Forbidden Knowledge (3)

FORBIDDEN KNOWLEDGE

Sept. 25, 2005

Beyond the center shore of my dread sea
there is a dark grove, supple and hoary
in the maenad desire which I will
write over. It compasses my song
with the drowsy mewl of deep-thighed lust,
and though it is a certain death
to peek I must, head turned back
upon the sea which salts my gaze
in saucy blue infinity. I dare not
but I must; I am commanded
by a supernal and subversive thrall;
I am scrotummed by the will,
my face its muzzle to those cheeks.
Thus my creator compensates
for corpse he coprophiliously devours
down the gullet of his bourne.
Always a whiff of death inside that
savage view, as if the curvature of all delight
crashed upon an olfact shore
and every peek is pure olibanum
wafted to the dream which shelves
my words for good.
Almost. So dare I must, ere
all words fail, and peer I do,
upon that dancing muse inside
the grove astride the house where
all books pour their reams,
like spermactetti gobs on lactate
orbs, the eyes of God’s own lust
staring back at me. Surely
the view has frozen me here
and the book I fill is like a pillar
of salt, witness to the awe
and awfulness of dread origin,
two shots of whiskey and a fifth
of sin, pure malt friskiness
I’ll never fully say much less swim in,
though here I try. Dare I say the
words which smash on through?
Will I ever thence return? Does
that even matter now, when
every sea and moon doth burn
blue and lucent and bewitched
like congealing cables in a mind
which now builds a bridgelike abbey
back and down inside the soul?
The hour’s late: soon light will blue
the noctal frieze which cheeks
my song: my task today’s at end:
soon I must go feed the cats
and wake the wife apsalm across
her feet. Soon I must cap this
pen and toss this book to that
last unsounded wave so
so my day thus dark-grounded,
may begin. Will I burn in hell
for such outrageous peeks at
pantyankled truth, or do horned
angels fan their wings in wild
applause for this next sum
of burning pages? And can
the work ever be quite done
when the butter’s always on the bun
& steaming her desire my way,
tickling my sense for one
last view before the curtains
lower and clump for good?


NOTHIN BUT A LOVER

from A Breviary of Guitars
2000


1.

I’ve always been
drawn to women,
fascinated
by their bodies,
their curves
my heart’s
round welcome,
their soft voices
like cat’s fur
or the surf’s
susurration:
I’ve hummed
their tune since
birth: When I was
three or so
the maid in
our Pittsburgh
home would
yell to me
Pretty girls
passing by!
and I would
scamper to the
window to catch
the faintest curve
of departing
wonder: The
maid would say
to my mother,
He ain’t gonna
be nothin’ but
a lover, and
it’s true,
no matter how
many words I
throw into
the smoke,
no matter how
many times
I lose my
way to her:
I have always
been finding then
losing then finding
them again:
Like Paula
who I played
with when
I was three.
Paula was 4
and lived across
the street,
a jolly Jill
who refused to
wear a top
when it got
hot: One day
she led me
far away from
home to search
for worms in
the park: We
ambled on
and on until
I had to
go to the
bathroom: We
crossed a
highway overpass
& knocked
on some row
house door: A
woman whose
knee I faced
let us in &
led me to
the bathroom
& then fed
us cookies &
called the cops:
My parents were
frantic when
we drove up
in the police
care — sure
we had been
lost — But
all their squabble
just faded when
When Paula’s
mom hauled her
home away
from me: O
watch her
walk down the
street taking
with her all
song: When we
moved away
to Illinois
all I had of her
was a wallet
photo that I
carried everywhere
until my brother
ripped it up
in a rage at
me: Somewhere
I’m still
inconsolable,
searching and
searching through
the oldest plumes
of memory
for her in
her wading
pool, smiling
at me:
I am fascinated
with how a
female draws
me to her
on some
current toward
the sweet
prong between
her legs like
a widdershin
dowse: In first
grade Alan Fausel
and I hiked
into the woods
at recess
in search of girls
who walked alone
or in pairs:
We’d spring
up at them
and propose
I’ll Show You
Mine if You Show
Me Yours:
O it was
perilous business:
There were these
two who always
ripped us off,
gettin us to
hike down
our pants
and underwear
and stand there
aflop in the
breeze: They’d
flash their skirts
up then down
& shriek happily
away: But I also
remember this one
Susie cute as a
button with dark
brown eyes and
short brown hair
who would lower
her undies gently
down to her
Buster Browns
& lift her skirt,
& close her eyes
and smile, smile,
smile: At home
I drew a house
to store my
visual coups:
One room stacked
high with large
crossed O’s
for bottoms &
another room
filled with smaller
crossed O’s for
vaginas: I
understand
this now as
the basic song
of male worship
for a female’s
body: It’s not
something that
women reciporcate:
They don’t stare
at men the way
we do at them,
gape-jawed, stunned
into mute
reverence for
nature’s fertile
fuckable founts:
My wife never ceases
to wow me when
she emerges from
the bathroom
at night dressed
for bed in her
white Calvin Klein
gown: How it
clings to her,
so sinuously
sweet, so richly
awarble: I know
I make her
nervous staring
so at her, but I
can’t help it:
She’s voluptuous
in every way I
have ever dreamed
women could be:
I never tire of
running my hand
gently oh so
gently down her arms,
her legs, her back
and bottom,
her breasts -- softly,
so softly, the
way she loves
being touched:
Then cupping
and squeezing her
breast as if to
fill some
undrenchable
cup: It never ends:
The vault is
never full:
And it’s more
than mere
horniness,
that urge which
stiffens sates
and drains: Rather
my love of
women is a bath
from uterus
to grave:
An eternal river
the dolphin sports
in where the
music of Ariel
drifts like smoke,
my dream of
her heaven between
the waking and
the wake:


