Lingua Sacra

All poems are protected by copyright, and are the property of the author.

“Do you know what a poem is Esther?”
“No, what?” I said.
“A piece of dust.”

-Sylvia Plath

(Come in under the shadow of this red rock),
And I will show you something different from either
Your shadow at morning striding behind you
Or your shadow at evening rising to meet you;
I will show you fear in a handful of dust.

-T. S. Eliot

“And now a she-wolf came, that in her leanness
Seemed racked with every kind of greediness
(How many people she has brought to grief!)” 51


Love Song Of The Greyhound


“She mates with many creatures, and will go on
Mating with many more until the greyhound comes
And tracks her down to make her die in anguish” 102



I

Beyond the farside-
In the valley of the hound,
I awoke in predawn fog,
Stretched low, on the soft, wet ground.
Split quick the skin of heavy hog;
Gorged myself to drown impermeable sound.

That horrible blood whisper,
Residing in the head;
Filtered through a strobe fluttered image-
Of the farthest angles men seek to find.
The place the angels fled-
Where, in the withered bride’s skull,
For two, and one-half years,
I made my bed.

After the she-wolf
Had racked me,
And stretched me,
Slaughtered my facilities;
Scattered my fragments-
Left me for dead!

So I rise here, now-
My body crimson, and slogged.
I am aware of one thought,
Which stifles all sound;
As I prowl through these valleys,
Upturning logs.
Perched upon a cliff bank,
Cries ring the hard ground!
Descend to drag the bogs;
Thought residing:
I am greyhound!


II

Of the beginning,
There is little to be said;
Or, at least, little point
In it’s being said.
For had we ever
Come to the fact,
Of how, she, and I,
Came to be like that-
It could reveal little
Of where we are,
Nor much of how we got there.
(But of that beginning,
And the means of our ends.)
For it was not the beginning,
Of how we arrive here, now,
But rather the immaculate dawn,
Of doubt, and realization.
The way, day after day,
We attempt to recreate,
The one moment it arose;
To stir our minds of life’s sleep.
Before love-
The shadow of vague creation,
Set over our skins;
Dimming it’s natures,
We grip, locked within.



III

In the beginning:
We rose among the mountains,
Two solid forms, amongst the ruins
Of love’s fortunes.
Drawn together,
By some strange, symmetrical force,
Pours from every crack, and pore,
Of those stony palaces-
Founded in that dry place of disaffection,
Where ice carved layers of stone.
Millenniums displaced,
Under the stern thrush, of water compound.

She and I,
In a slow stride,
Along those endless, serpentine roads;
Of dust, and bone.
Where each pair of lovers,
Turned off, in the smoke of torchlight,
To attend respective funerals-
Gaze faceless into designated graves.

We could not see why,
They seemed so eager;
To make burnt offerings
Of themselves.

Dragged our steps
Through musts of marrow,
Stopped at every spring, and creek;
To wash our feet among dry sands-
(If there were only water
Amongst the rock)!

There, our voices were still;
Words dull, across slates that refused there echo-
Sent syllables, stumbling down a cliff bank,
To drain into dried pools, decrease across
The skin of old stone.

Unknowingly, we too had come;
To carve our name in granite plates,
To date the plague of our debates,
And clarify the confirmation,
Of our final resting place.


IV

The hunt has ended;
I am upon her.
Hunched in the bushes
Bordering a small clearing.
She is sprawled, center-
Like an admonishing pinup.

She is aware of my presence,
Still she goes on;
Defiles to sodomize
The most recent,
Of mange-ridden mutts,
She has lured to her door.

A series of simple gestures.
I erupt from the foliage;
Sounding my arrival
With a barbaric “yalp”.
A touch of my hand,
And his head comes

Clean of his neck;
Like tender flesh,
Parted for the tempered blade.
She lay back,
Propped on elbows-
Vulgar, like a tarnished prize.

