MFA Thesis

Speaking to Shadows

By Carrie Hunter

December 2005



































Speaking to Shadows

Table of Contents

Incantation 2
My Madnesses 3
[J.] 4
Circle Poem #2 5
H.D. Says 6
The Rower 7
Wind Stories 8
Texas 9
Butterfly Stronghold 10
Dream Voices 12
Void Dancer 13
A Serendipity 14
"rapid, fragile, melancholy.." 15
An Anatomy of Knowing 16
Making Omega 18
P. Says From Underground 19
Saturday Night, Pre-Apocalypse, Ignuti 20
Purging Purgatory 21
Metempsychosis 22
Unlike Ivy 23
All About the Colors: Palindrome of Being 24
Kohl-Rimmed Forest Song 25
Tumbleweeds 27
Dreams 29
Prophesy 31
Cloud-Walled Organ Music 32
Vision #13B 33
(No Title) 34
Parable 35
( ) 36
Cornsilk Zombie Flowers 37
Precision Entrances 38
It is Suzanne's Birthday and We Are All Here in Our Hats 39
spiral trance forest flowers 40
7 Shades 41
They Say There's A World Outside Me But I Know Better 42
The Shadow Space 43
"then, capsized, hushes" 44
"with sap of the impossible" 45
The Hindering Night 46
Eggs 47
It Is A Purple Speak 48
Inside/out (while Catalina sleeps) 50
Preponderance 53


















"The Rower" was previously published in the webzine Eratio, "Saturday Night, Pre-Apocalypse, Ignuti" and "Purging Purgatory" were previously published in the webzine Muse Apprentice Guild, "Precision Entrances" was previously published in the webzine Moria, and "Preponderance" was previously published in SCORE Magazine.














"The Circumference is Within: Without is formed the Selfish Center/And the Circumference still expands going forward to Eternity/And the Center has Eternal States! these States we now explore!"

William Blake Jerusalem 70.7-9.


"On the one hand, a deep-seated continuity appears to link all things and all events and to lend them a significance that provokes our wonder...[o]n the other hand, we frequently reach the point at which the routine, falsity, and injustice of life inflict on us a feeling of senselessness; things happen without any evident explanation beyond mechanical temporal sequence. In this vision of the world no meaning attaches to events and things, and any effort at insight or sympathy ends in despair."

Roger Shattuck in his introduction to Maurice Nadeau's The History of Surrealism.





















Incantation

Manifestation of light,
 of sight.
Growing, manifesting, picture,
a picture, picturing a picture frame.
Amsterdam outside skirting
windmills, paparazzi.

Manifest clouds and light,
knotted gardens, fish-baskets.
Manifest sight.
Think in visions,
thinking visions,
won't you talk to me?

Candle offering
 on the windowsill.
which god are you
 that wants my prayer…

My Madnesses

In my first madness, I was taken
Off to a place where only torture
Was performed secretly in the night.

In my next madness I saw faceless eyes
Peering at me from the crack in the ceiling.

In my other madnesses, I saw:

A stranger as tall as a curtain
Unshadow and engulf me

Tambourined flappers dancing statically

Cowboys hiding, trapped in their stolidnesses

Red rainbows tripping and snowflakes trapped in mid-air

St. Francis birdless, dwarfed and urban

In my last madness, I saw windmills
Menacing, pursuing, chasing me.

This time I didn't scream or hide or cry.

At the end of my madness I saw a mandala
With the shadows of trees moving through it,
Turning it, slow circling with the wind.

[J. ]

                                  ( fluff ) 
                                          ( crone 
                                                                       fireworks for 
                                       cravings and bathrobes ) creatures fleeting ) 
                                                    glow somewhere bleeding asunder 
                                                              
                                              cellophane 
                                                              sever to breathe ) set 

                                                                                                                        secret dolls ) ( may I 

                                                                     windmills ) the 
                                                                 ( chamber of  ( she 
                                                                           ( glaring 
                                                                                                        
                                                                 cranium stain) 
                                          
                                                                            ( and the

Circle Poem #2

Every circle stands outside you
The edge of the grapevine
The drums in the forest
The unreachable reaches out
Touching nothing
I should've known    nothing violet 
comes from lily pads       Running out    at the edge
of the circle                   Why do I peer into the void 
What on earth           am I looking for

Inside the dance    she knows    inside the dance
It is known and what is known doesn't matter
Cry or run or dance or sing    the pain is known
and say whatever to the pain     A bell rings     What
it knows      What it calls attention to      The organ 
pipes in the forest          What they call to      Nothing and 
yet they keep calling