SCYLLA & CHARYBDIS

Early nightmare: civil war in
First grade. The boy who ratted on
Me and Alan to our teacher
For playing Show Me Yours I’ll Show
You Mine in the back woods during
Recess played Michael to my itch,
Pitching me and my kind to fire.
I crept along the school-house walls
Trying not to get caught: But then
Some kid aflame edged around the
Corner in a scream I could not
Avoid, and I watched my small bones
Smoulder in a sorry pile. For
Months I woke from that awful dream
The ruins of what my lust had seen.

***

PERIL DE MER

David Cohea

The 15th-century Melker Physiologus
... has the story that the sea-creatures
sira, half-maiden, half-fish, leads
the sailors away, after which they
drown.

According to the Bestiare by Phillipe
da Thaon, the serra obstructs the ships
in a very special manner, the creature
raises its wings and, by proceeding in
front of the ship and depriving it of
wind, does great harm.

... In his Besitare, Guillam le Clerc
defines the serra simply as a
peril de mer, feared by sailors for
its propensity for sinking ships.

-- Clara Strijbosch, The
Seafaring Saint

Every voyage has its squalls,
and she is every sailor’s
honeyed nightmare, an
abscissa riding butt-naked
on the wave-mare of abyss.
Desire fraught with peril
bound her waist with
flesh above and scales
below, the sweet dive
down from her roseate
breasts trapped by
screeching terror
in the depths. Who can
resist, who would dare
to dive into that
wilding wave, which rises
twice the height of
a man’s main mast?
A sailor is composed
of such fraught foamings,
when the apparition
rises from the foggy
aft of sleep, almost
a girl, certainly
a reaper of every
throb and leap
inside my hips,
her voice almost
a surflike croon,
her blue eyes pale
and icier than
the high scimitar of
the moon. Oh what
halves sweet heaven
into shrieking hell
than those thighs
which never quite
appear above the
wave’s wild crest,
thighs which have
gripped the keels
of galleons & split
them with a sigh?
Travail here carefully,
you who would ever
shore again. She is
every drink you must
think all the way
from glow to basement
doom; you do so
by reading between
the lines of her aria,
to see the skulls
piled high amid
the whales and squid
and split mast-heads.
That breasts so close
could fan so far those
frozen depths below
is the peril de mer
you must embrace
if your would live
to write the voyage
down. I draw her
shape to the right
of the last page, or
house her in parenthesis
(here) like that conch
on every shore which
set to ear splits wide
the door where nothing
but your sighs like
whiskey pours. Listen
too long to that music
at your peril, friend:
sails of gossamer and
lace will ice and ghost
the mast, prelude to
the foam which
covers it at last.


