When the Pupil is Ready, The Gator Arrives

Feral days here in sunny Fla: whitehot and ghastly still, the rainy season holding back, afternoons soaring syzygies of brilliance and menace. There's a faint scent Set in the air - part brush-fire, part something deeper fish-like, a serpentine venom which gives the torn clouds a brownish hue. Traffic winds the interstate in a slow sear, a river whose scales blaze with chrome bumpers and windshields and sunglasses, its edges all too sharp, like shrieks of shattered glass. Everyone on the road seems one cutoff short of conflagration, as if the afternoon commute will suddenly burst into fireball of road rage.

Yeah, we could use the rain. Even writing at this hour of 4:30 a.m. everything is dazed with the heat, smashed flat, wilted. Do seas boil? They certainly dry. But does this heat come from above, or does it rise from below, like a sun waking from the otherworld just below the eastern horizon?

And who is venting here, the oppressed or an oppressor? The tricky thing about projection is that we see ourselves best in others. What pisses me off most by that jerk in the black BMW who suddenly frags into my lane without signalling is that his assholic surge is exacty mine a half-mile up the road when jump lanes to get around a lumbering semi. I spot it, I got it.

So if summer has become a hot adder, then its fangs are my own, piercing all the way past the bone of what matters to me, what ails and prevails and nails me but good.

To follow the intent of that bite ...

Fructifyer and destroyer, the sun makes everything visible, for better and worse. Photosynthesis greens the garden, but without enough water the bloom withers, its possibilities decapitated in its cradle. The body delights in the lavish smile of sunlight, especially up from winter -- there's nothing like walking next to naked on a shore of salt thunder -- but dalliance and abundance wrinkles and hardens the skin, and nurtures carcinomas in our folds. There are ghettoes of the sun where every bad vice comes to harbor; overdeveloped Florida is sprouting these all over, blighted subdivisions without a single tree in sight, trailer parks like a thousand naked hindquarters too vulnerable to hurricanes, deserted strip malls cracking in the sun and four-lane highways everywhere cutting through towns so indistinguishable that the only way you know you've approached the next one is that a fresh cluster of franchises like Target and Ross and Publix and Taco Bell has fanned into view.

Ubiquitous traffic, the incessant savaging of wetlands by lumbering house-sized Caterpillars, roads always widening, huge concrete shitpipes in sections laying idly nearby, Hummers and 'Vettes whipping by in eternal pleasure with bumper stickers proclaiming faith in George Bush and fishing and Dale Earnhardt and Brandy who's on the Lake Brantley soccer team: no wonder that the substratum is sleeping uneasily if at all, turning on a spit of that sunlight that pierces all the way down, forcing us to see what we can't accept. It's coming, isn't it, the retribution, a wave of blue doom is right behind us, which will turn us into pillars of panicked salt if we turn around, if we look inside, if we call on Eurydice too soon.

The heralds are everywhere, those augurs and prophets and tomb-guardians which slither through the garden with hunger trained on our soles. Here in Florida, three women this year have been hauled from lake- and river-shores by gators and killed, at points or stations of the state which triangulate roughly to here. Such deaths have been rare and now they are happening everywhere, all at once. Shark attacks are up too. Fear of hurricanes is something that runs deep through the state's psyche, with six major hurricanes ripping a portion of the state's flanks over the past few years. And the brush fires are bad this time of year, always about to tide a great flame over the state about the time the rainy season begins (this year it's bad enough - they have to close I-95 near the east coast for a few hours every day due to the smoke - but in 1998 500,000 acres of the state burned, and if the winds hadn't shifted and the rains started the next day, many towns would now be char).

Maybe its from all of the encroaching development, from the global warming which has made seas just that bit more inviting to cyclonic winds hundreds of miles wide. Who knows, but there's shadow in the sun's eye, something dark and invisible. We came here looking for the fountain of youth, but something else is staring back in the black pupil of that aged water.

Our situation here is mythic, for the tale of innocence getting an eyeful of divine horror goes back to Kore, in her days before she became Persephone. She was the virgin in the garden of profusion, "a place," according to Roberto Calasso in The Marriage of Cadmus and Harmony, "where dogs would lose their quarry's trail, so violent was the scent of flowers."

Kore was admiring her favorite flower, the narcissus, when Hades appeared. That yellow flower, used as both garland of Eros and of the dead, was so beautiful, so engrossing, that the eye leaps into it, loses all reference, become drunk on its exulting lush scent.
Indeed, Kore -- who's name means "girl" but also "pupil" -- is the quintessence of seeing ourselves in the world; the beauty which ravishes her eye is her own. She is innocent, unaware; there is no fixed border between what is seen and felt. She is also self-absorbed, seeing the perfect reflection of her own beauty in that flower. What is it that Eros sees but himself, reflected in Psyche's eye? What is it about the dream of the world which makes us so wish to dive naked into it, to drink and drink and drink its nectar until we are full drowned?

Yet at that moment Kore is looking at the narcissus -- just when her gaze is about to fall fully into its yellow womb -- just when virginity cusps toward quintessence, love sealed completely within itself, a Narcissus enmeshed with the naiad of the pool - Precisely at this moment Hades irrupts from the ground in a chariot led by four horses running abreast of each other (great image of magnitude and amplitude and ferocity there, 16 hooves of black horsepower churning all at once in her direction, like an approaching storm).

Kore's gaze is torn from the flower into the visage of death, the invisible silent and cold bourne of Hades. The pupil Kore, she who gazes at the fullness of life, is what Hades sees himself in, with all the passion of the dead for the living. That is the moment of Kore's transformation into Persephone, Queen of the Underworld, wife of the invisible, maid of visible gardens only in one third of her former sense, her former viewpoint. She goes down, she grows up. Or we do.

Kore is the woman in the Ocala Forest who one night about a month ago wandered off slightly drunk from the guy she was partying with to skinny dip in a lake after midnight, when the moonlight over all was like a saturate lucence, making her nakedness a flower to the eye, sacred and sexual, perfect. And indescribably desirable as meat to the flat gaze of the 14-foot gator who, sensing the disturbance in its own waters, floated slowly but with great purpose, the mouth already salivating as the massively powered jaws began to tense for the spring. Did she see those jaws as they spread to welcome her, did she see those empty reptilian eyes ghosted in moonlight as they saw that this prey would not get away?

Horrible, ain't it? Yet that tale is woven into the over-bronzed infernity of the season, in our history in the state of ten thousand flowers, in the psyche of this twenty-years' resident who came looking for a woman on the shore and found the sea instead, or the woman inside the salt thunder of the surf -- the fairy queen Cliodna perhaps, whose three birds sing so sweetly as to induce laughter, tears, and sleep, an otherworldly, dangerous sound which lingers at this hour in the faint buzzing of crickets and sprinklers pulsing in yards, sighing just beyond the sound of semis slowly lumbering up 441 just outside of town. We think we'll find her if we build enough subdivisions, but that's just kindergarten to her, kid stuff. The real learning is just begun for the pupil finally ready to see her.

How shall I see, if I do not pay close attention?






GATOR BAIT'R

As I was sitting in traffic
in the downtown Apopka
bottleneck I noticed
a boat on a trailer next
to me. "Gator Bait'r"
was written in cute gold
glitter script across the aft.
It's Friday night and I'm
going home, my body
trilling from the last hard
workout of the week (45
minutes of cyclings &
then upper body lifting);
sunglasses, air conditioning,
low jazz, weariness &
endorphins cauling the
ferocity of the rainless
late-afternoon sun, where
its so humid and bright
I cannot even see the sky.
A sign outside a pest
control company a mile
further down says, "10
Days to Bring in the
Biggest Roach in Apopka
and Win Big $?" Why
are these messages
hooking my attention
these blearing dog
days? I drive on listening
to a "Fresh Air" interview
with some guy who's written
a biography on Fatty
Arbuckle. Traffic darts
helterskelter around me,
everyone desperate to
go home, get to that
first beer, I don't know.
Seems that Arbuckle went
to a doctor to have a
carbuncle lanced and
the job was botched.
The doctor prescribed
heroin for the pain
and Arbuckle got hooked.
The studio forced him
to quit by building a
cold turkey room in
his house and locking
him into it. He lost so
much weight that when
he went on tour soon
after to promote a movie,
he had to wear a fat suit.
A lime-green Volkwagen
turns onto old 441 ahead
of me bearing a vanity
plate that reads
"NOG8R" -- get it,
No Gator? -- it was
printed on a Florida
Seminoles logo plate.
The rivalry between our
nature and nature's, the war
of predators and privateers,
is a virile summer rassle
tented in this big heat,
cheered on by whatever
angels are gathered on
the head of this pen --
hawks and turkey buzzards,
wasps and buzzing roaches,
I dunno, some raptoring
will which keeps drawing
me back to the true heart
of the heat of this season,
the rude indeterminate
roadkill and lanes off the
main intercourse which
are drowned in swamp
ivy and grime. I see it
even as I turn onto
the last street home, my
neighborhood blasted with
the same heat, a motorboat
almost hidden in weeds
next to the duplex up
the street, sprinklers
at the rental foolishly
pumping precious water
at this hour, my ancient
neighbor Dan drinking
Jim Beam with that woman
who visits him thrice weekly
in revenge on her husband
who left her and came back.
It's there right at home, our
garden hanging limp from
its ruddy heights, the cats
sprawled on the back porch
hungry for dinner, my wife
taking me upstairs to show
me her latest embroidery
laid out on our bed
looking more than
magnificent & the a/c
at full broil & the western
windows melting down.
Honey, it's beautiful, and
I mean it with all of my
heart, it's absolutely true,
just as true as we'll never
get that thrashing gator
out from under the bed,
not ever.





SWAMP GLASS

The day was like every other
in Florida's long connubial
of light and heat -- the
worker standing in the
shallows of the lake pulling
up weeds in that steady
slow rhythm that has
kept him at this long
seasonal job for so
many years, working
the shores of so
many hundreds of
lakes around Central
Florida -- the mid-
morning sun conducting
a rising choir of crickets
in the reeds, the
occasional rag-tag cloud
overhead slowly fleecing
in others of that flock
in the way of summer
days that by late
afternoon amass to
principalities of air,
cracking heaven wide
and spilling both seas.
But for now, it's just
the hazing humid
prescience of all that
in a near-dreamy
saturate of heat, the
lake water about him
reflecting back what
life he's always known
here -- docks leading
back to rich folks'
houses, some shadowy
man in a bass boat
drifting by a ways
out, all of the lake's
mysteries sealed tight
against the underside
of that brilliant glass
like the hid half of
the moon. He barely
notices the gator
lolling ten feet from
him, its black bark
barely breaking
the surface of the
water -- no big deal,
gators are everywhere
in these lakes, they
approach and watch
and linger and then
drift off. The weeds
pull up soft and mushy
belling with them that
stink that makes you
first think of fish and
pussy and shit at once,
but it's just for him
the same old redolence
of work as daydreams
down the shore, his
hands in water gripping
roots uplifting memories
of nights now long ago,
before he was this
lonely divorcee,
before he was married
and married before
that; back when it
seemed so many
women smiled at
his tanned Cracker
charm, inviting him to
swim the sweet warms waters
of their welcoming within.
He was reeling slowly in
one of those tales
spooled out along
the the shallows of
his mind of busty
Darlyn, 18, a prissy
and pious waitress at the
Chat n Chew in Eustis
whom he'd talked into
going on a date with him
to go bowling. Instead
he'd takne them
to the RiMar drive-in
to see "Brewster's Millions."
She'd protested on
the way there for
what seemed a sufficient
enough while, sawing on
about how she was a
good Christian & saving
herself for her husband
and he'd just agreed,
saying in his soft
twang that his intentions
were pure as silk,
he'd just like to hear
her talk. But later
after she had helped
him work through a
pint of Southern Comfort
in the darkness of his
Ford pickup (the movie
track on the gizmo
hanging from the window
mixed with the softer
stream of laughter,
belches and the high
brogue of moans and
ejaculate sighs coming
from the darkened
vehicles around
them. And suddenly
there broke from
her this other woman whom
perhaps even she didn't know,
turning to kiss and kiss
him again, then giggle,
and reach down to massage
his crotch, kissing him
with her tongue swimming
deep in his mouth.
Then she unbottoned
her her red polka dot blouse
and tore it and that big
brassiere away, weaving
those magnificent hooters
in his face, slapping his
cheeks with each breast.
He closed his eyes then
falling into the mily soak
and drift of sex which in
this present he tries to
reattach their surficial
part -- as if the spirit
required a house, a horse,
a hearse, that whorish
sweaty stink of perfume
and passion. And then
something woke him from
that dark -- something plinking
him in the nose -- he opened
his eyes to see this glittery
silver cross hanging between
her breasts reaching out
to flick him as she swayed,
sharp and hard and
maddening as hell. He
pulled back to focus
better only to see the strange and
terrible double image of Darlyn's
breasts superimposed on the
face of Richard Pryor on
the screen much further
behind them, the sweet
fruity fullness of breastmeat
crossed with his ten foot bulging
bug-eyes. The gator struck
right then, its jaws fast as
traps, collapsing in a
instant on his upper thigh.
Sweet Darlyn fled screaming
from those searing red holes
below and the worker was
right here, reassessing
the cruciality of his moment,
in a world of trouble
& the rest of the world
still calm and sleepy
and too hot. He did not
panic but bore back
and wailed with all
his strength, whacking
the gator once but
good with his fist
between the weak
hazy eyes, which seemed
to flutter for an instant
and then wake from
its own dream, loosing
its jaws and slowly
swimming off. The same
day buzzed and droned
everywhere, the lake
still pure as glass
except where he
was stumbling out --
exactly there all
was muddy and richly
red and smelly of
the funk which stiffens
our nose-hairs, alert
to some world in ours
we care or dare or
cannot quite see
and it holding us
exactly there for
that one singular
moment in its gaze,
whispering
pay attention...

