continued from <!-- m -->http://www.spiritplants.org/phpbb/viewtopic.php?t=1140 (http://www.spiritplants.org/phpbb/viewtopic.php?t=1140)<!-- m -->
******
Consider
Travel to a yesteryear brown to its soft
bones, sleep wild in crabbed universes &
wake with a terrified shout, what this place,
what its people, who are you? Who am I?
I live crooked among songs & watchful
among men. This yesteryear's city held my
love once, awhile, forever, & gone. What resides
within still the feeding seeds below wounds & old grooves.
******
Softer
When will the mystery give it free or devolve
to scraps & stains? I ask, love it all
sloppy & music, learn little or less from
the hits & loss. Listen, the world is noisy
with urge & delay. Ask, the mystery high
with hard mock, lures every hunger to the next hour.
******
Only
Same park has bled through my years &
we arrive to each other still. The glare
of time this morning acknowledges our
bond, & too our eventual passing.
******
Sorrow
Not for the rusting downtown, there's little
left here to go. Not for the years ran broader
through another world here. Not for the
unbreaking blue over bare skyline, sunset
an endless tail of glare. Sorrow for what
did not happen, yesterday's many hands
gesturing toward paths never followed.
******
Strange Blood
Hard memories root below the belly,
crimson scars where hours bumped & bled,
feed still on thighs' golden want & heart's
disappearing paths. You, the roughest ache,
I can touch where you dwell even tonight. Call
you one name or another, brown eyes full
above, others in tart bedchambers, or the ones
I found mapless & tickless in my dreams. I call
you all strange blood, riding my later years
as hard as I do. You, the roughest ache, root
below the belly, connect one to another as much as
the ancient egg wherefrom & the glaring crumble to come.
******
Revive
Reaching in til scrape, & scrape again,
cross two memories, call it a new hour's
song, reach deeper, sex together path from
wherefrom & hunger's ever, this is
Art, chewing & chewing the mind's bones
til a melody of dust flickers through.
******
Tavern Light
Another night midst the click & clink,
the dancer leaned near me & smiled til
neon birds puffed countless from his lips.
"There's nothing but praise," he whispered.
"It's our only mission. Our only home."
******
High
A wish as I tire of the city's mute, rushing
forms, the cold truck among souls thin & wary
with loot, a wish for somewhere high & strange,
a creature among few, good creatures, fine with
hope, a we by choice not accident. Watching
the shrivel grey this way & pink ripen over
there, asking what for, blood's passing potent,
what for? Counting the beats & the breaths,
this one's green memories, that one's tangled
long for escape. What for? A wish for content
through the empty pocket hours, troughs of crass
neon feed, here is the world in its bite & murmur,
here is the world arcing rhythms through aeon &
race, here is the world, love its spectacle, praise its going.
******
Blue Notes
Slip closely, warmly, eager as small hands
for chocolate, into tonight's dreams, their clues
to your unasked questions, & the strange lights
again, you will be theirs one coming hour, til
then simply bear you gently into sleep, closely,
warmly, old eyes sparking slow by a known
touch, memory like a roar's great reach,
affecting without will, while heeded, worshipped,
slaven to, warmly, eagerly, the ancient
glowing clouds risen below, raw creatures
& shapeless cavern no waking hours illumine,
windows shot out in a building with no exterior,
warmly, eagerly, even when the pursuers
are close & merciless, do they resemble
the lights? Shall they take you at last?
A pocked still face in the cafe's dankest shadow
shakes no, keep on, they're only memories,
their song as great as your lean within.
******
Spectres
I watch a maiden pink smile & speak
deafly, her long fingers flying creatures of blood
& symbol. A party of winter jackets & bright lights
crowd into a nearby cavern. The world sings
of love & uncertainty both. I try to see beyond
the cities of men & only hear unknowable
growls & ice snapping. Neither king nor preacher,
nor the mangy one wet in the long alley, none
know what the night's beauty or danger portend.
******
Weeds
We snap off another's line & into the world,
alone belong to our beat & breath. Weeds
in the shine & blow, no given purpose
but to shine & bloom. We touch, the hour
raves high, the jug is full & bread hot.
