I have passed through
The narrow canyons of cerebrum
While listening odes of mature cells
Vibrating slowly
And a fresh Pine resin, Oak moss and fresh Ozone winded my hairs
Inside my nose
Plugged my alveolus ready to burst of indescribable pleasure
I’ve heard sounds of sprinkling blood
From my wounded feet
Leaving blueprint of the thirsty soul…
For
Knowledge, Wisdom and Enlightenment
That slowly bows in a front of God
Only by us called LOVE
In an emerald macadam to show the path
To the following procession of creatures
From all Gurdijeffian Octaves
Which as a golden fig are blossoming from within?
You may call me outpour of passion
And you’ll not be mistaken
You may call me lanolin extracted from merino
And you’ll not be mistaken
You may call me a broken porcelain soldier
And you’ll not be mistaken
You may call me a bee that soaks the nectar from
thousands of roses
And you’ll not be mistaken
You may call me a yellow topaz
A child of carbon
And you’ll not be mistaken
You may call me a felt petal of the white rose
And you’ll not be mistaken
You may call me believer who prays for the sins
of human multitude
And you’ll not be mistaken
You may even call me human that mix with angels
unaware of his innocence
And you’ll not be mistaken
But I know
I know spirit does not have a gender
The wind misses the color
The grass is painted green by transparent rain
Alchemy is a transformation of mother’s milk into blood
Heaven is nature and man is Hell
But the Mother is God in Heaven and Earth
Thus I’m hardly a human.

For Grace Bulmer Bowers


From narrow provinces
of fish and bread and tea,
home of the long tides
where the bay leaves the sea
twice a day and takes
the herrings long rides,

where if the river
enters or retreats
in a wall of brown foam
depends on if it meets
the bay coming in,
the bay not at home;

where, silted red,
sometimes the sun sets
facing a red sea,
and others, veins the flats'
lavender, rich mud
in burning rivulets;

on red, gravelly roads,
down rows of sugar maples,
past clapboard farmhouses
and neat, clapboard churches,
bleached, ridged as clamshells,
past twin silver birches,

through late afternoon
a bus journeys west,
the windshield flashing pink,
pink glancing off of metal,
brushing the dented flank
of blue, beat-up enamel;

down hollows, up rises,
and waits, patient, while
a lone traveller gives
kisses and embraces
to seven relatives
and a collie supervises.

Goodbye to the elms,
to the farm, to the dog.
The bus starts.  The light
grows richer; the fog,
shifting, salty, thin,
comes closing in.

Its cold, round crystals
form and slide and settle
in the white hens' feathers,
in gray glazed cabbages,
on the cabbage roses
and lupins like apostles;

the sweet peas cling
to their wet white string
on the whitewashed fences;
bumblebees creep
inside the foxgloves,
and evening commences.

One stop at Bass River.
Then the Economies
Lower, Middle, Upper;
Five Islands, Five Houses,
where a woman shakes a tablecloth
out after supper.

A pale flickering.  Gone.
The Tantramar marshes
and the smell of salt hay.
An iron bridge trembles
and a loose plank rattles
but doesn't give way.

On the left, a red light
swims through the dark:
a ship's port lantern.
Two rubber boots show,
illuminated, solemn.
A dog gives one bark.

A woman climbs in
with two market bags,
brisk, freckled, elderly.
"A grand night.  Yes, sir,
all the way to Boston."
She regards us amicably.

Moonlight as we enter
the New Brunswick woods,
hairy, scratchy, splintery;
moonlight and mist
caught in them like lamb's wool
on bushes in a pasture.

The passengers lie back.
Snores.  Some long sighs.
A dreamy divagation
begins in the night,
a gentle, auditory,
slow hallucination. . . .

In the creakings and noises,
an old conversation
--not concerning us,
but recognizable, somewhere,
back in the bus:
Grandparents' voices

uninterruptedly
talking, in Eternity:
names being mentioned,
things cleared up finally;
what he said, what she said,
who got pensioned;

deaths, deaths and sicknesses;
the year he remarried;
the year (something) happened.
She died in childbirth.
That was the son lost
when the schooner foundered.

He took to drink. Yes.
She went to the bad.
When Amos began to pray
even in the store and
finally the family had
to put him away.

"Yes . . ." that peculiar
affirmative.  "Yes . . ."
A sharp, indrawn breath,
half groan, half acceptance,
that means "Life's like that.
We know it (also death)."

Talking the way they talked
in the old featherbed,
peacefully, on and on,
dim lamplight in the hall,
down in the kitchen, the dog
tucked in her shawl.

Now, it's all right now
even to fall asleep
just as on all those nights.
--Suddenly the bus driver
stops with a jolt,
turns off his lights.

A moose has come out of
the impenetrable wood
and stands there, looms, rather,
in the middle of the road.
It approaches; it sniffs at
the bus's hot hood.

Towering, antlerless,
high as a church,
homely as a house
(or, safe as houses).
A man's voice assures us
"Perfectly harmless. . . ."