Her hair matted
To her breasts, thick patched,
Drying in the noon sun;
As she licks from her skin,
His acrid stain.
I descend,

Lower myself
Into that awful
Whispering again.
Come inside her;
Like a victorious
Explorer, reclaiming

Lost alchemy.
We rise to take up
The form of beasts;
Our mouths never meet.
The body sweats-
Oil, and fire,

Over, the repeated phrase:
I am greyhound!
I AM GREYHOUND!
Like the heartbeat,
Quickening, in the body’s
Convulsive pace.

She sends her contemptuous
Moans and howls,
Through the night air;
Well into nightfall.
When birds, and squirrels,

Flee, and scurry,
To protective holds-
(They know,
The comedy is over).
Without warning,
I seize her left arm;

Drawing it back, by the wrist.
My jaws close
On her shoulder.
The wet crush of bone,
Joint buckles,
Red plush, rushes

Between my teeth.
Trails along my lips-
Falls to bead in grain dirt.
The limb comes free,
I am sent reeling-
As her hind claws

Grate my chest.
I fall to the ground,
Bawling, blood soaking
The dry soil,
With a little bitter life.
I stand to leave her,

Bleeding there.
Stumble through those woods;
Clutching my wounds,
Like small songs of memory-
Singing tiny pin notes,
Deep in the flesh of my chest.

Full well knowing:
That as the season’s scavengers,
Picked over her meat;

The summer sun,
Bleached her bones,
Scattered them to be alone!
The corpse left,
To rot, and decrease,
In that small clearing;

Among the dry drone,
Of the cicadas
Unabating psalm-

Could only be, me.


V

One should be in surprise,
Of the death love brings.
When it’s energies clutch,
And seize, the human heart;
To halt such redundancies.
Indefinable process,
Pattern of constantly new forms-
The most enigmatic of equations.

When the angels come,
To lift us from stone;
Flush time’s dust from our lungs.
Here we are gods forever,
Our image, frozen in the warm
Displacement of light,
Through stained glass.

Here the rose blooms,
In insubordinate compassion,
For this crippled, and conflicted world.
Mending it’s fractures,
In the supple fold
Of finely crafted velvet.

But do not fallow,
From this place, me.
To a house where
The air hangs wavering,
In it’s tranquil sea.

To a room, where her eye
Sits in a corner;
On a dry bone of carpet.
Flinching at my eternal
Disaffected gaze.

Where I have resuscitated
Myself amongst
The pail reflections of glass.
Stood there in that company
For endless hours.

As the smoke rises
From these old pipes,
In the hope memory,
Could afford some piece
Of forgiveness.

Where I sit up, this night,
Like all nights, waiting-
For someone’s call.
An anonymous figure,
Come to lead me through
This barren land.

I remain here,
Only to be shown:

Somewhere out that door,
Down past the walk,
Bathed in perpetual twilight.

Perhaps a short stride,
Up a winding road,
Beneath the auspicious

Shade of a redwood tree;
A worn rosebush reaches
For daylight, and longs to be seen.

* * * * *

Vast, and empty, the open sea;
Mine irich kind,
Wo wilest du?
Vast, and empty,
Mine irich kind,
Empty…

Psalm For A Ghost


Its in the translucent way you lay in your bed,
That you remain in our minds now-
Like a faded negative, silent reminder,

Of someone who once moved about this house.
In a stroke of genius, you were struck dumb,
In the elucidation of your illuminations.

Left to press into us, with the garbled litanies,
Of paralyzed tongues, refusing to ply
Our flesh, from the bone of your fingers;

Refusing to actually give up, and die.
Your balled fists push into eternity-
Beat back a little death from your

One-more-day; you insist is the only certainty.
The family corresponds it’s dismay
Of your victory, in reticent whispers;

Which crawl along the wall to dissipate-
Skirting the edge of your attenuated ears.
Careful not to disturb the phantoms

Of that solitude, who have become
Your only consistent conversations.
You don’t see, it is your own death,

That calms me, your refusal to actually
Lay-down-into, that gray box our hands
Fold over, like a prayer of our own salvation.

Allows me to know, when your curtain is called,
We will all slowly rise, bleary eyed,
With numb feet, and stumble towards the aisles.

Exhausted by the long predictable play,
Relieved once those weary dialogues have ended-
Once the distasteful scenery, has been wheeled away.

