The Fisher King (2)

MOTHER OF PEARLS

for Mary on Mother’s Day, 2002

Brilliant sands reach back
toward a distant shimmer
where I recall white afternoons
and your voice above the sea’s.
Weaned in that bright music,
I have always loved words
which sing of that relation,
each line a surf between
you and I, cresting and curving
into us in foaming chords of joy.
Each poem I write is a pearl
sown from that cerulean wash,
a beach of adulation.
No wonder I ate all that sand.
I’m a voice now of that
restless, crashing land,
reaping your white songs
grain by patient grain,
the rest of my life long.


BLUE BONE BRIDGE

The strong, inwardly quivering bridge
of the mediator has meaning
only where the abyss between God
and us is admitted—:but this very
abyss is full of the darkness of God,
and where someone experiences it,
let him climb down and howl away
inside it (that is more necessary
than crossing it.)
— Rilke, letter to Ilse Jahr, 2/22/23
transl. Stephen Mitchell

When I was 5 my mother took me
to a matinee of “Puss And Boots.”
Two images forever twined in my mind:
in the first, a terrible night thunderstorm
caused a tree to fall on the hero in
an overloud, horrific crash.
In the second a boy jumped
bare-assed into a smiling summer pond.
Terror from the first scene leapt up
in a strange howl, made huge and
loud by the weight of that savage trunk;
a warm delight of the second scene
to lathe my fear in a rich white goo.
On many nights thereafter I’d wake
from nightmares of crashing thunder,
only to press my face to the pillow
and watch myself jump into
warm waters to save a girl.
For all the simple carefree days
which composed my early years—
nurtured and loved by my parents,
safe in suburban neighborhoods—
that dark sweet imagining
kept seizing me like a claw up
from the floor which flicked
me in a pool.
My friend and I built monster
models—Creature From The
Black Lagoon, Dracula, The
Forgotten Prisoner—the two of
us in thrall with the dripping
caverns and rotted cells of
revenants and skeletons.
I found in actual woods
near home and school
a dark sexual joy of
peeking and revealing,
play-acting Mommy and
Daddy not as I knew
but thrilled to guess.
As a child I only guessed at
that blue bone-latticed
land, walking as I did in
relative safety, knowing I
was but a hand away from
some parent’s hand.
Far different was the night
which called me from home into
the tropic lush of my 14th year:
bolder and colder that moon,
wild and intoxicate,
sexual with swollen glands
and aching fingers.
Growing up meant straying
far into that insatiable wood;
a self’s composed from paths
far from home and God.
The musk of crushed oranges
seared up from the rot of ruin
which came on a stormy night
much longer ago, when my God
decreed I craft these craven
images from what I bleed
and perilously need.
How I bandage myself up
from that horrid land
and link back—to the living again
and to a loving hand—is
a complicate return
to a forest night
where a thunder merges
with all the joys down under.


