Pomz

Ask

2004-02-04T19:09:00.000-08:00

with shimmering accuracy
the deeds&thoughts of unripe saints collide
in ambiguous embrace.

memory pretends to have known
but actually wanders more or less
in thick darkness.

deep wisdom is a crisp jewel.
exhale the entire perception.
send it out on invisible wings
to join the vivid twilight.

life is an auspicious question mark.
don't kill it.
ask, when you breathe.

Demise of the Abattoir

2004-02-03T15:18:00.000-08:00

You lean to kiss but I protest.
Your hands gesture a polite difference of opinion.

I want those hands.

Look out the window.
See how the moon sits in the black sky with such composure?
I want to lean against you like that--
dumbstruck and luminous, pressed flatly into your stillness.

You lift the hem of my sweater,
as a question.
I step back.
Not now. Not yet.

Your left hand
signs a word on my skin,
the right translates.

You are not in hurry.
(Your eyes are.
Your sex is.)
You move now with the
sticky slowness of an opium dream.

This is what I need.

From the corner of my eye I see
everything that moves
or ever has moved.
Like the tattered drivel of a penny dreadful
memories riposte
and I recoil.

This will tire you.
It tires me.

I feel dizzy.
You say you will catch me this time.

As if waking from a dream you whisper,
(One hand on the kettle, one on me)
"Peppermint, right?"
Some old wound is mended by this kindness.
I push the chipped cup in your direction.
You pour, deliberately steamy and slow.

The Little Birth

2004-02-03T15:14:00.000-08:00

A shadow from the left.

My brain hesitates
apraxia blooms
your face becomes a faint nebula
empyream sphere
catapulted into the shadow
(danger is near) but I cannot run.

I am inclined to death or
death is inclined to me.
sight falters, light quivers,
particles disintegrate.
anoxic disturbance
kindles gasping utterance--
poems take birth in the dirt.

The present languishes.
i am captive to here,
frozen in somatic prison
electric worlds moving under my skin
not by wish or decision
--many people watching but no one is near.

Dysphasic voice tattles
my stammering song
mercifully uncoded, the lyrics are wrong
in this anguished sonnet of the deaf and the dumb.

My life between deaths is fine
no excuses made for
idiopathically divine
cycle of tiny births--
angelic senses intractably opened
by god's hand, some say unkind,
I live and die in the space of this mind.

Invisible Ink

2004-02-03T15:12:00.000-08:00

so many things I will say now
because when I remember your voice,
the sky opens and
fluent turbulence chases fleet images
(death to details
but the texture reads like well-formed braille
beneath curious fingertips)

I will say things,
brave things without hiding:
I do not fear life's delight
nor am I afraid to die blissfully alive,
wings open.

I might speak like this
but really I would like a small resting place
in the fragile palace of your affection
if there is room, if you want.

I am tugging at gently remembering what it means to
be balanced upon the opening of a story
contrary to popular belief.
a heart is a voice if anyone listens
but the world is poised to be closed and deaf.

the little feet of prayer
making tracks of wishes
fall victim to the light of day.
it was just a dream, after all, then,
a thin wraith waving in the wind,
wistful and suspect.

Eccentric Code

2004-01-22T15:39:00.001-08:00

in fitful sleep you murmured eccentric code

in the hoarse voice of your reluctant existence

& there in suspended dream I saw

the angry angel past

washing your wounds with blood

mercifully waking at last

you screamed.

(the name I heard was mine)

you will say

(into the wind, after I leave) that

the mere suggestion of communion

required a sacrifice to brilliant gods &

lost children

(mumbling, "love was uncalled for, unbidden")

you couldn't get up and you were afraid. I saw

and I stayed. It wasn't your fault, it was mine.

a saint's conscience is a clean place

but my body keeps dark secrets & I

trade the only thing

left to save my life--

(willingness to die)

so you can sleep.

but sad, & suspicious of pleasure,

you turn

(faithful, as always)

to grief.

Virtue? No.

I have only wishes and

dead sense.

time is short and I know it.

mending perfection

was never my strong point.

let God's name be

but keep it quiet.

Shame and Disgrace

2004-01-22T15:39:00.000-08:00

Stop.
If we keep talking about love
twilight will pass
candles will cast bewildered light on every surface.
Mystery will slip away.
I'll forget why we came here.
Quick! You know how life is.

The one rule is this:
never ask out loud.
(give dessert, wine...
all those hints)
Then, risk everything
for a kiss,
your legs trembling between mine.
Your indulgence is an act of mercy,
be a saint.

Forget repenting,
when I have your fingers in my mouth
the choices are shame and disgrace--
take your pick.

In the morning my shadow tells me
what I am supposed to become
(the way the sun climbs the wall and
forms disappear
into the buttermilk paint)
Tomorrow a stranger will arrive.
You can do this again and again.

Don't bother explaining,
I'm listening to god while you talk.

Hydromedusa

2004-01-20T11:35:00.000-08:00

timid medusa,
hesitant, surd speech uttered in gelatinous darkness
languidly rising through eremitic silence leaves
limpid bubbles in your wake, untraceable comment dissolving.

precisely mapped at creation:
undulous tendrils set in transient oscillation
your seraphic touch, incapable of embrace
a wary movement of habit, not choice.

your electric body ephemeral,
fragile muse,
holds not one secret
(all can see, who care to look,
your heart, your lungs, the tiny mechanisms of life
as you know it).

stay where you are, frilled Calliope,
the sun calls you,
but to death.
remain suspended in saline dream.
fear the isolate shore that murmurs your name.
swim and be glad for the soft abyss of the hydrosphere
where tears are life.

keeps me else

2004-01-19T22:30:00.000-08:00

ripe and soft you pull close
your tongue along my neck
my hand along your thigh
we shudder to receive your careful delight.
you never wander, just linger
slightly longer.
i absorb your ecstatic willingness to open;
your weight upon my weightlessness
keeps me here else i would rise above living,
die angelic and giving, an aspect of your heart.

you, friend, whose kindness defines good
tender and lithe, continuous and fine
delicious beyond any tasted thing divine.
warmly arouse juicy tingle
thighs to stomach to cheeks do mingle
i dream now, lazy and shy
wishful and grateful, willing to die.

seed of everything

2004-01-19T22:28:00.000-08:00

wet, pale
round and smooth
perfect universe of karmic blueprint
seed becomes tree becomes flower becomes fruit becomes seed becomes

an apricot never had an idea to be lovely or loved
never imagined
or suspected
never did anything but become the message of the seed,
showing signs of whatever happened in the meantime

it’s easy to ignore the obvious
to complicate the sublimely simple
to add intention to perfection or disaster
or the infinite ground between

harder just to watch it bloom
to pick and eat an apricot
without wishing some thing
naming some thing
or being absent

juicy , isn't it.

2004-01-13T15:08:00.000-08:00

how to build a shrine room (instructions for zopa)

honour the fragrance of silence.
make a space empty of any embellishment
other than the simple relief of having been opened.
give room for the fragments to assemble,
room for the undoing
to compel a man, a candle
and a question mark.