Not by my own striving but by the exercise of Divine Grace did I first
journey to this realm of the Temple of Time, realm of Chronos, and was
through willfulness destroyed by His hand; yet through Divine Grace and
not by my own striving lifted from the realm of darkness to serve His
Son and heir, reformed in fashion as Man, female in form, and arrayed
in glorious garments that I might aver the testimony of the boundless
Grace and benevolence of His Majesty the Lord of this World whose name
is known as the Red Dragon, foretold as the Lion of Judah, who dwells
where the prophet Nostradamus placed Him, but not upon a throne, who wears
upon His hand the signet of the Rose and Gold Cross, the Masonic Emblem,
and who serves in the Inner Temple. I have seen and witnessed the founding
of the New Order of the Ages at His command.
With my companions
I have come to know many great truths which I speak of symbolically, and
offer them in my own hand that you may seek for yourself a means of salvation
and redemption as I have been given. This is the age of Prophecy; this
is the moment of the beginning of Grace. I have returned to Time to reveal
this to you.
E.L.V.H.
Novus Ordo Seclorum
12-01-1993 C.E.
A.D. 1999
Introduction
Metaphor
is the natural language of mysticism. It is in our contemplation of the
symbols presented to us in the subjective world, that we explore our inner
natures. This is a vitally important activity, for it is in the exploration
of our inner self ,and its environment, that we discover that within us
which is of ignorance, or darkness, and that which is of wisdom, or light.
The subjective world is the source of all ideas that are born into physicality
from the hand of man; and consciousness is the vehicle which allows us
access to that subjective world.
I began an exploration
of that subjective world in my first collection of poems, Epistle to the
North Americans, in a series of poems called "The Zebratta Poems." The
passageway into the hidden spaces of Zebratta is made through the act
of contemplation, or what the mystic calls "Cosmic Attunement."
In this state,
that which is becomes that which is known and understood, and those things
which are actual then become realizations. These journeys are taken out
of time, as it were, and independent of the progress of culture. In encountering
this collective metaphor, however, alternatively conceptualized as "Hell"
or "Sheol" in various theologies, I sought to change my relationship to
it, to retrieve from that place all of the consciousness of the Inner
Self, from the darkness, into the diametric condition of attunement I
call "Dyne", or source of power, thus retrieving for myself, and for those
who identify with the journey, all of the knowledge and the awareness
that comes out of the experience of that realm. But from the point of
contemplation there must come action; and from the completion of my exploration
of Zebratta there inevitably arises the need to examine the objective
world. This work concerns itself with the interaction between the soul's
awareness and the objective condition of humankind at the end of the second
Christian millennium.
This is what I
found.
INDEX
For
the Intiman Players
Within those gentle
peals a trace
Of ballads not of Ballybaeg
You tell of Christian heirs of Wales
Ensconced in lichen-crusted towers
Thick green moss
on ivied face
Their stone too cold in morning showers
Ever fast, those chains of Gael
Upon their woodland castle walls
Over-gentle, touched
by Grace
You cannot speak in tongues that wail
Invoking Cymryk's ancient powers
Sweetness soothing, thus enthralls
And brings us
to a milder place
Away from cairn of mystic tale
And not the cries of Ballybaeg
To echo through your scenic halls
But hymns sung
high in holy space
Disperse the angry gods of Gael
Confusing hosts of Ballybaeg
Erin's ghosts flee from those bowers
And give the land
an English face
And make the play an English tale
And not the dirge of Ballybaeg
Despite the playwright's doleful powers
Your actors never
shall embrace
Reluctant Christian heirs of Wales
Your English two-act thus appalls
The bloody ghosts in mossy towers
Let us approve
your English grace
As you elude the chains of Gael
You cannot go to Ballybaeg
Nor enter in those ancient bowers
But echo faintly
some slight trace
Of anguish born in Erin's jail
So let us sip its bitter galls
Until remembrance gives us powers
To see the craggy,
careworn face
Of ghosts in lichen-crusted towers
Aristocrats of Ballybaeg
Chained to woodland castle walls.
