The Web

July 6

It’s said that the perfect
web was spun by one spider
and since then that’s all
arachnids weave, like
Scyllas of the whorl,
round killing-pits of
absolute pitch, again
and again from birth
to death, brood after
brood for millions of years.
One spider wove the
perfect zero in a
simple weave of straight
lines, engineering
thus a foolproof lair
for drawing prey
into its jaws, a vortex
of gossamer and steel
and unending thirst
for sucking others dry.
There was one end
to each millionth
prior attempt -- to
craft that round --
and once achieved
innovation retired,
its daring attempts
sewed and sealed a
groove in the
species brain, became
innate. When will we get
anything so right,
I wonder,
we creators and
confabulators
and engineers of
world upon world?
There’s never any
end in sight, only
the next blue door
to harrow through
with whatever tools
we’ve been handed
to us for our labors
by the gods who
yet linger in the
depths of the heart.
So I’m here at
4:30 a.m. in early
July with the garden
outside black and
rich as god-loam,
growing wilder as
I write after another
late-day storm,
rich and musty like
a new lover’s smell
just between a
parted thigh and
lifted panty -- a
vertiginous zone
of heat and unhalved
origin, so delicate
and dark in scent --
beneath the lemon
soap there’s sweat
and fish and something
else, too wild and
urgent to wait for
me to try to name it.
Shores heaving in
the garden with an edge
of panties pulling down,
seas throbbing and
crashing there, wave
after wave from
weather far away,
or continents down
under. I inhale that
fragrance deep as
I press pen to paper,
unfurling the taste
of moistened pussy lips
to skies which brood
and foment, unleashing
tongues of fire and rain,
washing it all clean
& drinking deep what
only it can pour
and nourish and sustain.
A perfect round may
yet be cabled here
with these doggedly
black lines in which
I swallow all of You,
beloved Thou, each
salvo left to right
another plunge, my
song fucking You
past the rims,
to that final shore
where we at last
begin. Maybe
that happened
long ago to me
and each day’s
song spins another
web whose perfection
isn’t found in the
craft of its making
(obviously not)
but rather in
its sussurant
and successive
waves of the
same blue sea
tiding deep between
a You and a Me.
Perhaps the song
perfected when I was
three & sang for
the first time to
Big Toad in his
yellow plastic pail,
ferrying there what
I heard when I napped
in that cottage close
to Cape Cod’s sea,
a sound so like
the womb I heard
in my mother’s
voice that
I had to repeat it,
that low ocean
surf-rounding sound,
finding in my own
voice milk and
pussy sweetness, the
sound of breakers
smashing hard
down miles and
miles of shore,
a path which
continues here.
So praise this hour
of dank and humid
dark which so sighs
for this penis
which looks half
like a pen
and half like a
bottlenose dolphin
playing just past
the the bow of the
this frigate
writing chair.
I’ll keep plunging
here if You’ll pull
down your underwear,
my sweet, my
savage heart. My
threads of ink are
black yet gossamer,
its bower soft and
billowy with a
nascent reek of death,
its rudder ruddy thick
and veined, plunging
slick and urgently
the surging oily waters
You proffer beneath
my history, the perfect
circle I can’t see
though it rims my
every ecstasy, in
gardens ripening
on Avalon or Ys
tomorrow perhaps or
the next. I’ll see her
standing midst
the pentas, angelica
and sage, just the
way she looked
when she waved
her last farewell
-- all curves in blue
with dreamy foam
and the saddest
smile just ebbing
from her face, one
finger falling slowly
from her lips
as if to name
at last, forever,
the true sound
of my name
beyond the
breakers of this day,
where all and nothing
still have much to say.

*


... I’m writing this poem
desperate and drowning
in a desire which
never reaches shore
never exhausts in foam
between your thighs

I knew full well the price
I wrote this poem
in that kiss
knew where
this slick slide
of letting go would lead:
to everywhere and
nowhere; to this
page with its leaky
singing bloody words;
to yet another
morning’s long walk
back to silence.
I knew, I knew
you couldn’t stay,
couldn’t let go.
So fucking what.
How could I resist.

