Rubedo Libido

Panic over gas ebbed considerably yesterday, no lines at the gas station though the fuel's over three bucks a gallon. The scenes in New Orleans, especially at the Super Dome, reminding me of Robert Coover's novel Gerald's Party, where the proceedings of the night reduce the original scene to muck and mire, each scene adding more filth, detritus, and error, making things so ugly as to be almost unreadable, though the fiction churns merrily along. Dead bodies -- one in a wheelchair -- amid the thousands outside the 'Dome in the heat, waiting for bus transport elsewhere, conditions in the dome -- powered down, stunk high, slimed deep, -- of an awfulness none may every find words to fully describe. How quickly things can pitch treacherously down into disorder ... My wife watching the news relentlessly, overwhelmed by the horror, apocalyptically angry at the Bush administration, at all powers, for failing to do anything about the situation. I want to watch the UCF-South Carolina football game, I've had enough of that reality, there's only so much you can watch before the loop has to be filed away ... Going to bed last night, turning out the light, a termite on the alarm clock as I set it, one of the winged swarm, guess the humid weather is driving them out again ... no money to pay removing 'em right now, not enough money to get through next month, the worst of times to be entering the worst of times ... Waking at 2:45 a.m. with a massive migraine, spear thrust through the base of my skull, nothing to do but take a Frova, nurse an ice pack, against the wounded sump of my head, flip channels on the tube's Tartarean waste of infommercials, looters on CNN, hip hop booty music vids, 60s sitcoms, endless loops of sporting brilliance, jagged pay-TV softcore porn, the static and shatter of interference insufficient to hide heaving breasts, bouncing curves, the facial calculus of ecstasy ...

And then, around 3:30, shut off the tube, ditch the ice pack, and get to work.



Carl Kerenyi on the nature of myth from his Prolegomena to Essays on a Science of Mythology Bollingen 22, transl. RFC Hull:

"A particular kind of material determines the art of mythology, an immemorial and traditional body of tales about gods and god-like beings, heroic battles and journeys to the Underworld -- "mythologem" is the best Greek word for them -- tales already well known but not unamenable to further reshaping. Mythology is the movement of this material; it is something solid yet mobile, substantial yet not static, capable of true transformation."

***

Myth is mobile on the wings of eros, on the fins of desire, leaping up and out and over to the other side where the beloved awaits, where the dragon waits for battle, where the grail is clutching in a sleeping king's hand ... so the tale has booty, a sauciness to it, causing glands to swell and hearts to beat wildly and an overwhelming wave flood through, insanely pent on release. Our hero is a victim of passion, his crimes of the heart and points south, unpremeditated, hardly conscious at all -- his crimes are excusable for that reason, not like the malevolent guile of the plotter and intriguer, a repeated sin but not in kind to the serial killer or rapist, overwhelmed by the waters rather than cunning an employ of them.

***

Two dreams:

I'm back at the JC Penney warehouse [where I worked 28 years ago and is a recurrent dream-setting], where everything has been removed: now its just a huge warren of industrial-looking, vaulting rooms & docks. Some greasy substance has been laid on the floor. Alone in this necropal hive of former activity, I hold some kind of wheel-less stock cart or dolly; I jump out as if body-surfing, "riding" the board over greased floors room after room through the labyrinth. A joy. Then I convince Brian [who worked the loading dock at Penny's all those years ago, and who may still be working there, for all I know -- a consistent, dedicated, simple guy] to try riding with me. The rooms now include the departments above, also emptied, their former stock (lamps, appliances, women's lingerie) piled in the periphery. (As if cleared for this purpose). Brian talks about approaching our task differently, more modestly, our boards turned right side up. He tells me how no woman has accepted or wanted him, because of his dutiful blue-collar station; I respond that he's a great guy, a real find for any woman in this world. Then we set off, gliding on those boards or wheels or runners, joyfully gliding through the grand empty rooms of some lost or forgotten or bankrupted enterprise.

-- March of this year

***

I go back to the "scene of an old crime" -- back to the bedroom of a young woman I once had wanted to fuck in a one-night stand of the dreariest, lowest-bottomed state. The girl is unlovely but fuckable, unchanged in that room after some 20 years. She wonders why I have come, why I will stay, being from the land of the living and faithfully married, and she a dead memory. Why of course for the sex, I say, and the dream slowly strays to that, the room in a warehouse I worked in long ago, with a bright day hammering the outsides of the building, the hour the long end of a hard drinking night. She is exactly who she is, yet has lucency I never considered or could see before, a waif-naif whore-ridin bride who glows with the sexuality I desire, offering it to me like a priestess, admiring my white underwear, poking into the crotch to fish for my cock, humming, smiling, mergin here with my wife sleeping next to me, their bodies and voices seaming into to blue hands in the dark descending, arousing, pleasing, pleading.

-- from May of this year

***

Such the hell of sweet desire: locus of making, labyrinth of greased passage, bed of blue fire, flame of insatiability, flood-tide of release. The hero's descent into hell makes a cuckold of Hades, Persephone Herself enflamed with this daring spelunker, she another of the long procession of women conquered by their passion for him, in the grand calculus of natural selection, making of his brute bluster the sweetest violins ever to part the dread thighs of the Queen of Hell ---

Desire the frontispiece of that masterpiece called love, fomenting wild and huge in the imagination, all about the hurricane's approach, the awe, swelling organ music, swollen equipage, the heart like a tin-drum in the metallic exictement of the chase, all thought driven down to the loins, heedless of sense, of order, of God: Ares thrusting straight and single-mindedly toward the bed of Aphrodite, all that war-like spleen now servicing the liver, the balls, smith-god Hephaistos (husband of Aprhodite) be damned, Olympus be damned -- how those high gods all were so reckless in their lustful pursuits, engendering all sorts of transformations in that reach which collapses all desire -- Daphne into laurel, Demeter into the mare-mother of Arion, the fiery spout of Zeus engendering Apollo, Hermes, Eros, Dionysos, Herakles, -- archangels all of of hot spirit inflamed buy blue depths- --

But that hot face is eager not for union but transformation, the motion of the leaping trope, translating one essence into another; and the goal, as I have said earlier, is only surficially that of sex, which is the literal conjunction of a literate thrall for combining, leaping over, metamorphosing style, method, mode, genre, poetics: the goal hotly plunging into cleavage and cunny is not engined by the balls but the heart, or the male-female singer there, moving our stories along the labyrinth, weaving together in its skein inside and outside, known and gnomon, archangel and baboon, pen and penis, starry passion and low rut, moony brilliance and dark water, cat and window, nymph and wife, migraine and meditation, moving the story along in the name of the myth, its iterations and engenderings and transformations.

***

Guilty desire is the swampiest of all, it hauls the hero by the ankles down into regions he would never otherwise trespass. Sex the sweetest breasts of anima proferred to my tool-makin', forward-striving consciousness, slowing me down, whispering c'mere, relax, set down a spell, have a sip of this, drawing me into the dark drowsy peripheries where something other enkindles and then rages, not the forward motion but the downward plunge, into the Her mere, her vast blue dissembling keep.




DESIRE

Aching stars:
this hopeless longing
for the forever-withheld,
miasmically-waylaid clench
of all you offered in one glance.
Arrival and departure
the same portal.
Desire a wild
gallop through fields
of strawberry wheat
in early autumn,
riding harder toward
your absence.
There it pulses,
beacon to strange
and reckless waters,
open wide and forever
deaf to consequence,
shining faintly on
the next door, the next room,
the next blue bed where you
in all your faces wait,
out beyond the breakers
of any moon-struck beach,
dangerous and darker
and wilder than
this heart has ever
dreamt. But will.

KIMBERLEY BLUE

She is a blue stream
winding through
the smoke and booze
long brown hair
and blue blue eyes
the high tide of her body
straining against
the shore of her dress
blue spandex sparkling
like morning water
in this jaded light

She stops before me
with all night behind
all winter outside
all broken hearted
somehow eclipsed
a black aura in
this sapphire's halo
she smiles on me
sweetly & asks
would you like a dance
and I say sure

She lifts her dress
lays it on my lap
reaches behind
to unleash blue lace
and begins to
wave and weave her body
round rich jazz

I inhale her deeply
a musk of jasmine and orchid
and I am only here
in this brilliant shadow
captive to blue billows
dreaming in my balls

Something too strong
for words not a wave
but more than a sigh
washes out of me and
climbs the salmon run
of her dance
Up knees up thighs
to hips whispering
whiskey saxophones and lace
Up smooth belly
to breasts so proud
they startle me
even here
even at such a naked price

When my eyes
rise all the way
I find her
watching me
watching her
for one two three beats
and we're in some other room
too foolish to question
too swollen to ignore
too soon swept away

She smiles and looks
off into the mirror
to admire my lust
glowing on her skin
and devotes her motions
to a deeper blue

and that is that

Around the bar
other women repeat
this dance for other men
each pair a room where
a man tries to drink
deeper than a woman goes
and the night
is an empty glass
on any beach
where just one sip
would surely drown us all





BALL BLUES


1.
The red numerals
of the clock burn in
the night like coals.

It is 12:30, it is 1:12,
it is 2:03, it is 2:50,
it is 3:19, it is 4:10.

