close up photo of an orchid glazed by rain water, with large arching leaves and two blooming flowers, one of which looks at the viewer like a little fairy person. the flower is bright white with maroon and magenta-purple markings with orange eyes.

oyi //

cocks and doves

is the sun enough for me?
uppity child— little Henri,
a cockadee, chases dovelettes
from the weeds. palest grey

sweetmallow breasts, ruffled
romancing on the pagar. desire
trembles in the precarity of daylight—
wooers, laughing, are tumbled upside-down.

Rainbow tidbits for Henri,
though neither of them is a hen. verily,
unto the sun is born a luminous,
bewilderingly beloved.

//

🌗

splinterwha

the resource re-
considering

skipping stones
whistling

in crevasses
stellar, hollow (

reckon starving
metric Io

reaches out ( g -
lossy limb

bittermallow
idiot(es) wind

whips ( w h i n i n g
past mumbling

nettles offset
private alphabets

boolean ( b r e a s t
nipple, teething

shooter —

wounding ) strings,
splintervolta

tablet dissolves
like ambien

sound-guarded Kali
graphic stems

roots’ f r a c t a l
externality

inscribed iamb ( so
so many

times ) my ear
sheltered, Delphi-like

in serif lobe
omega ( brooding,

loaded ) blood suss-
staining ends

threaded, mute
( litters
        leaf

ground ) grammar
thick bundles,

shorn bodies from
brushes, hair-

lines
        t um b l e w ee d
                                to thrift

the thistle, this
still tick-ling

or if sewn spider-
      silk knew, s o w i n g
    
           (    m    i    l    k    s    o    f    t
the habit

of ( public
beauty )

a mustard seed

//

Phaedrus: what could you mean, O best Socrates? when Lysias, who is the cleverest (deinos) of contemporary writers, composed it over a long time, and at his leisure; while i’m just—any old body—(idiotes)—

how could i remember this, in a way worthy of that ?

so i lack, abundantly; and yet, i’d want to— more than much gold becoming mine.

// 227δ-228α

a photo of bubbly, frothy seawater, translucent greenish turquoise rippling over brown and black and white pebbled beach.

wishy-washy //

while waiting

i seemed to hear a new leaf budding from
outside, across the garden. i, pristine
sat on our bed— the future strange, deranged—
an alien inventing self-erasures.

is it normal, in my crone, to feel this way?
i missed a contentwarning— fingering machines,
scissored by shades of glass. the news,
the look of starving innocents; the bud,

not yetgreen, also not yet visible.
hallucination of the woozyqueen
or turquoise bees, copper goldenbuzzing
around the vervain; a shipwreck from afar

in language of my nature, or astray
unfounded tear, some private pearl, ruptured—

//

🌘

breathtakes

Soc.: (cont.) nonetheless, i set my heart’s desire (thumos) on hearing. so even if you, walking, made your walkabout to Megara, and like Herodicus came to the wall and departed again, i still would not leave your side. // 227δ

qoop (O the genius)

a slick tongue slides around his marble curve.
force never felt so powerless before,
swept off your glacial nerve, flooding coastal
cities; by pull, arousal virginal

to witness one sun-surrendering bud
of violet, untouched America. he hides
in plainest word who dresses in flowers,
lying in a meadow— the modest egg thief.

mineralocean turns the ten tropics
ragged, wed to the staggering moon— but if
no yolk, she’s alabaster. jade at noon,
obsidian midnight, gravity’s appetite

dilates, lapis un-stone— a vowelbirths
the polished shadow of ingenious nature.

//

🌒

Socrates: O the genius. if only he would write that for the poor man rather than the rich, and the older rather than the younger, and for whatever else is attached to me and the many of us; then the words would really be popular and publicly useful. // 227ξ

photo at the beach on a hazy day with pale blue sky and blue water, the black sand medium-grey mixed with taupe, and fiery bright orange and yellow jepun leaves strewn on the beach.

poly-seasonal //

his very subtlety

i brought my heart to work today—
a careful accident. i wrote
a note for you, pretending not
to show you who i am: bearded

angel, or boy turned upside-down;
chain-yanker or lonely-for-fruit;
the groaning king, his blessèd wreath;
a golden mule, the kiss of death;

soft bosom of the empress, red
from solar radiation; or
caress of thigh, giver of bread;
this image— you, unlimited.

