Sire

SHORE SIRE

Jan. 12, 2006

The friendly and flowing savage, who is he?
Is he waiting for civilization, or past it and mastering it?

-- Whitman, “Leaves of Grass”

Ad citharam, cithara tensior ipse sua.

“Lyre of the stiff taut string, stiffer the string of himself.”

-- Hymn to Priapus #69

I write these lines each day
prowing a wake of dark
between my brow and an
outer dark in the full soak
of 4 a.m., careening toward
a crashing shore which may
yet prove door enough
to turn the first page of
the next dream. Who waits
for me there, half standing
in the surf’s collapse,
half ebbing in the foam?
No one I’d invite to my
house and wife for dinner,
not with those canines
curved like flint daggers,
with those blue eyes so
hardfrozen eternal blue,
with that loutish pecker
poking out and vivant
for all to see, an ugly
veined shark strung like
a lyre to my high purposes,
causing it to bob and
throb and arc in ache
of fecund cuntlipped skies.
He’s my papal augment,
my lust’s berserker brogue,
the tidal man arousing
full in the night like the
full moon now overhead,
lamping back into my
peering eyes the eerie pall
of big blue balls knocking
hard as stones into each other,
bluer than the sea and sky
reflected in my love’s
rolled-up, gawd-lovin’ eyes.
His hair is wild as seaweed
in the bitter courses of
the wind, his voice loud
yet distant, like the world’s
first news broadcasting from
the curved speaker of a
conch shell at dawn. This
poem is gutted deep to him
the way a lost guitar is
strung, still tensile though
the key has slipped and
the chords rusty and awkward,
familiar and not, crusted
over with the barnacles
of a million years adrift.
Do I sing him or he of me?
I wonder, staring out the
black front windows where
the world is dead asleep,
the garden lost in pall,
my sense enveloped by
a sea-bottomed, drifting
thrall which words can
only churn the highest
waters of. I’m thinking
down to him the way his
cock keeps twitching up
my way, enquiry to entreaty
paired like the arms of a
swirling world-wide tree.
No matter how much I trim
these sails it seems I’ll
never reach that huge old
figure on the strand where
I begin and end. If spirit
has libido, then mine is surely
his, rapacious and greedy
and yet patient -- o so patient --
to sing my way on through
into his feral finned visage
and crown his sceptered blue.


THE POPE
OF PLAYALINDA BEACH

2003

He stands at the
surf’s edge swaddled
in white and gold
brocade, his long
train dissembling in the
wash. His crozier
posts the sand like a
surf caster turned the
other way, bejeweled
with summer oceans
and the eyes of
rapturous women.
And those eyes --
so serene as they
scan our naked
congregation,
shepherding us
to the utmost wings
of this crashing
surfside day.
Above his head
the sun is a belfry
of summer fire,
pealing sanctus
over a shadeless choir.
Who is saved
and who gets damned
by such ordained
bliss? The surf thunders
and recedes down
the shore,
no crest not a prayer,
every crash
an eternal door,
the long ebb like
plainsong, censers,
egress to the back
-- a cathedral pour
the flesh adores.





SPECTRE

2003

And some in dream assured were
Of the Spirit that plagued us so;
Nine fathom deep he had followed us
From the land of mist and snow.

- Coleridge, “Rime of the
Ancient Mariner”

He’s swimming down there,
rarely visible as he follows
me except on nights
as this, when the full moon
filters down to trace the
huge pale wings lifting
and flapping through brine
in their slow, mighty rhythm.
Tonight he unveils
from the boat’s wake,
the black sea, from these
eyes which refuse to
believe he’s down there
just as the felon in jail
swears someone else
held the scythe he
once swung with such joy.
The spectre is agile
and supple as all dreams
are in their rout of the
heart, a nine-fathom
hallows inside the dark’s flow,
neither God’s nor the
Devil’s to damn or toil
or know, older perhaps,
a Prometheus unbound
or unsounded; or an
emissary perhaps of
some approaching rage,
like a surf pounding
in total silence
or the turning of pages
too pale for any words
I have learned, but will,
or be cursed to ride
with a ghost in my hide.


NODENS

2003

I swam on down
from my history,
down into mysteries
of the heart which
have torn me so
with old blades.
Down the well I found
the chapel of the
old Romano-British
god Nodens, a blue
tiled room with glass
windows which the
sea pressed hard
but would not break.
Shells and oars
were inscribed on
the walls, and the floor's
mosaic named all
the great whims of
the sea, shark and
narwhal, salmon,
seal. In the center
of the floor there
was a votive well just
nine inches across,
though I suspect
it descended more
than five thousand
years. I reached
down far and pulled
out a bronze coin
of the god riding
a chariot pulled
by four horses;
naked men
flank him as they
ride the waves.
That's enough for
me: each wave's
marbled meat
mints a pure motion
in the currency
of a wild sea.
Hand and fin obey
the current's maul;
his poem sounds
in blue thunder,
drawing on the
nipples of the
world's salt heave.
Having appraised
his wold, I wait,
and sure enough
he sends a wave to
wash the page clean.
On its bluegray
face I see the usual
sign: “Not Here.”
And so I let the
coin fall back down
in his receipt,
watching that eye
glint and burn
and smile and fade,
swallowed at last
by the darker god’s
abyssal stare.