You revolve within your conflicted limbs,
As I sigh, admiring the tactful way,
The memories in your photographs fade.


__________________________


Mutely For Flowers


My father, separated,
By the birth of birth,
Who sits, tiredly melting

Into the crevices,
Of a fleshy chair.
Recanting his mute stories,

To a thousand passing flowers;
Who nod, stupidly in the rain.
Gently folding the ash

Of some cheap cigarette,
Like limp, white linens.
The opium aflame behind

His glass hollowed stare.
Blankly consuming the world,
Through the safety

Of his living room window.
Each day, he sits, and waits:
For God, or death;

Something more than eternity-
Or the flowers, to root,
Numbly along.

_______________________________


The Becoming


These living figures in my life
are dissolved, in transition.
Are involved, in becoming
by ceasing to be.

They strive toward equality
with the myriad faces
which populate an old tattered
shoe box.
Faces for whom I have no memory,
save those given me by the older
generations.

And here, in this room-
Amongst the binary drone of an
oxygen machine,
which rises and falls like the
distant throb of a riding mower,
shifting between two gears,
-Lies another member of this
slow progression.
Though she is running now,
breathing hard in a full sprint
towards her absolute resolution.

Her ragged breath grates the air,
scraping away at thirty-second
intervals, until we are
only left with her ruin;
and all the plans the week must see made-
And her husband frail and bruised,
weary with his relief of her passing.

This common plot devise
is so standard it has almost
become cliché.

We have congregated here
to witness
her final exit, to watch
the velvet curtains unfold,
obscuring the floor behind her.
-it’s as though they were selling
tickets down at the family trust-
Already her photos are among
the others
-In this one she is younger than
I am now and you can see the
beauty which I never knew her by-
The kodachrome merely waits
for her presence to eddy, for her
to become a face my unborn children
will never know
a series of stories
they’ll forget, despite being told
and retold.

Sabina

Muss es sein? Es muss sein! Es muss sein!


I

When I called the other day
you, addressed me so casually
I became restive-
and abandoned what I had
originally intended to say.

That the night before
I’d dreamt of you.
Dreamt that we were lovers
again.
But always there was, lingering,
a sense of apprehension. A feeling

That if anyone knew, the world
would come undone like
Disintegration.

So each time I leaned in
to bite your neck and cup your
breast beneath your shirt,
I did so with a great nervous
Hesitance.

And we kept arriving
to the same airport
to the same gate
over and
over
Each time the plane flying
closer to the terminal before
Landing.

Till finally, the plane was gone,
it was only you and me, flying
through the airport ceiling
at that maddening speed-

And we both knew we would die.

I’d called because I wanted to
tell you how you laughed rabidly
when we discovered even our seats
were gone, and it was just you

And I hung, like marionettes
in the sky, our bodies
fixed in the shape of Osirin
Hieroglyphs…

But I lost my nerve, and instead
spoke at too great a length of
unimportant things, as
I am prone to do
when forced to improvise.


II

In these ruins, carved out
of my knowledge of you,
I have given you a name:

Sabina. A pale nymph
in a black bra and panties
with a bowler perched atop
your head.

(though in my mind she
always wears matching
thigh-highs)

I have given you
this name
as the earth is given the sun-
as something unasked for,
nor rendered gently upon it.

You have always been
the most talented of
All women
at giving and receiving,
you claim I taught you this;
though I’ve never understood how.

But even in this name-
Which I feel well suits you,
despite your proclivity
towards the French,
There is a lie.
Not for any belief that the
character which lends it
does not well encompass you.

It is Tomas, so absorbed
in his efforts to emasculate love-
to castrate its sexuality,

Who fails to realize his love of Sabina.
Its synchronicity
with that of the infant Teresa;

Whom he plucked from
The riverbanks of his bed.
With her heavy suitcase
The life she offered,
blindly knowing by fortuity
he would take it, willingly…

Yet at night, when he could not sleep,
as the restless serpent of the mind
lay coiled hours long,
round the ‘idea of love’
the face which stalked his corporeal
memory, regardless
of how easily it could be perceived,

Had the blurred features of a double
exposure.


