Apr 30, 2007

The Soul Like Pigeon

I'm blue, the way the sky's blue.
No, not in color. Not that blue,

not like that: I'm blue, the way
my soul's blue. It breaks.

Love paints me, my soul, into a
blue to which you enter, the way

the pigeons enter, rabbit-like,
the boughs. If the boughs are a kind

of resting, or a safety to which
it will return to, mustn't it also be

my body? What my soul is, it is
inside my body. That much is certain.

The shorter version goes
like this: the body the bough,

the soul the pigeon that
can't stop returning.

Apr 29, 2007

The Dead

The dead / wander where they please,
especially into the heart where there is no defense
goes a line from a poet I know. What does she mean
by defense? By the dead in relation to
the heart? There is heart and there is
body, is memory, is that it? Who we have
loved, we will still love, will keep coming back
like rain: more a question about when than if.
If I have told of my heart as a lighthouse,
are the dead the wrecked sailors who enter,
bewiggled, in storm, for shelter, with coats
that carry the sea? Not like a curse but like
a burden? If the dead are the sailors, can
the boat be with what they wander, the heart
the lighthouse? meaning life is random, but also
unrandom: both. My heart: a lighthouse:
a tower of light to which the dead enter
like rain.

Cento: So You Were Spared

So you were spared.
You knew no field, but drifted
toward one. As pigeons to home, they
sough and came to a kind of resting
upon your deep/your fair/your not-
to-be-understood-in-this-our-life-
time breast. They bent over in grief,
mourning their lost brilliant crowns that
they can only watch, not reach as,
beneath them, leaves scattered down:
singly, in fistfuls. Leaves. Light.
The trees filling, emptying. The bodies
that, wrapped and wrapped, lay
sprawled above the steam as it left
the vents of my city. Here's a coyote.
Alas, alas, all is undone, you cry, when he
takes it by the neck, where the head should
be, repositioning the body so the markings
at the wings face up. Like memory, the cry
changes nothing really, any more than trust
changes: Trust me, the way one animal trusts
another.


Notes:

From From the Devotions, and Riding Westward


Alba: After: Line 1
The Blue Castrato: Line 2-7
Alba: Failure: Line 7-10
The Cure: Line 10-11
Truce: Line 11-12
Alba: Failure: Line 12-15
Riding Westward: Line 15
Hunters: Line 16
The Way Back: Line 16-19
Radiance versus Ordinary Light: Line 20
Torn Sash: Line 19
My line: Line 20
Closer Your Eyes: Line 21-22

If a Lighthouse

No, not like a volcano. Not like waves.
Like a light bulb whose light is
constant; like a throbbing, or
a workhorse. Da-dum-da-dum.
That's how it goes, my heart.
If a lighthouse, then not
the tower but the light that shifts,
not spreading as, in moving,
it splays the sea, like a gift.
Like hands, it give guidance to
any ship. If, say, my body is such,
then my heart is its guidance:
an anchor to which, all this time,
I have kept returning.

Apr 28, 2007

Alba: Two Lovers before Dawn

I love you, have loved you, the way a lark
loves, all this time: not like the folding

of wings but like truth and more truth;
not like dishonesty but like loyalty,

like a gift, open, granted here. Remember the lake I
told of, and the lovers who crossed it with a small boat

and two oars, and the water churning like big
biceps? They would drown, naturally,

but did not: could not, as we cannot:
we will love and meet as if for

the first time each time, each of us like coins
cleaned shiny by each other's touches:

Do you feel that rinsing of flesh? Like cats,
we clean each other. Like apes. Like you, touch me

here and here. Do it again, all over. Enter me: clean
me. As our sex, you will be missed.