All is possible. We part, cry over shards,
curse the blood within & stars about. All
diminishes. Neare, ever nearer, to what,
to where, & why? Walk the ground like
a spring to God, or tap it twice & wonder
how soft its rest will be. Dusk's murky light,
the elusive sound of drums, the young
maiden at her thick book, the tattered master
rasping another day, none can tell the miracle
of alive & its pending fruit. None can tell its cost.
******
Simple Dream
If it was blood burst from my own finger, it was
brown & splashed thin as water. I was split
with anger & loss, breathing narrowly, watchful
doubt of every face, bent unhappy by a path
marred with coins, by the dying green of my
land. Buried the sheaf of musics in winter's joyless
ground. Something's going to bloom better this time.
******
Centuries Arriving
There were spastic amber clouds hovering high
oaks that night, a hundred bare drummers &
then more, a great crowd sexed liquidly toward
the groove & thrust of shared infinity, alike the
clean raw bite of doorless dreams, music for
slickest mutual release, eat it, drink it,
remember it, racial history leaves little remain else.
******
Hallow
What to be recovered in the arching rear
look, where to return with any waking music
but much shaded place near spires & towers
of Empire's sagging heart? How to wrest wrinkles
& fists from pulpit & throne? Another use for
men than muscle & piston? Another for women
than hooks & nesters? World for more than
feeding & dominion? What ignites waking music
in a world slumped in habit? You there. Dare this
hour's far border, depart tubes & tomes, run for
what you do not know! What do you have left?
******
Dominion
The sorrow hit one man & another, taste
this day & its lesser meat, why? Why did
we do this? What in each other did we fear?
What in the further places we beheld within?
What do we do now? How do we become, again,
lesser? Assuming the bondage again, who do we protect?
What do we do with those unconvinced?
What do we do with those *who will not cease?*
******
Enigma
The beggars on winter's wet streets praise
God & dinner alike. Watch a theatre couple
hurry by with envy & enmity. The night is
cold even by cigarette's warm suck. Buy
something from me. Give something to me.
Why you with her? Why you at all? *Something.*
******
LSD 1966
Cease the tide by cursing the moon?
Crush the drumheads, men will tap stones
to oaks. Bind a woman's fire & she will lay
dreaming coming stars. Green breaks your
fist at every shade & angle. Freedom bears
your cluster of nots but in season they too will fall.
******
Haunting
Yesterday, no, years away, call youth
the sugared days, soft-boned heart, cageless,
& a great moon nearly close enough.
Years, throbbing fans in a thousand separate
rooms, unhappy waits, clockless kisses, meals
& mirrors, evidence of nothing more than passing.
Youth, roots, tangle, muck. Love arcing a
mottled sky, hard clumsy rain of hours called
self, sadness follows below on swift, broken feet.
******
Spectral
The cafe's old man rants on the endless
spiking reach of the Empire, I sit with
his pencilled maps of Old Europe & figures
denoting webbed bloodlines of power, sad.
We sum to lost centuries men have spent
discovering their blunt truths. Hunger & fear.
Maybe curiosity, too, on prettier, well-supped days.
******
Melt
Flesh sniffs flesh, little muted by
tight pink band or leather mask,
dig through your tomes & preacherly nays
for explain, & none. Flesh does not
muse or cogitate, fingers pressing
for lace's undoing, thighs tighten at a
buttock's twitch, lingual grunts of tongue
code for hard & have & take. Flesh wants now.
Drums for forest caterwaul & crown's new
conquest alike raise to knock flesh high
& calm, pay out its spasm for king or
beauty, direct hand from blood's heated
cheek to trigger or crowd's ecstatic tumult.
Untwist limbs, relax into mind's order,
time's duty, patience pretty with sacred golden
statuary, the quiet rolling pulse of blooms,
the lively hellish jostle of brother against
brother. Then long fingers spark sun in
a dulling eye, notice a bared foot wrestling
the surf's white growl, remember to the
lure of slow lick & moan's urging fret.
Then dreaming where flesh twines heat, many
tight backs roar in need, fire runs from
every pore touching pore, why finally crumbles
in the long grind, & all are sated in lawless union.
