I foot the ladder
I called upon the wheat
I called upon the spaces where only an ibex can stand
I called upon the swollen silence, the space between the keys
I called upon the distended bulb of awkward air that is my usher unto
the people of this world.
I called upon God to change my purpose for me
but all I saw were white shapes in the darkness.
he had sent his heralds with the long horns and bugles
the thrones and cherubim suspended like a women’s pearls about the neck
but i was too deaf and hard of seeing
on what was happening in my day to day
in my aloneness
in my facebook messages
in my bank account.
I thought the die was cast and so
I rode their mercy like an uncut Arabian steed.
I was young and my shadow was a
bad foretelling -
like worms drowning on the pavement-
like an empty soul factory in the bathroom stall.
but I’m on borrowed time like a black cat dream on
the narrows and the cobblestones.
like how a broken broom breaks all gypsy curses,
black cat dreams are never wrong, and
in the deep statecraft of my undoing I’m almost sorry for
what I asked for.
See, there are two of me and they are crowing
I know not which one bodes the ill intent and which one wields the cyanide.
but both are mostly indolent in their listening
to the building of the gallows.
Every breath is a fatality
Every hand full of dirt is a genesis
and I can hear the hangman at the gallows.
Let Justice Be Done, Though The Heavens Fall
and i’ll go see my brother on the water.
halfway up the sky he’ll build eternity outside of time,
and I will foot the ladder.
birds of hollow bone they herald my undoing,
planting white lilies in my heart.
by the building of the gallows I will foot the ladder
sometimes there are only hammers
sometimes all I see are nails.
where is the healing balm in this dreamscape that I invented?
he’s holding sulfur in his death hand.
I looked up and asked him for a bright lantern
I asked him to keep this pen alive and to fix me to his liking
I asked him for a bamboo raft worthy of the rapids.
I told him that when I was in California I was so sad I couldn't see the ocean.
I asked him that if I were to give penance
could he take these tumors in his hands.
all i saw were reflections of him smiling
like long eclipses on comanche moons.
I heard the gears of the clock all grinding but the hands were spinning loose.
I wanted to be home then, but he said I already was. And then he told me:
You are the gallows and the hammers
You are the black cat and broken brooms
You are the pavement and the worms and
the drowning and the nails
You are the lilies and the wheat
You are your brother and his dreaming
You are the cyanide and the birds.
but i’ve so much invested already in the crawling
in and out of beds
that all there is left to do is
foot the ladder till I'm no longer deaf to the horse's mouth,
to the screaming of the diad in their forgetting of their
Oneness
Of their Atonement
Of their dreaming of the dream.