Many Musics, Seventh Series *part 2 of 4*

[cenacle]

Continued from here:
http://www.spiritplants.org/forums/the-library/many-musics-seventh-series/

xxi. Idee Fixe


The sweet, strange lights at street corners,
  tonight, the luring shadow past each
face, the thought of maybe, new thought,
  or old thought in new dress, yes,
maybe a chance to steer for shore
  again, a moon cracking open mind's flat skies.


******


xxii. Another Way


We stood, my brother & me, regarding
  the pattern on the wall, the labyrinth
fading, right to left, how to travel
  that one? I noticed his fingers tapping the tune,
the one in my mind too, & a few steps
  more to daylight, if not answers, numberless
paths, if not a way, & the next day's chance.
  We nodded, went, maybe the fading labyrinth
our clue that letting go the map is hard, best chance.


******


xxiii. Wider Foam


Nod, burn the canvas, there's new music
  in that smoke. Or let it stay,
mix in some more blood, let curious hungers sniff.


******


xxiv. Winter Island


The preacher stood outside among
  his stars, arms held out to his god's
lights, open, open, waiting, smiling, waiting.
  And nothing. Minutes, the hours passed.
He returned inside, his immaculate rooms,
  his plain, narrow bed. Closed the drapes.


Walked the rooms, wordless, still listening,
  still out there among those lights,
so close, waiting. In his study, its walls
  ceiling to floor in books, there in the corner,
three small dead rats. And, look, out the door
  races a cockroach, shiny shell, see it go.


Walked outside again, now shedding clothes,
  mile by mile, to the far end of the island,
the lighthouse, the rocks below, evening seas
  thick with fog, arms out again, far out.
No why. No why & there never was. How beautiful.
  His god had not descended, neither taken him
away, explained nothing, remained. Oh my.


******


xxv. To brother afar


Some eat others, because they can,
  because they will, because for a
blinding instant the suffering you
  are causing now is newly electrifying
the wire to the suffering caused you then
  & worlds & time smash happily,
& let go, breathe out, let the common blood settle.


******


xxvi. Decision Tree


Extracting the poison from its mash,
  converting it to the honied drink
we'd dreamed, smiling & mindless its tasters
  & soon the end of this world.
We'd go into classrooms, meet families
  in their homes, it would take awhile.


Yes, they found me though my love
  remains free. They'll burn me &
bury me miles in the earth tonight,
  as though flames & shovels may undo.
My love knows better, watching those
  who drink the honey, smiling & mindless
they leave this world, melt clean through,
  the hardest human idea a clod in the stream.


My love knows you will drink this honey
  & let it go at last, whatever it is,
& as you do, & as it goes, your senses
  will new wild to the sunshine, sounds
of water on metal, the smells of those
  blooms as you go, & the happy, happy dust.


******


xxvii. Bursts of Darkness


Another dream of forests, & worlds of text,
  the orgasmic light of every creation,
& the old, old things still soiling my corners.


I've never believed in redemption as a way
  to efface the hard past. I say:
wear the tatters of your years, where
  they stray to mere threads, where
ugly, where they hurt, & you hurt,
  & everyone hurts. Wear them.


Maybe beyond the end there will be
  forests & worlds of text, & redemption
of some plain or ironic kind, but,
  not knowing, what you have is
what you are, & the sum of it all
  might be no god's to account but
your own, how you best wore the worst of it.


******


xxviii. Blood Canvases


An old, small figure hurries through
  streetlamps & hard pour, bent spine
like the question bodies form young
  & minds keep asking until old.
Keeping along with this figure, step
  into a lit shop & the jingling jostle
of others, the question on the shelves
  of goods, answers on the labels,
among the pages, answers in long rows
  of auditioning come-hither carnies,
& which to choose, which to choose?
  Or select a few & mix up a stew?


Back in the rain, no less hard,
  hurry, the figure is diminishing
with a sack & the strong wish to be alone.
  Into the building, the many steps,
the tilted door of home. Ahh, sounds
  of deadbolt & latch. Now open the sack,
take out the answer, only one was taken,
  & lay aside the question, chipped
from spine, just to see, just to see.
  Consider, yes, yes. Turn off the lights,
try candles. Some music, there, that
  old song of skeletons in moonlight. There. Yes. Will do.


******


xxix. Kindness Most Binds


I learned a lot that summer, living
  in the drainage ditch by the sidewalk.
At first people just stared at me,
  unable to parse out my angle or shill.
Eventually they made picnics nearby,
  not too near, but enough to call me a neighbor.


The mayor appeared, a man in a waxen
  suit & linen moustache. Several bigger men
flanked him, looking for my bigger men,
  studied the security details of my ditch,
frowned. The mayor, I think it was him,
  I'd like to think it was him, smiled,
urged an alliance. Gestured around where
  we lay together. All these picnickers . . .


By summer's end, even the older dogs &
  butterflies were going or gone. I felt ready
to stand up, move along, it had been
  a good run. The brown grass beneath me
would green again, it always does.
  The molded form of my body would remain,
oh awhile, & then it too would go where
  everything goes when gone, but not forgotten.


