Cosmos
the lost marble & spice trade
the lost marble
news is, bad flooding in Sumatra; so i
put down my pen, examine my hands
and feel myself a chimpanzee that lost
its marble by these ten irresoluble things
compulsion as a typhoon turns its form
an eye that cannot hear; in filthy flux
a child clings to the minaret of a mosque
i have no word to turn it from its path
is every child the same across the globe
a digit hugging-to against the storm
inherent heart against the deafening blow
an act of curling tight to one held poem
so poet-magus turns her glass from one
true child to ten imaginary orphans just—
as here, as typhoon where, and whether i
was drowning in the sum of what they did
there was a marble somewhere in the mud
ten fingers prying ceaselessly for air
don’t let me be the word to cause a flood
don’t turn me like an eye without an ear
//
diptych
of survival
InsyaAllah
//
spice trade
you know we taste the weather of a word
or housewife by her sambal, like bitter salt
this kitchen hell and getting warmer, mad
desires to let out; adventuring to eat
a journey to her inward, fine-tuning cook
is converse travel whereby stirring builds
a tragic tongue to name her worldly khas
enchanting handfuls for like memory cast
seduction; spice trade, her nightly shedding veil
far-fishing season monger Sheherazade
queen turning by tantalized infinities
survivor storming mercy from the heat
//
notes from Kuningan
morning hari raya / upacara / island turning // take the blessing / by notation / if i may // Pak and Bu S— / morning offering / shrine at home // rains a little / as we are greeting / laugh it away // i place the canangs / with lit dupa / ini di bawa, ini di atas nggih // with shredded pandan / shoo the cats away / the kue is not yours // then time for dressing / always late again / ceremonial demand // kebaya sunny yellow / olive peacock batik, gift from Ibuk / mauve selandang // polyester lace is tight / not my usual / glossy korean lipstain (bare fig) // to Penestanan / in the car now / windows down barricade // traffic pecalang / all day this way / Bali holiday // people fill the street / everyone is smiling / they recognize our face // he knows everyone / stops for everyone / a face for everyone // salam for everyone / friend for everyone / how many promises to mampir // banjar clear / on the way again / ceremony in the air // double-park the car / the cock-fight corner / across from pura dalem // at our old place / pandemi family / second home again // pass your body / around the family / salim for elders / salim from little ones // receive the bodies / moms and sisters hold you / feel you and pat your curves // meet Blih’s girlfriend / she seems good for him / marriage when // Ibuk Penestanan / enduring smiling / to see my face // she brings us coffee / kripik and kue / water from warung // and i’m too rare here / somewhat guilty / the intensity // the affection, her skin is so fair / but not too fair, she’s looking healthy / they note some extra weight // under comment / they discuss me / i endure // Bapak L— / talking death again / Mase scolding him // six large koi / in a clean but crowded pond / tadpoles nibbling at their scales // Mbok A— is here / older sister / the secrets she endures // heroic / (…) / by another woman // the delicate child / slender hand held / so as not to disappear // he takes my phone / for an interval / makes us watch a video // sea monsters suddenly / el gran maja versus the bloop / this detour for a while // softest fingers / feathering the touch screen / when he was small he didn’t talk // he couldn’t look at us / he wouldn’t speak to us / he ran away // now he’s outbound / needs to show us / sea monsters a serious event // an old mango tree / outside the home gate / branching over the street // when they ripen / he climbs to take them / no apparent fear // all day people passing / in the street below / teenagers outside the minimart // boys in udengs / girls in kebaya / all wearing sarungs // and then it’s coming / time to prepare / baskets and the flame // at the front steps / there’s a mat there / we kneel on it // kebaya itchy / sarung binding / squeeze onto my knees // off my sun hat / off my sunglasses / pale under the sky // the rain is clearing / by the rainworker / smoking his cigar // the women place the offering / burn the dupa / receive the blessing // remake the street / here come the god seat / make space for it // sound approaching / mangku rushing / the time is near // a flood of boys, boys, boys / marching sleeves rolled / red hibiscus in white udeng // here the mangku splashing water / wet blossom blessing / hands receive it // head receive it / face receive it / heart receive it, if it can // the passing concentration / bending flute line / twirling attention // pray the empty / pray the flowers / learn to pray // then we