Odin's Whirl

TWIN CAM TOTEM MAN

November 16

Last night while we slept
the tail of a wild front
whorled across the
state -- earlier yesterday
tornadoes ripped through
Baton Rouge into
Mississippi --:
Sleep held us down
in its dreamy thrall
while the sky heaved
the tress & rattled
windows & baptized all
with a haul of blessed blue.
I dreamt of a man who
was like a spinning
swastika, his nature
of dual fealty and
ferocity, savage and
surgent, whirling and wild,
his yearning burning
and bellowing like the
storm’s vortex over
us which whooped as
it spun. The pairing of
qualities made him more
and most a tribal
or totem man, a
master of two realms
like a shaman’s
basso inside
the dayside poet,
sexual and spiritual,
cortical horizontal,
a spurt of molt steel
siring all kings and
fathers and marge-
thirsty keels. I’ll take
him as You, Grandfather,
demiurge who’s
hauling me around
and down this whorlpool
of whirlywords choked
with the world’s gnomons
and verbs: You choke
this poem’s waterwake
with brassieres up in
trees pyring desire
on its cross, staring
at history with a Siren’s
oh-so-black eyes. You
give me something
to say here to the rain
that’s falling now,
drenching the garden,
the humps of our cars,
floating ten thousand
sleepers in this town
to destined salt dreams.
You bid me iterate
again and again
the rounds of my tale,
revisiting its rooms
and chapters like
isles of an immrama
which deepen their
hues each time
I sing a shore of them:
Puppy love’s powder
blue splits into
red sex and hard love,
pewter ceruleans
surge dark with
the wave which
baptizes and breaks
a soul into swoons,
empyreans and falls.
I became a Christian
just before I turned
14 and was doused
in the Atlantic Ocean
off Melbourne Beach
one morning in June
to cleanse me of all
past freight keeping
me from heavenly ascents;
but the sea I was
dunked in suddenly
doubled in a wave
that came out of
nowhere (or everywhere
You are), passing
over and through me
with white heaven’s
steely salt flow.
When I was lifted
spluttering and pale
I was both a new
Christian and something
far older, hoary
and brined in
a faith which
rang low in my ears
for the rest of my years
like the sea in a conch,
a strange melody
which was loudest where
tiny silver crosses
swung between a
girl’s budding breasts.
Where the taste of
fresh orange juice
was strangely akin to
the spiritous flush
of that first drag
on a cigarette,
wherever a
ghostly undertow
opened doors
both fascinating and
terrible, enthralling
and wild. Paint a
Siren at that shore
on Melbourne Beach
where I woke from
first water into
two future men,
one soaring,
one diving, one
divining white
courses in the
aether’s cirrus gauze,
the other dining
on every treat
to tumble down
the throat of the whale.
My trunks were
plastered over my
skinny cock and
marble-sized balls
like a frieze
of Eden seen
from inside the apple,
Eve as the
fresh-bitten moon
laughing over the
ocean, blessing
my sex with its dual
drives for rapine
and rapture.
Summer storms
were massing inland
while beach breezes
raked me ripe with
salty sea-ions
tinged with low danger,
making me feel
a bit chilly as
the last vestiges
of water dried from
my face chest and
legs. I was now an
animal up from first
seas, walking erect
and proud, naked
of spirit and loud
now of soul, heading
back to where the
crew was playing
volleyball under
a brilliant sun.
My heart beating
furious from two
wakened chambers,
the one half white
God’s, the other
Manannan’s, never
again far from
that shore where
two immensities
greet and clash
and strum this
salt lyre. Back and
forth over the net
flies the ball,
the boys hollering
& the girls shrieking,
leaping and bouncing,
trying and failing
to get clear to God
while hard and soft
entropies hauled
them back in
gravity’s undertow,
swooning us all
in the surf of the
soul’s crashing thrall.
Tiny crucifixes
afire in that sun,
jumping and leaping
like Mexican beans
about those girls’
bikini tops, as if
to touch such ground
was death or worse,
dissolving God’s
precious metal
into something
feral and gross,
exactly where boys
in their manning
clobber and yowl
trying to nurse.
Whirl and whorl
that primary scene,
old Father, brood
it down to its dregs:
Sirens are perched
on the poles of
that net, silent
but greedily
drinking it all in
with their eyes,
marking a music
not so much heard
as intoned in
the wash of those
youthful bodies
joyous thrash
in a water not
so much seen
as interred in
the locus I dream.
I work for them
as You, salt father;
I am the medium
here, thousands
of years down
the tale. Fresh green
mint and bit glowing iron:
Smooth white linen
over rough wooly pubes:
Wave crash and
angel thrash in
the spume and the flue
of a disquieting waking
today I call yours
where twin cams are
slaking something
that sings as it roars.