Each slice of hour
cuts into me most sharply
where I least have you.

My balls glow an angry
blue tonight, lunar
angels of your absence.

My cock strains to free
itself from my hips, a
stone viper hunting your silence.

I won't jack the cream tonight.
I keep it for you even
though you will not save

your honey for me.
Tonight I refuse to admit
solitude's wadded Kleenex.

My blue balls defy God,
they are lungs bursting
leagues beneath the sea.

They will not rise
unless you call them.
Speak or drown me in foam.

2.

You looked at me too
deeply today. Now my
balls are blue with your eyes.

They are overripe plums,
purple wineskins bursting
with torch brandy.

Run your tongue slowly
over that thick udder,
taste the taut fury

of my scrotum. Pull your
fist up the ladder
of my leaping cock and

feel the veins pumping
like the heart of horse
galloping moonlit ridges.

Suck the ruddy mile
of this heat rising
from the roots of my

loneliness to the slick
blue skullcap of my love
for you: all of that

waits for you this night,
waking me again and again.
And at the summit

of that impatient hammer
there's a blind eye searching
the heavens for your pussy,

there's a parched mouth
gaping for your peach honey,
there is an angry cock head

wild with thoughts of you.
I am one lurch from gushing
pure devil brimstone

all over your breasts, your
ass, your eyes, your hair.
My longing is a terrible angel

trapped tonight in a web
of hornets and honeysuckle,
bulging and throbbing

and lunging at the
spinning night, aching
to jam my swollen heart

up and up and up the wet
furrow of your absence,
cry your name, and die.

Tell me this is not
the cruelest love of all.





MARSYAS

Why do you tear me from myself?
Oh, I repent! Oh, a flute
is not worth such a price!

- Marsyas, Ovid Metamorphoses


My god's a blue Mohican,
a virtuoso of swoon.
He slides round moonlit trees
like strings of a black lyre.

I tried my pipes against him,
playing a song tapped
from dark suburbs.
Played it well too, soulful
and true-so sure I'd win!

But then the god reversed
his lyre and played it
from below. Oh how the
Muses raved! He tore the ivy
crown from their hands
like a blade from its sheath.

Next I was stumbling down
city streets at 2 a.m. with
techno blasting out every door.
Girls in faux lame clattered
through me like beads from
a broken strand.

A god left me hanging from
this wild tree like a trophy,
a red acre at last pure song.

AMOR

Our hunger rises
when it lowers
to lick the
burning pulp
between us.
Bite nipple.
Something rages
in us like two
wild horses,
unbroken, huge
and fierce.
Slap ass.
Flesh claws
flesh to reach
spirit, bone
pounds
against bone
to sound soul.
Our desire
grows red and
raw aching to
split us wide.
Fuck hard.
Sometimes our
clench is as
catastrophic
as birth, its pain
making the
pleasure real.
Hurling ourselves
towards what's
out of bounds.
Come nasty.
Body chasing
heart thundering
over the plain.
Wings wrapped
round each other
and falling into
the fire we
cannot otherwise
know. Drowse
a while and
wake, engorged
and fierce
like a burning
arrow, which
you squeeze
and suck and
swallow and
bury deep in
the place that
cannot get enough.





PWYLL AND RHIANNON

(from the Mabinogion, First Branch, Part Two; transl. Jeffrey Gantz)

One day Pwyll was in his chief court at Arberth where a feast had been prepared and a great number of men had assembled. He rose to take a walk and set out for Gorsedd Arberth, the hill that rose above the court. One of his men said, "Lord, it is the property of this hill that whenever a man of royal blood sits on it, one of two things happen: he receives blows and wounds, or sees a wonder." "I do not expect to receive blows or wounds in the company of such a host, and I would be glad to see a wonder. I will go and sit on the hill."

As they were sitting on this hill a woman dressed in shining gold brocade and riding a great pale horse approached the highway which ran past them. Anyone who saw the horse would have said it was moving at a slow steady pace as it drew adjacent to the hill. "Men," said Pwyll, "does anyone know that horsewoman?" "No, lord," they answered. "Then let someone go and find out who she is." A man rose to go after her but by the time he reached the highway she had already gone past. He tried to follow her on foot, but she drew farther ahead of him. When he saw his pursuit was in vain he returned and told Pwyll, "Lord, it is pointless for anyone to follow her on foot." "All right. Go to the court and take the fastest horse you know and go after her." The man fetched the horse and set out after her. Once he reached open country his spurs found his mount, but no matter how much he urged the steed onward the farther ahead she drew, all the while going at the same pace as before. His horse tired and he slowed it to a walk and returned to where Pwyll was waiting. "Lord, it is useless for anyone to follow that lady. I know of no horse in the entire kingdom faster than this one, and I could not overtake her." "All right, but there is some hidden meaning here. Let us return to court."

They spent the next two days there until dinner time that second day. After the first sitting Pwyll said, "Well, let those who went out yesterday accompany me to the hill now. And you," he said to one of the lads, "bring along the fastest horse you know of in the field." The lad did as he was asked and they went to the hill with the horse with them. As they were sitting there they saw the woman in the brocade garment riding the same horse along the highway. "There is the horsewoman of yesterday," Pwyll said. "Lad, be ready to find out who she is." "Gladly, lord." The horsewoman drew opposite. The lad mounted his horse, but before he could settle into the saddle she had gone past and put distance between them, all the while travelling at the same steady pace as the previous day. He kept his horse at a walk thinking that he could surely overtake her but he could not. He gave the horse its head, but even then he was no closer to her and the farther ahead she drew. Perceiving the pursuit was useless he returned to where Pwyll was waiting. "Lord, the horse cannot do better than you have seen." "I have seen it is useless for anyone to pursue her, but between me and God she had an errand for someone on this plain, had her obstinacy not prevented her declaring it. Let us return to the court."

They spent the night singing and carousing until dinner time the next day. After all had sat down for dinner Pwyll said, "Where are the men who went to the top of the hill yesterday and the day before?" "Here we are, lord." "Then let us go to the hill and sit there. And you," he said to the stableboy, "saddle my horse and bring it to the highway, and bring my spurs as well." They reached the hill and sat down. Almost immediately they saw the horsewoman in the same dress coming along the highway at the same pace. "Lad, I see our horsewoman coming, give me my horse." Pwyll mounted and settled into his saddle but no sooner had he done this than the lady rode past him. Giving his spirited horse its head he turned to follow, thinking he could easily overtake her, yet he drew no closer than before. He pushed his steed to its utmost speed until he saw that the pursuit was useless.
Pwyll then called out, "Lady, for the sake of the man you love best, stop for me!" "I will, gladly," she said, "and it would have been better for your horse had you asked me that earlier." The lady reined in her horse and haulted. She drew up the part of her veil which covered her face and fixed her gaze on Pwyll and they began to talk. "Lady," said Pwyll, "where do you come from, and where are you going?" "I am doing my errands," she said, "and I am glad to see you." "I welcome you," Pwyll said, for it seemed to him that the beauty of every girl and woman he had ever seen was nothing compared to the face of this lady. "Lady, will you tell me anything of your errands?" "Between me and God I will. My most important errand was to try to see you."

RHIANNON

I could never catch her,
though all these years I've
tried. When I was three
years old I'd run to the
window whenever my
mother cried, "pretty girls
passing by." Whatever
made me race flat-out
got me to the window
always a nick too late,
my eyes catching a
jot of hair or passing
smile, but nothing that
would hold: just my
hammering heart and
that rearward, shrinking
view I love these days
too much. In later years,
when in the tightest inches
of encounter, some verge
of touch would always
race by just out of reach,
leaving something like
a scent in the air,
sweet and strangely
dimming, a halo above
that final collapsing light.
How could I coil in the
limbs of some woman
I more or less knew and
wake next to her
no closer than when I began,
months, years before?
For years I've ridden at
full gallop, my hands reaching,
my fingertips just outside
the outermost glow of
blonde or auburn or black
hair -- Who could have guessed
by any wisdom of this world
that it was she who was
seeking me? Years ago my
father woke on an Iona
where Thor still walked,
brute and ugly, the
churl on the road to
Corco Duibne. Yet my
father only felt love for
the apparition. The monster
said to him, "your work
is our work and our work
is yours," and for the next
20 years my father has
proved him right. My quest
is hers and hers is ours
in this no-world of a
well's wold, spring for the
white mare who steps
down nightly from her
hill to drink deeply here
in shade, her foal beside
her (the one we never see),
daughter of these years
plunging an absence who
was there all the time,
receiving each forward
motion with soft, undinal,
irretrievably roomy sighs.