double it / give it happening / take a moment to form // now it’s coming / moving down the street / presence on the way // percussion heat / heart flame beat / bronze opening // bathe the flowers / in the smoking / fold them behind my ear // great gong agung / deep expanding / down belly through feet // make space for sesuwunan / come the barong / guardian of the street // women carry offering / towers balance on their heads / jeweled baskets overflow with cakes and fruit // see the dewa / vision loves them / eyes following // golden armor / grassy black mane / bulging eyes // then start shimmying / snapping teeth / shuffling the feet // flip-flops in the front / flip-flops in the back / shaggy with a bouncy tail // barong is dancing / attendants touching calves / steady exhausting underneath // forest guardian / body bearing sun-wheel / banjar medicine // then we follow / walk the family / take it through the street // walk with sesuwunan / holding hands again / don’t let him disappear // pray for island / pray for family / pray for banjar // boys are laughing / keep the music / challenging the air // in the made space / music opens it / opening is here // pray for earth / pray for spirit / pray down hard // see it feelingly / cracking open / then deplete // campaka blossoms / in barong beard / my favorite part of him // makes him handsome / red hibiscus / jepun ylang ylang
the fragrance / how it follows me / into the next day
//
Helena at the mirror
i want 2 read Aristotle
with u
in private
in Greek
i want 2 show u every word
i want us 2 go slow and thorough
i want 2 find the perfect way
words right thru until tomorrow
first the physics, then the ones
that come after the ones on physics
parts of animals before poetics
the lost books of poetics, too
O beloved flood of words
can we read clock-
wise and counter-
at once?
πολλαχῶς λέγεται τὸ ὄν
and don’t f—k it up
//
back in her bones, an animal holds
or is held by or stretched by
or broken or taken or raped by
or mended by the word
dismembering that ended carcass
and read like knives the one-way road
apart, a mince of sentences
by university of butchers
by that unkind yet counting world
where have they tipped the ante yet
i tremble to look at it
switching tabs to the deadly news
so walking the ramparts; yes, and
the corpses i see, or telegraphic
trick, the Sphinx’s vexing prize
that riddle i still can’t remember
//
and would we take up arms
against the legendary walls
of Troy, discrete infinities
by logic of desire
by Tyndarean oath
soulquaking fear
kinsplitting lust
or unendurable rage
and would we, trembling
turn the word around our grief
with blinded eyes, who work
the catastrophes of love
//
and who was she, her silk slippers
silent across the golden floor
the guarded pit of destined apple
lily white eye of the bloody storm
her syllables locked in a jewelry box
the whole word, world-ending woman
wordsmith of disinterested tools
worldsmith of sterile fiction
if she could only work it through
her desperate clarity for water
self remembering un-working war
a verb for herself wrung clean
but how she loved and if she did
then would she trust herself by daylight
and could she stand a beautiful nude
Helena at the mirror
//
and would we return true again
victorious from Troy
unbent, discrete infinities
by logic of desire
by twists and turns
by Hades passage
in our angry season
and Agamemnon, dead
and would we, trembling
turn the word around marriage bed
with blinded eyes, who work
the catastrophes of love
//
our organism element
our weaving waiting whom to see
low past the meadow, nettling
the rising and setting sun
the leaves are falling as you love
to be making music until sleep
from infant inhalation through
a rousing breath of song
these outward limbs are turning one
and inward twelve again, like pain
as stirring deep the earthy cauldron
bedroom of a virgin dream
and see the carp still strumming nerve
around the liquid shield for her
a flaming champion of rest
in the rolling river sphere
//
i want 2 b the brilliant word
with u
in the grove
approaching evening
she measures limbs of me by bird
my tragedy like comedy
she murders for imperfect love
and laughing plays me gently dead
as floating messengers of grass
deliver specks of sparkling pollen
to flutter nymphian hurricanes
and suckle clumsy in the flowers
do u know her now; of cursed word
flown round, pre-history again
swan daughter shining, self less law
of no returns, like poetry
ὦ φίλε Φαῖδρε, ποῖ δὴ καὶ πόθεν;
u b her lover 2
//
don’t b mad
at my posterior
analytics 4 u
hills of empties
not 2 much
& watch it thru
//
selamat hari raya Kuningan🌾
filter //
piscean field
i dreamed i was a carp swimming in the moat
that runs around the bedroom catching raindrops
and you were watching me; i was pearlescent
moon-colored with orange spots, moving swiftly
and my slits are liquid lungs into my ears
