Matter / 7

Transcendent late night seeds
in front of the fireplace
there is a family of man,
and a family of you, plant,
tomato, lettuces, pitbull,
bull frog, coyote and the
moon, but who listens, and
who, awake, at the seed bed
rouses all the meaning of the
meeting of the seed inside
the dirt, of rock songs,
of car wheels, of fleabane,
of the aster and the shale,
irregular in its regularity,
regular in its irregularity,
a weeping cherry tree,
a sound beside a pond.

on learning
there is much to learn
and some of it is as difficult to learn
as it is difficult to follow real-time
linguistic constructions that are or may be
as real as a drawing of a line is a real line
and not a representation of it
how to say she thinks
as she writes now to say

for instance:
the Native American speaker speaks of herself as an Indian which the non-native American speaker who is of course a native American avoids for the socially sensitive locution that marks the racist reality and is therefore wrong and right at one and the same time and real as any drawing of a line is a real line and not a representation of it during which the Indian has been speaking of herself as a member of the pomo tribe (all this comes to mind) it is for this reason she feels lucky not to have been out to lunch or to have missed lunch most of the time to make the most of the reality of time to come to what the member of some other tribe might call as luck would have it or a technono stammer whose accidental phonemes invite someone to make sense again anew alight upon another case of what the hell bon appetit!

Mailbomb: I had a mug of coffee sitting on my desk.
Mantis: I reached out my hand and picked up the mug.
Market: I had several pieces of paper in front of me.

Reaction:
I suddenly began to hate the Specialist
wild and white choreography unleashed
on a semiotics-ignorant public--

The fine young artificial
proto-mullets are so natural
brazen vessels, buttery-soft.
I continued to sit there for a while.
It was a terrifying and grotesque site,
but the Specialist continued:
"Say, did you sleep with Francoise?"

Playboy: The lace on one of my shoes was undone.
Plutonium: I depressed the switch on the side of the kettle.
Plutonium: I continued to sit there for a while.

Pseudonyms:
"Just as the film was about to start, Guy-Ernest Debord would climb on stage to say a few words by way of introduction. He'd say simply: 'There's no film. Cinema is dead. There can't be film any more. If you want, let's have a discussion.'"

Data-haven,
the counterfeit siblings
(William Gates)
covert video:

so natural
I'm no longer self-conscious
using my hand
when the convulsions had subsided.

Buddhistic and bland

It is a crowd
every soul of which
imagines he knows

where he is going,
near enough to
peer over a neighbor's

shoulder, close enough
to smell the fires
where the implements

are heating; every soul
presses to find a space
unclaimed by any other,

as if the whole scene--
the wagon packed
with prisoners, the canopy

fluttering over the platform
where the last stroke
will fall, the cluster

of half-sloshed soldiers
guarding the perimeter--
were staged for the benefit

of each pampered
spectator imagining
himself blessed

in his momentary
vantage, free from harm
or restraint, pushing forward

toward where the crowd
parts, just wide enough
to enjoy the show

The sun is what upsets the air.
At night, all's calm. In the glow of
far cities, it's easy to cross the wrong
airspace, and wind up carried in a gold
catamaran to the water, and sailing
towards the clouds where the
mountains are, leaving dogs
and crows around a bonfire or
a wall of smoke, across a gold hill,
spilling from the torn bits of
the new cardboard card, copying
the old plastic card, copying money.
copying enslavement to birth and death,
that black road ending in a white mist
by the ruins of a tavern where the
Revolt of the Spirit was betrayed,
where what would have been
a landmark is now a men's room
with pictures spread out on the floor:
cunts and assholes glazed with spectacular
ejaculate, some photogenic jelly, more
than any testicle sack could manage,
lungs and liver would fail, thought
itself turn inside out, in moods
no medicine can master. The
kayak drifts. Broken slopes glitter
in the shadow of an iceberg. You
search for the root that will dissolve
the venom in you. The car spins.
Police at the scene confide: "We think
that reddish swirl in the violet sky is
a planet, but in the wrong place."
You offer: "This may be due
to a talisman I buried in a field,
the Virgin of Guadeloupe, half eaten
by scorpions drunk on occult starlight."
A chill has freed the leaves of their green,
while over at the aquarium, the dolphins
are eager to please whoever holds
the fish bucket. Despite all the
eerie disillusionment, you resume
your petition to the Firearms Board.
But cursive is a joy your lazy hand
fails. Your words are no more
than a funnel cloud, sucking dust,
paper, and unsecured items into the sky.
(Of so much, only a hint, Chevalier,
due to your sensualism.)
Leaves glow in the wet light.
Salamanders of lightning shoot
down the sky's wall. A beauty from
Brazil slips a vanilla bean in your
coat as the room turns the color
of a swimming pool. In 400 years,
the boat of absolute belief will cut
back across these waters. Will
you be ready to board it?