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
name off the door.



NAXOS

Eros is a mighty daimon
but an army of lovers
can be beaten here
with just a word: No.
Desire ends where it
begins, at that
honeyed source just
beyond my lips,
in a name I know
but cannot say,
not yet, its
brilliant beach
and blue surf dropped
from rounded hips
so casually, with
such killing grace.
As soon as I say Yes
or Come she then
departs, as if along
a loosening and
diffuse spray of surf,
receding like a
tide as I approach,
forever just out
of reach, silencing
me down to this.
And when I say
No or Go I hear
the rise and fold
and tumescent crash
welcoming me with
open arms of crazy
foam, pleading all
the words I meant
to say but lost.
so it goes between
the word and its beloved,
forever here and gone,
an icy sweet peramble
which melts the names
back down the well,
though raise them here
somehow I'll try.
She will not come
unless I refuse her,
she will not stay
unless I let her go.
And so I've learned
to assault love from
the rear, marrying
the verses to its
wavelike curve and
crash by loosening
the cincture of my
sense, merging
noun and sound
and then horsing
them upon both
sine and wave
where you and I
are one bedraggled
castaway upon
this rock, this tiny
island in God's stream
where what we know
we copulate
and what we don't
we dream.

TSUNAMI PAUSE

In 1868, a stretch of nearly
3000 miles of the western
coast of South America was
shaken by earthquakes.
Shortly after the most
violent shocks, the sea
receded from the shore,
leaving ships that had
been anchored in 40 feet
of water stranded in the
mud; then the water returned
in a great wave, and
boats were carried a
quarter mile inland.

-- Rachel Carson, The Sea
Around Us

I do not so much revise one poem
as to deepen it with the next,
stripping away the daily bloomers
to squeeze great breasts below,
nursing some angel's darker
brogue which may one day
shout the joy of God. Such descending
laterals are not approved by
the tribe but I obey another, the
Odrums cursed to live on shores by
seas, my words dipped in seal-plaint
and blue-black hot-icy, arising on
deeper waves than we allow in heaven.
What then when one tide witches
fully out and hangs there, waters
receding so far to rouse lost towns,
their dripping roofs ghastly in the
sun, the church steeple with its
barnacle-entombed bell tolling a
frightful stillness in noon air?
That monstrous pause I
sense is what that angel
sucks on this fog-heavy morning,
the dark in that stalled-front
soak of fallen cloud mashed in
my migraine to sum a pall of dread
and sickly stillness, my written world
frozen in its tracks and the sea
nowhere to be found. My work
and ways are revealed now
too plainly to the eye and
are not pretty, a rude littoral
of failed labors on advancing
days--hear my tale: Yesterday
in yoga class the instructor
had us pair up, one to kneel in
Child's Pose (on all fours then
squat back on your knees &
stretch your arms full out ahead,
resting on the floor with your
every forward demeanor) while the
other rolled a red, head-sized ball
around neck & shoulders
and every region of the back
massaging as deeply as you can:
I paired with the odd one out on the
other side of the room, a young woman
who'd come mistakenly to class in
boy-shorts & a midriff T, not good for
all these poses & especially this one
and meant for boys at least a generation
younger than I: Knowing that I could
just do the exercise without the
lower questions I just engaged, letting
her massage me first soft and lamely,
rolling the ball as if she abhorred the
notion of the proximity of any touch:
When we switched positions I really
set into it, giving her a good deep roll
as the instructor intended, amused at
her quiet discomfort as her T shirt
hitched halfway up her back &
her shorts receded almost all the
way to the crack of her ass, revealing
a pure pale young shore I hadn't been
that close to in 15 years and wasn't
any closer to now: & while she suffered
her pleasure I just gave thanks to God
& rolled that devil ball hard and deep,
giving her everything deep water has
given me and no more: Not sexual or
perhaps only metaphorically so, balling
this girl but good with a rolling tone
only entrusted to me & for darker deeper
porpoises than any I have loosed on real
skin: My hands never actually touched the
girl but man I gave that red ball a
man's gentle maul: At home a while later
my wife was dead sick with a headache
(we both seem to get 'em when the weather
is stillborn this way), readying dinner in
a hurry so she could take her PM sinus
pills & escape at last to sleep: I was
exhausted from 4 hours sleep & a hard
day of production yoked to my Mac
& was o so ever grateful that we ate
& nodded off in bed before 9 a.m.,
slipping fast beneath dark waters:

Wings I cannot I cannot see are spread
and lifted here for miles, the salt acres
revealed by evicted waters a terrain
no one has ever seen, much less sung
the breadth of or tried to salvage its
derange. I see canyons of ache scarred
by the knees of giantessas and Thalassas
sprawled in Child's Pose in that billion
year dreamtime when the archons
plunged them to their hilts
& filled the oceans with salt spume.
I hear continental plates bumping and
grinding, the whole earth fucking deep
below & occasionally sliding deep &
sending for the shiver of an orgasm
which wakes tsunami waves, a peal of God
racing 450 miles an hour toward the shore,
causing hardly a ripple at midocean
(where frenzies are the norm)
and as the depths below decrease toward
shore the surface water brewing up
a Himalayan cusp of waves, built
from all the gentle waters of this shore
which have now receded, leaving this moment
still, dry, dripping, revealed, held here in
a silent clear tone which pauses between
the worlds, the poems, the ages which I
have bordered and now must somehow cross,
or descend, or awaken to. Hold with me
this tired, dry, foggy, migrained minute
before 5 a.m. Friday February 24 2005 AD,
that we may clear God's palate and this page
but good for what has risen beyond the
horizon & speeds faster than a jet this way,
pent with all the hammers of the next God.


MY BOOK OF WILD BLUE WONDERS

My little book of wild blue wonders
is writing itself down long after
the voyage in which I found You
and endless foundered through,
My Cape of noctilucent seas.
Back then I was too in thrall
with Your fever and fret
to do much else than tie myself
to the mast and let the waves
mass through, each an
apocalypse of futile desire,
its force and drench and angel
of such brute amplitude as to
send me reeling down the
hundred leagues of doom.
Again and again I sailed out
to prow those curving walls,
surmounting crests of vicious
foam to crash on down
glassy backs and hurtle
into troughs of pure abyss,
the face staring back at me in
those deeps my own and Death's
a caricature of bone write blue
by puerile awfulness. After
years of such sturm und drang
I travailled on to calmer seas,
but the smash and howl
of those rough nights formed
a strata in my years, a bass
clef if you will, which tide
on darkly in words I came to write
on mornings such as this,
the outer life becalmed and fine,
the inner one a drowned Cape
where all that big night music
went down down down to
silt the nougat of my heart
I tried to find so wantonly
inside a woman's Yes.
Here at this quieter hour
of a deadened, sleepy world,
the waterworks are still
hammering the weird wattage
of that thrall, confined to
a chicken scratch across
and down the page. Each
song's a thundrous fall of
nights long dead to me,
rehearsing in brute cerebration
the awe those wild winging seas.

Consolations

There is no way to prepare for or understand catclysm, though go on we do. Unimaginable losses are buried, they ghost the architecture for a good while (we still peer into the abysms of the Titanic, hearing the cries of the doomed), the edifaces are razed and trucked away for months (like the World Trade Center), the ash remains on our windowpanes for years (like Mt. St. Helens).

Who knows what is to come? But mythological faith tells us that though we don't know what the future holds, we do know who holds it -- the resources for our future come from our deep past, so we can take comfort and solace from those who have suffered greatly before us and gone on to praise God and remake the world.

I think of the cellist in Sarajevo during the siege who had no more employment -- the symphony had long been disbanded, no power in the hall, most of his fellow artists dead, buried in the great soccer field -- who got up every day and took his cello out into the streets, settling into bomb craters that had been made the night before -- and began to play the most gorgeous keening worshipful music his heart and hands could empty out -- filling those holes with the beautful, the human, the eternal -- Isn't that good
coaching for all of us? To sing in the drowned parishes of New Orleans, to tell the old tales of death and transformation and rebirth?

