Many Musics, Third Series *Part One*

[cenacle]

Continued from:
http://www.spiritplants.org/forums/index.php/topic,2324.msg15757.html#msg15757

Many Musics
(Third Series)

"Out here on the perimeter
there are no stars
Out here we is stoned . . . immaculate"
—The Doors, "The Wasp (Texas Radio & the Big Beat)," 1971.

i. Manifest

What won't come is music half-called,
distracted, hungry hours, sunk in the province
of men. Lights, simmering smells, bread & stew.
Lure, of wine & silk. Someone nods & says
we're mapping beauty, a hour nearer, a formula,
derived of striplings' coos & closely tuned
compass. More smoke, distraction's distraction.
Maybe the potion drunk an hour ago will able save the next.

Music half-called rings back in blind cries &
smoking metal. Sentiments & easy lusts.
Mapping beauty? another says. We can't feed
ourselves & save the trees alike. What beauty
in a hungry child or a burnt acre? Legions
of men will be needed, maybe more than all
this world holds. Legions of men & centuries
of days before anything known, or we even begin.

Music, I call you now, from what I know
& much the rest, I call you now, music,
where you tend I will follow, what you
know I will believe. By star's light &
dream glow will I map beauty, in songs
to manifest, music, I call to you now.
Each drift on his breeze, one wind, many winds,
one rhythm, one melody, many musics, hear my vow.

******

ii. Passing Water

Sing the hours true & know the hunger
is bound in breathing itself, its walls,
beams, what girds underneath. Breeze moves
each & all, one wind, many, & rains
fall with the ceaseless questions & some
answer. Want born, roots, thus musics bloom.

Next hill may show whatever the burning
smell in the air, or within heart's bluest
scent itself, or where bound world's greater
arc half risen. Sing the hours true,
chop wood, carry water, reck every hour's
pulse of promise & ache, what stays, what going.

Ferment & strew, drifting lash on a curved
warmth, news of today's annihilation in
god's praise. Crack the wish to notice newly,
the long remembered page's lean wisdom,
dream's luring distant treeline. Every heart blows
through empty fields with obscure intent.

World manifests in you for its own reasons,
many, & none at all.

******

iii. Penury

World evolves an hour to a train's slow
through grassland carrying new dead,
to a long-waited kiss in rainy light.
Music half-called, deep hungry words,
clear dreams of a dying man. A soldier
cursing the strange land's heat, his own sad blood.

What to do next when the wind &
the lightning & the rainbow & the shutting
door? Any of it. What to do next?
Say the way is dis-illusion, call world
an effect, crack that wish to notice
newly? Manifest. Shit is beautiful too.

Look onto new years, their clustered
seeds, unmet faces, chances brambled
in mystery. Eternals touched in finishing
the song, & crawling the dust. Look back,
bravely, what spillt, what gone, calmly,
what lingers & what still it seeks through you.

******

iv. Clean

Leaves everywhere shake & I understand:
I know nothing.
Trees above drink of earth & shine alike:
I am nobody.
Human paths through hills & bushes decaying
the moment the pick draws away:
This hour is a gift to all & my sadness
is the struggle to share.

What answer is a tapping in our cells,
a deep rhythm, source of knowing &
nothing, move nearer, no why, move
on, sing, trust.

What answer in godless hands that
can shape dust to bullet & thus back
again, or shape dust to a prayer of thanks,
manifest a star in every seeking eye.

Leaves are shaking harder now, everywhere,
a language of both knowing & nothing,
a pickless path, this hour's gift both
spent & unspending. Move nearer
the deep rhythm, sing, trust, move on.
No why & there never was.

******

v. Viva La Vida

Fear falls frozen dripping through
the heart, one & many wonder at
its breathless wall, its lump of god within.
How alone & why? Ask again. The cicadas
& bamboo too? Ancient astronauts taught
us this far & left, nodded, let go?

Want, taught to want, to feed one hunger
with another, to chase, to almost know,
hurry toward those brilliant years, sensuous
playing lights. Sabre tooth & bronts not
withstanding. Hunger, is it more complex
with more men, larger cities? Does any
who falls tonight triumph in finale,
glory for not an hour more?

