For Jacques Roubaud

Fate feels you twitching:
the shapeless mass of plain denial.
Yet there is nothing plainer. 
No thing more real.

In metered dance, the tongue becomes a patient lance of the ineffable.
A frost forms on the words; we fail to dream
beyond the confines of the load.

at the mouth of the river

little may

little may

dream thought through time 

What force cradles time

with such magnitude
as that offered in the depths
of the dream? 

little may
awaken time

(I drag a comb
through the silt
at the mouth of the river
floor to scavenge
for a miracle)

in a fractal prison of fractal hopes 

with curtains drawn

in a tapestry of imploding lights

(Plush fabric of a miracle

         with such uncertain terms)


little may
little may

offer a soul with a form thought may feel
(as if sense were born beyond the body)

little may
be the soul of sense that time cannot erase

(but what is thought?)

nothing.

a mechanical framework of infinite forces
exerted upon infinite strands

an unraveling forest

little may
little may

(but what is thought?)

little may
awaken time in

an unraveling flourish

i am the am not of oblivion

violent wind through the trees

loose and thrashing through me

shakes a soul from the leaves

i am the am not of oblivion

blends with breeze what with words

appears dead inside me

sharp as shrapnel shaken loose

from a hemorrhaging pearl

coursing forward with weight

and with injury and fate

trailing backward as leaves down a hillside

i am the am not of oblivion

mother, harness some breath 

from your body and then

believe "nothing believes nothing and then..."

For Antonin Artaud

The dry, ratcheting breath of aimless thought

scalds the mind where it races

upon ice

with token symbol

clustered like a snowflake

as it melts into my hand

Amend the darkness!

 - screams that pull the stars across an abacus 

with a desperate breath 

your soul engulfs

my private speech

and imparts a caustic lilt to the howling wind

Cult of Absence

I.

A placid state with little movement in the streets; an abysmal quiet suspended from the ear.

To beat the setting sun, to catch maybe a glimpse of fire oozing through those icy sapphire husks.

Fast now over brick-work; legs are loose, distended cords and the body is all physics.

Portends the evening with it's sky peeled back like the rind of a spoiled citrus.

Clouds run long against the rot.

II.

Within dreams, a derangement of sense - a cascade of image and feeling like the textural seething of insects- a kaleidoscope of the transpersonal, each living painting etched by fire into an inner night.

A hunger strike invites the hollow; folds of flesh transform the pattern.

III.

To seethe inside a dream of silk. A cobwebbed dearth of insect light. Of silent mirth.

IV.

In the ocular night, all is sound.  

The seething of light becomes texture and weight upon the base sugars of an apple core. 

Where the ants are not marching triumphant, but seething in time.

My tongue teases reason off a sea cloud,

for it sits where it cares to,

and infiltrates the mind's city with a spectral embrace.

The salty character of damaged songs

that always speak without speaking

and prescribe time as a feature of a chariot race.

I want less movement

flowing backward from the words I make;

I want the sea, if not the salt,

a fretless tide that is never damaged

– unlike the words I make.

Beneath This Frozen Ground

I tease the night together with a soft light
lapping my face like a wound...

A bitter star labors by the bottom
of a silent cloud (or a magic cape)
that disfigures the darkness
of the deep freeze that ponders back
through inky pools of time

Is anger beneath this frozen ground
beneath our fire, believing nothing,
beneath our dreams deft, muted presence,
cognating light as a silver flower
or a virgin birth?

I dreamed a morphing every-shape
until it caved
and the night assembled my world as a finite place
that suspends our shared beliefs

To Suffer With Oneself

...and to lose that ancient fight – the willingness to suffer with oneself – is to hold death within the lungs and yet continue to breathe. But even this is a romance honed while we are awake and knowing nothing else; when pain burrows deep within the mind, it renders time obsolete, and like real death, denudes the very fabric of experience, as if to challenge Heraclitus with a deep and lasting darkness...

...we know not the mind; we call it home, anchored by our senses to incalculable strands of movement, sound – the likes of which dissolve into a stream of meaningful locutions, patterns, judgements. We call this home. We call this “I” this self, this we, this royal We; this pronoun engenders careful scrutiny of what we see and hear and come to believe to be outside our home...

...and to lose that ancient outside, from which each derives the willingness to suffer with oneself...

Assembled Hieroglyph By Night

- Invite a question with your speech, but do not speak.

- Refurbish Latin hieroglyphs from German cherubs sporting clubs...

These thoughts are not angelic; though,

they mold our spirits

(and this is not a dictum from the clouds)

- Let sound perform the theatre we impose on soiled shrouds.

- Peeling back an earthen veil reveals a thirst for angel's blood...

...day-lit narcissus bloom becomes a cannibal by night...

- When we began, we felt the rain upon our tongues and drank

Is this a lie?
Is this a hope, a romance honed by the gradual impoverishment of sensory life?
Drunk on the colors of our raceways...

- The phosphorescent haze of “stop n' go” beamed through a single bead of sweat

A Preference for the Salt

“Taste the salt” - the result spawned

rhapsodic waves of ocean breath

besiege this little island

lined with splays of crystal ice

A calm deluge of miracles

• a thirst for skill
  spread

thick and lapping

coral lyrics at the bay;

a reef of silver dendrites melting 

faster than the word from voice

a distant oval

The rope controls motion like an oustretched hand,
a veined sand sliding coarse
      lancing my face swell
           bulging bluish,
grape-world time inhabits

an instant is a thousand listless
carousels upon sodden earth

open mouth a distant oval