The entire night    none of us can sleep      We walk out
and enter the silence of green watching    the bells enter          
into the roots of the trees and settle there

And what he thinks he knows about what she thinks she 
knows                         of God

The suspense    of the prolongation    where is her 
voice       The validation of someone who knows 
what you know        who also sees twinklings in silences

But when you take god out of the silence
Forging circles onto circles      where does it 
actually take you

Stellar settling stars stupefying    there is no song here
It is just me here      watching for the rising sea, 
the rising lights              words failing    meteor showers 
of words falling

Where they go there are no ladders
Shattered bones lie in heaps
Showing no signposts    you can rest here 
Or you can walk    perhaps it will be in a circle
The distance makes it too hard to tell

H.D. says

Overmind and jellyfish and I am 
further away and everything
is yellow, there is too much sun,
too much everything, and here,
there are cacti but they don't speak
to me and I don't experience Overmind.
I am me and puny and mundane or
I am God.  The presence of God 
and clarity in my puddle and I can't steer
through the woods without my hat on and
something in me knows
what that means but it is not me.
Is it Overmind? But there is no middle
zone, H.D.  Did you experience a half-way 
zone? I am me and stupid or something else
entirely and I don't understand that something else at all.  
It is barely even my business, H.D.  I am only here
for it.  Spicer's aliens I understand better.

The Rower

Oars coming out of cabinets
and me in pigtails
searching for something
in green and maybe I am Holly
Hobby, and the rowing oars, such currents
inside of cabinets—where are you, rower,
coming from? 

The insides of walls contain such secrets. 

What is hidden that wants to come
out?  What is hidden that wants
so badly, to row . . . and who, and sliver, and shiver,
insatiable ceilings—more and more,
and dipthongs and seaweed.  I know
where I am going but I don't know
where I've come from. 

One day I simply realized that I existed. 

Oars coming out of the core
fighting against the current
to be born, to be here, to be . . .

olive oil and judah juice—I don't complain,
with such self-sustaining seafare,
crouching blankets and dolly graves,
we see fair and far but only here, not
what is beyond, in the other sphere. 

Wind Stories

The wisdom in shallow connections.
Indigestion.       Elephantitis.       Enjambments.
   or not. The things the wind can do.  But. 
This is not a list poem.

"Really Salacious"  "Cuomo"  "Don't allow
Ethel Kennedy on the plane"  "You can do things"
"Austin stone. Isn't it beautiful?"  "Let me finish"
"You tell the story"  "You tell it"  

How should I know which stories are important?
  The meaning must be
in having them.

I follow your sounds.       The owls
of the morning.       inexactness.       memory
of seashells.  I let go          of meaning.

I see your face in the sand. (and it doesn't
matter) I look.  Where else (?) can the sand
take me, scatter me.  I want to be              scattered.

What else can the wind do.

The stories in me are disconnected. Wide gaps. 
Like multiple personalities, they don't speak to one another.
The sensations in my body I suspect are my stories
but they are like wind, occupying voids, they will not
coalesce into words, want to stay inside, inside hollows
somewhere, avoid existence --  it doesn't have to be real.
One can be storyless, walking emptiness, remembering nothing.
Occupying wind tunnels. Sensing the activities just outside, not
engaging. 

A green table, banana stick ice cream, giant speaker Sousa
"Stars and Stripes" fairy-winged teenagers, hula hoops and flutes.
This experience is not story. The direction of the wind in hair.
My collie rolling in the grass. There is no truth
inside plot. Only sitting here with my ass on the bark.
Heartbeat continuing, clouds slowly moving. Occasionally, a 
butterfly. Except, I am on the third floor of a library, 
sitting at a green table, immersed in a memory.  There 
is no truth in plot, there is no truth in experience, 
there is no truth in memory. Or is memory the only reality, is
truth whether or not truth, truth?

"What I know tends to become more and more unstatable."   

Texas

A verdancy I never knew. And counting.
19 deer. How many different kinds of bugs?
Such green, such blue. Watching lake ripples,
such texture. A mateless swan, hissing.
The bachelor next door, hissing back.  The mayflies
did not come this year.  Everything clean.
Grackles everywhere. I dream I killed
a bird, I think I must have heard them 
from inside my dream.  I kill the messenger.
I've killed the messenger. Sick of messages.

