The Hard Word

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Cyclops 288

Said you the bloody word
Said me: shall thou be water?
A word so sure it went out into daylight and became holy
Between land and air the sleeping invisible universe waits
Seen only from the watchtower
Where lives the prince of the fishes
One-eyed strange to himself
Coming to pleasure, a citizen of will
Drinks his own piss
Friendless he, lost in indecent sleep
Lost in the hard word.

Cyclops

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287

Should I pray to an uncertain god?
In saying the names of the children of Troy
Their faces rise in the eye of the mind.
In the weighted country where Moses
Delivered the day in a shower blood
And laughter falls down the hill and
Damns both the near and the far.
I drink from the mighty water to see how far we have fallen.
Our thieves have stolen the stony wind
And left us to tell our stories to the night
In only shirts wrinkled with the past
What luck sends us out into the wilderness?
Sold on the quay by unpaid merchants
Hanging from churchlamps
Beyond the rain.

Last Sirens

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Sirens 284-285

Barry Barry Bloom comes a tap tap tapping
Voice melodious oozing pouring sing out you
Righteous fate. Wallop me with a blind curse remininding
Us that you were here. The sardine sandwich the razor the cheap attorney
The choice of summer .
You , in your skin and I in mine, hard believing that we let pass fate
Without a chanceless window or a whispered word in parting.
As if rehearsing a stroke of fortune causes memory to retreat.
As if you forgot the blind and blowing shriek of mermaids off the sea.
As if you marched alone toward home and bed and wife.
Then you remember there is no music with which to awaken the dead.
Put off death in its black straw hat and beat the drum against the wind.

Sirens 286

A nation blind
In the hero’s window
A country of the sea
never-viewed,
True but un-lifted.
Surely, behind the earth you’ll find them,
These last men
The last epitaph
Lonely, young, written.
Done.

Roaring Chorus

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Sirens 282-283

I wish I hadn’t promised the rose a song, a stranger ear, a Thursday washed in rain.
I wish I hadn’t prayed for the murmuring lips of chance to send a word or two my way.
A hand of nerves that reaches wide moves the air, taps the world aside
And nearer, nearer to the far shore good men perish in praise on the sweet rocks.
A roaring chorus a shadow of sound; a million shades these laughing ghosts in boots and castagnettes
They add to the music of the unpleasant organ
Through the last of the lion summer nodding in time and walking, walking to the halfway place of god
The chanters remember their attempt to talk
Glad time concealed we rise to steal the night.

Measurepoints

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278-279

Hearing a rich crisp tune full of sorrow and beer, what animal comes nearer?
Gripping water maybe now we have a good voice, a voice of wonder, a voice of memory.
The bitch’s painful key builds in old age then bothered withered drops away
A middle cave a dark and sorrowful place numbered among the belongings of empty cock-eyed priests
These things are things that boys half-know in their half-assed way.
Beating wishes against the ages something now returns to us; something dark and falling and full of noise.
The listening chords now fail – they leave us deaf and tired.
When we return we are begged for our faults.
This is the answerless puzzle.

280-281

Dress me in the dress of love- my dying breath spent being born.
Rock of beauty rock of hate these stones that fill the air and fall like stars
Even now, the music of the rooftops comes like memory;
We listen, hypnotized.
Our name of hate our name of pale circling tune, how bright the night falls!
Yet lest you hear, I will tell you myself, tell you of this smooth, rude tune; the fading of light.
Somehow we know of this place, filled with holes of fury
Where the weather is the sound of bending trees, trunks upturning.
Where we find the country waiting, waiting to be unfolded,
Where the day soundlessly comes down.

Fiat

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276-277

Your brown voice, a gorgeous promise faintly, lightly dresses joy.
A bright movement across the sea to the house of morning, you try so hard not to be.
Nearer talk: is it enough? The answer is that at the end of the earth music music music will be no more.
To whom is the slow sweet dance given? To him in the cave disliked and lost in his pale waking.
What song has been brought to the laughing door? One of tearing waves and frozen mouths.
You were admitted, yourself a shell, held to the ear of the ocean. You were a waiter, you waited in the waves.
You and your accompanist wove the net of weary gold and, in joyful wisdom, cast it lightly across the body of life,
Where pretty misses and their hard of hearing gentlemen promised each other admittance into the gap.
While you wait you forget. While you wait you hear voices.
You wait.

Fly Me To the Moon, Fly Me To the Stars,...

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Sirens 272-273

In jail we talked tanks of chewed lightning. Brothers-in-arms we,
Clinking flush and struggling too much the happy bores.
Admiring the slow days as the tenses change a song of
Sweet monuments and the sight of slender smoke speaks-
We are pale and borne along by opera horses, singing of
The last light of day. We have been paid to tell you
The happy, eyeless history, where the name you have
Is better than the one you know.
Then, in comes death- he who smoked with savage lips,
We feel the scorn in his lidless eyes when he says,
“Gentlemen, love lives not.”

