Yes, Penelope

 721

What moved in neverchanging space:
an incomplete carnal liberty
light above the circles of the most temporary
latitude.
Me: a narrator of motion; describer of
invisible fits of reflection and absences
These thoughts- shadows of wind
projected along tracks until
reaching their destinations where
they become gradations of incomprehension.

722

Weary childman
your jailor joins you- sealike
in the dark bed running aground
here, in Ithaca, you return
to the land of the squared egg and
the bridge to the darker moon.

Wait the brightday, traveler.

723

Yes, Penelope.

Never so weak as waiting for
the cover of education. A month of dogs, you say?
The matter was all pretended well before you were born
the tragic bed so interesting
the razor, the beard the dirty photo, all
eaten til nothing left but
spirits.

The dying dress and woven-unwoven face
in a sickened city
fear imagined
poisoned love.

Here, we depart.

Autumn Light

Ithaca 673

Our reflections merge
with ancient signatures
a genealogy of survivors
with revived versions of ecstatic visions

the consequences of this have
compensated for our isolation
we, the living comply
with the law of melody
with the anticipation of devolution
with the anthems of simplification

Our costumes are hieroglyphs of
defective inscription
our epigrams the
writing of familiar ignorance

herein lies the restoration of the past.

Ithaca 674

where host of major modern
secludes itself, deluded exponent
of concocted reassurance
there you find the sediment of example
there you find the possibilities of catastrophe

But, what of the residual courage of ecstasy?
the familiar widows
the familiar streets
driven to trinity to predestination to
concealed sensation?

there are answers to this in all the places
where water mixes with identity
where the future no longer resembles tradition
where beautiful figures form
in un-solid light.

Ithaca 675

we home- came back to
slay the boys in hallways
and dining rooms

Back to pretty hand
and woven weeping caul
undone undone
unbroken pleasure
led to sorry feeling and
smiling  dressed in minor sadness
reciting a hero's song.

Any Sentence May Be False,...Including This One

Ithaca 667

Not proof not lie
but wasted time
the shape of ships within infinite visibility
making war on intentions with
temperamental popguns
not proof but lie
in the mechanical arms
the significant arms
the illegal arms
the biological arms
the arms of haste and illegibility
like this poem is an illegible advertisement for
ineffective interest
for the invention of digestion
it succeeds in its arithmetic
only in the common mineral
of the vertical truth.

Ithaca 668

White like candlemen in summer night
we slope down toward reconstructed autumn
written as children with switchblade knives
and a keen sense of justice.

We are in our boots and
We are engaged in lies
our reflection stranded
in a hotel window in
the twilight of the year
going nowhere
our imitation is there on mountain paper
an example of corners
becoming obituaries a
solitary horseman a murderer of bliss.

Ithaca 669

the plunging coincidence of
hero and success
is an essay of night
the smart day is the theme of the drapery.

at the solstice there will be death in the halls
as a consequence of intellect
and curiosity.

Wind and Rock, Days of Stone

Ithaca 664

Adjacent revolutions
nullifying cities
all of it, predictable
all of it, subject to ownership
performance employed in a state of business
and it is just business, after all
A wheel of gratitude
and stupidity-as if
inevitably there is a market for sorrow
and its sales of limits
with a raised hand in rainy salutation
its special sons propel
their special sunless mothers
into encounters with the void
where constant work is needed
to endure these endless, reluctant days.

-For EDMC and the Art Institutes

Ithaca 665

The practice of indifferent memory is
a play where the players exchange roles
constantly
has there ever been a different sort of youth?
lifting our moneyed eyes to the coinage of fate
to the Phoenix rising
above a field of sky
where velocity is no longer desirable
where muscle is occupation
and mirrors arranged in circles
concentrate the beautiful light
leading us, the blind into deafness
and darkness where there is art to being alone
and surviving these thoughts of loneliness
we're never free from our own judgment-
stateless
timeless
other mindless
built of obstacles I am
a different jew
singing uncertainty
a survivor blooming so openly
in a field of stones disguised as wind.