As I went out one morning (with a nod to W. H. Auden)

As I went out one morning 
Walking the primal road
My shoulders were bent over
With an invisible load.

And down by the creek where the salmon
Sing all day in the spring
I heard a man with holes in his clothes
Say, “Love has no ending.”

I wondered at his heresy
He wasn’t supposed to speak
Of things he did not understand
And shouldn’t even seek. 

“I love you, Lord, I love you,”
the ragged man proclaimed,
although his face was badly scarred
and his body bent and maimed.

The man was clearly crazy
For as he spoke his rhyme,
The salmon danced in the shallow stream
In fish-determined time.

I didn’t try to love him
But I loved him just the same
For he broke the diver’s quivering bow
And called his God by name.

“Oh tell me, man, oh tell me,”
I cried in my anguished state,
“What is the secret of the world?
Where is the end of hate?” 

And all at once his face had changed
To an evil, ugly mask
His body had become the hate
About which I had asked.

“How stamp this mask into the mud,
How keep despair at bay?”
“You can’t,” he told me, grinning,
"But my God can point the way.”

“How dare you speak of God, you wretch,
When God’s abandoned you?
How dare you use the Holy Name?
He doesn’t want you to!

Your life’s just spent surviving
With the sidewalk as your bed
And taking poisons in your veins
And scrambling to be fed.”

The man just stood in leaves and mulch
While the salmon sang and spawned:
“Just see the other side of me
And tell me I am wrong.”

Another face appeared just then
A face all beaming bright
Its eyes were streaming like the sun
With pure mysterious light:

“You blinded fool, you stand before
A drop of mist made rain
An eye that Paradise looks through
That holds both joy and pain.” 

“I cannot understand you, for
You play such games with me!
How can you masquerade as God
And tell me how to see?”

“No one knows how Life began,
From Nothing came our birth.
A stir of seething molecules
Sparked all the life on earth.”

“Don’t tell me, wretch, you are the one
Who made this world come true!
Imposter, get out of my road,
I cannot look at you.”

“Just so,” the man said, streaming light,
“For no one knows the why.
But you will be forever changed
By looking through my eye.”

Nonsongs and Neopsalms: a compendium of poems by Margaret Gunning, (Part two)

Part two of an excerpt from a much longer book-length manuscript of poetry (Nonsongs and Neopsalms) that never saw the light of day, though some of the poems were excerpted and published in various literary magazines. These were written over a long stretch of time and represent multiple mental and spiritual transfigurations.

                                       

Delivery

This is a strange

Horse I ride, feet

Pointing up, all bloodless and blue

On a long trail of ether.

My brain swims in a vault of chrome

through the removed murmur of voices

and a distant

Clinical clanking.

I will emerge now, slick and

purple as a baby.  The surgeon’s eyes

Crinkle over the mask.

Hands cool as paper, hands that have never

Handled a snake, patiently suture

All of my holes.  The work is true.

Emergency waiting room

Which is worse:  the spilled

smell of

accidents

or the sound

of magazines

slowly

growing older

in this

ticking house of death?

  

Sorry

My heart unclasped

One day in your office,

Suddenly, all in a shot, the catch

Broke loose, andit

Fell behind a pile of files.

I did not mean to;

It was an accident of gravity.

Earth reached up and pulled it down.

I stood dizzy,

My centre lost, the core

Riven.  It felt silly

to lean over like that.

My face grew hot.

There was no way to put it back.

The space had grown over already;

The fall had changed me.

I left that place different,

Looked outside.  The light

Hurt my skin.  The world

was a new color.

I wiped my eyes, and kept on walking.

A small place

in my chest

Grew still with singing.

loom (a hymn of gratitude)

God sings

As she works.  My, my.  A merry

tune:  Bach; birds.

This weaving

of flesh fibres, new nerves

stretched across dead pain, Awakens

the ache of joy.

How it tingles!  Deft hands move,

A shuttle.  Darting threads,

A gleam.  A sense of fabric.

Substance where there were holes.

The moths driven out.

I will hold now.  No secrets will

Spill through.  The bag is

Solid; it nests

All the marbles.