Fear falls, frozen, dripping through the heart,
great galleries & long centuries,
preachers roar & kings thump. Comfort in
hovering together close over the abyss, align gazes
& call it love, or gesture to maps & libraries,
bullets, chalice, scripture, grave, solemn
nod their truth? Comfort in what hasn't
slipped yet & touchless faith it will hold.

Questions mirror glance to glance, & highest
music only sighs & sings of full moons,
midnight tides, & the moment's power
in warmth laying by warmth. Tonight
behold the wide world with all its fears,
howling & half-awake, no key to explain.
Behold the world, howling, half waking,
yet still no key to the smallest face or least star.

******

vi. Insurgo (6/19/08)

Old thoughts crowd the peak, obscure
both sky & valley. The years conspire
to narrow faith, harden & systematize
what it becomes. Worshipped words without
burn. How long stable this living machine?
Look to how dear men bear the crumble
of other centuries, & yet little reck
its warning. Old thoughts, on a familiar
train crossing a local river, some factory
crowds its edge. I witness this passing
hour in nod to its sky, its valley,
what treasure it keeps, what it passes along.

******

vii. Distant

Brave, bastardly brave, stupidly brave,
happily brave, let the countless musics
within bloom. Break narrow faith &
dreams of burning landscapes, win or lose
by what matters, struggle to share, & share.
Blowing scarce tonight, I pledge to my
returning tide, & what fineness still waits.

******

viii. A Night's Raw Lyric

Sniff the fecund world from a hid,
ordinary place. Sniff its noise, an art,
a statecraft, the intense light draping
a high, hungry color. Sniff the lies
in calling the stars a heaven, in
praising what buries in earth as
carcass, as remain. Sniff the world's
constant hungers, drying here, new
wetting up there. The world awful
with its making scents, where kind &
fine, where cruel, where flesh wilds
for flesh & not a coin, not a king,
not a god in any skies despite.

******

ix. Plumage

The world downs every man, one day,
some year. Slinking hours at a distance,
a smile in gauze, the trembling talk
of books. What fineness in hungers lost,
streets where shoulders knocked with
high plans, moon an ally, dawn's fresh page.

The years drown in watching the world
hustle many charms & lies, arguments
for answers, the blunt lure of flesh
for plumage, the driving, wild wish
for warmth. Drinking hours at a distance,
still wanting after what they didn't reveal.

Tonight, again, I know nothing. I am
nobody. Singing to manifest, crawling
the dust. Study the web, pray the hours.
Watch one man in a doorway guard his
plastic bags, thrown a coin by a couple
sparkling wetly with drink & easy thoughts
of silked mirrors, cuffs & cocaine, stereo moans.

Watch another fall from his seat,
others notice, flashing lights arrive.
Stumbled out to the curb, slumps with
a cigarette til a van & kind voice arrives.
Hours since: another man shovels in cheap
food where that one went down. Despair.

Tonight I still beat at narrow faith,
at vows thin of mystery & pleasure.
I am reaching for the hungrier words,
to sing, to burn, to reveal. New sounds
of the sea in my blood, next page,
the way on. Tonight I will not drown.

******

x. Twined Paths

Hope honey me again tonight, crush
between tips then fling me seeds
to the shadow & breeze—

The cafes & the woods are same for
the chase I keep, toward answers
that murmur & raise—

a travel past the hustle of a man's
deepest lies made law, music & tragedy
of a laughing boozy half-harnessed tit—

Hope hunger me again tonight, press
toward one stream these hard-twined paths,
answers to release the beast & explain the blow.

******

xi. Prayer

Night flashes through me, an anxious
traffic, among human spillage from taverns,
raw from hours beggaring men for needs.
Dreams to come of hawks high on
empty arroyos, & babies a soft mystery
in my arms, of tomorrow's fractured news.

Universe, I am asking again for help,
& strength, for the best of what's left in me.

******

xii. Kryptos

Where the strength to elude the Beast
& win the hour? Mend fractured wishes
into Beauty, slip through heart's hungry
maze, blow up in new song? Neither
slave to a passing struggle nor a helpless
moan blaming coin, king, & cunt for defeat?

