The world it does spin. This we know
Not in space as we are told
It spins in time we feel and see
Two hands you have on two long arms
With one hand pull at ocean's tide
The other one is gauntlet gloved
Two brothers borne and lived and died
One -- a knife plunged hilt deep in hot flesh
of girl and man. Contentment was beneath
The other was a stone, silent and still, but seeking
was dropped into a well <Plop> was the only sound he ever made
Finding depth plumbed was done
Their sister is a circle ever growing
she whispers in men's ears
Oh turquoise daughter, this world spins too fast for me
There is a pile of leaves that smolders
There is a pile of leaves conceals more death than I have ever seen
There is a top between our legs that spins perpetually
A man stands waist deep in the sea
Rip tide cleaves him in two
Turquoise daughter, birds fall from trees
Turquoise daughter, darkening aflame
The sun is burning the western sky
Turquoise daughter what are our names?
The dog stars fly, the wires scream
There are two breasts,
but children three
When she dies she becomes the great white pelican
wings drawing on the water
She cuts piles of leaves apart in flame
She cuts the breasts from off her chest
She cuts the marrow from her bones. The great white pelican
she cuts like no knife nor tide nor sharp stone can
She whispers in men’s ears
She says it spins too fast for you
and wire cuts too deep
This we know, we feel and see –
the great turquoise pelican can cut the tides
but cannot chase the sea
Like everyone and everything
she was born from dusty effluent
of morbid stars. She was carbon bright
A filament bridged and glowed
Like everyone and everything
she was born a bursting prophet of origin
Rare to rich over-burn of eventuality
She was born a single treed forest burnt crisp
Like everyone and everything
she was born tossed and caught
From blank non-being into being
From blinding gestate to cold dark earth.
A stone
Like everyone and everything,
she was born to veiled
nursemaids of pain and pleasure
One called need, the other want
Like everyone and everything
she was born crying out, to mark
short span of being. Compressed
together, screaming apart
Like everyone and everything
she was born fissured with impurity
That is the crack and split
of pyrophytic seed
Like everything and every being
she was born highly charged.
Repulse and attract imminent
A spark seeking the touch of circuit
Like everything and every other being
she was born a one time thing
in everlasting experiment
With potential toward all else
Like everything and every being
she is diminished by neglect
As semi-precious as core clustered diamonds
As underfoot as turquoise
Like every being,
she was born with unspoken name
Like everything
she was born with no spoken name
Like everyone and everything that must be
she was born blankly
grasping for a given name
Oh Turquoise Daughter
All things, beings all, are born clean
into a well worn and weary world
Stars glow red and every cell has death drive
Rivers -- metal ochers, metal yellows –
like bony fingers reach to sea.
Big waters barely beat.
Big waters filled with skeletons of all things,
like old coral, oily algae green
The surface is a sick skin, a fever sweat
for greasy rain-starved winds
A new clear creature comes up from mud
and squirms grub-like from chrysalis of debris
She does not slouch toward pestilent future or from corruption of past
For a moment she is pure and unseen
She opens eyes as blue as treasure-held fragments of that old sky
This world is putrid.
Each step sucks up the smell of sour decay
each shuffle through the plastic shells of shotgun wadding,
old bent butts, of straws and bottlecaps, clears infertile crust away
Each step pushes blood poison, brown and veined, up her legs
She moves toward exhausted alkali – the world as desiccate as leaves
She moves through and to a place where other beings might be or might have been:
the strange mindful intention of piled debris
hard ground stained by dirty fires
corners strewn with dried black chips of feces
Everything has one property to possess and share: every being has smell
Every sheet of paper bound and stacked, every book broken spined and outcast --
all dim deciduous memories, trustee of image and word --
withers in the infrared and speckles green in mildew damp
and smells like old pornography
All things, beings all
are death drive born -- seeking
starving for the echo source
of clear of bright of clean
She comes to a cityscape
The world cannot help but change
Everyone and everything pushes out
The city has burst unfilled, a hollowscape
Wide avenues lead to center, radiate
Only laterals crowd with argument and debris
No one, nothing meets or challenges her
but the blasted glass ground beneath her feet
The sentinels are empty and everything
remains is scurry scurry
Heat is frivolous spent
without movement - tangled
Everything pushes out
against what it may find
looking out with
city center empty eyes
She stands at epicenter
that is like a weak star
Broadways radiate like light
did it explode? vaporize? did it collapse?