******


xxx. Seeding


"It's just a ride."
—Bill Hicks, 1993


What if you realize, one day, that
  everything is alive? Not one, as
many the guru would say, still many,
  but alive? All alive, the easy of this
watching your love stirring the dawn,
  walking the pathless trees of an
unnamed wood. The hard of this,
  when looking at the worn out things
of men, lost of shine & purpose, gummed
  & greasy, broken last hour or longer.


Mapless, following this thought, you make
  along as before, step high enough among
the daily prejudice & bored laughter, but
  now uneasy with your own movements.
Do these live things know & accept their
  ends? The jar of vegetable paste, even
the half-crushed moth on the sidewalk.
  Is the first glad its contents now
spent out, does tossing the other
  from sidewalk to bush reck its passage?


The questions are ridiculous, remain,
  widen to include paper clips & tree branches
part-severed by the night's thunderstorm. Where
  does thought & feeling end, how to know,
are the usual borders even most useful?
  This electing of men, getting of coin, washing
every new soul in a half-reverence of
  the world, yet still the numbers measure decay
by the years, still the promise rusts pretty by.


Some say dispose things better, some burn
  it all, some include us too. This world
little worth a sober god's remaining glance,
  or cleansing stroke. Such a loathing
that the dead are boxed well & imagined
  free to sing unsheathed of mouth & bones.
Some say there are answers to this world,
  every fallen icon & twisted bone in the red dust,
but later, love, later along the tale.


But say: Everything is alive, made to find
  its function & receive its due? Aren't
the massing murderous ways of men
  enough? Why worry the dark light bulbs
& steers to the knife? The fate of snowflakes
  & old wrecks in deserts & rivers?
Do some empathies lead nowhere but
  lonesome dream corners of the fancy?


I have surely wondered all this,
  as you do tonight. Felt the chasm
among each & all wide & bricked as
  though by stone. I've wondered too:
why feel but only so far, why
  imagine but with an eye on the clock,
an ear for the door? Tonight, perhaps,
  we ask this question over a distance
wider than the world. Wonder, hopeless,
  yet still, does paradise not steam
from the shit as the sonnet, the burning,
  the breathless, as every new psalm of smoke?

******



xxxi. What Will You Do Now?


Jim Dine, "Two Big Black Hearts," bronze, 1985


He'd built long ago what I'd found half-sunk
in the snowy wood, two great black steel hearts,
cried from his shaping tools deep in molten flesh,
the air buzzing around this work still,
nature not easily accepting it back.


I push away what I can of its icy crust,
study his symbols. The ones I know,
hand, knife, bed, bowl, while others remain
his secret tongue, now dead with him.


One heart tells his youth, romance, full moons,
song. The face turned away from him in dance,
even as her hands cling to his neck & shoulder.
Speeding carriages, city lights, the hours when
a curious god traced closely through him.
That great tree, her light breathing,
nearly weightless things expiring in his grasp.


The other heart tells of dust, a violent hour,
endurance later. Too many words,
too many empty beds, the wane of faith
in the words of books & living men.
The lost symbols no longer step lightly,
turn in, turn bitter, find nights only wanting.


Forest & time obscured his tale, years taking
back as they do, & every spring exposing,
inches upon feet, what upheld his great work,
going, it was even then slowly going.


And more since I've seen this work, or
thought on it, until this morning when I woke,
through a dream of birds, clouds of them
about my room, flying my mind, calling out:
"Why are you leaving me here? Will you abandon
me to be consumed? What will remain of you then?"


******


xxxii. Empathy


Before the sniff of your skin, taken
by my genes through my nose,
before the shape of your breast,
already cupped, worried, had hard
& soft, your eyes. Oh yes, I go for
your eyes, not because I'm in them
for you, or will be, but because I'm in them
for me. You taste a little salty,
like every woman, like one touch better
than another, like every, carry your
secret place without borders, like, you are sweet,
as you pass, smiling with your friends,
bound for laughing what now or brooding
what later. Bound with the glances that salve
& those that stripe. Bound, to how the glances
fence & fill in. Which words, how many,
who far—


I lean back, as I let you up, straightening back
into your clothes as I do not, wondering
what we did in my mind. How was it.
That moment in passing, carnal weighted,
as I continue helping you dress, as restoring
you to girlish order matters most, seeing you
on your way, a young night, your friends
pointing to a door. That's where we're going. Hurry!


******


xxxiii. Cumulation


Not from the strength of it
draw what you need. The brutal places
of power & beauty. These pass, one to another,
nothing more than leased to know,
& the earth takes back by shine & soil.


Would you know power, you would know
your weakness, chase down its hours
& rivulets, face its pains. Acknowledge its pleasures.
Nothing builds long & true that does
not root in your soul's deep earth,
climb from your dankest places, learn
how to root among others, what binds each
to the wheel.


Find it there, where looking is the hardest,
from its clay build not a world but
the steps to one, would you carry on still true.