Some of the passengers
exclaim in whispers,
childishly, softly,
"Sure are big creatures."
"It's awful plain."
"Look! It's a she!"

Taking her time,
she looks the bus over,
grand, otherworldly.
Why, why do we feel
(we all feel) this sweet
sensation of joy?

"Curious creatures,"
says our quiet driver,
rolling his r's.
"Look at that, would you."
Then he shifts gears.
For a moment longer,

by craning backward,
the moose can be seen
on the moonlit macadam;
then there's a dim
smell of moose, an acrid
smell of gasoline.

When, like a running grave, time tracks you down,
Your calm and cuddled is a scythe of hairs,
Love in her gear is slowly through the house,
Up naked stairs, a turtle in a hearse,
Hauled to the dome,

Comes, like a scissors stalking, tailor age,
Deliver me who timid in my tribe,
Of love am barer than Cadaver's trap
Robbed of the foxy tongue, his footed tape
Of the bone inch

Deliver me, my masters, head and heart,
Heart of Cadaver's candle waxes thin,
When blood, *****-handed, and the logic time
Drive children up like bruises to the thumb,
From maid and head,

For, sunday faced, with dusters in my glove,
Chaste and the chaser, man with the cockshut eye,
I, that time's jacket or the coat of ice
May fail to fasten with a ****** o
In the straight grave,

Stride through Cadaver's country in my force,
My pickbrain masters morsing on the stone
Despair of blood faith in the maiden's slime,
Halt among eunuchs, and the nitric stain
On fork and face.

Time is a foolish fancy, time and fool.
No, no, you lover skull, descending hammer
Descends, my masters, on the entered honour.
You hero skull, Cadaver in the hangar
Tells the stick, 'fail.'

Joy is no knocking nation, sir and madam,
The cancer's fashion, or the summer feather
Lit on the cuddled tree, the cross of fever,
Not city tar and subway bored to foster
Man through macadam.

I dump the waxlights in your tower dome.
Joy is the knock of dust, Cadaver's shoot
Of bud of Adam through his boxy shift,
Love's twilit nation and the skull of state,
Sir, is your doom.

Everything ends, the tower ending and,
(Have with the house of wind), the leaning scene,
Ball of the foot depending from the sun,
(Give, summer, over), the cemented skin,
The actions' end.

All, men my madmen, the unwholesome wind
With whistler's cough contages, time on track
Shapes in a cinder death; love for his trick,
Happy Cadaver's hunger as you take
The kissproof world.

For the angels who inhabit this town,
although their shape constantly changes,
each night we leave some cold potatoes
and a bowl of milk on the windowsill.
Usually they inhabit heaven where,
by the way, no tears are allowed.
They push the moon around like
a boiled yam.
The Milky Way is their hen
with her many children.
When it is night the cows lie down
but the moon, that big bull,
stands up.

However, there is a locked room up there
with an iron door that can't be opened.
It has all your bad dreams in it.
It is hell.
Some say the devil locks the door
from the inside.
Some say the angels lock it from the outside.
The people inside have no water
and are never allowed to touch.
They crack like macadam.
They are mute.
They do not cry help
except inside
where their hearts are covered with grubs.

I would like to unlock that door,
turn the rusty key
and hold each fallen one in my arms
but I cannot, I cannot.
I can only sit here on earth
at my place at the table.

Darkness
as black as your eyelid,
poketricks of stars,
the yellow mouth,
the smell of a stranger,
dawn coming up,
dark blue,
no stars,
the smell of a love,
warmer now
as authenic as soap,
wave after wave
of lightness
and the birds in their chains
going mad with throat noises,
the birds in their tracks
yelling into their cheeks like clowns,
lighter, lighter,
the stars gone,
the trees appearing in their green hoods,
the house appearing across the way,
the road and its sad macadam,
the rock walls losing their cotton,
lighter, lighter,
letting the dog out and seeing
fog lift by her legs,
a gauze dance,
lighter, lighter,
yellow, blue at the tops of trees,
more God, more God everywhere,
lighter, lighter,
more world everywhere,
sheets bent back for people,
the strange heads of love
and breakfast,
that sacrament,
lighter, yellower,
like the yolk of eggs,
the flies gathering at the windowpane,
the dog inside whining for good
and the day commencing,
not to die, not to die,
as in the last day breaking,
a final day digesting itself,
lighter, lighter,
the endless colors,
the same old trees stepping toward me,
the rock unpacking its crevices,
breakfast like a dream
and the whole day to live through,
steadfast, deep, interior.
After the death,
after the black of black,
the lightness,-
not to die, not to die-
that God begot.

beholding
the tipping
Big Dipper,
with its
dangling
handle,
traverse a
midwinter
northern sky
rising
in concert
with a
steadfast
sword
wielding
Orion,
mooring
the southern
firmament,
I stand
atop a
splotch
of black
macadam,
straddling the
equidistant
expanse of
all
ascending
celestial
spheres

Music Selection
Charlie Parker
Estrellita

Oakland
1/23/15
jbm

Almost yesterday, those gentle ladies stole
to their baths in Atlantic Cuty, for the lost
rites of the first sea of the first salt
running from a faucet. I have heard they sat
for hours in briny tubs, patting hotel towels
sweetly over shivered skin, smelling the stale
harbor of a lost ocean, praying at last
for impossible loves, or new skin, or still
another child. And since this was the style,
I don't suppose they knew what they had lost.