World blooms through wars, through every
flesh's cry & fall. Blooms, waits, invites
each & all. Through the hours won, lost,
& abandoned, world blooms, open hand,
a wish for each, no matter what
I am, no matter what you are.

******

xiii. One Song

Someone sang, "Knowledge sums endless,
wisdom ever gives way." He pointed
to the countless drummers & their dancers
crying up the dust. Nodded, sang again,
just a word, "Beguiled," & fell into the storm.

As I followed him into the desert, &
then ceased to follow, the songs left me
slowly, the apologies, the love chants,
the cries against crown & preacher.

As I ceased to follow, & ceased to look
apart from stars & mountains & ground,
I also ceased to care for the little mantras
of man, let them go a flake at a time:

"Peace brings more rewards than war
ever could." "Love over money."
"Power handled with caution, always
looking at its effects." "Nationhood
a comfort, not an ideology." "The world
does not belong to men & women,
but we belong to each other."

What remained, what I am, having
ceased, what is until all is not,
is one song, sung by every man & woman,
every rock & tree, every planet & star,
every insect, virus, alien, ant, & whorl,
everything everywhere, one song,
I am coming in an unknown hour,
I am singing every hour until then.

******

xiv. Sacred Trash

High on labyrinth
endless desert
to go

******

xv. Paucity

That dirtbag room in her lunatic house
where I sat by TV with a dish of
warm cheap food & a torrid crumbling wish.
Fate took its time, relaxed silent by
those many hours that I writhed.
Amid my hard wants, savage musics bloomed.

Whether yearn for a coupling or a coin,
the din of days is the tapping of a heart's
empty bowl for notice, for some token
it can keep, some pittance will survive
its miles, swathe its nights, complete
old promises of dear forgotten faces spoke
roughly on autumn benches in far gone parks.

******

xvi. Rant

Amid this curtained savagery, the lies
explained as loyalty, discarding the man
to keep the idea, the hunger for orgasm
even a full moon cannot sate & Art
will not explain, & tradition the praising
of today's shit because it smells like another's—

How the spirit moves caged in a book
read from a pulpit by a man who dreams
of adding his come to the flames burning
down the heathens' village—

Brave talk of God's love as a mystery
not a bondage. Brave talk of the world
as gift & game enough for all.
Brave talk of another in question &
early morning curiosity. Tell me
of a hope that does not rest dependent
on another, or a despair that cannot
be cut with a touch, a barking, hungry
persistent word of empathy. Love's long
blind reach into the dark.

******

xvii. Many Moons

If a dream of many moons in the sky,
what else then? What more than sitting in
festive groups staring one another for the
hour's favorite quip? What not men among
the roots? What new stars among ceaseless
lonely want to fertilize the world with more?

Many moons in the sky, in dreams &
otherwise. More than celestial formulas
or a guru's solemn named day, else than
the heated bestial grunts of age picking over
youth's glinting bits. Waiting the foothold
more luring than a new lover's thoughtful
recline among shadows. The first word
of the song stars know better than men.

******

xviii. After Embrace

I watched them each part a life
as he walked across the street &
she hurried down the sidewalk.
Neither looked back, as though that easy.

******

xix. A Fable

A man smiled & leaned against another
man, said, "this is my land, brother,
but I'll hire you to work it for me."
The second man heard his baby crying
& checked his options, none. Asked his pay.

No freedom in working another man's
land as he counts. Nor freedom in
striking him down. Freedom not found
in a coin or a crown or a cross.
Freedom's hour come when none above, none below.

******

xx. Love Song (for K.)

What remains of the years I sing
& call my Art. What salves my
suffering or sets it to a softer tune—

The need to fuck, the need to piss,
the breathing, the beating, the fury
toward what beauty these autumnal hours—

And love, I can only think, is how
my music protects & calms your nights
when I cannot do this for all.

