Monday, September 28, 2009

Laestrygonians Arrive




Hanging iron in Zion
The rivergod sells its only daughter
And uses the dough to
Celebrate Yom Kippur in style.
Atonement never comes cheap.
Soon, a washed-up Elijah arrives and starts breaking the furniture
The hand of the king is still
But theology of night is unmoved by
This confession, its hymen bloodless, intact.
The poor increase in number daily
The stain of the failed savior a welcome relief
From all those slow wars.
From all those empty years.

150

The looking fool
The stale poet
Dead drunk trying to find a rhyme with night
Coming out with other things
Flittering with reverence but not quite knowing why
Only recently realizing itself a penny-pinching spirit
Hungry, dull out of time.
Famished it watches the waters, underfed,
Waiting for the bread it knows must soon arrive
Until foolishness floats by seeking some farther altar.
Tell me, again, the meaning of your faith.

151

Hands of God
Shake what crumbs unexpected down
To the river of wonder
Then, clapping, make the salty sea.
Flying by night the dancing fish
Grow feet and continue to answer to
The surely rising masters of the water.

A rowboat at anchor, many gulls calls forth
A disease of belief,
Beyond here, there be giants.
152

The priests of the morning
Bring only ordinary words
Then greek rocks to be used against
That empty horse- too late
The false curiosity that is always
Bringing them to ruin reducing
Them to simple letters
Lagging, drunk, in the gutter
Not thinking to ask the real question:
Where are you going?

Saturday, September 26, 2009

Between Eater and Eaten




144

I see this day
Blooming with names a moment
For walking and promises.
Attention, breathless, caught on
The face of Saturday they appear,
Singing for their suppers
Displaying the antithesis of aureoli
Professing the greatest love then crying
Too late taking from
Pocket and purse the friend of passion
The name of names.
I see their faces on the water.
145

Between the eater and the eaten
A deed that takes some doing
Requires a little chewing
Time for moving the
Plate from finger to lip
From hand to hip
Walking about old Dublin
Eyes returning
The design is straight for
Emphatic women wondering where
Next they may be eating while
The heart sends its bill for paying
146

A new Adam now argues with the wind
And is told it can kiss my ass
Settled down between a laugh and some
Different form of adultery, like, say, with a snake,
Eve’s attempt to speak to wisdom meets with loud silence
Until she can no longer bear the suspense
Which is mainly in the form of a sculpture
Of a crying onehanded trickster
Who slithers along a column holding up some poetic disaster?
“I see what you mean ,” dribbles a spitting mouth
Neckless but eating nonetheless
I like that! says the perfesser
I like that- I see what you mean!
147

None could tell Penelope
Her man was not coming home
Professing Helen’s heart
Lost that morning in some New York cab
Con te partiro
Where? Where?
Hello, you palm of beauty you
Noble point of hope along the route
Of sorrow and suffering
Where the deliverer discovers her emptiness.
She floats, now (deus nobis haec otia fecit- motherfucker!)
She floats far above the water and bitter book
Becalmed in some airy circuit
Where none could tell her.
148

The end of the wind
Weary of the day along the
Island of June plums
We stare at our own
Blame a tickled one a
Peace added to the sum of promise when
We wind up in Palestine as
An old god sitting on some
Cracked pavement the
result of so many
defenestrated statues.

Goodbye, Aeolus.

Wednesday, September 23, 2009

The Truth of the World




A vagrant inspiration
Called the truth of the world
Writes the history of Tuesday in a holy tongue
The roar of the mountaintop ceases
The ominous silence begins
After which a new religion,
Spit up and belched from
Some stonebearded primitive
Comes down the hill
And takes over.

Monday, September 21, 2009

Where Do We Go From Here?




The polished eye surveys the
Peace of the volunteer
And like Demosthenes then reports this
To the sea,
With a mouth full of stones.
This brings on the flood wherein
Dreams are wiped away
Along with with the
Professions of night,
Occurrences of laughter,
And incidental blood left over
From the murder of the Buddha.

But please don’t mention that
You heard this from me.

138

It is said that
Messengers often die in their sleep.
Small acts of the soul transfigured
The evidence of justice, looking back at
A few well-chosen words.
The divine music heard from the
Back of the beast makes
A graceful language which can only be
Understood by these self-same
Messengers who shout.
The frozen lake of fire
Consumes those who otherwise
Deserve to live.
Silence.

139

Like a worthless professor of historical wrath
Is the leg of a man telling a woman of
An essay of fingers
Advocating in the sweetest of tongues like
A raised poet of the sick describing
The scent of decaying paper.
Can you imagine these things?
We are an act of commission
In a time when there was a produce of
Hysterical justice. Amongst the trembling vials
of impromptu pride
a debate takes place
about the nature of grief.
140

In a loose handwriting of noble words
It was revealed that neither the
Corrupt nor the sane would appear, here,
Without withering.
Listeners poised to hear from
Their fathers, a head full of eyes and wishes,
The acts become like smoke
Drifting upward until they achieve
Invisibility.
The speech of belief condemns
A far way county. A language of
Monsters, a box of frail stalks
A curse of Egypt:
You cannot have my love

Saturday, September 19, 2009

Newer Demons




133

Here, in the coughing opera we
discover the last prime number
and the secret of light,
that thing oftly described as a riddle.
The sphinx returns to Dublin
Where it is promptly shot and
Left for dead
The bitten writing and nervous hand
Now stilled
The King of Finland Blown to bits
Amidst the rows of steel
His face cast in tissue paper
His gasp really a laugh.
I thought I caught a glimpse of him
Rushing to the rail station
His umbrella open in the rain.

