The Uses of Salt Savagery (On Wilderness)

Extremity battens its wild tooth on this page, insatiable, greedy, pent. Seeking Beatrice, the mouth drinks from the lake of fire, rolling hell on the tongue as one would taste an infernal wine. For it is there, on the stoniest ledge on the lip of abyss, that we find balls and bluster and endless cunt for the saying, hooves and wings, ten-thousand-fathoming flukes: And then, harrowing the hallows of that first instinct, we drag our prey home, like a trophy or booty, each line gleaming with that spoor.

In the Orphic mysteries, the throne of initiation is located in the cave where the infant Dionsysos is murdered. Out of the greatest awfulness, the the rebirth. Kerenyi continues the story:

“The murderers wrapped the severed head in a purple garment, put a wreath on it, and bore it on a bronze shield to the foot of Mt. Olympos — perhaps because this was the birthplace of Orpheus who, with the exception of his head which went on singing, was torn to pieces by women like a second Dionysos. According to our Christian source ((Clement of Alexandria)), the same two brothers carried the pagan secrets unveiled, the phallus and with it the Dionsysian religion, in a basket to the Etruscans. These two stories — the one speaking openly of a phallus, the other employing the word “head” — are variations of the same theme. The murder of the Divine Child was his reduction to an organ from which — or as which — he could be reawakened. The murder was prerequisite to the reawakening. (Dionysos: Archetypal Image of Indestructible LIfe, 267)

I sieve the dream from the other night through this story — with its scene of gruesome murder in the woods, which is explained in writings on a cave wall — redolent with personal history (some girl molested me in the woods) and collective (the tale of Dionysos the child murdered in a cave) and wonder if the next unfolding is happening there, even as I write ...


***

But back to the wildness. Perhaps there is a fascination and power in it due to its imaginal proximity to the waters of the unconscious, a presence which defies time and place, which wraps history and mystery in its urobouric tentacles and infuses the victim with sublime saline electricity. The images are like magnetos brimming with blue fire. So in my dream last night of the entering and then hastily withdrawing from a conspiracy to rape a child -- I was contacted by a woman to set the thing up for this vampiric pederast, both husband to that woman and some figure of self from my past -- the horror has a gothic steel to it, empurpled in evil, utterly sublime. I went to the authorities to inform them of the planned crime, and then waited for the Bad Dude’s revenge: he was a sort of Bruce Willis with terrible jaundice, this yellow-skinned skinhead whose pelt had withdrawn terribly, leaving only the hard marble sinew of appetite. How do I fend this fucker off, I wondered? I planned the conversation: look, I have my foibles too, no one is perfect, no one doesn’t carry around their shadow, your thing is yours, just not mine, your historic consequence, only resonance for me ... The argument sounded convincing enough in my mind as it I rehearsed it, but when he showed up (some fast food restaurant), his face was unyielding, skin sallow and taut, everything tensed with bull-strength, those eyes black pools of eternity.

I can’t say just what that poem is about though surely its like a tea-bag of divines seeping in my watery noodle, spooring something essential for the track of my thought...






Two sailors try their comeuppance in J.N Reynolds “Mocha Dick,” the ur-tale which inspried Mevlille.

The first mate of the whaler Reynolds travels on is of first rank in the vicious pursuit of whales:

“... No man in the American spermacetti fleet had made so many captures, or met with such wild adventures, in the exercise of his perilous profession. Indeed, so completely were all his propensities, thoughts, and feelings, identified with his occupation; so intimately did he seem acquainted with the habits and instincts of the objects of his pursuit, and so little conversant with the ordinary affairs of life; that one felt less inclined to class him with the genus homo, than as a sort of intermediate something between man and the cetaceous tribe.”

In that man’s eyes I see the fish-rider of my totem, hunter astride the Lion of the Sea, instinct to instinct perfectly matched in cunning and viciousness.

Yet there is another figure on board that whaler, a man who hunts seals who professes an even wilder instinct:

“Where the sea is roughest, the whirlpool wildest, and the surf roars and dashes madly among the jagged cliffs, there — I was going to say there only are the peak-nosed, black-eyed rouges we hunt for, to be found, gambolling in the white foam, and there must the sealer follow them.”

***

Calls to adventure, out from home into the woods of the wild hunt, beyond all safe and known harbors, comfy white writing chairs in the suburban living room, out of the 21st century back to the 21st BC, from spring’s arousing genital blossoming onto tundras rocked by winter’s hardest-cocked winds of all time.