Written on the
occasion of attending Jonathan Friel's "Aristocrats"
by the Intiman Repertory Theatre on September 26, 1990 with my brother
Edwin
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Proserpina
If I could reach
that open sea
Then I would sail
And hasten forth to greet the Muse
Upon the tempest's gale.
It storms
The sky is dark in misty morn
And I exult in rain
I drink its liquid freshness in
And am reborn.
My daughters are
the cooling ponds
The rivers are my sons
I pour myself on forest fronds
And kiss my little ones.
The sky is new
Transitioning in lightness now
From empty grey toward blue
I am transformed
And far below the flowing rain
The earth grows wet and warm.
8/18/91
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The
Beloved Country
A beachhead on the
southern coast
An empty ship at anchor
Invaders from the cruel north
Approaching through the mist.
Assegais follow
them through veldt
Across the river Fish
Shadows slip away from dawn
And swirl through morning mist.
Greet their white
and holy Day
The resting day of Christ
Rifles shout and echo north
While shadows haunt the mist.
Fires wake and
eat the veldt
Houses fall to ash
Churches shine like glowing wraiths
Like ghosts ashine in mist.
Assegais follow
them through veldt
Across the river Fish
Ships at anchor in the Cape
Are lost in morning mist.
9/22/91
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Fireflies
A parcel of invented
facts
A weighty tome of lies
An insect in a pool of wax
Stirs briefly, slows, and dies.
It is the hour
of the moon
When sleep has fled their eyes
But little ones astir in gloom
Behold the flickering skies.
They watch the
lamps of evening light
And call their men to death
A war resumed with call of night
With every fall of breath.
The fireflies,
those tender things
Are caught in pools of white
The souls of evening flee like wings
In aimless, wandering flight.
I will not be
a firefly
An insect drawn to flames
I will not fight, again to die
In mindless children's games.
9/14/91
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Eusebius
Goofs Off Again, And Listens to a Tape Recording of Handel From a Time
Warp in the 21st Century
Water Music
Suite
The overture begins
again
On spinning ochre ribbons
In a garret far away
Orchestras are playing on the rippling water
Just beyond my ears...
I know that master,
listen to that string!
Like a flame aburst from coals
Like a mountain's echoing
I am Eusebius, I know that hand
I could sleep within its folds
And never stir again.
I saw the angry
violins upon the Danube
The day they climbed in tails and wigs upon that boat!
I lay without a string along the arbored shore
Kissing too much flesh, and wanting too much music
Too much music for her simple piccolo.
The strings disliked
St. Joseph's music then!
But here it is again
Like preaching from proscenia
The subtle, clever man
Here he is on ochre ribbons
Singing threadlike metal bands
Sliding through my idle hands.
I saw the bitter
cellos on the Dnieper
The day they sank that boat!
And the Emperor was laughing, and Eusebius was laughing
For he had no proper instrument to play
But one sweet tender piccolo
Upon a bed of hay.
St. Joseph had
a trick on us
He made us write our parts
That was why I sold my bow
And wasted days at hearts
(That was why I played the clavier at night
To rebel against St. Joseph's might)
Eusebius was worst at connotation
Subtlety and innovation
And here's St. Joseph once again, it is disheartening
Forcing me to tune again
I could sleep within its folds
And never stir...
I saw cornets
flash upon the Don
The day they moored that boat
Eusebius was found undressed
With someone's married sister
For he had no proper instrument to play
Kissing too much flesh, and wanting too much music
I was much too drunk that day.
The overture begins
again
I know the part I play
I spin an ochre ribbon
Orchestras are playing on the open water
Far across the Bay.
Will St. Joseph
remember me today
As I play his water music
Across the starry ocean
Far across the Portage Bay
Will he come to scold me, preacher of my nightmares
In this garret where I lay
Punching silver buttons on a deus ex machine
In a most undignified and most unstringlike way
Will he tell Eusebius to raise his bow
And lead the first and second violins
To play that ancient composition
In this frightful modern day?
Have I had enough
of lounging
In this most un-German way
Scrounging for a piccolo
Amid a pile of hay?
I feel his breath
upon me
Forcing me to wax this bow
For soon I'll wake, and then I'll go
With violin
I'll go
Resume my place nearby his hand
His inner keep, his private band
Eusebius, no longer just a stringless man
In this steel and contrapuntal land
Kissing too much flesh, and wanting too much music
I am much too wise today.
