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.