I count 14 pregnant women in the grocery store.
I bring back 8 different types of Texas-brewed beer.
Such verdancy of life.  Symbolism seems to be everywhere.
A vision creeping just around the corner.  The stagnation
I used to feel, I don't feel it now, here.  Cicadas
underneath my skin. Something is about to happen.
 

Butterfly Stronghold

This dizzy equilibrium. You know it, too.
Too tired for colors but yearning anyway.
You are always forever so far away.
Even shadows flit, hiding away.

A sinking mythology. I am too tired
to save it. This sinking geology. Slow
Terra body sinking into her bath. 
What will make her rise again. Evaporation...
And then you do what you must do.
Ching-ching and bling-bling,
but sadly, and showers, and pounded
down flowers. But ring-ring,
and slowly              spring. Sunshine
laughter and eventually you respond.
I know you do.  red, green, blue and
red, green, blue.

Dream Voices

Dream Voice I:

Eclipse on - the full of the moon
I felt an earthquake - in the other room

Dream Voice II:

A wind came to rest
Upon a strange girl's chest

"What you don't control is the spirit, the voices, coming through you"

and wolf spirit, dog spirit, brake pad spirit,
rubberband spirit, Cynthia says
"I can help you" Raking rivers
under the rug, moth spirit, I see you.
Voice of Echo, I hear you. Rye bread
spirit, I eat you.  I think Hilda 
sends me goose bumps and I stay
with them for nearly an hour.
So many failures, but the men selling
roses, they follow me. I can laugh
too at despair, Henry.  Rebecca,
collecting daisies, things that fall off trucks,
I have a daisy and some Bubba Dog beer
I want to give them to her, but for some reason
I don't.  The Bubba Dog beer spirit laughs
and laughs. The spirits follow me and quieting

I want to wear spirals
--explanation of vertigo
I fall against walls sober
and I think perhaps I am 
going somewhere –  but no, I
am only going to the place
where onions go...something
about the center and never
getting there.
 

Void Dancer

"And behind that, perhaps the Void dances, not black, cold, or empty as we have believed, 
but dancing with light, sheet lightnings spread as a series of surfaces over nothing" 

And a bouquet of lights, blinking
the void is winking at me
and it is a moment of relief
things can be relieved
a momentary breeze.

I drink the watermelon drink
knowing full well that it is not summer.

The void, the place I visit when I am not listening,
um-hmmm, I say. I am split between places
and both of you want me and it is an equal
magnetism.  And yes.  And yes.  And
oh yes.  But to stay would be devastating.
Tornado turtle and kiss kiss.

A Serendipity

It's like the opposite of serendipity,
but it is somehow utilitarian.
Missing you, remembering what I forgot.
The view from here, the trees, that skyline.
This, writing with my dog.
Utter independence and that that 
is the most free you can be – when you're alone
and there are kites and I notice the birds and
maybe, actually, serendipity.

"rapid, fragile, melancholy.."

and plashless, utterly.
and flies, of course.
and out of nowhere, completely
unprepared for, a Vision comes.
I don't think I believe in this
anymore, yet it is there, static
as the first one, still waiting for me, I fall
back asleep, can't even be bothered
to be bothered. rapid, fragile, and now,
melancholy.

An Anatomy of Knowing

I.

To vow anything, ever.
In another place. To be certain.
Of anything. Ever.
Those that drunk themselves to death.
For art.
The hand of the devil.
What it knows.

Juniper.
How the voices of trees
will speak. Softly.
Rustling in the wind.
In another time.

In another time,
        he spoke to me,
would tell me things.
I'll never repeat.

Different petals
        on the same marigold,
rubbing together, whispering
and listening, whispering
        and listening.

The things they never speak of.

Listening to the guiding trees, whispering. 
Or was the wind merely the wind.
Even in that time.

Juniper.
Incense rising in a straight line.
Sure where it was going.
A certainty.

But through time, something happens.

One's hands are chopped off.
        One loses one's feeling,
does not notice the soft mumblings
against the skin.
Is consumed by something else,
crumbling.
A crumbling inside.



II.

Jerome in the desert, abandoned.

One abandons oneself.
One's certainty, lost.
One remembers nothing
but the present desert.
Forgets what time does,
how it changes things.
How tears evaporate. The certainty
of the salt-paths that are left.
The engravings there that strengthen one.

How many triptychs are abandoned,
         never completed.

The Juniper tree waits and listens.

How many flower petals
dried and forgotten,
sink into the sand?

Trampled on
or carried off by magpies,
secreted in caverns 
for the future to remember.

The rocks erode
        around their shapes,
certain where they are going.
 

