In Memory of the Future
It is by means
of poetry
that history passes
from the world
of the present
to the world
of the actual.
words read in a poem in a dream
Dying
I’ve come for your eyes you said
the door shaking between us
my dumb knees braced against you
my shoulder jammed deaf in you
hard I feel you breathing hard
hoarse sighs words clogging my skull
these words choking me stale sounds
you know who it is you said
the lock rattling between us
my heart whines at my ribs
I hear you singing you said
your scorn hissing sharp as hail
ripping my scalp like salt claws
my lips crushed glass dry grinding
ask me what I want you said
these hasps squealing between us
my neck stiffens in its sheath
as I take your blank force heaved
a wave bulging the wall in
my tongue groans at my cracked teeth
rust flakes my throat bloody scales
have you had enough you said
the wood splitting between us
alone in my skin I sweat
under your hard flashing pulse
my flesh turning and turning
its fat seething like kisses
my lungs burnt open crumbling
let’s get it over you said
the door broken between us
my coiled muscles burst apart
my guts spill out at my feet
my bones shatter in crystals
and blow away like blind dust
even before you touch me
you thought you loved me you said
I’m here now take me you said
I will give you what you want
you said nothing more than this
you said your voice flooding me
with your hot blasting silence
why dont you answer you said
Looting
It was that red moon rising
through our bitter city’s fumes,
and the fires under our streets
that seethed pounding steel and stone
into a slow oily dust
on which we lived, like crystals
Condemned to breathe, I cried out
And that bright planet rising,
there, beyond our haggard roofs,
that distant evening friend
who follows like a good bitch
and keeps her clear eye on us,
wary of our promises
Condemned to touch, I took you
And later, that pale river
of cold light across the sky,
too far to carry us now —
what did we say it must be?
dead clouds, or a mist of souls
blown off by the polar winds…
Condemned to eat, I ate you
It was then our count began,
and we measured all our stars
and knew each one by its name,
marking its history down
from white light to russet flames,
and our night shrank, our night grew
Condemned to hear, I killed you
What was left? the world prostrate,
and in this furnace these bones,
glowing on their mound of ash,
all that remained of the past,
hissing, snapping like green wood,
charring our eyes, and the moon
Condemned to see, I sought you
Do you recall those hard roads,
frozen, gray as the small moon
hanging over these blank hills
where we wandered, drifting west
with those others, armed shadows,
men and women and their dogs?
Condemned to move, I came here
As our earth and sky went black
I stopped and stood, I waited,
without moon or stars or time —
no, you were not among them,
you were nothing anymore —
and our long night almost gone
and I was awake at last
Condemned to live, I speak now
Sleeping
but this is where I came in
I said floating fast asleep
my fists clenched my feet kicking
my eyes shut to the salt deeps
my tail thrashing at black ooze
here the currents carried me
as though these waters were mine
and here is another door
I said when the surf opened
and I crawled out dreaming still
on the bleached and broken shore
my bones swelled in my soft skin
my snout lifted from the sand
as though these sharp rocks were mine
but there must be a way there
I said beyond this cave’s mouth
and I strode out in the snow
my arms before me weapons
my eyes fixed on the high pass
where the winds whirled the light round
as though this world were mine
and the last door is that flame
I said that flame flowing down
like the sun falling like air
falling earth water falling
and I ran on into fire
my thought burning through my sleep
as though its ash would be mine
but here is another door
I said walking into you
mother your breast waiting wide
father a child in your lap
myself a child too once more
my dish my spoon before me
as though this were our morning
and I woke inside my sleep
I said as the door swung out
poor streets poor walls poor windows
the staring blanks of slummed faces
mouths fading behind blurred hands
ruins like women begging
as though their love had been mine
but this world is hard I said
break it take the seeds of life
plant them in my heart I said
water them and submit me
to your heat I said your sun
till I wake inside my life
I said as though it were mine
Thinking
your hands wrung these words from me
shook me dry as this old book