******

xxi. Downtown Lights

When the dead return in dreams,
helpless, breathless—or the lost lover,
never was a goodbye, a thank you,
a shared nod of failure—

But there was my father, taxiing me
to kin, & here I was in the back seat,
complaining I'd forgotten my notebooks—
& again was that lover, left to me
a dictionary marked with cryptic directions
to reach her, reach back to her—

He's awhile now dead in the ground,
she's even longer dead in my heart,
yet reck this hour's ink spending slave
to each, heart's deep bruises beating
this music in me, squeezing me out
as once his loins squeezed me out too,
as once I cried & squeezed within her,
till heat ran cold, & earth drank piss & blood.

******

xxii. Autumnal Fancy

Sage cry the truth & tend it,
you're traveling away from its moment,
now, & still. Feel it drown on the shore,
feel each new hour huddle near, chew at it,
its light crackling apart, but what
you knew, how sure! How sure!
And tell, tell, none need suffer without
explain again. Feel it going, even as
you tell others among the oaks, even as
you shape your speeches & songs. Going,
every day, wake up, it's going, let it,
it fed that hour, sated it, bloomed
that hour with hope, let it settle among
the rest in your heart, let it relax from
truth to faith, now a breath, maybe two,
what's left not sentiment let abide.

******

xxiii. The Midnight Cry

Tis said the beast's beneath the bricks,
waiting night or distraction or an elixir's
  flash of something hungry—
Tis said the erotic coil's tight & getting
tighter, now what will make it burst?
Tis said civilization's built, trembling, on
ruins & bones, breathes & drinks with ghosts.

Tis expected, by many, this world of men
will fall to a bomb some god's minions
  will—or rise to another god's return—
it won't last, however the end, at best
a smiling recall to the stars, beauteous hour!

We do not know, Universe, our flesh hungers
for each other, for light, for music,
  for answers. We do not know, our hopes
cloak pretty on the beast's shoulder, our fears
that the beast is all we really are.

******

xxiv. Hereafter

I'll be the hungry ghost returned to snap
at clusters of tight skirts, snap till I hear
one who laughs & wants more, snap till
she cries out, till she's urging the rest—

Or the clustered thorn in the preacher's
golden costume, now burbling, now biting when
he speaks smoothly of God's mystery & suffering,
cramp his holy thighs when he lusts, when he loathes—

When the king raises his fist smiling,
would command not just armies of men
& machines but the woods, the tides,
the moon itself, I'll blind him a moment
& give his tongue a heated taste of his own shit—

When one man leans on another, measures
the world's worth in coin & commodity, when
he sharpens others to reck him with quicking breath,
I'll crumble his ankle & whither his cock—

When the lusty crowd denses round a single
helpless face, moves in with noose or cuffs,
I'll sweat each one with panic, choke,
& tomorrow your door, tomorrow it will be you—

Lastly the child, with her new breast
blooming, with his questions shuffled toward
thick books & stained glass, I will spend
the last of me scrawling over young hearts:

"Nobody knows all! Believe, with every window open!"

******

xxv. Stench of Duende

It was in that cash-only motel room,
those furthest hours when I undressed you,
as others had, love was fucking's residue,
your young body long trained to be taken,
to clash & lick sinews for hearts, it would
hurt a little but he would say it, & I sighed
& held you lightly, for all the devils & violence
that had led you blithely to my arms,
& would retrieve you again by morning.

******

xxvi. Vintage Falls

World for consumption or partner,
gorge or feed? Best send a camera
or a blueprint into the wild to know it?
More gain in spearing salmon for trade
or squeezing the river's roar into a lit room?

There are angles in this world that cannot
be braided into use, secret chiaroscuros
of morning, an empty shore, a quiet water,
down river a mile the remaining bones
of a drowned woods, in the vague air
an unhuman language croons from ten centuries passed.

******

xxvii. Distraction

If a preacher's wily words of other worlds
  or a fine ass on an evening avenue distract,
if the taste of meat or chocolate, if a snowy
  wind thrilling every tree in pathless woods,
if the sight of a fallen creature on an empty
  road, broken & going yet blindly breathing
on, if the stars weightless & some say
  portending, if the remembered laugh
of a loved one known only in earliest youth,
  if dreams drowning in sand, & those
when earth is impossibly viewed from above,
  if the preacher's blithe promise of someday's
answer for today's kneel & obey, if the rest
  matches in soulful beauty that fine, fine
ass, what then otherwise was the reason
  for arriving to this hour, you & I, the world
blood-wracked to blue, what was the reason?

