enormous stillness

enormous stillness





i have spent all day looking
for a substitute for the weird
cold red thing at the heart of white

anemia is my snowman
a cardinal on his breast

i do not think the finch and i
are ready for flight. the wordless
release of gravity.

i am almost out
of cigarettes
and i would like beef
for dinner. the sun has
hidden her pretty face all day
behind blind clouds
and the beating hands of a skewed clock.

i was given several swords for christmas
but no directions on their use. the sun
was not helpful . language i could not translate.


it grows cold for paradise. i have relinquished
heat for a few burning phrases. a novena for silence.
more words , mere words, the unyielding music
forgiveness sings to guilt. put it in a carmine balloon
let it sing two hundred thousand feet beyond
our last greeting, so it will not sully the first
borne in the dark matter between us.


























&*%^




matins

the old priest rose when the sun
was already making pasty faces
behind clouds. the bread needs to rise
the blood to be washed from the lamb
the floors swept. where you swell
is where you dwell, bombed from a black
dream, the seeds of other universes.

she empties the alms box first
scatters the offerings like dates
under palms which the gods
may take in an act of compassion. there are
less and less, novelty and silence
make a home of ennui in the rows
of sea and sand . she forgot where to stand
but welcomes the rattle of vertiginous
and the openings ripped thru cirrus
high in the atmosphere.

she has forgotten the language of the priests
but she cannot admit herself into the quotidian
ah , there's a bit of magic left still
she sings as lights the pipe.

she would not go into the wilderness
so the wilderness comes to her.
desert is what mountains long to become.

briefly, she thinks of putting on the soup pot.
lentils and carrots. an onion. there are dried
pomegranate seeds, merlot from austrailia
and unleavened hosts in the cupboard.

but there's time for that. the palms
sway so she puts you in your younger suit
jumping from tassle to tassel, one way
will be spelled correctly and one will lead
you directly to the drone of a tibetan prayer bowl
beats against time which was defeated in the trivia battle
next month, two years to countdown, when the face
drops off. hello eye, hello mighty photosynthesis and clay.

she just like the way it rings
against the upright bass the particular
dramamine of pulse and ting.



the priest walks with censure smoking , sandalwood
yeast/rain on the heliotrope.
a supplicant is at the gates, which she locks
because they get so non plussed
when she didn't. the last one
who just left a kalpa or so ago
had tried to crawl thru the wormhole
on the dais. the priest forgets how dangerous
the esoteric can be to the novitiate. even then
she did not lock the gates, it took a cat the color
of the sun, topaz eyes and a penchant for boxes
to find the keys she'd placed somewhere for safe
keeping, now she can't recall where , almost begins
her ritual crawl , bending her knees to look for them ,
jangles, tinkling , the music of metal
stops her oh
there they are she says to the back
of her mouth, giggles,
places the most intricately
carved handle into the teeth of it
turns

lets in the wind.