my curves are cool and clear, my eyes lidless
and i have swallowed plants and animals
of increasing scope and dignity, growing swollen
and fleeting undulant, your vision touching
my sunspots flashing heat, turning fiery
and i was fishing flames beneath the flowing stream
my scales a watery brightness and a warmth
nobody could put me out, the thunder, the storm
your atmospheric range was permeated light
and i was breathing it, my gills touching silver
my veils a golden breeze, piscean field of pleasure
i remember jasmine in the ghosted air
and thicker even than the empire of frogs
the bellows of your eyes, how they inflame
my heart, and what catastrophes you initiate in me
//
🌒
//
O honey my
hidden shining
& my ovening
//
the maskmaker’s wife (a prequel)
true, i killed a spider on thursday
it was counter-intentional, a blow
i cried for hours about it, hormonal
oceanic, and only later realized how
i was folding the hung-up laundry
i saw and tried to shake the hider out
from black denim, furry humble pro-leaper
but i miscalculated; too much snap
a streak of ichor mud across the web
between my right thumb and pointer finger
she unwound inches before she emptied
and died; i was so sad; i am so sorry
sorry, sorry, i spoke to her crumpled self
recriminations. what left—a legacy of masks
some translator inside a house of masks
and O how many masks there were for mercy
//
the time i was murdered by my own poetry, vol. x
slugs in the shower, laron tonight
fertile swarm; birth/life/death 2.5 hrs
box of tissues; hollywood tomorrow
//
crack of infinity
blue of a contusion, gold in scattered ribbons
feel something real that is not another
echo of myself
surprise is never really surprise
nothing arrives from nowhere
everything comes from some place
where my bridge
meets your jaw’s slope
lips soft between ridge
from the comfort in the many small
yet bright windows
the alternating colours of the terrace stars
we’re half-awake on this train
some of us going home
most hustling
we’re thin. and taut.
slender strings desperate to retain
all that is moving away
term of venery:
a ruckus of bros.
the garden as highway:
fox eyes, badger’s eyes
reflecting in the dark.
a raven with something red in its beak,
three running deer causing a fourth
it’s mostly just me
and you
and the season
but more exactly so
convergent infinity
//
This is hyperverse composed from hypertextual fragments of other bloggers' work; follow links to read complete pieces. — Praise belongs to all messengers of the heart.
//
just begonias, today //
and we’re hyperverse tomorrow;
know you my lyre, my love, my lunar
metronome displaying solar
]licks leaning lighter later
//
selamat tilem 🌑
Junonia atlites
to snap a ragged angel clutching stem
the blustering breeze away with solar air
her tissue wings flat flustered here to there
as clinging to the budding cluster to drink
she filled from galaxies of guava’s nectar
so stopped, or tried to stay, a messenger
from Juno sent, or born suffering soldier
of flight and heat, by fiery news arrived
by lunular and radiating “S”
each ocellus arrayed a revised scene
and partial pupils where crescents intervene
to turn a crimsoning into the sky
a pale or sight-depleted, shredded wing
robuster than my lens could burn, ash-worn
and torn edges, floating abandon as form
yet stellar grip, high hunger for her name
//
tea
a perfect orb is held by accident
the lip of cup, the curve of base, the lint
a maker measures leaves but never takes
the horizon, the fertile mountain-slope
a home in hand is seasoning for leaves
the dance, the steeping scene, the taste of rest
as takers, we fish out the wayward ant
to see if it can walk; it often does
the wanderer needs shelter from the rain
the angry, aching poverty of time
i give the moon, i take the moon, she says
who is the moon; composting circumspect
the softest earthquake breaks a mirror still
what tender for the heart of liquid sky
//
🌔
familiar
if i remember you, i was fifteen
your hair was knotted by dirty difference
flecked-amber gibbous as my need for love
your body pliable and bored for me
(her mother hated your feral smell)
three decades gone, my pace is set by ghosts
and at the door, at least three cats or four
familiar tempo territorial, you puzzled
pigments with my pinkest calico
(you should know we don’t do skim)
we go, we pan the monsoon winds, we blow
gold-dust up noses of tropic mountains
resuscitate, topless in hard-top jeeps
we are burning lucky indigo, lit dupa
(what’s here that’s spendable is yours)
who reads as suffering comes craving rhyme
by planetary slow, the latest virgin
almost born, in need of form, soft hand
and shallow. Moon meadow, nettling in time
//
(she didn’t mean to make you cry)
//
🌖
Gold. Beef? //
silver tongue,
golden ear,
Lover absent,
garden near—
The title of this poem is homonymous with my husband’s name.