III

The best picture I have of you
resides in my copy of
The Selected Poems of Dylan Thomas
-I could draw a line through serendipity-

I’m sure you would be happier
in my bi-lingual edition of
Les Fleurs du mal

- Nous mettrons notre orgueil à chanter ses louanges;
Rien ne vaut la douceur de son autorité;
Sa chair spirituelle a le parfum des Anges,
Et son œil nous revêt d'un habit de clarté.

But for some unforeseeable reason,
I do not move you there.

I don’t read Thomas often
anymore, so when I do
I am always pleasantly surprised
To find you.

Your pail skin, Your white dress
almost dissolved into a background
which is so out of focus,
it is little more than a cloud
Of verging shades of azure.


IV

I have barrowed a verse
from Baudelaire
to define you.

A name from Kundera
to describe you give
you a face in this memory.

I do not know
how to defend all of this.
Our love, my love of you
-we do not show it to ‘the others’-

But that it burns day long
and casts a milky
reflection upon the surface
of the night.

Spider

I sit smoking behind
the coffee shop where I work.
A small spider crouches to my left
in the shade, on the sidewalk;
-patient-unmoving-

And though I try to read the lines
of Mr. Williams;

Now it is spring
Elena is dying.

The slight brown figure, cropped
against gray concrete, keeps drawing
my attention.

Inside porcelain cups chime against
porcelain saucers, and little voices
chime against insignificant things.

I worry that it will bite me.


______________________________


The Dance

What areas have
so far
-as into say, have as of yet-
been
Overcome.

which is to imply
Conquered.

This is the beginning
of effort
the blind dance
devoid of music
a figure sets out from

reTurns to

With no set course
or sound
to move by
-be moved by-
Yet in the journey
finds a pattern
creates a rhythm
in each step

Every gesture
eliminates possibility
save possibility of possibilities

Broken fragments
slip together
though unrelated
manage a soft fit
form a new shape


To form is to
Define
is to create

Set a new course
map a new journey


_______________________


Paull

I

I am in envy of you-

Not of your language;
by which I feel I do better,
But of your consistency.

Of your modernity,
(I feel as if you own it).

A tone at once
maudlin,
And stoic; which addresses
its audience with a particular
patience and care.
You have carved
your peach
to the pit,
And now offer that petrified
scrotum for our nourishment.

In hope the seed might
take root, Split soil-
Become a tree…


II

My verse too often feels
Archaic

Grates like a rusty gate
in an 18th century cemetery.

Each headstone
cracked
covered with moss;
Each name rendered
Illegible by wind and rain.

As though the elements
perceived, there were
none left living for whom
those syllables, held memory.

Francesca

You came in out of the night
And there were flowers in your hand,
Now you will come out of a confusion of people,
Out of a turmoil of speech about you.
I who have seen you amid the primal things
Was angry when they spoke your name
In ordinary places.

I would that the cool waves might flow over my mind,
And that the world should dry as a dead leaf,
Or as a dandelion see-pod and be swept away,
So that I might find you again,
Alone.

-Ezra Pound
_________________________________________
A Letter I’ve Been Writing

My love is a letter I’ve been writing.
A collection of words which keep
falling out of me, revealing itself,
as though for the first time.

Or a single rune I repeat,
like the lines I trace across
your body lost in the dark ink
of my mouth: neck curve pools
in the cradle of collar bone,
areola peak, hip crease
cups smooth stomach,
sweet nectar of dogwood
bloom which brings your
very flesh to a shuddered blush.

There are other comparisons I could make:
My love is a line of small
blond hairs which sprout
just above your kneecap,
so modest it could not be noticed
by the casual observer, so perfect
it could not be lived without…
but that I have no need of them.
My love is a letter I’ve been writing;
which I address to you.
_____________________________________
Overlooked

Her glance cut so deep,
One could not stir
To dislodge the fragments,
Of it’s oblivious nature!
How the sun at dusk
Does turn to behold,
Some worthless, fleeting thing.
Abandons it’s neophyte,
Amid the diabolical din of night.
___________________________________
To Say That We Have Been

To say that we have been
Strangers, or lovers-
Is most often, not enough.
There must be further elaborations
Upon the construct
Of these relations.