Such is the fuse of the writing life, a cable laid down cross the abyssal plain, plumbing my oldest heart, thrumming with coax threnodies of salt blue savagery, infernally holy, pulsing with God’s own hot gyszym. (Thanks to Ginsberg’s “Howl” for that spelling). “The poet know that he speaks adequately then only when he speaks somewhat wildly,” sd Emerson, which, if you take into account the wooliness of that studious man, shows that he knows where his galloping sentences are shod. “The intellect inebriated by nectar,” indeedy. Fiery drink of the black mother means ink, I think, not from any actual dugs — heaven knows that road means true destruction — but through the cleavage of their seem. (The ritual drama of Dionsysos’ murder is part of the initiatory act of enthronement: we park our ass on that horror, and it blossoms a inward sight in us.)

Thus I gather wild tales, that I may use them like a diving board for plunging deeper into foam.

This from R. Hunt’s Popular Romances of the West of England,, 1930:


***

“The Dandy Dogs, or Dando and his dogs, is a name given to the Wild Hunt in the neighborhood of St. Germans. As Hunt tells the story, Dando was the name of a parson of St. Germans who was given to all forms of riot and was passionately fond of hunting; and as they drove over the estate called Earth, they were joined by a strange huntsman on a splendid and fiery horse. It was a hot finish, and Dando called for drink, but he had already exhausted all the flasks of his servants.

“Well, if you can’t find any on Earth, go to Hell for it!” he said.

“Here is some drink from the place you mention,” (the strange huntsman) said. Dando drained the whole flask, and declared he had never tasted anything so good. In the meantime the stranger was collecting a large share of the game, quite as a matter of course.

Dando was drunk and bellicose, and denied his right to it. The stranger quietly continued to strike it to his saddle. Dando flung himself off his horse and staggered to the stranger. He grabbed at the game, and fell as the horse swerved. This put him in a passion. “You shant have it!” he shouted. “I’ll go to Hell for it rather than you get it!”

“So you shall,” said the stranger. He lifted Dando by the scruff of his neck, and carried him off, followed by the hounds at full cry. When they got to the Lynher he leapt into the deepest pool with the hounds into a blaze of fire and a great column of steam. That was the last that mortal men saw of Dando and his dogs, but they can still be heard early on Sunday mornings, pelting past in full cry.

***

Springboard enough: What follows is a response to that wilderness, of history and mystery composes, glittery titties cresting keeled foam, harpoon barbs wounding my own heart, hauling me back to God ...

***

SPLEEN

2001

God help the, old man,
thy thoughts have created
a creature in thee; and he
whose intense thinking
thus makes him a Prometheus;
a vulture feeds upon that heart
forever; that vulture
the very creature he creates.

— Melville Moby Dick

Guitar, woman,
bottle, boat-shaped mind:
That of which there
never can be enough
rises and crashes
like a surf in me,
restless, impure,
furious in a spleen
of hot oil. Who but an
Ahab rides the white
whale, plunging each feral
barbs into his
own bottomless heart?
And yet, o rebel will,
bloody in unsounded
agitation, how is it
that the very life
you mock rounds
here to these sure reins,
this dry surrender?
Harrow the depths
first, last, and well.
Nothing that surges
can without dark swell.
My story’s my name
and this day my father,
hard oaring between dry salvage
and the old, historic slaughter.