//

🌒

earthquake

it felt like grass, before it felt like stone.
the other side of flame, igneous black
or tattoos grappling for your diamond face.
so i grew roots in water, he in bone.

and what if i abstain from apples for
a year, a tear, a deathtime. would he still be
indifferent? or disappeared into
his silverriver hair, my cloudy mountain.

your wooly light tempted discovery,
pulsating veins of mercury, the ground
mantle unbound. it whispers— not a limb
of you is immune to this hungering human.

//

🌓

Phaedrus: indeed Socrates, and the hearing relates to you. for the account was— of our spending, somehow, i don’t know— erotic. for Lysias has written the temptation of a beauty. but not by a lover, this is his very subtlety. he says one must gratify one who is not a lover, rather than a lover.

// 227ξ

How many a desert plain, wind-swept,
like the surface of a shield,
empty, impenetrable,
have I cut through on foot,

Joining the near end to the far,
then looking out from a summit,
crouching sometimes,
then standing,

While mountain goats, flint-yellow,
graze around me,
meandering like maidens
draped in flowing shawls.

They become still in the setting sun,
around me, as if I were a white-foot,
bound for the high mountain meadow,
tall-horned.

Excerpt from “The Arabian Ode in ‘L’” (Lamiyyat al-Arab), attrib. Al-Shanfarā (may Allah have mercy on him), translated by Michael A. Sells (may Allah have mercy on him) in his volume Desert Tracings.

These are the final lines of the poem and the ones most explicitly referenced by this, but of course, excerpts don’t do it justice; 64 stanzas writhing snake-like through spirits of the desert as purest distillation of outlaw’s heart. Earlier stanzas can be found here. It seems appropriate that only traces of this poem should appear online.

Al-Shanfarā is a terrible dust devil, burning himself alive. Legendary antihero, desolation and exile ensconced in the premonition of paradise. dizzying!

as if i were a whitefoot

nameless, the gentle landscape chose
pointlost, ungiven, brutishly
endbringer to deadset hunger,
rudeness riverrun to mercy.

grim gravelshatterer, sparking flint
to be action or scenery—
object of disbelief, the ground
to goat a hesitating hoof—

or clamp too-trustingshank, object
of appetite. salivaspills
from ruthless gum of animal,
rankcivil tooth of shackledmilk;

but snarlingword, infant of dust
absent a motherverse, is howl
heartletting keen of lucid sacrifice.
come drink from me, Al-Shanfarā—

she desertlimns greydreaded; trim
your distance, wolves. the veil of thirst
is inhuman as ocean, burns
your hornsgolden by bending sun.

//

(reply to Shanfara’s Lamiyyat al-Arab, trans. by Michael A. Sells in Desert Tracings.)

photo of a somewhat abstract composition of architectural, geometric, and organic shadows, including the silhouette figure of a person, on a carved wooden interior wall, with a large pair of doors and a sharp peaked ceiling, cast by light of the recently-risen sun.

early morning //

Socrates: O beloved (phile) Phaedrus, whereto and wherefrom?

Phaedrus: From Lysias, Socrates, son of Cephalus, and I am going for a walk outside the wall. For I spent a long time there, sitting since early morning. Persuaded by your fellow and mine, Acumenus, I make my walkabout along the paths. He says they remedy weariness better than the racetracks.

Socrates: Beautifully said, fellow. But it seems Lysias was in town.

Phaedrus: Yes, at Epicrates', the house of Morychus near the Olympian temple.

Socrates: So, what was the spending? Or obviously Lysias was feasting you with speeches?

Phaedrus: You will learn, if you have leisure (schole) to hear, as you go.

Socrates: What? Don’t you think I make it, as Pindar says, “a matter higher even than business (a-scholias)”, to hear about your and Lysias' spending?