Confessions of a Sinner

As with Pigeons, they Ignore us

What shall we do with the bodies,
all bleach all mud all smeared
in blood? Do we burn, lit aegis-like
their skin, so that black come,
ash come, and effluvium? Isn't
the fire too perceptible, a mark to
say: here, bind hard our hands?
If we wash only and throw their bodies
into water, would traces be traceable?
Traces always carves the same: the same hunt,
the same end: no trial and no listening to what
we say. As with pigeons, there's only ignorance.
Yes: our hands have killed and
killed. But here, in my palm, can you see
what I see: can you see that blood?
What we have done, we have suffered.



A Sinner


If you'd count syllables any day,
any day I'd count, name tiredly
the stars: Pegasus. Orion. Procyon
and Procyon: which have burned out and
have not? At Lake Como, I comb the grass
flat, as if in the starwatching Earth's hands
press me, my body, farther from that
cosmos I reach for, E.T-like, as for doves.
If I have grabbed a dove, felt that crushing
of limbs, have I sinned? If I made red the
palestrea ground, can I be forgiven? Yes, I have
killed, but any day these bleached hands
are like their faces. Can you take, rinse clean
my hands?



Your Servant


Here's a jello, and some pudding. Eat some.
Here's a light, making of my platter a mirror
of gold columns: signals, maybe, from
God. Does it mean he doesn't want us?
As swans, we keep coming back to what
we love with hunger and more hunger.
More to do with the human condition,
than with sin. It's only natural, like breathing
air is, or to fish: that sea, that salt
seaweed,etc. We regard it as privilege
to do what you do, have done, did, on earth.
If to savor for savoring is sin, give us a
sign, not like a threat but like a gift: is it
this light or this wind? I'm your servant:
What you want me to do, I'll do. You
can tell me anything.

Apr 27, 2007

The Stillness of a World Lacking Time

A stillness of a world this long forgotten: lines like
scissors, shapes that cut clear, what,
everything? Yes. A dune. A sky,
meeting. An oryx
gazelle, with horns that rip
nothingness like spears.

Faith: like Brainwashing: God Poem

Here's a jello, and some pudding. Eat some. Here's a
light, making as of my platter
a mirror of gold columns: signals, maybe, from
God. Does it mean he doesn't want us?
As swans, we keep coming back
to what we love with greater hunger.
More to do with the human condition, than
with sin. It's only natural, like breathe
air is, or to fish: that sea, that salt
seaweed,etc. We regard it a privilege to
do what you do, have done, did on earth.
If to savor for savoring is sin, tell,
give here to us a sign: is the light or wind
that? I'm your servant: What you want me to
do, I'll do. You can tell me anything.

Apr 26, 2007

Growing up: Less Imagination, More

Like a bird, any bird: a pigeon maybe.
Or like a volcano, as cold as coins; as
warm as lava. Yes, that is my heart.
It changes, changes the way a swan
does, at first--a swan, then a girl. It's
fairytale, but who said my heart
isn't? Who, aegis-like, as if a cargo
around their mind, think of the heart as
else? A steadiness, a throbbing
(Here, feel it)?
There's only this much truth,
this much imagination. Take what's left
of the latter, given chance, when chance
give it, gave: with hands in air as though
saying, Here, take some.

Apr 25, 2007

The Arm

The biceps
curl like the man rowing
his boat, the triceps extension
extends like light. I drag, lift
half-willingly my body onto the mountain
shelf, with bi- and triceps working.
I rest, I strap myself to the granite.
Look up. A blue sky.Look
down. A river, extending like a tricep.
A hill a curl like a bicep.

Alternate ending of Sonnenizio

Sonnenizio

Now he's singing, cadence on a rough sea:
no quiver in the sky, only a rip, as when a violin plays

and it slices the air around your ears now
and now; how delicate his fingers touch

this instrument, these strings that twangs
when he plucks them, one-by-one-by-one.

Now he's stopping, stillness in a rough wind:
it must be hard to imagine

a stillness having fallen in this weather,
like that of a peach's soft flesh, but imagine: this

was what he felt. I cannot, beside him in a lime light,
with legs like a leave, a quivering almost like two Babel's towers,

see another reason he'd stop: to him a peach stillness
to be tasted this long, and this long: momentarily teeth-in-peach.

