Secret Knowledge

WHITE CHIP

Air I could not breathe,
vowel I would not speak.

Bright penny of
the bitterest moon.
Ante of surrender.

Door through which
it is death to enter
and hell to refuse.

Coda to an
infinite agony.
Color of an
endless patience.

One hand held
high in room no
longer empty,
begging the
coin which begins.

***

Four years sober today -- "sober" in the AA nomenclature, which starts with not taking a drink today and extends to enlarging a life which fills, unlike whiskey glasses, far past every brim. An amends to the sea. Not so I get every curve I dream but that I shore all waves to head my way with the song my mother taught me long ago, composed of sea winds and wave-salt and a soaring, plunging love.

***

"The most common Gnostic myth goes more or less as follows: An aeon or angel named Sophia ('wisdom') greatly admired the High unknown or Alien God ... Worshipfully but mistakenly, Sophia sought to imitate the self-sufficient asexual creativity of the High God, and this mistake became the Demiurge, or Lower God, the creator of our universe, of the world, of matter, and of human beings. He made all these in total ignorance of the High God and Sophia, his mother; he believed that he was the only God. Hence our world was conceived in ignorance and folly, and so are we ... Whatever spark of the good or spiritual in nature was breathed into us by Sophia, a heavenly exile trying to make amends for her initial error.

Sophia's story was coarsened by a continuing mythology which had her reincarnated in a series of famous women: Even, Noah's wife, Helen of Troy and Mary Magdalene, to name four.

-- Alice Turner, The History of Hell



***

Marcus, (a) student of Valetinus ((c. 150AD)), who went on to become a teacher himself, tells how he came to his own firsthand knowledge of the truth. He says that a vision "descended upon him ... in the form of a woman ... and expounded to him alone its own nature, and the origin of things, which it had never revealed to anyone, divine or human. The presence then said to him, 'I wish to show you truth herself; for I have brought her down from above, so that you may see her without a veil, and understand her beauty.'"

- Eileen Pagels, The Gnostic Gospels



THE WOMAN IN THE
POLKA DOT DRESS

November 2004

Alchemical work had to hurt
(boil, sever , skin, dessicate,
putrefy, suffocate, drown, etc.)
natural nature in order to
free animated nature. As soon
as psyche enter into consideration,
the only-natural is not enough.