DOUBLE OUTBOARD

2003

For two-headed
double-edged turbo-rollers
of wild blue, we’ll need
some elbow room. Dear
Pal Rilke, if we
are the bees of the invisible
we are not indivisible
but a complex
and dappling
emulsion, congregate
and appellate in our
eruditions. See: I’ve loosed
my polysyllables from
their stables today, all
the ones who could
or would not
roam set-sized hawkers
of sooth: So ease back
and buckle up, roll down
the windows, enjoy
the ride ...
Today I
think of Cary Grant
who would be 100 years
and a day today. What
a polished archon of
noblesse! — Handsomest
of all & almost the
funniest too. His genius
may have been to keep
those whirls in
paired motion: Strolling
in in black-tied
perfection, then from
that vantage stealing every
scene with a rear-guard
wit and thus revealing
some whole
other man who didn’t
give a shit about the
minted glamour boy.
Always at his sartorial
best with a motley grin
to boot: together they
formed the summa of
a style, a blent
quintessence which
no woman and few men
could resist. — Rest
thee well, good man.
- Tough act to follow!
Yet his example serves
this next poem well,
where shaft and shore
sing the harmony of
a strange yet nearby
key, of stone
and sea composed.
We’ll see. Cary Grant’s
trick was to wow ‘em
with one face and then
loose a zinger with that other,
providing the rudest and
unassailable permission —
So well practiced that
he never won an Oscar
(his roles must have seemed
too easy). Lord knows
I’ll never wow my wife’s
undies to the thundertow
that way: Nor will I
gain a nod from fathers
everywhere with
this conceit: Still I’ve
roamed wide and deep
in ink here, so it’s time
to yoke both to task.
Alpha my bucket,
Omega my oar: Ripe
contrarians, it’s time to roar
where idols heap outside
my city’s walls. Let wounds
in tongues of ocean
plumage soar. Perplex blue,
hang your strange pale
light above the next
dashing, devilish shore.




ST. MICHAEL AND MANANNAN

based on the drawing by William Blake
of St. Michael binding Satan

1995

1. St. Michael to Manannan

He was part of the darkness
that was once my own.
But you bid me rise
so many leagues
that he became
my abandoned depth.
I think of him now
like the amputee
who wakes cupping
a breast in the dream
of a trembling hand.

Once he tried
to drag me home
and we fought halfway
to the bottom of the sea.
As we wrestled
my hair grew white
and his eyes
slit to dragon coals.
The waters
boiled round us
in a terrible swirl,
chasing sea
beasts to the broken
porches of Atlantis.

When I finally
broke his hold
and fettered him
in your chains,
his face sank
the thousand
leagues of grief.
Often these days
I think of him
disappearing into
those silt shadows.
My heart at least
has never been a blade.

You've built your walls
and towers now,
demanding a new
heaven of Gothic stone.
But understand
that each time
I intercede for you
and jam my white
sword in to
the bloody hilt,
an ancient narwhal
suddenly breaks
the sea to pierce
God in the back.


2. Manannan to St. Michael

When the last lock
snapped into
the links of doom
and he rose like
a white sword
to the sky,
I fell into deep
chill moodier
than any fairy spell.
The waters darkened
about me in a cloak
that forever hid
me from your view.

To me you portioned
hoof and horn,
the least parts of
the king's stag.
You paupered
my waves with
cunning boats.
Banished from
the cities to hide in
distant hills and islands,
I became a sleek
captain of absence,
forced to ply my
trade in dream
and sensual smoke.
My gold meadows
blazed to stubbled char.

I understand
that every time
I meet him the white
sword wins all.
Ah, but if you only
understood how those
losses make me strong!
I ripen on a vine that curls
about your sickness,
sorrow and death.

If you would only love
the gall now chilling
into winter, the gates
of my damnation
would forever close.

Perhaps then
the white prince
and I could resume
our song upon that
apple branch
where the fruit is
sweet and cold
and heavy as sleep,
where each bite
fills the mouth with moon,
and the juice runs darkly
down God's uncertain smile
the way eternal lovers
find the greatest grace
exactly where they fail.




IT’S MY CROSS
(AND I’LL BURN ON
IT IF I WANT TO)

2004

There are easier ways to go
than this unrequited,
ever-off-the-shore travail
between the islands of
your washing bliss.
I could just go numb
inside the free-fall
of days; zip up the
itch and say no more
of that tantalizing
blue so full and not
of what you are
always nougating through.
A sturdier keel of
less sensate wood would
surely cut the swath
of wave with drier
purpose and surer
compass, I mean
should it ever rue
to leave the harbor
which it would not.
Moored fast to the
world’s known dock,
that boat would
rock all night on soft
dazed sleep, impregnable
to the breasts of dream.
But you are much too
sweet upon that crashing
shore no boat or song
can reach for me to
even wish to fling
the burn of those high
frozen stars which augured
my voyage long ago we
first met and kissed.
Such ancient lamps
are much too oiled
from our first bliss
to dare physic a
damping down by sleeping
through to first light.
Instead I war on
with my gods
here on my
devout knees,
beseeching the wide
dark tide to show
your face at last,
a least one smootch
of curve and smash.
for these curve
smashing eyes.
And so I vigil here
again and again and
again, lighting candles
in these votive boats
of paper and incessant
ink, writing down
every squid and
sperm-whale tussle
in the depths of all
I dream to know of
you. Futile and fruitless
perhaps to the waking
day, but the nails
are inextricable
and have fused me
to a burning tree that
lamps each matin
with a wild candesdcent
longing for the next
words I can say
of how you stood
and smiled in the
milky new day’s light
with sleep blue in
your eyes and pulled
me once again into that
voluptuous song
that deepens
because it dies.



