On the Rocks Looking Out Over Spaulding Island

 

On the Rocks Looking Out Over Spaulding Island 

(For James Wright)

There is no bronze butterfly 

This early in the Spring.

Down on the rocks -

No distant cowbell,

No mournful lowing.

As I listen, aged novitiate, 

The ceaseless prayer of the ocean

Hushes and sighs in murmured oblation,

Bone and stone and all the world erasing -

As the unwanted thought arrives unwelcome:

Have I wasted my life?

A forlorn cry distracts.

There suspended under the blue vault 

Over Spaulding Island,

An osprey is dancing in the sky.

The fish in his talons 

A splinter of light

Shedding brightness as he rises. 

I watch him for what must be hours - 

Until he and the sun and me

Are all dissolved in darkness. 

And I know this much for certain:

This time, at least, 

This time was not wasted.

A Long Saturday

Photo by B. Jones

So here I am:

Deep down in the hole 

Of the Holy Language,

Working a rich seam

Of bone, teeth and horn.

Reassembling God’s Skeleton

In flickering lamplight - 

Listening to my canary sing

The song Nicodemos whistled

As Jesus was dying. 

Where in hell

Did that silly bird learn that tune?

Although, I gotta say,

It’s pretty catchy.

Damned impossible to forget. 

Figure it’s after noon - 

Time to make the climb 

Back up into Saturday.

This day where nothing seems to have moved:

The torn veil hanging still in the Temple.

It’s all much darker 

Than I expected it to be,

Rain falling like an ocean pouring down.

Through it all, I see trees dancing,

drunken skeletons tearing up the earth.

I make a meal:

Bread and wine.

Contemplate every single bite 

Every swallow, every breath between

And I wonder, maybe slightly hopeful, 

What kind of day Sunday’s going to be. 

"I took the Friday-Saturday-Sunday schema from the New Testament: Christ's death on Friday, with the darkness that descended on Earth, the tearing of the veil of the Temple; then the uncertainty that - for the believers - had to be beyond horror, the uncertainty of the Saturday when nothing happened, nothing moved; finally the resurrection on Sunday. It's a schema with limitless power of suggestion. We live through catastrophes, torture, anguish; then we wait, and for many the Saturday will never end. The Messiah won't come, and Saturday will continue.”

- George Steiner, A Long Saturday

Awakening from the dream of war

Awakening from the dream of war
in a moonlit field in a northern state,
flood of blue now overflowing.

The silver resolves from the shimmer
of a pale child hugging the blur of a goat
in the sweeping curve of the moon.

Her ocean hair falls across my face
leaves my mouth full of bone and ash,
a thin smile spreading into a wound.

Standing in the clearing still,
stumps remarking the hourly ring,
the gnomon impatient at the leash.

The American Mythos

copperhead and water moccasin
and the long bamboo hook
with the loop to catch them
contain fang and venom in a barrel
filled with scorpion and spider
such were the objects of our desire

the scorpion stings the spider
the snake eats the scorpion
I laugh even though
I do not think it was ever funny
then some little kid kicks the can
over suddenly and the world
is screaming and on fire

everyone running to the river
not forgetting no Lethe no Leman
no sticks or stones skipping
over the black mercurial flow
of our summer god that summer
the Trinity River
our own fertile tributary of the Ganges
reading our names written
long ago in sandy riverbed
composed of ashes of the dead

the alligator gar comes crossing
the seam spreading behind prehistoric eyes
moving like music rising up in morning fog
hung over the water like a faceless shroud
of the man who refused to die turned upside down

lamb's blood threads whirlpools
beyond the gate of horn
there we were so perfectly young
and knocking knocking and waiting
not knowing waiting for it to be opened
pounding upon the rock fearing not
beating upon my chest like Tarzan
and all my companions
silent in the canoe