Sonnenizio on a Line by Carl Phillips

Sonnenizio

Now he's singing, cadence on a rough sea:
no quiver in the sky, only a rip, as when a violin plays

and it slices the air around your ears now
and now; how delicate his fingers touch

this instrument, these strings that twangs
when he plucks them, one-by-one-by-one.

Now he's stopping, stillness in a rough wind:
it must be hard to imagine

a stillness having fallen in this weather,
like that of a peach's soft flesh, but imagine: this

was what he felt. I cannot, beside him in a lime
light, with legs like a leave / like two Babel's towers,

see another reason he'd stop: to him a peach stillness
to be tasted this long, and this long: momentarily teeth-in-peach.


¤

A Bulb, a Coin, a Column

Today, this is me: a bulb, a rusty
coin; a column, this close to breaking.

Mosquitoes and Wings

I think of mosquitoes when I see wings,
I think of mosquitoes as of wings: like
any wing: like a wing going unnoticed
a pigeon's wing ripping hard the sky's
in the act before ripping the sky
flesh, the mosquito sucks blood apart, in that manner,
the mosquito sucks blood
:you know, in that manner when it bows
as wings suck the sky, its blue brow.
over a certain part of your body,
This is the difference, only:
a needle-like beak eating hungrily your
the mosquito does it with bodies,
blood, there and there, now progressing
with those who plows innocently
over here. The only difference, I guess,
their orchard, those striding
are what they cause: malaria and
through a thick jungle
shapelessness. And how they look.

Like Two Figures Who've Forgotten Where They Are

I have flashes now: a lime light, and a tree
beneath it; a ground upon which lies a dry leaf
like a sailboat, upside-down, or like a leaf
or flower folded into a ship upon a pond. You know
these vessels we make as a child, blowing
at its anchor as if from behind
a waft comes, coming slowly, and everywhere
beside the sound of insects' gossamer wings
brush the air. Yes, the leave like that, but
it's also a leave of the same dry texture
as, say, terracotta clay,that same untraceable
pattern our fingers, each of our two fingers,
touch now and now,like two figures who've forgot
where they are.

The Bow, the String, the Archer

Imagine a bow, the force in the arrow
if the archer let go of what he holds
to his chin: that string which he draws
back with two fingers as if a horseman
or a charioteer controlling his horse,
or the relationship between the poet
and the syntax. To be a good archer
is all about the way you pluck it, the string
you hold, and how you release it: the twang
must drrr as you shiver: a long shaking,
all but strong. Also the eye is important:
For aim, of course: remember to squint.
There's a string, and there's an archer.
Together, you are the restrainer and
the releaser.


/

Imagine a bow, the force in the arrow
if the bowman let go of what he holds
to his chin: that string which he draws
back with two fingers as if a horseman
or a charioteer controlling his horse,
or that relationship between the poet
and the syntax. How far the arrow
goes comes from how he plucks it,
the string he holds, and how he releases it:
the twang must
drrr the way you shiver:
a long shaking, all but strong. If the arrow
is the force, the bow is the holder,
the archer the restrainer, the string
the releaser, when released.

God: As with Pigeons, They Avoid Us

What shall we do with the bodies,
all bleach all mud all smeared
in blood? Do we burn, lit aegis-like
their skin, so that black come,
ash come, and effluvium? Isn't
the fire too perceptible? A mark
as to say: here, bind hard our hands?
If we wash only and throw their bodies
into water, would traces be traceable?
Traces leads to cops. Bad guys.
It's always the same: the same hunt,
the same end: no trial, no listening to what we say.
As with pigeons, there's only ignorance.
Yes: our hands have killed and killed.
But here, in my palm, can you see
what I see: can you see that blood?
What we have done, we have suffered.
Isn't that enough?

