boundless //
telescopic texts (avec "?") (10/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.
//
i was looking through
the paper, when
your hand touched
my shoulder.
clouds parted —
an exquisite interruption.
//
dead earth blues
i pass my hand across the air
before your face. your eyes don’t move.
i speak of news, the word is bleak.
your eyes don’t shed a tear.
where could i live, if in your heart?
no room for me is there. your face
became my homelessness, in form:
His mother, blind to Christ.
i keep a memory of home,
of close and kindred mysteries.
the rosy books i used to read
would rise to meet my hungry eyes.
a meme versus the memory
is dream forgot, for anti-dream.
you cannot eat, we used to say,
the cream without the cake.
the bone without the nerve, of me,
is concrete sea and leaden air.
i read the news alone and lose
the wind out of my heart.
no matter, were we ever there.
why is this imprint fused with thought
if not to be remembered?
i pretend you aren’t a stranger.
and dreams arrive; they aren’t my own.
the one of drifting pieces, lost
at sea of darkening history.
i wait and work; a dream for mercy.
//
telescopic text (avec "?") (9/x)
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.
//
dissertation in three or four dimensions
time is (only)
a measure
of motion.
time is
a measure of
( motion )
( ( multi ) tudes )
)
mercies
(
//
doleful heroic //
hello, my name is Judas
the men adore the butchered thought
of admiration for the men
(who do) for cutting wood to fit
against the other wood, they cut.
a duplicated map of thorns
will never touch the wreath. a cut
will never seed the tree of life,
nor pieces writ, the divine form.
but women, so distracted, will
make sandwich bread for them, to soothe
their breadthless lengths, to multiply
digits on barren diagrams.
if sinew, taught by love’s remorse,
could paint a thought, the blind would see
the daily crucifixion of
an animal geometry.
but women, silencing in time,
purée their sentences for them.
and speech will thin, like hair, and lips
re-make the skin to keep words in.
an excerpt is excerpted-from
until the palimpsest is pulp,
the meat is mince, and men are point-
less marks on partless everything.
//
🌘
domestic instability
her furry flank rises
and falls softly, as breath.
the wheeze and drift
of pink nose, neatly
muffled by curling paw.
where she is, here — where i
have placed her. her face
today is altered, injured,
i note; from stepping out
of wood-and-bone dimensions.
to meet another sister — dark
of velvet, sinister of scent, who knows
the grass as blades;
the searing fear of blood;
the growl of God at stake.
while she is light — as spots
on creamy white, strawberry
twizzler tongue — and popular.
her prey is floating feathers.
and yet, her heart is mean
as poverty, as maniacal envy.
black sister, with heart of pink;
pink sister — black-hearted:
the dueling dialect of shadow rose.
tender beings, engendered
by pain; unviable, beyond
their quantitative shells.
//
on the poet’s indebtedness to Black Thought
a wild hare goes
anywhere — quick
as wind. bears,
as scar, the scripted
mark of trickster; wisdom
of prey. knows never
to set dull footstep
in a question
that is only
a noose.
//
e.g. Black Thought, etc., etc.
telescopic text (avec "?") (8/x)
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.
//
i was thinking about Bob Dylan’s “talkin' world war III blues” (lyrics, recording) from 1963’s “The Freewheelin' Bob Dylan”. the song ends,
Well, now time passed and now it seems
Everybody’s having them dreams
Everybody sees themselves
Walkin’ around with no one else
Half of the people can be part right all of the time
Some of the people can be all right part of the time
But all of the people can’t be all right all of the time
I think Abraham Lincoln said that
“I’ll let you be in my dreams if I can be in yours”
I said that
and the last few lines were stuck in my head. or i was puzzling around that turn, the deal of dreams. which it struck me is a fundament of poetry, the deal of dreams, whereas world war III is a war of dreams.
one result of my preoccupation was a trio of dream poems: “wild bird caught in an accidental cage”, “revving vibrators”, and “i saw you dreaming, painted”. then one in hyperverse, “like sifting through guitars”. hyperverse are these compositions built out of hyperlinks to the writing of others. i find it very fulfilling, putting these together, which are basically a postroll edited into a semblance of poetic verse… poetry that opens literal links into other worlds. thanks to Bob, and to everyone else who shares velvety words with the internet. your dreams are amazing. i am moved by you.
related, here’s Bob’s later song about dreams, “a series of dreams”. and here’s Bob’s grouchy response to something adjacent and yet opposite the deal of dreams, the Judas accusation. — “play it fucking loud”.
