Awakening
I
I awoke in July. When heat
Seared the orange daylilies
Framing fragile gardens.
Walking through the new city,
I shed my coat, gloves,
Sweater, scarf, and boots.
There was a white birdhouse in a yard,
The replica of a tiny church on a pole,
With cross-shaped windows
Striking me like a bell or a whip.
II
Smothered by tubes and sheets
For weeks, and
Angels sat on my head and licked
My face with raspy, catlike tongues
Until I appeared like a cloud on someone else's
Lawn. I went to a bar in the foreign
Town and drank beer and ice water
But all I wanted was the snow I had fallen from
Into this glass inferno.
Angels sat on one side of the cracked mirror
Behind the bar, devils on the other.
III
I was a dancer, possibly a father. All I
Remembered was now burgundy, red flesh within
Siberia. I see myself walking down
The road in the picture to the beach. My
Eyes have seen the shape of the future
Through rain. I am like the future. I am
A god, risen from a basket of worms. I
Am walking into the picture.
IV
The ship's prow is
Covered in flowers. I spent a decade
Living with an angry beast
I never knew in a
Dying cell, didn't I?
Sprinting occasionally
Like spirited lightning
Across a fabulous floor
Made fine.
Clever sweat and dissatisfaction
Were the price we paid. But we always
Struggled and went on
Until I fell. Did I fall?
Do we ever?
V
I carry coins in my head. Prance
With flame-drenched souls.
Hunger and light is what boiling
refines down. A little passion (like a footnote)
Between the scurry and the files.
The ship inches down the bricks,
Dragging our house behind it.
The house we built is
Unfamiliar, but I find the beams and
The masts lovely: it views
The sea.
VI
The waters closed over my head
And I sank into a bed of anenomes
And roses. Mermaids and men
Pulled me down, kissing everything.
Cries and red lights in the distance
I called home.
I am home now and it is the strange
Place I love. Dress me with flowers,
Stand me in the garden. I will be your
Sextant, your sundial, your walking
Miracle of cherished bone.
VII
I was never as fragile as a song
Before, more like Atlas holding
Up your earth. Your gaze withered me
And we are married but whose clothes
Are these? I'd like to find the person
In the video who swept the world
Into his arms and kicked a flight across
The stage. . . his heart pounding like a star.
The resemblance would drive the old me
Mad.
VIII
The pictures are so lovely!
The phone rings night and day!
I am beloved! Miraculous
Renaissance encyclopedias!
IX
There is no decay.
I still see angels
Lighting and quivering in the corners
Of my eyes. They make me laugh
And people say "hallucinations."
Flash: an image. X-rays: surgery.
Our lifetimes combined added up to less than
A second one.
X
First you throw all the rules away.
Then the notebooks, the textbooks and
The science that saved you.
Then you clasp your wife's hand tightly,
Defy the world and stand gracefully
On the prow, sailing proudly (no tears today)
Through the mechanical painted streets,
Out to a sea the color of beer.
==============================
The Mystery of the Huge Black Carp
In the Netherlands
Where the landscapes are soft, dreamy and brutal,
On the immense rolling grounds of the university
I came upon mysterious ponds
Filled with huge black carp,
Vague missiles moving stealthily under the fogwater.
Carp had ceased to thrive here
Centuries ago.
There was a rotating lens
Atop the building on the hill
Which observed my movements through the valley.
And before that a journey down a waterfall
River in a boat that meant certain death --
A graphic, misleading design.
Sleep is like death sometimes;
Our memories intermingle with those of angels.
And our thoughts move like huge black carp,
Stealthy symbols trying to navigate us
Through the dark, lurking just beneath
The surface of morning.
=======================
Shine
Strange hay of bodies threshing light.
Scimitars of thought slicing unfaceable nights.
It is impossible to die
Mid the inscrutable crunching of cells.
Impossible to kill time
Or lie to the brazen hour.
The beat has come to kill us now.
No more pushing through weeds
To strangle moments.
The boat has docked.
The endless ladder abruptly
Ended. The next step lands in
Space. Below, the mists of a child
Gazing into the lake rises, strong enough
To blind.
The darkness collapses.
The angels mimic science, basses drone
And whine. You have run into the wall.
Alone. The threshing heart ceases.
The silent bone sings.
Plummeted high
Above the bright world
Without speech,
Dangled until one by one
Their thoughts let go of you.
If only you'd known the stupidity
Of numbers, the moronic, aching waste
Of cellular days.
Now you know
Everything. What you'd give to touch.
Nothing is taken from what has been given.
Your eyes are raining jewels.
The ocean has fashioned
A harp from your thigh.
The electric deer graze in meadows of mind.
A fetus made of stars
Swings in bone and cradles night.
Here you are, a nothingness
Clipped from pictures, sewn
Into disguise.
The star that doesn't last is why.
The medicines lasted and rang true
Until the line erased all facts.
Imagination perfect and true
Is all that's left of you.
The angel falls away at last,
Leaving only hunger
To devour.
Inside life, at the core,
There are no dresses and wings.
Where rain begins
And light shines
Madness unfurls.
The door opens wide,
And no longer matters.
It was the last thing you saw.
Now never begins.
The old
Shine.
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