Quanta

Perpetuum mobile, we

could know nothing of movement

except that it was movement.

Could we know nothing of men?

The rose was more fully a rose

as we were so unroselike,

stripped of leaf and petal.

Hiroshima, the Battle of Tokyo,

the nightmare and the night,

lesser infinities burgeoning

under one two many suns;

the splay and meld of violence

dealt by stiff-fingered science.

The bomb boomed ego, ordering

order poorly understood and

the universe trembled in a drop

of black water imprisoning god.

Perhaps I shall know god

if I am not a god myself.

Perhaps all gods are god

moving toward or away;

I won’t know him to be god

if I move only as he moves,

so we see him everywhere.

Our eyes in the mirror never

see themselves move, close, blink,

see nothing but a stare, or wink.

That was then.

                          Now we can know

nothing that we have not changed

by attempting to know it and

put ourselves again at center

of the goddamned universe.

The eye touches the world silver.

Where we can’t see we exult

to find we can’t know place and 

velocity simultaneously; we

watch light act now like hate

and now like love, and calmly 

declare our kingdom is a horse.

We pluck up the rose but think

the thought the only rose real,

confusing indeterminacy of god

with thinking thinking thinking.

What we know is index

for what we can only imagine:

number is dimension;

numbers variably interact;

dimensions variably interact

depending on the whore’s orgasm,

the equatorially marooned Nootkan

reading my mind like thinking.

So without all this, the mind’s 

construction of this poem, this

poem has nothing to say and nor,

we extrapolate, would rose or mirror;

so number, because it accounts

for nothing but itself and

therefore can’t be questioned,

is nature second to second nature.

In the subatomic realm pontiffs

witness paradox and say

it cannot be unless I think it

and so I think it so.

I think the chair; thank god

for me, thinks the chair.

I think god; he has better

things to do.  He thinks me:

the ear of a lion of gold,

the light at heart of an icicle,

seed of what I’m not and might be,

a rose in the mirror.

Sestina: Light

See that dangling chain of light

Beneath the moon, swinging free

With the dancing of endless age; 

There is that, and there is space,

Together, waiting in a corner

Behind an early dawn’s shadow.

Just as a good rhyme will shadow

The meaning of both words, light

Can grow in the obscurest corner,

But not quite sourceless or free.

What is not the filling of space

With one’s own sense of the age,

One’s certainty of what this age

Will attempt to evict the shadow

That is the prior tenant of space?

We would be the effort of light,

Expending all of our selves to free

Us from the two walls of a corner.

A corner’s opposite is a corner.

We turn one ever day. We age.

We learn to dance, to feel free,

And ignore the spasms of our shadow

As we spin, spin toward the light.

We even lose our fear of space.

They say the oldest place in space

Is the farthest away, that corner

Opposite our own; but if its light

Is the oldest in the sky, then age

Is to time a meaningless shadow,

Or light of time is totally free.

Our young sun’s light is free

To slowly fill up most of space

Over time. A planet cuts a shadow

Into its rays, like a hall corner

Cuts lamp-glow. What distant age

Will see a diminution of its light?

The light of stars is somehow free

Of age, while we’re captive in a corner,

Chained by shadow, dangling in space.

Observation

It is hard to look at things,

harder to say what you see.

Rattle each grain of sand

in its grave of desert?

Why begin unless you intend

to see things to the end?

And do not rely on the words

you overheard in a dream,

not knowing what they mean,

how they sound, those half-shadowed

chess pieces maneuvering

in and out of thought, unthought.

Language goes hard as time

at the first understanding.

Everything goes inside it,

which is an unopened box . . .

vague outline of a blue box

against a black background.

Then your voice’s children

as they escape to the street,

as they wade into the crowd . . .

the wind sucks them through a bone.

A plume of exhalation

withers on the zero air.

We know only one thing,

as a novel knows one story,

like a closed book reading

its own discrete emotions

pressed to paper word by

word, comma by comma.

It is not only duration

allows our mouths approaching

by halves to sometimes kiss.

A word is startled by the eye,

and something is unknown,

if still discrete, no longer.

The Spot

As a child, in times of transition,

moving in, away, or up a class,

I’d choose a spot of no distinction,

eaves elbow or dirty pane of glass,

seen daily, in passing, from bus or car,

and call that spot up to memory,

my own version of a wishing star,

proof not everything is temporary.

Solemnly naming the spot my own,

commanding it, above all worthier

bits of the universe, to stand alone,

I’d whisper,  If I do not remember

this spot the next time I go this way,

even if I remember some other time,

all that I have seen and done today,

and this spot, will no longer be mine.

So many years later, I still attempt

to make of humble, unnoticed things

what they do not seem, to exempt

the passing car or the cardinal’s wings

from the wrist watch’s oblivious tick.