-- James Hillman,
Dream and Underworld

Fall 1986: A bad season of
collapsing walls. My last band
had folded wings that summer.
My guitar was frozen in
its case, a stone thing
falling through blue plush
into a well of banshee
booze, hauling me down
a tide with those fingers
of big night music gripped,
like stone, around round
my ankle. I had tried
swearing off the booze
but going it alone I hadn't
a clue what to mend or
forgive or give back. And so
I found myself out again
in that old the zombie zone,
suited up with a
a lunar-cold vengeance.
Real things fell on
me from arch-angelic
aeries, like
the massive oak
I discovered
on top of my garage
apartment after work
one day, the walls of
my tiny cheap room
buckled out. I retrieved
journals and guitar
and natty slax and got
the hell on outta there,
setting up in a tiny
room in my mother's
house. That was when
I started writing down
the malaise, even
as I headed full force into
it. I made a weak
(inept, too wounded)
attempt to love a German
exchange student
named Magritte but
the clearer motions it
demanded -- stability,
fidelity, sacrifice --
kept getting lost in
the murk of tequila.
One night I called
her to make plans
for dinner and a
Pat Matheny concert,
and found myself
after ringing off
walking right out
the door, engorged
with that cactus gestalt.
Long hours later screwed
to a barstool in
my favorite water
hole, the blackout man
crept from his
grave, that barking
hell-bent satyr equal
parts fang and cock.
Followed a woman
back to a house
where someone had
died recently --
there were piles of
bills on a table, ashtrays
of a ghost
overflowing like
sewers, the smell
of oatmeal cookies
and piss. In my journal
the next day, I wrote
"heights of sex around
2:30 and 6 a.m., yes,
but the falloff was
meteoric" -- the blisses
of that season seemed
carved not from waves
but their riptide. The
next night -- the one
before my date
with Magritte -- I
ended up at Fern Park
Station drinking the
night away to the
sound of a bad big
hair metal band
& Kim the topless
dancer invited me
back to her apartment
for more of the same
though blacker in in
is blare. Bare overhead
bulb & Van Halen
squealing on a table
radio as we did shots
& drank beer. After
I fucked her on the couch
(from behind, hard,
like a wolf), she sighed
and said "I have always
hated you" softly
in my ear. The next
day I called in sick
and shook Kim awake
to drive me back to my car,
the late morning
overheated and
shriekingly bright,
all knife and no ocean.
I was 29 and falling
down the oubliette of
my old dream of
love's billowy perfection,
refusing to let go
down those gripless walls.
Back in that room
in my mother's house
I slept fitfully for the
afternoon, making coffee
at 4 p.m. and casting
an I Ching oracle. --
The Abysmal Doubled,
like snake-eyes formed
from six faces of two
coins, two hexagrams of
drowning stacked on
each other, auguring
the dangers I swam
without and within.
It offered the image
of a melancholy heart
going down in freezing
brine, a place shared
by the moon, thieves,
wisdom and darkness.
"Surrender is the
only escape," it whispered
through the hungover
creaks and folds of
the afternoon. Ah
but what to surrender
and how to let it go?
What of the dream
I had in that season
of the purely curved
woman in a black and
white polka dot dress,
walking up to the
stage where I stood
trading licks with ZZ Top.
Her breasts hips and
ass waving like a tide
toward me, her eyes
so hot on mine
the way I thought
every woman I ever
desired looked at me,
a feminine veneer
for a greater ocean
behind, her kiss
which came later
absolving every
abyss I now swam
through. She took
me to her bed of beds
on some island
of sweet delight,
fucking me every
way I came,
sighing up from
that billowy descent
how she loved me
utterly -- udderly,
lutely, resolutely,
undulantly, you
weave all the sounds
of love's pious assent --
and yet the dream
was striated with
my late and fallen
ennui, and I doubted
her words though
I knew they were true.
And then I sensed
she would be gone
and forever hence
with me: "The eternal
moment" I wrote
in my journal. Such
was my appetite
for her, for you,
my bittersweet
ocean's absentia,
my dark-blue drawing
wave, my hunger
which all the
bars and beds
could never sate.
The Florida of that
season now
18 years ago was
in every appearance
a nightmare of
overbright streets,
the necropolitic
spookiness of
all that suburbia
just a false front
for the land I
was dying in, eternal
night inside a
brilliance. Reagan
was in his second term,
the Chicago Bears
were mauling the NFL
and rock n roll
was a glitter in the
eye of the pax MTV.
I closed my journal,
cracked a beer and
toasted that bad age
which molted
into this one. Later
with Magritte at the
Pat Matheny concert
