19

1.

The grey king

fisher king

John the Baptist

waiting, early

for the King of kings

in full flower

the year bends forward

from the alloy of his 

knees, he comes and prays

and so he must be early.

The body of the year

waits to receive its soul,

among this great variety of things

the same two or three

or even one.

Or zero.

The monks in charge of summer

see what the sentence wants to say.

Stretch out your hands

and wait.

Be like the crickets,

there is no conjure without complaint.

Baptism in these lowest waters.

2.

The Histories are symbolic,

an everlasting interior,

Indo-europeans bearing gold and silver

ivory, monkeys, peacocks

to the Levant of 

faithful transcription.

There is a record of everything. 

Even this.

Get it down and walk it

to the library – scrolls

in the beehived mud walls

that coil in, as the sun coils

red below the horizon.

The gates clang shut

and we saddle the camels

to be on our way. Our day.

Instructions for an elevator.

3.

Into the silence

evening fairies slam their doors.

For this good stew

the mind refuses to yield–

the poem is written anyway

and what comes forward,

reticent, motions back

deep into them hills.

Queen Maeve has not forgiven me

that is what this night means,

the outskirts of their revels.

Glowworms mock me

lights through the trees

let me say something else

just once slip into the automobiles

cruising on their spiral streets

where the leaves all stand still.

With the rest of the guests

they comb my beard

but no one leads me into church

passion of the goat

sweet thistle, mint,

the names of angels

growing outside the door.

Lay there with me, 

in Love nothing is made of.

4.

On St John’s eve

pick mugwort

from across the road.

In one eye Mars the 

other Saturn. Put the sun

on your hair, caterpillars 

asleep on the leaves.

Sacred decadence,

the arousal to prayer

clouds whirring

where we call ourselves the sky

run my fingers across

and into Chesapeake Bay

watch again as she jumps

over the fire,

another excuse to see:

to where the rains live.

The skies, thighs, part.

The page arrives

as finally our pens go dry.

5.

after Ada Langworthy Collier

The poem is an animal on human feet

Lilith on her tiptoes as I pass close

her white hand that nearly

reaches out

within the dead’s embrace

we call out their names

brush against the rose.

The roses that surround her

I brushed, the mistake of being

anyone.

I banished her.

Unfolding

point, star, speech

between the paradise

of empty bodies.

Any book

can only pretend to begin

embarrassed by the surprise

of paper coming close, contact

and for the scratch of an instant 

before the letter

when you read askance

see how the pen moved through silence

how to love without myself

what must always have been you.

6.

After H.D.’s Hippolytus Temporizes

This is the beach–

fireflies hovering in the ditch

the wood’s edge, Hyppolitus

pestering from a thousand shrines

the full moon, Artemis

there’s so much we yearn for

these many of me,

the size of the goddess

they pull down from her sleep.

This is the beach–

slow lights drag

and vanish from into night

and piece by piece

one’s person is endangered

under control

hears her intoxicant rimes

incest

death

the blossoming rod

that lives in the mist

that is only ever bare.

I worship the greatest first–

(the white feet white of the dead

that live, an intoxicant moon

her dark magic draws from

herself, that paints us white).

I worship first the great–

(goddess leers uptempo death

where the lovers die and dance

beyond death’s Question.

Where the little lily grows)

I worship the greatest first–

and the altar seeds

the arms of the arbutus

lash white lily flowers

the queen must eat

ah, the sky must eat

the lovers here and there

must repeat themselves 

to cauterize our wounds.

7.

Imagination sinks

heavy and cold

the queen of winter

casting from her hill

radiance, geometric

the first mark of the State

from the fire purified

at the pyramid’s tip

too perfect to be seen.

The bird to fly more quickly 

shuts its wings

through barriers of trees

reclaims his senses

the serpents who chant our names

gradually grow louder.

The poem cannot escape

ritual.

Trestle-boards

on the viewscape.

Dawn to dawn

noon is midnight,

witches climb the hill

splendid Thomas Cole

sleek beautiful black cat

the dancers high-step round the throne

Thomas Cole invisible

the fire’s seeds among us.

8.