Thus, the following is a good prayer for the day -- from one who I call the patron saint of every lost or drowned pet of that region -- marching orders for we who have heard the tales --

ST. FRANCIS PRAYER

"Lord, make me a channel of thy peace, that where there is hatred, I may bring love; that where there is wrong, I may bring the spirit of forgiveness; that where there is discord, I may bring harmony; that where there is error, I may bring truth; that where there is doubt, I may bring faith; that where there is despair, I may bring hope; that where there are shadows, I may bring light that where there is sadness, I may bring joy.

"Lord, grant that I may seek rather to comfort than to be comforted; to understand, than to be understood; to love, than to be loved. For it is by self-forgetting that one finds. It is by forgiving that one is forgiven.

"It is by dying that one awakens to Eternal Life.

"Amen."


Thus, these consolations:


HARM AND BOON IN THE MEETINGS

Jack Gilbert

We think the fire eats the wood.
We are wrong. The wood reaches out
to the flame. The fire licks at
what the wood harbors, and the wood
gives itself away to that intimacy,
the manner in which we and the world
meet each new day. Harm and boon
in the meetings. As heart meets what
is not heart, the way the spirit
encounters the flesh and the mouth meets
the foreignness in another mouth. We stand
looking at the ruin of our garden
in the early dark of November, hearing crows
go over while the first snow shines coldly
everywhere. Grief makes the heart
apparent as much as sudden happiness can.


CONSOLATION

2000

Lying on the couch
beneath a blanket
on a cold Saturday
morning weary
with the flu
& resting a spell
before grinding
into the day's work

Drowsing
to Bach preludes
transcribed for
piano drifting along
the delicate
pour and weave
of notes a gentle
counterpoint
to hard worries
about my marriage
& what's rising
in the cracked
ground below

I slept a spell
then opened
my eyes
to a perfect
calm: The sky
in the window
a deep blue
& the room
bathed with
bright hard sunlight
& the cats
each on a big
chair turned in
the same
a left spiral
of sleep

The music
threaded it
all together
in a lace
more delicate
than snow on ice

& I thought

That's the
consolation
of art brief
walks on
a postcoital
beach we
never deserve
and so
ungraciously
receive

I remembered
cold winter
mornings in
Spokane 20
years ago
when I'd sit
on a heat grate
sucking a beer
with all the
tatters of night
bleeding in me

I'd listen
to an album
of Bach harp
partitas & watch
the sun play
brilliantly on
icy streets outside
& for a few

moments I was
back on the beach
with my mother
when I was 2
with the sea
in heaven dancing

O how purely
I wanted to
bridge my days
to that one
To pin the
wings of that
art onto
my life

& Oh how
I failed

All I've
learned since
then is how
these glories
are so paired
with the failure
to sustain them

Oh well
at moments like
these the
dance is perfect
a Bach
prelude to
whatever comes
a counterpoint
of light and sound
in the harmony
of what never
remains



POPPIES

Mary Oliver

The poppies send up their
orange flares; swaying
in the wind, their congregations
are a levitation

of bright dust, of thin
and lacy leaves.
There isn't a place
in this world that doesn't

sooner or later drown
in the indigoes of darkness,
but now, for a while,
the roughage

shines like a miracle
as it floats above everything
with its yellow hair.
Of course nothing stops the cold,

black, curved blade
from hooking forward-
of course
loss is the great lesson.

But also I say this: that light
is an invitation to happiness,
and that happiness,


when it's done right,
is a kind of holiness,
palpable and redemptive.
Inside the bright fields,

touched by their rough and spongy gold,
I am washed and washed
in the river
of earthly delight-

and what are you going to do-
what can you do
about it-
deep, blue night?




... More and more in my life and in my work I am guided by the effort to correct our old repressions, which have removed and gradually estranged us from the mysteries out of whose abundance our lives might become truly infinite. It is true that these mysteries are dreadful, and people have always drawn away from them. But where can we find anything sweet and glorious that would never wear this mask, the mask of the dreadful? Life - and we know nothing else - , isn't life itself dreadful? ... Whoever does not, sometime or other, give his full consent, his full joyous consent to the dreadfulness of life, can never take possession of the unutterable abundance and power of our existence; ...To show the identity of dreadfulness and bliss, those two faces on the same divine head, indeed this one single face, which just presents itself this way or that, according to our distance from it or state of mind in which we perceive it - : this is the true significance and purpose of the Elegies and the Sonnets to Orpheus.

- Ranier Maria Rilke (transl. Mitchell)

***

Did you ever say Yes to one joy? O my freinds, then yo8u said yes to all woe as well. All things are chained and entwined together, all things are in love;

if you ever wanted one moment twice, if you ever said, "You please me, happiness, instant moment!" then you wanted everything to return!

You wanted everything anew, everything eternal, everything cahined, entwined together, everything in love, o that is how you loved the world ...

-- Nietzsche, Thus Spake Zarathustra


MANGER SCENE II

Up he rises from the dumpster
Behind the Pink Pussycat, the
Full receipt of every lost and
Forlorn ache which you deigned not
To receive. Amid the empty
Buds and butts and vomit-
Smelling rags he's the crown prince,
Mewling (OK, groaning) as
Any babe would arising from
Such death. Well, he and I begin
Here, amid Her sordid trash.
The sour light proclaims a cracked and
Bleeding dawn -- poor afterbirth
Indeed though the psalm proclaim
New motion where old salt was lain.


BEGIN HERE

Begin here
where there
is no poetry,
only the clutter
of late winter,
the manic
mind's exile
in motion,
whirligagging
with the cold
moon for the
sake of something
to whirl.

Begin here
where there is
no beginning,
only these
shattered pixels
of sour winter light
swaddling the
frozen rubble of
last year's rot.

Here where
nothing and less
contend for
winter's
miserable crown
poetry sparks a fuse,
urging the day
down a simple
and singular path,

winding through
the ghetto

of bleak afternoons
to a quiet field
where berries
may yet sprout
like fire in the
heart of the city

o yes
this poor master
of silence and silk
asks only
that you
begin here:


A WALK IN LATE SUMMER

Theodore Roethke

1.
A gull rides on the ripples of a dream,
White upon white, slow settling on a stone;
Across my lawn the soft backed creatures come,
In the weak light they wander, each alone.
Bring me the meek, for I would know their ways;
I am a connoisseur of midnight eyes.
The small! The small! I hear them singing clear
On the long banks, in the soft summer air.

2.
What is there for the soul to understand?
The slack face of the dismal pure inane?
The wind dies down; my will dies with the wind,
God's in that stone, or I am not a man!
Body and soul transcend appearances
Before the caving-in of all that is;
I'm dying piecemeal, fervent in decay;
My moments linger-that's eternity.

3.
A late rose ravages the casual eye,
A blaze of being on a central stem.
It lies upon us to undo the lie
Of living merely in the realm of time.
Existence moves toward a certain end-
A thing all earthly lovers understand.
That dove's elaborate way of coming near
Reminds me I am dying with the year.

4.
A tree arises on a central plain-
It is no trick of change or chance of light.
A tree all out of shape from wind and rain,
A tree thinned by the wind obscures my sight.
The long day dies; I walked the woods alone;
Beyond the ridge two wood thrush sing as one.
Being delights in being, and in time.
The evening wraps me, steady as a flame.

On Catastrophe

A ghastly humidity since yesterday morning, seeping in from the west, off the ghost, fantails of Katrina I guess, its wake, a spoor of laden heaviness sweating the hours, giving my wife and I classic headaches, and freighting the usual ambles of the day with Her humid breath, scented with death and blue awfulness, prescient of the horrible destruction on the Mississippi Gulf coast -- all day tv's and radios delivering the sobering and then chilling news of aftermath, of many who stayed in their homes and drowned, of antebellum homes along the coast which had sustained hundreds of storms now only foundations, of levees breaking in New Orleans, flooding the entire city, of snakes in the water amid drowned pets, of 30,000 poor packed in the roof-damaged Super Dome, told to stay put without electricity or water -- ramp the magnitude of awfulness in slowly welling crescendo, and frame it in that humidity, the memory of local aftermaths, what it means to do anything without power, in the terrific heat of late southern summer ...

Typically, what we imagine -- and fear -- always looms worst in front of us rather than behind -- the fears of catastrophic storm-surge loomed highest as Katrina approached. What they sort through now in the French Quarter indicates a far lesser wave, not the tsunami of judgment but still bad -- hurricanes are fascinating in the approach and just a huge and durable pain in the ass after passing over (here in Fl., after hurricane Charley, the debris of fallen trees choked streets for weeks; only when hurricane Francis began her east-coast approach was there a frenzy to get things picked up).