She walks upon ashes and looks
around clear blue, no second sight
The beast has been still-born and yet
has lurched away, pushing out
She feels threat inevitable
One thing overcome by another
Push turned inward
She breaths it finely in
Her hands are metal black
what did she touch? Somewhere deep
there must be clay and hummus
untouched untrammeled and unstreaked
From chromium clouds
the suicide air lays acid down
Toward quicksilver skies
the earth pushes up its alkali
A shadow flits across her eyes
Then another and another still
Some ancient creatures cloistered up
ooze across the formless sun
The wings push down push down away
She pulls up her feet and follows
Every girl in this hostile world
needs walk on, every girl needs a dog
The old birds move across the sky
they look down, lantern-like
at weary angles with the weary world obtuse
She follows them with long strides. She shears
She pursues strident and acute
Decrepitude falls away
fluttering like old lace
The paper clothed ground peels up
and flickers like grey flame
Her legs lift ponderous as wings
She is leaving but wishing won't make it so
Legs and wings astride as if willing
only made it so, they are away
The bird and her describe a whirl against itself
Then, whirl against the broken back of world
-- all its own armatures corrupt
its chemical sky collapsing into sea
Firmament slides delirious away
Guide-wires burn and snap like filaments
One by one the wings collapse and
fall along guide wires arsenic and lead
Still, she persists her vom'tous slog
nearer still against the blasted sun
But look, a smudge across the rarefied
A listless smile that is primeval tusk
and two black shines that are mockeries of eyes
The stillborn beast remains, a stain
and like a slug, consumes the world decay
There is a bright white –
a pelican astride being of legs and wings
And there is a sallow white
that is a fade, consumption
Please tell your children that you are coming soon
Please tell our children that you are
Please tell your children of your imminence
Last night a sickly light scarred
the low hung steaming atmosphere --
a load shot into the seeded sky
Tell me your children are imminent
In this morning's feeble dawn,
eyes old and wise, wings
spanning three meters wide,
the great grey pelican -- ocean's hound --
filled it's gulping beak the final time
And then Leviathan
blood plumbed with mercury and lead
rolled its eyes back in its head
White ribbed belly stretched to convecting winds,
oil covered -- a suffocating new blubber
Today is merciless. Wisdom is dead
Please tell our children anything
They are compelled to scratch
their spoken name in open osseous sand --
our children -- exposed and bounded by
the scaly crissing crossing trails
of mucous webs of slugs
Our children signed a blind consent
and they will desert wander
they will, our debts, pay
They will grow mute illiterate
They will be burdened by old laws
scratched in cuneiform upon
chipped slabs of clay
They have signed away
in aggregate, inheritance
Please tell them their secret names
Please let our children know
the fertile laws of nature will
supplant the fetid laws of man
We know it is too late in our cities
seamed and chipped, utilities choking choking
We know it is too late in our nitrous fields
collapsing into blue-green waterways
We know it is too late upon our greasy seas
We know that our mighty, ocean striding
derricks stand upon feet, iron-oxide red
Our valley spanning damns rest on feet of clay
Drown the wise men, may as well
let their harsh God be their judge
And we know it is too late for lightest sky
Turquoise daughter will not ascend, broad winged upon
now white pelican. She must at last return to ground
Life itself is there, tenuously choking
choking pale & self consuming
Is it too late?
There is a pimp and there is a whore
He cuts a dripping peach
Between his stained and crooked teeth
he sucks last pith from pitted core
He spits it out to speak while beating her
You bitch. You cunt. You piece of shit
Why does pimp hate whore? Why
do slugs use razor tongues
to drill in shielded shell?
Is it too late, turquoise daughter for sperm and egg?
Is it too late for germinate seed?
Too late even, for dormant tuber & wind-held spore?
Too late, the mollusk pimp will spit
Too late and more. Too late and more
The story so far is bleak. Here is reprieve:
Writers often do despair of staring blank at blank white sheet
The naked onus is to fill judiciously
To silent say what is a need, no more no less
To mete out hard truth and fragile beauty like rare thread
But you will seldom hear despair of staring darkly into inky well
The truth is there -- that every word drawn out of it is destined to fail
The truth, I fear, is bleak. The well is most opaque,
into which a fragile truth might, like a penny wish, sightless sink
Ink black, paper white, the writer knows his own hubris
and fears any hope is a like mistake
But must hold truth that blackest ink and whitest sheet
are last exhale of pulpy carbon tree
Poets task is not as engineer. Ink in words
is only slowed and followed spill and swell
Lines laid down like ordered thought are dark waters
cutting courses to root rich earth and thirsty fertile ground
The story so far is bleak, yet it persists
of its own power, not by me but through
with the same natural mystery that drives toward dark well
both sunlit stream and obscured roots of tree
Turquoise Daughter, sink some ships
No man alive can comfort you
Let flesh fall like so much drifting slag
sparks brighter than our meager sun
[cancer causing animus, tumorous]
Turquoise Daughter, halfway flayed
the broken earth thrust between your legs
It hasn't always been this way
Remember that – it’s your great pain
Let the great putty-men flake away
From that land raise a great wail -- alone and whole
See the silver raven speak on black water's face
Sink some ships and follow her. Collect the wails
Sew them up in womb and crack your mighty legs
Turquoise Daughter create a scream
A scream complete, more mighty than the Word. Sink ships
Send bodies flaming into black seas crushed
I may not know to not fight back
Turquoise Daughter bury me
Use my blood as grease
Let Annihilation be your name -- create!
There is no man can comfort you
There is no man that does not fear
Not in you but of you. Breath communes
The sun yearns red
Great storms batter the eastern seaboard
The west burns earnestly toward sun setting end
We are not unfamiliar with his desires
Each day some burning man at his own red meridian
loads up and shines down bullets, pitiless
Down and down, we are groomed for this
A pitiful man holds downward his gun
The sun seeks red
The pitiful man seeks gray
The sky moans with ash and haze
Not in you but of you. Breath communes
We have been groomed for this
It is pitiless how long and how
the child seeks love from her tormentor
Lead hot sun and crouch behind
Mask on because breath communes
Active shooter drills, the sun's own red desire
is a gray earth, a charnel house
Who loves color like a child?
But unburnt waters rise, subsume
Where is color-loving child?
Where is gray man?
Where is rapacious sunlight?
Subsumed
Not in you but of you.
Breath communes. Alas, submerged
But all colors start in lightless deep
From spark, from movement,
from vivacious seek