I heard the best score
yet for my love --
a long dark pulsing
rendition of the bossa
nova jazz soiree
"Are You Going With
Me," watching Magritte
pull as far away from
me in her seat to
watch the band. I
loved that music most
when I watched her
face drift off toward
it, the woman lost in
the tide and me trying
to wade in after. After
the concert Margritte
wouldn't talk to me
and I dumped her
at her car to head
back out into the night
which is like this
wild witch's smile,
all tongue and razored
teeth, a pink wet
gullet which swallowed
me as I hit the bars
guzzling Buds and
shots of Rumpleminz.
In that darkling
scree the ache delivered
me to Laurie, an
exfuck who I hadn't
seen in three years,
now fatter and older
and drunker from all
the ways her love of love
had abused her. I
followed her back
to her apartment (in
a complex attached
by the root to the
whole grim archipelago)
& she let me have
my way with her body
every way I wished
though we couldn't
stand to look each
other in the eye. We
fucked the rest of
the night and half
the morning, our
pudendas jabbering
like unearthed skulls:
that curtained
room was torn from
some inmate's
page where night
after night sharks
have had their way
with her, tearing
and plunging and feasting
in slow balletic clouds
of blood. She was
the girl I never got to fuck
inside all the ones
I had, a woman inside
my own self-
ravaged psyche.
I got the hell on outta
there late that afternoon,
coming home in a
fucked out hungover
bruise to find a message
to call Magritte. She
apologized for her anger
at me and asked if we
could meet that night
and make up, maybe
proceed. But how could
I even presume to try
playing love by its rules?
I said sure and headed
out to drink. Falling
thus I finally let go
of whatever hold love
had on me, the wounds
I nursed for all those
woman who had left
me for good, shredding
every guise and gout
of purer feeling to
get down to where
the woman in the
polka dotted dress
resides and queens.
In my cups that night
I drank to dregs
like a drowning man
holding on to the
anchor of his farewell,
all the way down
to that ruined city
where she dreams.
And then I lost
the queen herself,
the one so founded
and floundered in
the marketing of
a metaphor -- accepting
at last that the
dream was only
that, pure seem
and puerile gleam.
And then I really
hit the bars, going
three months of
nightly blackout
drinking, lurking
at the bottom of
a sea with the
rest of the drowned
sailors, arms
wrapped tight
around the coral
bones we dreamed.
That was the brine
in which you were
pickled, never
to return to haunt
day worlds again.
The woman in the
polka dot dress
is that booze which
Bryan Ferry sang
about in that old
Roxy Music anthem,
"The Thrill of It All"--
that pure whiskey
poured into a tight
and nippled dress,
an anthem of desire
which I sang with
all my heart marching
out every door.
The death of every
dream is horrible,
a gripless slide down
all the names for hell.
My dreams from that
time are florid
with descriptions
of infernal gloom,
of vampires with my
face who ache
to die but can't,
vultures preening
on the moon, carnival-
like rides down
sulphur chasms
beneath the blackest
coldest heart.
My love was torn
by desire's devil
tongs in one long
whiskey draught:
Sundered till only
my lips remained, still
pursed and ejacualate
of her exalt sheen.
Poor fool. That
season crashed
and burned me
me now nearly
15 years ago. It's
5 a.m. now on
this second day
of writing this
poem, heaping
so many lines
lines on the ache
I still feel recalling
that awful time. I sit
on my pure white
writing chair in
the house I married
and mortgaged
every dream to
remain in: it's
a coolish morning
in November and
so much outside
is the same --
a second-term
Bush repeating the
arch Reagan chill, the
Steelers whupping
the NFL's unbeatable
best, and E! Television
parading the
smiles of hotties in tight
dresses, eclipsing
the shine of blood
everywhere on
Iraqi streets. And
me hurling all this
ink in measure to
a feeling that harpoons
me still when I
recall that woman
in the polka dotted
dress whom I
always wanted and
never met. That image
is like an olive
at the bottom of
my worst infernal
drink. And yet,
today it seems I got to
you at last in her,
that curvy ikon
of those nights in
wild absentia: Or,
to scratch deeper,
perhaps I reach
you best recalling
those worst nights,
my lines sliding
down a time most
alien and strange
and wild. Dare I say
I'm more alive now
in the real work
of daily love for
having lost you
utterly on nights
so long ago? Or
is it that by naming them
the demons drop their
tines and go to work
for us, the woman
in the polka dotted dress
sashayed up close
to this banging stage
where I'm still trading
licks with fire,
translating for her
your own blueblack desire.