The vortex of that dark imagining, chock-full of irrational and inchoate disturbings, the mind aswarm with daggers and other assorted visages of woe, all of one's life brought suddenly into relief, all one has worked for vulnerable, insufficient, intensely loved; and all that approaches like a whirl of shadow, all menance and insuppressible might -- an attack from the unconscious, Jung might have sd., our evil twin up from the badlands below for a bit of merry marauding:

And the feminine element too -- thus the 'canes alternate sexes -- the wild Morrigan bitch who don't take no for an answer, lifting her black skirts over the region, 400 miles of wicket petticoats up high and the chthon sea-bladder loosing in fury, vengeance against every way we did mama wrong, cheated on girlfriends and wives, tried to keep that old sea-sensibility quashed down with the brilliance and cocksurety of our sun-struck egos:

The hero at work in our skulls is a guilty critter, as Herakles was always in penance for his outrageousness (his 12 labors were undertaken to expiate for the passion-blind murder of his wife and two children); guilt for trying to do better than the father, guilt for every way in which he fails to measure up to the white throne housed in his superego. So these cataclysms are a form of vengeance by the father, as the flood only Noah survives is sent by an angry god to punish the errant hearts of men. Joyce was terrified of thunder -- imagine that godless god of art quailing so at that most primitive trumpet of the father -- And Hamlet's bloody court intrigue is the hero's sympathy with the devil of judgment, enacting the father's will, his wishes, at the extreme detriment of his own.

Cataclysm fascinates because it abrupts the order, turns everything upside down -- who doesn't secretly long for the very event which
destroys all? Bored no more! we hoot, watching the angry red spiral approach on radar. Here comes Everywhirl. And out of that boil, something new, slates wiped (washed, blown) clean, the building up of a new race, the blessing of starting over. How many events are so charged with anticipation of that both annihilation and rebirth?


USURY

September 12, 2001

I wanted more
catastrophe. Saw the
second jet fly approach
from the rear
twist then plow
into the tower
and thought WOW!
Real stuff! When
a few minutes
later they reported
of an explosion
at the Pentagon
I thought What next?
with all the
excitement
of one who hopes
a hurricane
won't turn and
barrel this way
instead. Sure,
I felt a dread
silence when the
towers collapsed on
everyone below. So sad.
But I was high on
events you dare
not dream of. What
next? The White House?
Disney World? I
looked out the window
to a turgid sky,
clouds dark in
their ragged approach.
Any fate headed
this way? Oboy!
Here's life at last,
as big as it gets.
Let's pop some
popcorn and gather
by a big screen TV.
Let's cheer each new
burst of flame.
Let's ride high on
the moment before
the telephones all
start to ring and
the cinders tumble
on us all.



***

Imaginings of cataclysm are one thing: aftermath is wholly another. After the wonder and awe of the approach, the fantastical bets on where the storm will land and how bad things will get (amazed accounts of 45-foot waves, threat of some tsunamilike storm surge, the morbid mind thrilling at the though of how bad things might get), then comes Reality at its worst, all imagined bets off, the done deal too damn real, nothing left to do but rummage for a few drowned relics of the former life, find a shelter, wait to rebuild. A living tenor wiped out, some new voice too fragile and unsupportable to believe in, much less chorus. Time now for finding the last remaining survivors on distant roofs, for assessing the damage, for rallying convoys of water and instant food and bandages, for shooting looters and getting drunk amid the shatter and shrieking sun. This is the agony of rebirth, not a poem or rock n roll show.

And it's not even a human show, though we suffer dearly in it: the storms aren't Ivan or Katrina, Betsy or Hugo, Camille or Andew but nature at its wildest and worst, a feral malevolence that is hardest on the innocent. I think of all those pets left behind to be crushed or drowned ... of trees grown for patient decades (centuries even) looking like so many outraged ladies, sprawled on lawns and roads and over houses, leaf-skirts scattered, spines broken, raw white splinters pointing at the sky. This was how it looked in Central Florida after Hurricane Charley last year:




LAMENT FOR THE TREES

The news reports so few
died in Hurricane Charley's
path -- most in trailer parks
down in Punta Gorda, folded
up in their homes like Amens
by dark hands gripping down
at the end of prayer -- but
the choke and stink of dead
oaks runs a Tartarean stream
twenty miles wide from Charlotte
County up Polk through Osceola
Orange Seminole and Volusia
Counties, strickening all who
live or must pass through
that harrowed zone with the
vertigo of what fell down
when greater winds blew
round. The oaks lay everywhere
across our dreams of paradise,
like wooly mastodons heaped
over broken iron fences
and blocking side streets
of all passage as traffic creeps
slowly by, careful not to
brush the jutting fingers of
heaped limbs and timber
next to the curb. Above all
the mid-August sun is white
as a boil or a canker
causing trouble in the sky,
grinning high above the
shrivelling bower of
slaughter. Maybe it's just
the rot we can't smell in
our human way, but still
a scent fills these days
like some ravening, mythic
afterbirth of death, part
turkey buzzard, part riot of
the carcinomia, so much
more exposed by the sun.
And while we sleep, what
ghosts raise from their
savaged split and fallen
graves, marrowed with
the green pith of arching
light, sighing and twisting
so to remembered breezes,
moonlight glitters on ghost-
leaves, or tears, or dew --
all that won't collect in
those brutal, tree-shaped
spaces tomorrow's sun
will maul on through.

Awesome and awful to nth degrees: what have we to equal the menace of a 400-mile-wide storm? What have our 60 or 100 dead to say to the millionfold plasms of our same ache now floating seaward in a sepulchre of muddy retch?

Humbling.



Folktales are rich with stories of inundated towns, often due to the disturbance of a water-spirit living down a well, in punishment for a sin, or simply because someone forgot to tend something crucial. All are instances, IMO, of the hero's guilt which invites catastrophe. There's always a fissure in our bright visage, a chink in the armor, a crack in the wall, a fatal character flaw through which floods the madness of unconsciousness. Stories of cataclysm seem to bear this out.

These tales are from John Rhys' Celtic Folklore: Welsh and Manx (1901)


***

There was a man of the name of Owen living in Mynyd Mawr, and he had a well ("fynnon"). Over this well he kept a large flag or flagstone, which he was always careful to replace over its mouth after he had satisfied himself or his beast with water.

It happened, however, that one day he went on horseback to the well to water his horse, and forgot to put the flag back in its place. He rode off leisurely in the direction of his home; but, after he had gone some distance, he casually looked back and, to his great astonishment, he saw that
the well had burst out and was overflowing the whole place.

He suddenly bethought to ride back and encompass the overflow of water as fast as he could; and it was the horse's track in galloping round the water that put a stop to its further overflow.
It is fully believed that, had he not galloped round the flood in the way he did, the well would have been sure to inundate the whole district and drown all. Hence the lake was called the Lake of Owen's Flag, "Llyn Lech Owen"

***

In Cantre Gwaelod, or the Bottom Hundred (there is) a fine spacious country supposed to be submerged in Cardigan Bay. Modern euphemism treats it as defended by embankments and sluices, which, we are told, were in the charge of the prince of the country, Seithennin, who, being one day in his cups, fogot to shut the sluices and thus brought about the inundation.


***

Boand, wife of Nechtitn son of Labraid, went
to the secret well which was in the green of sid
Nechtdin (Trinity Well, the source of the river Boyne, located in the Barony of Carbury in Co. Kildare). Whoever went to it would not come from it without his two eyes bursting, unless it were Nechtitn himself and his three cup-bearers.

Once upon a time Boand went through pride to test the well's power, and declared that it had no secret force which could shatter her form, and thrice she walked widdershins round the well. Whereupon three waves from the well broke over her head and deprived her of a thigh, one of her hands and one of her hands. Then she, fleeing her shame, turned seaward, with the water behind her as far as Boyne-mouth, where she drowned. This explains why the river is called Boand, "Boyne."

A version to the same effect in in the Book of Leinster, fol. 191A, makes the general statement that no one who gazed right into the well could avoid the instant ruin of his two eyes or otherwise escape with impunity.

***
Tradition relates that Bala Lake is but the watery tomb of the palaces of iniquity; and that some old boatmen can on quiet moonlight nights in harvest see towers in ruins at the bottom of its waters, and also hear at times a feeble voice saying, "Dial a daw, dial a itaw," 'Vengeance will come'; and another voice inquiring, "Pa bryd y daw," 'When will it come?' Then the first voice answers, "Yn y drydedd genhedlaeth," 'In the third generation.'

Those voices were but a recollection over oblivion, for in one of those palaces lived in days of yore an oppressive aud cruel prince, corresponding to the well-known description of one of whom it is said, 'Whom he would he slew; and whom he would he kept alive.' The oppression and cruelty practised by him on the poor farmers were notorious far and near. This prince, while enjoying the morning breezes of summer in his garden, used frequently to hear a voice saying, 'Vengeance will come.' But he always laughed the threat away with reckless contempt.