Making Omega

We're going to go make omega
and unmake it too.
maybe it was a sword hanging over me
but I saw it as a rose.

 

P. Says from Underground

say then that sound comes 
sacrificing sound
throes of if and when 
and I don't know. So 

when it comes say what-
ever when it comes
sever when it comes.
Shading sounds for shame

at least you can se | ver when it
does come.

Saturday Night, Pre-Apocalypse, Ignuti

Shopping carts converging, something
is about to happen. Inside
of a cloverleaf concertina,
a cumulus clot.
Cirrus, incredulous clouds converge
in a cumulonimbus cornucopia basket, mirabile dictu.
A cloudberry cloudburst,
coyote clown trickster,
clupeid fish, closeted flies.
buzz buzz. Whatever, storm out
inside astral valentines,
bloody is next year.

Purging Purgatory

In this poem I am not a seal.

Nothing is about to happen.
The apocalypse is postponed indefinitely.
There is no music, no clouds,
no silence exactly either.

Shutterbug, shutterbug
trifling in truffles
that shuffle away
in their nightgowns, a hospital stay.

Methodist meteor showers
mean nothing, detail suburbia dent
metastasis slows but does not stop.

Metallic metamorph messiah messiah.

There is a leak in the back somewhere
undetected. No wonder the cancer is everywhere.
Mermism trout catches another.
The seeress sears me.

But wait, bloody was last year.
How many puncture wounds must I endure?
Seagull on the seagate says wait, wait.

 

Metempsychosis

Giving up
on the bus,
I cross the street
and see it coming
mid-cross, but keep crossing
anyway. Somehow,
what it takes to turn back,
is more than I have. 

The man kneeling
over a box
on the other side is staring
at me, he knows
my lack of impeccability, 
my laxness, my lack 
of will.   I think 
he is the crow
I saw yesterday crowing
like he meant it but
then scratching himself just as much
like he means it,

I itch everywhere yet feel nothing.

I look again at the man but he
is gone – ghost, dream, vision –
what?

"…dreams and visions are an obscure coinage
No sane person takes faithfully" 

To believe in visions, in stark, sudden appearances
of beings from other realms, is more, is so much more
than I have or can do. 

Unlike Ivy

Ladder into ivy
to know where one is going
to not know where one is going
there is just ivy
a plethora of something
and the past that…
a plethora of something else 

or

the absence of plethorias
absence of utopias
absence of the known
and trust is required

"Unlike ivy, I die when I become attached" 

 

All About the Colors: Palindrome of Being

"[God] shows Himself here more in that 
which is not than in that which is…" 

The good luck of sitting
next to a house painter on the bus
clover spells, clover spells

…and finding upon returning home
the house has been painted
what luck what luck the smell

of improvements and maybe
we are like that house on the corner 
that changes colors
every few weeks.   Purple and then
orange, mint green, turquoise, yellow.
Boredom, indecision, something

 in our core
 is kaleidoscopic, we change
  we are becoming, unfolding
   but never do come.

That which is, is always dead.

and the "souls of dead librarians"
a dream of gigantic jars,
encapsulated science and
lollipops for sale.
 

Kohl-Rimmed Forest Song

How can I call you back
without any Circe sea-magic 
How could I call you back?
I've already given you my ocean,
all of it, my bay-leaves, my secret drugs.
How could I have?

In shreds I am sewn, ripped apart 
¼ asleep, with my thrown hilter heart
diadem of crash crash, fury lurid fury
Hiding sinking buttercups, florid hells, I sing to you.

Which petal are you, which petal are you
brushing up lightly? But I am not a petal, you
are not a petal. We are not touching, we
are not humming. Drumming in a honeysuckle circle

Dreaming such wide circles, I cannot even see you.

The nightingale wails, the nightingale. Singing
of blue stars, I can do anything in the night. It is empty & anxious
& willful & something must be made in this time.

There is much work to be done. The circuitry must be shattered, 
I shatter, how the wind can change you. Tornadoes, thorns
tumbleweeds tearing through the desert. Shattering
sandmen. Broken glass everywhere. And
that is where the sewing machine was, my mother
tells me. Sitting on the swing, motionless, surrounded
by broken glass. The desolation. The sadness of trees,
bending over, wanting to pick us up. Wanting to cradle us,
Caress us. But. They can't find you either.
You are in the wind, sometimes.
Sometimes. You are only in my mind,
in this ghost-beast paradise.
And all Time is cyclical. 
That is why I cry
but I do not worry.
Buzzing bees
must mean honey somewhere,
light somewhere.

