The Meaning

morning of the brilliant sunshine

morning of the brilliant sunshine
the elastic electric cleanses the eyes.

the image of renewal
replaces sterility.

offers the previously
earth mortgaged

rebirth, the seminalism
of thoughtful elasticity.

The pallid, the effusive,
numb, blind,

torn, blown, thrown away —

to be replaced by
Elysian liquidity,

air and light,
corruscating frequently,
human and thinking free.

the girl reflected in the window

ripples by, her dress an aquatic pulse
of colour and submarine motion

her dress within the liquidity of glass reveals
its liquidity, magnified by each move she makes

she passes away from me and all I can do is chart
potential depths, shallows, hidden hazards, and imagine

who is she, what is she doing, where is she going

The Artist and his Muse

The painting says Modigliani, the nude says “take me.”
I look, I see, I penetrate beyond design— the painting mounts
the birth of the modern, again and again at the start
of the twentieth century, past brazen oranges, peaches, apples
and kohl lidded glances become burning flesh, woman posed
into willing odalisque muse, she who is become the plastic moment
of delayed desire and I am now the artist’s rock hard delight,
his overpowering need to paint, to overtake this heavy lidded mask
of want and surrender. To be first to make her his own. Then commit
her to instantaneous gratification, over and over again, until the
sated watcher, deep within her, cannot ignore her invitation to love
and self-annihilation.

You know it is wrong.
It’s not good for you.
You have to stop—but
nothing else makes you feel this way.
Nothing else makes your heart beat
this way, makes you sweat, makes you
pant, makes you want nothing more
than this —but it’s wrong.
You shouldn’t continue.
You could get hurt.
You should stay at home,
defend yourself,
lock the door behind you.
Instead, you step into the night
heart pounding, hair standing
on end, alive and awake
to endless possibilities,
though you may not survive the night.

Hermes

It is my role – I chose it.
I chose first touch, first taste,
first stolen penetration.
It is my curse, my joy, my fate –
I am surrendered to it.

I hear the call, I am the messenger
I see them, naked, innocent, unguarded
I am the Prince of Thieves – how can I resist?
I take them, seduce them,
taste their first kiss, again and again,
the first bliss of touch to soft,
hard, wet, hot, grind & release,
strain deeply against their souls –
first taste and then deliver them,
the god-loves – those that survive me.

The gods shun me – I have known each of their toys.
The chosen despise me – who they once loved so fervently,
base and bare – as if I were Pan – as if my pipes sprang
from my Wood, My Keep – but that is not who I am.
I am The One Who Fools Gods, I am The One Who Sings
New Songs, Makes Old Into New – I am The One Who Travels
All Roads – and carries foolish declarations of love when
performance was called for instead – so, I Was There Instead.
Although I know I repeat myself over and over and over again
I do not repent – as I cannot repeat myself.

They hate me because they gave me
their first love and I betrayed them.
Testing if they were worthy to
pass on—to lose, to gain—to regain—
story told again and again and again;
they resent me, I took them to the divine
and all they believe is I rejected them—
when I only came to push them through
the door. I am not to blame. And yet
once again, the messenger bears the shame.

Even in a crowd, you catch my eye,
as arm in arm you walk on by
with your lord or lady, with whom you abide.

Your cold glance does not remain,
but in the air there resonates
complaint, no longer compliant, as once you cried.

My eyes glance but do not remain,
I do not need to see your disdain,
when next you glance, seek others who are less constrained.

I took you from the mortal plane – you will never
see me in my final role, guiding you to the Boatman
who ferries all in Time across that black River. I will
never hear your voice plead with me, beg me, offer me
everything, anything, if I will not take you – only then,
once again, despite your muffled cries, I will fold you
in my embrace, one last time, and take once again,
your innocent kiss.
From this, you will remain, ever proofed,
ever denied, this final passion, culmination, the truth –

and will march, instead, in charade,
refrained within the eternal parade.

Dear John, Dear George, Dear Irene, Dear Susan,

I spent a long time thinking about what I should do —
should I phone, should I write, should I send a card?
I decided to write because writing seemed closer
to our friendship, what I would never achieve over
the phone; what a card could never accomplish.

I was sorry to hear your news — and then time
passed and I thought it was too late for me to say
anything —accepting that I had been too rude to act —
inexact, and purposeless, I had accomplished nothing.

I’m sorry your son died. Your wife died. Your father
died, your mother died. Your lover died. Your boss
died, your bank teller died, your car died, your battery
died; your clock died.
He would be so much older now.
She would be. They would be. He would be older than
me, you, we would be, at his age. She would have been
there for you, helped you handle it, she always took care
of everything beautifully, so his passing away was right
in line with the moon, or whatever constellations play
their part in these things.