One night a poor harper from the neighbouring hills was ordered to come to the prince's palace. On his way the harper was told that there was great rejoicing at the palace at the birth of the first child of the prince's son. When he had reached the palace the harper was astonished at the number of the guests, including among them noble lords, princes, and princesses: never before had he seen such splendour at any feast. When he had begun playing the gentlemen and ladies dancing presented a superb appearance. So the mirth and wine abounded, nor did he love playing for them any more than they loved dancing to the music of his harp.

But about midnight, when there was an interval in the dancing, and the old harper had been left alone in a comer, he suddenly heard a voice singing in a sort of a whisper in his ear, 'Vengeance, vengeance!' He turned at once, and saw a little bird hovering above him and beckoning him, as it were, to follow him. He followed the bird as fast as he could, but after getting outside the palace he began to hesitate. But the bird continued to invite him on, and to sing in a plaintive and mournful voice the word 'Vengeance, vengeance!' The old harper was afraid of refusing to follow, and so they went on over bogs and through thickets, whilst the bird was all the time hovering in front of him and leading him along the easiest and safest paths. But if he stopped for a moment the same mournful note of 'Vengeance, vengeance!' would be sung to him in a more and more plaintive and heartbreaking fashion.

They had by this time reached the top of the hill, a considerable distance from the palace. As the old harper felt rather fatigued and weary, he ventured once more to stop and rest, but he heard the bird's warning voice no more. Helistened, but he heard nothing save the murmuring of the little burn hard by. He now began to think how foolish he had been to allow himself to be led away from the feast at the palace: he turned back in order to be there in time for the next dance. As he wandered on the hill he lost his way, and found himself forced to await the break of day. In the morning, as he turned his eyes in the direction of the palace, he could see no trace of it: the whole tract below was one calm, large lake, with his harp floating on the face of the waters.

Egg Head, Crackin'

... We make, although inside an egg,
variations on the words spread sail.

The morning-glories grow in the egg.
It is full of the myrrh and camphor of summer

And Adirondack glittering. The cat hawks it
And the hawk cats it and we say spread sail,

Spread sail, and say spread white, spread way.
The shell is a shore. The egg of the sea

And the egg of the sky are in shells, in walls, in skins
And the egg of the earth lies deep within an egg.

Spread outward. Crack the round dome. Break through.
Have liberty not as the air within a grave.

Or down a well. Breathe freedom, oh my native,
In the space of horizons that neither love nor hate.

-- Wallace Stevens, "Things of August," II

***

As the hero's labors to expiate guilt are surficial actions of the ego to compensate for the darker tropings of sublime inferiores -- the shadow which knows, eternally, what the hero is forever doomed to throw --

So the hero's sights are set on a goal which seems identical in every surface way to the lost or dreaming princess of his underworld. He is sighted by anima and sees here everywhere in the day's surfaces -- everywhere she cannot be found -- old and new loves, swellings and crests of blue water mantled with hot foam.

Thus shadow and anima are the unknowable and invisible mastheads of the hero's noble brow, a tandem of watery personalities, inchoate and irrational as the unconscious depths they thrive in, demon brother and faery queen of ever labor filial to the day's difficult cause and all that must be sacrificed to make a marriage work.

All lives suffer this tandem, and each is a narrative, for better or ill, of what what learns of them in the harrowing. -- Madness, drunkenness, disease, gross materialism, porn addiction, corpulence, meth decapitation, divorce & etc. run wild in the dark woods we all have to make our way through. -- As well as equally dangerous Charybdal compensations such as sterotypy, literalism, compulsive ordering, exercise addiction, perfectionism, fundamentalist witch-burning or other acts of Republican fascism.

Yet make our way through we do, wounds welling fantastical, older and wiser (maybe): And this sum, this late-August pause between labors, this gestation of knowns, this torpid boob-thirsty suckle on the the thousand erotikons of heavage and cleavage -- this daily wick I light and flicker in the far reaches of cybersapce is like a candle held to a cave wall for the first time in millennia, lamping glyphs of old soul which is wakening, slowly, from an egg.



COMFORT

These poems are breasts
of comfort: plashing waves
on a soft-focus beach. No one
else seems to hear them
though I swear they're real.

As a kid I moved inside
when others played too rough.
There I found the words
for what was missing in the world,
writing over sorrows with blue silk.

Not much has changed these years.
I'm lyric and romantic
in the worst ways, my ironies
lost in sweet sounds which,
like mother's milk, sustain.

This is the banner
I lift in these poems,
a cheery hoist to a bitter wind,
a bonfire by a booming surf
I never found much welcome in.

LUNAR BETRAYALS

How many times have I betrayed you
by the light of that full moon, my oh-
so sea-deep sweetness, exchanging
your reflective swash for that louder-
plashing fire? Such lamps were lit
to find you; and yet my torch replaced
your passage as I ravelled through
the world's desperate, unyielding heart.
The curves and cleavage of those
beginnings became my only end, my
star-tarred greed to plunge what you
only meant as billowy invitation
to drowse toward more richly lucent
shores. Not that you didn't conspire
in part with my betrayal, in thrall
yourself with the signage in my ever-
outward zeal, my heart's frantic
egressing heat the zionist
who pays back every loss of you
by settling on every slickslide same
in all the ways you won't, no,
can't be fully entered.

That moony autumn night
when I was 14 & sat behind Sue
on a parked motorbike no one
was old enough to ride: Surely
you sighed all those honey
bells when when my hands
crept under her t-shirt to
ring those hafts of startlingly-
wobbly warm flesh; surely you
were beaconing me when I
dialed those hard pubescent nipples
-- islands trilling danger in your
equinoctal seas. I squeezed those breasts
in terror and pure desire, flooding
with all the brilliance of that harvest
moon which arched so high above,
its light tolling from an unseen cathedral
where for 30 years now I've daily
prayed and counted out your beads
& feasted on the host.

Not that you didn't lead me
here to fall hopelessly in love
with insides I've never found a way
to enter. My longing is like a wave that
never crosses all the waters
you remit and shore. You've
kept me forever here adrift,
searching for that naked
strand where you wait and
sigh and welcome moons in every tide.

This morning going on 5 a.m.
that big moon is lost to cloud,
the sky a drossy net of blueblack milk
which hides even the itch of my desire
in abyssal folds of paling ink.
Sweet temptress beyond
all tempting sights, I have always
sought to shape a face according
to the ache I felt, believing you
would finally appear on the horizon
when I finally found the shape
your song desired.

See? Even now I'm burning in the
prow of this descending boat down the
deepest fissures of sea cold gloom,
belling all the way down your
wavelike sound, that echo at
the end of every line which
seal-barks in the dark
the siren-warble of infinity
which my most naked love bestows.

For even love is just another
further door into the your
downward-plunging dream, a
bed conjugal to that thrall
which births a darker,
unknowable and unforgettable
gleam. There is a bell-note to this
world, a single deep resound,
the sum of all the waves which
pulse outward from this heart,
which reach, collapse, and
pound in sad returns: A drone
deep on the basalt bed which
aches for the moon we found
and lifted with our kiss.

I want to end this poem right
here and go up and hold my
wife, and squeeze her
incommensurate curves
with hands as trembling as
the ones that ventured
under that young girl's shirt
a hundred lives ago
beneath the silent belling roar
of the one exiling door.
Surely I will lose your there
again, but that's the dance
you love most: Me hearing
wild music everywhere
and not a single coast.



TINCTURE OF ABYSS

... Four-and-twenty from Munster who
went with Ailbe upon the sea to find
the land which Christians never dwell ...

... The confessor who Brendan met in
the promised land, with all the saints
who have perished in the isles of the ocean ...

from "The Litany of Oengus," 6th century

Ferry that tincture here, muse
of equinoctal silk. Ladle black
lactissima from those heavy
breasts barely obscured by
an unbuttoned and bottomless
blouse. Pour in my ear those
three degrees between deep
night and first light. May
my pen refrain that booming
choir which sings night and
day in the Cathedral of
the Sea, a lavish organum
of wave and boulder
on shores no man has walked
nor named, much less
scant dreamed. Throat
that sea-black color
in my voice that I
may sing the wildest
isling of them all,
the one with cliffs
no one has climbed
and a well within
of such sweet silver
that one drink sates
300 years of desire.
I peer in that blueblack
mirror and the fishtailed
man stares back, his
seal-eyes pent on cod
and raven, his smile
like a bell proclaiming
every hoof and fin
that steeples holy hell.
Salt Ys, strike that blue
noir note from the
hard prong aching
in the sea's vast legs
-- that boom in every
wave's orgasmic crash
resounding down the shore
of this life between
the massings of
consonantal stone
and the liquid plash
of what cannot in
words be known. The trick
is not to follow Lycidas
to the hollows of that
wild sound; to brew
sea trouble in a vat
or skull for ages long
enough to tincture
3 drops here: Enough to
shod each wave's resound
with lines hooved loud enough
to reach at last your ears.