COLLOQUY
WITH BICKY BOUSE

When I was 14 I’d ride my
Schwinn Stingray out from
our development & down
a long country road to
the next subdivision, this
one even balder than ours
not a single tree about
to shade suburban
lives from the over-brilliant
Florida sun. I’d call on
my friend Becky who
was 17 & in love with
a boy back in Texas
& wise in the ways of
smoking dope and
being in love so much
as to fuck with utmost
zeal -- things I knew
nothing about
but was eager unto
death to learn, as if that
knowledge would at last
molt me from the
badlands of my wormy
insufficient self.
Usually there were
a half-dozen kids getting
high in the living room
during those empty
afternoon hours before
her mother got back
from work. The Moody
Blues or Yes
always seemed to
alternate with Alice
Cooper and Led
Zepplin on the record
player, the A and B
sides of our early
‘70’s counterculture,
a soup of stoner bliss
with more raffish
chunks of meat
thrown in, perplexing the
entire broth. Her
younger brother (a year
older than I) would
be in that circle
of defiant children’s
faces, passing the
next joint & bragging
about how much
pussy he was getting,
fucking his girlfriend
twice a day & even
going to Mazola parties
where a dozen
boys & girls got naked
& sloshed pudendas
in a common ooze.
Even then I knew
it was all talk
but whenever
after school
I’d see his girlfriend
climb behind him
on his motorcycle
in a miniskirt and
combat boots &
spreading for him
from behind, I’d
watch them zoom
off in seething envy
and rage at my lot
of bad luck, strict
faith, and that brilliant
wall of fear that
always stayed my
hand from the zippers
of the neighborhood
girls just when it was
time to furrow on.
How long oh Lord!
I’d pray, teeth bared
at mirror and heaven.
While the party
wallowed deeper
in its daily trough
of high, Becky would
lead me out of the
house and down
to a stream of sorts
out back, a drainage
ditch really, where we’d
sit and laze and
watch the water
tinkle merry in its
foil, the Florida sun
of those spring
afternoons passing
slow and breezy and
fair and bright.
Flooding us (me,
at least) with that
high light that was
its own pure invitation
to a way of love
I could not then quite
fathom, nor ever
since fully name
(though once again,
I try). We’d pass
a roach back and
forth on tweezers,
wheezing full the
last of dope, while
Becky -- blonde,
a faint mottle of
acne redding her
face, with eyes
as blue as that
Florida sky --
instructed me in
all that she
had learned about
getting high and
fucking with a ripened
heart. She’s tell
me that you never
bogart a joint but
share and share
it full until its
fully gone. How
you hold that sweet
leaf’s smoke
in your lungs
as if you were
travelling underwater;
and that the longer
that you held
the smoke the
further you would go.
I did as she
said, lips working
the pulsing roach,
inhaling hard
and long. Dazed,
our senses runneling
out in a dozen wavelike
paths, we’d fantasize
about a Dopers Paradise
on some island
across the sea
you boated to
while smoking joints,
sails filled with
each harsh exhalation.
The island was verdant
with poppies and
peyote, ‘shrooms
and cannabis
plants so high that
you felled them
with an axe and
one plant was sufficient
to stone the tribe
for a year. She told
me about all the
drugs -- dropping
acid (carefully, with
friends), the bitter
taste of mushrooms
& the carnival palette
which followed, the
vroom in hashish
and the harrowing
wildness of PCP --
She’d done ‘em all
and I was greedy
to hear of it all,
virgin as I was to
this doper’s swoony
veld far outside
the rigor of my
days, my God, my
past. I smoked my
first joint with her,
I think -- where and
when, I can’t remember,
nor the conditions
of how we would
ever meet, of such
different ages and
afternoons -- Maybe
she had lingered
to talk when I was
handing out tracts
at school & invited
me to try her
doper’s heaven as
an alternate to
the cold cirrus
of Jesus’ arms.
In that circle I
had too much to
say, but when alone
with Becky I was
all ears, the eagerest
of students.
I was virgin too to
love, and so I
plied her like
a prosecutor to
tell me all she’d
learned. She rambled
on staring at the
water about the
boy she loved back
in Texas, whom she
had to leave when
her mother got
divorced and fled
this way. How she
met him at a kegger
when she was 15
& how he produced
a joint from a shirt
pocket, lighting up
& inviting her to
the welcome
of that cloud -- her
first time getting high.
How it hurt like hell
when he busted her
cherry (those words
are etched deepest
in my memory)
and all the sweetness
that had followed from
that burst fruit, in
all the subsequent
nights of fucking
that had followed,
whenever and wherever
they could, and
however they desired.
How she was saving
her money -- each
visit she’d update
the count -- for
next fall when she
was 18 and fly as
fast as she wished
back to the sweaty
arms of her man.
She’d lapse then
into silence and
we’d watch the water
for a while (or I’d
watch her watching
that glide, savoring
the flow of her eyes
in reverie as much
as she did water).
Those afternoon
stoned reveries
were of things
too far from us
to ever be fully kissed
-- doper isles,
bowers of love. My
love for her was
of that ilk -- all
of it impossible,
just stolen time
& dreams & this
fully ripened woman
exuding love from
every pore, like a
high, full sailing moon,
though that love
was not for me.
Come 5 o’clock
I’d groan and swear
and say I had to
be getting home,
& leave Becky
to her own
nightly cup of ills.
I’d ride my Stingray
home, trolling slow
along that mile-long
lane where cows
beyond barbed fences
swished their taILS
& shat, the afternoon
sloshing dulled bronze
from all its rims.
Home for me was
chores & homework
& mandated Bible
study & prayers
(intercessions on
my behalf for
Becky’s lips & breasts).
My mother in her
black habit of
sadness & the
floors all pins
& needles veined
with furtive,
impossible desires.
In two months
I’d be gone from
all thing Florida,
flown north to
save souls at
my father’s church
in northside
Chicago. Dope
and sex were
both forestalled a
few years more
while I got a better
hand of my miseries
inside the Bible’s
walls. My high
school yearbook
from ‘72 has a
note from Bicky
Bouse (that I guess
her dopester’s handle) --
“If you can’t be good,
be careful! Remember me!”
Not a note inside
that scrawl of the
thrall I felt for her
which has seeped,
like honey or sea-water,
into all these later
words. Oh well.
I never found that
doper’s isle as I
voyaged down my
years -- my booze was
always sighted on
a much saucier,
sleazy shore -- but
of love I think I
got closer to the
place her eyes
saw looking at that
stream. Surely she
instructed and guided
me into all the
boat’s I’ve sunk.
She taught me
to hold onto the
dream until it
nearly bursts the
lungs: & then
let go of it in
one dazed flow
& savor what
dreams mine.
Thanks to Bicky
Bouse I found
a warm spot
out of my
accustomed walls --
not with her drugs
or as her lover
but down that
wilding stream
between her
eyes and voice.
My next muse
and second mother.