Phaedrus: Then lead.

Socrates: And speak.

// 227α-β

silver robes of a rose rabbi

(a reply to Wallace Stevens’ “Le Monocle de Mon Oncle”; introduction here.)


I.

—and did you ordinary women mock
in liturgies of utterances contained,
lines overwrought by time-keeping cant of yours?
and did you burst from bullied syllabub,
or clockwise stiffen into winter walls?
the musicals of ghosts, midwives and angels
echo, hollow, down stone-cold corridors.
and did you consecrate your spectacle,
coupling one who spoke—no, no—not nothing,
a stand-in that you killed while playing swords?
to quell the bubbling spring by means of rain?
or merely quote the Mother’s name in vain?

she has been up at nights, considering
how to un-kiss this devil-gendered thing.


II.

well, i make believe an uncle, dead
and dear. less clear is fortune of the bird.
to fly, to seek, and what on earth to find
but torrent of an obsolescent mind
—he said, obscure and arduous to hear.
and yet, it flies. and though he doubts her crown
and midnight sight, she will fly too. and though
her silver glows in anecdotal mood,
her lilt, of stellar tilt, still loving, lingers
in braided dancing round a pool of blue,
tuning her clutch in nesting eddy of
said bird, whose course is old and hardly true
—and yet, it lives. rising, as golden-red
in flight, crowing like Scorpio in the East.

rest easy, uncle cold and fluttering
and lately of rambunctious residue;
a dove survives heaven to choir anew.


III.

O man, if you could see her witchlocs now,
or what’s become of Eastern expertise.
she is swamp-bitch, and twisted, twined and hitched
without romance by ruby claw to thorny crown,
her hair—each barb a bell, each bloody herb
a suicide. she’s heard of nobody’s
outrageous feats of raw technology.
in wracked rumors of Western fantasy
she knit a while textiles anti-exotic,
but sweaters have no use in the tropics,
where skin is king. and now we’ve come uncrimped,
uncrumpling, algal Anadyomene
of muddy water, Charybdis of the bog.

what’s history is past—nevertheless, he asks
why, woman, have you gone eau naturelle?


IV.

that spotless glass is not the book of Adam.
that trinity you stole cuts like a knife.
to be uncrumpled is to be un-uncled—
un-uncled, i become the poet’s wife.

i am un-hidden woman of the garden,
body un-ridden by the dust-bound word.
the queen of poet’s tongue, i lounge and lean
as music on my salivary throne.

the syllable you speak, my roundness is
her shapely immanence. our rectitude
is life—of tree—of life. so eat me, fallen
father of mankind, and know your foolishness.

speak again, brother—madly, as husband.
my honeyed bone un-spells your make-believe
kafir—he sees his wife sans négligee
who tastes the naked fruit by ripened eye.

says ordinary woman made explicit,
who steals your spectacle to save your life.


V.

can we remember together, after all
or does my voice harden the picture frame?
by being body, do i gather you
intolerably, or spread you thin as kin,
one stroking throb of summer esoteric—
you tickle me with feather of a peacock.
a gazer’s gloomy imagery is perfume
of incense, arousal at great distances,
long-smouldering and lit by tender match.
far from the proximity of virgins
there burn the Verbs of Love, arrayed
as galaxy of irretrievability—
before my eyes, you took and held my hand.


VI.

we used to call you man of twists and turns,
the dynamo—reckless, drowning, sea-rendered
until perennial blue, the one i knew
well enough to know, i loved nobody.
his thirst, prostrated, clutched me from below,
desperate to conceal from wingèd word
a history of suffering. a babe
buried his need in bosom of my nature,
drunk on the deep milk of disappearance.
his subterfuge despair was mythical,
until he made her fiction. he may not
remember me—but i keep by my heart
a wavy lock of sunset-auburn hair.