Glaucus' Net: Third Haul

SNAKE SONG

June 8

”Theos,” the indeterminate divine,
was an invasion, of body and mind.
It was our becoming intimate
with what is most alien. And nothing
is more alien than the snake. A hand
lifted the snake toward the neck.
The hand slipped the snake under
the neck of the initiate.

****

The sea is the continuum, the perfection
of the undifferentiated. Its emissary
on earth is the snake. Where the snake
is, there gushes water. Beneath its
coils flows the water of the underworld.
Being sinuous, it has no need of
joints. The same pattern covers its
whole skin: its scales are uniform, its
motion undulating and constantly
self-renewing, like waves.

-- Roberto Calasso, The Marriage
of Cadmus and Harmony


I am the hour of the snake,
the black shore of the sea’s devouring.
My mouth hurls high as waves
and wide as their far thundering,
pent to strike the moon with
Your transfixing fatal fire.
I am the final, fatal arc of water
whose spasmic fall
You chapel and chalice
and charm from the bluest
graves in hell where
love sleeps on and on.
I am not her smile
but its penultimate,
the curve and flash in
every sated bed which drowns
far more than it reveals,
the merest invitation
to the dance and voyage
and receipt no words
can ever net a name for,
much revel the full
quintessence of,
though I try here til I die.
I am the sine wave
of coiled motions
dropped in the votive blouse
which ever hides Your
world-wide cleavage;
that asp inside a poem’s creaks
and squeals which
doors divine intrusion,
lifting mortal brassieres free
to find again the most
naked breasts of all
torn from my lips
at the shore of history
when I woke and walked
out from the sea.
I get back to You
astride the wave-back
of an ink-black adder,
though heavens rage
and drive all loves away,
though actual seas careen
far from even hope of sight,
though I just sit and
age and writhing write.
I am the third net
cast by Glaucus on
that rock You dreamed
in the middle of first seas,
the third net of one
enquiry, the deepest third
of all songs to name that thrall
whose is heart: The purest
draught of mystery
distilled from every
proof spilled from that
history of every panty torn
and hurled into the lake
of fire. Not lover, not mother,
but the beloved blue abyss
whose womb gives birth to me
each day, and baptizes me
back into her endless joy
beneath the next careening wave
to gout from the cock-mouth
of this pen. I ride to You
on sheets too pale to see
Your blue eyes staring back
in the black anointals of this hour,
the sound of saying this
enrapt in the gauzy billows of
a drowse that happened so
deeply and so long ago
I’ve made its sink the
sound of waterfalls
and booming waves
in songs I cannot wake from
much less share or shore
with anyone but You.
Your kiss was like a snake
loosed in my bed that found
and coiled round my heart,
making it a caduceus of
the gods of deep-sea love;
and then you bright fangs
deep in what is wildest in me,
loosing noctal seas
whose throat and shore I am,
son and sun and sum of she
who beards this slowly closing clam
around the pearl of song I am
shining dully in this dark
the prize of all devour.






The third cast is the deepest -- beyond depths, beyond all singing ... beyond love, beyond the flinging of the endless wave ...

***


THIRD CUP

2001

It doesn’t matter if you’re
looking for God or true wilderness
or the insides of your love:
you’ve got to search
at least three ways.
Query the same engine
and the same pages result.
First you rowed forth seeking
island to island the
descending rooms of a vault,
finding Orpheus astride
gray fishes and a sea god’s
house ribbed with whalebones.
Then you entered the forest
of your desire where it
was darkest, with only
your red hunger to
light the way. Now it’s
time to take the guided path
back from annihilation,
returning to the world
a simple boon. That chalice
that you found out there
heals itself returning
to the lips of those who
need it most. Actually,
the third way isn’t a
search at all: rather we translate
what we found in letting go,
filling the page with
loaves and fishes
from heaven’s deep.




THIRD ISLE

2005

There came a long dark season
when I tried to marry in both worlds,
loving my wife in the home we
daily made, and straying off to
woo your wild verbotens, daring
at the utmost peril to my first
and actual love just to press my
face into the saltiest curves
and mouth the dregs of you.
Errant fool, I strayed into the
woods from my path, chasing
glints and phosphor, first with
the mildest and most forgivable
of wrongs -- what man doesn’t
deserve a hearty peek into
the glade -- and then by silky-
so-savage degrees, my resolve
emboldened by the fire building
down below, I transgressed deep
and deeper til I was lost in
thrall, no husband anyone would
recognize by the wounded,
wicked lights he almed and
lamped and called. Daring to
leave home and dive full in
up to my neck in whiskey
and those loosened nights
where I found and flung
my heat’s desire, I ravened
far through lace and thorns,
the itch empurpled and
plunging me deep, down
to the sweetest abysms
a falling man could call.
Poor fool me, poor fucker,
poor asshole, poor souse:
my hard-fought house fell fast
in ruin like a collapse of poker
cards, leaving me a man most
without, self-abandoned on love’s
third isle, neither married
in my mind nor free in heart
to truly quest, much less sing
aptly enough those labials
I’d sacked all shores for.
Thus humbled and unhorsed,
I walked the million miles
home, a path I suspect will
thread the rest of my days.
God graced me to this third life
which harbors a third sea,
my song still riven to white
shores but loosed from
actual sands, literal tides,
much less too real metaphors
like dolphin riders or me
finding you on any distant
shore. Still the rhythms
of blue waves are hoof and
fin enough to write the music
down, the metrics of abandon
strict and strapping and
oh-so-bottomless. I suspect
I’ll hug this rock til Doomsday,
singing blue matins in both
penance and penury of
the delights which need no
riders to smash every ship
to shore, my Amens ever
freighted with the
next blue-belling More.


THIRD SHORE

2005

Daily I walk this shore
of what cannot be yet is
amazed at all the blue,
it takes to name the
silent depths of you. Some
days I recall the way I
walked that shore alone
and utterly washed by
your wet lips; other times
I think of how you stood
just so before the sea
in singular ecstasy
of my heart’s bigger,
albeit wetter half,
the half I graze and
altar yet dare not
fully breathe.
No two walks are
alike, though the
peramble is the same:
my butt here motionless
upon this writing chair
as the iambs trod down
and back, line by line
on down a page
not wide but oh
so deep, dowsing
til your salt rhetoric
has soused the daily
ache, a singing
man doused in brine
til every bone, every
writhe bereft of fin
is blue and wild
and fine, whatever
ends I started with
now bottomless, like
a descending magnum
of old wine. I walk on
down to where that
distant reach where
staid fixities greet
& mortar dripping walls,
ambiguities of wing
and wind, sea and land,
my hips on yours
exchanging fruit
we’ll never fully taste
nor squeeze to
dregs of rind. And
there -- at that locus
of my walk which
has now grown
fully here -- there
yet here we meet again,
me a motion
of wavelike words
and you uncorsetted
of all but verbs, our
wash more pure
than ink or ichoring
balls -- a spiral
springlike spume
of spermacetti fire.
Between the worlds
we greet and kiss,
two-thirds strange
and one salt bliss,
irreconciled and
inconsolable and
worth each spilling
acre of these pages
in wild and worse abyss.
There and here in
this third world
which is both shore
and poem abed,
we sing in salutation
of the diurnally
sweet dead, those
lovers who didn’t
know they’d found
each other til the
tide had fully ebbed,
leaving tide pools
and tropes of love
to fade and bleach
and lathe this third
world’s loam of
blue-in-white sands.





A PELT OF BEACHES

2006

I spent years pickling my
noodle in the wantons
of hi-proof woe, sitting on
barstools so singular in
my dement. For many
years after I’ve been
rolling my tongue in the brine
of those rude waters, as
if the later reveries
are the true brogue I was
angling for in rolled
and crashing booze.
What’s changed except
the angle of derange,
my collapsing narrowed
to the hips of a paper song,
fucking to its harrows
a night now ages long?
Poem after poem I’ve
assembled the pelts
of the animated tribe
that taught me the breakage
inherent in low swoon,
furry jezebels with mewly
voices who unzippered
me to the ravages
a pure and naked night
no waking brain can measure
nor aging man occlude.
What I’ve become is
an amalgram of their
their dank hot closures,
my pursuit as wide
as the state of Florida
and long as the state
of its disease, plunging
down and through
the gap in sense and
all stability, clasped
by the knees of crashing
seas. This is carnal knowledge,
gleaned from a book
whose pages are composed
by all those panties lost
in the covers of a drowned
bed, an unbrassiered sapience
where sun and moon swing
high in feral unison
across undying skies.
This long beach I wake
and walk is pounded by sighs
lucent and brilliant and torrential
all at once--and that is just
the visible part of its heart,
a marge of risible blue.
My coutre is pure accoutrement,
an outre fizz down champagne
necks uncorked so many
poems back the buzz and
thrash have ebbed far
down, as oolites of
an ululation long
jacked of all elation,
ossifying salt to stone,
my bride’s election to
a far stouter realm
which throngs the oldest
mead-hall where all
eternity comes to drink.
I’m just a motley maudlin
still mooning in the surf,
pruned to leather by
the sun, no longer the brown
child of summer I once
sought to become
but some merry older mentor,
my dominion autumn tropics.
I write here with one hand
on the surf-pole and the
other in my shorts,
both fishing for the gill god
who still roars and rears and snorts
the songs of summer’s spleen.
I am the fool of ten thousand
barstools who’s still knocking back
the tide, my thirst for her so deep
no bottle, song, or woman is
wide enough to slake
the salt germanes I ride.
Not even the sea is wild
enough to pelt the beaches
I here wear though
it must somehow suffice,
shoring once again
that brutaller tensed blue
which serenely sirens You.