The Hero's Guilt (1)

God saw that the wickedness of man was great in the earth, and that every imagination of the thoughts of his heart was only evil continually.

And it repented the Lord that he had made man on the earth, and it grieved him at his heart.

And the Lord said, I will destroy man whom I have created from the face of the earth; both man, and beast, and the creeping thing, and the fowls of the air; for it repenteth me that I have made them.

But Noah found grace in the eyes of the Lord ...

... And it came to pass after seven days that the waters of the flood were upon the earth ... all the foundations of the great deep (were) broken up, and the window of heaven ... opened.

-- Genesis 6:5-8; 7:10-11 (King James version)

***

So begin here with a dream-image that was belled clear and startling in my mind some moments after I had fallen back asleep around 6 a.m., next to my wife in bed:

I was at my father's place, instructing others (or taking advice from shadowy figures) on how to provide an outlet for some small welling stream -- to allow water a way to the surface, provide merriment, gleam, fresh insight: But then I look and see a flood pouring down his Glen of the Temple, down from Thors Gate, or perhaps up from the Poet's Stone -- a wide riverish wake drowning all in its path.

And wake.

***

Edith Hamilton's account of Hercules in Mythology underscores a darker vein of the hero's nature. "(Hercules) had true greatness," she writes. "Not because he had complete courage based upon overwhelming strength, which is merely a matter of course, but because by his sorrow for wrongdoing and his willingness to do anything to expiate it, he showed greatness of soul."

So when he kills his wife and two children in a fit of blind rage (excusable, to a hero like Theseus, because he had "lost his mind" in the red passion), he indentures himself to Eurystheus, king of Mycenae, to expiate for his crimes by undertaking twelve impossible labors (suggested to the king by Hera, who never forgave Hercules for being born) - tests in which his desire for forgiveness is matched with an heroic will to succeed. Thus he kills the lion of Nemea and the nine-headed Hydra, capture and bring home a stag with golden horns sacred to Artemis as well as a great boar on Mount Erymanthus, clean the Augean stables in a day, drive away the Stymphalian birds, fetch from Crete a bull sacred to Poseidon and then the man-eating mares of King Diomedes of Thrace, abscond with the girdle of Hippolyta, queen of the Amazones, return the cattle of Geryon, a three-bodied monster ravening a far western island, each wore than the last. The eleven th labor -- to steal the Golden Apples of the Hespirides, an island that can't be found -- he must master with his wits (a rare moment for this big-hearted blunder), fooling the dumb-and-dumber titan Atlas. And the twelfth and last labor -- to steal the three-headed dog Cerberus from Hades -- is his most daring and impossible and (duh) harrowing, one he must accomplish wholly alone (he was usually aided by Athena in his previous labors). And the big lug picks up the monster and simply carries it out, placing it at the feet of terrified Eurystheus.

Point being here, the hero is motivated and shadowed by guilt for his outrageous actions. He may piss of the gods with his being (like Hera), but his archetype rules the inner hanging court of guilt and conscience. So what of this shadow: is it a door beyond the hero?

***

Action, reaction: for every forward striving, is there a resonance, a court down under where good intentions are crimes and the victory stroke impales one's own heart? Is that dark doppler more essential (faithful to our essence) than anything we attempt topside, in the day? Hillman so suggests in his essential Dream and Underworld:

"The shadow world in the depths is an exact replica of daily consciousness, only it must be perceived differently, imaginatively. It is this word in metaphor. Our black being performs all actions just as we do in life, but its life is not merely our shadow? From the psychic perspective of the underworld, only shadow has substance. Only what is in the shadow matters, eternally. Shadow then in psychology is not only that which the ego casts behind, made by the ego out of its light, a moral or repressed or evil reflection to be integrated. shadow is the very stuff of the soul, the interior darkness that pulls downward out of life and keeps one in relentless connections with the underworld."

How the do we look upon the hero up topside, who so rules the light of the conscious day? Hillman again, same text:

"What goes on in the life of the ego is merely the reflection of one's deeper essence contained in the shadow. ... The shade is thus a cumulative deposit made simultaneously with the ego's career."

Thus the shadow of guilt -- the torment of Hercules, who cannot be defeated on earth except by his own self-judgment, who counts the failure of his heart far greater than the colossal cordage of his ball -- is what the hero is truly about. So why is it so hard to see this? Why must life and shade become so divided, and our stories so harrowed with guilt?

Hillman: "This way of putting the question radically changes our usual notion of super-ego No longer may we assume it is imposed from above by a later development, as if it only comes from sunlight and as if the small child casts no shadow. Rather, we are watched from our actions by the shadow of the body, that which is its closest witness."

And this: "(the shadow) creates the heroic endeavors of the day ego as a sort of expiatory function for its psychic torment below. ... Rather than viewing the soul as expiating in a nightworld for our shady actions in the dayworld, we may imagine dayworld actions to be expiations for shadows we have not seen. As long as we act in the heroic mode, we are driven by guilt, always paying off. Our doings are more like undoings, and our visible achievements are driven by an invisible image that either cannot rest (Sisyphus) or cannot move (Theseus stuck on the throne of Hades)."

***

So the hero's engine is forever dark, his striving to beat the world the soul's attempt to articulate what it cannot yet name, much less face off against. So you hammer Hydras and rassle bulls, fending off the creeping inferiority with outrageous fortunes abroad, topside.
I might be carrying (ferrying?) on the father's work, but down under I'm pissing mightily upon him, drowning his achievement in an embarrassing statement of pure puerile body -- flood up from my hips and out from the Poet's Stone, high words rogered by low porpoises.

Is that it? And all of that breastage crowding and crowing in my day, the bigger the better in plenitude, flooding me in nourishing lactates, more than I can ever mouth; and that flooding's undersides, my bottomless desire to flood breasts with semen, milk 'em the other way, my very imagining nursed not by the image but the desire for them, as Eros looks not upon Psyche but his fiery reflection in her eyes, and thus Psyche as the mirror of Eros, her cleavage my plunge, cock jammed between milk globes spuming a milky spunk, drowning the day. ... And all of those reveries snaking up from such hard dark-of-early-morning labors, d-cup adder's tongues flicking what I did not see as I wrote the words, sensibly, serially, rhetorically, in none of the modes the soul prefers ...

What did I achieve on paper that was not refuted in that boobal parade? Instead of seeing progress (or egress) from the hero, under the capstone of his waywarding balls, I wear 'em as a thinking cap all day, immersed in pure puerile sexual reverie, clear thoughts refuted, a good married day undermined by all of the secret hot fancies,jezebel jinns I could only wade through, guiltily, trying to make it up to my wife by being relaxed and courteous and flexible, easy, not tense in traffic, making good conversation, paying attention to her -- shadow hero and love's darling embroiled in the fascia of the day, in high foment, deep expiation, steadied only by prayers to my God, and an ever-more-abiding faith in the miracle of metaphor ...

The Hero's Guilt (2)

Monday morning, Katrina whirling down on New Orleans as a Category 5 nightmare, a three-hundred mile-wide-buzzsaw packing winds of 175 mph. Some guy from FEMA said yesterday that only structures built to withstand a Category 5 hurricane survive a Category 5 onslaught.

This poem was written last summer when it appeared that Hurricane Ivan was going to bear down on New Orleans -- some hours later the storm shifted east, saving the city the wreckage that descended upon the Florida Panhandle -- yet it's appropriate to my breast-cresting theme in all of the inappropriate ways.


IVANESCENCE

The Minoan women's custom,
which seems so strange to us,
of totally baring their breasts
on festive occasions, is perfectly
natural if they were playing the
role of nurses of Dionysos.