The jaguar

so little fact in me

to see it with,

breathing sweetly

in the underbrush

white moths

dapple its coat.

The facts come to taste

Heaven’s secret honey

the days of the week

array themselves, swing open.

The priests in a circle

swing open.

Walls are doors.

Fact is sacrifice

we take off our clothes

your name your father’s name

the name Ismael

read the book to the beginning. 

Whirlpool or mountaintop

from which the sweet breath

slowly leaks.

9.

Birds defy today–

ever defines them

“let the crows into your poem”

that deal in all that shines

like gold and fate

the names of kings.

The next morning will be loud 

with chicks in the post office 

being mailed out,

the world manages

almost to be poetry.

But in this empire

nothing needs doing.

Beware the sunrise.

All action is magic.

10.

Unlike the moon

that changes positions around the sky

every time you look for it (so you claim)

the gods shake their heads

in the center

of our negotiations.

Listen to the paper,

the machines hidden everywhere

wood, steel, the whine of AC

everything wants it turn to speak

the sea roosts

in every direction

wave by wave.

11.

The earth identifies,

drags to itself

the other earth

inside of language

that we live on

drags the actual

into itself

St.Peter keep us

Saint Peter we draw

to get us home again.

I do not look forward

to the resurrection of the dead.

But the concession

of wave to wave,

the angelic chain

of each effect.

12.

Water runs down her body

this woman in a shower

what’s the heat waiting for

who’s it bringing forward

as it waits to break?

The scarlet woman

tanlined, red, painful

lets the water run

in ritual heat

eyes the sky

sits on porches.

Under Her.

Prepositions rule us.

The horseshoes fall short

and I almost know what it means.

13.

Summer in the caverns

of someone else

emulate,

cool off,

be like rock

and let water

seep

the smell of emerald,

recorded sounds.

Watch the fan spin

every angle packed

with roses, calligraphs

of the rampant eye

each image is written on.

The lord of sight

writes within the cave

the word of words.

The rock allows.

Animals, ochre men, 

scars from vaccinations

All are walking towards her

just try to stand still.

14.

Something to take home

shape of a tree

birds nest held

in the crook of your arm

these months

that’s all history is

being other

watching the myths fly

from your father’s arms

for no better reason than morning.

Such ordinary tools

sleep, sun, tree

equinox together

the end of days

the road 

through the desert

that flowers on its way to us.

15.

We’re mesopotamians, like Abraham

whose capital, head, forces itself shut–

the door to emptiness.

Words let the emptiness out.

Our other head 

that of Orpheus, where deer kneel, birds in flight

he does something

like sing 

fluttering free from mouthes

empty as the sky

but no end to rain.

I call this scholarship

patter on the roof

of someone else’s mind.

Tell me what you hear.

16.

There’s only revision

and then, at last, an original.

This is monkey testicles speaking.

To meet anyone is free-love,

to add animals to yourself

friends, forests of yesterdays lunch

watch the hand hang

its crystal in your bedroom

lines my reckless legs must walk

unborn coincidence

the effect of tomorrow

put off till today.

17.

In the empty bowl of a valley

the chisel workers who will make forms

where are no forms yet

scherenscnitt

cut away

from the folded napkin

of the horizon

almost symmetrical patterns.

Entireties rebound.

We multiply.

Unto zero

the sun the scissors

rise again.

So we photographs think

drawings of the light

in undeveloped darkness

where words flash

a greenish light

just enough to go by.

18.

Fireworks continue,

the sizzle of suns

far off continue

I cross myself

a deer

curled up in the woods

crickets howling

from the swamp back home

the road, curled up

that continues

one day we’ll begin

walk backwards from Irkalla’s

house,

scraping off the mud

mud in our mouthes

feathered

the entered who may never leave

the majesty of death

with our buzzing stones.

You can hear still

like somewhere you need to go

the great anywhere continued

language pumps into the body.

19.

Leafy rhubarb

grateful as rain

to be left alone.

The leopard will not share his mirror

with the elephants in the jungle.

For moon does not shine

it distills,

across sheep

and river

the husbands do not share

until each at last is a door.