Almost yesterday, pushing West, I lost
ten Utah driving minutes, stopped to steal
past postcard vendors, crossed the hot slit
of macadam to touch the marvelous loosed
bobbing of The Salt Lake, to honor and assault
it in its proof, to wash away some slight
need for Maine's coast. Later the funny salt
itched in my pores and stung like bees or sleet.
I rinsed it off on Reno and hurried to steal
a better proof at tables where I always lost.

Today is made of yesterday, each time I steal
toward rites I do not know, waiting for the lost
ingredient, as if salt or money or even lust
would keep us calm and prove us whole at last.

War; absolute
This will be my macadam into re-assemblage
For if I'm not on edge, I'm taking up too much precious space
What wickedness lies beneath the surface of the skin?
I should know this place better than anyone
But my landscape has become mercurial
Ever changing, impossible to map
I am forced to navigate its pitfalls in ever complicating ways
It has become a desolate place
I alone should rule here, my sovereignty unquestioned
Yet I've become content to be complacent, and have allowed a sickly intruder to slip past my walls
They infect, demoralize: turn my skin to stone
They must be expunged; cut out, snipped from the healthy flesh like a cancer
As one removes a gangrenous foot to save the leg
Though my tools at the moment are blunt, I sharpen them daily with the whetstone afforded to me
They will not continue to expel bile into the bloodstream for long
My strength returns by the hour
They know this, and they tremble
I am the goddess to whom this altar is devoted
I am righteous fury, come to cleanse this blight with holy fire and flood
The war drums sound as the gate is lifted

The iron bell tolls -- judgement day cometh

I cherish you

like the feeling of cracking open
the window on the first day of spring
Feeling the warmth of the sun
breathing in the smell of flowers and grass
hearing the birds awaken from a slumber

I cherish you

like waking in the dead of night
to the sound of a summer storm
Listening to the soothing patter
watching the lightening eluminate
as you smell the damp macadam

I cherish you

like that moment of precipus
before plumetting into sleep
It's a calm filled with ambiance
and warm enveloping bedsheets
that emphasize the taste of mint on your teeth

I cherish you

like hearing a hearty laugh or
putting on a new pair of socks
because the little things
the things we tend to take for granted
was the way I loved you --

the way I cherish you.

I have come to conclusion
over sunpierced crust
brittle as tobacco leaf
astride mottled nag
scraggling on loose gravel
sandsoaked
saltsteeped
leadheavy in lid
past dactyled tracks
parallel cobbled macadam
wavering shale
lockjawed lava rock
fractured cobalt
lone juniper
forgotten scrub
open boil of tar and pitch
halfburied bones of leviathan
still shifting in the clouded boom
of stone
through grapeshot hail
adobed pueblos
thatchskinned women
and straw men
all witches
flaying the gila
pestling scale with cornmeal
and fermented mescal
desert sangria
hallucinating sideways in the murk
where coyotes yip
and each star a conflagration
mirrored in the captive eyes
of floundered meteorites
at the terminus
where sun and moon merge
I know the question
and response
from where do you come
to where do you go

The granular spittle that remains in my throat
A long day between winter and spring
My state known only by friends few of them
My Love felt by every creature
The ******* that sprinkles with their hatred
And those that converts their names and faith
This suffocating visible plurality of creatures and bizarre manifestations
My spiritual nervation has strengthened
Soul cells are dancing the muttered nation’s dance called Love
Those who make *** in the air as flies’ foals hatred babies
Can you **** babies is our question
We the invisible plurality of divine creatures and manifestations
We the perpetual Theophany coruscate in pure hearts
As Sun in the dews of mornings full of vetyver, ambergris, limonene, fragrance and a slight skunk of civet, moschus and the sweat men by labor exhausted
We speak we sing we paint
With the act without exhaling a syllable from our holly mouths
We sprinkle with the aureate dust
Straight we look at Saturn ring color eyes and the color of peacock tale feather
We built a cube temple and play chess in cube
We love the terrain where the guests of Moses and Lot before him had passed through
We sing with Seraph of high realms we sing in sync
Here we bring joy in hearts of those who encroached in procession through emerald macadam
Where you seldom pass
We know by heart the Al Jaffr and ten Sefirots and we read the Liber Razielis
We accompanied Adam Kadmon in his solitude prior to separation and embodiment in terrain that will be bloodied by human through centuries
We have said to John to go in the river Jordan baptize the Christ and lead him on
For those who knows a little
We said to Waraka to prepare Muhammad to become the leader of those who seek the truth
We said to Bahaullah to explain men to take after women and the mother Earth
Otherwise in upcoming millennium the solely food of them shall be kernels and water
We said to Gibran commence the Theurgy for upcoming millennium being as solely artistic repose for creative men
We said to Fahredin write as much as possible and hush as a canyon stone
Until he finds his echo point
We…