So,
We extend the courtesy
Of greater complications,
To feel at ease within
This deprivation.

We have at times,
Stood alone;
Together amongst the absence-
Our silence, insurmountable
Segments of sand-
Caught, cutting symmetrical shapes
Into supple muscle,
Which the barnacle banked shell
Swallows like swaddling,
To covet and conceal.

By this, and only this,
We have been displaced
Among our reckoning.
Moved from the center
Of this grace,
By the frequent ferment
Of pearls pried between.

To say that we have been-
So-far-down
A barren serpentine road,
That our beginnings could
No longer be seen.
All of our ends,
We forge from our dreams.

As such is the realization-
We have survived the sinking ship,
Only to be lost
At sea…

O western wind, when wilt thou blow
That the small rain down can rain?
Christ, that my love were in my arms
And I in my bed again!

-Anonymous, 16th century
_____________________________________
Gravity

I must wrest myself from this gravity.
Too long have Saturn’s
Rings governed my orbit.
For too long, those petulant energies,
Have lulled me, asphyxiating,
In that atmosphere, struggling,
In the noxious gas of ethereal undertow.
Somewhere in this vacuity,
There must be some solid
Stone, where I may, concede prostration.
Somewhere the stern soil,
Tolerance, temperance,
That does not drive one so, to self destruct.
I would I should find some
Leverage to pull against;
A moon who’s anchor, might haul me out
That malignant, celestial current;
Set out across that stygian rent.
I would that she would rouse me from,
That diabolical womb;
Disintegration, carve new
Constellations upon the face of my fate.
Create a new trajectory,
Together we could tread.
A path no evil, or impurity could beset.

_______________________________________________

A Storm Between Us

All this weather wears our bodies
thin and swells the glands
in our throat.

It deprives us of appetites-
fashions a white blanket out of insecurity,
which does more to catch that
cold ache in our bones than
tries to keep us warm.
And then the fevers,
so strong the hottest summer day
could not sedate that chill.

When will this winter storm abate?
But will abate-
spring already beats upon
the icy door.

_______________________________

The New Birth of the Old Religion

They scuttle amongst the scraggy thicket,
and in hours of darkness, scrape stones
together hoping for a flint, a spark to set
the new fires amid the dried out underbrush.
Their cries at each bloodied finger send fleets
of magpies into a flood of black and white,
obscured gray in the bloom of the new moon.

Bodies now twisted and naked, caked with mud,
muscles pierced by the ardent clutch of thorn-
once stood straight and pristine, adorned
in fine robes, silk mantles, hand stitched
with embroidery of the alchemist’s finest gold.

Where from their mouths once poured the milk
of eloquence, there are now only the jagged
fragments, broken syllables, which shred the
meat of their tongues, leaves them despondent,
with merely nasal snarls of discomfort,
all they can remember how to convey.

Nevertheless they huddle together, their boney
forms braced against the cold, and as the sun
brakes along the horizon they fan out in
concentric circles, foraging for food, seeking
out some semblance of that reason they’d spent
amid the cooling embers, the night the horrors
came to claim their sacred mythology.

They search for the new order
amongst the ruins of their past.

Ouroboros


-jetsam-flotsam-
a rush of currents,
tides and eddies;
rivers run in and
out of themselves,

through tributary streams,
across the cracked land;
dump themselves without
reservation into oceans,
that are one body of water-
with no beginning and no end;

all that has been said before,
will be said again, and then again;
-this too has already been said-

as each thought,
from the first wet
clutch at new breath,
to the last dull rattle

of air; every aimless meandering
in between, pours out from-
drains back into, slips dizzy
in a superfluous whirlpool
of subtle energy which has
never begun, and will find
no end…
_________________________________________

The Order


I dreamt my father died,
And left me an inheritance of debt:

Brown souls pressed flat,
Wet in a million endless
Ruts, dug deep in a narrow,
Muddy, country road.
Their cries rang out, resounding,
In a peal of thunder,
Shucked rain from gray clouds.