I asked for this
chalice of flame
when my hand
reached down
your jeans to
cup your ass
I knew I’d burn
into cinders and soot
this is my sulfur road race
pumping hellbent again
from surrender to sorrow
what a way to burn
what a way to learn

she sits on the shores of the world
her red hair the wild sunset
I sail toward without hope
the sea a foam of writhing fury
the sky so blue
like her eyes
I’m trying so hard to see
in the dark of this morning

when I touch you
I am a poem
of burning poppy
exhaling your sweet fuck musk
down every dark corridor
singing through the lonely night
that stole into this room

when you pulled back
when you walked out
I’m burning baby
a pyre of pure beginning

-- Desperate poem, 1996



THIS IS THE DANCE

from “A Breviary of Guitars,” 2000

Spring 1984:
One of the
last songs I
wrote for Rip
the Silk was
“The Dance,”
a slow brooding
reflection on
how there’s love
at last in death:
“What is now
is what we’ve all
been waiting for /
That certain cusp
between the string
and bow / This is
the dance that we’ve
all been asking
for / So dim the
lights / And open
faces / Read the lines
between the
spaces / This is what
we’ve all been
waiting for:”
This arrival, this
bowered bed,
right? The angry
songs got us
girlfriends who
wooed then soothed
then tucked away
they old anger
nighty night in
their sheets:
Stepping into
love killed the
songs I wrote when
love walked away:
Helix of loss,
helix of gain:
Dana and I
found an
apartment in
North Orlando
in one of those
dreary complexes
where everything
is prefab and
cloistered with
easy comforts:
Florida at its
commercial
suburban
narcotized worst:
Dana threw herself
into making her
first nest away
from home, blowing
bucks we’d vowed
to our PA on
a big color
TV, dish & bath
towels in blueberry
& peach, big woven
fans tacked on
the wall & a
huge comforter
for our bed: Home
sweet dying
loam: I can’t
remember a square
inch that was
my own: Kept
my guitar under
the bed &
my journal tucked
under the couch:
Our goal was
for me to pay
the rent & she
to save her
money for PA
& Dana to
practice on
her voice & me
on my guitar
licks & together
find a touring
band to fly
fly fly away
from the rigid
ordinaries of
our life: I took
my old stockroom
job back, less
money but
better for the
look (I could
rooster the hair
& wear an
earring): Dana
got work as
a cocktail
waitress down
Orange Blossom
Trail at Thee
Doll House, the
“quality” tit
bar: So though
we now lived
together our
work shifts
kept us further
apart: Helix
of presence,
helix of absence:
Poised to make
our break,
instead we
dawdled: Days
when Dana should
have been practicing
her voice she
mostly watched soaps,
complaining of
hoarseness from
the smoke: Nights
when I was
supposed to
practice my
guitar god riffs
I mostly noodled
watching movies
on MTV: Poised
to fly, we
folded our wings
& let the moment
pass us by:
“We gathered on
the esplanade
our shadows
and the moon /
The orchestra
played melodies
so say to
hear so soon:”
See the happy
hearth of love,
the lovers rising
from the same
bed to forage
nothing from
the day, as
if love would
do it for them:
Schedules being
what they were
we had sex
less & less,
Dana always
tired or sore
not wanting
me in her
and fussy with
my cock in
her hand --
all that jizz
such a mess --
And I, with
no ground I
could stand
on apart from
her, simply
paled to gossamer:
“The lights went
out / our fingers
touched / the air
turned sad
and blue /
So turn around
and disappear /
No one can
tell what
happened here /
This is the
dance we’ve
been waiting
for:” I threw
my band away
for this fuckless
fin de siecle
sleep in someone
else’s bed: I
wrote these
lines today
as every day
in my chair
in my study,
the one room
wholly my own
in this house
I love furnished
by my wife --
this room I
made, all my
books & journals
on big white
bookcases &
more goods
stuffed in 2
file cabinets
in the closet:
I made a
desk which
stretches across
the room, enough
to work on
the iMac & have
room to pay
bills: I have
a fat loam
of notes songs
jots jisms books
younameit in
a pile to the
right of this
chair—all for
ready reference
as I dally &
drowse down
the interminable
length of this
poem, this
Breviary, this
ding dong song
all night long:
I love my wife
because she
doesn’t question
or change this
room with me
in it at this
terribly early hour:
Don’t think we’d
be together if
she didn’t: My
first wife hated
my study, once
hissed in tears
that she wanted
to go in &
rip apart all
of those pages
I had mortared
up between us:
Living with
Dana I had
as few defenses
as when I used
to visit my
father: Left
me feeling
wholly unworthy
& substanceless,
as if I
had nothing
of my on to
hold on to
when I had to
face my life
again: Dana’s
cat heart felt
that emptiness
in me just
willing to give
in & simply
strutted away:
Is all this
fucking substance,
this unreadable
poem, just a
cockring I can
use to keep
another’s heart
filled with me?
Don’t fool yourself
kiddo: At least
know it never
works: There
at the last land
after all your
bridges have
been burned
(as the song
goes), The final
dance is with
a ghost, the
woman who
was never there: