Scott Nichols 

"Long-range sight
       For an Eternal night …."
           —Curtis Mayfield, 1942-1999


EL BARRANCA

I.
The dawning truths
arrive
with low voices. Off
the Pacific like tiny
islands. Rubies
scuttling over a cube.
The cube rises,
shakes off its exteriors,
and the sides
grow convex. Like a lens
everything is behind us.

II.
The foreign country
behind us leaves, the new
country ahead revels
in its loose breasts, the capitals
filled with tunics and pallid
feminine sweat.
Leaning on the pillow you bare your arms,
like a silver shield in the holy city.
These epic gestures want epic
celebrations, the dry air wants rain,
your sweat wants a veil. The veil
only carries a hint.

III.
These rooms are
sails and bridges. A vessel
slides under them, the vessels
that bear down
into their own weight and sink.
Only the bodies seem to rise,
missing their bows and sterns.
Meditating on the great mystery
of the soul. Its light reaches in
from a dim room. Its memory is blank.
The soul fills its decks with
angst, seeping into wood and thru to the island.

IV.
The momentum ceases over
the ocean front. We face it with tiny shadows
ahead of us. The shadows fan out
like pigeons. Over the cathedral,
they make their prey, their circles around bells
and plate-glass windows. Over the cathedral
they recite the Scriptures into a bell.

V.
A priest braces himself
against a window
with a ciborium tipping over
across the room. The wine soaks
the red carpet thru. He sees only
the wine, the floor disappears,
the carpet calls out to midnight, it's the Red Sea,
the floor cruises ship over a silent
ocean, over the time zones,
with no arrow. No
south and no north.

VI.
A half-hour's
reverie, a cigarette or two.
I think of towers, Paris
in the papers, lost millenniums,
lost hummingbirds, an arthritic arm,
its fingers cased in lukewarm gel.
Watching a tree,
there really is no arbor here.
Leaves swoop down out of a neighbor's
yard, but not from the trees.

VII.
Looking back at the boats,
your breasts sit large and loose
under the tunic I have given you.
This visage,
more than the sun's, we have
more than imagination over us.

The soul is what our bodies haven't used.

VIII.
Last night I sat up
writing. Writing all night,
it now rains in buckets, the sky
full of tame cowboys
and their captors. They
wrench out of the clouds
in single file, fractures all over their arms
and legs from fighting, the water
brimming up from a puddle on the ground.
Smoke funnels up from the sidewalk.
The wild animal is tamed,
the tamer runs rampant.

IX.
The cusp of the unseen,
the doctor's arm reaching out.
It is somehow darker
than normal. He swats the chandelier
out of the air.
The chandelier drops off with a tremor,
jewel by jewel,
until the sides of the chandelier fold
themselves into lamps.
The echo waits in a shadow
before sneaking around the corner,
laughing like a hyena.

X.
The rain responds to a
complaint. A ballerina
dances in shallow water and at the same time
hides her mermaid fins.
You cock your eyes at this.
"Paris is only
half of the answer." Then what
is the other half?
You fill me up to the gills
with these halves. Their shelves
break off in my ears
but I do not hear a sound.

XI.
Five stars in the sky,
I think of Cadiz. A
word. French-press coffee
and a broken chandelier.
The other sex.

XII.
Leaving the restaurant,
it's like a blizzard.
An abstract painting pushes you
off a ledge. You cling to reason.
The painter's cloak. The museum
rears back like a wolf. Rimbaud's
legs wait for me in Abyssinia.
They run long and wide.

XIII.
The doctor explained
the wound. The ether swaddled up
behind us.
You imagined it like a feast of flies,
eating away at the flesh of the cut.
You put a fake crystal
up to the sky
and it gave you a sense of time.
Your eyes in sweat and
dust, the doctor looked
away. This is his
dominion, his alert compassion
he hoards,
a sort of awning from rain.

XIV.
The herons sharing a meal
with Christ. The birds affirm the ground
and the sky, they affirm the breadcrumbs,
the northern star, these tablets
full of symbols, markings,
Jesus points away from
Golgotha and turns to wine.

XV.
I step into a bedroom
to tear pages out of my lover's
diary. The rain follows me inside.
The strings of an opera, La
Traviata, fill the bed, but outside
the tundra fills in around the foothills
and we are covered in cold. Tea-stains
on the walls of the bedroom
where you listen. The snow melts a little,
the small of your back lies naked. A quiver.
Arrows shot up into
the sky from the bottom of the well.

XVI.
Paradoxes. Snow
on a couple of mountains
but not the others. Smoke
in my mouth
but my feet undisturbed.

The broken chandelier. The rhythm
of marching.

XVII.
An appearance. The Thames
exploding quietly. We are polite
too, masks without edges.
A stream without a cemetery.
The taste of metal. A resurrection.
The concubines of our past
at the mill, weaving. Here, the music
pouring out of a car window
on its way to fatigue. The lamp's awning
gestures like rice in the air. Sunning
the children in false light.
A window watching but not watching.

XVIII.
A naked fist
at the lever. Pointing south,
toward the invisible levee.
The bed under my feet still
flying that belongs
to a dead squaw. Awakening,
restlessly, the poem of Cortez
touching the gulf. Holding
a child in its hardened
fists. The naked man
at the upended cart. Suspension.
Lie. Well full of wishes.

The hard cock pointed to the side, northeast.

XIX.
The vista toward us. You
think of immaculate conception.
"Where are they, four walls?"
Only two in the distance. A
monolith. Bandage to the wound.
Broken river winding
down. You point to the athletic
torso, the hardened calves.
The flat shoulders, the decade
of work, the small chest.
The abdomen full of ovaries or flies.

XX.
The short filter on a
cigarette. "Southern fist."
Full of jewels, isn't it?
The books are charisma,
the psalms are charismatics,
they prick the faith healers
with baby wounds
and brandish rocks
in front of us. The kings
hand us the gifts instead.
Silk brassieres. Paper
fountains. A sound cue
in a line of verse. The failing
badge I carry across this bridge.

XXI.
Ardent ways. The fission
of the train. Amoeba arms
reaching out from
the threshholds, reaching
for the tin signs. Your
jawbone sick. Barrabas
merging. The abbot
in steel. Methamphetamines.
The edge. The calculated
risk. Prayer of the people.
Circles in your eyes.

XXII.
Your conscience. "Ready
for resurrection
on all terms." The poet
wakes up. A sudden politburo
makes a decision.
Your mind is 1910, your hands
carry an ivory shawl in dreams
while you wear
the blue shawl.
To you I am newsprint.

XXIII.
Rubber ball with
stains of a ghost. The imprint
of the judge
on the turquoise shift.

Emerald shoulders,
it is unto you I fail.

XXIV.
The imprimatur. The twenty-third
psalm. My hand trembles
while I stand
in front of the altar of trees.
We read all of the books, the Scriptures,
then set fire to the forest,
building our altar
out of wood stumps and ash.
"Exquisite choice." Plain division,
simple wind. It is simple to see,
the pink clouds funneling out of the vista,
the whip folded under a cape, the edges
with no points, the tire marks
at the foot of the wall and the street
disappeared.

Sins, only the most remarkable sins.

XXV.
Immeasurable rivers,
once all trenches
beside the rancho. Now we sit
in front of the cathedral
with the backs of the holy men far away.

The holy war is over,
the siege of crop flown with it,
the oil steeped into the ground,
the modern-day Inca
battling new-fangled sweat,
the heels of the men
reared back from a gallop.

They do not turn around.


12.31.99—01.05.00
los angeles, CA