just after daybreak, the habits of the face animal
or other animals in the endlessness
of the eyes baked through them. The light
carried with the morning air, smelling
so sweet in what's left
of this pot, of little fire under
the broth - cooked for days only
for the thing itself to have meat
fall off the bone
that at the end, softly, like
a form thrown onto the water
will split from the shadows

when I was little what I liked most
was to create worlds--
the unearthed gardens I grew wild
beneath a sheet of glass, so much
more powerful with a miracle
of smashed beerbottles colored
beads polished by rain
transmuted truly into almost pure
emerald, ruby,
I have made

to have eyes
that remember shapes, better still
be the one who can see
the thing and see into it

strip of clay bends until
the subtle luminous movement
is empty and dry
- "to make a vase or bottle means
to make the inside" - splintered
reflections
of what we know
wrap around themselves in a sequence
of colors of patterns the quiet
giving-given from the neck down
and into what comes
to the present with this gesture
of doing, repeating a sound
that is a place of the first opening

looking through
the glass onto the dying
bodies -- skies, stripped of their distance
realities halfway out
of the frame

Make yourself timeless. How
Moon yellows the hills,
Makes your torn hands
Meander, your tongue hairy.
Might you torture her.
Might you transform her,
Meaning yew. The hell
Mouth yawns, then howls
Music -- yours. The horned
Mare yanks the halter,
Makes you the hunted,
Marks your trembling. Her
Mother yelps; the hag
Means you terrible harm.
Might you tickle her.
Might your trickery have
Many yellow teeth. How
Moon yokes those heavenly
Monsters, your tiger horses.
Mask your treachery, holy
Man. Your torn heart.
Make yourself the hero.

I'll never forget that night when
none of us said a single word;
why the none category is growing.
Light are you a particle, it said "yes,
subject to disentegration."

O dark departure.
None of us is as dumb as all of us.
We could have said something else,
something stronger. It was all about
us becoming women while our
three headlights were dying.

The prison barber came running to us and said,
"Light are you a wave," it said "yes."
Now we lie in bed most of the day.
Jesus said, "If you have two coats,
give one to him who has none..."

O tender pre-war night!
O village blacksmith!
Before this wilderness of waters reached us
the sun warmed both of us for hours.
None of these thoughts require language
between midnight and one in the morning.
None of these bible pushers has ever
stopped to change a blown tire
by the side of this or any other road.

Having said that, accidents do happen.
Having said interludes annoy me,
a lot of people said the third floor was haunted.

Riddle in the front seat with his brother,
Brigham Young, who said, "If you went to Heaven
and saw God it would be Adam and Eve"
just as the mobilization posters were going up.
We understood that our Chevy was now a Yugo.
None of us could sell our homes.
None of us is as smart as all of us.
None of us were expecting.
None of this is correct.
And although we were both grown women,
we had just been born.

L'entrée de ma vulve est peut être ex-centrique;
Le défilé étroit ne conduira plus les cierges dans
le grand cimetière.
Dans le vestibule une grande Rotonde et
un grand mirroir reflètent des blocs erratiques.
A partir de là :
Prendre par la cathédrale à pas de crime;
L'immense draperie s'ouvre sur la galerie des brigands.
Continuer, continuer;
Passer les cristallisations, les colonnes;
Traverser le lac jusqu'à la galerie des Merveilles
et atteindre la Perle des Cavernes.

Light shines through the burlap
of the sack tied over my head
there is the tree
they are going to hang me from

I am writing out of my body
the mob of my cells left behind now
some skinny crow lands on the dirt road right in front of me
a cow lifts its head, just like in the movies
as the rain starts I begin to dissipate too
there is moss on one side of the tree
and ferns lots of them, and small brown furry animals
nosing around on the ground
because there is a corpse there--it used to be me--
and they want to know if it's something to eat
so they tentatively circle it, then move on
deciding against its edibility

Undead in the air and almost dispersed
I remember a black tar road in summer
I am going from somewhere to nowhere now
over that hill, maybe
or maybe not
another ragged bird pecks at the ground in the distance
thin orange legs, an odd beak that's been chipped away
its one eye looks human, intelligent

the road becomes sand and the water I've heard all along
is now too loud for me to remember where I put the box of
some object I desperately need
so I zigzag through time and space
there are red cars lined up
at night, chrome shining in the moonlight
I hear the sound of shoes on a sidewalk
after the last live car on the highway above
drives past, obviously not stopping
there is a lake it is early in the morning
the sound of water drips off the oars
as does the water itself