The overture begins
again
I know the part I play
I spin an ochre ribbon
In the garret where I lay
Orchestras are
playing on the open water
Far across the Portage Bay.
9/26/91
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Saying
Something French
Don't bring your
dirty wash in here
Keep it at the door
I am not driving to the mall
I'm not going to the store
je m'occupe.
I'm not going
to that restaurant
I won't be found there anymore
I'm not spending my last buck on tips
Leave that laundry at the door!
je m'occupe.
There's a word
in French to stop you cold
Arret!
You might find me suddenly too bold
But that is not my problem now
I have life to live inside myself
je m'occupe.
I will not be
a serving wretch
Washing socks and ironing shirts
To drive Your Highness here and there
I will not soften all your hurts
je m'occupe.
The lashing fury
of my strife
Is bleeding out of all my pores
I want to live my lonely life
I want to be my own goodwife
So take yourself to all those stores
je m'occupe.
9/24/91
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Undertones
No one looks at Kasimir
Hiding on the street
No one books the Vance Hotel
Just west of Kasimir
I am slipping into city like a stream
Like an undertone, unheard
Beneath the city's flowing dream.
No one sees the
Dahlia
A block or two from Vance
No one hears my crystal voice
Rebounding from the windowledges
Resounding from the galleries
Full of Art Nouveau
I am slipping into city like a dream
Like an undertone, unheard
Beneath a cloud of rising steam.
In the rooms the
women come and go
Talking now of Art Nouveau.
No hears me singing
here
Nor sees my splendid dance
Harmonies of colored light
Vanish toward approaching night
An undertone...
Stone and shadow
wait for busses
Just a block or two from Vance
I wait to sing a choral fugue
And rise in joyful dance
Undertones assail the peaks
Beyond the city shrieks.
Harmonies of colored
light return to dawn
The brakes of busses waken me
And take me high and outwardly
To dance another, bold original
Elsewhere, in the mountains
Where birds will cheer my song
Where undertones are echoed chimes
Where spiders sing their honeyed rhymes
In cushioned blue of dahlias
And morning sunlight scales the peaks.
In the banks the
bankers come and go
In rooms bedecked with Art Nouveau.
Stone and shadow
huddle close
And beckon me with mimes
Undertones are building slowly on the cityscapes
Dripping from my consciousness in rhymes
The mountains loom in majesty
And take me high and outwardly
To dance a bold original
Among the ancient pines.
9/25/91
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Inquisitor's
Confession
I killed him.
I stabbed him with a blade of grass
And he lay dying on my rain-fed lawns
And then he gave his ghost into the black beyond.
Weeping on my
laughter
Kings and sages came to sin
I sinned
Against the only man of honor
Raised to power without wars
I was his demise.
I killed him.
I choked him with a water glass
As he lay drowning in my grass-filled ponds
And then he gasped his ghost into the silent dawn.
Raging on my laughter
Priests and friars came to sin
I sinned
Against the only honest cardinal
Who had not betrayed his God
I was his demise.
I killed him
And yet, he would not die
That holy man of Trento
Remains before my eyes
That dirty monk from Pinsk
Approaches from the skies
That healer from the mountains
That heretic at large
He breathes, he lives again!
And forgives me as he dies.
10/13/91
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The
Prayer of Angst
Our mother, who art
in Narnia
Legion is Her name.
Our spirits feed in ignorance
Upon her breast of shame.
Our bodies twist in agony
Our hands recoil in pain!
Blot the drops
of night which drip as ink
Into our Christed palms
Seal the iron wound that keeps us
Reaching for her charms!
There has to be
a parent meek
To hold in mild bliss
There has to be a Jesus Christ
To bless us with his kiss!
I thought only
Numen stayed the fangs
Of lions poised to maim
But I have done the very same
I have done the same
And blot the drops of night which drip as ink
into my Christed palms
The Numen's strength
has held me close
And succored me in bliss
And stayed the striking lion
In my mother's wounding kiss.