******
Soma
Where then, sense opened to the talk
among clusters of trees, how starlight
arrives & returns both, signs of revolution
everywhere where once boredom, dull coins
& days. Where then? Join tribes in the
mountains, caterwaul & bonfire, electric
limbs crossed bright with spiced honey's
kiss, where then? I'm high, I'm awake,
I'm open. Universe, which path shall I be?
******
Cost
Art, rummage the hours, nudge secrets
& wounds for a dust something like melody,
for a fruitful cluster of beats, for a line
high or low, for what crosses & reck the spark.
The wince, the pleasure. Old anger stones
to the cleared hill, sweetness the beams &
walls, hope the rooms. Too little, hit them,
& again. Something's left. There. And there.
******
Golden
What hasn't happened yet, bright funky
fineness to come, the golden swoop without
end. Blood wakes at dawn, ready again for
the world to explain. God, fine ass, lessing tides.
******
Warp
What true music tease from the loose angles,
webs in the glass, where the warped eye rests
& pursues. Brief violet dusk, now a loathing
metallic rain, now calm again, noisy glow,
how pry the hour wide, its bloom's fecund
remain? What place men in this world but
restless, moving flesh, craving songs & cities?
******
Scriptural
Wedding binds blood to blood by vows & wish.
By rose, by lace, by eager witness of
men & women. By mystery's sanction & praise.
******
Bind
Blood binds to night's caterwaul by the
smearing smack of high flesh, two pretty
beats & a hard breath, call it Art, bristling
scars in a man's well-worn quiver raise
about the heart crown & cage, are these
years saying best path neither to nor from
but a shifting path in the wild pitch?
******
Trauma
Canna tell you it doesn't hurt, you know that
for yourself. Canna tell you that love doesn't
lure back, you've traveled there too. Canna
say much explains when too many odd hours
prick the package, her secret hotel embrace,
his cry of stumbling power to the hard winter's
blow. What overlays the years, what meshes,
what calls back to worship if you will, a hurt face,
a smiling hour, the hope dearest when dreaming
with scant other. Canna tell you where it's bound,
or why, or worth. But feel it, warmth grubbing
for warmth tonight, & somewhere a song &
showers of light reign down. Feel it, the hardest
creature shuffles in dream to near something.
Feel it, the rhythm & beat within urging about,
old memory, brief blossom, future's quick muse.
Feel it, that best truth, ever a stranger's curious knock.
******
Sanction
Call it the sunshine hustle for coin,
smacking pink flesh, music hungry enough
to bear starlight, lawless hands tame a
little by preacher's nays & king's hard lean.
Lookee there, how it moves by wing, by sinew,
by fin & buzz, all is hunger, desire is true law,
for a curving hue of melody, for a smoking
bite of flesh, for a kindness unbegged. Lovers
& armies alike crack open gladly in the tumult,
skins marred, breath clutched & released.
We bloom best by spasm's arcing cry, by the
music tapped within let free, by the years'
mysterious shift from take to share to give.
******
Muses
Desire is true law. Say again. How each
of you so loved, seam & sinew to very life,
how you entered me doorlessly sweet, kindling
to crack every why, how you left among
charred bones & needless alarums. How I
sang sucker's prince to every tide & crescendo.
Want slowly bears its own demise, passion's
widest hour begs, & passes, births each new hungry hour.
******
Watering Music
My wish would be an hour's content for each
of you, plain sun & long grass, a touch with
desire, a sparkle hinting God, sweet earth in
a taste of bread, a dreaming finish in your
heart's native tongue. A long memory, too, for
years when dread-deep in the rough little consoles.
******
Glaze
This music wanting for the greater chimes,
cleaved long to night's dreaming heat,
hustle & near it, by soft, by conjure, by plea,
what the great world still peeping in its
shell? Wanting for the greater chimes, call
it God or a closer starlight, a whither to space,
a taking sweetness, convincing in its quiet roar,
long waiting first discover. This music
will sing endless to its end, mystery bound
in acceptance, open hands to these skinless
hours, what love. What love! Startle & awake.
Sudden again these fruits of music in hand,
roused beasts around the weeping gape, what
known now, what known ever? Consider.
There is blood. There is cosmos. There is song.
Ragged figures in the rain. Nobody knows. Say again.
What music does not diminish ever throb
its faith into a knot, & calls it Art.