REBUILDING THE GOETHAENUM

REBUILDING THE GOETHAENUM

The Cathedral without corners. Unsettled.

Smell of vanilla all this morning, of childhood veils, smell of ectoplasm, the color of the worker’s shirts arriving. At the threshold of my transformation. Hekah, her helmet of raised hands. Kah raised, prongs of the magic thrust into matters of. Stirs animal energy fork writhing through the guts. Guts writing through the fork. Writhes and writes through splashing. Sexual pulse. Soul in soul. At the threshold not held all corners loose. A weather to hand. A whirl. Under words. 

Can not make sense. Restraint. Who comes.

Hold myself back. Words back. Who comes.

If everything is available then detritus. Yet an empty. Vigorously

Her down my head.

Chisel. Whirling flame, edges off, build.

The whirl, 

to be.

Her command.

Her house. Whirling.

Toward the round, the perfect, the world, unweaving her angular

suitors. Releases, winking stars of her veil.

And in the central emptiness husbanding, observance myself.

Make unavailable. Only this writing can. Confuse. Covert. Herself. The Destroyer.

Suitors. Of the Husband’s poem ten thousand men. Whirl he thought reflection. Within her. In the rondure of the soul and the sentence. Her house is. 

Coming.

Her strange sigh to us, to wake.

Die menschenbildende,

builds men of us, windows and fluttering birds.

Deer who wild. Suddenly ripened

swift razos over the mountain. Hoofing.

Hooves the mind. To obscure. Into where plurality lurks,

trample down mine. Enter my. Her chiseled down. Holds. Not myself to her holding. But an empty and an advancing. Her marble columns Herself. Throngs. Otters and birds. On grass through templums. Where the poses of building. The inviting steps and sight and inviting sanctum’s emptiness. So a bird, a wind, or what. She comes. Undressing. Endarkening. Isis Her Veil.

Through the transitory blessed seeming. Is seen. As happenstance unfolds. The veil’s cornerless. Must unfold. Habit dying. Winks.

Obscured and precious again. Star net on the pleasure pattern’s slaves. Foisted smear. Mystery. Blessing.

The Danau starting. Deer unremembered. Overtake ours sweet and light as source.

Stands of cedarwood of Ishtar the star. So she and the creek through trees riverine. The transmigration of souls. His ear to the column. The king into twilight. Out of the king. 

The rush of us. Everyman. We make each other. Her saps.

In Golden chains.

Laburnum tea.

She steeps. 

Behind wisteria of Kaukasos and Quonehtacut, my pupils.

Hear the rush of

over flowers

over trees shrinking. Water over water. This Danau.

She steeps sourceling. Golden poison twilight.

Her rays through

Her veil. 

Fauns and timbrels on mountains. Running submerged. Me.

Your perfection your round floods.

My names. Nameless suitoring. She eats all of. My flame erect. From her center, this building. My suitors, my patterns, my clothes and chairs. She liberties. And in the center, inly, for she my mind hath so displaced. No mind but her, chthonic touch. The eagle flying in, the in returned to flame. Letters, words, translucent books, pure. And then my blemish, these smear words.

No originals. No remaining. Smears, obscurations, ink. To begin again. Everything to clarity, write and write. Until empty, weightless.

2.

Across heavenly rising, a drowning book down my face. Sweeps clean. Goes down but looks up. Feints. Works inward. Inland from this farthest point. From the prow of Her Veil. My stick broken and cloak thick. One foot and then the next. She smoothes down into. The green hills splashing. Amid columns that up, up, through sight and sky’s boscage. Cleaned from myself. From the prow, spy. For days, weeks. The stray lonely marmot, eggs stolen from nests and slurped. For years. Lives. Become small, lean, my few long hairs. Long white shadows. Beneath my feet catch and snap. The long white clouds, incautious, imitating her temple. The imitations that catch, drown. While rising inimitable. Winged and real. Water lilies, where water and slick grass. Hawthorne, locust blossom, the smell attending. Nature’s Masonry. Cats. Leading seriously, more and more against my legs into one cacophonous. Pur of intent. The long stairs. Stars. Descending into the death, depth, earth, while Mary rises. The cave behind her. Things to be. Her circumference reaches, strains, the structure strains. The angles, stars. Names that know my name, flocking toward zero. In the space claimed. Claimed from certainty, me, my poem. In our darkness dances.