In Nebraska, they are murdering transexuals
those with necks red as blood and lipstick
     This recording is the last of the words which are me
     -Play on the air for all to hear
or smash them between these two bricks
these two red bricks of earth and stone
     In Nebraska, they are murdering transexuals
which you may think is funny
when their lipstick gets smeared ridiculously
across the macadam
until you see their blood the same as yours
until they come for you
those "good old boys" with fists like bricks
and necks engorged with hate and spit
warm beer, **** and vinegar
sun beating down on their angry, little brains
 
     This is the final transcript
of all that I am
embellished with sequins and such
scrawled in *****
     These words are my lover's breaths
floating in darkness above cold ears
lost in cartoon-balloon blurbs
a drama of gasps
a flurry of snow and chipped nails
upon the pavement
across the prairie
in Nebraska

« Amis et frères ! en présence de ce gouvernement infâme, négation de toute morale, obstacle à tout progrès social, en présence de ce gouvernement meurtrier du peuple, assassin de la République et violateur des lois, de ce gouvernement né de la force et qui doit périr par la force, de ce gouvernement élevé par le crime et qui doit être terrassé par le droit, le français digne du nom de citoyen ne sait pas, ne veut pas savoir s'il y a quelque part des semblants de scrutin, des comédies de suffrage universel et des parodies d'appel à la nation ; il ne s'informe pas s'il y a des hommes qui votent et des hommes qui font voter, s'il y a un troupeau qu'on appelle le sénat et qui délibère et un autre troupeau qu'on appelle le peuple et qui obéit ; il ne s'informe pas si le pape va sacrer au maître-autel de Notre-Dame l'homme qui - n'en doutez pas, ceci est l'avenir inévitable - sera ferré au poteau par le bourreau ; - en présence de M. Bonaparte et de son gouvernement, le citoyen digne de ce nom ne fait qu'une chose et n'a qu'une chose à faire : charger son fusil, et attendre l'heure.

Jersey, le 31 octobre 1852.


Déclaration des proscrits républicains de Jersey, à propos de l'empire, publiée par le Moniteur, signée pour copie conforme :

VICTOR HUGO, FAURE, FOMBERTAUX.


« Nous flétrissons de l'énergie la plus vigoureuse de notre âme les ignobles et coupables manifestes du Parti du Crime. »

(RIANCEY, JOURNAL L'UNION, 22 NOVEMBRE.)

« Le Parti du Crime relève la tête. »

(TOUS LES JOURNAUX ÉLYSÉENS EN CHOEUR.)



Ainsi ce gouvernant dont l'ongle est une griffe,
Ce masque impérial, Bonaparte apocryphe,
À coup sûr Beauharnais, peut-être Verhueil,
Qui, pour la mettre en croix, livra, sbire cruel,
Rome républicaine à Rome catholique,
Cet homme, l'assassin de la chose publique,
Ce parvenu, choisi par le destin sans yeux,
Ainsi, lui, ce glouton singeant l'ambitieux,
Cette altesse quelconque habile aux catastrophes,
Ce loup sur qui je lâche une meute de strophes,
Ainsi ce boucanier, ainsi ce chourineur
À fait d'un jour d'orgueil un jour de déshonneur,
Mis sur la gloire un crime et souillé la victoire
Il a volé, l'infâme, Austerlitz à l'histoire ;
Brigand, dans ce trophée il a pris un poignard ;
Il a broyé bourgeois, ouvrier, campagnard ;
Il a fait de corps morts une horrible étagère
Derrière les barreaux de la cité Bergère ;
Il s'est, le sabre en main, rué sur son serment ;
Il a tué les lois et le gouvernement,
La justice, l'honneur, tout, jusqu'à l'espérance
Il a rougi de sang, de ton sang pur, ô France,
Tous nos fleuves, depuis la Seine jusqu'au Var ;
Il a conquis le Louvre en méritant Clamar ;
Et maintenant il règne, appuyant, ô patrie,
Son vil talon fangeux sur ta bouche meurtrie
Voilà ce qu'il a fait ; je n'exagère rien ;
Et quand, nous indignant de ce galérien,
Et de tous les escrocs de cette dictature,
Croyant rêver devant cette affreuse aventure,
Nous disons, de dégoût et d'horreur soulevés :
- Citoyens, marchons ! Peuple, aux armes, aux pavés !
À bas ce sabre abject qui n'est pas même un glaive !
Que le jour reparaisse et que le droit se lève ! -
C'est nous, proscrits frappés par ces coquins hardis,
Nous, les assassinés, qui sommes les bandits !
Nous qui voulons le meurtre et les guerres civiles !
Nous qui mettons la torche aux quatre coins des villes !