***

But where the Gnostic myth caught the imagination was in its interpretation of the incarnation of Jesus Christ. If the world is Hell, or at least a kind of Hades or limbo ruled over by an ignorant and ignoble Devil, then the descent of Christ from the heavenly pleroma into a body of gross flesh and blood that must breathe the impure air of a world made in error was quite literally a descent into Hell. His Promethean purpose was to harrow or plunder the unhappy domain of the Demiurge in order to save the souls of mankind by bringing them gnosis, or secret knowledge.

-- Turner, ibid


***

"... Heaven and earth have a shape similar to the womb ... and if ... anyone wants to investigate this, let him carefully examine the pregnant womb of any living creature, and he will discover an image of the heavens and the earth."

-- Sethian gnostics in Pagels, Gnostic Gospels




Jesus saw infants being suckled. He said to his disciples, "These infants being suckled are like those who enter the kingdom." They said to him, "Shall we, then, as children, enter the kingdom?" Jesus said to them, "When you make the two one, and when you make the inside like the outside and the outside like the inside, and the above like the below, and when you make the male and the female one and the same ... then you will enter (the kingdom).

-- The Gospel of Thomas, quoted in Pagels, ibid.


HORSES OF INSTRUCTION

October 2004

Last night as I approached
my home -- a mile from the
turn off Highway 441 into
Mount Dora -- a storm was
brewing ill, sudden and stark
against the calm folds of
late late summer's afternoon.
The mass was like a boil
or a wen, the clouds a
motley of angry grays, lightning
vipering in thick, jazzy bolts.
The rain intensified in the
last streets to home into a
pocket tempest, strafing my
car so loud I lost the sound
of Republicans and Democrats
shouting at each other
from the radio, their
meaningless words and insults
drowned out in this far more
local an substantial
vent of God or nature
or real singing. In our garden
the plastic cat-in-a-pumpkin
had blown over, the witch
up on the front steps now
kiltered on the grass beyond
the azalea bush, her scorn
now helpless and sad. I set
them both back up then
ran inside -- drowned rat
to house -- where I was
greeted with woe by my
wife, so sick with the flu.
She lay on the couch
coughing up her
lungs, cursing every
doc to prescribe such
expensive ineffectual crap.
The storm blew harder
outside our darkening
house -- a whirling gale
of sheeted rain through
which the lightning
pillared here and there
in exclamation bolts
of thunder, like strafes
of sniper fire from
high howitzers. One cracked
so fast and hard next
to our house that the
lights were out before
the boom and then returned
as the noise scrolled
out of town. Jim Lehrer
flashed back on the set
with the day's hard news
and my wife intensified
her tirade against her flu
and Violet our Siamese
squatted low in a the
study door, terrified
even more of this next
storm. I was exhausted
from too little sleep,
a migraine & a too-long
day of knocking out
too many layouts with
too little clock. --Quite
a night but we got through,
eating leftovers by TV
& watching taped
sitcoms, the storm
raining hard for another
hour before floating
slowly east. Eventually
the strays came by
for love and dinner
and I sat with them awhile
on the porch, their tiny
mouths greedy in their
bowls, the flashing distant
but still pure white.
When I came back in
my wife was fast asleep
on the couch, zonked on
PM Tylenols she had taken
for the headache which
topped the rest of her misery.
I cleaned the cats' dishes
and readied coffee for
this next morning's row.
As I stood at the sink
looking out on sodden
night, I thought how
the horses of instruction
must gallop hard
to pound their homilies
full home. Without
such difficulty on the plate
there's not much flavor
to the soup, no grateful
savor to the meat, no
linger to the spuds'
unfolding wings of
soft white soil.
Bed me here each
night in the better
of the worse. Such
labors for love of
enduring days
are the secret
and blue-roaring
hooves of my
far-stampeding bliss.




WHO KNOWS

October 2004

... -- that I
then inexhaustibly day and night should
have so much stored up, assimilated
nature to offer --- , without knowing whether
your radiance has anything to do with me ...

