Sweetest moments, most fleeting, always?
Her life to her children:
humbly, from these sins learn.
Turn, but look back, naming …
ruined brilliance is amnesia’s mercy,
no bequest quite so envied,
memory serves, goldwatched to a
near seduction, puddling into virtue.
She saints with cruelest eye,
Boethius samsoned in gay prose.
Who believes this? Believe it,
deceit becomes her legend most.
Most, or best, this virgin
trampolines the doughty, dirtbag councilors,
conceding ere she fickle strike,
her scepter’s thought-out spark,
that practiced giggle, fraudulent orgasm,
we love you, emerald Majesty,
believe us please, come away,
assassins tempt our unwed midst.
Fever peaks, her locks’ loss
kingdom’s moreover, best or most.
She asks after you, mortmain,
what answer give we back?
No fucks so witty when
the librarian dreams of arson.
And does she dream? Delighting
in matchstick music, ash applause?
Cries cry and fires roar
and even unlettered audiences know
what’s happening here is bad.
She can dream, can’t she?
Glass closet domed with pain
and baize tabletops arrogant with
sunning words, innocent of her.
She whistles arson’s piped parade,
dreams Queen Elizabeth the First
(nonesuch, and shrilled pavonian blue).
What then were these things?
Reflect – worship – pray – read – think.
Done down to nothing none,
done down to Bess, Beth,
Betsy, and why not smile?
Spring scums the folded hands,
eyes flirt their spermy wash,
brides’ knees lift casual walkaway.
Given, fallen, and so risen,
no riddle but simply love.
(Gretchen barks inside my ear
loud as shotgun-damaging loud)
ambiguous number, measure and weight
sledge-quoited out of context.
Spread light across the table,
inflict on it my shadow,
white words behind gray eyes.
Dogs dream, cats thieve – write.
Thumbed anthology of habitual sins
organized along some principle of
small or unexpected division: by
climate, say, or stray periodization
(less bogus Marxism or Ariel
Durant than immigrant’s civic catechism).
Tired yes, reluctant, no, not
quite number, measure, and weight.
Sound out an unknown language,
mistakes a three year old
would, eyes wide, worry over.
Rain upsets the shoddy craftless
counting out, falling the same
the very same, at home.
Awake now, stir words grainwise,
coarse as sugar in tea,
the Bishop’s letter has arrived.
Isidore: the name’s a promise
of puns and penny anagrams.
A name first heard from
Sterling Morrison, wintering through 1973.
–That dunce, Isidore of Seville.
The name’s a promise paid,
beauty grim as Spanish dust,
peninsular, imperial, a hardship post
for lack of sleep, not
books, or wax, or dicta.
I’m not quite ready yet
(for Heaven? ; humble ascension to?)
Broad daylight: still get lost,
suck blood, and poison, out.
Willing to pace my buzz
tongue loose while anchor holds
‘cold food loses its taste’
the charged, erotic, sad rebuke.
No one bars my entry.
I sneak past unannounced, unseen.
Words borrowed from white Clement.
Of Alexandria, city of Alexander.
Faltering, tentative, step stop step.
I thought that all gone,
it doesn’t matter now, none
of it matters now: not
sun, the sea of light,
moon, the light of sea,
pretty stars, night’s sequined robe,
spangles twinkling do as they
the rest that earth emballs.
Dionysius, enthusiast, mused: most goodly
knowing of God is that
which is known by unknowing.
Answer thus: I wot not,
yt ys writ gon mad.
Faith is nothing else then.
Than preconception of the mind.
Prophecy without avail when those
who hear undocile, absent, be.
Loadstone attracts steel through affinity;
twigs drawn to amber teardrop;
lumps set chaff in motion.
Might as well be pirate
on a violin’s stormless sea,
one thousand shades of blue
from Vera’s eyes to bruise.
Spoiled terrier, dreams rain down,
fog ghosts booty round us,
fleet of dockless accusers close
with watery slap shunt by,
pass by and on, vanishing.
Faith penetrates deep, holds you
down in arms of silk.
Lit, the words are earthbound,
calm as tepid breakfast tea,
or cat, with grinning mouse,
from tail to skull, night’s
promise, half tango, half rape.
My garlic is which glossary?
Choose from few the flowers,
since Bishop’s letter has arrived.
Stay with me, convenient darling,
we’ll wake accomplished couplings later,
night unbeaten but us, alive.
Stay with me, we’ll worry
out the Theseus thread together.
Hope springs forward, hope falls
back, weaves, waits, plays possum.
(She wants to be alone.)
Stay with her then, and
see which shyest ego triumphs.
It isn’t faith I’m after.
Life comes in pure short
gasps; life comes in short.
And the Bishop’s letter, unread?
Open it, drink its lines.
***************************
Isidore asks: what secrets do
you share, what binds you
to this shadow-famished girl?
Don’t answer, let me guess …
you’ve let her doppelgang you?
And like all holy men
whose prejudice brackets dust to
dust, exotic purplings cannot shock.
Horned zealotry, made rich with
playful feelings, leads to Love.