TWO MEN

2001

Two men foster me:
the one who looks beyond (or within)
towards a half-lit blue margin
and the other, whose work is always at hand
and reaches itself reaching for your hand.
It takes both to build an enduring
chapel by the sea:
One to dive and treble,
the other to make God eye-level.
And so I am, a northern man in southern climes
where had and heart incline
towards world in daily demarcations
and ghostly embarkations.
Two pistons, two feet, two oars
glide me down the center of the hours
and make a life fit for love and and murk.
May I keep the two apart and ever at work.



TWO SEAS

2002


In the world I would live in
the sea is both fair and cruel:
the drowse of lovers and
Poseidon’s stallions balls.
I love a day on the beach
in early June as much
as a jaunt in hard December;
they slake two needs.
Womb waters, frozen keep,
cerulean jacuzzi or
infrann’s deep: both
announce me here, tiding
in these lines with
gentleness and hooves.
As the eye is formed
so are its powers,
wrote Blake. From my
mother’s hazel to
my father’s blue,
there’s an ocean to see
and saw the world.
In my duple seas
I forge turbines,
eternal and infernal:
sufficient to the task
of writing past your
margins toward the next
inchoate isle.
A pen so tempered
cuts the wildest swath:
but when I head off course
I suffer a duple wrath.


TWO WINGS

2002

That much I cannot yet
declare has been my angel
from childhood until now ...

—Emerson Journal 11/22/33

One wing greatness,
the other sibilant speech.
The bird they haul
is monstrous, a bruised
and brutal angel
circling itself. In it
I have known heaven’s
ache and it’s deep pavilions.

The trick is to stay right-
size while dominions blow.
The archon sings tidally
and far -- I can do no more
than follow with a steady hand:
Penning wings-strokes
down a page I know won’t
very sensibly sing
though at times it does
so preternaturally ring.



DUAL CITIZENSHIP

2003

While the wave-borne
beast bid me ride
and hard, there was
a life upon another
nearby beach
where I fared as
you, working, building,
loving, building walls
of sand against
the sea (each with
a guilty, impossible
door). Who isn’t
citizen of two lands,
one which builds
a chapel by the sea,
the other which
come as night to
drown the psaltery?
And who doesn’t
salute the flags which
hoist above and
below, and try to
mouth that difficult
and surrendering
pledge which sings
true both ways? By
now you know my
only drill: It’s 5 a.m.
a cup of coffee (big
stallioned, strong
regular & two shots
of Cuban), the night
outside quiet & dying
slow to a difficult
pale of dolphin blue,
cat Violet at the
window on her
private beach, cat
Mama in the guest
room crying gently
for all she would leave
for but cannot because
her kittens are
not allowed, my wife
asleep upstairs in a
bed of worry over her
sister: Inside all that
I release this vowel
movement, as
necessary as that
other shove which
more slowly builds
as I write -- Each day
I compose or recompose
the well waters Oran
ventured in, dragging
up these wood buckets
of oar and skull
and fin, this page
both beach and
cenotaph, my beloved’s
thighs crying wide
for ink, more ink.
Some hand instructed
mine to hold the pen
just so, to rise and
fall on paper as waves
in sheaves toward
shore all go; and when
all apparently’s been
said, draw carefully
the recede which salts
the next day’s storm.
Summer’s motions
here are regular too,
the clouds accreting
high in hot balconies,
sea and sky in sweet
conspiracy, sure as
two lovers who bare
their hot cupidity
to each other in
surrender to the wave
which will wash them
clean & float them
miles away. These poems
are coracles which
travel two ways, obedient
to both day and drowse,
compassed by a heart
both salt and sand,
the perch between what’s
dry and banal and
that blue bacchanal
such motions invoke.
And once I’ve had my
spout and spurt, I zip
the last line back into
white trousers, & pull
the sheets over my
beloved’s sweaty, sated
back, & let her sleep --
Then shut these books
and go upstairs
to join my wife
in bed who stirs,
groans, and slowly
stroke her feet,
milking that real day
which tides up
from that other
day He reins and
rules and rides.


CROSS BETWEEN
A WOMAN'S BREATS

2001


Bright martyr,
you’re perfect
hanging there,
fusing me
to this song.

Grace note at
the center of
a dark pond.

Gold cup
brimming my gaze.

Compass
of insurrection
and grief.

Hammer for
a distant gong.

Nails at nether
and nadir
of this surf.

Ferryboat
and sherpa.

Crossroads
altar to making
and slaking.


You’re a bright aria
to the woman
I’ll never know
sitting across from
me in every room,

blessing my day
with one glint
of paradise.

Thank you, Lord,
for hanging
me here.