274-275

History punishes all who wear her, all who sing upon the rocks
Hatter of history, moon of scornful sorrow
You who improvise and you who harbor rats only to
Listen to the chordless tunes their hunger makes. You
Invent useless pain and complain about your husband- he is not with you now,
But you may find him at the harbor, longing for some
Ethereal ocean. Don’t go after him, instead, build a ship from
Straw and pianos and set sail. Deafen yourself before setting out and
Prepare to learn the mathematics of mourning.
You come upon a night traveler
You come upon he who bore poor sailors through eden wearing bright hats.
You come upon obstacles as answers
You come upon the things that you lost from your pockets
Find yourself on a sad lane
Still reverberating from the scales of an earthquake

A Brief History Of Defiance Of Rational Explanation

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Sirens 270-271

Shiny musical bird, a Swift I think, collapses against the brightness. Its wife
In words loops through kissing notes clapping in the shadows.
Somehow you call me and I wish that I could see your face.
Then, to your unhappy heart, I speak of the coming flood.
We break down, counting the score, accepting nothing on open faith,
Consuming the thunder of bells in our bosoms, welling up unwearied-
Against the certain tide.

Arranging chairs in rising water we start to drink from it
All tenderness is lost and left behind. If we could we find this strangeness-
We would not, would we? Instead we crown ourselves in song and
Sing the dream of light.

Fill It With Sighs

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Sirens 266-267

They drank the cool water and they were clean and they were together.They watched the lovely sails as they travelled across the face of an obedient ocean.They were awed at the sight of the falling Daedalus.They waved a silent goodbye as the heeling ship troubled the fading afternoon.They did not say that they would be back, no, not for certain.They held the lord in their hands until it turned to smoke and left an unnamed aroma.They ran to the night and found themselves drenched in saints.They sang tunelessly from paper napkins and cared not for tomorrow.They watched the morning gentlemen enter, screaming silly songs.They spit into the wind.They pined for love.

They rose into the air.

They rose.

Sirens 268-269

The curious air becomes close and fills the valley of the lost with sighs.
A gale of woe, touching the dangerous waves, calls us and we long to go-
To receive a kiss for our song. But, still, the heart brings down the moon
An innocent mistake because of a remembered voice. Sleep in the beautiful
Night and dream of Echo, her not sad voice leaving a wound where the shadow
Once waited. Hold back the brave until the proud are all lost, until the ear and
The eye are filled with rage.
A blackbird perches upon my heart and I let the murmuring of liars wash over me.
I remember the name of the morning.

Life Is Crazy, Let's Dance

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Sirens 262-263

You are like a song in the quivering air. A flower
Suspended in music communing with the light.
In a sudden note the heart of your appetite flows- becomes
So much clearer- the endings are found chordlike,
Dwelling among the owners of the faltering
Dust. I could not leave you, a waiter, an agitated eye, now
Mirrorless and gliding. The dying black chords are doorways
To all the quickly spoken spells, bending ears for those who
Can’t hear them.

A finger on the horn bids you come closer- you in creaking shoes and
And gloomy Judas coat- Afterwards a high bell holds you
Against the sighing hue of skybluesky. You misunderstood the
Essence of all this, the sunnier no oneness of this. Through the silence
you think of this day. How warm it is.

Sirens 264-265

We knew what depths there were, but this is before we turned
All handy. Where do we search for our forgiveness, where do we remember?
We were married in brilliance out on a strong ocean, voices of horns
Calling to the wind. In god’s opera there is a business of ardency, a thoughtless
Shameless name. Wakened by a burning garment, we make our way to the
Palace of Saturdays then wander back, among the laughter and gloom.
We dance to the tune of night pianos, thousands of them, clattering out chords of
Tight misery. We look to other travelers, to attack them and steal their souls.

Then, there are the shadows. Carried in wonder, in bald, inexquisite opinion. We are
On the rocks as a thousand hats take to the air in silent celebration.
Somewhere a drummer beats out a distant song of love.

Humming Pebbles, Bitter Pearls

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SIRENS 260-261

The humming pebbles are poised to hear the

lies of youth and love. They cannot stop

themselves. The dying answers are calls, pure,

heroic, lifted high. We are voices from a richer

time. We look to please ourselves in some

golden future.

Between the conquering blazes and the

birdsong at the window is the unseen thing,

unfairly changed, drinking glassfuls of roses and

thinking of tits and lies. An arrival is a hand on

the shoulder. Smiling Egypt is awakened and

ready to receive you. The clock tells our

fortunes and we are held like hostage princes

far from our eastern seas.

A cantor of love rises but has forgotten the

song- we couldn’t hear it anyway, our ears so

stuffed with coins. We put on our coats and

step out into the rain, brooding over answers of

wonder. We are now aloft and bent in rage,

watching for a change in the light. Bitter pearls

drop from the curbs in the street where all the

stores are closed- the doorkeys lost- the owners

have changed.

The fading morning might be of some higher value.

Supine Voluptuaries

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SIRENS 258-259

The smoke of the past- raised, grazed impatience-

the smiles fall in waves. The lately moons

lay in the arms of Daedalus, unrecognized and unanswered,

arriving with a certain thickness now near, now forgotten.

Who looks for me? My muse’s song is on my lips the

tune so long in the day as to be taken

for a jingle- a fable not noticed but on the bill, none-the-less.

The rote bell and hell’s piano take it up and the streaming

concert now has meaning. A minstrel sings of the labor of

a famous sea, its duty to receive the fallen forms of the vain and risky.

Here, now, god’s brilliant bastard, on the back of a mermaid rising,

hands out the wires and keys. Can mercy and grace be so near?