Donc, trôner par la mort, fouler aux pieds le droit
Etre fourbe, impudent, cynique, atroce, adroit ;
Dire : je suis César, et n'être qu'un maroufle
Etouffer la pensée et la vie et le souffle ;
Forcer quatre-vingt-neuf qui marche à reculer ;
Supprimer lois, tribune et presse ; museler
La grande nation comme une bête fauve ;
Régner par la caserne et du fond d'une alcôve ;
Restaurer les abus au profit des félons
Livrer ce pauvre peuple aux voraces Troplongs,
Sous prétexte qu'il fut, **** des temps où nous sommes,
Dévoré par les rois et par les gentilshommes
Faire manger aux chiens ce reste des lions ;
Prendre gaîment pour soi palais et millions ;
S'afficher tout crûment satrape, et, sans sourdines,
Mener joyeuse vie avec des gourgandines
Torturer des héros dans le bagne exécré ;
Bannir quiconque est ferme et fier ; vivre entouré
De grecs, comme à Byzance autrefois le despote
Etre le bras qui tue et la main qui tripote
Ceci, c'est la justice, ô peuple, et la vertu !
Et confesser le droit par le meurtre abattu
Dans l'exil, à travers l'encens et les fumées,
Dire en face aux tyrans, dire en face aux armées
- Violence, injustice et force sont vos noms
Vous êtes les soldats, vous êtes les canons ;
La terre est sous vos pieds comme votre royaume
Vous êtes le colosse et nous sommes l'atome ;
Eh bien ! guerre ! et luttons, c'est notre volonté,
Vous, pour l'oppression, nous, pour la liberté ! -
Montrer les noirs pontons, montrer les catacombes,
Et s'écrier, debout sur la pierre des tombes.
- Français ! craignez d'avoir un jour pour repentirs
Les pleurs des innocents et les os des martyrs !
Brise l'homme sépulcre, ô France ! ressuscite !
Arrache de ton flanc ce Néron parasite !
Sors de terre sanglante et belle, et dresse-toi,
Dans une main le glaive et dans l'autre la loi ! -
Jeter ce cri du fond de son âme proscrite,
Attaquer le forban, démasquer l'hypocrite
Parce que l'honneur parle et parce qu'il le faut,
C'est le crime, cela ! - Tu l'entends, toi, là-haut !
Oui, voilà ce qu'on dit, mon Dieu, devant ta face !
Témoin toujours présent qu'aucune ombre n'efface,
Voilà ce qu'on étale à tes yeux éternels !

Quoi ! le sang fume aux mains de tous ces criminels !
Quoi ! les morts, vierge, enfant, vieillards et femmes grosses
Ont à peine eu le temps de pourrir dans leurs fosses !
Quoi ! Paris saigne encor ! quoi ! devant tous les yeux,
Son faux serment est là qui plane dans les cieux !
Et voilà comme parle un tas d'êtres immondes
Ô noir bouillonnement des colères profondes !

Et maint vivant, gavé, triomphant et vermeil,
Reprend : « Ce bruit qu'on fait dérange mon sommeil.
Tout va bien. Les marchands triplent leurs clientèles,
Et nos femmes ne sont que fleurs et que dentelles !
- De quoi donc se plaint-on ? crie un autre quidam ;
En flânant sur l'asphalte et sur le macadam,
Je gagne tous les jours trois cents francs à la Bourse.
L'argent coule aujourd'hui comme l'eau d'une source ;
Les ouvriers maçons ont trois livres dix sous,
C'est superbe ; Paris est sens dessus dessous.
Il paraît qu'on a mis dehors les démagogues.
Tant mieux. Moi j'applaudis les bals et les églogues
Du prince qu'autrefois à tort je reniais.
Que m'importe qu'on ait chassé quelques niais ?
Quant aux morts, ils sont morts. Paix à ces imbéciles !
Vivent les gens d'esprit ! vivent ces temps faciles
Où l'on peut à son choix prendre pour nourricier
Le crédit mobilier ou le crédit foncier !
La république rouge aboie en ses cavernes,
C'est affreux ! Liberté, droit, progrès, balivernes
Hier encor j'empochais une prime d'un franc ;
Et moi, je sens fort peu, j'en conviens, je suis franc,
Les déclamations m'étant indifférentes,
La baisse de l'honneur dans la hausse des rentes. »

Ô langage hideux ! on le tient, on l'entend !
Eh bien, sachez-le donc ; repus au cœur content,
Que nous vous le disions bien une fois pour toutes,
Oui, nous, les vagabonds dispersés sur les routes,
Errant sans passe-port, sans nom et sans foyer,
Nous autres, les proscrits qu'on ne fait pas ployer,
Nous qui n'acceptons point qu'un peuple s'abrutisse,
Qui d'ailleurs ne voulons, tout en voulant justice,
D'aucune représaille et d'aucun échafaud,
Nous, dis-je, les vaincus sur qui Mandrin prévaut,
Pour que la liberté revive, et que la honte
Meure, et qu'à tous les fronts l'honneur serein remonte,
Pour affranchir romains, lombards, germains, hongrois,
Pour faire rayonner, soleil de tous les droits,
La république mère au centre de l'Europe,
Pour réconcilier le palais et l'échoppe,
Pour faire refleurir la fleur Fraternité,
Pour fonder du travail le droit incontesté,
Pour tirer les martyrs de ces bagnes infâmes,
Pour rendre aux fils le père et les maris aux femmes,
Pour qu'enfin ce grand siècle et cette nation
Sortent du Bonaparte et de l'abjection,
Pour atteindre à ce but où notre âme s'élance,
Nous nous ceignons les reins dans l'ombre et le silence
Nous nous déclarons prêts, prêts, entendez-vous bien ?
- Le sacrifice est tout, la souffrance n'est rien, -
Prêts, quand Dieu fera signe, à donner notre vie
Car, à voir ce qui vit, la mort nous fait envie,
Car nous sommes tous mal sous ce drôle effronté,
Vivant, nous sans patrie, et vous sans liberté !