******
Cathartic
Drawn to our wedding hour, its public vows &
crowded wishes, its unknown garments worn by
an altar plainly scented of men. Give its tome
of instructions a level-eyed praise in return,
little knowing if the flaming creature stuck to its
heart is any truth more than crimson curtains
burning in a ceaseless desert war, or the steaming,
howling forms in dreams, or the small, mottled
creature hid motherless on a cloudy moving steppe.
What answer? Sadness & morning light. What truth?
The disloyal remembrance of days for days. Vows
will root awhile, through give & take & share,
& a beat, & begin again. Why the universe,
why desire? Vows at the altar explain in passing,
will diminish to weeds along the path. No hour
waits without mystery, & a coiled thought to break
& new want's fiercest blood. Still, bear the vow &
smile the wish. We shall wed & twine further our
song, flush our root higher from joined will
alone, share an ocean between our hearts, &
hope to endure its many changing tides.
******
Remain
I will call no common God my own,
& thus splintered from the mass of men,
their tomes cry a rampage, a gleam, a subtle,
howling way. Upon me a mist, a light,
a crooning sugar, a want to move nearer
all ways, I do not know what or how.
Wish to kneel & kiss the ground, none of it,
magick perches plain upon every beat
& breath, hand for hand in the wall of
beggars longer every night, in the farthest
jungle & feeding cove, in the trash among
the treasure in one's going red flow.
Find me there if you would look, singing
helpless in rushing black ink, looking to
men & seeing, above them, trees, looking
to trees & recking their sunshine lovers,
looking to sunshine & what there to know?
Universe ever climbing its own beam to fall
untold within. What fetches on this cryptic
twining, what divides & suffers to know,
what joins by chorus & feeding? Tell the moment
when a heart falls, a limb gives way, two
creatures cross past formula, morning light
shows a fallen barn's many dews, within
a bullet loads near its quarry, still dreaming
its lost mate among the quiet strews.
************
Stranger
Path blows stranger with the years, across
hands gentle from back to back, vows
so near the heart, later dust from old tracks.
You are my beloved when the rest but sung
scatters on the page, my love a mystery
sweet jagged in my veins, my fidelity &
hope when the world but a great yowling
banditry. One true note. We need to keep breathing.
Everything to go, everything to lose, everything to behold.
******
Joint
To play one true note, every & again,
here I am, no more veils, this word,
the next, beat it hard, beat it true,
one true note, all is possible, I know
sunshine again today, hear mutter
in what they call dream, a wind resembling
an old day's joy, one true note, this
morning toward a softer knowing, shhh,
nothing more than evidence of passing,
the wild green of that fullmoon blaze,
the twists by which a soul comes the years.
One true note, music in a buzz & secret icon.
Here I am. No more veils. This word. The next.
******
Wedding
Vow union again, in a night crackling
with high want, world exploding every
moment in feeding & making new. None
lone as seems yet what dearest joining
perpetual? Only bid fidelity to what sings
true to the sweet burst within.
Vow union again, to what warms near
the laughing ache, twines close like blankets
& blood, slow acceleration to break the
strutting prows of kings & preachers. Slow,
til a mad heart's sudden spark, tracing love's arc
through emptiness, like an egg dreaming new songs.
Vow union again & reck all the world
God, & best wish to live like an endless prayer,
chase with green's swinging power, wonder
how, wonder how. How to live & why?
Can any tell & be sure? Where melt the
gone days, where fetch the old wants?
Vow union again, & dare this hour's
far border, shudder to love with both fists
wide open, blow out the bent years & books,
walls & greeds, daylight grumbles for meat
& coin & tit. Remember: all is real, clap twice,
all is maya. Breathe, relax. See what remains.
Vow union again, tis a new song canna
be sung alone, hard strum the dust, sniff
by what crevices in the melody, sweet burst
within. Sudden spark, night high, higher,
crackling with want, cry out! What croons
worlds listens, & listens for all. A beat. Another.
Vow union again, love at fiercest angles
to a strange, ceaseless war, love a new mother
wooing in the dark, love a prophet yet
unfound by his feeding, believing beasts.
Conjure better to come with backs strong enough
for this hour's truth, & willing for the next.
We vow to live this world in all its going beauty,
great, crumbling, how helpless happy it passes.
