diana, night
who knows how to tame wild beasts
the lapis called cervus fugitivus
meaning ‘two deer’ of me in you
becoming me again, as desire burns itself
to see through the fire of this gem

so Meister Eckhart says
“any virtuous soul a golden vessel,
massive and firm, adorned
with every precious stone”
as if it were a lady from another time
who comes to stand upon the field.

Voices adorn the fields of gold, 
and I watch, for there is a body
nested within speech
that I call myself, 
these hazy eyes search the wind for 

jewels waiting to be born.

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