I may have been mistaken.
134

The heeding minute passes
The excited pen of madness
Clutched in the Phoenix’s claw
A smartass piece of mindlessness
Inspiration missing, ball-less in the ossory
You know how the whole thing ends.
The bite-marks of history
May show the places of surprise
But not the things that leave us skinless,
Carrying useless, ugly stones up
An invincible hill
On a winter-like day.
135

A distant voice
Answers the flesh the
Inner door to desire.
The professor and the editor show up in New York
Trembling with the nightmares
From which they cannot awaken.
The shape of the air
The path to Hell
The skin, peeled back the breath out
The breath in.
A longing interrupted by a rude murder.
136

Pages of reason turn to nonsense
In a cyclone of weeping teeth
An eye is hooked by the possibility of a kiss
Even though the clever stars fall
on the street
Only to be trampled beneath mouthless song,
Feet and leg and tongue designs
For looking invincible.
The fellows at the bar twitch unspeaking
Barely hanging on by
The skin of their dreams
While you and I, south of talent,
Pretend we are the same
Dressed alike in skins of goat
Changing places
Changing names

Tuesday, September 15, 2009

Things Lose Their Meaning


The forgotten moon
Bent blowing with delight
Takes its own laughter seriously
Hoarse instant weatherless and remote
A face of groan and gloom the harsh voice of recognition asks:
“what is it?”
Mark it down to fine shadows and serious expectation
The blue eye
The inner door
The violence of ignorance
Now hairless, eyeless
Hooked and lost from the sea
Withering in some cold sun
Too late at last shining forth a short
Glowing hopelessness
Too late an impatient hat
Too late he gets a grip
Too late he asks the question:
“what is it?”
126
Bangbang limply late
Made for evening dinner
The leaders swindle unwashed winners
In their own reflections.
The pages come to hand and a sad jig
Is danced every time
The sport of scepters the queen of cups
The breaking smile of unwashed teeth
Now laying on of hands
In just a moment the coast is clear
Just like a morning conscience.

127
The tissue of struggle, the hurry of hurt
Cringing, barefoot, a comedy of fault
The hurricane of waiting flings
Around special meanings.
And it ruins us for happiness.
A collision ensues
The rustling air collapses
All time ends
Racing through so much accumulation
In banged rooms with crackling doors
As we float through this
Sorry anno domini
128
Time begone
Gently through smaller spaces
Sliding past receiving hands
A lark rises and exits without comment
Casting kite-like shadows
Across doorsteps and doorless country
Blind empty noise
Squatting fixed in a white place
I steal a dance with a swift
Then walk to a shadow
And ask
Where is my echo?



Saturday, September 12, 2009

Laughing in the Emptiness





He went down to the silver sea
He scrawled the names for laughter on the emptiness
Once, in Marathon, he hurled a question about forgetting
He received no answer.
The walking shadows murmur
The tumbling stony fringe of truth
Repeating stories that were overheard
When Xenophon pulled them from his pocket.

He arrives in time to count the loss,
He arrives in time to play the glorious sunlight.




Wednesday, September 9, 2009

esir enots rise stone





link to website update September 9, 2009

121


Tourists in justice
Seeing with fingers
Hagadah book
Riverbank speeches
Backward reading
Twelve brothers, stick and water
Obituary notices -what does it see?
-Horseshow spectacles.

Working the machine
The Angel of Death
Kills the butcher who
Kills the ox that
kills the dog that
kills the cat
Practice makes perfect

Next year in Jerusalem.

Monday, September 7, 2009

The Orthography of Dreams


119

Nervous pencil you’ll
Slip the words of change
On a tiny paper wrapped to a tiny parcel
Wrapped in the word you pronounce as flight.
A hand and rib marked
For parliament better awkward than designed
A house of keys that asks of us
A thousand and one things:
The scratches, the pauses, the patient rule.
120

Everything speaks in its own way
The human paper sure of its silence
Gives way to a long felt voice
A voice without a name but doing its
Level best to speak.
It speaks of the orthography of accounts
And cold paper
And door creaking like the
Machine of symmetry clattering unanswered
Tyranny of constant attention
The hatless kiss
The breathless, deathless missing of a train or plane.

Beneath the cemetery wall
A faithless friend

Saturday, September 5, 2009

We See the Canvasser at Work





118
At first, the Lord looked for a job in Italy.
Finding none, he took up the barony of Saturday
Where notes were made on the nature of nature
and paralyzed monkeys stared at balloons.
(oh, the secrets that we carry.)
Now we come to part
with scary standers; our excuses, their excesses
stretch the limit of Authority.
Soon enough the evening country
will be leaving silence, dirty, cold and scheming.
Is this something only I am dreaming?

Wednesday, September 2, 2009

Kissed Under the Moorish Wall




116

A savior is what the flesh wants
like a door into grace
with rough cheek and rouged brain
the neck of state gapes as it turns a welted face.
A cut ear beneath an umbrella
and jesus, a tenor, a figure between mary and the footlights
taking up the pen and writing the dusk, leaving the heart behind.

And I, Martha, whisper up the evening
and turn the sword toward the wind
steering a word like a hand to the lost