Postcard 194

 

The Moon is weary of all this.
The perpetual motion and perpetual monotony.
The moon feels forever held in tension between the pull of two mighty bodies.
Though if the Moon sits in ts darkness it senses a third, bodyless pull
                                                      -- a pull to void.

The Moon certainly entertains this pull,
but it is just suggestion. The Moon finds itself in a situation
it cannot escape without plunging fully
and catastrophically into one of its two seducers or
                                                       ripping itself apart.

And what of the two beguiling forces?
Are they as subtle as they feel,
or is the precarious balance between them
the source of the feathery elliptical tugging?

The one is distant but so impossibly radiant.
It makes the Moon feel seen, but is the Moon being seen?
Or is it just reflection? If only the Moon could know it was
its own voluptuous curves, its own time earned scars being illuminated,
                                                          rather than just the other's brilliance...

And the other... upon this one the Moon teased effect,
had tickled blue -- with its own small force -- to brown and green.
But what was given back? The close embrace seemed more a projection
of desire. Now? The Moon hangs so tautly
                                                        -- madness

Postcard 193

Father Song
1 January 1988 Pasadena, CA

On new years day
the cold split of ages
my father walked me out
you'll thank me, he said
on a morning, a nascent day, a dawn
to shake the Champ's shaking hand

to hold
to be held
to behold
to be beheld
to be beholden to

You are your mother's
son you were is this
I am split in your river
I see I in you, rift of mothers name
Child, you see you gone

to hold
to be held
to behold
to be beheld
to be beholden to

The Greatest bereft
of fallen roses the bite
of time the sting a flower
float away, will I even
can I have I ever tried

to hold
to be held
to behold
to be beheld
to be beholden to

Like the daughter of the father
who follows him into the ring
I wonder if I echo
the wrong thing

Postcard 192

This being walking barefoot on asphalt to spare river-logged shoes, to feel
crime rise up heat. That much closer to annihilate, devastate, words that chop 

Earth marked soles that coil a simple stretched plane to rolls
to body warmth to dim light to must to just beyond sight

Possession: to own is fuel to anger from which hate is to heat. You know
this being with cracked blackened feet. And

This being, this other one, lies with short toes spread then curled
grabs - kicks down the clean sheet. Where is truth?

This beings with feets too wrapped in bunches folds to see what then?
when these two beings meet, congress, seek truth, stain the sheets

Postcard 191

We sat and

then we stand

footfall footfall

climb hand over hand

legs strong as sheep

hot sun south side

shale slide stone sharp

shear face ever steep

skidee skidee

 

whistle songs

wind scream short

breath blister knee

there goes and there

goes and another fall free

 

precipice precipice

 

stone fall stone fall

all is gravity gravid pull is all

leg up leg up foot down foot

down knees buckle

like ice crack-weak

as water melt snow pack

collapse ice in schist

lithic split

 

carapice carapice

 

snow crash avalanche

stress and split buckle

break through mountain feet

chasm canyon stream unend

valley carve valley make

valley carve valley make

 

the ache the ache

 

too high breath

too high the ache

Postcard 190

 

She sits upon a pile of old bicycle wheels -- bent spoke and flat

rubber tires cracked. She spins How she is upright is mystery

 

She stays upright in mysterious power. Gears and wires press

into her legs, here and there trailing red welts and stripped skin

 

Punctured as a tire and tube

 Her legs -- soft and strong -- press

 

into those things extruded & stamped

dead ends of kinetic life

She is a still but singing ring -- the gyre alight

What can be held by broken welds on rusted pipe?

 

And does whatever orbits like degrade? Only

as her tremendous weight pulls in embrace

 

And does whatever orbits escape -- annihilate

and free? Only in her light release

 

Orange pedal reflectors -- a scatter of photons

in the asphault shattered weeds. Her feet

 

sit solid as Atlas and share his dancing joy

She sits upon a pile of old bicycle wheels

                                                -- spins

Postcard 189

 

envelope me

you fold like fine paper my

two fingers in creamy eternity

i was convinced i was the well -- oily and deep

i am gutted by that poison drink

envelope me 

ivory bright sheet clean me tonguing

desperate words along your supple crease -- aspiring

to the mighty pen. tattoo my name

in penetrating ink

envelope me

your spool recieved but on edge

im bleeding through seeking tear

-- smudge unto me

as i smear unto you

envelope me

with clear

drive me from you

r fibers -- rub yourself alone

and free -- erase me 

envelope me

my words foreign to you

muddy untrue -- wrap them up

precisely send them off far 

off into discarding world

envelope me unworth you

Postcard 188

 

 

Oh Faith

 

Once again, I have taken mad religion too seriously

Which is it -- gods or over the counter manuals?

