Saturday, October 15, 2005

Spill The Wine, Dig That Girl

Gertrude's Stone of Was Being and Was Not Being
In Vino Fecundus Gerundus et Terra Caput Mortuum

I had something that was falling out of me. Something there was that kept falling out of
me. It was leaking out of me. It had always been leaking and falling out of me.
There was some time that this something was not leaking. There was a time
it was not drained out. There was a time it was not falling, that the
ground was not calling. But then that time came. That time was always
coming. That time knew its time. That time knew it was time. It was
a time that had always been coming so that even when something
was not falling, leaking, draining out of me it was always falling, leaking
draining out of me. It was not something coming out of me,
not something simply coming out of me. It was falling,
always falling, though not always. It was leaking. This was
a forceful leaking, like being drained. It was something
that was being drained from me and called downward,
to the ground. This calling by the ground was constant.
This call was not always constant but when it called
it always was calling. The draining was forced by
something pushing in on me. This something pushing
in on me had always been pushing. There was never
a time it had not been pushing. This pushing pressed
the draining which was always falling to the ground
that always had been there. This ground that
always had been there existed before it was
not there. It existed in a time that did not
exist. Its existence was not in time. Its
existence was not time. Its time never
existed, this thing that always was.
There was a time I once was. I was
once in a time with something
leaking out of me. It was
always leaking out of me.
I always was. Was is
always. Was is me,
was always me.
Was is. Is
was always.
Never was
was never.
Was was.
This was
the was
that was
falling
out of
me,
press
ing out
of me
always,
never
not
being
drained
out of
me to
be re
ceiv
ed in
to the
ground
that
always
was
even
when
it was
not,
when
I was
not.
These two always coinciding.

Sunday, October 09, 2005

Hickory Dickery

Church Mouse's Observations
On Sex and the Mythic Suburb
When He Was Just Fifteen
.
Loved boy, demon dreaming, run through
an emasculating mill of hours,
boards piled up, planked, trafficked in 4²
religion, waiting on a driving nail
with brambles in his hair, roots turned
from will to function, a piercing on
a civil lathe, dizzying cries out
of dark wood to a foolish track of
silence, a polis of quiescent vows,
sawdust, at last desired, somewhere,
in some way, as someone, someday,
a last tryst with light,
Persephone dragged down to the dark
of an accustomed compromise,
Lethe's tidal give and take

hard to remember what the world was
before she alighted like the moon,
like a dark screen, lit by the sun
ever riding at her heel, the lustrum
of her back meteorotically always
just beyond, beyond the sun and the crater
she cleaved in loved boy's yard now gone to
seed, overgrown like a jungle where
cats roam about the face of a fallen
buddha; lovingly they pad the earth
in carpets of peaceful invention;
loved boy throws rocks at the sun,
sun turns to a river where loved boy
drinks, memory blanked by her sweet
elixir, one sip and forever gone
desert emerges in the bed
where loved boy swam, wild rapids
turned to sand, gleeful accelerations
between silted banks of refusal,
waters robbed of holy wars, baptism
of thistle, purged eddies of loveless nights
where fish that try to spawn go belly up,
rich effulgence stripped, putrefied,
dried bone cast in the heat of shoal
and sand where statuary crumbles,
toppled totem in a dying forest,
illusion lamented, a longing
cleansed, hot wind glides along, her name
rustles leaves, a creeping fire, fissure
rubbled pyre panging for her touch
he straddles the ghost of a future promise
ridden out of fitful sleeplessness;
dreams, like shells, litter a blanket
in a solitary field, a boy
understands an upturned nose smells fear,
he's outsourced to an ignorant safety
of distance and memory that divides,
conquers, like a book fallen on its side,
a museum shelf's glass-housing, a scream
and a shard of nail beneath, listing among
days that do not know his name, loved boy
totters like a calf, like a plunger in
the trunk of her father's car, his ghost
flush against the back of the sky
where night picks away at an ancient hole
cherchez la femme, loved boy
of a motherless house and a
spattering of maypoles, suburban
sex and all still moments in between,
letting go and freezing in a
mid-day and cautionary sequence
of return, eruptions of bread and seed,
a(r)morless armies and a drink
expel a constant howling, it's a drink
he can't afford, he turns onto his side,
heart tympanic in his ear, memory
of taste, saliva on a wooden tongue,
though he was of the earth he was
of the earth too late, stopped
creating, quit weilding language skyward
gods tortured him with lovers,
his mind a constant hum, thoughts mere
impositions, broken apart,
one got away as the other
was being eaten, he remembers
her like snow not far from an ocean
and he feels like a fat man leaning
over a countertop, a glass jar
fired without love wedged into
memory; she likes to describe being
ravaged to her friends, there are boys
she will not name, and one, like wine
sharpened on the tongue, metal on a strap
in a house where love went bad, a midnight
meeting of regrettable constancies.