  Somedays

Somedays, the harshness of nostrils

Bus-lurching crowds, rudespeak

of news-seekers, is too much for me,

I need to nestle, to throstle,

wrestle with the renewal

(of your mint-melting

inner adagio)

The bus vomits; I catch hold of things

again.  Taking charge of the crowd,

grabbing thumbs

manipulating the traffic

pulling the world with a pair of

pliers

It’s no good any more:  I need your dependable

light somnolence:  the old silk robe

of your being

(I need to

wear you

like

hair)

 Crown (For Joshua)

It’s purple out today; no mistaking

it.  Purple sings

The imperial air.  Where

roses were lost, that dimension

They were sucked into/I traverse

(as through a secret panel

or revolving door)

to the Other Side, where essence of roses

Smells.

Purple wings shot through

with veins – with skeins of slaughter

We know the price:  the smell of

(blood and roses)

Purple sings the imperial air.  Where

roses are hidden/purple roses

that spill

 You-riff (a favorite)

If mint ice cream could be made flesh,

(moreover

                Gershwin’s

                                   (innocent

piano keys (not the    (inanimate:  but the

        (hot

very (act of playing) teeth, a fine Mary-

morning

(could be a bald spot:a hunch of shoulders)

                                                                 (all

then I guess this Everywhere where we  (call

the universe/this minimouse, into the Here

would be exhaling you/expressing you

daily,

in daily bliss, dally, bless blush 

       

              doily

in gaily, /  earthshivering

Maymess triumphant, in Gerard Manley Hopkins’

hosiery/then, I guess your

Bashful tigersmile’s a paean to

“Great Chocolate!” eyes  (a-bleeding

                                         (monument to

(hooting hyaena’s

                            laugh’s a plainsong to)

  Lean into it

Haven’t they played this song before?

It’s pain, and it has been on my radio

For weeks now.  Let’s settle down

(my yoyo:  the tiny precious blue one,

has been asleep for days; some dream

told me it had died,

             (spring died,

That it   (would not be back again.)

“But an astral yoyo”  (this is

an official statement) broke loose

between our tromboning eyebeams,

our Sprung-together selves.  You are

an Arctic expedition; I a mere

can of Spam, better than eating the dogs

but less tasty than your bunkmate

           Everything stopped breathing

There was a gown

Made of apricots,

Woven from

A dream of bees, a smile

so drunken it was breathed by

Mother Teresa; I was saturated.

Then you came along like an

Old saddle, your walk as

wobbly as

Copland’s cowboy.

Was I expected to just

                                                           (go on)

breathing again?

  Mary Alice

I sing of Maryalice,

nun as sweet as she

(tied up in the AA meeting/back to back

with Ray the pervert, the man

with the gun in his pocket

Fisheye Red, Lazy Sprockett, and the kindly forever prostitute)

A dizzy harrumph, and Mary Alice spoke

of life/in an abstinent/dry convent

Not even the sacrificial

Wine/A sober nun!  I longed

to anoint

her

/        screwed brow

with the oil of self-congratulation the raw

Bursting sanctity of very existence.

Her voice was frail as a Gramophone,

her hug like rails,

her print dress (out of habit?) disdainfully

Particolored.  I wanted an umbrella

to shield her bent crown

from the raining destruction of reality

  

  Buzzed

Your hive was a hum of

Cortical surprise; a splendor

                                (golden fuzz)

Of psalms:  a salty                        of Bee

being.  Such passion

in the apiary!  Such dizzy repro- (se-?)

Duction!  Bee

attitudes frighten me.  I will pick

the salacious hairs, the

haloed laughter of swarms

From my bee-blurred eyes.

                                                

Three-part invention

(a) indigo eyes

I am the salt

you are the sweet

hair/

        My heartsprung

(horse) of the air,

au clair

ah! care,

         clover

to the/stables,

We.

     Drenched with the scent

of hens of hay

                    dear

of tree:  your/odor

(of salt

(of sap

(of sea

b) cunningerotic

Lip, let me laugh

You.  Set the salt

Sally, sashay down

The hay of my mind.

Seashorn,

feverworn

hairborne:  Your

face a chiming, a

Brining.  The

(stainglassed

seahorse

of your

                                          (voicy

                                      (ice

c)     Fifth chakra (for ray lynch)

a blues tunnel

blamed open

pitched down

to the base of the soul

Mermaids spinning

in your throat, Dear

heart:  shining vessel,

opened for a song,

shut open,

Wept for a penny

disabled

    the

by/(dreaming

      (door

  

Three more haiku

I.     Back road

                                             

The way unspools, retreating

           from a back window:

           Unreeling

           vision.

II.               Spiral

               Higher I mount, and higher.

               I look down.  The screw

               Turns deeper.

               I climb.

 III.           Final exam

              Horses explode from the gate.

              Pens surging forward –

              Furious

              focus.