I'm trying to convince with show dont tell

Jesus Christ! "Thankfully my lover-priest, my sacrifice, aother

found succor in these cruel witches I know of," for instance

 

Like the old Doctor had firm capability -- like me but not muddy. Clean

Sterile. professional. What you desire but pristine. I'm tired

of trying to convince how desperate life can be. Get it

while you can. How tender can we see ourselves

in awesome relief? I drink you like the sea

What can you doubt? Feel my hands, my scars. I am here

 

Thank god I found relief. You leave me

a bag of teeth & two commerce manifestos -- Gottman PHd

his bland apocalypse in a dustjacket. Are you the whore

of Babylon or daughter of Danville CA Cheryl and Steve

 

Magic. Witches. Gods. Moons. I drank dangerously

I worshipped, bled, went nightswimming 

in your bottomless sea. For this? Lifetime

movie eight essential dates betrayal. You 

betrayed me. Better watch what standards you seek

I take all this magic talk serious after all.

 

I'm taking a sabbatical

Postcard 187

The full world has been conquered

When he hears the sound
a horrible sound
the scream of a horse
you see his eyes
He hears it and knows

with that shot
his horse had died
a percussion rending time
And his eyes, they change
in that moment
He dies with his horse

Like a child he named
'self' 'horse' 'bullet' 'time'
Fence and saddle become
the only named things
between him and horse
As a dying man, a man
dying with a horse
all that slips away:
Man - away on padded feet
Horse - away as sand
Time and Bullet - fold up like water
Brittle self relaxes
passes as breath

Oh serpent underfoot
this is what you meant:
an unconquered world
Two fanged explosion
What now separates
asp from bullet?
man from horse?
woman from rib?
Likely stories, serpent
replies, fencemending

The full world must be unconquered
and I wonder, will I ever
join a horizon line upon a horse?
Will my equine breath
mingle with steaming tulle?
When will my horse age be and
when will death do its undividing?

Postcard 186

Bodies come and go, break and grow
Let cripple be a word that only serves for souls

I finally have man's own dog and understand
each sweet impulse unchecked by thought

I'd had a whale's age -- submerged. And they still
surface in dreams sometimes like mother's breath

These dog's days are the good god's glass
on my own inadequacy. My larger self --

always theoretical -- is light as hollow boned bird
is round as cat catch bird as catch can

A self rolling spine insensate. As in hand in air,
as in jaws. All all Holy Holy

Kick a dog for guilt, though. A lame
and grounded bird is fierce, then cold

A wounded cat -- tiger noble, tiger gold
Kick your dog to know your crippled soul

These coming dog years, perhaps
a decade, perhaps a score,


they will be my measure. I shall find
what my worth is as I become old

Postcard 185

It was one of those days crested in tears, swelling and trembling as a rough gray ocean seems,
in its fullness, to be higher than the battered sand. Higher than my own eyes.
I know this cannot be true. I'd be submerged, but I feel the trembling possibility
with each tremendous wave, clapping upon itself, sliding up the shore with a hiss.
Between the gray sky and gray sea, the sand glows gold.

It was a day like that with trembling sorrow more delicious than despair.
Colors jump sharp and the wind dances across skin in small salty steps.
A day when bad news would not surprise. Not bad news of commerce or politic, but
news of loss. A death day crisp and bitter as a wild apple.

My son calls  -- angry and confused. This is the heartbreak I conceived in him and foresaw
as clear and bright as battered sand. He's been up for days -- madness? spirit walk? amphetamine?
He has fragments and much disconnect to say, in essence: What have you done to me?
How have you made me so? My tears crest and provide that wide angle lens
through time and its tides. Yes, so clear to me, this has happened before.

I see my decades of man's work. I want to wield the golden bough to tell him
Kill your idols, kill you kings. I want to hand him the sharpest blade -- sharp as light --
and my own bent neck, thankful, it is a tear crested day. That tool is double sharp
and we are fleshy beings served by myth but not myth ourselves. I am sorry I say to him.
I know I often failed. I am sorry, but please know how much I did try.