duhpursuit

If we advance,
innocent, guiltless,
the informed
undertaking of rook
and queen,
the porcelain, poised
to face another
solid, brick, mortar, stone–
designs on the other,
transposed.

If we trade
red, for impulse
square, for sphere
black, for cream
and gesture, this way
the wicked
pass, or pour.

If the common squares,
the echoes, the daily
percolations, are left
to boil, to spill
unkempt, unmeasured,
the closed file
may open onto new
patterns, the laying down
of arms, the winged
flight of waxen players,
descending,
lunar revelations,
embracing the dark.

Time is all
it takes
to slay the maidens,
youth undo, or seal
the curious
in their vault,
self-made;
to lose, yourself, despite
the careful maneuver,
to the grand master–
lose in her
many-chambered thing,
the mind.

It’s only If,
the looming elsewhere,
the duplicitous
unknown, that calls out
undisclosed, and makes us
all a little lost, a little crazy–
cautious, although

It’s only If,
the hidden passages,
that lead us
down, or out.

A glance, a lure, ensnared and gladly
sinking in the disturbed sand, we cast off,
like bedclothes in a fitful sleep,
skins, feathers, wings, scales; we
send lines across the deep,
dissolved in a moment, all restraint
the edge, comfort
a distant promise, land.

Only now on the horizon,
where everything is thrown
and slowly gathering–
bottle tops, unsent letters,
the father, son, and the holy ghost,
our old address–taught threads
wind around the drifting, the sunken
debris, the sins you thought you’d save.
This is my body, given for you.
This is my blood, shed for you.

And those who make it their business to speak
of clouds, the cloistered, coddled
unions, have us hook and sinker;
dearly beloved, we are gathered here,
a tender cosset on this lovely afternoon
as we fling away regret and hold
each other’s hands, compelled if only for
a moment to pray.

We are children; we wade in
waist deep until there is nothing left to hold.
Everything we touch in this moment is golden–
the gilded morning, autumn, whistling softly
while we work on hope, your body and my body
rippling the surface of another, moving
in all directions, but one.

Nothing is more precious, more tenuous, more feeble,
than the delicate flesh of the heart, pulsing a million times
before we can take our first steps, before the earthworm,
moving blindly in his earthen cathedral, takes one
and leaves the other four to break.

If we could move through the world like this,
blind and solitary, emerging only when the obvious signs
of rain have made their way down to us,
bursting skyward without the slightest thought of birds–

But for now we are still
navigating the tepid undulations in our sleep,
another dream just hours from now, waiting to rise
and fall, two dreamers astonished by the crest
of another successful exhalation.

The experts can tell you
when the brilliant flash will cross
the sky, appearing each night in a different place
to travel the entire breadth
in under two minutes–just long enough to fall,
to be caught scaling the roof
half-dressed, bare arms extended
in the almost blue of undiscovered planets.

But the Hopeless are hard
pressed to see through
the many layers of curved glass
a flagrant starburst spreading
its swift streamers, elusive, gibbous,
unable to grasp the fleeting bands of light
that go through phases like the moon,
Mercury and Venus revolving out of reach
a broad and open palm
glancing the crimson strands of dawn.

The Romantic posses a celestial optimism
reliant on the two-timing dualities.
They have their evidence
down to a science, the interstellar reality,
a swinging balance that relies on tension-
the undeniable pull of another body.
Everything loops back around again.

To those gravitating toward
a grave position, hoping against circumstance
for a parallel universe, a centripetal force,
it’s all in the approach: wringing the rosy outlook,
out of the saturated unknown, the source of terror
pulled back and obliterated by the laws of gravity.

They are idiots, fumbling and dim-witted,
ignorant of the carefully timed opening
closed, inopportune, and dumb–all their senses
numb to the obvious unfolding
despite all the evidence that nature affords
to those with enough good fortune
to penetrate the meticulous overlapping
of flesh and mind and spirit.

They are desperate and stumbling
stammering, incoherent, mumbling,
always somewhere in the dark and bound
by circumstance or obligation
for a sharp and unexpected corner,
the tender separations
only we can see, their mangled frames
muscling their way into the narrow aisle
of our hearts, as if they have nowhere else
to rest their weary, calloused minds,
searching always for a soft and gentle space
that will let them be seven again,
whole and unfractured, nestling
their heads into the doughy rescue
of a fictional mother.

When they find us at last
it’s as though their spirits
are worn already, waiting for us
to smooth the ragged and torn,
the wrinkled corners, placing the untidy
childhood they have
brought to bed.

Excerpts, notable quotes, etc…

Was it entirely paranoid to suspect that all those stoppers, thingamajigs, and substances devised to prevent conception were intended not to liberate womankind from the biological and social penalties imposed on her natural passions but, rather, at the insidious design of capitalistic puritans, were supposed to technologize sex, to dilute its dark juices, to contain its wilder fires, to censor its sweet nastiness, to scrub it clean (clean as a laboratory autoclave, clean as a hospital bed), to order it uniform, to render it safe; to eliminate the risk of uncontrollable feelings, illogical commitments, and deep involvements (substituting for those risks the less mysterious, tamer risks of infection, hemorrhage, cancer, and hormone imbalance); yes, to make sexual love so secure and same and sanitary, so slick and frolicsome, so casual that it is not a manifestation of love at all, but a near anonymous, near autonomous, hedonistic scratching of a bunny itch, an itch far removed from any direct relation to the feverish enigmas of Life and Death, and a scratching programmed so that it would in no way interfere with puritanical society, which is to produce goods and consume them? (14) Read the rest of this entry »

listen

You’ve got your boots on. The music is playing. The lights are dim. You’re western wear came “hand-crafted” to mimic the classic, time-worn feel of rough riders. And it has been a rough ride, you are sure. So even though you have a fear of horses and have never set foot on this particular dance floor, you feel justified in ogling the swift turns of the seasoned regulars, a breeze of confidence sailing past as you take another exaggerated drag on your cigarette. Leaning against the railing with your best impression of a fatigued cattle-rancher, you try to appear disinterested in the fluid coupling of hands, hips, heels and instead maintain a steady plan of drunkenness to get you through the night without two-step dancing to yet another broken-heart love song.

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list poem

procrastinate: alphabetize, make lists, vacuum, do a load of wash, call your mother, start projects you have no way to finish, create secret identities and hide, develop bad habits (nail biting, theft).

feed your denial: chocolate (bitter) (dark), gin and tonic X 3 with lime, reality TV.

say goodbye: close the door, switch off the light, don’t look back.