LABOR DAY BY THE SEA

2000

Into the amniotic wash of Labor Day by the sea,
Ponce Inlet, SUVs and vans perched feet from high tide,
a sweet dreamy breeze caressing waves softly toward the shore,
sun straight up the dome and still fierce,
my body yielding to the kiss and suck of summer and sea
and curved eternities:
I sit in my folding chaise reading Walt Whitman to the salt breeze,
singing lines which pulsed rhythmic between my body and the sea,
trailing off the page to watch passerby, kids with boogie boards,
young couples proud in what still is unripened,
mothers given over to the suck of their babies,
leathery old men and women resolute to their end,
all emptying out like a tide, leaving just the sea before me,
softly folding and breaking in warm plashing waves,
sibilant in all the ejaculate praises of Walt, the song never ending,
finding in each new age new hearts to break into what now
passes for praise, nursing my aches and spawning my fevers:
I thought I heard the sea sigh oh come nestle in me
as it broke gently into foam and so I walked out into the surf
not believing a syllable but wishing it ever more,
praying for baptism to the rhythm and pulse of each wave,
finally diving beneath a tall one and going still trying to feel
God’s dazzle and drowse wash over and through me
cleansing and lifting me up from selfish gambols,
but it was just a wave going over and I rose up into brilliant clean air
no fresher with rebirth than a moment before but such truths
themselves are nourishing, forever alone yet one inside the womb
I wake and walk from merged at least between arrow and bow
riding metaphorically a dolphin which takes me beyond all I know:
The sun and sea are just ciphers, a mystery which refuses solution
though I stand here naked as law and love permit, my pilgrimage unending:
“You must derange your life” I once wrote by these waters five years ago,
but now I think there isn’t really a choice, life makes you crazy anyway;
Today I hear the sea sing to me
love well your wounds for in thy blooding thou art free;
salt smart hugs I have for you on this bed which rises and falls
And I close my eyes standing in the shallows of the rest of this life
hoping to praise what little I have, praying to love with all of my heart, turning back toward shore at last without any benediction to share
with you but blue green waters and a brilliant sun
and a breeze which sighs Eurydice O woman of waters
I am forever here on this shore between I and Thou
singing ocean songs to the sea, braiding your name in the day.






MINERVA

From Immrama, 2004


Romano-Celtic solid bronze votive in the form
of the helmeted head of Minerva
from 1st century CE was found at
former temple of Sulis in Great Britain.
Intensely stylized, she wears a high crested
helmet decorated on either side with
dolphins. Her hair falls in locks at the
perimeter of her helmet. Her facial detail,
including her wide eyes, broad nose and
tightly closed lips, is strongly preserved.


Something deep in me
stares hard into blue
waters; something deeper
stares back. Wider eyes
than mine focus me
in salt orizons. All I know
is what she sang to
me up the dolphin panniers
of Your well. She rules the
longing of my hand
the way the surf
caresses down the shore,
wave by darkling wave.
Every poem peers
down a depth of
brine, seeking that
bedded isle on
which she waits for
me. Every tree there
is bent with her
nippling fruit; the
very ground at
her feet leaks
a savage, milky sound.
Her eyes are everywhere
the view’s engaged:
like pyres they
freight the day with
glittering lakes and blazing
chrome. She swims
in the slitted eyes of our
cats as I slowly
pet them into a syrupy purr.
And she stares back
hardest in every woman
of my day, their eyes
averted but their
breasts below
so round and and loud,
fixing me in
their impaling gaze.
Her eyes flame
high in all dim
places, igniting words
I don’t or can’t fully
name, a low thrum fizzle
on dark waters
with hooves like
spears, piercing me
every time I look.
Yet for all the imploring
ire of her eyes, her
mouth is utterly silent,
the lips taut as stone,
gathering me here
only to tell no news.
In her silence she
is most terrible,
voracious for
my naked voice,
sliding up
and down the salt
blue registers,
unslakable, beyond
all words. Of course, it
is I who irrupts
her: I pulled her votive
dripping from
the well, & held it here
in this next poem’s
light, writing down
each gorgeous sound.
Minerva I don’t know
what to make of you
quite yet, the
song is perplex
today, too inchoate
and unravelled
and diffuse. All I
can do is lay
this poem across
your dolphin thighs
and bid your flame
adieu before the
real sun rise --
A mortal man
with goddess fins,
her wildest blue
the iris of my view.



WAVE-BORN SANCTUS

From Immrama, 2004
2004

Never is my mind more calmed
than when I’m rowing here,
O watering God, ferrying these
well-dippers of blue resonance
across and down the page.
Who knows if the sound
which so enchants my ear
was poured by that same loins
that filled the sea to brim.
Such facts are not required
to lift and cast my hand in
vigor of every wave-borne horse,
to gallop hoof-on-water
in words inked from abyss.
Their tones are bloom-mercurial,
belle-lettres of orange essence
both virginal and saucy in
the breeze, a mint of two-faced
doubloons spilled from vaults
below or within or on some
hidden shore between this day’s
poem and the poem not here yet.
Sulis, Rhiannon, mare Uffington
and Brigit all bed these lines
in the devout two inches
which margin both sides of flow,
across the fold which separates
the pages by a bind, and beyond
the turn of one page to the next.
Of their actual pubes and nips
and bites and moanings I’ll
not defile this pregnant surf:
Suffice to say such lucencies
coil in the wooings here
which only seem like waves
of words against an always empty
shore. Manannan smiles in Oran’s
gape, his tongue undead and
buoyed above all flood. His
missal slowly fills up here,
inked in his blood and the
spool of some whalish organum
I’ll never understand, much
lest name. My job’s to ferry
in my hands blue jots of
merry scrip and scree, the
jowled juju of Your frothernity,
and leave ‘em on this shore
that ends my every poem,
conch and spilt coin and
wilder wave-wrack than any
one has seen or sung
for you to carry home or on
to shores your gods will bid
you ferry, fold and crash.





AROUSAL

From Cape Blue, 2005

Cape Blue morning I write,
a spring front hard in the trees,
soaring and skewing and blowing
in seven directions at once from
the altered vantage of two open
windows. But that seems too trite,
my real imagined Cape indifferent
to confirming winds. Wild and lovely,
yes, but of no consequence to the
song. Still I imagine walking out naked
into that wet dark, to bathe in the
fullness of it alone in what was
a leisurely street in a small town
now a wilderness of big winds ripping
the sails, the garden become a harvest
of waves, each in worse foment than
the last, and my flukes happy to
have something strong to work with.
Perilous hours of gale too precious
to write and so I just sing as I walk
feeling rain and cold on my skin
and brilliantly happy to be naked
with You and going at it at last.
Grant me an old oak keel, Lord,
weathered by a hundred Cape Blues,
when I enter my love at long last.



THREE CUPS OF SONG

2004

The old singers down my father’s
Tree held three cups of brimming song—
Laugher, weeping, sleep: Dante strolled
Through three states of soul in travail
Between world and God: Three motions
I name here enact that blued waltz—
To recall bad nights, embrace today
And mint the dark ores lifted here:
Three writings row the “complicate
amassing harmony” Stevens
Poured which I here harbor: Three boats now
Line this brightening shore.
And God? A third to every shore:





NEREID OF THE WELL

From Oran’s Well, 2004

This well has a hymen
the day will break
and scatter with its
penetrate light and heat:
And all the secrets
of this well will thus
become known, the
properties of its waters
to physic art or
history. The vowel-like
sound of its cold plash
will find a saint to
garb our devotions in,
an oak or stone to
altar our prayers.
God’s will is divined
by what eventually
happened here
this hot summer day:
but at this moment
before first light
none of that can
yet be known, the
quiet hour like
a nereid’s dream of
still waters and sleeping
fire, the moonlight
icy on the liquid panes
of mind, faint, crystalline,
every fragrant mystery
within and below
all enclosed in the
fullness of God’s maternal
round which wombs
that high sound which now
starts to twinkle out, star
by fading star, replaced
by a low breath reaching
from a distant brightening
coast, pale blue and
swelling pink, tumescent:
And from that waking
heated sound
cry back from spreading
waters this ache, this
need, which makes a
belling cry to birth and
nurse and woo and fury
a wild summer’s day,
to be the white mare
this next day’s king
must ride from dawn
to dusk, partner and principal,
the milk of summer
swelter. She mirrors
the dazzling sky with
a silver bed of
chromatic fire, and drums
within for later storms,
eyes gleaming with the
bolt and thunder
and crash, mouth
receiving wide the dissolving
rains which slowly
fill and quell her well.
When last light
kisses the old gal good
night, she falls into the
futurity of dream, fashioning
the maid from that
lunar silk and leaving
her to hang on the branches
of the trees far down
there to vigil unto dawn,
singing that ancient
lay of springtime love
in the naked glade.
But wait -- to east
a flutter of that flute
which pipes the paling
blue -- in the well’s
black glass I see a
pale face peering back --
mother, sister, lover,
muse and fury
disclosed in one
sweet face rising
there, slowly,
oh so slowly,
by every silken degree
of this next waking day --
she arrives at the
calmed cool surface
opening her
noctilucent oh too
blue eyes: The coming
day pursed for
that moment I say Yes
and we for one instant
pause, and close, then kiss.



BLACK WEDDING BAND

From Black Vigil, 2005

For three days now storms have
swirled in from the Gulf, heavy
muthahs dumping high-wattage
rain in sheets larger than a city.
The sky’s at it again at 4:30 a.m.,
blowsy and suggestive, loosing
its hair into the trees and slowly
raising a register of sighs as it
lathers Ninth Avenue,
wet sounds sieving together in
in the dark into one gentle
genital slush, a lover sighing
O Yes as I write. Perhaps we
are thus wed, me and this
beloved hour with its darkness
now angel-braided with rain,
pen vowed to its black vowels
which offer suck of blue milk.
That sound in my pen is as faithful
as tides of the sea; as the moon’s
feathery amperage of silver,
spilling swoon as it sails -- O how
our garden trilled in that white
noise late last week when
the moon was so full! And O
how the salvia and cat’s whiskers
swell in this lavish love-fest
of rain; I can hear their roots
knocking about like big boners
in moist loam, their moon-
aroused capillaries now
engorged with dark water.
My pen can’t get enough of
that sense, and so I sit and sing
of June’s wet rousing dark,
gorgeous and lush in a
dead sleeping world. This
hour is a congress of bliss
hard at work, building a
house six feet under the
home my wife and I soon
wake to, strangely roused
and wetly refreshed.

PANTS ON FIRE

2006

A book in the hand
is a ball of fire.
— Emerson

My reading magicked
the booze abyss into
descending bliss, the old
jones for reckless dives
toward paps of no avail
become an inside job of
metaphorical descents.
I found my lost God’s
exalts in the brinous salts
of archetype and dream
and verse, wandering
from Jung to Campbell
and Hillman and from
Homer through Rilke
on a fertile promontory
of pure Shakespeare.
A book-to-book assay built
this downward tower into
dark divines, and strung
a eustachian tube of surf
from an angel’s ear to mine.
My feast of saints are shelved
in a burning aviary of books,
a vault of diving boards all
squealing Yippee down the
leagues I follow as I write across
and down the page. Image here
the hungry lover’s pants
collapsing at his feet
and you read the sense I sing,
the urgency of the burning
sun for seas, my words
enflamed, engorged by my
texts’ sea-smelling lacunae,
so consumed by thoughts of blue
that only romping to the
depths of them will do,
each line so hastily wrought
the ladder’s burning too,
chasing the poem down
to its smoking end.
If a heart can think,
so the mind full aches,
its high harrumphings
hooved by a libido
schooled in humping
every naiad numen
to crest the foam
proferring pink deliria.
My book’s too hot to hold,
much less full savor
unless you’re deep at sea
down under any sooth
or certainty that
fills those joyous canyons
a singing voice gestalt,
carving heaven in basaltic
floors of stone. All tides
are margined here, my
sources shared by the
moon and wombs alike,
the cry of first beginnings
in which I shouted full awake
and which no blue assay
can slake, though I’ll ever
try, astride these waves
of ink no angel dares to drink
the fullest measure of.
Oh my pants are on fire
and there’s never page enough
to drop them all the way
before I’m mounted full
upon the fishlike diving one,
plunging in salt exult.
Just like this poem, that
book will never end, the
seas it dreams so nude,
so bottomless, I must
content myself with shelves,
these daily islands like
library wings which harbor
me for just one poem
before the next conflagration
of arcane lyric swings
me further out and down
toward the ankles of delight
and I am fused again
in heaven’s deepest fire
where its words at last suspire
in choiring exalt Amen.