From an oak at dusk comes a word
Coaxed . hooded & as yet unsung
Even in this evening time timid
Light is painful to her eyes

Permission to know more of this place
Seeps from her solitary expression
Repeated . but she neither sings nor
Reveals her self willingly . & never alone

Low from woods' shadowed musk-rose carpet
A twin is enjoined . an utterance sharp-eyed & bold
Paired sisterly through each summons across time
Fathered . whispered anew by the end of day

High in oak's company shadows of western woods
& man-made structures center the sun's late rays
Between force & allowance to illuminate a geometry
Odd of branch & leaf . a brief, deep scope

Womb - but no song - not yet

We wait as the confident one rises & plays again
A sibling's trick composing night & compelling
Lower maples' zephyred leaves to rustle
Turning up their silver dry under-sides

Only by such familiar enticement
Does the shy word lift her hood
Only then do the sisters sing
& only then do they weep.

Thornton from the West Indies writes to us,
Care Tuttledue (Dear Two-of-you) and into
my stitches his hibiscus writhe, his ten million
lizards scandal in terribly brief rain
he went walking. Gertrude says countries suffer
from fathers (except the English, they haven't
got one right now and are more cheerful)
and I read aloud Thorny again
then about a beautiful cake made of nothing
but cream and flour, adding an oh so
to my black border, my long slender needle,
a woman guided, guided away

Dear T,
my sweet sweet sweet sweet sweet tea,
into our photograph this hard line
of distance, simply! Just between us
and all ours. Aphotographing
we will go, Basket along, our dear pooch,
such curlicues. Rue de Fleurus' garden
dims in the rug-dust; blurred
is the countryside, all ahouse! Listen
to the lightness in our in-between.
Even after we're gone, a love
measure by clear measure thank you little little lens

Plunked in a glass pot with a bit
of ocean and nicely. Leo's found
a ctenophore! Hi ho hydra,
clean little keep, I am quite
sick of Quisset Beach, too hot, full
of woodworm, impolite puff.
Scowling, I arrange you on a plate.
Discover your other spellings.
Now that's done we won't quarrel.
Nor will we have our solitude.
In each particle of your splendor,
an asparagus, a turn of the stranger.

Everything will be with you already
all the while you go on waiting
there is another sturgeon swimming
peacefully towards you this second
her belly charged with eggs for you
you get to understand, knowledge is caviar
the old man said, swinging his racket on the roof
testing once again (so many years)
the Ghibelline light. No one wants it
because when the General knows you have it,
you're a marked woman, the old man said,
or man as it happens, you are a shadow
cast by candles on a gold mosaic wall
and you last no longer than the morning.

And there was snow in Venice this year
on the little bridge with the Hebrew street sign
telling how you find the House of Study,
that fervent observation the others call 'prayer.'
Snow on old tile, dangerous, snow
settling on water, a dream dreaming a dream.

This little book, questo librettino, I got it
from my German mother, my Jewish mother
as it happens if the truth be known, o knowledge
of all days compressed in this, this night also
the snow is spoken, and so I read
"Henry Menaced by Wolves; or, Prayer Never
Goes Unanswered," who knows who wrote it,
a long walk home he had of it,
not even counting the snowflakes,
their eyes all round him, their breaths
observable in every shrub
as little puffs of bluish steam
sifting through foliage, low to the ground,
the bushes breathing, and the boy decided
Mamma told me God is everywhere
so those are His eyes I see all round me
gold as His crucifixes hot as candle wax
I will not fear except with that praiseworthy
fear of God they say is proper
though I have never felt it yet, maybe this
is it now, since God is a baby in a manger
far littler than me, or God is an old man
bound and fettered, tied to a cross
and dying, pity and not terror
is what comes of that, but those yellow
eyes are on me now, they must be He,
how many eyes you have o Lord!
The better to behold you, sang the wolves
and waited.

I don't recollect
what became of little Henry after that,
the old man said, the years have bound me
to this chair I made once for another,
and then they took my books away
across this interminable room, long
out of armshot, shadows for breakfast
and a bird on the roof of the garage
for lunch, is it time for my ravioli yet,
my glory?

The ambulance got lost on the canal,
no matter, he felt better after eating,
went to his desk and later managed
to play some tennis for a quarter-hour
lobbing the ball against the house wall
all alone, no one to play with, pale
Tyrolean sky, just his instruments alone
and the mosaic in which he stands
fixed for a thousand years but only
as a shadow is, until the next
dose of medicine goes down, Lenin calls,
Christmas trees thrown out after Candlemas,
their tinsel and angel hair still on them
cluttering the bonfires with threads of light.