I dreamt my mother died,
And left me an inheritance of debt:

Silent forms, in a dim-lit room,
Shapeless in the fell light.
Revolving intersections of time,
Moving to an awkward measure,
Around a statue of ignominy.
Each hollow voice kept close,
To console, and comfort, during
The cruel cold night.
Each wavering filament of experience,
Moved only to taste annihilation.

I dreamt the world was mine,
An inheritance of debt:

The battery stood, reinforced,
The heavy cavalry was counted,
The virgin sons lined the walls
Of muddy trenches, and prayed.
The general’s austere voice,
Cracked through the megaphone,
And rang the thirsty morning air:

“These mountains are our fathers,
And our Brothers, sleep in the face
Of the hillside, kissing the moist
Earth, with decomposing tongues!
So the leaves of the redwood,
Will fall, to the omnivorous ground,
To nourish the bearer’s root.”

Somewhere, in the distance,
A patient vulture circled,
Blinding cargo in bay-
And the striped pigs,
Adorned the windows
Of the butcher shops,
In the soon to be demolished,
Town square.
________________________________________

Vincent’s Decent
(The Trouble With Entropy)

“As for you, you will rot in the earth
And it is doubtful if even your manure will be rich enough

To keep grass
Over your grave.”
-Ezra Pound

There is an image,
A tangible manifestation of thought;
Silent, and still, yet, so evasive,
I cannot clutch to elucidate,
Like a bone beneath the skin-
The dead bird under glass:
(red pulsing redundancies
brought to an abrupt halt at last).

There is something dead here;
And something else, dying.
Not cold yet, motionless except,
A labored heave, breath
After, painful breath.
This grips the feeble mind
With the cool hands of death and time,
As fingers grope the fevered flesh,
The dying dread to resign.

There is an image, a fear,
So still, and quiet; devours
Everything we wrongly label “mine”.
Consumes to conquer each and every kind;
Resonates a wake of concepts,
Resolve could only fail to define.

Perceive the tear
Of hopeless eyes,
The fear of every form of life;
Death wastes but little time.
There is nothing new in this,
And I wish I didn’t mind.

drub-drub
drub-drub
Carries on the fatalistic drum:

Though I’m weary,
Though I’m worn;
drub-drub
Though I’m late,
Though I’m torn,
Naked and unadorned;
drub-drub
Though I can’t escape,
This inhuman palace,
Molded human monstrosity,
Until the curtain falls,
To close the time I waste;
drub-drub
I’m still persistent,
But learning to patiently wait.

Here is no form, but a shadow,
No shadow, but an in between;
A meager dream, there is no light,
But our own illuminations, pouring through
Every dim lit life, in constant immolation.

Reanimating Lazarus

What a cruel act of necromancy-
To be led so-far-down,
The shining path.

To gaze upon the face; Merkaba,
Weightless and absolved.

Then, suddenly, summoned by the master-
Ordered to assume
That disheveled relic.

Wear that weathered face
In good humor again.

Greet the curious crowds with
A wrenched up
Toothless smile.

Shudders to rouse atrophy,
Out enervated muscle.

Eager to wash the sense of that stolen gift,
From cradles of
Massed meat.

And I should wonder, if he did
Secretly spite his modest savior?

Who was too absorbed-
in refute of gratitude
To notice, none is given.

*****************************************
Lux Ferre

Lo! My snake amid
Th’ gardens grass, slinking
Su’tly.

‘Sn’t th’ apple bright
Wi’ beautiful blush
Upon th’ tree?

Eh!…knowledge, such
An evil, tempting thing!

****************************************************
Odin’s Hymn

“God, deliver us from the fury of the Northmen”
Early European prayer for protection from Scandinavian warriors

‘Silence the wench!
Silence the wench,
Or I shall speak no more!
Quell her tongue
In a bowl of hell flame;
Or, I shall speak no more!
For this is no quickening,
The meager blood shed
Upon the alter of eternity.
Here is no death;
Only belligerent blasphemy,
As I cast from me the securities.