God: A Sinner

If you'd count syllables any day,
any day I'd count, name tiredly
the stars: Pegasus. Orion. Procyon
and Procyon: which have burned out
and have not? At lake Como, I comb
the grass flat, as if in the starwatching
Earth's hands press me, my body, farther
from that cosmos I reach for, E.T-like,
as for doves, for any bird whose soft feathers
begs to be patted. If I have grabbed
a dove, felt that crushing of limbs,
have I sinned? If I made red the palestra
ground, can you forgive me? Yes, I have
killed, but any day these bleached hands
are like their faces. I have suffered.
Can you clean my hands?

On Icarus

Icarus the meteor, wing and wax

the scattered rocks. Remember, there

is only this much and this

much of wax today; if from

him, then from what wax held,

loosened over the Aegean Sea

his wings.


No one today will wax

a stone floor, if of limestone,

of granite, if of marble etc.,

they will leave it, keep the stone

colour: like lime, hive, like the coyote’s

fur-like cargo. Nor will many remember

Daedalus and his son who in crossing,

yes, a calm sea, sea-plunged from heat.

There was a splash, and the plowers

continued to plow.



/



Icarus is the sunlight, wax and wing
the warmth, the painted flesh
to be cut apart. Why did he fall
if his wings were by wax fastened?
What wax we use today, is it from him,
that sea-plummet; is it what was left:
why we can wax the floor
and zeal the letter?

Apr 15, 2007

I Saw a Plastic Bag after The Mall

There's so much beauty in a plastic bag,
I can't stop looking at it, any more
than I can stop tasting sugar or sugar
cubs, pancakes with honey, as if the way
it carves circles into the air when it traces
its own impossible-to-tell-next pattern
is a way that, inevitably, binds you:
in the wind, it rises
and it swirls, is swelling with shape
now, now not, as if having a life of its own
where it falls, where it rises, where it brushes the ground;
hand-shakes the sky. There's so much beauty
in the plastic bag, I can't stop looking at it
without feeling I let go of what we for
so long, but never truly, have called beauty.
I can't turn away as if it never happened,
as if it never happened to me.

The Ordinary Tending of a Garden

She rake smooth again her orchard
yard. Weed must go: clover and bluebells.
Here, in rows in flowerbeds, gazanias, dendrobium
orchids. Chrysanthemums. Acacias
and lobelas, whose blue petals
form a crown over the earth,
which is tended, which she
now waters, carefully,
deliberately, hunching on her heels.
Now she rise; now she stamp
the earth as if the raking
depends on it.

Apr 13, 2007

On Leda and the Swan

i. Leda: introduction



Below you below it, this is how she parades on each heat-
crippled field dappled not in shadow, but in sun:
as if a swan, whose wings ascend,
descend,

come away and away in ledaean white,
her feet going, oh how her feet goes
brush/ fail brush/fail in the wind.



ii. Zeus: watching


You watch her from above, already having decided
how fair a swan-form would be. (How lovely still
she is.) What she is, who she is, what does that matter
before seduction?


iii. Leda and the Swan: yearning


Here, on all-dappled field, she in unmoving as a sound
(can it be: wings unbroken, soft, in the air?) severs
the silence. She looks up, she tilts her head to the sky.
How she stare
at you in swan-form, all-white descending

from sky and from them, from all things expected,
half-expected. Part of your point to find,

to damp on someone else your hunger.


How her body shake when you land beside her.

Two Parts of the Very Same Story: Fragments

How the tip of a wing
splits us apart at sunrise;
we are where reality
and illusion meet


¤


How the light of a street lamp
spreads as only itself does;
the man who steps into, now out of
a light we call

Sacred,

sacred
star.

Seaspray

Arcs,
arcs after water against rocks,
creates crescents
in the moonlight;
all left behind
to prove it

is the shapelessness
of broken lines
in air.

If

If the trees' green needles were spikes, if spikes
were melting icicles, I'd be a chariot, I'd be
the one riding the horse like no one else;
if I'd be a chariot, you'd be a fish,
you'd be the iridiscent scale
outside of it.