that has laughed its last and wept
and withers here in the dust
mouse-stained mildewed forgotten
in the lobe of my left lung
where it waits for me like death
like a man born just today
out of his own life saying
but does my mother know me
she knows me she knows me not
and does my father know me
he knows me he knows me not
till the answer comes like death
like my family my friends
who gather at this table
in the wilderness my home
amongst these sweating machines
and show me their broken cups
their empty plates their hunger
surrounding my heart like death
like faces condemned to live
on the anger of cold stairs
trudging out their conviction
from nowhere back to nowhere
just as I climbed on your words
from the child’s grave in my arms
to this sentence served like death
like my one love my lady
lying in her narrow bed
her thoughts bitter as her breasts
her hair clotted in her groin
my tongue stumbling on her teeth
our groans of futile passion
flesh beating at flesh like death
like prayer this offering
made from fossil scraps strange signs
phrases buried by prophets
beneath our floor of charred stone
the smashed skulls of temple feasts
remnants of some other life
hidden inside us like death
without words I know your words
promising me your silence
when I can stand in the sea
and feed the hands that feed me
when I can find my own face
and know what I know no more
you will speak to me like death
Praying
this is the way waking is
you were here just as I am
whispering to me your breathing
wakes me now you can hear me
look at me lying naked
as the sun in your mirror
and blank as your eyes and mine
like water trembling naked
at the edge of this calmed shore
where you watched for evening
and listened to these shadows
our words floating suspended
on the surface of our lives
between your day and my nights
stones my animal hands dropped
shells scraped thin scarred by my claws
bones pounded open sucked dry
strewn like words through your strata
darkness hidden in darkness
where you vanished with my name
my animal name in your mouth
my faithful animal legs
still prowling your lost forest
will pause where paths met and passed
silent paths that led to time
once a great tree living here
rooted in my heart in rock
bare now cracking in the sun
no passage for light in me
yet my patience grows like sand
my animal feet sinking
in shattered crystals of sand
dunes of bright sand wandering
where my desert drifts silent
and its stars have no stories
behind me beyond those hills
a stubble of stumps rotting
where the stream winds itself down
cold and clear rattling pebbles
in this head like my hard thoughts
of nothing but nothing but
your water your pouring light
until I know you are here
and my animal heart laughs
lungs cry belly bleeds and face
my animal face breaks off
leaving me alone my life
tied now head to toe to you
my life my animal death
On a Winged Phallus, Roman, Bronze with Bronze Balls, That I Gave My Friend, a Token To Be Hung on His Key Chain
Asleep, curled in your pocket,
he waits, his wings quivering,
and with his two old friends dreams
of those moist, those blue mornings
before these shrinking, white days
that crack our chilled hearts like glass
came to tell us of winter
Do you remember those breasts?
How straight she walked, eyes opened,
her long arms held out, her hands
strong and tapered, cupped flowers,
offering you her friendship,
like the touch of love’s kindness
her smiling lips showed she knew?
Out of an early hour,
with a flecking of salt spume
you could taste on her shoulders
and her hair heavy with youth,
faint stars caught in its coiled ropes,
she had come to greet you, yes,
so that you would see, and know
And you woke, as though the sun
were waking too, round and warm,
and growing from her belly
as she stood there in silence,
waiting till you rose, and stood,
till you let your locked thoughts go
and welcomed her against you
Again! Again and again!
Dont you remember her breasts?
that bright sky that shone on you
as the garden turned drifting
amongst those mountain orchards
and the sun pressed sweating down
on their swollen, dripping fruit?
And then she laughed, how she laughed!
her smooth limbs flung blazing wide
then wound round you tightening
as you thrashed in terror, trapped-
all that day long you struggled,
a beast, child, man-a young god
crying and singing and wild
as the hot red dusk crumbled
and fell in ashes on you
where you sprawled between wrecked walls
your bones burning themselves out
your mind staring at that sky,
cold, blind, black and high, so high…
Dont you remember her, now?