Or precedes therewith, how know?
Wait, count, delay your surrender,
perhaps gold need not flood
nor wine be left undrunk
ere some messenger shall return
to you within this lifetime.
Beware the mirrors she employs
lest silly soul soon sink
to bottomless sorrow, barbarous dark.
Praise you her inventive lust
but reprehend her suave audacity.
Here now, just as I
promised, I have brought to
you a remembered work about
the origin of certain things.
Difficult is as easy was.
Isidore will not let up.
Isidore makes all things easy.
My richest crimes? (child’s error) ;
daintiest foibles? (Hell’s lowest rung).
The black and white I
seek are flesh and shadow.
He touches me his pain,
her mouth bleeds tandem pleasure
and laughs at every word
that’s fair, as though we
giggling girls were and gaping
jousters shorn of nice behavior.
Pliant, we glut the cartel,
a river’s rising generously spurred
till angels weep, sore losers.
We’ll scoot along love’s velodrome,
itinerary shrunk to forgotten
names of boys, girls, in-betweens.
Attic poses struck to spray
a chamberful of cumshot mirrors.
I shall free myself from
lust, o Lord, for the
sake of alliance with thee?
Isidore thinks as wild much
and dreams the pretty possibilities.
But icecube, butter, handheld glass?
I give myself most humbly
whether it’s time or not
she’ll tell me when and
where to suffer deepest loss
the why left flutely muted
and for all that is
truly comprehended in this little
pressing of love, touched before
be it never so busy
with accustomed sprigs of sin,
figs sucked clean as finger
pinching thumb’s advance from lips
to cleft’s pedantic greedy lisp.
Oh liar, swallowing even as
you wish it were not?
Scorch the past for plunder,
mark of the fashionable beast,
fishnet souvenir torn from nursery,
the souls of lost lovers,
stamped with the impressions of
objects, loved beyond all reason.
Some words restrain, dud sparklers,
make us turn away, ashamed.
One whispered fantasy too many?
‘Sweet Jesus!’ is a girl’s
cry as much as prayer
in the economy of creation
titled good, with all things
so well, so blithely administered.
Holding seraphic festivals daily, to
cultivate strict fields, droning praise?
To sail the sea, tunelessly
hymning? He doesn’t wait upon
loquacious tongues to interpret inward
dialogue, all mumbles already heard.
Or so, patiently, Isidore insists.
Would it were so easy,
a choice of absent gray
and yet (and yet), presently
pride swells, chases dull humility
offstage, crows like a cock.
Words fail to nourish and
prayer sadly most of all,
a snare drum’s vaporous blast,
liar’s desperate codex farting prim.
Deed spells thought as mother
and thought cries uncontrite surrender.
It isn’t fear after all
but senseless resignation, shrugged relief.
I’ve done all I can.
Would it were so easy,
Isidore, but Heaven’s mosquito free.
My chaos, my best friend?
Smalltalk’s sexual fan: pulvinus, scutica,
armilla (viz: cushion, whip, collar).
Her fibula aches parousian blue
catapotium plush through manmade foam
to drip a rinse of
pearls, penguined as if saddlesore.
Under her ancient open dictionary
my body’s battered lectern gleams.
–Been broken? She taps my
maxilla, calls my shoulders ephippium,
laughing reins tight then loose
(habenas adducere, habenas remiltere, yes?)
rendering my scar-cuffed wrists
a bombyx spectra, the Romans
riding, by reliable account, stirrupless,
from piglet’s villa to disastrous
oyster, gavia-ridden skies lathered
with a sunset like blood.
Golden chaos moans my name
and pouts the outskirt orphanage,
raving shadows bosquing raving eyes.
Trembling sinner hugs her knees
calls down upon his head
the saltmarsh of her tears
the softness of her fury.
I’ll visit you again, perhaps,
perhaps persuadable in your pain?
Shall I prepare the banquet?
Begin the business of persuasion?
For such as is convinced
of the hellish range of
pickpocket domain and does not
suppose His Majesty’s dozed confinement
to limited puny places: believing
at times we are without
Him, might we indulge in
joyful excess night and day?
Isidore sighs for nearness of
the way that heaven ghostly
is, as night down as
up, and up is down.
Cry time, its utter end,
otherwise it shall come quick
to you and wordless knock
your candlestick from its place.
***************************
‘SIN is what I sing’
the fat boy burbles, dicking
commas in the smoky air.
Never so subtle a devil
as this one’s kissing flesh,
sin being the skindeep song.
When temptation pricks past thought,
some obsessions best lain low
‘limit-experience’ to be sure
but why? (repeat this) why?
Sin groans upon gold scales.
Now Isidore to gentle Braulio,
writing to him gossipless gossip
of that priest of Seville
of the church of Cordova
at the episcopal summit clipped,
slipped with a carnal sin
and submerged from a height
of honor to the depth
of sin with mournful ruin
and did I not say?
(over and over and over?)
Naked intent he calls it.
Fear of looking, leaping, lying
cotwise on a girl for
help in what most helpless
is, most all alone forever.