RS 2-5-2005
Seattle, Washington
this morning added 'consider,' i was still traveling in my youth's land, & grappling with where it is near my heart, where it is no longer, how it changes each time i visit, about once a year of late, how it does not...i found so many places gone...& realized i alone mourn them, for i alone saw them in the first place...i think this is how it is for everyone...we see some things together over time, but some we see & remember alone...
tonight added 'softer,' always asking the same questions, never hardly coming up with an answer leads to other than next song...heh
tonight added 'only,' i wrote at a park i call cement park, one that i've going to write at for decades...so many lives in this one i've visited it...named my years-long book after it...glad to see it recently & show it briefly to my beloved KD :)
this morning added 'sorrow,' writing from an all-night coffee shop i used to pretty much call home during my college days, i nicknamed it the people's donutshop, in the middle of a dying factory town, a downtown devolving to boarded up stores & shady looking figures...but it was much of my world for a decade or more, & i sat at this joint, looking out to the sky, or turning within to look at the tattered patrons, old, poor, betting their few coins on the lottery or the racetrack, the kind who may have seen more & other but now at best remember...i listened, & the day i wrote this poem i listened too, one feels far from anywhere in places like this, the news happens elsewhere...it was a visit steeped in sentiment...yet writing something new continued my affection for the place nonetheless...when i was green & knew little of the world it allowed me to sit with my books, walkman, notebooks, & try to learn more by my own wits...
tonight added 'strange blood,' the last of the pomes written during trip to see kinfolk, this one on the plane flight back to seattle...travel into the past, a lot of dust gets rutted up...glad to return here, home as i know it now :)
this morning added 'revive,' which pretty much sums up my view on Art, chewing up your soul, spitting out the song, waiting awhile, do it again...
this afternoon added 'tavern light,' remembering my poet/dancer/madman friend amante, and the seattle bars we ran through for a week years ago...recently found myself back in one, sipping soda pop, but remembering who he was at his highest, dearest...
tonight added 'high,' a loud, tired rant song about trying & strange result, & trying again, & ok if not love the try itself then nothing much else...
tonight added 'blue notes,' a poem wove of many of my dreams & fears, things that crave me in the night, and we brawl, i suppose, but with the closeness of things made from the same blood, & ether, that closely...
this morning added 'spectres,' from a night with KD at a local coffeehouse, looking around, the joint full of laughing deaf folks, a strange boutique nearby grand opening and hosting a party, the effects of invisible connections among things....
this morning added 'weeds,' it was in response partly to scriptural metaphor referring to people as flowers in a garden, & as sheep, really annoying passive metaphors...weeds is my preferred day...
this morning added 'simple dream,' my dreams are vivid, often violent, & when i tap into them very potent for drawing Art into being....
added 'centuries arriving' this afternoon, some kind of belief that racial memory is not exclusively or even foremost transmitted by material culture...which documents, but does not bear but a trace of the brute blood of existence...other ways do...
sometimes i try to rouse sadness & gloom over world's prospects into soemthing singing high, i push as hard as i can, i went for the rilke 'archaic torso of apollo' vibe at the end...unsure the result...
there's something at the end that says to me: Desperate! Now! Last burst of energy while you still remember how energy feels. Go!
tonight added 'dominion,' i was thinking about how far things stretched in the 60s, how people were reaching out in every direction toward the world and toward each other, and how such things exist now but not so commonly, there is a fear it seems of trying again, a sense that it would only fail again...so maybe better to just look nearby, not to far, too high or too low...
tonight added 'enigma,' it was a cold night in seattle when I wrote this some days ago, many rich & poor folks alike were out on the streets, some with homes to return to, some not...KD & I were celebrating me finding work, finally, after so much effort & more than a few disappointments...we bought a street paper from a lady who smiled & shivered & launched into her woe, coughing...i thought about the differences that lead one to home, or to something not home, at night's end...no answer no matter how extended the mull...
tonight added 'LSD 1966,' an angry poem about California outlawed acid, the first US state to do so, & soon followed the world...& how futile it was in the long view to do so, & how detrimental to all, & how the psychedelic revolution, which belongs to the ongoing existence of all creation, can no more be stopped than the wind by a fist...heh, i lot for six lines :twisted:
later tonight added 'haunting,' sad over youth & what does & does not come later...