Waiting
All that day they strolled past me
flexing their innocent thighs
their song pitiless, secret
humming strange words I still hear
like souls saved, soft and glowing
I could never find myself
while I waited for their eyes
At the bottom of my stairs
I waited always a child
crouching at home in this street
shivering, my few words fouled
my wrists bitten white with fear
hiding your love up my sleeve
where it sucked my hot eyes dry
When I touched your opened lips
when I licked your turning tongue
the walls cracked, the wind whistled
roads rose and fell in my brain
birds above those roads flying
your words waiting for my mouth
echoes trapped in these mountains
Feet tied with your running hair
fingers crushed by your shoulders
ears drowned in your flooding breasts
my throat pressed between your hands
hands heavy with long waiting
that tear me out of my face
before I find your secret
Ask me, you said, what you want
lift the stone of my lost head
that black rough turning stone world
harsh and buried in your lap
dense as a dead star and packed
with ancient thoughts, thoughts waiting
and mute till the end, like you
Bodies, sealed bodies waiting
face to face, or back to back
back to back, or head and toe
head and toe, or side by side
latticed, laced and sliding
like plasma into my heart
swollen with time, radiant
Year by year I climb, ravaged
up my stairs again with you
in my hands torn and savage
your words waiting, whispering
beating like my life on yours
and yours on mine, like the waves
that burst from your ravaged eyes
Hustling
If/Jo rget thee
1
When my wife wrote this poem
in my dream last night I laughed:
she knew all the ways to say
hustle: hustle and hustle
and hustle… I woke, hustling-
there we lay, third stage burned out,
orbiting and forgotten
2
Four times I crossed this damned town
north south east west drove all day
just burning up the freeways
as long as my gas lasted
and I was still a free man
with my wheel in these two hands-
but I never saw you there
3
She lies alone in her bed
cold hands pressed between cold thighs
her skull swollen and empty
as her eyes, her lips, her breasts-
he will come, carry her down,
pour her out of her lost life,
and burn his dead fears away
4
We were numbered, each of us
a number but those numbers
burned into us through our skin
a reference in the files. .
oh quick, quick, find us find us
before these ashes crumble,
whirling numbers on the wind
5
For homes they levelled these hills
surrounded you with their guns
while we sat and drank our beer
watching his dogs tear at her
because she’s cunt she’s proud she
says if it’s good then take it
but I think I’ll burn it down
6
the map showed no signs of us
when you held it to the light
no wrecks rusting in your veins
no white rows of broken teeth
or flesh torn, flapping like tents
burnt through by forgotten wars-
yet it’s there we’ll die, again
7
I had made my life my god,
who cursed me with my own words,
these cold letters burning you,
everywhere, like a blessing:
so that my death brings you life
and you think that you are free…
like the stones that walk this world
Losing
what am I who else but me
monkey twitching monkey hair
lipping my toes ca ca ca
in my tunnel in my trees
blessed by bees my me my me
sleeping with my family
like me like me ca ca ca
you yes you you know it’s you
no one else where you are you
squatting at the wall the flies
the sun the stone merciless
cities driven from each door
your father’s face in your hands
your mother’s voice in your cries
him oh him he feels himself
climbing in his contraption
his praying machine now up
now down his darkness carries
him his words whirling him now
light lighter than light and how
he stands himself on himself
from space she falls from nowhere
her dreams sheathe her skin like gold
her eyes cut blanks in the void
and she floats through time shining
as though flying to herself
that strange warm body down there
turning dark like this planet
coiled inside itself hiding
itself resonant with lust
to be itself to be all
in these hot cells its gardens
invisible acids molds
dust quivering and common
living on death’s vacant winds
what do you think of our place
we built it for ourselves look
the walls thighs roof backs floor breasts
patched males females hands knees good
filled with sand our old home look
when we come here we will stay
tonight our tribe is starving
this morning they knew it all
each one came to his own stone
each stone touching every stone
face to face harder than hate
one long slow joy without light
until their eyes were ground out
their thoughts crushed fused lost like love
Finding
they have reached these vague borders
occupied passes swamps plains
patrol these hot forest trails
they regroup rearm confer
they command the air above
they are ready to invade
they think the dead defenceless
years we marched from day to day
we ate root stem leaf flower
and fruit we tore flesh sucked bones
laughing together dancing
weeping like children we killed
and burned our own fat for light
never thinking they would come
first it must be found once more
although it was never lost
it waits somewhere like a thought
the thought is shaped like a key
this key fits a certain gate
yet that gate was never locked
because no one built this wall
unseen she turns reflected
in the mirrors locked in her self
all light lost in her black holes
her ears her ass armpits nose
cunt navel womb her blank eyes
her mouth is open singing
fuck it baby ofuck it!