This poem, from further back, has a pretty obvious W. B. Yeats reference that I forgot to mention. “Sailing to Byzantium” is an old favorite of everybody’s, including mine. I feel like I understand it differently now than when I first read it, ~25 years ago.
I love Yeats and would never write against him on purpose. But “Military Parade” does express a reversal; and then I noticed how “Sailing to Byzantium”, with its explicit goldsmithery, is roughly opposite to “Begging Season”, which is earthy and humble, in material, scale, texture. And then I noticed . . . how consistently not-gold my poetry is, where gold is postponed, doubted, displaced. Even my homonymous husband poem rejects its golden ring. A cascade of questions followed, beginning with: Whence the pattern? It wasn’t quite calculated. Things just seemed true at the time.
Am I weird about gold? Why? How did I get that way?
If I wrote more gold poetry, would I attract more mean green ($)?
A mischievous question like that is based on an esoteric, witchcrafty mode that Yeats and I share, by lineage (his being mine, and he being part of mine). I don’t dismiss the utility of mantra. And I wouldn’t put it past him, to craft gold into presence. So. Could I write a gold poem? Should I? What would mine be?
Finding in myself no poem of gold—Is this (would Yeats say) a sign that I lack imaginative ambition, symbolic understanding, spiritual daring?
Gold does appear, in my crafted imagination, my images and dreams, but rarely is its presence pure or simple. The negation—an optical or organic filtering—of gold feels important to me. It certainly reflects a material condition; I see little gold in my day-to-day. Does it also express a worthy poetic commitment, to limit gold’s presence—to the very limits?
. . . Do I have (vegan) beef with Yeats?
Consider my family, friends, and allies. What is the meaning of gold, in my community? How does gold function in poetry—mine, others'? Commence a catalogue of golden ships. (Fascinating, for sure; forthcoming, maybe—this would be an amazing list. I have a certain intuition that Phaedrus will back me up; and Socrates never would, but the Republic—seminal, in this respect—experiments with pure, psycho-political gold.)
Does the meaning of gold change based on history? Upon witnessing newer distortions—the cruel and tacky deployment of gold, the dictator’s ballroom, the ecocidal tyranny of it all—would Yeats himself admit symbolic defeat? (Doubtful.)
Or is there a—poetic, erotic, alchemical, theological—gold standard? Is gold truer than history?
The narrator frames himself as a refugee, sick with desire and bereft of self-knowledge. He is not unlike the beggar. He calls upon sages—emergent from God’s holy fire!—to teach him how to sing. He remakes his own body out of gold, and Byzantium—like a halfway house of gold birds on golden boughs—becomes his artificial refuge. The lords and ladies of Byzantium are his final, appreciative audience. He entertains them with gold-wrought songs of the very world—natural, historical—that he has fled.
The narrator is rescued from nature by his own luxuriant hypothesis, this golden ear. Wonderfully, he has crafted his savior into presence. And it might be us. But let’s be honest—was a poet ever rescued by gold?
Or does a poet set out to rescue gold?
. . . To rescue gold, from what?
I believe these are deep and important questions, all of which touch on power and the image. I also observe that questions of gold, not unlike worlds of gold, initiate a seduction. Yeats’ poem embodies the transcendent height of a poetic (symbolic, alchemical, technological) fantasy, rescuing as it escapes. While my senses slip ever so comfortably into gold’s embrace.