Things repeated return,
crumble into moats,
are rebuilt,
crumble into moats.

It shatters.
One steps away shivering
and sings anyway.

Tumbleweeds

Do you know what I know 
if I know what you know, 
do you know, do you 
know, Ophelia, do you know, Delia, 
do you know, Helga Doorn? I 
only know hallelujah 
I can sing I can sing alleluia. 
I will cinder in the center in the silver of your eyes. 
Do you know what knowledge does not 
know. Do you know 

the answer to everything is (the answer to 
everything is) keep, keep singing always, 
no matter what, keep singing and songs 
will follow you around like butterflies
    (echoing) and whatever else wants to follow.  

Everything is contained 
in the intricacies, 
seeing what sewing needles see, inside. 
I know who you are in the interim. 
Only in the interim do I … 

      talk with ghosts, I talk with ghosts, 
nonexistencies, inaltruistic joys are the ethers 
I am part of the ethers 
I am not here 
here 
I am not writing this 
I am not here 
I am not writing this 
waves and waves equal negation, but where am I 
stolen epiphanies so far away, so far but
I’ve heard others talk about them.  ice cream 

leaves fetters in the wind 
and I keep running back 
but there is nothing here
not even the wind talks to me here. 
Deserted in the desert what do the cacti want
      from me calling out Desdemona 
running around in circles 
but not towards water, 
never towards water. 
I stay away from shawls 
and sandstorms never protect me anyway. remember, 
remember horseradish and hay rides 
there are songs there are songs 
floating around in that memory 
memory of singing 
no memory of song 
just memory of singing. 

Where are the tumbleweeds all going to anyway? 
That summer of the sickness 
before the sickness that killed him 
there were tumbleweeds everywhere 
while I waited outside 
they wouldn’t let me in 
waiting to hear the news 
watching the tumbleweeds 
and the sand-filled sky 
I wondered what do they know 
what do they know 
do they know

that I am so far outside that I am inside of something that they can not even see?

 

"Dreams"

I.

Walking in the void,
the fear is
what if you don't ever
get anywhere,
continuously
walking in the void
no cities, no lights
just dust and darkness
the sameness continuing…
perpetual tunnels that never open
into light

II.

To be eternally in your passion
there must be colors everywhere there
with everything bleeding and there is no
subsiding and there is no letting up and there are colors
everywhere, eternally in one's passion, the sun never
setting there is always light and always colors and the grass
is always growing and there is so much to do and the colors
never stop their demands

III.

Here in the darkness here there is 
hail spiraling down
in the moonshine, spiraling down
no one notices the moonshine.

Moonshiner, moonshiner I can't see
make me some light so that I can breathe

IV.

If our shadows are red then we
are already dead.

The wind shapes around our secrets,
covering us, Vesuvial.

No one is capable of speaking to anyone else.
Mouths open
                     then close a defeat…

And what the eyes speak of no one can tell.

V. 

"A nice happy funeral"
celebrating loss.  There is 
balance, and bells.
Bliss, bliss, bliss and even
Sadness carries flowers, everyone
with flowers.  Nothing is shattered, 
bells ringing and nothing shatters
but hearts,  but that is a joyful shattering here.
like glass piñatas.
 

Prophesy

He knows me
Yellow he says
and chickens and gardens
and left behind curtains
He knows me he says
and yellow he says
and knowing and
I know him and
no thought is left behind
behind the yellow curtain

Cloud-Walled Organ Music

An impossibility
  between us.
Something unvoiced, silent elephants
  standing still
nothing stampeding
between us.

Katsu says Samurai
 are like Clint Eastwood.

What about the Samurai
  of the heart?

Strange topiaries, too strange
 and statues, but not, moving slightly.

There is no threshold to walk through.

And we are not statues   (or are we?). Perhaps we are
 that third thing that is not “is” and is not “is not”.   We

are neither statues nor humans, but topiaries swaying, moving
  against our will, being moved by some Plutonian wind
from underneath the earth.
 

Vision #13B

A man of copper, waiting in line
stares at me and knows
that I thought he was made of copper.
Maybe he is the hawk I didn't notice
the other day, because I was 
preoccupied with my own pettinesses
trying not to be late, wondering
what does so-and-so think of me, etc.

They are all laughing, but the not-copper man 
      is laughing harder.

I could think anything of anyone/thing
at any time and it could be
    a vision too.
Soon my list will top a hundred.