Oui, sachez-le, vous tous que l'air libre importune
Et qui dans ce fumier plantez votre fortune,
Nous ne laisserons pas le peuple s'assoupir ;
Oui, nous appellerons, jusqu'au dernier soupir,
Au secours de la France aux fers et presque éteinte,
Comme nos grands -aïeux, l'insurrection sainte
Nous convierons Dieu même à foudroyer ceci
Et c'est notre pensée et nous sommes ainsi,
Aimant mieux, dût le sort nous broyer sous sa roue,
Voir couler notre sang que croupir votre boue.

Jersey, le 28 janvier 1853.

My inner tongue trips
over her yesterday
morning’s extemporaneous
homily and its retelling
rains down on me
temporal anomalies
through which I’ll slip the bleached
monotony chasing me.

Turn key,
return me
to the upturned
glee of a midnight macadam.

Unmanned, it’s where
the manholes open up to me
their traps of sunken yet
stacked wire-mesh baskets.

They’ve been left
to catch a refused few
turquoise-beaded strings
mixed with ash
feather-dusted by the lime,
tangerine and grape
wing beats of exotic birds
too meek to fly upward.

There the tensile tip of a sweet
and fecund smell grips me
and it squeezes out
visions of too-soon
dying in that bed
where a stripped truth lies
tenderly with the on-putting
of my put-off lies.

A low hiss heralds happy heat
and radiating pings rap me
down the shrinking-shadow hall
away from Hedone’s keep.

In the singular
pleasure of this rhythmic pluralism
my nouns and verbs find
their final agreement:
*All we’ve known
is what a wanting wind’s foretold,
but its chilly, willful voice
can no longer hold us.

The overture sounds a muffled thud,
       And scraping flesh against macadam.
Un-rosined bows screech across nerves,
                     Dividing molecules to atoms.
Each neuron fires off, splicing into three
The soul from the body,
          and something indescribably between.

Catching fire, he ascends -
            "This is what it truly means to be!"
Each piece, each side
Breaking away in-finitely
To somehow become more whole
Through division, and in balance.
                  Like a reunion, of holy trinity,
                       Caught ablaze in fissile symphony.

                   -  -  -

And like a cork popped from Prosecco,
Rewound, and played reversed,
       He careens with a whining pitch
       And
                 f
                    a
                  ­     l
                          l
                            s
   ­                           From orbit,
                                  Back to earth.

Glimpsing God
Only to be clawed back
To the pains and pleasures of Samsara,
        To taste the bitterness of my own blood,
        Transposed
        From the ecstasy of Nirvana.

This is how I came to know the realm,
     In which our feeble bodies lurch.
'Ere I was born as a phoenix
                       from the ashes.
      In the rear cabin of a hearse.

This early winter has already slipped from the macadam,
Bloats the creek I see
From the perch of rusted manhole covers
Their tunnels rush with concrete.

It falls over the v-shaped Two-Log dam,
It whispers to me
I’ve come close to
Nothing, to nothing, to nothingness,

I’ve heard the babbling, the incomprehensible echo
Of my own voice
In the abyss of being, that, if I spoke
It taunted back, in a voice
Rife
With truth.

Redemption of solidity has me now,
This is where I grew up:
Along the same creek, along the flow and course of man
Crossing the winter’s water has proven
Test, trial, and victory
Every time. I never noticed it.

Apathy is a vague blur in the saccade of the last few years,
Self-destructed by the fault of feeling.
I am more human now, returning to the shores of limitation,
Of the piercing history
Still young, but wizened, hard, a court
At which I stood and begged for my head.

I have but my name now, and nothing to return to
But the temporary homes with temporary people.

If I said I don’t care, I was wrong. They were my temple,
But the god of me, the god of them, the god of sheer youthful joy
Has been overtaken by grapevines, by ivy

And I still proclaim victory, still proclaim
I won the fight of isolation.

From the frozen bed of silt and winter
I pull concrete chips from the bridge
They destroyed ten years prior, where once I stood
And added my sorrows to the ebon stream, carrying it
To the end of it, where end met end,
And continued on end-to-end.

But I have seen nothing and no end it quite like it,
For every shore has its mirror,
And beyond it is my voice, I cast out,
Calling back,
As it was.