//
understated //
like sifting through guitars
my guitar came apart in a dream,
as the last feedback was dying out
and my ears were ringing —
i heard the ringing of the telephone.
red lights must be exercising their power.
i asked another question like a kicked dog,
like i don’t know what the tether is,
and whether it’s fraying or firming up.
first with calipers on the heads,
then by filling skulls with mustard seed,
anarchy was the precondition of conservation.
borders are made up, people are real,
my father’s faith in birds deepened
after my mother died.
i knew then that we were finally past
the power of miracles.
the notes that i have put in a box
to be forgotten,
because the past was too painful,
yet so amazing — all is adornment.
and someone walked away from me,
it doesn’t matter who.
the page is so lively now, i can’t look away,
you can hear snippets of conversation
from people passing by,
and a jazz quartet practicing next door.
the next day the sun rose at the river,
and the feeling began to drift away.
turning the page again
but devoid of real poetry, today.
like sifting through trash
and telling a story about it.
//
Waalaikumsalam, selamat tilem, peace 🌑
telescopic texts (avec “?”) (7/x)
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.
//
p.s., and yes — to service chthonic Muse,
Hephaestus becomes god of cunnilingus.
i saw you dreaming, painted
in stains of sunrise
this morning, as the light
was lavender, before
the time of day.
your dream was, as you
would later, over breakfast, say
of me, and my sinking
country. but innocence
is how i, whirling
watch you dream. there is
a child, who teaches me
every graying day
( a serpent swallowing
the stick, i am, riding
my camel to Nusantara )
the taste of silver. salty
like tears of joy. bitter like
the finest tea, from misty
mountainous Java, fetching
( volcanic ridge meets light
at crescent — the fugitive
shatters, burning my eyes )
the steepest price.
a rosy shade brews golden.
your dream is denser
than a foreign country.
//
revving vibrators
how shall i welcome
you, into my dream?
like a begging bowl
to catch a metaphor
for only one thing.
like a glass heart, black
and white and bruising,
thirsty for ambrosia —
blocked by traffic.
under siege,
fleeing the tsunami.
waiting for rainbows,
parched grass bristling
with gasoline.
demanding miracles,
absent the wonder. numb
to their own tragedy.
so dreadfully the dawn
summons Iris
to quaking Trojans.
//
sifting //
wild bird caught in an accidental cage
the tongue that dreamed
a frantic flute, that dreamed
a silent, silver bird.
my fluttering dream
would welcome you, if only
i could hold it still.
clap, so i can hear.
peck, so i can feel.
sing, so i can know.
fly, so i am real.
feathers or ashes
of dreams, after
the eruption.
tyranosaurus rex
in dreams, hunting
my calculated shadow.
a dream that paranoia
wears a mask, a dream
of making friends.
if making flying friends
were catching dreams, and we
could end in feather pillows.
the dream of never
waking up again,
wordlessly dying.
it was a dream
of being caught, inside
a dream of flying.
the dream that nobody
could see, but me,
impending doom.
the home that was
a dream went blind,
lost its front door.
dreams of being
alone, of singing
alone, dreams of
dreaming alone, dreams
of losing dreams.
infractions against,
invasions of dreams.
the dream of infiltration
into enemy dreams, the scream
of sleeper cells.
the pirates' signal never
came, as dream-boat
boarded, and lost dreams.
it was a dream of skin.
your breath was dusty
odors of incense.
the shadow of a longing
of a dream, believing
its beloved real.
make yourself, hate
yourself, to dream
a self to steal.
be yourself, for
yourself, intones
the oldest dream.
the dream that anything
is new, the dream
of bones, or boundaries.
the dream of tangled
passages, too late, on roller
skates, for failed classes.
the dreams of ancestry,
a mother-tongue, essential
tribes or dying gods.
a dream of brooding
heat, the barren
dream of sun.
of long-lost love, a dream
of driving faster, over
edges, metric destiny.
i dreamed a giant, quaking
my pigeon heart, in shock
trembling terribly.
it cannot move, breast-
pressed for dreaming, cannot
turn around.
no territory, why the blade,
and how? the clapping thunderous
winged suffering, of dreams.
where is the dream,
anywhere, anything?
where does it end.
the war we won
a dream, the games
we played. the ones
we sung, the war
we lost —
//