BLUE ENQUIRY

2005

I do not discover,
I remember.
She came into the
downstairs bedroom
where I had gone back
to sleep, some moist
blue silk lifted
from the my
secret sacred history.
She might have been
the Bond girl I
always wished
for, a swell both
Barbie Benton and
that girl who sat
next to me in my
10th grade typing
class, her beauty
like walled country
I would never cross.
The woman I dreamed
had that tidal
blue sweetness just
offshore my actual
life, yet she was
so familiar to me
she might have been
some inside of my
wife sleeping deeply
in our bed upstairs.
She twined around
me naked and tight
and asked me about
her man, that perplex
ruse of stone and North
Sea surf and iron hot
from the forge. I tried
to tell her how
apt he is at boxing
and then shelving
every matter of
the day except
in matters sexual,
a thrall which
whelms every room
of night and day
with seething, pent
and urgent waters.
In just that way
men seem like women,
I said, though, saying
it, it seemed to
me that in that
way we’re exactly
different, women
managing (or needing?)
to keep sex on a high shelf
discreetly out of reach,
difficult to open
and hastily reshelved.
How this could be
helping my marriage
is anyone’s guess, her
perfect naked body
seamed tight against
mine, drawing this
supernal information
from me like it was
the inside kernal
of hot kisses and
thrusting seed. And
yet it was clear
in the dream that
this was pure and
simple enquiry, informing
my past as I rediscovered
it, there in a room I
do not dream but fly
through, carrying
heaven back into
this day. It’s 5:30 a.m.
now, sprinklers outside
whirring the garden
& my wife now yawning
upstairs & something
most old and new in my hand
which I must spread
across the soles of
her feet lightly,
gently, with all the
urgency of those
distant days of spring
now everywhere at once.


HYMN FROM THE REAR

2006

Your charms would keep
me here on this dark blue
shore in the last ranks of
the cultural rear, the vanguard
of a fond, reflective old-
boned glance, of no matter
nor any consequence
to the times: Good for You,
I don’t belong to that ever-
faster harder brighter
dumber deluge with its
crashing falls and white-
crazed foam: I disappeared
long ago from the view
of the fonts of wild youth,
or at best became its
askant bemused uncle,
the lute I play the
road not slakened, plucking
mad and loud
infernal boughs:
As my form rounds and
bends and wrinkles,
I’m thus lurching toward
oblivion’s tribe, a
brightness ebbed to
embers of rue
and thence to pale cold
lucence, the memory
of a dream of fire
which no dearth or
darkness can requite
or suspire: Though my
days shoulder a cross
which befits my age
and love, there is a
yet a lightness in
the music You demand
of me which is less flight
than pure dive in the sea,
the freedom to fin the
depths drowned gods
and whalers fan in
the absolute heart of
God, that nadir where
all things rend remit
and thus surrender
that which at long
last begins: I linger
at that shore long
after all I wished for
all washed away,
the starry romancing
and incessant nights,
sea-dawns cerulean
pink, even, adieu
upon adieu, the sea:
Stripped of
such augments, the
training wheels fell
off and I’m now riding
in Your full blue,
astride a meaty heart
of verbal mouth and
fin, pure penis
sans the old addles
of hooch or plain
wrong beds: I’m more
naked now than
when I was born,
world and word
conjuncted in the
tongue which darts
across the page: You
bid me linger here
so long I’ve emptied
all of the songs,
all insides of the
wave’s collapsing mash
of blue blue blue blue
seem: I have devolved to
this far simpler man inside
walls of strange verse,
a sweetness so deranged
with salt that the sound
harps pure blue gall,
the quintessence, if you
will, of what those
emptied bottled distilled
in the long years after
I was emptied even
of them, at last even
of absence itself: How
wonderful and strange
and quietly enrapt
this hour in which I
try to write waves down
as close in sense
and thought as the man
who rides the fish
which strides them,
not by providence
but in pure
victorious thrall,
forever on these
staining waves which
ink my daily spiral
raves not even You
full understands:
That, I suspect,
is why I keep coming
back each day to
write the measures down:
As I reach back, You
reach forward into the
future gambols of the
tribe, perplex and falling
as they seem: They will
make a later sense,
to be sure: Your strange
gambols have been stamped
like a question mark
for all these ages: My job’s
to make ends blue
and salt my pages with
eternal breadths of You.

***

And to complete this third net-cast: In Keats’ “Endmion,” the hero -- a “new born go” for having freed Glaucus from the curse of Circe, awakening Syclla from her dark depths to rejoin Gluaucs and reviving all the paired lovers who drowned at sea, leads our procession home -- from shore to sea, down to the depths where the court of Neptune waits.

To the bottomost we dive, and thus arrive at the door where we may at last begin:

***

--- “Away!”
Shouted the new born god: “Follow, and pay
Our piety to Neptune supreme!” --
Then Scylla, blushing sweetly from her dream,
They led on first, bent to her meek surprise,
Through portal columns of a gret size,
Into the vaulted, boundless emerald,
Joyous all followed as the leader called,
Down marble steps, pouring as easily
As hour-glass sand -- and fast, as you might see
Swallows obeying the south summer’s call,
Or swans upon a gentle waterfall.

Thus went the beautiful multitude, not far,
Ere from among some rocks of glittering spar,
Just within ken, they saw descending quick
Another multitude. Whereat more quick
Moved either host. On a wide sand they met,
And of those numbers every eye was met,
Fro each their old love found. A murmuring rose,
Like what was never heard in all the throes
Of wind and waters -- ‘tis past human wit
To tell: ‘tis dizziness to think of it.

This might consummation made, the host
Moved on for many aleague; and gained, and lost
Huge sea-marks, vanward swelling in array,
And from the rear diminishing away --
Till a faint dawn surprised them. Glaucus cried,
“Behold! behold, the palace of his pride!
God Neptune’s palaces!” With noise increased,
They shouldered on towards that brightening east.
At every oneward step proud domes arose
In prosepect - diamond gleams, and golden glows
Of amber ‘gainst their faces levelling.
Joyous, and many as the leaves in spring,
Still onward, till the splendour gradual swelled.
Rich opal domes were seen, on high upheld
By jasper pillara, letting through thier shafts
A blush of coral. Copious wonder-draughts
Each gazer drank; and deeper drank more near.
For what poor mortals fragment up as mere
As marble, was there lavish, to the vast
Of one fair palace, that far far surpassed,
Even for common bulk, those olden three,
Memphis, and Babylon, and Ninevah.

As large, as bright, as colored as the bow
Of Iris, when unfading it doth show
Beyond a silvery shower, was the arch
Through which this Paphian army took its march,
Into the outer courts of Neptune’s state,
Whence could be seen, direct, a golden gate,
Through which the leaders sped; but not half-raught
ere it burst open swift as fairy thought,
And maded those dazzled fountains veil their eyes
Like callow eagles at the first sunrise.
Soon with an eagle nativeness their gaze
Ripe from hue-golden swoons took all the blaze,
And then, behold! Neptune on his throne
Of emeral deep -- yet not exalt alone;
At his right hand stood winged Love, and on
His left sat smiling Beauty’s paragon. (III.807-865)

Glaucus' Net: Second Haul

THE EMPTY NET

June 7

I chased love into the
swelling chasms of the sea,
hurling my emptiness
like a net which fell and fell.
Those hundred waves she
bid boom in me now tided
darkly down hard billows,
harrowing her womb’s farewell.
Embrace thus drowned into
its deepest coil of loins,
desire ramped to abyssal ends,
pure bottom at its worst,
the whiskey heaven just offshore
the last shot glass to fill me
with that ferallest thirst of all,
my mouth a quenchless sate
on dead-end nights.
My losing her began a quest
alchemical in its tort of
noctal blue, killing and
washing my heart in brine,
where she-seeming shadows weaved
mid fleeting flickers of her hue,
like the viscous dance of
sunbeams at the bottom
of the pool. In that blue chapel
all drifts heavy, wounded,
surfeited in a thrall which
proved greater than any woman’s
welcome, greater even
than those world-wide doors
she walked out with my heart
in hand. Oh, love is always
so specific in its mortal greed --
no other woman’s ass will do,
receiving like a shore the
thousand waves which choir
her name in heaving wet
smashed of wild sound:
And yet in losing her
I gained her immortallest sense,
where every swell and wash
will do, she having ebbed so far
as to queen my every
longing breath, and make
each song a bliss of
eternally sweet airs
no words may fully kiss
though each connives the choir
of high love’s diving noir.
Oh she is gone and I remain
to walk this endless shore,
altaring in my head heart cock
that truest nature of that door
which hinges I and Thou,
the full receipt of the empty net
I cast here every day.