3.

Mountainous. Kékhegyvár. Where my house turned blue. My hands, my eyes, my birds. Where the sun sets and the caves. Blue. On the second day our yacks like the sky but for a few stray clouds. While only our extremities. As if of the blood’s circulations. Swarms. Centering around the center. The blue sun, the blue geese, midnight, returning, blue squirrels earthing and unearthing nuts, the blue of time, the little squirrel we’d call our girlfriends, boyfriends, or a friendly blue boulder on the hill, something to call. Intent to fragment, pieces, from. To call, to draw. The whole dancing. Pieces rhythm. Barnyard fenceposts sheep jumping sexual pulse. Physis, chi. Cow’s horns shining in the moonlight of difference.

4.

The Duke’s wives abounding. In not darkness. Not obscurity. But transparent. In silk swish. In maybe. Closet opens. A still lake, reflections, the suspension of many stars, the blood. Tide draws. Circulations called wives. Fields, daughters, otters, ponds, round and round to our reflections. Heightening. To her walls. Moon heightens to. Distance dwindles to. Blood to blood. Not blue but transparent. Nothing else to see. But we. Cerulean personae incense. Your mirrors at the thought of me. Angels. Smoke. Sheathes its swords where pomegranates. Where paradise. Where manhattan. Where Abrahams. Cobblers. Ate spaghetti. Food-carts, fistfights, schoolrooms, leather, deserts, widow’s mites. Ate and ate. Hidden in dawn’s names. Ancestors long. Golden chains my mother. Holds us to. Our eating.

5.

What I each.

Ever only.

Nightstand

red dawn, raspberries,

traffic jam. For dream writing.

Cathy becomes. Bill and Sandra.

Ignites.

Pen rises, transcribes across.

Could only be called the sky.

6.

Lightly, Rope cinched along. Where the hole, where marigolds. Smell of bone in her. Moonlight. What enters down. Altaring light below. Glimmering flash. Bands ringing. Selenite you could walk across. Crooked subterranean temples. Teeth in a crooked mouth. Remembering moon. Antennae, hands raised in bands, prayer. Worshippers grow. Within the earth a new moon. As within night’s svelt black winged. Love egged, and all follow after love. Holding your image for further instructions. Bands display. Shining from the earth from my face. She reaches, repays, we see her by. The hands receive. Our thinking water. A picture sticking to water, to a mirror. A deity to a human being. The soul to the body.

Bands flashing. Flesh ringing. Amid breakage and from the round. Her columns offer. The killer relies upon what. Long vertical crystals offer. Receptive. Cave blooming light. 

THE AUGUR

THE AUGUR

1.

Thin green clover's clean and sourceless juice, 

memory’s, parthenogenetic, held to my lips

enough to wet but not to drink,

prêtre orgueilleux throbbing at the Lyre

with the extra observance of having nothing to say.

2.

So this is saying nothing. Lips held

to the smooth solar plate above your breasts

a coincidence of shadow in the presence

of else. A moist jealousy within the sun.

3.

Calm paths of mystery leading to mystery

away from away, desire turns into the house

of desire. A conscious limb enters the ring

of the planets, the cosmos, the other.

Bird in the ring of sky. This trial.

4.

Say nothing. Cool clear water

crosses through the stream of sunlight

to quiver, realign, wink at me

Jacob’s shimmering ladder.

Where they cross I cross my hands

back and forth sign them clean:

as something else is clean as silence,

marble in wait for the god to speak.

Birds suspended above the bridge.

5.

Le pendu. The man in a cross

in wait for else, in wait for you

not statue but augury, a bird 

disturbed not into flight but sight, a door

like any river might find bound

to simple folk like us slow

too slow for trees or those decisions.

But the image, side entrance,

we can jimmy open, and the narrative

flows backwards from what I can count.

La pendu is La pendule, 

sonnant minuit, the clock striking midnight.