Monday, December 21, 2009


Der Panther
Cannot be understood
And to try
            Is to move further from understanding still.

Better that “horror”
Be written on a piece of paper

And that that paper be burned
And its ashes sent to the sky
And that they seed the clouds that float
Above a silent Paris.

It is that blue sky -
Emblem of Empire, syphilis, enlightened atrocity -
Which is responsible
            For the eyes which weary of the cage
And the doubt of a world beyond them.

And it is its duty alone to bear
The great lluvulation

Necessary to revive a dead heart.



Friday, December 18, 2009



Jardin



I had grown tired of seeing the bars
And no longer believing in the
World beyond them

I paced restless
But deliberate
In a circle.
I imagined a mute valor
At the center and it held me up.

Something caught my eye from outside the cage

I thought about it, about how my neck hurt, and
Then it went away.






Lamb
It is in your nature to submit.

You are not just the thing itself
But the symbol of the thing

And in giving yourself
You become Giving.

Lose none of yourself -
No essence, odor or remainder.

You are of this world,
Profane,

But made too
Of the sky and the shadows.

To possess you,
To hurt you in the meanwhile,

Is to possess the sky
And hold dominion over shadow.

For one such as I,
With nothing,

No nature
But the end of nature

It is a bliss
Transparent,

It is
A tear taken away.

No wonder
You are the object of lethal lust.

To expire
As we kill -

The perfect expression
Of Life.








I live on a shelf
That trembles
With the passing of angry clouds.

Tomorrow is Sunday
And I am afraid
God will make a bad decision.

Still,
We must wake early,
Bathe and prepare ourselves.

The sun will shine on us
And no matter the dark vibration
Beyond the sky

We must be seen
Glowing
With the love of the Lord.







Faun
Have you hidden so far away for so long?
Have you come down the mountainside
Only to draw me away?
You may pretend at being unseen now
But the heat of your neck vaporizes the morning
And spice marks the air with your errant cells.
I have followed your tracks,
Picked your hair from the thorns by the path,
Seen your impression in the dewy grass.

I know it was you who touched me
On the shoulder as I slept.
I know you sowed your piping
Into my dreams.  The days
Have all been colored by that
And the months and the years
All strung together by that song.

We were children together,
What you became I became.
What was in my eye was in yours
Until that day when we really saw each other.
Perhaps the resemblance was too much to bear,
Or perhaps it’s just love’s nature to destroy more than it becomes.

Become! 
What fantastical task!  What unfulfilled wishing! 
We have already become in the first flash of being. 
From there we must only
Fall in love with ourselves again and again.

Now you have returned.
I am so old but you will not hear it.
You dance the old days into me -
            Remember afternoons?  Closets?  The rain?
            Remember the smudgy polish of our faces?
Faun, I will hurt myself listening to you
You will lead me to insensate ruin.
            But you are in love, Matthew.
You say as you have said before.
            And I am as helpless as you are.












The same ugly thing
Is under this sun along with that
Rapturous jewel, that fragile
Fragrant bloom, that explanation
And that unsayable question too.
The smell of filth
Is made of the same vapors
As mother’s milk, and ecstasy
Is subject to the same tides
Of ceaseless respiration
As nausea, boredom and indignation
And the weakness that I
            Or anyone has displayed
Is of the same hand made, the same
Bench upon which is hammered
The stuff of us, from gathered and scattered
Remnants once thought of with purity. 
But surely even gold on its own is too soft for
Any application beyond admiration, and the
Work of the world demands - demands all.
            Look at where the shadows fall:

One side bright and loved by light
The other dark and real and right.





Brave One,

Know that I see you
And that all things
            Come from me.

You are safe because you will die,
Undoing all ill and error.

I forgive

Not because I am savior
But because

You are no different
From anything -
            Gone tomorrow, forgotten.

Know though, Oh Brave One
That if you have injured someone
Through love or the lack of love

You make yourself
The object
Of another’s reckoning

Over which,
            Of course,

I have no power.




What kind of day is it
Where there is only one poem
                        At the end?

All day long
Bullshit. 
            And you worry
Because who wants to lose a day?

At some point though you are resigned
And let yourself be taken by the world-
                                                           
                                                            After all
It is the world that has granted you the poem.

So you do her work, you
Sweep and pray and feed the animals
And when she’s done with you
And you’re cozy in bed
And you’re thinking it wasn’t such a bad day after all
And wouldn’t be so bad were it this day everyday,
            If that’s how things had to be,
            If there was no time or space or heart for poetry           
            Despite how such a thought had frightened you before
            Despite what an empty, barren desert the prospect is
            Or how close it has taken you to doing yourself in -

Inspiration!
Like a drunken roommate
            Returns.