ASS MAN

2000

A man is
geared by the
triangulation
of his history
with and desire
for a woman’s
body: Focus
tightens on
a locus of
such keen interest
you’d think the
throne &
altar of our
world was there:
(It is:) There
are smut mags
and Web sites
zoned to the
empires of
our bottomless
need: Boobs:
Teens: Redheads:
Hardcore: Facials:
Oral: Anal: Mature:
HeShes: Lactating:
Bondage: Water
Sports: Gay: Some
guys thrill at
the sight of
a woman’s breasts
above all: Some
come at the
sight of a
gartered legs:
Others
keel the depths
with blonde
or red hair
especially down
below: While
all these parts
can poof my
prong, (hammer
my hoses, wake
the hearsed dolphin,
scream my guitar
boat to every
aerie of naught)
I’d have to say
above all
I’m an Ass Man:
Love — I mean
LOVE — the
sight of a
woman walking
away: Those
sweet full curves
house the motions
of departure
and call: I love
it when one
of those jockettes
at the gym
bends over
to retrieve a
towel or to
tie her shoes
and up and
out goes her
tight sweet
ass: It would
be so easy
to just mosey
over behind
her behind
& corral myself
there: Yeee
Haw: I love to
get back in bed
in the morning
after these
perusals in old
panties & lay
naked next to
my wife with
her back to me:
Feel my cock
nestle against
the sleepy warmth
of her ass
and then thrust
my hips against
her slowly, not
hardening but
savoring each
inch of contact
& the sweet glow
of my loins
there: When I
leaf through
one of those
onehanded mags
admiring &
lusting for
a woman’s
full naked clench
there is one
shot which nails
me clean through:
She’s kneeling
at a bed or
couch facing
way from the
camera &
her butthole
& cunt tucked
in the split
moon of her
ass facing
directly at me
like a face from
down under:
Perhaps just a
hint of
her face or
breasts showing
waiting silently
expectantly for
my approach
& ravage:
Oh man: I
want to just
nestle my face
there & go
booogabooga
booga, lick
& kiss & bathe
& dream in all
that sweet
exude, that
musky dusky
oily roily
fishwater: Or
grab her hips
in my hands
& plung my
cock into
her cunt &
ass up and in
& in and out
& up and
up and up
and awayyyy
we go: I don’t
find any ass
memories down
there where I
fucked a true
love from behind:
At least the
love-memory
isn’t connected
there: Rather
those glosses
are all looking
into her face
at the moment
of arrival my
cock hard as
granite & my
nuts spasming
in a total loss
of control & she
smiling deeply
with her eyes
closed & whispering
come baby come
home to me:
Ocean beaches
& crashing surf
& all of
my wildly
emptying into
her: Yes those
are potent
memories but
the ass dreams
are more so:
Perhaps they’re
inflected
or infected with
nether truths
of evacuation,
departure, loss:
Desire defines
along an edge
of refusal: Little
Kim on the
playground when
I was 9 walking
away after
refusing my
bouquet of
dandelions — ooh
see that sweet
& pert little
butt dancing
away into the
hazy oblivion —
I store that
image in a
vault of sights:
Big and little
crossed O’s:
The Bigger
O focuses that
forever between
longing’s fingertips
& Eurydice’s
disappearing
shade: (Nice
butt, eh?)
But who really
leaves who
I wonder? Isn’t
the chase after
human moons
defined by sheer
fabrics & a line
of panty a call
for self-departure,
a leave of
my own sense?
I swore I would
never marry again
but when I
first saw my
future second
wife at the Sapphire
Supper Club in
October ‘96
she was leaning
over the bar
to order a
drink: She
wore a white
pants suit that
perfectly cupped
her ass as she
leaned over
& that was it:
I do & I
Will & I Must
& I Shall: “The
one thing we
seek with
insatiable
desire is
to forget ourselves,
to be surprised
out of our
propriety, to
lose our
sepiternal memory
and to do
something without
knowing how or why;
in short, to
draw a new
circle,” Emerson
writes in his
heavenly
sphere of an
essay “Circles”:
Certainly my
future wife and
partner’s bottom
raising
just an inch
as she strained
to hear the
bartender drew
me into a
new circle: It
was an
invitation,
wholly unconscious
and accidental,
forming a new
circle which
cycles me here:
Yet Butt is also
But, the
exception, the
prohibited No
my mother so
tartly scolded
me for: There’s
a naughtiness
which draws me
darkly toward
a woman’s ass
in ways I’ll
never be able
to frontally
confess to ‘em:
I would love
to fuck my wife
up the ass but
she would never
allow such
pilllage of control:
No woman would,
I think, not
willingly, though
the notion that
every one secretly
would love me
up there is
eternally arousing:
Not that I
relish dipping
my dick into
a woman’s
stinky sludge:
Rather it’s
the notion of
trespass &
the lotion of
taboo: Crossing
border heedless
of what others
dare not attempt:
“Nothing great
is ever achieved
without enthusiasm,”
Emerson again,
end of “Circles”:
“The way of
life is wonderful;
it is by
abandonment:”
And ooh how
sweet those cheeks
of departure,
cleft for meeee:
Nothing like
a naughty girl
who savors
dirty games:
Like the bad
girl who took
me into the
woods at 6
& used me every
way: There’s
a smell close
to shit in
molestation,
disturbing,
uncontrollable,
wholly addictive:
I can smell
it in a bad
girl’s husky
voice: It’s part
terror, part
invitation: Oh
the Queen of
Love and the
Evil Princess
Whore are split
evenly in my
desires just
like every other
guy: Love and
its desecration
are like 2
fillies ill-
harnessed to the
same flying chair:
Love builds
strong walls &
save houses in
which passion
falls asleep but
the love works
on forever: Desire
lurks the boundaries
of late afternoon
shadows that
play across a
strange woman’s
ass seeking &
fearing & edging
up to edge &
retreating in
fear: It’s fire,
bubblebutted
fire: Across all
Florida wildfires
now burst into
multiacre blossoms
of bad drought:
A state of
danger close
to the high
noon of summer:
Even the storms
which we pray
for bear dangerous
tongues of sudden
fire: Ooh I
can look but not
touch the next
pale curve on
a strong of moon
beads walking
by busily
ignorant of me:
Revel here if
you must: Grab
her here &
yank down her
shorts & panties
& lean her
against a chair
with her ass
& pussy looking
at you like
a face of wonder
in perfect
alignment with
the stars which
have fated me
here & ask,
what now,
dolphin plow:
Can a midlife
crisis truly
burn out of
control &
then out
completely here?
Can I forget
one note of
that passionate
music by
singing so
helplessly
about it?


***


And a trio of poems from “A Breviary of Guitars,” in sucession from that series which tried to source the big music there in my history of bitterweet mysteries:





WINDSWEPT

from “A Breviary
of Guitars,” 2000

The present/
Autumn 1985

Finally we get
those storms
this summer
so desperately
needs: A dark
weave of turgid
cloud clotting
up by 5 p.m.
to loosen all
the skirts in
a hard bolt-
jazzed outpour
that washed me
from the Publix
in College
Park all the
way to Apopka:
A teeth-grinding
passage though
I could feel
grateful for
the splashes
of blissful
blessed relief
over the land:
Such salves don’t
wash down into
our lives,
necessarily —
fevers of my
workday finding
no resolution
as usual: All
Central Florida
waits as Courthouse
Killer Thomas
Provenzano gets
a day’s reprieve
from lethal
injection while
his lawyers
argue that you
can’t so punish
someone who’s
convinced he’s
Jesus Christ —
I’m ragged from
waking at 2:30
a.m. every day
this week to
jolt and bolt
my fat fountain
pen in the
milky furrow
of Historic
Delights —
And yet despite
all this my wife
called me to
say how much
she wanted to
thank me for
the happiest
time of her
life (that
was yesterday,
Wednesday,
when she had
all day to
focus on her
business &
go thrifting
with Roseanne):
And I felt some
similar quiet smile
that I have this
work to do
and it’s like
two lovers who
have little problem
bringing the
other off right
when they
themselves are
coming — Whatever
my daily irks
& fevers, the
work’s a potent
motion in
time’s murk:
In Autumn
1985 I found
myself astounded
& unmoored
in a bed wed
to impossibility:
None of it
adding up
for Donna and
I but for
the outrageous
sums our bodies
multiplied: I
was a different
lover when I
plunged in
Donna, hard and
harder & patient
too, riding the
rise & collapse
of her storms
til she was
floating & then
I too collapsed
taking down
every house on
the block in this
tall blue green
tidal wave:
Coming home
from her house
after a night
together was
like coming to a
beach on some
terribly distant
island alone &
haunted &
desperate for
just one more
night, regardless
of the cost to
wallet sanity
& life: Two
songs of that
day chorused
the swoon in
which I
wandered: the
first was Bryan
Ferry’s “Windswept”
off his “Boys &
Girls Album”:
Faint synth washes
and slow pulsing
rhythm & Ferry
lost in the
washes of the
song singing
“Oh baby -- / Do
it again and again - /
I can hear
nothing / windswept
is the sand /
Oh baby / Oh
show me more / I
can see nothing -- /
Windswept is
the shore -- / Heat
wave to night
shade -- / Oh I’m
feeling swept away --”
Oh huge cerulean
waves grey blue
green rocking and
rising to a height
of foam like a
sob breaking from
she or me or
both of us,
everything else
erased — Donna’s
gray blue green eyes
taking me in
after sex luminous
as the moon
in our dark
troubled by all
she knows but
won’t say but
for that night
defying fate &
welcoming my
raging bull of
a dolphin song:
The other song
of that season
was Mr. Mister’s
“Run To Her,”
again set in
some moody
wash of sound
as if in fog
on a beach
with eternity
sucking and
drawing at
me like an
angel who wants
to wrestle to
a fall, battling
necessity’s gray
waking day
ahead with
love’s fierce
welcoming shout
of “not by
providence
but victory,”
The singer’s voice
taking wing
over dark deep
tidal rhymes:
“I see myself
locked in her
arms / She looks
inside my soul /
She is much too
beautiful / To
ever let go /
Time ----/ It
passes much
to fast / And time --- /
I want to make
it last / Oooooo - ooh /
I’ll run to her /
I’ll run --- run
to her” : Both
songs pearls of
that ocean drowse
that fucked me
silly & sent
me rolling on
doomed to
forever sing of
the waters I
was exiled from:
That music
shattered in
me but like
the brilliant
broken shells
that glitter on
the beach at
dawn, the tunes
are strewn
through my
day in Orphic
tatters: Violet’s
aqua eyes staring
full at me
& the smooth
curve of my wife’s
side sleeping next
to me & halcyon
choirs of rain
falling all night
& the curl suck
& draw of these
words flowing
down the page:
In the years of
“recovery” I
built moats &
walls around that
cathedral
embrace, searching
the books for
an adequate &
liberating
explanation:
Debunkings
of romantic
myth by M.
Scott Peck &
AA’s rescue
from La La Land
and therapeutic
spelunking in
my so called
intimacy complex:
Sought the
many doors marked
“Lecture on
Eros” and taken
notes so copious
I got buried in
‘em: And while
I’ve plenty of
maps & a
fairly sure compass
& a certain
wizened post
Christian not
New Age sensibility
about those
shipwrecked days
and nights, I’ve
gotten closer
to the Door Marked
Eros behind
which swells
that dread delightful
wave: The best
place of encounter
outside events
now wholly subsumed
in time I found
in Maude Nicoll’s
“Celtic Legends”
(1902) in this
story titled “The
Children of
the Water”: In
it Lir the god
of wind & wave
hears a man
& a woman
converse on
a shore: The
woman was of
the sea &
beautiful in
a terrifying way:
“Tall and white,
and her skin
had a pale
light on it
like green sea
water in deep
places”: The man
is tall and
handsome, “his
skin had a warm
glow on it
like golden
bracken at sunrise”:
The man knows
it is perilous
to love a sea
woman, for it
was “to love
three years in the
dream of a
day and then
die in body and
go away in soul,
driven on the
wind like the
spume of the sea:”
But she was
just too beautiful
for him not
to love: Do you
hear that distant
music, distant
lover: “The fevered
blood in his veins
sang a song of
strange love, of
white hands about
his heart, of the
twin kiss of life
and death”: He begs
the woman to
come home with
him, to “lie down
in my arms at
night, safe against
the storm without,
and we will rear
our children
under summer
skies and by
the winter hearth” :
But the woman
laughs and whispers,
“Come with me ...
and I will give you
the homelessness
of the sea, the
peace of the
restless waves, and
love like the
wandering wind...” And
so weaves her dream
in his ears “like
the waves on the
shore ... ‘I will
sing you all songs
... the song of
the rippling,
running water:
The song of the
waves for the
shining sand: The
song of the shell
— mournful with
ancient
mournfulness:
The sorrow song
of age upon age
(the sound of it
is in the ears of
the dead): And the
siren song of Maer,
the woman of
the whirlpool: I
will sing you the
magic song of
the deep: The hymn
of the great god
Lir: Of the
sorrow of the
night wind
for lost Deidre”:
The song of the
”moon children
weaving their sea
spells out of
mist and spray:
The moaning fury
of the gale: The
thin song of the
wind in the
rigging, and the
swelling song of
the sails ... Come!’”
And she lay
down with him
“pressing his
breast like the
running sea water
and her kiss stung
upon his mouth
like salt spray”:
But as greatly
as the man
of the land loved
that woman of
the sea, he
also greatly
feared her, telling
her she “could be
no woman if she
spoke so ... (But)
the woman laughed
and slid from his
arms into the
green water,
beckoning, calling,
‘Come away, come
away, the sea
wails and yearns
as a woman
for her lover. Come!’”
Lir then takes
the shape of a
young man &
appears to the
man where he
stands on the
beach, asking,
“‘Why do you go
giving a warm
heart to a cold
sea one?’ The man
said he knew
not, but that
he had no
pleasure in
looking at women
who were all
the same:” Lir
laughed & told
him to seek
out a maiden
singing in the
heath and to
marry her, for
she would bear
him many children:
“‘That is happiness’,
the man said
doggedly, and
the god answered:
‘You forget, you
have known the
seawoman’s kiss,
you have had
her gift.’”: The
man marries
the woman &
sure enough sires
many children,
but the seawoman’s
curse or blessing
prevails, for
“he and all
the children
he had and all
the numbered ones
that come after
them knew by
night and by
day a love that
was tameless and
changeable as
the wandering
wind, and a
longing that
was as unquiet
as the restless
waves, and the
loneliness &
homelessness of
the sea ... Always,
always, they hear
her voice in the
waves calling,
‘Come away, come
away; the sea waits;
follow me:’ And their
songs are wild
songs: That is
why they are known
as the ‘Sliochdna-
Mara,’ the clan
or tribe of the
sea wave: They are
fated to love
and long for the
sea as the man
yearned for the
lost, the
beautiful, the
ever-unpossessed
woman of the
sea: If you doubt
this, ask any one
of them: He will
tell you it’s true:
‘They have a wave
in their hearts,’—
How then are they
ever to be satisfied,
these children of
the water?”