this afternoon added 'spectral' from a years-ago memory of a sudden, charming, nutty old man, took me a few hours away from the ongoing dark of the time...
this afternoon added 'melt,' a poem about sex, desire, it's always present, & changes the world minute by minute, great & small...
this morning added 'soma,' on my mind was the first time I journeyed by entheogens, & the first time others did too, over the centuries, in all places, that sense of larger joining that simply this town, this year, etc. A sense of joining in the world, more awake, first time awake at all perhaps, & not knowing how to move in the new light everywhere...
tonight added 'cost,' one of those tries at explaining what i do, why, for many years when so much else in people & events come & gone...melody like stirred dust...something in that thought...
this morning added 'golden,' every new day lures, even the ones which seem to have the least promise, souls enter & hope for the new twist unexpected...
tonight added 'warp,' i'm always looking for how the edges of things, the shadows, the obscure affect all, what is missed by not looking elsewhere than center stage, shining lights...
this morning added 'scriptural,' i was asked by KD's mom for a very brief bit of poetry for the wedding program, i wrote this at lunch in a coffeehouse shadow, first day at job, i think...i was going to expand it, but, not, it stands alone in its utterance...KD's mother is very religious, this was my communication to her & others, my attempt to find where we stand near one another...
tonight added 'bind,' a blow against the strictures people help onto themselves, and reinforce day by day until they little feel their burden, and limit...
this afternoon added 'trauma,' while traveling in chicago, this pome my belief that cruelty is less the truth than need, always...
this morning added 'sanction,' another damned rant, but i like the phrase 'smoking bite of flesh'...and 'desire is true law' is another current idea of mine...it was 3 am in chicago last night, i was in an all night poor people's eatery, and the hour seemed to yelp this belief in pain...
this morning added 'muses,' a song for old loves, and for what i think now, that desire tangles, teaches, leads one through life, for better for worse...other ways, too? i am wondering...
this morning added 'watering music,' written sometime deep in the rainy seattle night, i had just enough waking in me lift to send love flying out here & there...
this morning added 'glaze,' which reads to me very like one of my 6 x 36 nocturnes...a lot of mileage to be gotten out of singing for and from want, with defiance, and something akin to hope...
this morning added 'cathartic,' the first of several wedding poems that conclude this series...as my wedding day drew near, i thought of it more deeply than i ever had...suddenly it was real, and near...the sober and joyous truth of it...
this morning added 'remain,' the next in the wedding sequence of poems that conclude this series...if not belonging to one of the major religious institutions of one's day, there is a tendency to feel outside, or rebellious, some form of 'other,' i think it is more important to get some grounding in what one does believe in, and work it to wider & clearer spaces...
this morning added 'stranger,' more of a love poem than some previous, i think weddings sometimes as they get nearer become less about love and more about endurance...i was trying to remember the roots that matter more than the ceremony...
this morning added 'joint,' written the morning of my wedding day, in the church basement men's room in fact, heh...this is the penultimate poem of the whole series...the last one is still being finished...again...
this afternoon posted 'wedding,' the last poem of this series...it took five weeks to finish this poem...originally wrote it on the night of my wedding to KD, new year's eve 2005, but it wasn't quite done...so i worked on and on about it...tried again & tried again...last weekend at my favorite punk coffee house in seattle tried one more time, and this time it took...so the series of poems is done...now i can make a book of them to give to KD for valentine's day, if i am on my game and quick :)
peace,
raymond
syllables are with you, ray.
great series and a dramatic finish.
taste of let's hear it.
(alas, i'll never tune into your radio show if this time difference keeps up)
jude, there is a radio archive of my shows at my website...
last night, as Valentine's Day was ending, and KD was falling asleep, I was finishing the book of this series of poems made for her...i'd planned to have it ready for her b-day a month earlier but the last poem came out slow and delayed...
in any event, she woke to the book of these poems this morning, and so some good feeling in that...
it was a long series, took 13 1/2 months from first poem to book-on-table...i don't know what pomes next...some ideas burble but not fully cooked yet...heh :twisted:
where ray go, faith go
poems flow
so
looking forward