Old Man Johnson
crazy legged cannibal
lived in the yellow house up the river
under beards of moss and spider web
wasp nested bug infested
an abandoned place
the lost temple of the Trinity
broken dusted windows
watching me climbing
upon the rotting stairs
on a board creaking dare
the others fixed in the canoe
in the electric midnight air

seeing those strange deflated balloons
slithering slow around the room
grey white maggots odor of ozone in an ooze
ammonia and the wet chasm chthonic water womb
mysteries in whispered fables told with no morals
in the licking light of last night's campfire
under a prurient moon

up there in the vacant living room I descended
avoiding brown syringes rusted blood bent broken
gradations of furious desire and dark brown bottles
cooing like owls in the tarnished boughs
as a fur white cocoons crack open
underneath my standing releasing spilling
light blue crystalline vaporine tendrils that tenderly
performed strange alchemy upon the soft pink neural caves
of my innocent virgin brain
the gar awakening in black water from a dream
a long snake moans uncoiling from my spine
as I am finally before the door again
knocking

thinking not hoping
that no one will really answer
as if I am praying to the dead god
knocking
then the heavy footsteps
from the other side
Old Man Johnson thump and slide
one leg missing broken stride
heavy thundering hammering
coming from the other side
here's your prayer's answering
he coming to get me
fear igniting stumbling falling

then the icy kiss of the needle
this medical metallic penetration
injecting rusty burning under the skin
the violent rattle of the door
the thundering of the floor
up and stumbling tripping
collapsing in the bottom of the canoe

go go go and my tribe pounding
the ancient waters of the Trinity
like those others from so long ago
questions questions then the silent staring
at the needle hanging wasp bent
into my hand I see it now again
and I begin again to understand

tumbling down that Trinity
with epiphanic explosions
celebrating headless prophets
wandering the concrete rivers
in Augustine's Lost City of God
preaching poetry to the whores
in wild mad howling cries
Babylonian babblings sung
as we cut through the water
under empty skies

ageless paddling into gargoyle mocking winds
before me I see the bone white barge
floating in the flesh and furnace of the Congo
a thousand cannibals danced in files
the skull faced lean witch doctors
mumbo jumbo mumbo jumbo
what do I remember of that skeletal tale
squalor and sad trumpet elephantine ivory
barges drifting overloaded with bones
oozing luminescent slime from the moon
crocodiles chasing little black sambo
grows a tail turns into a tadpole
shakes down in the mud
like a topless dancer
primordial sludge
I am now forever
buried in the deep down darkness
of things

crucified women
sing from crosses
lining the banks
there hung she
distant dreamer of days
in an all-american trance
suffering sarcastically
with twilight truth
unrequited love
and this misspent youth

falling faintly faintly calling the archangel
furious over missed annunciations
priest torn vestments that no longer cover
obscene statues of pagan masturbations
pounding pounding pounding
upon the dead god's drum
until I saw her

yes
she floated
in a pretense of magnificent mammalian abandon
licking her pink nails with a serpent's tongue
my life now lost in her endless life line lying
in her palm tree oasis as she slipped up soft inside of me
and caressed my spine
yes she asked
as if I was now compelled and under oath
and yes I replied

the boys still dive into the Trinity
from sun splattered cliffs
arcing super heroes
into quietly desperate destinies
as the alligator gar glides
beneath them hungrily
Crazy Leg Johnson is still coming to get me
we are all of us bound together at the bone
perhaps these are all too much with me
too much and never enough
because my wound is always aching
this dark spinal scar
upon the American Mythos
forged in those interior fires
of the long lost summer fables

we had no idea we spoke as oracles
hoping for dead god's voices
to wake us before we drowned

Tat Tvam Asi

For Ashley Berger


An old photograph of my self
Wearing a younger face,
A face I no longer recognize.

Who is that stranger
There beneath the skin
Staring out from in my eyes?

The self inside looks for sign
Of who it once was when
It was smiling in that face.

This is a slippery fish
To think about: my self now
Standing in an other self's place.

Where is the self that once was I?
When was it born? And did it die?
My minds are now both filled with doubt.

You are staring at me inside the mirror,
Is it me now looking in? Am I you or
Am I the one now looking out?

She opened the door of night

She opened the door of night
And became unhinged.
Hanging upon a turning knob,
Lifting high as her children's kite
Had lifted love and then was lost.

Wheels sing with the sky,
Constellations not composed of stars
But of a billion hollowed moments.
Every thought as unconnnected
As a heart's diagram exploded.

Walking in a spiraled ring
On suspended sands in Alabama,
Her faith the duration of a flower.
In the drystone riverbeds of Babylon,
She unsieves sediments of the hour.

She made her bed at last inside
The shadows blanket thinking:
There'll be time enough tomorrow.
As the lunatic moon undid
Her countenance of sorrow.

The Mourning Rituals

The morning rituals:
Water set to boil,
The coffee measured out in spoonfuls,
Paper filters folded in half -
Because we ran out of the right ones.
It satisfies me to improvise,
To make do with less;
I wonder if there's less than this,
Less than this, I whisper
Quietly to myself.