******


xxxiv. Mist on the Mountain Top


Mist on the mountain top &
so much to explain.
The ways men lean, & clash, &
crush to know each other.


Mist on the mountain top &
how to explain.
The dig of desire in these daylight hours,
its claw through the glances & limits.


Mist on the mountain top &
nothing to explain.
If you have someone to kiss, then kiss.
If you don't, reach a hand for what
you can. You are loved more than you know.


******


xxxv. After Rothko


The space between you & me, wide as the
wide midnight sea. Close as the breath
I will squeeze in your lips when one day you
are dying & I am come to say goodbye.
Many of our borders are spiked, but one
will soften, as you die, as you let go,
as I watch, an empty shore come dawn.


******


xxxvi. Hylozoism


"Change rooms in your mind for a day."
—Hafiz


Hurry, say the word empathy, the worlds
wait & you are near. You are loved more
than you are known sings the moonlight's
soothe, worlds wait, hurry, say the word
empathy. To become known you will reach
your hand into the dreaming darkness,
its snapping depths, soft thigh's croon
for an hour or more, hard things thrashing
for anger's relief, some god's secret conjure
for release. Hurry, say the word empathy,
loved more than you are known, you will cry
into brilliant eyes, the lights, the trees,
everything exploding with this feeling too.
Worlds wait, you are near, & the remaining
question, when harmonies of stars thin,
& the predawn chill sweets in, would you choose
to be loved or to be known, if but one alone?


******


xxxvii. Love Dogs


There were two tomes. One told the sky.
One sang the earth. Was this a choice?
Like left hand or right, & dispose the other.


******


xxxviii. Turn in Musics


Five white oaks & a prone, cold body in the sun.
The meadow waving riot to any story
one could tell of this. Only breaches in the web.


******


xxxix. World is Not Conclusion


Breaches in the web, look through
& see the rain falling on other worlds.
Go on, there are no answers here but patterns
of bird flight & blood on the lips at waking.
No answers to this curtained savagery,
just tonight's fears blooding tomorrow's canvas.


******


xl. Idiot's Song


No answers here but patterns of bird flight
& blood on the lips at waking, from dreams
of heaven where lines form & no good answers
come anyway. I turn to the one behind me,
a girl whose ass I would have hungered
in that other life. "Me too" she says.


Of course there's blood. Blood is the hardest.
Returning to the festival, I see that new.
The collected wounds erected as tents &
shaped in flames. Next morning, see what
remains, fill in the rest. There'll be rains
to wash the worst, & music of course for rags.


******

[cenacle]

*** Many Musics, VII, xxi, Idee Fixe - Mind boredom really sucks . . .
*** Many Musics, VII, xxii, Another Way - This poem is sweet in my mind because about my passed brother . . .
*** Many Musics, VII, xxiii, Wider Foam - Hunger, hunger . . .
*** Many Musics, VII, xxiv, Winter Island - visit to this island in Salem, Mass., and the previous day another cult had not been taken away by God or something . . .
*** Many Musics, VII, xxv, To brother afar - memory is painful, sometimes tries to take a new piece of it . . .
*** Many Musics, VII, xxvi, Decision Tree - another dream poem . . . still evocative . . .
*** Many Musics, VII, xxvii, Bursts of Darkness - a dream poem into a rant . . .
*** Many Musics, VII, xxviii, Blood Canvases - dream sources, a mysterious bit . . .
*** Many Musics, VII, xxix, Kindness Most Binds - I think another dream poem, and another fun one....
*** Many Musics, VII, xxx, Seeding - This rant remains deep in my questioning heart . . .

[cenacle]

*** Many Musics, VII, xxxi - What Will You Do Now? - Inspired by Jim Dine's might sculpture at the DeCordova museum in Lincoln, MA - my flights of fancying atop it . . .
*** Many Musics, VII, xxxii - Empathy - a long lifetime of staring at girls & women . . . not sure why built so . . .
*** Many Musics, VII, xxxiii - Cumulation - weakness is where one is most true, least like others . . . maybe strength is too, but less so . . .
*** Many Musics, VII, xxxiv - Mist on the Mountain Top - a sweet little thang . . .
*** Many Musics, VII, xxxv - After Rothko - I think, while sponsored by Mark Rothko the painter, this poem is inspired by my mother . . .
*** Many Musics, VII, xxxvi - Hylozoism - Hylozoism is the philosophical point of view that all matter (including the universe as a whole) is in some sense alive (Wikipedia). This my strange riff on this word. I like the word a lot.
*** Many Musics, VII, xxxvii - Love Dogs - title from a poem by Rumi, this a fragment of thought . . .
*** Many Musics, VII, xxxviii - Turn in Musics - possibly a dream fragment . . .
*** Many Musics, VII, xxxix - World is Not Conclusion - another fragment, a mysterious one . . .
*** Many Musics, VII, xl - Idiot's Song - title a Rilke poem . . . I think this is kind of another Burning Man-related dream song . . .

[cenacle]

Continued here:
http://www.spiritplants.org/forums/the-library/many-musics-seventh-series-*part-3-of-3*/