Wednesday, September 29, 2010

THE CROWNING
            Lucy’s pond reflective skin
                        simulated a steady infusion of surprise
                        and delight.
            She licked each finger absorbing civility and consciousness.
The sketch is fading.  “I don’t believe it should be this way,
            but I’ll do it anyway.”
“Isn’t it a lovely night Dynamo?”
“Did you say sentiment or sediment?”
                        He wouldn’t wear any clothes.  Everything
                                    was whispers, the corrosion of
            satisfaction.
“You have lost almost everyone you love,” cried Lucy,
            her fingers        grappling
            her belly.                                  “Call my lover,
            for your final seconds.”
“Your breath is voluntary
            making you making me
            love you, still.”
                                                            “Make me beautiful again,
            without searching your
                        pockets for razors.”
Look at me, I am your reflection.
I’m always looking at you, for you.
Do not rush this ceremony, the deducing of shadows.
            “I am happy here                     detached from my body.”
            “There is nothing                     to stop this incongruity.”
                        Thump.
                        Thump.
“I am met with constant hostility.”
“You are a trained lover.”
                        Dynamo walked through the forest
                                    dreary and heavy.        “She is a pleasure.
She gives me pleasure.
She tries.”                    Father and Mother and Margaret deprived
            of moisture choke down the mirth in death.
Their love became mercenary,
            a savage trivia,
                        especially during sexual punishment.
Lucy is a watercolor,
            a half-imagined thing,
                        a salvation of cloak and dagger.
Her mouth is a tower in flames,
            smiling politely as the dead
                        peer out from inside.               This is paradise,
a framed transparency
            the position of her hips
                        stained in agony.                      This is paradise.
Everything has been said.  Only the tribal confrontation
            for tongue remains.
Yet, no city, no images come, no poppies in the rain, no severance,
            no Jesus, and no chains. 
“Only cover your eyes and sigh.”
            It is called morning, a revolutionary pleasure,
                         the profile of a tongue in a knot.
            “What is the truth about this landscape?”
            “To whom do I sing as I wander up the path?”
            “You are beautiful and mad, the mirror of a city.”
            “Even when we are talking of ghosts,
                        with our clothes off, the afterlife
                        only strategic for demons,
                        our legs and our arms
                        make motion of these words,
                        the trees and the leaves
                        the dead and the living
                        the argument
                                    continues.”
Lucy sank her teeth into Dynamo’s chest
            and began sucking at the anti-image.
            “What we call the beginning is often the end
            And to make an end is to make a beginning.”[1]
“The afterlife is time travel.”
            “Who invited you to dinner?”
            “Be serious.”
            “The screams of ghosts are vanishing
                        desperately in the company of disappearing ink.”
            Dynamo awoke to the stench of horseshit,
                        a wafting invasion of spirit.
                                                Lucy crawled into his armpit and
nestled her tiny body
                        into his caves and holes
            and there disengaged from
his throat and loins
            a treachery not quite her own.
                        “You wait this time in hunger.”
                                    “You behave like a goddamned wheelbarrow.”
                        “All our faces have wings,
                                    and all our wings are clipped.”
                        A dead forest is a prison, a riddle,
                                    an angel watching foolishly
                                    slick music
                                                burning their backs     
                                                bent in morning.
“Around me you animate yourself.”
            “I don’t know if there is time in this world
                                    for miscommunication.”
Dear Lucy,      
            Being with you is like hunting
for a drunken comment
                        stranded on a dry tongue.  At a great distance
            you never tasted so strange.  But when we mirror
each other, you become science fiction.  The door
            opens and you are merely domestic
            skin disguised as art.
                        And upon your revision
at the edge of withdrawal
            when deep emotion clings      
                        to each squinting map of your youth
you will turn
                        mysteriously,
sigh,
            a translation, or
            a symbol                      an immediate telegram
                                                a new language
letters and numbers,
            a rose petal antiquated
                        with yesterday’s lover.
Remember eternity,
            how directionless its graceful miles
                        lead between song and myth, how pure
            the air was before our dreams,
                                    nasty, short, and brittle
skulls half-eaten,
            and the naked loss of metaphor
                        trembles
            remembering the very bones
                        we have left behind.
                                                            Dynamo
“I love you, yet, I wander,
            through your weary prose,
                        impatient for poetry.
I tell you darling,
            this transformation,
            this bursting forth,      
                        a bouquet of flowers
                        bloodied from bullfighting
            the substance of a single image.  Adam and Eve
a comprehensive melancholy,
            all the unemployed coffins,
                        the bridges and rooftops,
                                    the drawings of still clouds,
I feel sorry for you,
            unaware of your attachment,  
                        to the few strings left to pull,
            your teeth from the doorknob,
                        your hair shaven by shaky hand,
you eyeballs stitched into sand castles
            your faces screaming at the tide, to love, to love,
                        unaccustomed to magic, the sacrificial loneliness
in beauty.
            My poetry is suspicious of you,
born from dance,
like a dream of your watery eyes,
            the silhouette of an imaginary rose.
There is nothing more desperate
            than yesterday.”
                                                This is paradise,
                                    that boundary line
where love is outlined white,
liberated like a ghost,
            many miles forward and backward
                        a childish grace answered by the last
                                    abyss, a fake dream, a camera flash,
                                                a time traveler invited to dinner
                        for the last time.
            Lucy invited Dynamo inside.  All of their children
crawled the floor with apples in their mouths,
                        a mild garnish lathered their bald flesh.
            “Which do you prefer?”
            “None.”
Lucy crossed and uncrossed her legs
            in a dream of lilies, more beautiful than her
                        ravaged city.  “Say nothing more.  Say nothing
            that will erect staircases between us.
                                    Say nothing more.”
“We are both independent of images.  We are liars. 
            I am covered in cloud,
                        and you are the taste of lemon
                                    on my cunt.  In these erotic musings
you are a beautiful boy
            decayed an equivalent being
                        a crow cawing its head off,
                                     a Valentine pretending
                                                a bullet hole.”
“One touch of moonlight
            stronger than my fingers tight
                        the unsuspected shooters glance
                                    the proposition of a dance.”
“‘I hope that we shall find that we have one tongue,’[2]
            that poems mistake pretending
                        for a hovering threat.”
            Dynamo and Lucy lay upon the shared grave
                        of his family.  “Could this have ever
been an alphabet, a place for answers?”
            Lucy made a fire in her mouth and sucked
Dynamo’s skin until he was comforted
            by bones, a real child
                        born a silhouette,
                                    sucking every memory
                                    from an imaginary rose.
Birds fly away.
            A little boy in the forest splashes in the water
                        dancing,
                                    listening to unfamiliar sounds.
                                   



[1] Four Quartets, T.S. Eliot
[2] Letter to James Alexander (1958-1959), Jack Spicer

3 comments:

Elizabeth Guthrie said...
This comment has been removed by the author.
Elizabeth Guthrie said...

...or rather an enthusiastic, this is gorgeous, Joe! xo

Kent Johnson said...

I hope it's OK to post this here, Barnyard folks. I remember somoone from the group offered a post and link to the feneon collective blog last year. Thought I'd let you know the book is just out. It has nearly 250 entries and an Introduction, presenting a bit about the fc's troubled history:

http://www.effingpress.com/feneon-collective.htm

all the best,

Kent