DON’T FRAME ME

From “A Breviary of
Guitars,” 2000

So I entered
Summer ‘83
tempered in loss
by new health and
the wealth of
some other
woman’s body:
But the true
whetsone proved
a guitar and
anger was its
blade: Sitting
at my desk with
that Washburn
acoustic not
writing baroque
malaise but
weaving chords
round a rapid
scree of rant:
It’s all right
to do drugs &
try to reminisce/
But it’s getting
late / & I’m much
too straight / There
is something
clearly amiss /
I’m tired of
paying for the
crimes of the past /
When the past
aint even my own /
It makes me makes
me makes me
want to say /
Don’t frame me /
Don’t frame me:
The chords are
B minor E minor
A with the B
string open, an
airy wiry feral
sounding stop
high up the
aerie of my
anger: “Don’t
Frame Me” was
one of the
first songs I
wrote that summer
and I took it
with me to
Norman’s house
where we jammed
on acoustic guitars
in a fraternity
of boot-on-
asphalt fury
hanging with
the Stones, Elvis
Costello, Pretenders,
Police, more
Stones, and
then into my song:
Norman lit to
it as if he
were tippling
new booze: Something
lean and angry
and ours: Played
it through 2 or
3 times &
then stopped for
the night high
fiving & jiving
high up a tree
we both had
planted: Outside
on the porch
smoking cigarettes
& the night
humming &
sweet &
fit to gallop
across: Up
to Fern Park
Station on a
Monday night for
10 cent drinks
feeling like
eagle hatchlings
and the world
on fire round
us down below
& all the chickies
for the taking:
We jazz and
razz these 2
babes at the
bar & one of them
Lenny this
lovely redhead follows
me home for tea
and 3 a.m.
sympathy: We don’t
fuck, it’s not
necessary
somehow: But
her hand is sure
and willing
gripping my cock
through my jeans
as we kiss
wet & languid
half drunk on
the fires I’d
found when my
guitar unsheathed
in song: Rage
on to the next day,
beat to hell
but amazed at
the hooves I’d been
trampled by: But as
the day wears on
the hi-anx metal
hooves return
in more dour
and dire thunder,
all the fears
of losing Cindy
rilled noxious
& fell from
the sad old
basement, my
treasury of
broken hearts
(they only
look like genitals):
But now there’s
no way to
ride the banshee
down to back
so after work
I swim long
laps in the pool
as the sun burns
long and low
in the West:
An edge now
there between
abyss and fire
on which Cupid
rides his merry
hairy hoary
immortal steed:
Later, feeling
fit and rinsed
by sun-saturate
waters, I
practiced songs
on my guitar,
getting the
changes down,
limbering my hands
in the river —
Deep rhythms
which you must
ride the way
a dolphin submits
to the old
man of the sea;
Letting go
by holding on:
Writing another
hard song about
the power inside
Love’s grave:
“A Savage Heart
won’t lie to you/
Its words don’t have
a chance / There is
no way to woo
it / When it’s
Razors and Ice:
Hang on to
that E minor
chord in a
slow pummel
of punches
resolving for
one measure
on C major 7
pond that froze
over long ago
before tearing
back out into
the brutal wind:
Sometimes the
heart is
a fist that only
speaks in power
chords, each slam
a defiant hammer
sending a marker
up the sky to
God where the
Beloved sleeps:
I don’t know
if 4 years
away from bands
has built up
like snow on
some distant range
& just melted
when Cindy
walked away
& I picked up
a guitar: Melted
and built by
rivulets and
tributaries into
one joyful
angry roar:
Instead of the
old seesaw between
lost loves &
drunk dives
I now found
a ledge along
the neck of
a guitar that
afforded enough
room between
her heaven & her
hell within a
sheath of song,
fucking but
not impregnating
myself with
the erasures of
welcome &
farewell: But it
was a season
for writing songs,
each starting
with a ditty
and a line and
developing along
a gradient
I found not
by criticizing
the mess too
soon: & then
I found myself
horsed with
another rock
n roll song
to heave off
the stage: Feeling
blades sharpen
within me to
a point as I
practiced the
new songs:
Furious storms
breaking overhead:
My guitar soaked
in sweat: Eager
for the next
practice with
Norman, unveiling
the next song
like a hotrod
in a garage:
My fingers
loose, summer
in full arrival,
no longer merely
about love:






THE USES OF SALT SAVAGERY

April 2005

I would make a turbine of You
if I could, my Cape, a wattage
maxed to blitz my days in
Your high-joltin’ jolly rogers,
keel smashing through the
towering tumult inside this
gentle spring in Central Florida.
Surely there should be
uses for Your crag and storm
and blue careens on the
nether lips of two oceans;
uses for these predawn
sermons which pulpit on
those seas; coinage for this
singing skull held in place
by breasts and breasts of salt,
my bad boy music minted
not melanged in the colloid
roughage of abysms. Yep,
such high wild amplitude
could surely be of use out there
in my dingdong long work day,
turning my commute into
a run through feral waves,
my hours in salt mines
made rife with Your blue plunder
and rude booty, the spleen
of seal-harvest and their
moony dead chorales, limning
up the task list with
a revenant still fragrant joy
harmonic in the mode
sea monsters moo between
all shores. It would be
of great boon to vaunt You
there as both ship and
deranging seas, heightening
those droll hours with Your
imperilled weave: But alas,
within mere minutes of
driving out I’ve leaked the
mega bergs and squid,
subsumed by all the arid tropes
of suburban modernity,
prosaic and pastless and
so addicted to surficialities
as to drown all depths
beneath its taut glassine
— Glad Wrap mashed round
Your rims to keep day skies
from spoilage in Your
thrash of deep blue
brine-fouled awfulness.
In my day there’s endless
neck and nipple and
asscheek to chomp
to hell’s own slake, but
every incisor in my jaw
gets hauled off by the
rising sun, my shoulds
and musts and might-as-wells
like gums no longer bleeding
for the gnash and clench
and tear of older joys,
youthfuller employs of
pure puerile greed,
fucking every tunny that
moves where foam delves
clefted curvatures —
Gone those stallion wastes
though I ride gamely on
in this dark hour before
the day bangs its gong
of bright necessity.
Bad echoes of old surf?
Ennui of hard-blued balls?
The commotion of lost gears
churning in the deep tide
of lost & forgotten years?
Yes: for better or ill, this hour
charges on in aging newer
older motions three deeper
than my former old thrall,
pure whiskey poured on
the wettest place in the
whole damn thrill of it all
— a Cape of savage
swivery writ on pages of a
book that fits in my
breast pocket — That’s all I
take of You to work —
not to alm or amulet
or cash in Cape Horn’s round
as keep a long-lost sound of blue
alive just where it drowned.