Cat is out back
Lounging in a square of sunlight.
I open the window and meow,
Startling cat awake -
Go out to fill its bowl
As cat meows and hisses at me.
No one ever taught you how
To show proper gratitude,
I say to myself.
Then meow and hiss back

The water is boiling.
I remove it from the base
Letting it cool down some
So as not to make the coffee bitter.
Then pour it over the cone,
Adjusting my flow in
To equal the flow out.
A perfect slurry,
I say out loud to no one
And then I also add a meow.

I stir in a spoonful of sugar,
Then a spoonful of cream,
Watching the Milky Way
Spin in endless night,
Endlessly fascinated.
Never tiring of this part of my life,
Marveling like a child
At the simple daily events.
I am a child,
I think out loud.

It pleases me to bang
My spoon rhythmically around
The mug's interior listening
For the distant bell from the Monastery
And the ancient bell of the ox.
Then I hear her say, Jesus!
From the other room.
You're gonna miss this ringing
One day after I'm gone,
I say out loud.

This world is no longer home for me

This world is no longer home for me:
There's a fishing boat up in a tree,
The inverted cross of its anchor hangs
Loose as the tongue of a bell exhausted.

The neighbor's house cut in half
Exposing the unmade bed and blue sheet,
An easy chair facing a shattered TV,
A black boot standing on the stair.

The Laughing Horse gutted clean:
What remains behind is empty frame.
And once surrounded by a home,
A solitary door half opening.

Down on Tarpon street,
Beside the piles of blank debris,
The boatless fisherman drink for free:
Siren's tears from broken glass.

A hermit crab from a souvenir shop
Tumbles in a tide now amniotic,
His new home the empty shell
Of a washed up piece of plastic.

Born of Sun

Born of Sun,
Out flesh of woman,
He stands,
Sword hanging his hand
Like a curse.

Sea incarnadine,
Attacked abject rage,
Blood surf,
Wounds opening words
Between waves.

The son set
Himself against father.
Eternity paused,
Blood letting loose lost
Amidst slaughter.

Ever mutable
Memory of death,
Full fathoms mine,
Words echoing lie
Under last breaths.

Born on waves
Icarus descended,
She rides,
Pulsing tides
In vulnerable ended.

As Albert Ayler Stood

To live for the love of God.
To stand as a reflection from God.

As Albert Ayler stood
When the music moved
Through him.
As Chang Tzu's butcher slipped
His blade effortlessly inside
The spaces in between
The bones of breath.
Dancing with the ox,
Raised up on hind legs,
To Summertime.

Summetime...
In the easy evening light
Upon the killing floor
Until the sweet beast shuddered,
Let go a low moan
Sounding sigh
Unwinding
Its last breath.
As if it grasped
Its own sweet death,
Falling apart,
Being entirely separated,
A harmonic graced note
Suspended, then faded
Into blood and bone and flesh
And air.

Could George Gershwin
Have ever imagined Albert Ayler?

On Easter Sunday
In Eliot's crowded Cathedral,
The Sisters of Maculate Mercy,
Stand before the congregation,
Black veils breathing
Over faces ruined by elation,
Singing,
Fuck. Fuck. Fuck.

In our less than critical evasions,
We think of the voice of the Rilkean angel,
A terrible beauty uncontainable,
Reverberating in a cul de sac,
Trapped in the apse
Of this terminal musical cathedral,
Notes now not so much as fading
As collapsing inward
Under the pressure of inadequacy
Into the absolute silence of the crypt.

There is the haunting question:
When is even music inadequate
To the task of surrounding
Human experience with meaning?

Here at John Coltrane's funeral,
Thought rings with the unimaginable:
The human being is not inevitable.
Ayler's accidental notes inscribing
The sigil of our unwelcome presence
Upon the pain turned threshold
Where being itself becomes unbearable.

The punch-line always ready to pounce.
And the Pretty and Sweet and Lovely
Are now the over-painted terrors,
The wandering ghostly errors,
Singing Fuck Fuck Fuck on Easter Sunday,
Profanity now a prayer.

There is meaning.
There is meaning.
But it is a music we can barely endure,
A music we can hardly hear,
The bone's prayer -
God's ghost shuddering
Through Albert Ayler.


***

Sources and antecedent:
http://www.laughingbone.com/thelaughingbone/word/prose/a-beautiful-lie-but-beautiful-nonetheless