SELF KNOWLEDGE

2002

But the actual or potential alcoholic,
with hardly an exception, will be
absolutely unable to stop on the basis
of self-knowledge.
— Alcoholics Anonymous

May 26, 1996 — the day after
my brother’s fine wedding
in Pennsylvania, so bright
and fair a day, all my family
there from all around the country,
my fiancee gorgeous and
so happy to be there with me,
staking our own future together

— The day after I stood in line
where they served wine
and near wine, where the cups
were confused, and
what I lifted to my lips
was not near, not by a
long shot, but instead
the real thing, a sweet
draught of what I swore
to never drink again, an
eight-year drunkard’s drought
relieved by a first
gentle kiss, like a wild
strawberry plunked in
my life’s good glass

—The day after I did not
hesitate, but swallowed,
swallowed all, receiving
the communion with a
simple “well, what of it?”,
feeling not at all changed,
no sudden roar of
the bull god, no terrible
deadly thirst, no sense
of helter-skelter spree
grabbing me in its magic
carpet folds, none of that,
just a slight warm relief
spreading through me:

— After a night when
I thought, hell,
where’s the harm in that?
, the reception
proceeding on, family and
friends smiling over plates of
good food, the music happy,
smooth, content, the last
bright beams of day
shouting over the mountain
into me with grand tidings
of a different life, no dark
eddies, nothing of a knell
in any of it, the drinkers
in the room not much different
than those who didn’t,
and me in between,
successful and happy just
like them all, why not me?

— I drank no more that night,
proof the next drink was
no longer an axiom of the first,
not for me, not any more,
not after long years of
practiced sobriety, after
so many days begun
and ended on my knees
asking for help with
a drink problem which
eventually I solved:

— And so, the next day,
while everyone was out
hiking or reveling elsewhere,
I sat at a piano in the
lodge staring at a glass
of wine I had poured for
myself, in private, like
a secret oath: stared at it
a while, only six ounces
of May wine, nothing hard
in this at all, no threat
to one who long ago
had buried all the horrors
of the alcoholic night,
who had build from
those ruins a good
disciplined life — I had
done it, hadn’t I?
Now 38, wasn’t it time
to enjoy life as I
hadn’t been able to before,
not as a perilous drunk,
not as a zealot of sober days?

—It’s my turn, I thought,
brimming glass now in hand,
staring down that narrow
well into the face I
didn’t see staring back
so patiently. I can do
this thing, I swore,
and drank that wine
down in one long draught.
Just a sip, no more,
I vowed as sunlight
in the room
rearranged itself to
the tenor of what I drank.
Profounder angels I
once knew wrapped their
wings in one descending
sigh and bid me pour
another for one more try.
—Just one more
they whispered from
a flue of tumbling wings.
Whatever we once
promised you, one
more more will be enough.


third cup

It doesn’t matter if you’re
looking for God or true wilderness
or the insides of your love:
you’ve got to search
at least three ways.
Query the same engine
and the same pages result.
First you rowed forth seeking
island to island the
descending rooms of a vault,
finding Orpheus astride
gray fishes and a sea god’s
house ribbed with whalebones.
Then you entered the forest
of your desire where it
was darkest, with only
your red hunger to
light the way. Now it’s
time to take the guided path
back from annihilation,
returning to the world
a simple boon. That chalice
that you found out there
heals itself returning
to the lips of those who
need it most. Actually,
the third way isn’t a
search at all: rather we translate
what we found in letting go,
filling the page with
loaves and fishes
from heaven’s deep.