-- Rilke, "To The Awaited One,"
transl. Franz Wright

Who knows what composes
a mind, or why it rows the
way it does? I woke this
morning with this poem's
peramble already streaming
in my mind, its first conceits
and gambits scrolling
behind my eyes as I
stumbled up out of bed
(still dank with dreams
of debating John Kerry
in the presidential
debate or me as John Kerry
debating you the reader)
& downstairs in the total
dark of my chosen
redeye a.m. That quote
from Plato through
the mouth of Sokrates
was on my mind's tongue:
"Gods call things by
which they are naturally
right." And only gods
know the proper names
winging in perfected
aeries to far above
our sense. Only Eros
knows why his truer
name is Pteros, "wing-
growing necessity;" only
He know whether
the song's in his wings
or mine, my necessity or
yours, flight our lift
from all necessary
encumbrance or wings
that makes our plodding
feet seem moot?
Like in those first months
of dating my wife when
we made love most
of the night and stayed
in bed all Sunday:
why do I keep returning
to that rumpled bed,
my imagining inhaling
deep the musky sweet
still lingering there
9 years ago, as if
there's gold in
them thar reveries
when current
days which seem dry
as ghosts? Or have
present wings grown
strong enough to
build a next from
the twigs and berries
of a history; the past
made gold when
touched by present
minds? Only Oran
knows why everything
Columba said of God
and man was wrong;
only Manannan knows
how much Oran's
knowledge was stained
by three nights
of grave-dirt and
the cold Celtic sea
below his mouth and
eyes flew wide and
loosed; we don't
know how dark
the bone of truth
he tossed up from
that hole when he
said, "In fact, the
way you think it is
is not the way it
is at all:" but it
makes me suspect
its marrow was
a silver shout:
His back mirroring
I have claimed my
own, underscoring
every flit of Ariel
I capture here
with the motley
of a Caliban further
further out and down
in Infrann or Valhalla
or Olympus, the
stuff of merriment
for the deathless ones
who drink our blood
from cups of hammered
gold. Surely they must
all agree that
I'm a windy fool
to presume to say
the names of that gust
inside a god's gut
truth -- a bigger fool
to boot for always
getting it so wrong
with errant words
forged from that wind.
Who knows whether
all this inky
excess spoors from
a skull's compulsion
to babble on, as if
to fill being's voice
balloon was to live
again or more
truly, vitally too
perhaps; or is
that halloo up
the well simply
the dream of flesh
by ravaged, long-
dry bones? Who knows
whether I think
because I'm
still breathing air
or because the
morning awakens
light in all
its caverns? Who
can say that the sound
of birdsong picking
up at 5:30 a.m.
oboes and piccolos
a neuron in my ear
which telegraphs a
chemical derangement
of that hymn to
a vault limned in
my cortex where
a god or books or
nature or my beloved's
naked body is aroused
and sings back, my
pen erectile with
that exuberant,
protruding shout?
Who knows why
beauty is a booty
I've always hoarded
and trilled me deep,
always cause to recall
on paper; what
at 5 years old
I'd crayoned
a page of vaulted
butts and pussies
I had couped
from playing games
with girls in the
woods, or why
I hid that picture
beneath my bed
or hauled out at
to count back out,
calmed and charmed
afresh, keen to scavenge
more that holy
land revealed.
Who knows whether
the same gods or devils
now draw my
thought on to the
next soft shore of
verse in lycanthromorphic
such verse, or whether
the motion makes the
language better
or something worse,
a descending spoor
of milk and ink.
Who but the gods
can say if this
passionate expense
of words will one
day hang between
your breasts like
a silver crucifix
to swing in prayer
& coilage, or
if you'll simply
trash the cache,
sending it to
the landfill of
bad ends where
leeches crap
my kingly thought.
No one knows,
not here where
as I try at last
to end this poem:
nor is that
thought enough
to beach this boat;
I rest only because
I must, winded and
mind-wrung, talked
out, gas pumped from
my first day's thought
now precipitously low.
Let's close then
with more from Sokrates,
his mind forever
surer than my own:
"No doubt these
are larger matters
than you or I can
figure out." Indeed.
I'm slowing my pen's
motion down,
toward the line
that lets the black
reins go: And see
the blank page
further down like
a silent pool, the
blue cauldron
of all I do not know:
I rest my face on
water's dream
and let the rhythm go
to sink and source
and sing the swells
of all I'll never know.




THE POWER


Here is the power
you never had,
here in this little boat
beneath the moon,
your history behind you
and nothing ahead
but the open sea
and a fuse
of dazzling blue.
Pick up the oars
and start rowing.
You know how to go
and where, at least today.
Trust the power
you ride, a sure and
deep current.
The circuit completes
with your hands
steady at the oars
and your heart open wide.