MAPPING HELL

June 2005


Maybe everyone gets around to
mapping their hell (or hells),
holding lamps in the dark to name
chasms and rivers and black
mansions of bone — littorals of
the real life’s viscuous stone.
My little white boat — the chair I write
in every day, I mean — bumped
this hour of 4:02 a.m. in
the swoon beneath high summer
and is ferried on a stilled chirring
weave into a dark garden
bared of bright days, a garden
richer and stranger than dreams,
wilder than I have the pluck
or ink to aptly describe, though
— you know me — ever I try.
That’s the harrowing, a circuit
of nouns through blue bones
lost to days, my hand and
pen revenant, fixed on what
I remember, how the world
seemed, all I tried and failed
to quite sing. A bleak cartography
perhaps, were it not for
a strange melody that winds
through black trees still
dripping from last night’s
soaking rains. What is it?
The crying of seals, my
love sighing Yes in some
faraway dream, the sound
of fresh water dripping in
chambers of stone which
may be my heart or
perhaps its older home
in the ribs of narwhal
plunged deep in pack ice.
A bittersweet music I’ll
never fully transcribe,
like guessing the names
of every sinner in hell.
I look out, I hearken back,
I surmise and inscribe
ley lines and fey tombs,
stone crosses with gills
and wells by the umpteen
like the pores of a
dead god, a singing black
country at the far end
of my own. I hear my
life’s blue threnody
fluting from a far window
between what’s forever Yours
and this shore where You’re not.



WORD, WORLD, WOMB

March 26, 2006

Why should I desert you,
blue tasker? I’d ghost
my deepest roots
and tumble off into
the windblown drone
of days too chrome
and clatter-stanked,
my soul so much
future chum. So what
if nothing more
comes of this
than just what this is?
A voice survives its
own swank needs
to swim into far
deeper desires,
pure balls to
clapper Davy’s bells
in his brine chapel
on abyssal plains,
whole hearted
in the deepest blue.
Today as I read
Wendell Berry’s
“A Timbered Choir”
again I recall
a morning twelve
years ago when
I read those lines
a second time,
between the marriages,
alone in that
apartment by Lake
Cherokee, swamped
by overwork and guilt.
I read the lines
and wrote my own
like a tree back to its
tribe, savoring the
sound of words
like breezes through
a copse indifferent
to sounds of men, and
yet also communed
in their voices
on the wind,
something personal
yet collective,
lover and Beloved,
I and Thou, greeting
at a shore
my rows of words
tided against.
The motion lead
me down the page
to a resting-enough
place, harrowed there
sufficient to cross
my day with keel and
rudder where hot
bright charging
hours had none.
I looked up from
the pad to the
brightening day
as I do now, a
liquid smoothness
in the magnolia
tree beyond my
balcony, awakened
as if from
my words, with roots
and branches fuller
from the saying
or so it seemed.
6:20 here on
Saturday, and
the day is present
where it somehow
was not when I
rose to my same
old same old
same old matins,
calm and green
despite the cold
which seeped in
overnight, a
halcyon communion
of leaf and bird
and light I
came to here
down all these
unwordly lines.
So what if no
one ever comes to
shore what so
souled me then
as now? The wings
and fins and hooves
are for the going,
growing down
becoming’s way
to the salt blue
womb of the world’s
own being. I write
my part of heaven
content it choirs here.