Saturday, June 10, 2017

hieroglyphs continued

3.
Patterns issue from the mirror I try to be
goat footed box I track through the letters
through the animal dimension it is a wheel
you can hear still pouring through this alter
I mean this string I hold, the wellspring
Pans cascade through my privatized topology
to rebuke me for making the world
when it’s self I should be listening for
not training vines to grow up the light’s legs
while a flowering sky offers itself as an axehandle
to the snake that ties handles in bundles
that leave me messages at my mother’s shores.


4.
See what gathers and deduce the number
to find which two places I am at once
all my pans bow to Pan the random
their voices polish his resonant ewer
spindles turned true through abstract yarn
work awake whatever’s inside this bottle
fishy seeds to come imagine my soul
weight in the world calling my goose to bear
as if somebody were in search of a lamp
iron in your pocket to bring the children back
cast their broken hooks in the maternal oven
and untie your dolphin from the red ribbon at last.



5.
The images are tethered by a silent observance
bones ring in resonant boxes
each of them facing what they call north
the roar of Typhonian waters
through the orb of a plucked string
their grammar binds in my little ears
the wide sounds in which the tall ghost walks
a goose pulling an anchor by a red ribbon
grabs my hand with his neck permissive light
green wood tied to corroded ore
above and below both dangerously entwined
a dead dolphin for my trusty weathervane. 

6.
Consonants thresholds bones
keening towards their mysterious owner
chicory fleabane roadside asters
I open my small mouth onto all waters
learning their thread, fate, measures
that tie me to the ocean’s brother
fish bearing palm fronds peregrini
goose dredging your lost anchor up
by the light of the lord’s stolen lamp
things are tied to the will to find them
holy tools the snake brings to mind
in whose shadows reach blood’s tethers.





7.
A skull whose hair can work the fields
into a seen fire
of petals that thrill my imagination
its reflection in this wise water
stored away within each wave
until at last the water is silent is you
no reflection but direct report
no distance between my anchor and the goose
whose soft thin neck strangles me
iron leaves bending my young green stem
my flowers tell you I’m not from here
how the light from your sea came to die in my hands.


8.
The first is always the hardest
folk wisdom theology bird born from eye
multiplication will teach me everyone else
a pitcher with each time a different drink
that say truly I am not to be trusted
under the decorative twine of parochial grammar
suppressed formulations undermine our power
this logos I wave this fake anchor
only big enough to tell a bird’s lies
before the olive sprig handle crumbles
and lets the gates of the celestial palace down
to regain animal and thingly speech.






9.
This tape is a recording of the sutures of a skull
mesh of wood and geometry we are
knowing too much in our curves
wounds healed with memories like water
never letting go this ball of thread
that ties me closed as it comes
we accrue a fate begin the bible again
while words tremble to begin in us, their fate
and for some reason still take us in
to work crappy ore from the flowering branch
Kircher knew still shows the organization of the plant
a holy Kabbalah in my evil stories.


10.
From here deduce the rest
what language wants to say
the hour’s hexagram
archetypes rush in to be organized
their jumbled spears in the water
that dutifully files them away
I too am just a calcination of soul
this salt I call my own
anima mundi will one day reclaim
soluble like language on its way to begin
unconcerned with our complexity
but the consubstantiation of flesh and what it wants.






11.
Order I conjure from the so called random
order, Thoth, my own disharmony procreates
to espouse my cause within the world
we create in this house eloquent fiefdom
of effect radiant seeming
seals refract through emptiness
white Manjusri pre-teen under white sheet
imagination releases through the seen
creator of seen and unseen I dare imagine
Nicean flowers eating their iron branch
eat of the secrets whispered by the road
where you meet your own body traveling home.

12.
What happens when you walk up to a cup of water
rain collected in skull what did you see today
the water mistakes me for one of its hundred brothers
and I fill up my pitcher each weft
day is collected 
and I preserve the secret medicine
Galen knew context is the study of the soul
where to whisper in our home to change
the world we ail, unsay us against
the balance of forces that drive me to speech
unsay my seeing from the weft
year by year wearing out the shore of things.



***
Now that I'm done I think goal was to give each image a range of possible meanings across the 12 sonnets, and in the 12 lines of each sonnet propose a reading of the series, so various proposals for meanings would resonate all at once, not serially but with a sidewindering reach throughout the whole: that in the midst of meanings the image might hover, gesturing, iridescent. 

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