wave rave

from “A Breviary of
Guitars,” 2000

The present/
Autumn 1985

How indeed? For
the wave the sea
woman dashed
on me in the
welcome of
a few melusines
has baptized me
into a curve
and curl, an
arch foam
ache and break:
I accept today
that such loves
may have only
been moonbeams,
faulty ego
boundaries &
juvenile whim:
But the wave
itself is
one of the greater
angels, a titanic
motion swelling
up to kiss the
moon: One night
many years later
I walked Cocoa
Beach with a
woman Donna’s
age long after
Donna swam away:
A full moon
high above a
surf impossibly
stirred by a
hurricane
200 miles
out to sea; Waves
like we had
never seen at
that timid beach
scrolling in
huge dark swells
& the smash
& hiss of surf
a dull pounding
blissful roar:
Silver milk
in those waves
poured from
a crazy moon
& a stiff warm
breeze blowing
through the desire
we felt for each
other but could
not, would not
touch for the ties
she kept with
another: A
dazzling night
in which we
were gifted
with a sea so
few would ever
see: Some time
after midnight
on that silvered
beach where
angels sang
brokenly & eternally
of desire and its
terrible torn
beauty we stopped
talking & listened
& looked
& touched each
other’s hand, just
once, hugged,
just once, kissed
for a second then
turned to go:
I wrote a poem
on it and later
set the night
to music on
a keyboard
synthesizer (no
guitar could
suffice, I’ve learned)
tolling these
slow sure chords,
Emaj7 - Cmin7
F#min7 - Amaj7,
composing wave
after wave
of basso bellows
& swelling strings
& dazed dreamy
overtones caught
in the suck and
the roar of
a remembered night:
O I’m still
desperate to
describe the wave
of the sea woman
rising in me
in you impossibly
high fraught
with the ache
and plunge of
perfect union,
sure in its
rhythm & pulse
& chording &
broken utterly
when cusp trembles
foams & turns
down at the
moment of coming
falling weightless
for aeons in a
sheer glass curve
collapsing in a
smash and a
roar into oblivion:
I’m 43 now
and doubt
any such wave
does more than
shipwreck &
estrange us from
all we build and
strive for in
such difficulty:
No marriage
abides by such
a wave, no
poems or songs
ever summon
it truly back &
it’s an utterly
selfish amoral
unworthy
unwholesome
surrender no
one else in the
world gives
one tiny turd for:
Yet I desired
her & she kissed
me with that wave
& I can’t stop
this furious scrawl
down the page
mounting this
babel of joy:
Yesterday in
the spinning class
the instructor
was both lovely
& cruel, asking
us to pedal
harder faster up
an impossible
slope: It was
then that I truly
saw the wave I here
praise, this fearsome
nor’easter of a
swell curving
up high high
and higher,
mountainous to
moon: Oh
the teacher was
almost beyond
my heart & I
almost gave out
toward the end,
staying in gear
12 while she called
out 13, 14, 15:
She finally let
us go to
downshift &
pedal mad down
the hill & then
slow & slow
& slow till we
pedalled air
in sleepy arcs:
Of course she’s
this muse that
sirens me out
of too little
sleep & then swims
out just beyond
the tip of this
pen singing, “Come—”:
She was in the
3 or 4 women
who for whatever
reasons undressed
me in her waters
& then drowned me:
She stands beside
the real women
I have actually
loved judging their
passions which
always melt
into a deeper
surer love &
flashes her
booty whispering
“you could have
chosen this, you
know”: I cannot
surrender to
her but I will
not let her go:
Blue green monster
rising sinister
& ecstatic toward
a shore of loins
my balls throb
and pulse for
desperate for just
one smooch of
that hopeless
homeless hocus
hooch of
coochie coo
invoked in this
Breviary, this
blue green wave
reaching for
a fruit I can
never reach,
never burst, till
death do I
truly die: Such
is the passionate
singing I can
no more forget
than the sea
can reclaim it’s
orphaned moon:
Ah desperate
I am this morning
stung and dazed
by the foam of
one wave so
fucking long ago
rising anew here:
And I’m judged
as unworthy now
as I was then:
My hands weary
& aching & tingling
& the loam of
pages fattening
into a mound,
a mountain,
a sea, a cosmos
in the hollows
of a conch, a
pale flickering
dream at the
end of a farewell
& still I can’t
name it or
claim it
nor most of
all let it go:
The woman
of the sea has
exactly what
she wished: And
I her wandering
wounded dolphin
surfer watch the
horizon and wait
for the waters to
heave the next
slow swelling chord:

daughter of neptune

from “A Breviary of Guitars,” 2000

Fall 1985:
In such billows
and draws of
brine-stung bliss
I fathered my
second child: No
surprise there:
biology
dickinherology
moonsea ontology
all dance ovum
to seed: Passionate
coils rage hot
and moist to
cradle new life:
But Donna rid
herself of that
child before
I knew she
even bore it—
O perhaps I did:
One night she
was too moody
for sex: I thought
she was simply
feeling guilty
about the lover
who called for
her from far
away: As we
slept I thought
I heard her
crying much
of that night:
The next weekend
she begged off
a date saying
she had the
flu & needed
to paint her
bedroom: I
wanted to take
her to diner
at my mother’s,
go see a movie,
check into
a hotel for
some high-rent
fornication,
treat her to
a champagne
brunch the next
day: But instead
I found myself
alone for the
weekend, O
what to do when
nothing but
being in her
has any value
any more: I
practice the same
old routines of
workout &
singing & guitar
practice feeling
sterile & empty
in those motions:
Go out with
Norman to see
Jason & the
Scorchers at
some bowling alley:
hot hot cowpunk
band, a mix
of prairie yodel
with Rebel Yell,
Sex Pistols
meets George
Strait meets
Van Halen:
They’re hungry
& smart &
pumping rock
fire in its
purest opiate
yowl: Hearing
them was like
being young again
in song, 14
and sitting on
a motorbike in
someone's driveway
lifting Sue’s shirt
to rummage among
the breathless
fishes there & feeling
the night heave
up under me
in a wave: Norman
and I strut
the night afterward
like the rock
princes we once
were, drinking
Buds & shots of
Old Bushmills
& snooting lines
of coke out in
his car: that was
the night Donna
lay abed after
parting her thighs
to the vacuum
which tore our
family out by
the roots: Somewhere
on a night like
that the ocean
I called love
began its
inexorable ebb:
I began the curl
which forms when
something can
rise no further
and hangs for
a moment unaware
of the long
steady fall which
birthed no
daughter but
my last band:
The next day
I’m hungover &
wild for Donna
& can’t get her
on the phone,
her mother telling
me the 3 or
4 times I call
that she’s out
for medicine or
working in the
yard or sleeping:
And in that
itchy achy anxious
solitude the horse
loose from their
stalls, cold
and lunar and
whispering knives
with the wild
dark eyes: Next
day she calls
me at work but
isn’t very talkative,
not much to
say about the
weekend, just
sick, saying
nothing about
the work day
& vague about
plans for the
next weekend:
I feel like
I’m talking to
a stranger many
many thousands
of miles away &
ring off
wondering just
who my passion
truly loves: A
woman? A wave?
An aborted
song that of
that season
that goes
“Love is a
stranger / Who’s
taking you away, /
Love is the
danger / You risk
it all to play /
Love is sometimes
just like this /
Darkness just
beyond a kiss /
Love is the
stranger / Who takes
it all away”:
I didn’t find
out about Donna’s
abortion till
the night she
said goodbye:
Those days
early in our
fall it was
just one absence
inside a more
general ebb as
she broke off
dates & was
never home
when I called:
When we did
talk she complained
of life’s shit: Her
son’s father
wanting custody
& her mother
in the midst
of a breast
cancer scare:
So many reasons
to pull back, wall
off the waters
that still swelled
in me: O then
for me desperate
nights out
lights out
drinking to quell
the bitter mares
of loss galloping
through me with
their promise of
winter: One
night resolute to
celebrate that loss
with some betrayal
I met up with
Kim (The Penthouse
Fantasy Girl) at
Fern Park Station
& followed
her home &
helped her wreck
an 8-ball of coke
as cold rains
pelted the late
late night &
finally bedding
her after dawn
but I’m too
coked on helpless
love to stay
hard: Pass out
for an hour
or so erased
& empty but
then come to
hard as a full
moon lion called
Fuck It or
Fuck Her &
turning Kim over
on her knees
& grabbing that
sweet big ass
& pounding the
winter seas like
a royal roger
rumpus rake:
O ripened gorgeous
guilt the next
day & raging
that Donna’s not
even there to
care: Days spill
into weeks of
this with unreturned
calls & listless
talk & broken
dates & nights
nowhere hoping
the hopelessness
will go away
as winter settles
on the land
with crisp breezy
days & hard
drinking nights:
Yet in that time
there were still
glints when Donna’s
resolve to dissolve
our bond would
falter: Relenting
for a date, talk
of things we could
do, her eyes
betraying waves
for me she
once welcomed
through now they
just make her
look ill — “Broken
Wings” by Mr.
Mister the theme
song for these days
as I prayed love
would somehow
wake from this
slow ruin, rise again
in the fearless
hurl we once made
together high
over our impossible
lives: “O take /
These broken wings /
And learn to
fly again” somehow
somewhere: Up
to her house
one day to take
her to dinner
but family
has gathered round
her in a phalanx,
kids screaming,
relatives chattering
& drinking wine
& eyeing me
blankly, not as
any pause for
inclusion: Donna
on the phone in
the other room
with “an old friend”
who’s probably
the absent love
her family’s
rooting for: Donna
emerges smiling
to say he’ll be
down next week
& nixes our plans
for that weekend
together we had
always planned
but could never
pull off: And I
slide down a
hopeless oubilette
which requires
no energy, just
fold the shattered
wings & let go:
We bed late
& I bring her
off with my
mouth, licking
sucking circling
lingering on
her pussylips
til she bucks &
arches & sighs
but it seems
premature, maybe
false: And when
I mount her
I come way to
soon, no timing,
no common ground,
My orgasm a
feint at heights
tumbling like
a buffoon into
despair: She’s
asleep soon after
or pretends to
while I lay there
in agony, the
inches that
separate us
a desert of
bare rock dryer
than bone &
the moon high
above steely
& sterile, a
morgue lamp,
a headstone
bearing our
encircled names:
O wings of
sweet passion
how fragile &
inept you truly
are: If history
teaches anything
about our falls,
it is that
inhuman &
inhumane passions
pull us up
to them: Glimpsing
heaven we discover
hell: You’d think
we would learn
our lesson after
the third or fourth
crack on hard
concrete but
each day we
wake ready to
let ‘er rip, feel
the wind inside
the god of love
which our falcon
hearts love
to soar up to
then plummet with
wings folded
back to shore:
Love is a
tide eternally
washing the
world with delight
and woe, carrying
us fools like
driftwood to
the next never
dry enough
never sated
enough land: Ah
fellow children
of the wave, will
you join me in
singing of that
welcome which
truly exiles:

Glaucus' Net: First Haul

In Keats’ Endymion, Glaucus observes a shipwreck and vainly tries to rescue the sailors from their doom; watching the last fatal swirl of bubbles from his rock, an old man’s hand appears up out of the water and hands Glaucus a scroll, which reads:

***

In the wide sea there lives a forlorn wretch,
Doomed with an enfeebled carcasse to outstretch
His loathed existence through ten centuries
And then to die alone. Who can devise
A total opposition? No one. So
One million times ocean must ebb and flow,
And he oppressed. Yet he shall not die,
Those things accomplished. If he utterly
Scans all the depths of magic, and expounds
The meanings of all motions, shapes and sounds;
If he explores all forms and substances
Straight homeward to their essences;
He shall not die. Moreover, and in chief,
He must pursue this task of joy and grief
Most piously -- all lovers tempest-tossed,
And in the savage overwhelming lost,
He shall deposit side by side until
time’s creeping shall that dreary space fulfill;
Which done, and all the labors ripened,
A youth, by heavenly power loved and led,
Shall stand before him, whom he shall direct
How to consummate all. The youth elect
Must do the thing, or both will be destroyed.