Stop this, read no further.
Windows seem to leak gold
when sun strikes tearstreaked glass.
Heart holds one image longer
as though choice were death
and death’s quick-chosen love.
Linger on gold awhile longer,
night dancing the far side
of the sundown-dazzled hedge.
The clearing (what clearing?) yields
its silence to aprilled chill
a ‘shhh’ that isn’t rain.
Linger on this letter’s body,
this letter’s entrance and gate
that here you may see
what I am of myself.
He said it, not me.
Gold bleeds the sealed sill,
besnowed upon a winter’s day,
dreaming of Sir William Walton
or a thousand vain thoughts
and slinking stirrings of sin,
sun couched down, scorched flick
of prayer beads, rosary cluddered
in fingers frostbit with desire.
Such gaudy names we’ve borne
daydreaming you in winter light
I wanted wanted wanted it
and would not be consoled
as deeply filled your eyes
in mine, rough not ruthless
and dreams skip rehabilitated back.
Call me anything but Holofernes
while you take my head,
your maid as yet uninterviewed
perhaps I felt her shadow?
We lay in halflight dreaming,
moved by love began again,
returned however much it hurt
under the fury of wild
swans, the wode biting bears.
It’s animals then we’re after?
Well might they swarm, if
your eyes be true blue
and glory love your knees.
Birds, bees, baffle Nile’s book,
red threads brown, drowns green,
larks rising over toad assembly.
D minus for your elephant
but monk’s monkey crowns curl
of hideous topmost doubling vowel,
vomits up a little gemstone
word of one stunned syllable:
as is this word ‘bug’
as is this word ‘out’.
Queer, or so it seems,
nothing is allowed to last.
She hungers for my thoughts?
Not exactly, I wouldn’t say.
Vainly damaged, promiscuously pure, feline
when naked in summer sun,
scars like white pencil strokes,
memory serves up uncanny words,
an affair of burning nickel,
paradise the land we passed
through waiting to get clear
of nostalgic sex and immortality,
future unsure but surely bleak
so laugh, sing, and destroy
oh no I will not.
Isidore harrumphs: put down that
girl (that cat, that bottle)
pay heed, God damn it.
(Might I heed AND caress?)
Nippingly his reply, rachelous! YOU,
while availing himself of the
postcoital silence to sweetly harp
on love again: its power:
such that makes all things
common, as rain falls forever
but in few full words,
ever the fewer the better,
knit thee therefore to Him
by love and by belief
He is the very keeper
of time, the truest Doomsman
and the asker of account
as to dispending of time.
What has this to do
with sleeping girl and me?
Forgive me, my interest’s flagging.
Have then your beloved chaos,
till gold and sickle fuse
and clothed with cockles roll
all around in a ball
like hedgehogs in their excess.
Starving converts I lonely disappoint
mimicking Lucifer quoting the gospel …
(her nickname’s L’Apocalypse Joyeuse).
I need of her a
sopping saucerful, sin’s sweet relief.
Skin slick with perspirant dew
lust rivulets winter’s narrow gorge
and clothes come stripping off.
I’ll listen, then dream some
and wit I right well
for fear that I should
be had in dark suspect
for who would hapless spy,
behold me where I lie
along her tide, an it
so were that my eyelids
were open, he should see
me stare as I were
mad, and leeringly look as
if I saw the devil.
Comfort blossoms in her arms,
passion keeps safe the windows
and the watched door, latched,
for flies and enemies trespassing.
We lay still that night,
trusting in such mercy, and
then she began to pray.
***************************
My pain as such is
just a dream of gold.
Glass is the hollow accusation,
what lies behind no longer
my concern. Rain fell for
twice the length of time
allotted by the gods for
any mortal’s dry-eyed swan
song (twice as long as
death’shead moths are said to
live). Fog, tears, wine in
unwashed flutes, something by Chabrier
on the antique record player.
Any vignette worth recording perhaps
Then worth living? X says
What Y repeats and Z
Rewords at yet another time.
Time to pay attention, X?
Hell is not the others,
years have passed to waste
and rosy misremembrance. Delivered up,
my quodling words, all in
whispers, like lover to lover.
The mosaic overhead was gold-slugged
with drugged sunset, with midnight’s
random orgy, ripe quicksilver shot.
What color is it now?
Dolphins bump the strobed breakers,
teal and drake, and somewhere like
a tapped drum, daemonicola words
snap free, a needle creams
with blood, a sip of
tomboy wine, candied, fornax, the
axe falling. Effete nomad, I
beg forgiveness. What steeple jump
I from? Interfrictive party girl,
noired with shivered smoke (are
you there?) my voice turtles
to blur, punked with upstart
needs of upstart others, my
slit their lancing resting place,
celestial magpie mudpie-frocked. A lute
at the Gate of Heaven,
to play me tickling in?
Why not cry ‘paradise’ as
though it were a ripping
lark? Shattered ansula of horn,
stunned laughter, rain falls down
to bless us as we
(you still there?) fall asleep.