I wish you could taste
the oranges I am eating right now. They are as sweet
as grapes, like strawberries, ripe melons, apples juiced
with ripe peaches and pints of cherries, bananas,
exotic fruits with unpronounceable names, in sweet
surrender I gulp nectar as if I were drowning in it,
a thousand stylized goldfish swim towards me bearing
platters of Chinese fruit, flowering trees, bamboo flutes.

The seeds are within the compost; who will love you now?
Who will know you, who will talk to you, who will listen,
explain to you, help you get money, get you to work on time?
What will you do? How will your heartbeat now that it is gone?

These words serve little purpose. They cannot take away your pain.
And I have not expunged my own. I only want you to know I think
I know how you feel. I feel crummy too — that I took so long
to acknowledge your grief.
We are so much older. When we were
younger we would have handled this better. We would have worn
white shirts and ties, dark suits, shuffled appropriately, and then
shuffled again, away from parents, tea and coffee, psalms, prayers,
cocktail olives and little sandwiches with the crusts cut off, running
down the road, drinking and dancing and wandering around after
everything was closed, looking for someone to fuck, someone we
would never find because we were so anxious; and the city’s lights
were anonymous, and we were shadows swimming away in a moon
lit night, when the clouds looked like enticing countries and the
sidewalks were small kitchen tiles, running away from home.

How Shall We Sing The Lord’s Song In A Strange Land?
variation on psalm 137

hands, feet drumming on ribs, the ground,
the mouths of pots and guns beckon;
the wind, the clouds, are the sight of sound
to the deaf, the foreign, the prisoner.
This bridge is the harp hung across
the tears of our sorrow. Each life
must know this and it has unstrung us.
The song that must be found, cannot;
we sing in no tongue, no language—
our words are incantations, they harm those who
do not know the melody—it’s magic—
and only fools ask the meaning.
These whore masters who bid us sing
do not hear our anger. It crashes
upon the shore a great wave of vengeance.
If we forget, let our tongues be like the wave—
ever licking, never drinking; let water be salt
and tears our fountains; if we forget,
make our bed from thorns, crowns for our
children to wear, though they be but mirrors
of our pain. We who sing hear not the song
that is sung—take comfort in what is missing.

My Father

I am a greater, and lesser, man than my father —

greater that I am the result of his wishes, the changes
and improvements I made to him; lesser because
of his achievements, his fierce life, all I do not know
about him, his black hair aflame; after my bath he

would lift me, weightless, in his arms, a moment
he gave to me that I will always hold, free, time
less how it resonates, how in his arms I yearned;
how in his arms I learned how a father loves, how

a man holds his son.

How The World Makes Me See You Are Not Within It

Oh my son
listening to Debussy
I realize this beauty is a message
from you, “Hello—remember beauty—
the world is suffused with it.”
I see it but I see it without you
and beauty is no longer transcendent
but dead, and all my ideals simply
forgotten.

Christ blesses the nails

So little to believe in.
Seems everything we are given
falls away.
Seems everyone we love
can be taken away.
So many things to remind me—
we are born of clay,
easy to crumble,
fragile once fired,
not really clear what we are made for,
so little to show from long ago,
yet each day brings us closer
to the divinity at hand.
I open mine and see
nestled in a wound,
a nail made of iron.
I know this
is something I can hold onto.
This will last.
Bless this age of iron.
We who are to be forged,
bless and remember
the crucible of this open hand.

Christ blesses the wood

My new skeleton grows,
its cells fuse to me,
cleave me into a bridge
to a moment when all
that is mechanical will be
traced to this moment.
When all that is, will be,
heaven unknown, and hell
someone else’s problem.
The punishment continues;
the spirit lives. I am
so easily turned;
I grow into my skin.
Amen.

Stars must be charted

Stars must be charted from the surface of the water
whose qualities and characteristics most become the ether.
The diamonds of each ripple are equal in increment
to the imagination necessary to filing and describing
constellations as they appear before you. Heaven’s
girdle marks the phosphorescent path we navigate
polarized scales of fish trace the path of shining waters
pouring upon the ocean, pouring onto the plain, the full gallop
of the panoply of all that seek to run, flame upon the
surface, oil aburst with the glory of its consumption,
earth shattering cataclysms that make chasms and canyons,
that separate now from forever in a book written in shale.

Our passage scribes a shattering of new space where we
reflect, undistorted, each star’s place — endlessly.

Crumbs do not make a sandwich

Salute those who read the end of the book first.
They seek a reason to read.
This is the back of the book,
the mantle that is the crust.
Throw upon the weight,
the detritus of words and thought,
let them be sediment and the rest of us wash
that scribbles between the lines.
You who look for an index
are bound to be disappointed—
crumbs do not make a sandwich,
finding your way here was no coincidence.
What is the point of starting
if the end is not what you desire?
The brave page resists; a blank page
is not necessarily yours for the ink.