-- III.689-711




GLAUCUS ON HIS ROCK

June 6

Time swoons at this hour
of sated mossy dark, dreaming
in salt mansions of
Circean fire, rousing
cold naiads with red bouffants
to dance with legioned
stiff contraires.
It’s only me here on this
rock in the middle of the sea,
chanting endless runes,
singing of old loves
as if to haul them dripping
from their abysmal drift
still clutching what they lost.
How many tides? A thousand?
A million more? The wash
seems endlessly moot
yet I persist, droning in
wild meters psalms of purest blue,
so foolishly believing
that one day my song
will thrill You back to me.
Oh well -- someone has
to ward this hour and
pray its passage through,
a belling buoy for
every future love as
well as sandy cenotaph
for all who fell exactly
here, collapsing in the
waves they rode this far.
Oh my song is choked
with splintered masts
and ensnarled rigging,
a drowned mess from
which a thousand
bluest limbs protrude,
breasts which startled
the moon and hands
an inch awry them,
loins still pressed
so tightly that nailed
souls stare blankly out
from behind, like rapt
mastheads sailing down
the frigate leagues of doom.
No matter how often
I write these lines
their joy and grief
compounds in contra-
bassos the boom
of waves collapsing
in this surf’s loom,
a whalish organum
whose proper bellows
is this margeless heart
where all love perforce
thrills and dies at sea.
One day perhaps I’ll say it so
and bid my youth farewell,
the hippocampus of
that passion freed
to dive off into the
swells like a book
tossed to the wave.
I’ll let her walk away
the way she did all those
times before, ebbed
from every door
I’ve harrowed in the
hallows of high absence:
I’ll write these songs no
more, thank God.
Well -- til then my
work remains, such as it
is, despite my age,
my faulty moron sooth,
the general sinking
irrelevance of words
writ on crashing water
while the world sleeps
on and on: I throw
this next net in the
wash and haul my
past in Yours on up,
flashing wet and slippery
in the waters they reveal,
peels of that greater fruit
whose juice stains my
chin and cock and toes
and all the stuff far under,
so fresh, sweet, and wild,
gone forever from the world
before the first cock crows
blue pale to crack black under.





SURFSIDE SOLUTIONS

November 2002

Long ago my mother set me
like a shell upon the strand.
Her voice tides in my ear—
warm milk for worried brow,
pink rooms which soft resound
the drench of drain and draw.
I love to mound my words
inside that nautilus of surf
—a useless carpentry,
you say, to castle heart
in walls of hammered grain—
No matter. Sonorous physic,
wave-songs I curl my mornings
to, you are a cat’s solution,
the sweeter nous. Like the
town that solved its water
shortage by showering in twos.
That’s what you’ll find here,
a vault of curved additions
which fall too fast to count,
shapes which fail in every way
except to greet those great rooms
she carved with her salt voice,
bright mansions left on wet sand
for your own hands to hoist.


BIG TOAD

from A Breviary
of Guitars, 2000


When I was three
my family
vacationed
at Cape Cod:
I recall only
vague shadows
& that buttery
halflight of first
memories:
But there is
a photo of
me sitting
by a tree
playing a
ukulele to
a frog in a
yellow bucket:
I named him
Big Toad
and sang to
him with my
toy uke: Music
for that swart
appendage
apart and
with me,
a tadpole
longing that
swam so
wonderfully
below: I knew
the pud was
loved and sang
of the big world
it swam through:
Everything was
connection back
then, soft light,
the sound of my
mother’s voice
wrapped in
the surf and
breeze: those tiny
songs I found
so easy to sing:
A dolphin’s weave
on a bright
cresting wave
carrying me
us here:



sand castle


2000

Sigh down the long runnels of foam
which line the heart-road of this shore,
now soft in the gauzy drift
of a late summer afternoon,
the sun far to the west, it’s fierce
maul now fleece, pale on the backs
of two boys building the same sand castle
you built against the tide so long ago.
Each measured handful
of packed sand is angled
so close to the water’s edge
it’s understood a that sand castles
are an invitation to what
washes it all away.
The arrival of each wave
in its final exhausted spread
is exhilarating, filling the moat past brim
and tearing down with singing foam
what you too would release
if you knew what, or how:
You watched those walls tremble and fall
to the sea’s mute caress
and when you walked away
you forgot what was so earnest
about it all almost before the sea
erased it anyway. Now it’s too late
on one beach to save your life
though there’s still time on this other.




BAPTISM

2003

A low voice crooned in his ear:
a bittersweet song it was, passing-sweet,
passing-bitter.
-- Fiona McLeod, “The Washer of the Ford”

At 13 I was baptized in the Atlantic
off Melbourne Beach by pentacostals,
an occasion which was strangely
perfect in its timing. Months earlier
I’d been given a tract which showed
the hells of sin: a blue novella of once-

good people deceived by pleasure into
grave of boozy sex and all the fanged
conceits which fork there, ending up
in the halls of pitch and apostate ire.
It scared the Bejezus into me just when
I was ready at last for the world: puberty

had just slammed its flaming wreck into
me, adding three inches of height, burning
off my childhood fat, curling out a brimstone
beard pubic hairs, lowering my voice a
gravelly half-octave.Poised at last for the
eternal pleasures of youth, their infernal

consequences bared their canines wide,
revealing an endless maw. Terrified of
punishment I fell on my knees and gave
myself to the God of the group who’d
passed the track. It was with these people
that I now drove out to Melbourne Beach

on a warm morning in early June, two months
from my 14th birthday. We sang Christian
songs in that packed station wagon, the windows
rolled to a predawn lurid Florida smelling of
citrus, death, and the sea. I was flanked by two
virginal girls, a chaste inch between our bathing

suited bottoms, literally just enough to spare
the devil’s bray. Still, when the car rolled over
a dead mole or ‘dillo, the jot caused the left girl’s
left breast to bounce against my arm, and
the chorus in the car turned to a drone while
I felt that deeper music thrum, the hard rock

of rages which was all thirst, all sweet, all
consummation. Parked on the beach at last
we exploded from the car like colts, sprinting
in joy toward a surf which curled and broke
in the glass of first light. Somehow I managed
to leap and come down on the very spot where

some manowars were buried, leeching my soles
in ocean fire. For an hour while the others romped
and bodysurfed I lay on a picnic table in pure
agony. I prayed God forgive me for the imp inside
me and gave thanks that I didn’t have the chance
fall further in that surf. When I was well enough

to walk, I was led to the surf where the service
began — standing waist high in cerulean, warm
surf with the sun just up from the east, still red
with first birth, the pastor next to me with eyes
shut tight, praying in tongues and then shifting
to English to say God bless this new son. He then
he tipped me back into the water and held me there —

only for a second or so — but while I was under
a cleansing wave passed over and through me, calm
and eternal and silently true. To this day, I swear
it was one of the closest moments I’ve had with God.
Or gods, since the wave passed under me as well,
washing me of every wrong and blessing of my darkest,

deepest joys — angel and imp, agape and eros, spirit
and soul married in that douse which washed through
and then passed and I was hauled back up spluttering
while the others clapped and praised God. The sun
continued to climb in the sky, hot and beckoning,
as the rollers sprawled in again and again and again,

curving and smashing and hauling back our blent blood,
waxing and ebbing, cleansing us in the sea’s feral mud.





from A GUITAR
IS NOT A WOMN

“A Breviary of Guitars,” 0200

Spring 1978:
I typed my poems
and papers on
an electric
typewriter using
erasable bond
paper, each draft
supremely more
precious than
the today’s flash
of printouts
so easily erased:
I made far
fewer scribbles
in my journals
too, still unfamiliar
with living long
on the page:
A few lines now
and then
before whoever
I was resumed
whatever I did.
Just think: six
lines of verse
in time
cashing out to
this Breviary:


first cigarette
the haunting music
adrenaline mauls the stomach
why won’t the eyes open
I will not die
until I’ve touched another face.

I read back
over those lines
as if probing
my heart’s DNA:
The pages of
that journal
that captured
the Spring of ‘78
is worn now from
my many returns
to it, in my
many attempts
to learn and write
my story in
so many forms:
A faithful
pilgrim to that nova
that flared soon
after the night
in March when
I went to a party
put on by
some girl at work
and met this
girl named Becky,
a pretty blonde
browneyed doe
who was leaving
for LA in a
week. She was up
from Florida
and didn’t
like winter a bit:
I told her I
was a guitar player
and poet sans
band or book:
that impressed
her nada:
I could have told
her I played
on the Whitworth
College basketball
team or dug
worms in the
park: Becky
preferred her
stuff simple,
not much to
say about it:
simple stuff.
I, who had
walked for years
deep inside and
apart from the
women I yearned for,
was bug-eyed
startled to find
myself so calmly there
beside her simply
chatting, the party
eddying about
us almost
unnoticed: A
A virgin dreams
of what sex
is like so
deeply that
the first time
passes almost
unnoticed: That
was meeting
Becky: She got
to me before I
knew she’d gotten
in: We talked
till one or so
in the morning
until my ride
yawned and said
we had to go:
I don’t remember
if I slept much
that night --
so much happened
so fast in one
week that
I wrote almost
nothing in the
thick of it,
a couple pages
of tortured verse,
hot jots of
amazement
at what erupted:
I think I
got her number
from her friend
and called
her the next day
to make a date:
She said yes,
She said yes:
We met downtown
for lunch on a
raw waking wet
spring day,
temps in the
mid-50s, the Spokane
river muscling
into a roar
with melted
snowpack carried
a dozen miles
down from the
western Spokane
mountains: I
remember Becky’s
brown eyes,
her easy smile,
her southern
voice, and
red-brown shoes
that fastened
with a buckle:
We ate a
restaurant
by the river &
drank a bottle
of wine & told
our life stories
as we could
tell them then,
our heads filling
with a sort
of boozy drowse
that nestled
in the boom
and hiss of
the nearby river:
Where that river
ended and
we began is
the utter mystery
to this day:
We ambled on
through that day
into the the night,
kissing in some
cold wet shelter
in the park where
spring’s raw fuse
burned weirdly
in the cold:
bought more
wine and munchies
and headed back
to my house
to smoke dope
& drink wine
& listen to my
Genesis (sounding
so distant: do
you have any
Journey? she
asked) & on
carrots and peanut
butter: She climbed
on my lap
facing me and
we began to kiss,
my heart pounding
with surprise
and surrender:
After a while
I asked weakly
(almost apologetically)
if she would like
to spend the night
and she just smiled
and led me to
my room by the
hand: We climbed
beneath the covers
n the cold cold
dark of that room,
finding heat
quickly between us
as we wrestled
from our clothes:
I tried to make
love to her
but fear kept
if from happening
at first: We fell
asleep for a
couple hours
and I woke on
her fucking slow
and languid,
the bedsprings
creaking and
squawking
with each dreamy
thrust which
she welcomed,
welcomed:
I came and
drifted off
still in her &
then dreamed
of an incredibly
clear blue space
like a morning
in early summer
by the ocean
in Florida:
Woke with crystalline
waters stretching
miles around that
bed and Becky
sleeping curled
into me like some
blessing I did not
deserve: You
never do: She
woke and we
began it all
again: I kissed
her all over
down to her
cunt which smelled
ripe like armpit
& she was
embarrassed
tried to push
me away but
I butted my
face past her
hand and bathed
my mouth and
face in deep
womanhood which
a day or so ago
was the faintest
constellation
at the furthers
corner of the night:
When she went
home that day
in her yellow
Fiat I wrote
of my surrender
to my birthmark:


O pulse of blood quickened by light
O heart reborn and squinting at the sun
O core bled clean and drying by the pool:
I have held her face beneath my eyes
O love o damnable love.:




ANNIVERSARY

2002

Today it’s been twenty years
since I lost the second woman
I hardly knew yet I loved
in full, stupid, jealous & greedy.
In losing her I became
so desperately and infernally
alive as to beg silence: her shade.

