Society

Haven

Frost clings to cascading haystacks

in the comfort of a low fog bank,

resting

in the benediction of the softened morning sun;

the rocking chair, holding a rhythm,

the barn door, open like a hymnal,

the fenceline, stretched as a sheet of music;

eddies of sawdust dance in the light.

This is distinct,

this is a dilation of time,

this is intercession,

this is the mote in God’s eye,

and the blessing of memory coiled in on itself

with the old lariat in the corner.

Listen to this silent song:

a distant scrap of laughter,

brushing off a rising wall of cut granite;

the fading warmth of an embrace

stealing away into the mist.

Like the mason’s craft,

the mortar cracks to dust;

the stone remains.

Tabernacle

Hush, now;

the sun is spilling over these unending pastures,

and she is standing at the end of the field,

watching

the coupling and the uncoupling,

the warp and the weave,

the sky and the soil;

and, holding a handful of dirt,

sees light race to the edge of the prairie

where it drops off into space.

There is a voice, here,

a scrap of sermon remembered:

“…let us reap this rampant harvest from the firmament.”

She stands, letting the stalks brush her hand-

some are bent,

some are broken,

some are painted with a swath of morning,

and some are spattered with a thin trail of blood,

as tails of air uncoil in the wheatgrass

over miles of root woven to the earth,

pulling at the groundwater;

something moves, a pulse

insistent as the creak of a wooden pew,

in this place

unleavened as the bread

cooled upon the dinner table.

Hush, now;

she stands at the end of the field

as the wind stirs behind her,

and, for a moment,

picks fragments of ash

from a naked foundation.

Bazaar

It’s nice to meet you, as well.

These things laid before you
on the blanket,
recently lifted
from my repository
are indeed for sale,
and I’m glad they’ve caught your eye.

Some are questions;
some, answers;
though they do not always match.

I offer collections of mysteria,
and gatherings of the plain.

I offer of the disconcerting,
and the unique.

So, then-
what will you give me

for the lock of whitened hair,
the stretch of cracked earth split by fenceline,
the barn owl’s call in the evening,
this cup of tears,
that lingering late-summer kiss?

What will you give me
for my dog, fading in my arms,
my sister, leaping from the ocean,
my mother’s laugh-lines,
my father’s tire tracks,
my grandfather’s letters?

What will you trade me
for staring into the void of the midnight sky?

And what will you trade me
for judgment,
or forgiveness?

What will you give me?

The Wyrding Way

Near the dead of the lake,
in the night of the woods,
the witching hour becomes thick and heavy,
where the divine will not pass.

The ones who borrow are hiding in the trees,
in the minds of the forest,
in the cracks of the earth,
in the deep mire of the evening.

Here the moon comforts the sun,
who whimpers in frustration where he cannot reach-
a tangle-copse of raven burdens.

The town turns out quilts
of every glorious color and heavenly design,
and I am a stiff black thread for the silver needle-
threaded perfectly, and useless for sewing.

She knows when the witching will happen,
but in her prison I cannot reach her,
and the light of my power is stopped in a dam.

Under the oak,
Under the holly,
Under the yew,
they gather.

The argent circle hung from my neck
is a signet of sacred light to stay the snake,
and a sigil to draw the venom.
Bones of a horse jaw I clasp, ward of the evil eye.

Holy Mary, Mother of God,
pray for a sinner, now and at the hour of my death.

When they dropped the ashes of my ancestors,
I remember a spirit rising from the shards,
wailing and chained to the ground under the half moon.

Someone holds aloft an effigy of straw.
It will raise a horror of bones from my still-warm body,
and I will become a golem for the rest of my days.

The inkwell is broken, shattering black over the parchment;
I was held by the heart when baptized in the waters of Styx.

Some change, a stick of gum, and this.

This? This is “Daydream.”

It’s made partly of memory

that leaks into consciousness.

It’s true!

Here, hold it for a minute.

You can see house;

if you turn it this way, it becomes dog, or horse;

place it under water- it becomes death;

lift it up to sunlight- it becomes running through fields.

I’m not careful, to be honest.

You can cut yourself on the edges.

But it’s an essential effect

to keep in your pocket,

for when you’re waiting in line

or find yourself on a beach.

Shrine

Here are the many-colored portals of history,

where rain slides down city windows

like weak wine,

and we each receive tongues of flame

and names, like

Ubermensch, and

Rose of Sharon,

to cover our childish names:

Drink of Dust, and

Watch the Sky.

So we travel this way,

or that way, and someone says,

“Do you like this apartment?

You can live here, and work, and cook, and love,

and say whatever you want,

unlike Joan of Arc.

In fact, her ashes were mixed

into the brickwork of this fireplace;

now you can both send a burnt offering

to heaven every night.”

But this is what I’m saying:

if we drifted backwards awhile, perhaps,

we’d remember

those other names.

Remains of the Great Beast

We go to the bottom,

below South Line Street, in the razorlight-

where the air is green dead,

where ectoplasm gathers on the shining walls,

and fires light the low lamentations,

below the bellows,

where the ghosts live who have no other home.

A cold vein runs in time

with the corner music,

on the edge where the air is heavy wet.

If you kept a dime, you can save your soul,

since at night the faultlines are easier to split

with gold and pirate ditties.

All eyes sweep the broken ground.

Between the concrete and the chassis, the air is still.

Between the rebar and the relics, the air is still.

Between the tonnage and the tenements, the air is still.

You forget how to define

when you see directions spread before you,

like the auras of fingers…

Can you tell me how to get, how to get to South Line Street?

We struggle topside after a while

from the gamut of the underrafters,

and breathe heavy.

See

the sun sinking; blood red waves.

Here the wind throws gritwater forever,

and is not quieted.

Question Mark

Shall I ask of you

things not seen for a thousand years?

May the common man walk on water,

if he has enough saved to upgrade his boots?

Is the logical extension of classical music

the electric guitar?

Will the rainforest

live in terrariums? Terraria?

Who will correct me

in a thousand years?

Is time only a tracing

from a to b?

If you travel backward,

what will you ask of those from the days of long ahead?

Or, is time a river

eternally swallowing its own tail?

And, will I see you

tomorrow?

Immortalized

On the way past the park, I happen upon

Shakespeare, trapped in his personal prison garden

of perennials and succulents and iron bars.

It’s the most efficient way

of holding someone indefinitely-

they cut off his arms and legs,

stuck him on a pedestal,

and froze him like Han Solo.

He notices me,

and shouts up,

“Hey! Think you can get me out of here, man? Please?”

I stop, and think for a second.

“Sorry, Bill!

I’ll bring you a newspaper tomorrow.”

il Duomo

The vagaries of pomp,

as befitting a man…

 power corrupts him totally.

So then, prepare a table before me

in the presence of mine enemies.

But do I give myself to fortune,

which has not will

nor purpose?

My own will has been a weak support.

Are “Truth” and “the Good”, transient;

cast off?

I say now this is truth:

the unending Holy See of time and space,

the darkness dance of the heavens

whirling unchecked,

eons after man has slept.

Deny it then:

we are supplicant before the reliquary void.