But now the simile and the metaphor

so complicate things that when I pick

a spot that should mean no more

than what it is, like a broken sidewalk

or tree stump—you see what I mean—

the thing comes alive, begins to talk,

turns to words on a computer screen.

Pentwater

 

When I look at the water

at the height of the horizon,

the wave becomes the measure

of distraction—one from one.

Thought without language,

apparition of ecstasy,

the dappled expanse of gray

is a pure solution of age.

A glint in glinting tangles,

perturbation of the lens.

Light, facets, and the angles

form a lid, a cloud of sense.

The shadows of clouds roam,

dousing the frenetic foam,

like jealous ghosts of ideas

haunting insistent memories.

The wind dies.  The waves turn

into breakers, cresting, lurch

beyond themselves and churn

the trough line of their search

to the end of their sameness

on the slanted, abrupt shore,

or in further, final caresses

of the afterthoughtful shore.

Or I dive into their crests,

heaving breast upon breast,

then stand and see them dead

beneath receding waves ahead.

Only the sun is witness, red

as an old apple on a bed,

as an old eye as it slides

beneath its trembling eyelid.

The gulls scream, adding song

to the air, fish, water, refuse,

light—the things that they use—

sing the meaning in their songs.

Trine

Lightning is the God of Again.

He strikes no place twice from above

As long as the clouds don’t bear rain

And heat remains frictionless love.

Air, God of Now, fills each tulip

Like a sun not subject to shade,

With love makes the balloon pop

And sees the dead carcass decayed.

The God of And is in the dust

Blown from soil, blown from flower,

Clinging in the storm clouds where lust

Of Now for Again breeds the hour.

The Bewitched Groom: A Dramatic Monologue (Hans Baldung Grien)

 

Where am I? Stretched on the floor,
the strength in my limbs a memory
of a moment before. My eyes could be
open or closed, but I'm not seeing
what I think I see, unless I've gone
mad! The witch! The fire-brained hag!
The seething toads and bunched snakes
of her soul are giving birth to blood.
She's flooded my veins with her water
to quench the hot Homunculus in my heart.
My reputation with purblind gossips
has blinkered her view to her daughter's
virtue. My darling, my perfect flower!
She doesn't love me, but I'm rich.
My love! Hers the downy and exquisite
flesh of a rose that is stripped
of its crimson. But what consummation?
The ejaculation of hate from a deaf,
goat-teated rawbones. Sprinkling horn
of gelded unicorn, wielding a faggot
spluttering with the black dust pinched
from the notch between her wizzled 
thighs, she's tweaked my inner ear
and banged the bones in my head abuzz,
so I, like a drunken ass, bed
the floor, supine, my crutches under,
jabbing at my spine. She wants me dead
on the day I am to wed. Damn her eyes!
When the bitch has exhausted magic
I'll have her carcass burned to ashes.
There's evidence in this paralysis
to prove what the village has known since
the century was born a breech, wailing,
and the moon began to burn yellow.
The Redeemer fail me? No. I know God.
I once drove my horses till they dropped
and punched my peasants for pennies,
but no more. Oh, I learned a lesson
or two, and paid penance with infirmity.
I even kept the mare that pitched me
on that rock pile. The soil is thin
in which she plants her spell: time
and righteousness, proper living dig
the maggots from my heart and prayer
persists-the leaching of my soul.
I must get up, damn her! Enough is
Enough! I will love her dear one,
keep her safe and use her sweetly.
I promise to veil her eyes from
lascivious men not fit to touch
their lips to her dress's muddy hem,
until my ghost departs this game clay
to ride the fleeter media. Won't one
muscle move? My thumb twitches-
something wooden and smooth. The handle
of a currycomb! The stable floor!
I should be grinning in my closet mirror,
draping myself with golden medallions,
and tying my codpiece with bows.
For all my resolutions, I am a broken
promise. There, now I've given
up hoping! Forgive me, my love.
I cannot come to you today.
Forces more subtle than mortality
and mortal sin conspire against me.
I would hum the song of my honeybee
heart, but Queen Mab would shout out:
"He fooled the child, but not the crone!"
See! See! See my eyes fly open!
She's found the window in my head.
She knows that I would farm you
by the moon and by the sun and stars;
your golden hair would shade my eyes,
a fancy cap; your legs would be my
legs for work, your hands helping me
to beat you. Any child you yielded?
Oh, he'd have learned his Papa's ways.
What's that? Behind! The mare!
Flared nostrils, glaring eye! Humiliation!
Land on me, falling world!
The girl will only remind me when
the cock pecked crow and not the hen.
I'll bathe and go about my business.
To Hell with love and sucking sighs.
I am a man of satisfactory wealth.
Proud to swing his crutches to Heaven.