dust swelling hot radiant
bursting he hurtles dispersed
beyond his own space boiling
bulging from his bones like time
fists feet skull knees neck shoulders
his prick his teeth clanging o!
love, mother of the muses!
there you are but coming here
like a steel shadow always
and shaped like your poor body
under living fire shattered fires
you surround your enemy
yourself hunting yourself yes
have you understood have you
I wake now I stand I breathe
I walk I find touch seize you
to me they trooped my armies
my savage children trampling
eating my face drinking blood
storming my blank wall
they find us together now
Falling
I lie strewn on these blind sands
that shift in the August breeze
and blow back on winter gales
etching my bones grain by grain
with faint words I speak now
as I slide from these seasons
a man falling from the sun
what sifts through my bleached skull
agate chips shells emptied claws
frayed bits of broken silence
floating up to the world’s skin
as I sink in this long fall
through the staring darkness
through time through these dry sands drowned
and dropping slowly drifting
past the frenzied spinning worlds
past stars that blossom and burst
raining shattered light as dust
that sweeps over the last shores
in dead foam of bitter pearl
blasting the void where I fall
straight through this stilled universe
crushing our stone to nothing
like a thin floor of hard space
and far how far below there
a lake of black waters wide
cold waters held deep held pure
in the open hands of death
towards which I am falling
my life burning out my bones
cell by stubborn cell crumbling
dissolving my selves at last
waste shadows traced through this night
lost between being and not
annihilated and gone
plunged at the end and falling
still falling towards that lake
those ancient heavy waters
no hands can touch no mouth drink
waters waiting under the sands
for all that falls from above
and falls thinking to the end
to enter the quiet pool
stripped of hope fear stripped away
and every fearful turning
of that rope of twisted words
that tied me to my own thoughts
naked of words now and thoughts
I slip blank beneath its waves
Parting
your hand touches your breast here
where I lie fading a bruise
like my words my lips my tongue
holding your hurt heart my mouth
gripping at you still attached
as though my teeth were fingers
tracing a path through your veins
towards you as you drive west
into that gentle valley
up a vague road winding slow
among the rolling pastures
as old as America
yet virgin still and waiting
for you to carry love here
like the pain your hand touches
silent as I am silent
when you stop by the white house
standing awash in dead leaves
fallen over these years leaves
I remember them brown years
I had seen coming for us
whispering my words to you
again beneath your hand words
pressing hard against your breast
as though I stood beside you
opening the door wide now
for you to enter autumn
through this evening darkness
lighting the fire pouring wine
setting out apples and bread
as the year closes our time
where you sit with me and drink
hearing the wind in your oaks
tear at these words I write words
winter flings against your hills
while flame wraps your night once more
our cries flaring like embers
before the chill rains sweep down
flooding your gardens and field
burdening your path with ice
blocking your way towards dawn
the world’s light fogged and dimmed cold
and gray as these morning hours
crumbling into words like ash
where you wait for love alone
for the sun to break through here
under your hand at your breast
to warm what remains of me
stone that cannot speak again
Giving
now his hands are at my life
tearing these pearls from my throat
my gold bands from my locked wrists
my warm robe from my shoulders
his hands strip my sleep from me
as I watch his face his eyes
watching me in my mirror
where I see myself waking
standing in this room alone
an empty lunar crater
flooding now about my thighs
with time’s lightfilled urgent dust
rising like his words pressing
and soundless as love forcing
me on its forgotten way
to this meeting in me where
I have never come before
where I cannot come again
until his living fingers
bless my silent lips these stones