(This is my
Manifest destiny;
This is my
Reign of hypocrisy!)

The Goat stands on the mountain-
Laughing;
The Bull lie in the valley-
Maimed;
The Hermit is in the wave thrush-
Singing;
“Bring out your dead”
The Twins are on the cliffs edge-
Mourning;
Cradling one another’s head!

Can you sense the awful taste of time?
Can you see the feeble trace of rhyme;
Contradicting each and every line?

What vague concept stirs?
What churned cloud
Of diabolical intention,
Collaborates, to undermined my edifice?
A weakness, so profound, it torments.
There is dimension, shape, color-
Even though I am uncertain of its intent-
It is an object.
Maybe,
Must be realized-
Brought into…
Examined under light!

O you who think
You’re the only ones,
Who can summon the moon;
And dismiss the sun!
Heed this warning writ
In careful runescript-
Tombscript:

There will be no mercy shadow-
No grace of covenant, no security;
There will be no quarter given!
When dexterous digits, plot to plunder,
Descend to destroy, probing deeper,
Fingers plunge, to touch a center-
Stir a path of pain,
All death refused to heal.

Here,
Rest upon your nose, is my blade!
Look hard, Witness!
Steel saber, Iron hilt,
And upon the shaft, strange engraving.
How methodical the impatient tongue-
Come has the time of reckoning!
My sward is in my hand;
Be quick with the blood!’

Sibling Symbiont, Ritual Of Philomel, The Pattern
__________________________________

Sibling Symbiont


I stand alone inside her,
A quiet Testimony of my true,
Shapeless disposition.
A form ever ascending to meet
The accomplishments of merciless failure.

This is the ritual-
The disappointment
Of absolute reality,
Replaying forever,
The pain of it’s genesis:

Warm pockets of flesh,
Catch in fishhook teeth.
The blood running out,
Along fingers of bodiless arms.
Dripped onto the wet, smooth,
Expanse of my face;
Trekked down the ridge of my eyes-
Trailing along my nose,
To pool in the crest of my lips.

Hot water streaking
A mirrored surface-
The torment of memory;
Pain of realization.
Repulsive reaction,
The body folds to imitate.
Reflection shattered-

So I rise, on stilted hands,
An awkward torso, jolted,
Out of hesitation.
Stumbling, stuttering,
Through this familiar storm-
As my rain smears
Her simple reflection,
And my palms pad our blood,
Into the petals of her eyes.
_____________________________________


Ritual Of Philomel


The woman’s chair is empty-
In the house, she is nowhere to be found.
She has succeeded, by somber steps,
In a patient procession-
To the edge of a sulfur stream.
There she is knelt, amid acetylene-
Fervent fingers cup flame,
To dispel the frozen wound.

She is the virgin, rest upon the crescent moon-
Her figure draped, in white, and blue,
But frostbit, on a tongue of bone;
Where space positions to consume.

What unfathomed rift would dilate,
Situate to resume, such violent absolution?
What primal drive, transfixed her mind;
(An ancient echo refrains it’s subtle rhyme)?
Could I but flush that wellhead,
With water of a gentler kind;
Could I but silence the hound,
Who’s raving stimulates her cries?
______________________________________


The Pattern

And feel as if I’d mounted on my hands and knees


We are making love:
You are a paraplegic
I hover over- and you
Do not touch me.

I am bent, a necrophiliac;
I kiss you, pretend you kiss me back.
Pretend your body is still warm,
Still animate- Intimate.

You fold under every gesture,
Move into every position
I desire.
I linger at your hemisphere,
Just below the soft swell of belly.

I drink of your body-
You do not reciprocate.

I am as gentle as
I am as violent as

I am as thorough as an ant
Assembling your mounds.
Mapping the tunnels of
Your rhapsody.

I make every effort
To exhaust you,
To drive you to reach out.
To touch me,
I wait for you to desire me.