******

xxviii. Breath Bewitching

What diminishes, in some hours,
  is not just the want to know,
but the faith anything can be known,
  answer not fruited of hustle or delusion,
the questions asked the skies on worst nights,
  & those glints nearly touched on others,
can sum, manifest, fold the world
  at last gently open, & what seemed
random horror of chance & limited view
  will reveal finely in music, a mystery
more beautiful because made plain.

******

xxix. Song to a Stranger

Some other night you would have moved
  me, did, as I sat lone & wanting,
in nocturnal cafes where sugar rushed
  my hungry pages, below stars that
could explain you no better than else,
  in dreams where your auburn hair
would come undone & I would lose
  within your body what my last hour
will never know in your heart.

******

xxx. A Lesson in Power

In the taking of a kingdom or a heart,
  a beast for its meat or seed for its fruit,
there is a push, a breath, an acquiesce,
  one world coming, another one gone.
A feed in victory by stars & firelight.

In the release again there is loss,
  for how her body tasted that mountainside
afternoon, for how thousands once
  bowed to a flag, its ideas triumphant
by gunpoint. A silence, a burial in breath.

Derive this lesson, then: neither
  the take nor the release will last,
& whatever drinks of power's thunder
  tonight will crest again fallow another.
What carries the years neither king nor kingdom.
  What carries not the singer nor the song.

******



Continued here:
http://www.spiritplants.org/forums/index.php/topic,5613.0.html

[cenacle]

Previously added Many Musics, III, #1, Manifest, which I'd call a song to keep going. Today added #2, Passing Water, which I'd say is an observation on life, on what I see, weird as it may be. Me or life or both, heh.

[cenacle]

This afternoon added Many Musics, III, #3, "Penury," every so often I write a song of hope, simple hope, complex hope, needed hope.

[judih]

now and then we're able to channel hope
gotta let it shine
sacred duty

[cenacle]

tonight added Many Musics, Third Series, iv, Clean, the simple story is i was in the woods and high on nature, and these are the words that came out...i don't think they need any other elaboration...

[cenacle]

Tonight added Many Musics, Third Series, #5, "Viva La Vida," this poem began with the line "fear falls frozen dripping through the heart" and then I was also very much into the new Coldplay album whose title I borrowed for this poem's title. About fear, about what we live with but do not know why.

[cenacle]

today added Many Musics, III, #6, "Insurgo (6/19/08)," I was riding a train through Portland, thinking old thoughts, not knowing in days I'd be laid off from my job and the lazy comfort I felt in the world when I'd written this poem would, much of it, be gone for awhile...some longer...

[judih]

joy of moving, nostalgic salute to scenery left behind
feels like a february state of mind

[cenacle]

this afternoon added Many Musics, III, #7, "Distant," this one is simple, I'd just lost my job and needed to vow to myself that better days would come if i was bastard-stubborn enough to get to them.

[judih]

i love the thought of 'returning tide'

i have a feeling my tide's a long way coming

[cenacle]

Tonight added Many Musics, III, #8, A Night's Raw Lyric, I think often of the many hungers at the root of the world, and how society will cover it, channel it, deny it, legislate it, damn it, but never, ever undo it.

[cenacle]

This morning added Many Musics, III, ix, Plumage, this was a pretty dark poem, it seemed like everywhere I looked there was struggle and decay. I could only think to fight it off in my heart with my pen and notebook.

[cenacle]

This morning added Many Musics, III, x, Twined Paths . . . "release the beast and explain the blow" should be the title of my autobiography, or my directive to human purpose...

[cenacle]

This morning added Many Musics, III, xi, Prayer . . . life is such a struggle sometimes...and other times it's just the opposite...

[judih]

universe
come over
tea and back-up
you know you wanna

(cenacle - a variation of a prayer - once said, even i feel better)