sealed like my body silent
opening my dreaming eyes
at last to my secret death
among these broken passions
these enemies and lovers
starving friends who bind my arms
leading me always astray
from the memory of life
when I want to drink my life
from this cup my poor fathers
gave me the cup their fathers
carried from Jerusalem
the cup he places in my hands
filling it with blood pouring
my life for me to drink now
until I come to myself
and stand like his shadowed self
here in my wide empty eyes
before me in my mirror
calling him to me from darkness
discarding this long silence
and giving myself to him
as though he will gather me
together in his hands
and restore my scattered years
in that hour brief as love
before I fall from that joy
down to my darkening sleep
where I wait for him once more
Reading
she opens the book and reads
black letters blank words phrases
like these written in my head
by a hand rough with bear’s blood
sentences stitched together
pelt by pelt and worn
a lifetime by a strange beast
where she sits there is no dark
the winds tear round in my head
keeping the carcasses cold
the fire smokes the walls glisten
with wan light a winter’s life
flickering in its stone cup
shaping these words from shadows
until they fill her cold lap
with blood that streams down her legs
to the ground my father’s ground
packed with thinking bones with words
like these words wrapped in ashes
formed by the forms forming her
from the words on this dark page
as I was from the stone roof
that glittered with insect stars
in that staring woman’s eyes
where she lay by the low flame
summoning me in my flesh
and thrusting me at your world
to be destroyed with the rest
leaving what is left for you
where men fall fighting these streets
with hands stripped naked as girls
women roaming wild like cows
gaunt boys clutching at their breasts
children heaped in your doorways
spilled like plastic bags of trash
can she hear me speaking now
I am walking back and forth
through her eyes in a circle
tirelessly from line to line
my words making her lips move
as though she saw herself stand
raising her arms towards me
and calling my name the name
she knows I have forgotten
the name written in her book
in lines cut in her body
wound on her long arms like snakes
waters clouds rivers of rain
masked by this script like my name
Surveyors
We walked along these high walls,
which have no gates, no windows,
which stand scarred, burnt by old wars
and barbarous, mere neglect.
When we asked what lay inside,
they said, Your lost paradise,
your holy city of love,
which will never let you in,
though you may march forty years
round and round, blowing horns
and battering at its stone.
A foolish story! you said.
A story for fools, I said.
Day after day, we kept on:
this must be China, we said,
ruined both sides of the wall.
So we searched for our lost selves
here in our human desert
where all must live, and all dies,
even those old Emperors
who made this forbidden wall
that keeps us from the city,
the holy city of love
that will never let us in…
till we stand still, you and I,
in silence, and build our own.
Lines on the Neck of a Crude Amphora Which I Dug Up in a Field in Sicily
the broken neck of the vanished jar
remembers the oil the water the wine
that poured through its thirsty throat
the body that held it high, so frail,
shattered into its mud again
this thickened throat remains and
remembers and speaks still
of bodies filled with fresh joys
the water oil wine of ancient ways
hand to hand out of the world
into the world again
as though this neck held the head
as though that vanished fulfilled body
restores itself
in time with us again
Under the Stars
Their presences draw near
of all that I must fear;
no others seem like those
who come from nowhere close,
from nothingness appear
and stand in silence here
as though they came to me
because they come for me.
My life my flesh my bone
are mine, but not my own;
[who was eloquent,
who am, inconsequent
now as spent violence,
standing in the silence
of a ring of many,
a silent company.
No matter what I do
I do not speak to you
though I am speaking now
how I do not know how
and though it’s you I see
you do not speak to me;
of all whom I did fear
your presences are here.