DIADALE

For Homer there were many
diadala, even apart from Daidalos.
Every skillfully performed piece
of workmanship was a diadalon.
This adjective, applied to objects
made with skill, preceded the
other forms of the word.
The masculine and feminine,
daidalos and diadale, are derived
from it.

-- Carl Kerenyi, Dionysos: Archetypal
Image of Indestructible Life

A girl-woman named Diadale
used to wander down to
that ugly rented house in
Spokane where my wings
were forged and we’d smoke
a lot of dope and fuck. She
was dark-haired (low currency
in ‘77), 20-ish to my 20,
a friend of someone’s friend
who come down to party
one night and ended up
with me in bed for a half
dozen or so more nights
before she wandered off.
She wasn’t interested in
the high hosannas of
my art-rock tastes; for
her, getting high was
something physical and
sweet, not orchestral
and dour. “No mind
at its worst!” I’d written
in my journal one next day,
carelessly leaving the book
open on the coffee table
for her to read. She hauled
on a joint the way she
sucked me off -- full lips
working full round, her
pale blushing cheeks
working up a passion
full of weedy smoke
or seed, swallowing
every bit of what was
offered, whether out
of need or greed
or something more
inlaid than I, dumb
fool, had eyes to see.
I think now of how
she’d get up from my
cramped single bed
on cold mornings to
go pee, reaching for
a towel to wrap around
her as she headed
for the loo. -- Tall and
pale & of a beauty
that astonishes me
today, leaving me to
wonder what starry
ass my head was so
stuck in that I just
turned towards the wall.
She was easy, I was
horny, there wasn’t
much else to it back
then, and I was always
the day after my
night of black excesses
desperate to sweep
the wastage under the
bed, away, behind me,
vowing to get on with
the real thing, the real
work, perhaps whatever
next day. When she smiled
her mouth stretched
ear to ear, pure winsome
invitation: and her bare
ass as the towel went
round was pure as curved
honey. Why is it that
youth is so wasted on
the young, as wealth
is lost upon the rich?
I let that royal towel
go round and sweep
her out as I turned
back to my sleep,
hazed from all the pot,
balls emptied, my
heart miserable as
I prayed to some
day fly south enough
to find the grand
beach I so dreamed
when I came in
Diadale’s mouth. And
so over the years
I built this dancing
ground which kissed
and flew from her
on wings she gave to
me. I remember
the hardness of
that overbright
February mornings, just
wishing she would go
so I could get on with
her ripe revolvings
in the music, on the
page. Mistress of my
labyrinth a mile
forever out to sea,
each time I wind these
words through song,
it’s like weaving through
that conch that washed
up and away so many
years ago. I weave my
words in the motions
of that lost allure
and congress, each
matin buttoning to
a kiss. May what I write
today resound in all
I might have found
just beyond that turn
toward the wall
that wrote her off to floor.