THE STONE IN THE DOORWAY
I.
The reflections of the candles on the ball are Ursa Minor, nearly.
Gimmel.
Hiccup.
The camel that travels the orphic egg,
its head
thrust into the light
forms from the reflection.
When I look at the ball
my eye gets cloudy.
The light at twice remove
rolls in luminous bands
across the Selenite
which I wouldn’t see
If this really were my body
as I moved along with it, bending myself
to the caprices of my hand
on the ball’s curve.
My own hand! There must always be an other.
While I become mineral
turn my belly
into its slow
kind of oven.
The moon and the north star
through the late October
knotted clouds, I remember we saw
the grass crunching underfoot,
as Dante knew, the dead take you with them.
II.
orb’s got a wobble
rabbi says is the ecliptic
little better, little worse again
a real mountain is another kind of street
where you can drive straight into the clouds
a flame that hurts terrible
until you hold the roses
cold in your hand.
Dreidel spun awake
from a dish of ash
sudden appearance
of things as they are
cliffs mid-air, waterfalls, the palace
of light coming through light.
Mind become the medium
by which to undeceive mind.
A redefinition of “tools”
teleology
is the empty point
fire exit
right through the image.
III.
Timber Rattler
vision of Er.
The egg shakes.
Just get this out now
so the mind deers
can come tripping through
the garden gates:
pearls on a rotten stick
hoodoo to keep away
but you can only really hope
to attract,
plant for bees. Ladybugs.
Try not to touch the snake.
No snake.
I’m thinking about something else.
That slithering
I try to avoid
and comes near anyway.
Don’t be fooled
by what I say
my trembling hands
my pale face-
I was interested in deer,
in the mind’s park
but something else comes
exactly like
what I’m not thinking about.
The deer in the park
sidewinder through the snow
with their strange yellow eyes.
Trust the deer.
IV.
Curve of shadow velocity of ink
the square of the page captures.
I’m here to interrogate you
or at least that animal who lives on your sleeve
waiting for the black clouds to clear
before the midnight sun,
to shatter in its mirror.
The rhyme’s cool wind you know
rushes into the valley
and through your mind, too.
Hieros gamos
fall asleep
and the hills sleep
new found king of the Tuatha Dé Danann,
chthonic ancestor,
king who eats his son.
Hinge.
Jinn.
Judge.
We’re only products of
how the letter swings
that separates the ground
from your name.
V.
You cannot triumph over your sister.
The letter that was there, weird
“skulls haunting my naïvety” –G.B.
concepts return to seed
the mysterious ground
closed off by conspiracy
as if language were only our own.
Gate of the letter. The hand
between Adam
and Earth
where Arthur is his Sister’s captive.
VI.
The tenuous thread
the fates hold
sidewinders through the mind.
The fates the three shadows
of divinity,
and ghosts pegged to numbers court them
morning noon and night
the ball is only the field seeded by stars
mind’s special gravity
seeded by stars
the deer seem to know are there.
VII.
The stone moves from the voices
that work at it from inside the cave.
A stone props open the door
that would shut if your eyes were closed
and lets all the others through
into the personal nighttime of language.
You can snatch a shadow up with your hand
and suddenly the stone moves toward you.
VIII.
Avid play of voices
light and the interior lights
called shadows out here.
IX.
The lower cinnabar field glimmers
(among the white of everything, its own red sun glimmers)
sight tightens the skin of things
from mind’s absolute porousness.
You are yourself my Id.
My phone number.
Full moon irises from the lake
deliciously unconcerned
but remember there’s no difference
between this moon and the absolute wet.
X.
The named moon rises
and all the names are hers.
Mirrors in my goblin hands.
They call up my number
and I say what they tell me to.
Talking grease behind the scenes.
XI.
From the field of names
things arise. Each word
is the first, in hyle
pulse of living matter.
Lips vanish
the lip of the glass,
lip of creation,
in the kiss.
Don’t mind my
slobber in your ear.
Solomon
candle-tree
going for my walk
because all trees do
even the one we walk
inside of, believing
its secrets of ourselves.
The tree pretends
to be more than one.
Fake mistake. Speak.
XII.
Thomas Edison was a Theosophist
and in his wisdom he sealed off
the stars from us,
a roundness to the shadows,
shadows like stones
in the forest of lights
Meliselda, the king’s daughter
coming out the water.
The light breaks as you push
your way through. Meliselda. Shekinah.
I sang in lusty Ladino.
Naked on the letters that blow towards her
through my heart.
XIII
La Rose Croix
of Chinese tián 田
field, 1.3 inches behind the navel.
The Lower Cinnabar Field of
Sâr Peledan’s decadent yoga
virginities received in jewels and incense
jewels and incense the opening of the flower
virginity in the play of things
the play of the gods upon the earth, Lila
I watch them change the stone but nothing moves,
no alteration, no imposition. They come by another way.
XIV.
Olive-light, combustion in the shared root,
obvious as gold, in sway to the bellymoon
words in the market under washed out blue tarps
like all we ever do just to keep away from the sun
love a kind of gold that loves shadows and dragons
but there is no difference. One day the Djinns
will untie Wagadu, that small stone that made me
think that I was in here. The stone
that was made to seal the cave will go back to the fields
as a pillow, a place where lovers sit, a word come to
your lips. Your lips. A word is a kind of kiss. To be a word.