You wait for me to come again,
Knowing that I am weak-
eventually I will

Voyage Of The Marlborough Glasgow

Author’s Note:
The Marlborough Glasgow set sail in 1890 from the port of Lyttleton
in New Zealand with a cargo of wool and frozen mutton, and a crew
of 23 men under the command of Captain Herd. She was lost at sea for
over twenty years when she was spotted by the crew of the British
sailing ship Johnson in 1919 on their way home from Lyttleton,
draped in the green moss of decay with the skeletal remains of her
crew still on board.


I
“Unbind the rotten barge in bay;
Step lively, b' stern 'n 'ur backbone.
Invoke the west wind wrought
By our torrential arrogance…”

Drive with out destination,
Impending consequence
Without observation-
“Set th' supine ship upon
Th' stoic sea…

“Cast th' children’s corpus overboard-
Abandon 'em wi' naught o' reservation
In your pace.”
Let them love the oceans impenetrable veil
With the rest of our disposable weight:

The tables and chairs,
From the captain’s hall;
Trunks and cases,
Belonging to the working class;
And the navigator’s dead instruments.

“O unfortunate souls, damned 'ere upon
'Is deck wi' me, heed my tardy warning:
'Ur captain ‘s a ne’er-do-well; nefarious, listless
Alienist, who means to love the sea,
‘N a most abhorrent way!”

May the coral reef kiss
The foot of our gentle lady;
May the timber-bow cleave
The cliffs in loving dissonance;
May we sail forever finding
Naught, save no-thing!

“Press th' palms 'n sockets, stall th' insistence
O' sober eyes.
“Pray for th' loved ‘nd lost, pray for a soft bit o' sand
At th' bottom of the ocean; or th' hull b' tempered,
With th' fortifications o' Troy!”

“Lo how seaweed caressed
Th' infants 'eavy head…”
Water wilts the flower bloom
‘til solely bone shone through…
“Pray for th' children though…

“O murky, inky, rift;”
O vast unwavering blue-
How I love you!
“I
Love
You!”


II
"Come lets get us away again,
Where th' wake-thrush beats upon cliff’s edge,
Jaded shore!

B’damned with th' placid beach;
Lull of lazy tides lick-like opiate, complacent-
Bore!

Come lets get us again,
To the sea-beat upon th' bloody shore.
We’ll bleach our bones on jaded cliffs,
We quit those beaches for!"

I quite proffer my insanity,
Profanity;
To your bourgeois, contemptible
Lore!

"Come lets get us away again,
Where waves beat granite, so, between
Spray and stone, pail flesh tore…"


III
The sun burned, and blistered my lips,
As I stood on the deck of the ship.
Accepted not food, nor drink,
Nor sleep; save bread, and water,
And standing slumber.
Declared my insane admonishing,
That the ship, was regardless;
Destined to sink.

The wind burned, and blistered
My ears, and the tender,
Pink meat of my cheeks.
Weather bleached their canvas,
To repaint my face in blood.
Tears ran rivers in gutters,
Of cracked skin (o tributary streams),
That were not tears of emotion,
But spray of salt winds mist.

(Lo us here, listless e'ermore.)


IV
‘Oh Jonah, we beseech thee-
Here, now!

Oh Jonah, we invoke thee-
Bring with you
To our suffering!

Here; Now!
Be upon us with the fury
Of your lord!
Let gale blow to jagged cliff-
Let the squall pelt to rip
Stretched canvas!

May the fury of your lord
Leave us blue lung’d,
To rent the life out
Our swollen chests.

May the king of your
People
Slake our thirst
Forever,
In the Fathoms of the Drink.

Let the cold water
Leave us pale lipped;
Clot these veins
In the frigid swell.

Guide us to
Iceberg-
Shallow reef;
Anything away from
The dead wind,
And unmoving sea
That does now plague me!’


V
I set out upon that sea,
Searching for shipwreck,
Found the cursed covenant
Of Caster and Pollux.
O there were storms,
And well enough, to drive
Those weak of will away;
Longing for the lull of land,
To still their shattered nerves-
Quiet the beating
Of betraying hearts.
But of a desolation fit,
To sustain, or stave,
That sadistic surge;
Blind mindless appetite-
There was naught!
Just the still sea’s
Patient mockery.

The quiet laughter laughed;
Water lips lapped the bow.