This is how our dreams end:
Not an avalanche cascading around our ears,
But the subtle shift of pebbles in a stream bed,
An endless series of minute compromises with ourselves
Which we justify to by raising any number of spectres:
The weight of disappointment from unrequited expectation,
The bogeyman of unintended consequence from our successes.
So we make the box of our wishes smaller and then yet smaller,
Until we do not recognize them as ours at all;
Or, perhaps, we have adulterated them so often
We can no longer ascertain
At what point they stopped resembling our hopes and ideals,
Not unlike when the batter, stepping to the plate,
Scratches out the back line of the batter’s box
Until its boundary disappears
Into a confusion of dust and lime.

One final wish, then; scatter me at the crossroads when I die,
So that, if perhaps for only that one moment,
I can rise above the gray and cracked macadam
Of these too-familiar roads
And float into a clear, blue unambiguous sky,
No longer a victim of the gravity
Of the workaday concerns that shackle us together.

Must a boy become a man, paint a lifetime
with sparkly night colors gray on gray,

the time it takes to spill blood and tears
listless onto 
one sandy, macadam street

Chase him,
he’ll turn on you

Confront him,
he’ll fight

Shoot him,
you came ready
 to ****,
to feel hard flesh
 surrender,
slacken,
heart flutter,
pressure lost

The street knows, drawn with chalk,
what difference lies between man and boy
Which is which, when dawn breaks,
and why do angels 
weep at night unheard….

I roll a marble down Market Street
from the hillside
looking over the dusty city
while the sun sets.
It finds a central channel in the cobbled street
and rolls beyond my seeing

past the Kurdish boy on the curb
plucking a tick from his stiff
homespun trousers.
The boy chews a sliver of wild onion grass
he has picked from the feral garden
behind the abandoned mosque

my marble passes now.  Across the street Kastorides
stamps the tin lids on liter cans of olive oil
bearing his name.
From the corner of his eye, he sees the flash of my marble
like a wet pea, wonders when they will pave over Market Street
in macadam.  He shouts for Andrei,  
out of earshot,

marking cards in the alley behind the coffee shop
downstairs from the flat of the student
who glances from the yellowed wall clock
to the Swatch watch on his wrist, then tenderly
lifts the flap of his haversack to peer inside.
He has smoked his last cigarette,
is poking through the butts in the ashtray for a long one
when the phone rings — only once.
The student pulls a sweatshirt
over his bare torso, grabs the haversack

and dashes out.  In the street he sees my marble,
almost slips on it in fact, and stops to watch it
running down its course toward the fountain in the square.
The driver of the truck, distracted by fears of his wife
and blinded in one eye
by a speck of dust which was once a dog’s skin,
takes the corner too hard,
the left front tire giving imperceptibly
over the rolling marble.

Though paths remain uncrossed
And souls still give a friendly gesture,
The local haunts are still shuttered
To those that brave these occult and rural roads.
The busted macadam speaks volumes
Written in its faults those riddles and anecdotes
Long kept in the spirit of the place
And the etchings of otherwise mute country spaces.
Such is the clarion of a hero’s return
On the lips of a medium, forever for profit
Incanting enchantments upon grounds
Which formed his genesis and the ash he became.

Or so the flicker of passing trees conceit.

Delusions of that throbbing arrogant wound
Have played tricks on these eyes before
To all soothsayers and falsifiers with words
So dulcimer as they are harmful to restful nights.
This is the true passing of the hero:
A loss of a child’s wonder to the silver lines
In the unnatural twinning of reality and make-believe
As sung from cardstock ramparts of an ocean of carpet.
There is no looking backwards to a road disappearing
With the valley’s crushing winds to my back though
The battle grounds and olive trees suspending offerings of peace
Run headlong in their respective directions, those unrealities: present, past.
Only spirits can hold time’s scales
With such precision or precariousness
As preternature may devise—
Those creatures of children’s books.

Or so the flicker of passing trees conceit.

Smoke crafts the forms of three adolescents
Jogging along the culverts of the West Fall hill:
Among them, the long-haired boy I know, face as though a mirror
In fear, I fire my arrow straight and true in the name of reason.

They scatter into the fronds of wheat and I utter futile words of advice
To ask of him: do things differently.
And they seem to listen.

Or so the flicker of passing wheat conceits.

I come to the shores of that river where young men dive
Inside the crater that grave of bicycles inured twelve in all
Attempting to dredge the depth for a lost frivolity
And the scattered refuse of the year before: perhaps a trading card.
I throw myself to westward skies out from that sylvan steppe,
Whose lustrating turgid flow repelled the revenant of the past.
May its purity allow me to meditate upon its unwavering face,
And it shall shine back stern with an idol of a comforting familiar.
As it opens its eyes, halfway, its clear aspect scatters
Beneath the inflatable tubes where, hand-in-hand and sweetly as birds
The voices of those long-haired wraiths: the girl of his fancy,
Whose name was destined to be cast aside in the autumn wind.

