THE STONE IN THE DOORWAY

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.