VII.

suppose a parable is just like her:
desired and defiled in equal measure.
his chivalry requires a blushing knight
to guard the word, who is incarnate treasure.

i heard of one such rescuer of women.
who, for his lovely sin, was de-mountained
by crippled foot, and fated never nimbly
to climb again. but faith in constancy
makes deliberate gifts, arms built from hours
spent torquing tongs before roaring earth-core.
therefore, no purity of heart is borne
that lacks an alloy in the sooty forge.

thou shalt not fear the courage of your virgin
is the limping gist of this comparison;
her shining is at once translucent bloom
and armor’s lustre, welded by humble Vulcan.


VIII.

if doom begins to seem antipathy,
baby, you’re scrolling past the blues. that time
of year thou mayst in our humanity—
but not the Muse—behold, of warty gourds'

cosmic grotesquerie. and there’s the rub.
as long as tongue still holds a gentle fold,
i will elucidate your grim hallucination.
launder and bandage the decaying limb

of sense, of memory, of time. wed heaps
of conscious compost consummate the bloom
in star-swept dimensions of titanium,
where whorls of microplastics never end—

machine poetic, of pumpkins meteoric,
becoming metaphysic—tender beings,
fizzing histories apocalyptic,
chime and rhyme as flutes of pink kombucha.

we sing the tropical-epochal view
at end of universe, or two. until
séance à trois, with chaperone of grackle,
i love the laughing sky—let’s make it crackle.


IX.

most oblatory heart, i bring you news.
despite our deadly faith in prophylactics,
resourceful Cupido pricks porous tactics,
ever hanging hymenal fools. behold:

on spun-gold surface of radiant yolk,
in sky-strewn milky way of albumen
suspended, questing’s lustiest conceit,
the part-less heartbeat of a person third:

as ancient aspect touches youngest plume
to stir, pure destiny, the origin
of life, as love, in pilgrimage secured:
the red point points, and to itself—as bird.

O holy gift, O crack in everything!
the mad midwifery of paladins
births not a baby, but a voice on fire:
ecce peep. now go, and meet your daddy-o.

his name’s Pipit the cocky chickadee;
he is a theory of fertility;
enthusiasm incommensurate
with clock-a tweedle-dee and tweedle-dum.


X.

a balmy chickadee alights on bough
of jepun tree—gigantic, bristle-trunked,
beatified—by tipped cosmos of day
and melting star of paradise, bodies
unveiled. we lie in kindred shades of them,
verbing and flowing, in blues made legible
by greenborn leaf. in leaves there hides a forest
where braid the wanderers their briared maths.
a souvenir shelters nectonic paths,
ancestral courses wild with counterpoint,
and mercy of geometry—proffered
by rivered children of Love’s oblivion.


XI.

dilated pools, star-gazed—surrender pinkly
to phobia of frogs. if you dismember
those bracing, faceless bodies—lost in love
their coiling gyres, desiring—helixing
directions inward, home. or intervene
against the skyward cough—raw, gaping need
to swallow more—when pollywog is strung
by lunar air. ritual drowning of gills,
suffering insurgency—the gulping word,
fata Morgana flooding Camelot
is twinned ecstasy of triple betrayal.
for swimmers' lust, the sea is all. and still

her cries are not for us, alone—we hone
the bluest chord of velvet-driven reverberation.


XII.

now all of us have lost our taste for mince,
the history of grinding, darkly, Adam;
so schooling blade, student of buah, will prune
til circumspect the hour. and she has thorns,
forms of her own—we prick ourselves and bleed
to name her flower. bending the voice to crown,
we’re drunk by literal skies of melody.
you found her singing by the sea, where she
had fled, as she remembered you were drowning.
who is the rose rabbi? i read, she comes
and goes. knows herself not. how would she know?
if glass were introspect, Iris of time—
to find she had been borne, a cradled question.


//

Wa’alaikumsalam, selamat purnama, peace 🌕

photo of water washing up on a black-sand beach in dynamic curvilinear motions, falling back into a frothy, on-coming wave, the surface of the water coarsened by falling rain, with white foam swirling over and speckling the dark sand, sometimes blurring into motion, and a warm yellowish, antique cast to the light.

ghosting //