The difference between
 when shadows speak to you
and when you speak to shadows.
 

orange juice  grapefruit juice          pineapple juice


   ROSE JUICE


larva juice  pickled-toe juice        Peter Pan juice

                                     sanctions/sanguine will recover     who?
              I am the walrus
       and soap cloaks
                   surrender sangria
                               Sahnjeen in Pumpernickel
   I swell Sousa      and     so-so's for froglegs
                           larva decay snails in their shells.
                                            what sordid sails shine?
     No shining/signing
                No signs
                         for today
Dropping signs – write nonsense
                                             for oracles
It is true. You can't say any of it's
                                                       not true

                                                                 Larva is true and rose-juice is true
and so-so is real
                     we drink tea on Sundays
          and Wednesdays are my day, not Steve's
                          and everything is truth
                          and everything is true
                   and the lexicon-chant t(r)opiaries
                       and the checkered-face 
                                                      alligator
                                                       and elephants are true.
                                                       and pineapples are true
                                                   and Ginger loves Seymour
                                                             the spinach is true too.
 

Parable

In the sea without a name 
immersed in colorless sounds ~ someone calls
for Dana ~ in the waves
there is no one.  Somewhere, on land,
someone is playing drums, conga, a ritual
is taking place unseen.

Someone is calling in the mist
a white foam stills the shadows.
The boat putters slowly. There is nothing
to see – each moment produces more
of the previous moment.  Moments 
become undifferentiated – all moments
are the same.  In every moment the same
piece of seaweed brushes against my hand
floating in the water.  The seaweed is 
an oracle of the future. The seaweed is meaningless, 
predicting only the present.  This present moment 
opens my heart
and the future seeps into it, moment by moment.

The future becomes an oracle of the present.

I forget about the mist I remember 
I am the mist.



 

( )

(Dreams are parentheses) ()(           )


(Dreams are) (a series) (of parentheses)


(Reality) (is) (a) (series) (of) (parentheses) (put) (together)


What is between?()()(  )   (     ( )          ) how do you reach (   ) (                      ) the

(really)    (                        ) real (                                   ) that (                    ) which

 is between (            )(               )or under?(               ) the ( dream) (       ) or under 

                                                    ((((((((((reality?)))))))))

 (Parentheses)(back)(to)(back)()()()()()()()()()()   Where is the question

 that resides
  
   outside? (                         )   Is that what is real? (                 )

(            ) (                 )  (                          )    (                                   )
(where does it reside)
    and (                     ) (how do you get to it) (         )

(           )

    (  )?

 

Cornsilk Zombie Flowers

Seeping I sing.
Sleeping I swim.
There is no dew on my eyelids.
Centaur shows the way. This useless
seeking of sunshine, Centaur show me the way.
Sewing dark-time flowers onto my wrists,
they will lead the way
I follow the flowers
 iridescent blue in the darkness.
I don't bother with weeping,
   I'm walking
further on singing for company…
I walk further on aching
for a darker darkness shining.
 

Precision Entrances

(For H.D)

ethereal jellyfish
knotted garden
pearl vision of a 
waking bridge
quiet transitory gully
screaming and sunlit
tides of dream
seeds in the ground and
oyster abounding

the delphic charioteer
flies three times right into 
the mulberry symphony
trance skeleton drunk in the vineyard

again        with her domed music and tripods but this time

Delia is further underground than you,
this time, Nike has further sundered her wings,
this time, there is a lesser chanting in the woods,
this time

It is Suzanne's Birthday and We Are All Here in Our Hats

September 26, 2003

puffy bananas, precursor to peanuts,
elephants angle and shout "Éclairs"!
Sophie is sacred and seasons don't dare
oak leaves and antelopes quake hopping for hand-outs
barren-trains eagle and stumble for sunshine
sodas become shadows, while phantom-less suns
beckon five collapsing bell-dreams          and if glum-shine
is sleeping where are the sad dogs with sand-mops 
  and why won’t they shine 
with recipes of half-clocks                       The  bell hops are hoping 
for ding-dongs and senses         and listening elephants
feign sleep while leaving shattered salads              for Sophie is 
grieving not listening, to mad willows and water-sun colas,
she is blinking and blinking.

spiral trance forest flowers

forward trance forest
winding   tighter
 and tighter
winding curves. 
 winding
greener and 
 greener
entering        spiral,
 spiraling,       inward
an inward forest
 with poison flowers
a winding road
 winding deeper
and poison flowers,
 the poison flowers grow
outward,
 spiraling larger
yet there’s no meeting
only a strangeness
 a potency
widening
 turn by turn
stranger and stranger
 shadows grow longer
and darker and 
 the poison flowers grow 
larger and stronger. 
 