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

For days we watched his slow
procession from the mid-Atlantic
where he was spawned,
taking shape in that counter-
clockwise spin which spanned
like some angel's wings
for hundreds of miles,
marching surely west
and north toward New
Orleans, flattening
every island in its wake.
The ladies called him
months ago at Mardi Gras,
that festival which
prepares for the sacrifice
of one god by giving
birth to this other.
In a caterwaul of booze
and hip-hop the maidens
hiked their tops,
revealing pale breasts
bouncing full and young,
the crosses dangling
between them beset
by winds which know
no assuagement or
suspiration. Oh the legion
of those nipples which
offered suck to him those
raucous boogie nights,
showering if not milk
then some milky light
down on the drunken
hordes below, our mouth
opened wide as Ivan's
girth as he marched
across the sea, the
evanescence of that sight
his wild tumescence
too, whirling us together
in winds faster than
our roofs sustain, far
greater than our current
truths hold down.
The streets of New Orleans
are empty now as
winds and waters rise,
those high porches
bare, licked clean
by Ivan's greedy mouth.
they called him months
ago, swaying all
those breasts to a
preter-urban beat
in air as hot and
humid as a baby's breath:
Or we did, standing
in the crush below,
engulfed in that rout
and riot and shrill,
banging noise which
lifted something as
we got down, something
spiral in its spire
up through the falling
Savior of our mortal
days, into something
higher, or wilder,
something which we
cut and waved and
hurled far beyond
Easter into some
westwarding sea
where Venusian
shapes are known
to rise, and in that
shape a foam-born
Ivan with his whirling
swaddle of winds.
I wonder how they
watch the news,
those gals who
offered suck at
Mardi Gras, now
safely home with
jobs or school and
boyfriends back in
Pittstown or Council
Bluffs: When you
sleep, do you dream
of Ivan's breath
hot and greedy
so close to your
heightened, aching
nipples? Do you
hear that howl of
hungry wind in
your distant rooms
as it rips the
top off New
Orleans and battens
down and down
and down and
down?

The Hero's Guilt (3)

And finally, this rondo of poems which delve into the shadow of the hero, that infernal puppetry which raises his arm:


FINNGERING


When the fian are on the brink of the Suir, Culdub comes out of a sid or "elf-mound," and steals their food three times in succession as it is being cooked. On the third occasion Finn ua Baiscne gives chase and catches up with him, and lays hold of him as he goes into the sid. At this point a woman seems to meet him as she is coming out of the sid, with a dripping vessel in her hand, having just distributed drink, and she jams the door against the sid! Finn squeezes his finger (mer) between the door of the sid and the post, and then sticks it into his mouth. When he takes it out again he begins to chant (dicetal). The imbas enlightens him (fortnosmen an imbas) and he recites a series of rhetorics.

-- Nora Chadwick, "Imbas Forasnai"


The moment he is baptized Dylan (twin of Lleu or Lug) makes for the sea and receives the sea's nature, swimming well as any fish, and because of this he is called Dylan Eil Ton, "Sea Son of Wave." No wave ever broke beneath him.

-- Rees and Rees, Celtic Heritage


When I was 16 I
visited for a while
a girl from my
Christian youth group
in her parents'
apartment on Lake
Shore Drive while
they were out. We'd
watch TV and eat
chips and fool around
on the couch. Hedged
by youth and faith,
it never went that far;
our motions
were a shifting
barrier island between
how much she'd give
up (an ebbing resolve
to resist) and how much
I would persist in
the next encounter
(waxing against a
fading Christian faith).
God was God, I was
sure, but she was
something more, or
ignited in me heat a
for more, its flame
consecrate to regions
I dared not go, yet
knew somehow I must.
We'd kiss a while in
a milky haze: I'd watch
her kiss me, her eyes
tightly closed, blonde
hair in soft focus, all
else fading in the
watery buzz which
was slowly drowning
us, her lips to mine
like some sea-lock
our bargelike tongues
bellied back and
forth through. With
my free hand (the
other chastely folded
into hers) I'd roam the
ramparts of her
clothes seeking
ingress, stroking
her belly through
her blouse, running
fingers down her leg
in long, surflike
strokes. Emboldened
in the warming bath
of our embrace,
I'd unbutton
her blouse to roam
hot skin below, and
tempt a tight brassiere
which psaltered just
a nipple, it seemed,
a nub which hardened
as I squeezed and
pulled until she'd
shift hard, letting me
know I'd once more
gone too far. And
so I'd withdraw
whispering I'm sorry,
the canticle of a
my parent's faith
now caught in the
headlamps of teen lust.
We grappled on
that couch for many
nights with lame
sitcoms on TV
as our surf, those
babblings a weird
counterpoint to
the urgencies we
flailed a flustered in
the grip of young
love and the wash
of steely-willed sin.
Other times we'd
listen to Moody Blues
albums -- Seventh
Sojourn and To Our
Children's Children's
Children, our kisses
lubed by those arty
confections of
ennui and loss which
prophesied what
always happens in
the ebbs of love.
She was a sweet
blue-eyed puppy
of a woman who
played beginner's guitar
in our youth group
and who believed
in God and love
as much as I, though
by that time I had
wandered toward the
edges where a stranger
music thrilled. What
I sought in her
was more a part of
what I by then
could no longer renege
for the God of
saintliness and
morality, with His
paradise of dead
and sexless clouds.
One night I managed
to loose the button
of her jeans, and
slowly -- oh so
slowly -- work the
zipper down, and then,
with kisses most gentle
and devout working
the higher ground,
with infinite patience
and resolve I
worked my fingers
slowly under a fabric
I would never see and
got my middle
finger down into
what turned into
a sea, a startlingly
moist ingress which
touched something
deepest in me,
turning all the world
red in a sudden
ripening rush. She
heaved and with
a start forced my
hand back -- for the
last time again. My
fury was despicable,
but what could I
do? I wheezed my
lame apologies
and got the hell
on outta there, never
to return. The hell
with her high purities!
I fumed in the elevator
heading down. I'd
find another soul
more ripe for the
plucking ... So
went my blueballed
rages as I pushed
on out the door
into Chicago at
mid-winter, the night
very cold, the winds
coming off the lake
almost an angelic
in reproof -- or was
it my own new
solitary and luciferic
sprite, invoked when
she said No? As I
hugged my peacoat
tight and walked
carefully the icy
streets back to the El,
my mind slowly
settled back to
guilt and piety. I
prayed God forgive
my sin of wanting
more than my heart
of holiness could
ever quite fit in.
I'll never do that
to a girl again, I prayed,
yet as I mouthed
those words I
lifted my hand to
my face and sniffed
that offending, middle
finger. -- Oh what
dizzying surprise I
found congealed there,
something deep
and fishy, all sea,
of an iniquity
which ruled at least
the better (or worse)
half of my heart.
And when I put
that middle finger
to my lips and tongued
that wild brine, my
soul departed from
one life (cruel streets,
teen angst, God's ways)
and disappeared
beneath the wave
I had been baptized
in at age 14, far
south in Florida,
off Melbourne Beach.
I didn't know that
then, but now I
believe at that taste
of sea sex I was
spirited with Dylan
Tor back and far
and down into a
womb which bid me
swim all nights in
search of her blue
bed, and sing then
say just what flavor
hurled me flowerlike
below, my life
turned upside down
into an ocean-going
route no matter
how far inland I
woke and worked
and raveled, no
matter how dry
the outsides all seemed.
A secret sacred knowledge
was passed to me on
the shore of my
middle finger that
night, a kiss, if you
will, which turned
my bones to salt,
my heart into
a boat, and this hand
into a wave always
urgent for that shore
across the way
from an old faith's
eternally dry door.
I jilted Laura the
next day saying
for God's sake we
should stay apart,
my eyes sailed
on to Dena in
Bible Study, big
breasted and damaged
and greedy for
dark love. Laura's
hurt blue eyes
(for only a week --
she found a better
guy) stared at
me across the room
in bitterest farewell
as I sailed on
in search of her
body, kiss by
clench by eventual
bed by bed by bed.
I have aged in
that travail -- married
once then again
and hope to call
this woman home
when I am old.
Somehow I've found
my God inside
that moist travail:
The virgin on the
couch madonna to
this low blue
spiralling choir,
cathedral to all
I've never found
sufficient way into.
Each poem I
write is a cross
hung between
her breasts -- gold
nails through
my heart which
bleed such sweet
fishy milkiness.


METAPHOR

It wasn't important to know
why he crazed so perilously
for her. Not any more.
Nor why he believed
so intransigently in waves and moon.
He already knew that metaphor
was just an adman's conjure,
not steak but sizzle.
But like any addict
he plunged to hell anyway
and received his due.
Working back from ruin
he reflects how energy
fools the magician,
its jugglery a mask
for transformation. How passion
can glut on love with such repast
and then leave so little of it left.
Days now he wakes and walks
crying for those waters
like a man forsworn of drink
yet nursing a will to taste
that whisky again. His heart
reaching for that shot glass
with its draught of cold gold.
It burns like a pole star
amid all the duties of
renunciation. It will kill
him, he knows, and he prays
for a different love to
waken and call him back.
But he also knows there
are many worse ways to
live than this death.
At night's end he turns
out the light and lays there
in the dark listening to street
sounds and thresh of
blades deeper down
whispering their brute
spells. He thinks of
waves and moon and
mounts the dolphin
which no metaphor can ride.