MERCIES
The first awake is victor
no more of that Latin vallum
the killing wall, defensive obstacle
we run with, rush toward the enemy.
What else could we bring?
Hold your wall up to the dawn.
A kind of door
you hold until it’s gone.
Intention is a kind of fire.
First awake so that’s me whistling below
trust nothing more than the street
now the water has receded
by a kind of fire
that hides in dryness
an annual philosophy.
Everything is in bloom.
The black rocks
where the mirror breaks
into white sand. Demiror
amazement, wonder
whose rocks move still
and we move them too
across the sun-white ground
kids left alone at the machine.
Emperors nodding to each other
as she carries us down the street.
***
Crouched at your chair with my uxorious feelings
I work the you in me at the you all around
he drew a hurried star
just above her knee
she thought was an A
everything is a story on skin
whoever they were,
speaking the world
in my story
on whose skin?
Woruld an old Northern word we don’t use anymore to signify something that takes a while. The bus stops (I hear are disappearing from San Francisco) silence, the silence we’ve banished ourselves from “bowling” as Robert says, and fireworks every night. Just sit in the silence. The only place anything happens.
***
If it signifies it’s a world
that’s all worlds do
strange animal the words describe
hippogriff, Shemhamphorae
the rabbit I found her
cradling naked on the bathroom floor.
I pulled it to pieces
with my hands, like this
to see what’s inside
to find the door
and go in,
just another word
a way out of the sentence
its strong back, these joints, names
to carry me into the silence.
Carry me beyond the body.
Masons working our way to antiquity
we can’t understand
the building
where every I means different
talking signaling waiting
in our island ways
but who hears the fugue?
Listening to myself tell you
again these same old things.
There is always another Mason.
Thus two.
To carry me
in his/her
arms.
This is no ordinary sunset.
You can see the angles
hear them behind the clouds
steps up to the gate of City Hall
Solomon’s Temple, Valhalla, whatever,
where you have to hear in its éclat
all you’ve done
all you do
until you learn at last
how to carry yourself in.
***
In the picture there are hundreds of Neolithic figures from Olympia, bulls dogs cats horses pigs otters snakes wheels, no people. No people at last but the precision of some sudden truth ambling from the priest’s fingertips back into the woods of our desire. De sidere, from the stars, that heavenly body. They must have been her, must have figured it out as they carried me to the temple dedicated to her and buried us in the back like some forgotten language. Secret of the temple. Take the night things back to the night. True compass. She put me in the folds of her skirt and I never pointed to me.
As far as I’m concerned
this poem is about nothing.
Voices of the drowned
from Berlioz’ Requiem
terrible altos of the arduous sea
steer my little ship
afraid of my own shoes, shores
but I wouldn’t tear my ears away.
All I want is to be lost he meant
and they carried him into their mysteries,
the terrible power of things
the sea in the sound in the body
how far can we carry being taken hold of
take me where I need to be
he said, the hard fate where everything
answers. The rocks that wouldn’t drown Io,
the shy embrace of your non-lethal trees.
The embrace restrains. We are so obvious. Dreaded circle of ourselves– outside, other than the very center. Tzim Tzum. We hold each other back and watch ourselves walk down the quiet streets. Pull back the bow, speak open the biosphere mariposas and motorbikes pollen noising through each other’s valleys.
As Kim reminded me today Mercy is rooted in Desire. Mercy is magic, its wish is granted from the call of articulate intensity. Half recursion, return of same; half fugue, undeceived, untempted, an ear to the East.
Just open your mouth and listen.
Heat lightning.
My mother cometh
but the rain decides to fall now.
I’m telling you everything
too quickly to be sure
the rain has stopped
you can hardly see the last
trace of wet vanishing from my khakis
we are the gods of weather
but he heard I love you
did she mean us or the ones who never stop
animal you can still hear breathing
now maybe the streets are dry
now maybe you never had children
hot breath through its attendant circumstances.
Aristotle tells us a fire creates accidents
in cookery as in horse-racing
pace the tracks clockwise,
let your land lie fallow
some merciful wheat will take you in its arms.