7 Shades

All about the talons
and so unlike the seven
we shake, create some
several, even seven, sail-aways
and shanties and the hail slows
I'll see it when I want to.

and shade here and
 shade is here.

Seven.               of them here.
all about the short ones
all about sheerness and soldiers
and sometimes
 and sadness
  and hating it and
not pretty at all.  But there,
 and there is shade
    somewhere
There is shade sometimes.
and shadows quaking, shadows
 quake too     at times.
Seven quakes at star shines.
further shades at further stars

They Say There's A World Outside Me But I Know Better

shadows sing softly and there are no
elephants in place of chimney tops
this time
this time
there are only chimney tops as chimney tops
and nothing magical comes, there is no drala
tonight, in the air, there is simply the air…
and footsteps and laughter and sirens
and the breath is the same as it always is
and it continues and we continue, walking,
looking at chimneys and then finally, not,
just looking into the air, at the faces
that appear. Maybe drala, after all, from inside
of not-drala.
 

The Shadow Space

There is a dearth of drums
 on rainy nights
And in the silence
 is the key
to something vast and wilder

In the silence is the sea
 of lightning fast and
glow worm glass, last
 joys don't last

I saw you tumbling down
 and chanting, sighs flapping
we will be there in the interim
 as we always are

Lightning fast and dancing…
 chancing glistening
I love you every time.
 

"then, capsized, hushes"

 and even
 and soaking
and you are not you in the evergreens
 even light
  solar solder
see, it is the same here
after all of this and
 the night has passed
and there is no peace here
  but there are people

the smell of cinnamon,
  hot cocoa
   and lanterns.

...and singing, hushed, in the distance
   beyond the trees.
we sink, hills fall after us
    rolling.

"with sap of the impossible"

and china, bent
tornadoes of the unforeseen.
I'll shadow the sense-trains
Sotheby's in ashes and Elohim
in “trimmed-down”.  Will you come
when the wind is at the bridge,
when the sour song is sung, when
I am at the traitor's door?

Elegy in ashes –bleeding sores,
sheet-thin skin, vapory grin,
about to jump. Glumness of the afterglow,
it stays and curtains and we
are not where we once were 
and the cobwebs breathe, saying break
down the windows, escape, sheet-metal skeleton, 
don't stay with us.  Curlicued

shale-droppings, dust of the floor, make way.
 

The Hindering Night

The hindering night. Girls trapped inside lassos. Scarecrows. Burning sage. The 
night watchers. Gesturing invisibly. A halogen christ.    Something is mollified. A 
thorn crown burning on barren ground. Miles away. a broken cradle sinks into water. 
Crashing waves, breaking land. The earth cracks. Dry straw. Burning holes in the 
ocean. The girl itching. bound. Fires inch closer. The sea looking up the sea drips 
down.  crocheting.  her hand back. The mother is weary. Land seeps into skin. Skin 
seeps into land becoming...    All evaporates. in time. Where do the shadows 
disappear to?

 

Eggs

Elephant eyes and
eglantine thighs.
I am the sorceress
of always
and yesterday.
I am the sour grin,
Cheshire trapped in this world.
You are here too now.
No more interims. Still,
sea-foam and shale-stone,
it is what it is
and I am not done
with cellophane cedars.

(the translucence of nature,
 I could become Daphne anytime, but)

You know
only what you know.
Elephant eyes and
elegant thighs.
Love seasons and I don't know 
what it is.
The untrustworthiness of feelings.
Taloned hope and seacrest jars.
I know what I know
but that is all that I know.

And you are not alone here.
And you are not with me here.

Shadows fade, become seasons,
 there is nothing left but you,
turning, yellow, cobwebbed deity, only you 
 know where we are going.
 

It Is A Purple Speak

Delia will crave you, carve you, carry you
through the stain

elegant yesterday sees
me here again, nauseous again,
here breaking apart
again, breaking apart but
more solidly this time.

Delia what ribbons do you let fall on the ground?
Sordid salad stains
I am with you 
in the meantime
always in the meantime,
dreamtime, between something
and something is there nothing//

I am in the nothing-time, and
secrets keep us distant, so
far away from the something,
secrets keep us trapped in the between

I am sordid with it and salad fresh
secret garbanzo beans, pine nuts
of stained joy, stained spring
I am here, am something. 

(It is if I say it is)

I am here, something, stained and singing:

 “Do you see what I see”

    What ribbons have you let fall, Delia?