They pass beneath and I utter futile words of advice
To ask of him: do things differently.
And they seem to listen.
Or so the flicker of the passing stream conceits.

And, oh, the mountains rise as the curtain
Upon which a young poet casts dispersions
And anger for the sclerotic moments in flowery metaphors,
For there at the altar of renunciation, one can only speak in tongues.
And over the young poet, the fog hangs lazily to mark the world’s turning away:
A blinding of witness to his offerings, the deafening of ears to his word.
For I am no mere present, but the possession of that which looms
And that which as passed—for whom am I, the present, a memory?
Yet, this knowledge sates all hunger and quenches thirst
For those wounds, those ashes,
Those songs written deeply
Have proven fertile for genesis before.

Or so the flicker of passing dreams conceit.

whorl and pool. pale

light circulate around

lamps to build a world

between

the black buildings


street streaked,blacker,
by tar macadam
are flavour made as lit
- whole oranges
and, modern blasts of blue
white fruits.


blobs both.


Old black thick oil
bitumen based rock.
lighter the other.
made of energy
bouncing into
eyes as a scene.


division is round
at edge of energy
and straight painted
line. demarcation:
my side your side
for vehicles and,
kiddies games.


by day this place is singularly lit

and shadows are directed

one way

but now under street-lights

the shadows play

i never met my grandfather till today--

he dies in 1975
and today he was born
at the bottom of a drawer in the kitchen,
his coffin and crib:
he is swaddled in moth-eaten dishtowels
by a nameless undertaker
or perhaps the autophagic author himself

his crib and coffin:
he was buried a lifetime,
deaf to my own cacophonous et cetera

amidst cardboard boxes
he arises, stretches
and sits on our couch, transparent and whispering
his earliest recollections in ink from distant trenches:
he eats sliced-up milky way bars,
listens to little orphan annie and the manhattan rainstorms
as they flood his empty pillowcase;

my earliest recollection is a blank notebook,
never happened,
didn’t fall from the sky till three-quarters of a century later
in drops of impossible invisible ink

in 1934 i smell decades-old storms
and tobacco smoked by children;
today he tastes dough
from hands of women he could have loved

we break toys, apologize to our ghosts
listen to drops on macadam phantoms.

we think tonight was cloudy.

we left identical sleigh tracks in identical snow
laughed identical laughs whose echoes and imprints
are separated only by city and by many, many newspapers.

we remembered the same sun,
the same rain and lightning

and we both wrote that we may be heard
over the century’s thunder
but stopped, hid, tired, retired—

shaking hands
halfway to tomorrow,
never touching—

two strange strangers
left sleepless and motionless in the same notebooks,
the same house:
in the same cradles and the same coffins.

The street was a plume of
Cigarette smoke and cell phone lights
Waiting for police brutality
As the man’s head bounced
Off the macadam and he screamed:
Help, I can’t breathe.
Speculations abounded from sidewalk to sidewalk,
Was he guilty, did he deserve it?
Is he faking? Look, he’s weaponized spit!
Evil’s banality spans the one-way street
A volley of pity and vindictive joy
Muting him, washing away
By a blue tide of boys seeking retribution
Pushing through.
They held up the gun over his head
Against his heart, tipping the scales.
The crowd, in applause or in anger
Swelled in number and noise,
For or against, brought together
By the chance to be featured
On outrage videos spanning the internet over
Right or left, the ambivalence of raw footage—
Those boys took him off
As the crowd turned upon itself,
Distracting it from what it gathered for,
A red flag waving in front of the bull.

Clouds triumph over the little bay of macadam behind the shops,
Like the area behind a supermarket.
They parade on jubilantly

The sun is a medallion I am not allowed to wear
There is a house arrest bracelet on my ankle
And my bike is chained to a telephone pole.

I am on break, smoking one

My boss doesn't know about the house arrest bracelet,
I keep it concealed under loose denim,
My phone is blaring Back in Black.

I am rolling along the highway with a tribe of hooligans
I am playing a guitar solo on top of an old van,
Cutting up the clouds with my body as it screams along the highway

Cocktails in different locations,
Making out with felinish women behind stages.

I wonder if I'll ever make it there,
Or if I'll be left behind in the wake of smooth operators
Forced to stifle my groaning bones as she walks into the sun
(MY sun)
With him, hand in hand.

Along the platform to the far end
And one reaches the reading room;
Edged out in reminders of picture rails,
Any painting long been discarded
For fear of theft or vandalism;
So here in the, cell like, tar- macadam floor,
Bracketed struts of green wood
Supporting any takers,
Most simply shelter from the rain,
Cloistered behind newspapers.

Occasionally, a singular type,
Drops the day's gaze for the page in a book,
Forgetting the sounding of train times -
Departures and arrivals;
At least there is 'no-smoking'
And the area kept clear of *****,
Makes this place usually locked,
Apart from inconvenient times,
When resting would not be beneficial.

The windows drip a grey sludge,
But if you drift off
All this is side stepped for the beauty of the page,
The running with the wind on the
Train stop.

Love Mary ***