I see the allure . . . and it feels like a rub.
//
See also: this reply from Angles Morts.
“Then,” he said, “O Simmias, those rightly loving wisdom practice (meleta-o) death, and dying is least fearful for those, among humans."
// Phaedo 67ε
If Phaedrus sits between Phaedo, whose act is the death of philosophy, and Timaeus, whose act is full creative flight—then Phaedrus is the birth and fledging of the poet. It accomplishes the transformation from interior to exterior by way of externalized interiority. It demonstrates the containment of love in a poem; its success rests on Socrates’ closing prayer.
Practicing death (as previously mentioned) is reborn as studying and writing poetry. In this, the pharmakon becomes a necessary tool—like a eucharist, hence the prayer. The pharmakon both kills and resurrects.
O beloved Phaedrus, whereto and wherefrom?
hypothesis : the second sailing :: pharmakon : Platonic poetics . . . :: demiurge : cosmos.
Begging Season
She’s ever spinning time into the wheel.
Spidering her line, by inward feel—
Triangling desire, evening to ends,
A deeper sky realizing constellation.
Death is her capital; she doesn’t spring,
But feeds into the year her twisted ply.
At distaff, by the flick of no-man’s candle,
Brown burlap webber lures the final fly.
How does a poison love the cure? Spent hours,
By the mercy of a shadow. Wanting not
To see her, housewives sweep her out the door—
Her standing slow, side-winding smoke of flowers.
A life of making is the heart of letting go.
Nightwise, black-dagger vagabond—by stars,
A diamond thief; by dawn’s left light, her whispers draw
His burning thought: the filigree of beggars.
//
🌒
Δ
Screenshot slaps—
To ring a sucker. You think
Your appetite entitles you
To moonstained blood?
And you, and you, and all of you.
Scrap mouths, yapping from
Ass-ends of snakes.
Shut it. Shut it. Shut yourself!
Your little o’s and u’s and y’s
Without wisdom—
All bite, all bitches' bark—your traps,
Fracked actuary lines.
My splintered flotsam pierces
Fiercer than your fangs.
Your slit-tangled tongues,
Your whore-hooked hounds,
Your dog-groveling snack,
The politician’s lie. Your island—
Ground to grit, and sifted by
My epicurean babble.
I suck off
One billion suns, you snatch
Six bones from Ithaca—
And don’t dare swallow.
I am the throat, I am
The eye. Black
As red as wine, neither
Skin nor flesh, as I
Exhale his brutal
Homecoming; I am
Cauldron of slaughtered
Maidens’ morning.
His alibi, to coast right by you.
As if the smiling tide
That governed him—
A king!—stoppered with wax.
Just try—you cannot shut
Your maggots fingering,
Their heads, nailbeds, uncut, exposed.
I am the shuttering.
Shot-shallow loons, aswirl
My spiral bowel, prowling
Pack of orphan pups, your howling
Hungers feed a woken Why—
My delta consumes,
Your keystroke masturbates
A corpse’s withered sty.
Pregnant with his child,
All men belong to me.
My one
Unconquerable O—
Your place to die.
//
History
The end is opposite where you were looking. How—
Evolving sexuality, between libraries
Of progress, and Trojan wars of recollection. Trenches:
My universal texture. How does the tiger
Recline, her velvet freshly laundered in the Milky Way?
By Sibyl thong, peach-fuzz chemtrails, or does Iris flex
To tempt desire? A belly dance, like Buddha, in
My skull-shaped shell—does a snail extract
Compliance?
//
🌗
endives and mallows
this morning, handsome as a child, touches
with warming fingers the amethyst mallow.
delivers, gladly, each from darkening time:
the businessman, lucid as professor;
the tyrant, same as refugee, receives
his quickening caress, the goldenlight of youth.
but not each child. nor any child— the sun
has blinded all with his apparition.
a forest of light is teething in the seed,
dog star, a diamond cleverly effaced.
her baby will be different from the rest:
impeccable smile, a garden’s wondering, walking train—
daily untangling from the priest’s embrace;
to carry off, intact, her very name.
//