All I remember of her today
is that morning we walked
on Cocoa Beach after fucking
most of the night. We were
making small talk in our
dreamy exhaustion—laughing
at the way sandpipers scurry
like tiny execs— when she
paused and smiling at me
in front of dawning sea.
The whole package I recall—
that smile, the blue eyes streaming,
the curly blond hair in a halo
of sun, her breasts full
and straining against
a year-old bikini top, the
sea crashing light foam
at her ankles like cream,
that evanescent breeze—
all of that was greater than
any morning, a finally found key.
Yet that was only true
in reverse, when she told
me at last to go to hell.
but in reverse. I recall
how I hurt bad enough
in the proceeding months
to see beyond the heat
into caring at last about
how I lived love.
How the days slowed
in the viscosity of grief,
a sludge both anguished
and gorgeous, slowing
the day to a wave-crawl,
the sunlight lengthening
across the lakes.
That image spoiled my drinking
for the next 4 years
though I tried, reaching
for her on every tree.
to care last about how
Eventually I came to
marry that shape,
sacrificing the wild
night of making love
for long hard days
of patient making.
Love doesn’t teach us
how much there is to
gain in love, only
how much there is to lose
by not loving, or failing
to love well enough.
Today I recall those long
burnished days in September
when grief was a tide
tolling a sea
I’d been born to in losing.
Stupid, jealous, greedy,
it’s true, but also the wound
which eventually bled me real.
I sit in the house I prayed
that day to inhabit,
the sum of every surrender
I made to love’s brine,
it’s awfullest, most
incompetent son,
each smile a wine
so much more difficult now
so much more
what she only kissed.




FREEZE FRAME

From “A Breviary of Guitars”
2000

Fall 1985
What was so arid
in a hammerlock
of high pressure
and a triumphant
angel sun now
just foams &
spouts in storm
after storm:
Every day now
I drive in to
work & see
bump marble
rumps mooning
the heavens:
By lunch they’re
massed ever
empurpled with
fevers hurling
ejaculate snaps
& flooding the
streets: Like new
lovers who cannot
exhaust their
bottomless cistern
of desire hurling
their bodies
at each other
frantic to find
what screams for
release: Storms
again midafternoon
as the day’s
wearies settle
amid problem
accounts & new
AS400 system
woes & programming
patches & the
itch & flick of
a desire which
has no body
it can vanquish
in: But man
it rains hard
a ballsoaking
cuntslobbering
titheave
ballstothewalls
of a storm
in which the
green world
shouts glittery
arias of joy:
The last time
such storm
rose in me
with Donna
was a wan
fair Sunday in
November ‘85
when we drove
to New Smyrna
Beach with her
son Nicky packing
lunch & a bottle
of sherry: Parked
along a deserted
stretch & set
a blanket on
the sand & lounged
there a couple
of hours enjoying
80 degree temps
& the sun
mellow and
sweet & the
surf softly
slapping and
slushing, love
not yet ebbed
& loss early
in its flow: Donna
just beautiful
in a black one
piece bathing
suit that carved
her curves with
authority &
grace & surrender
& her skin a
shock of white
as when she
first peeled
down her panties
for me then
turned her
ass toward my
bright hungry ache:
We sipped our
sherry watching
Nicky play
with a truck
in the sand &
Mr. Mister’s
“Run to Her”
on my boombox
half lost to
the sound of that
swoony merciless
surf: Blue pale
sky, blue green
waters stretching
for miles &
Donna’s eyes
sad and distant,
looking past me:
She got up and
walked down to
to the water’s
edge for a while
soaking up
all that feral
eternity that
makes babies
love & graves
her back to me
as one passing
through a door
into silence:
And then turned
to smile at
me radiant with
all I’ve ever
desired rising
in my heart
like Venus on
the half shell
amid the foam
of my balls &
then looking for
one second like
another woman
on another beach
in another love
which ended
in another surf
& I felt then
the horrid ironic
fatefulness
of the Ocean,
a wave which
parts the thighs
of a love which
births departure:
But Donna
just smiled
bittersweetly and
then as if she
had come to
a decision walked
back and gathered
up Nicky and
put him in
her car telling
him to sleep:
For a few minutes
the boy’s face
(resembling Donna
in the eyes
but the rest
a cipher of
some other man’s
love) crying in
the window but
Donna was
unmoved &
the head slowly
disappeared
like a setting
sun into silence:
Donna then looked
over at me
& smiled the way
she did that night
up at Fern Park
Station & then
lowered her
body on mine
to kiss me full
and dreamy
as the sea her
body breathing
full against mine
like a surf &
her bones against
my bones as
close as bones
go: Kissed slowly
down my chest
in a wave &
gripped my trunks
with both hands
& then pulled
them down far
enough to take
my startled cock
in her mouth
& slowly, sweetly,
gently, deeply
suck that slender
isthmus of flesh
that separates
I and Thou:
Loving there
what’s impossible
to find and
perilous to forget:
I watched her
for a while glide
up and down
my cock with
slow sure strokes
her mouth a
firm clench on
my slick hardening
length, veins there
pumping out like
clouds rising
over the sea
& her eyes closed
maybe prayerfully
or brokenly or
already somewhere
else — who knows:
Her long dark
blonde hair falling
around her pistoning
mouth like
a waterfall & each
downward stroke
washing me in
that gorgeous sure
river or wave
I always felt
in the sex that
joined Donna
to me: Then I
closed my eyes
& lay back
surrendering to
the pleasure
slowly building
in me, so sweet
& watery, not
urgent in the
way of new lovers
or knowledgeable
or secure like
old lovers: Rather
we were as
one receiving
a last kiss from
waters now receding:
Oh drifting boat
on sunny waters
on God’s now
gorgeous earth,
a breeze softly
raking the
glittery soft surf
& Donna’s hand
now cupping my
balls squeezing
& gently milking
the dangerous
seed rising up
there as she
settles her mouth
all the way
down to my
pubic bone &
I’m coming, coming,
rising up in
a wave of white
screaming joy
and she doesn’t
let go but takes
all of me in,
drinks my salty
sticky seed &
it feels so
strange so
utterly fucking
sweet as if
my balls were
dissolving & the
rest of me to
in this tingling
toe twitching
exhalation
emptying
erasing &
killing my
every conflicted
motion: O stay
there for just
a little while,
Breviary — linger
in the lavish
mouth which swallows
me whole: a
mother’s mouth
giving suck &
a receiving back
the milk she
gave me: The
ocean stretching
like a blue gray
angel’s blessing
& “Broken Wings”
on the blaster
true just for those
seconds and
so eternally true:
All the futile
stupid arrogant
wrongheaded
cruel self
destructive
things I wreaked
with that white
boy’s penis
absolved in
that melting
molten spasm:
These million
words flocking
in the wild sperm
cells flocking
to no home
down her throat
just like the
sea welcomes
no home I
have ever built:
One of my
hands inside
her bathing suit
clutching a
breast squeezing
up a nipple
desperate never
to let go:
This gloriously
beautiful ocean
of an angel
of a woman
nursing my
dolphin on the
wave it still
rides: O crest
& dissolve and
there’s no
way to remain
right there, no
way to prevent
the day’s return
into slow focus,
Donna letting
go with her
mouth kissing
the tip of my
glistening cock
& pulling my
shorts back
up with a sigh
patting my cock
and nuts one
one one one
one one one
one one one
final time: Wipes
her mouth with
her hand her
eyes slowly
refocusing taking
aim again beyond
me: I lift
up on an elbow
& try to push
her down to
kiss, return the
favor by lapping
away at her
sweet milky
thighs but she
shakes her head
sad and firm
& takes a drink
of wine instead
& looks farther
out to a sea
already gone:
O lift up from
that beach O
falcon o sad
sea eagle up
up over to
the edge of that
one infinite
spasm that
crashed up out
of me and through
me at the
same time like
the wave of
the woman of
the sea anointing
& cursing
me like that
baptismal wave
that crested
over me at 14:
Rise up over
the ocean’s
suck & haul
o angel of
my eternally
misbegotten love:
Up over the
rim of the green
ocean and up
up through the
blue heavens:
Up over the
hurl of this
ancient song:
Can you take
me higher o
peregrine
falcon up
where only
blind men see:
Up over the
edge of
my ruination
at your altar
o dolphin muse:
Join me with
my aborted
children, my
daughters of
Neptune: Can
you fly me up
over all to this
warm place
where my seed
lays waiting for
your welcoming
egg in the
belly of all
dead loves: Donna’s
son begins
crying in the
car & she
goes to retrieve
him & we start
packing up
to go: “Run
to Her” on the
blaster already
ironic and Donna
asks me
irritably hey
isn’t there anything
else you can
play? Something
that rocks?






WEEKEND AT MELBOURNE BEACH

1994

Our first night here was wild.
A full moon tore from the sea
faint and bloody as storms
approached from inland,
lacing the dark with hot bolts.
A sea turtle dragged her burden
of eggs across the sand.
You and I watched from our hotel window,
our bodies trilling with thunder
and salt. I leaned you back on
the table and pulled down your shorts.
Buried my face in your lap.
Sweat and cunt and coconut oil
ripening the sharp ions of beach storm.
You tore wet gasps from
the night, startling the darkness
as much as each lightning bolt
slicing from outside.
Coming again to that third
body that waits for us
beneath the basso billows of surf.
This morning you sleep,
still far off in that sea
of primal soak. The day so
brilliant white, dazed with itself.
I eat a nectarine at the table
and watch maddened dragonflies
hover and hurl in tall dune grass.
Flattened waves break
at the shore in weak curlicues.
The smell of our riot rises
from the table. All we do
these days is surrender.
Swelling for you again,
I return. A blue sheet
ripples over your breasts in a wave.





FULL MOON
AT COCOA BEACH

October 1995


The surf was pounding
the air when we climbed
out of my car, hurling
sea mist toward
a full moon now
breaking from clouds.

The pier was closing early
that night, swarmed
by the high surf
of a hurricane's
turbulent pass
many miles to sea.
The guard said
an advisory was out
for a high tide come morning
with fifteen foot waves.

We leaned on a rail
halfway down the pier
and watched the night.
The horizon a wash of
foam and darkness.
Shards of moon
scattering like silver fish
in the glassy curl
of a wave before tumbling
into foam and thunder
and rocking the pier.

You leaned to watch
a wave pass under,
your dress fanning
wild in the breeze.
The wave I felt
curved that satin and
the mystery beneath
into moon and sea.

Later we walked on
the beach, found
a place to sit
and talked a long while,
telling our stories
as warming strangers do
who find the distance
between them narrowing
to less than tissue.

It was after midnight.
The beach, the sea,
the moon took us
somewhere
on a silver stream.

It was a gift
that rose unhurried
from the depths of
some heart which must have
always known these things,
recalled from old loves
or the salt soundings of the womb
or perhaps the full store
of ineffable moments
a man and a woman
have ever stumbled on together,
a silver strand of DNA
pulsing and receiving
this tide.

Having forgotten joy
for so long on a road
of deaths small and large,
having gotten so lost amid
hurry and complication
and complacence,
that night slapped
me back to life.

Warmed by something
I can never name,
we opened our arms
to one embrace
and then walked away.


WIND AND SURF

1996

Cold rags of sky
whip sand and froth
down the beach,
blasting away
all signs of spring:

but inside
our hotel room
you and I
bower that dream
between our bodies,
my chest rapt
in the billows
of your breasts.

Beat silly
in the maul
of wind and surf
at the windows
we sleep,
curled into
the vernals
of love,

never quite solitary

or solid again.