God

What about God


God as redolent,
God as what is remembered,
how once he shook and shook
the earth with his hands,
molded it, then cried
to make the Flood. Is that believable?
There is wind, is heat, humid-like,
right now it gives shape
to my linen clothing. Is this
God breathing, you say?
If I thread the earth, do I thread
his feet? If through the sky,
if I fly through it, is it God's
mouth? What about the sea?
Is it his stomach?

This is How You Paint a Mockingbird

I bought a harness, I bought a bridle.
A canvas, and a brush. Today I'll be
a painter, tomorrow a horseman.
How my left hand give colour give shape,
how each line, each stroke, fills
the canvas. This is how I paint
a mockingbird. This is how
you shoot it.


(Note: L. 1 from Carl Phillips)
Sapphic stanza

These short shores make long, clear-cut lines that form my
day safely. I crave to pass waves, like bowls
draining deep: now, like what we deem quite real,
by cliffs I plunge to sea.

Rondelet


The moon's contour
a steep bowl, or a cycle, now.
The moon's contour
change: we shape it with these hands, place
fingers over our eyes, make of
it a triangle, now a bowl like
the moon's contour.


(Ruined) Rondelet

The moon the shape
of a bowl, or a cycle, now.
We stargaze in our orchard yard
as we shape the moon with our hands,
how we place each fingers over our
eyes, so that we make of the moon
at first a triangle, then a shape after
cutting it, aptly, in half; now
the moon the shape
of a steep bowl.


Silva


The moon the shape of a bowl,
or a cycle. We stargaze in our orchard
yard as we shape the moon
with our hands, how we place each fingers over
our eyes, so that we make
of the moon at first a triangle, then a shape
after cutting it, aptly,
in half; now the moon the shape of a steep bowl.

Dream

I spill my coffee;
I lick my fingers, how
they are soaked in coffee the way
rain soaks trees whose crown gleams,
is glass dregs shimmering. The trees are not
themselves: fakes. The ones I know do not sweat,
do not shiver like bees' buzz, had sound been flashes,
do not seem a lemon in colour, no: they have
the ordinary kelly colour. Now I peel bark
of the trunk. Now not, my hands full
of sap. In my right hand I hold
a peach, smeared in sap,
to be eaten.

Cannibal

Balm me in honey
and wine
because I say so. Dip me
two times, after, in water,
then wash and let what's left
stay splayed on me.
Take a piece of my flesh
and taste it on your tongue,
carve it up
with your fork.

Now bring the lamb:
dip it in honey but not wine,
wash it, cut its hair
away. Slice it up.
Salt it.

Serve lamb and moist potatoes
on a platter with some wild
cranberries.

I will be your desert.

Reverse

What if buildings splay
across the skyline dominion,
if gondolas melt into what
it covers, or stops rocking; what if
streets becomes water
and water streets, if the ground
drops beneath us
and people

swim in water.

and fishes.

rolled and wrapped,
dries out on pavements?


What if the moon becomes
the sun,
and sun the moon,
if God turns to Devil
and vice versa?
Will that be Armageddon?

What if it all
is just a painting?

Apr 7, 2007

i pluck a magnolia, just for you

What do you do when I walk through Wisconsin
as through my garden: suave, apparent, notable,
like a gazelle's sashay. Do you look,
do you turn around for one last glance,
for one last wishful taste, then wish I was yours
and go on?

I know you do, caramel-coloured honey.
The streets are crowded but I am as distinct
as the way red steals your glare
from other colours . . .
blue, ecru, fuchsia's bright purple.
When will you ask me out, when will you
have the courage to do more than just look,
then wish, then imagine who I must be;
How I must be in bed?

I pluck a honeysuckle from my garden,
then a magnolia: this one is for me.
That one is for you. I put it here
beside the porch railing, where you should
see it.