10/16/91
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The
Song of Polyphemus
Will I escape his
cold, unblinking eye
And sail beyond those narrow straits
And find the open sky?
Can you hear Ulysses crying in the dawn
Beneath the gaze of one who never flinches, never tires, never yawns?
Transfixed in
Polyphemus' cave
Beneath his single, staring eye
Perhaps I'll sing my funeral dirge
Prepare myself to die.
Will I escape
this bold, unthinking eye?
Will I look again into the mirror of my fathers
Knowing I belong beyond that distant, gentle sky?
The night impends,
The light is small, too small by far
To strike him with its fading fire.
Have I escaped
the cold, unblinking eye
To sail again to freedom in the free and open sky?
Can you hear Ulysses crying in the dawn
Remembering the horror of grave he left this day?
Beyond the hands of one he had defeated with his chains
Resplendent with the courage of dismay?
11/18/91, 4/27/92
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The
Song of Solitude
If I could see the
red and fervid cloud
Descend as florid night upon their dusted brows
If I could see!
Pry my eyelids wide apart and
Peer into the breaches of their shrouded consciousness
Strewn with diaries of passions loved and longed
On sheets bespattered with the wasted seed of shattered longing...
No! If I would
look!
At photographs so long familiar to my eyes
I've memorized the creases of the old desire
Disguised as intellectual
Embedded in the sheen of faces cased in polaroid...
If I could stop,
at length full stop
Upon the poised anticipation of that oldest chase
That old familiar, hot embrace of need,
If I could rein myself, a steed in gallop
Racing toward a ribbon half-perceived,
Myself a weapon, half-unsheathed
To separate them from the enemies they breed
Within their swollen depths
Then I would stand
alone
Upon the grey, the most indelicate of dawns
And greet the morn with courage in my loins instead of ashes
With victory in my heart instead of thorns
With love unsteady on my face but flickering there
A brief, uncertain candle
But brave,
And growing braver with the power of the light
Bold, and growing
bolder
With the conquering of night.
10/16/91
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A
Personal Penal Colony
Gloom hangs thickly
over Prague
And I am due at court.
I stand upon a
railway bridge
Watch the leaves die into water
Watch the life descend to gravel
Watch the tears blend into rain
And cry in terror at the Golem
Hanging over Prague.
I drank myself
to numbness
I listened to the piano at the tavern
I drank my bitters deeply at the tavern
I left the piano player chuckling in the tavern
And cried in terror at the Golem
Hanging over Prague
And I am late
for court.
There are factories
below the bridge
There are people walking quickly on the bridge
There are trains approaching very quickly toward the bridge
But I have drunk too deeply at the tavern
No longer crying,
numbly waiting,
for the Golem
Hanging over Prague
They have called
for me at court.
There is metal
on the bridge
And there is metal in the factories
Watching life die into water
Watching leaves descend to gravel
Watching rain blend into tears
As I greet the horrid Golem
Hanging over Prague.
I am on my way
to court.
There is life
within the rivers
There are fish alive in rivers
There are rivers slicing Europe
Into towns and dorfs and countries
The Jewish men who walk around me
Cannot see the grey-eyed Golem
Hanging over Prague
Defendants wait
for me at court.
Gloom hangs thickly
over Europe
And I weep the smoky rain.
Can I die outside this tavern?
Can I die beneath that train?
There's a map
of modern Europe
That I posted on my wall
And there is no pin-clad Kaiser
Holding all my dreams in thrall
What happened when the factories
Spewed our death into the skies?
What happened to the Golem
Smiling death with smoky eyes?
There is metal
in my mouth
As I leave the smoky tavern
There is smoke adrift from chimneys
As I turn toward the south.
I drank in bitters
at the tavern
Watched the leaves spin on the river
Felt my tears become the rain
Felt the weight of all my years
Knew the end of all my pain
No one listens to the piano
With a smoky glass of bitters
For there is no
grinning Golem
And there is no grey-eyed court
And there is no storm of madness
Sweeping westward over Prague.
(for Franz Kafka)
10/9/91
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To
Purveyors of Popular Literature
(On the occasion of a certain sadness)
Beware of poet salesmen
Consigning to your wreckage heap their shining cares
Grasp instead with hungry hands a more familiar lie
Do not assuage their burning lips
With wines of richer ages
Do not soothe their aching throats
With manna from your sky.