THE HORNED GOD

2004

Always his heavier steps behind me
leading the way. Even at this hour,
when all the night has drowned
drifts broken in midair he’s hungry,
horny, his red eye nailed
to the jugular of this page.
When I was younger this hour
was the best and worst
when it was at all, for I was
either abed with some spear-tunny
greasing her with his molt slather,
or wandering the last of the
wolf-lined bars, cursed for losing
those cajones which ferried
me over to His salt dominion.
All that’s long gone now,
drowned with the rest of the
night -- receded in the wash
of years & wives and spent
seed I guess -- but still, something
calls me to this hour of his
rudest engage, rendering me
bored with mere poems.
His angst makes my fingers
ache to grasp a dark fruit
and tear its flesh wide, staining
the world with that juice.
Tonight’s the shortest night
of the year and the air
is trimmed with insects and
pulsing sprinklers and that
hairy heat which refuses
to sleep. God I’m thirsty,
booze is no longer enough
and my wife sleeps upstairs:
What cup have you hauled
to my lips, wild mentor?
What neck is this, so bare
and pale, with every forbidden
impulse beating patiently
under the morning’s skin,
filled with the jets of song?
Have I earned yet the balls
to remain on the page
while you have enough of
your way with the words?
See my hand? So poised
and articulate, studied,
calm -- hardly the hand which
must claw and dig deep
to wrench out that bleeding
fruit of what matters.
But do I have a choice?
The horned god closes in
here, the distance between
nothing psalm and hoary
song so small you can’t
squeeze more than a wave through,
maybe three drops from the moon.
Shore at last! This pen
has grown as heavy as an axe,
cruel and lethal and oh
so happy to swing free.
I head out to feed the cats,
5:30 a.m., the felines sleek
and muscular, rubbing
this way and that across
my legs while I fill their
food bowls with meat,
then sit with them
as they batten their tiny
fangs on the red fesat,
the first light of day
sawing a seam to the east,
a faint breeze lifting
the vincas and jasmine,
everything calling the
horned god home.


THE NEXT YOGI

2003

The word “shaman”
itself, which is from the
language of the Siberian
Tungus, has been thought
to some to be derived from
the Sanskrit “samana”
meaning “monk,” “yogi,”
and “ascetic.”

-- Joseph Campbell

For years booze was
my yogi, a blurry wild
man perched higher
than every good time
I couldn’t surmount.
While my days
down below burnt
to a self-immolated char,
he just on from his
ledge, singing, relax pal,
let go, get down,
pouring horn and hoof
and hickory club
into the bright
glass of my eyes.
For years I gamboled
in his arrears, some
loosening letterless
thing, wide in short
in my draft a man for
whom a bed and a babe
and a bottle of booze
was the purest
sum of desires.
But of what use
to the world was a life
inches thick, and
spongy with abysms
to boot? No wonder
things are so bad;
millions are bound
to the vespers of hooch,
spending their lives
in farewell down a
a life’s falling stair.
I was the drunk who
could only enjoy or
control his drinking --
not both -- and so
swung between miseries
like the clapper of a bell,
intoning wild yabbers
of descent, then crawling
back in the rigors of
a gentleman who also,
incidentally, drinks.
I never climbed out of
the canyon I cut with
my thirst, and nearly
drowned in abyss.
For me surrender was
the only escape, so I let
go all hope that I
could reach that truly
savage man -- And was
freed from the thrall
of that chill lunar gall.
The next yogi sits
inside and between
housed and hearthless men,
mediating with words
salt/sulphur extremes.
He teaches me how
to hold court with closed
eyes; to build and let go;
and to keep whatever I
give wholly away.
The next yogi, you know,
was inside the first --
I could not have found
him any other way.
The first yogi’s soma
dissolved me down
to scant bones; his
brittle low laughter
haunts the high stones
I lift today for the man
who surrendered and
went down below
so that song could rise
and nourish the world
in its flow. The next yogi
molts his pelt from
the last, the way this
poem peals from
the bell tower of its past.
The well waters I carry
to your in this song
is borne in that skull
which descended from view,
when all was so lost
and surrendered
and written again.


CONCH

2003

My chapel by the sea
is a conch fresh set
on wet sand by
the day’s first tide.
I see it there
from this dry chair,
surrounded here by
nothing of the sea
except the music of
beach days washed
through me lives ago.
I come upon the
conch at first light,
walking miles of
a summer shore;
at first it’s just
a dark hump protesting
an ebbing wave, a
prompt on sand
causing the water
to trail back from it
in a streaming,
pebbly “V” -- What’s
this? No one else
is there: the condos
at high dune are all
empty, sleeping, or
just dead. Just me
and beach and waking
sun and eternally
washing sea. I lift the
shell with both
hands -- it’s heavy,
like a skull or a
lost ship’s bell -- rough
grain without, all
knob and twist, a
shape which surely
captained long
seasons off the
continental shelving
to the east.
Yet its portal is
a sweet labial
labile pink to purple
and smooth as those
lips I’ve kissed
and pray to kiss again.
That mouth is
singing as I hold
cool seaglass to
my ear: and suddenly
all the lives resume
their constant hiss
within, a small wide
sigh of surf and sleep
and drawing back and
back and back
from the sandy
firmament on which
I stand, amid
the rinse and roar
deep within
whose tide I am.