Delia Delia, what what what have you done?

like a fish out of water
sailor sailor take warning

my panic and                his screamings are mine
my silent screamings are voiced by him
and with lightning in my veins and at 2 am even
and I could not ever                 I would not ever

and

“Do you hear what I hear”

but I am not here and I can not hear
if I am not here.

It does not exist if I am not present///

I stare at your eyes (what color are his eyes?)
blink blink emptiness I pretend emptiness
everything is breaking inside
everything is broken
How is the weather outside?
I look in his eyes I don’t see his eyes
I look afraid of looking

“A star, a star, dancing in the night”

Delia, Delia, where have you gone,
what have you done, who have
you become now, in the mysteries
that I cannot access, in the infinite

Malodorousness of where have you gone,
I might not be here when you come back.
I am here if I say I am and I am not-I am not,
If I don’t.  elephants elephants hiding away, do 
       you see

“what I see////way up in the sky”
 

Inside/out (while Catalina sleeps)

I.

In her dream of “something nice”: stained glass, blue horses, shock of sunlight,
 star-ingly rearranged. “In the sky, to the sky, we are of the sky.”

In the picture-window…

asleep             not sleeping                      seeming to sleep

Some things you only read about in books

triangles, triangular patterns
 icicles  frost on windowpanes

There are so many veins to trace             to follow

We don’t even know what to call ourselves.
She doesn’t think to question who she is.

What you need, what you need
 is not what you want.

leaves on my tree.
picking leaves off my tree.
what am I trying to become.

I look at the veins
 drop them on the floor.

Yes I am
 inside
my tree is every moment  I choose
 I occupy

II.

There are rooms blocked over
 with ice.
Impossible to move through.

axes and chainsaws
 and you are here too?

Austin stone does not mean you are home.

Ears of corn and pineapple too.
I am just afraid of being///bared, it is impossible

to move in here.
It is impossible to move with me in here.
I know.   I am impossible and January cold.

Everything is utterly my fault
 and I don’t…

You only speak to dissonance and atmosphere.

III.

I can hear the rain in your heart.
“Shut up Shut up Shut it up”
a screaming sound I swear I can hear
underneath the thunder.

Underneath the sound of rain
 there is someone crying
it is not you
 and
it is not me     ( I don’t know how)

it is the we of us together
 that third creature
   never born
 half-way formed,
    dying
a sobbing in the wind.
      (how to change things)

chalices break undiscovered, unsewn.
It is not me in the dust.
I am not me here!
But underground, buried
 there is something left, small,
ragdoll waiting for the needle.
      (how to change myself)

Something can be salvaged
 but  I am not sure if it is me.
Or you, or the we of us.   Something else
altogether, something else.

We don’t know anything until it is over.

 

Preponderance

the sound of the clock ticking
swish of endings -- finality
what can barely be heard
        in the background
what preponderates
what dominates and what
turns toward silence, tries to become it,
seeps into its edges.
with red fingernails and glittered skin
slipping behind mirrored facades
the mask becomes even less real
escapes the party -- barefoot dreaming
of the sun and of being maskless...
only maskless alone
only maskless in silence
sheepskin sleeping inside
barefoot alone naked inside
jewelry singing inside boxes
seeming seeming so still
but shaking inside, shaking lose
from what binds them.  Breaking
free from Gold. Golden hells grasping after but
Gold can never fly the way diamonds can. 

Notes

1 Henry Miller - "Wisdom of the Heart"
2 Diana Di Prima "Recollections of My Life as a Woman"
3 Diana Di Prima "Recollections of My Life as a Woman"
4 Marcel Proust "Remembrance of Things Past"
5 Robinson Jeffers "Cawdor"
6 Andre Breton qtd. in Mary Ann Caws "Andre Breton"
7 Umberto Eco "The Name of the Rose"
8 inspired by the Akira Kurosawa film of the same name
9 a line from Phillip Lamantia
10 "drala" from Chogyam Trungpa’s book Shambala: "When we draw down the power and depth of vastness into a single perception, then we are discovering and invoking magic. By magic we do not mean unnatural power over the phenomenal world, but rather the discovery of innate or primordial wisdom in the world as it is. The wisdom we are discovering is wisdom without beginning, something naturally wise, the wisdom of the cosmic mirror. In Tibetan, this magical quality of existence, or natural wisdom, is called drala."
11 from Aime Cesaire's Notebook of a Return to the Native Land translated by Clayton Eschleman & Annette Smith
12 a line from Lucie Thésée's "The Buckets in My Head"