Loose the fervid
grip they claim
Upon your sacred threshold
Send them down to nether fame
Where poets grow, in flame,
In time and tone and temperament
More bold.
This age needs
pressing at the gate
To greet our need, to feed our hate
This land needs mould and steaming slate
And trolls agape with two and forty hungry eyes
To entertain us in the chilly dawn of disillusion
As we wait.
More bold indeed,
my good proprietor
Send them back to dry their seed
And store it safe through winter
And yet another winter falls
While salesmen rise to make their calls.
More bold indeed!
my good proprietor
Send them back to urban night
They must have husbands somewhere there
To hold them back
Or mothers waiting at the edges of the stage
To hush their cries, to hem their rage
Do not consign them to your heap
For you will lose your dreamless sleep
For you will hear
their wizened sage
Whispering familiar lies
Of useless cares, of empty skies
You will see them make their calls
The poet salesmen climb your walls
And no one holds them back
They come! They come
And salesmen rise to make their calls
As yet another winter falls.
10/12/91
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Mine
Is Not The Hand
Fresh the wound that
bleeds inside my heart
And cold the ancient stone on which I weep
But mine is not the hand that wields the Law
And mine is not the shade that haunts her sleep.
The stroke of
rusted swords assails me now
And pricks the blood so lately healed to scar
But mine is not the hand that wields the Law
Nor burns the mark of Cain upon her brow.
The pity of my
love would stay her time
And beg that God and man unstain her deed!
But mine is not the ink that pens her fate
Nor executes the sentence for her crime.
Fresh the wound
that bleeds inside my heart
And cold the ancient stone on which I weep
For mine is not the ink that pens her fate
And mine is not the hand that wields the Law.
11/8/91
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Song
of the Skagit Elder
(for Vi Hilbert)
Skagit's land is
now unbounded by the bleeding pines
She watches seven shadows
Flee the dirty longhouse
And the dead Olympic mines
To haunt again the asphalt forest.
Seven black-edged
slivers reel above Seattle
Seven ravens shiver briefly in the sun.
Take them back
to history
Unduplicate the treads of black progressing
Over minds held frozen
In distortions of some dreaming earth!
Skagit's fence
is wounded by the prodding of the heads
Of seven sneering shadows
Strutting from the longhouse
And their steamy fouled beds
To play again in asphalt forest.
And I, the dogged
caucasian
Remain bewildered by the slow-eclipsing moon:
Is there no white man's mythos here
To haste a white man's thought?
To stem the putrefaction issuing
From some symbolic beak?
Is there no fire kindling in our collective heart
To bid our own awareness speak?
For Skagit's land
is now unbounded by the severed pines
The metaphors have taken wing and fled their ancient home
Breeding like a nested bird among our emptied lives
And feeding like a cuckoo on our young.
Seven black-edged
slivers reel in joy above Seattle
Seven ravens make a shadow on the Sun
And seven symbols
in formation
Feed like cuckoos on our young.
10/31/91
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The
Tower
The Tower stands,
a testament, before the foreign Knight
The first boot to scrape a heel on Albion's back
He comes to pray, knowing that in silence comes the Light
Certainty as steel upon his breast.
The early dawn
releases day upon the vale of glass
Whose ancient trees are tongues that loll from frigid cracks
He kneels in supplication to the gods of British might
Powerful as steel upon his breast.
11/10/91
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Eaters
of the Dead
Let me tell you about
the Nickel Man
And his hairy friend the Soldier
(Foreigners, my father said)
Come to Annaganthas for the Sunday fair
Come to sell their bodies and their foreign yellow hair.
They sold their
shoes on Sunday
And laid their limbs on pegs
They asked a penny for the arms
A nickel each for legs.
And war broke
out in Annaganthas
Sunday as the arms and legs changed hands
The Nickel Man and Soldier had filled a sack with lead
And when the wounded came into the square
He offered them a nickel for the dead.
The Huns had taken
Annaganthas
As the Nickel Man made money at the fair
And then loaded down with flesh and coin he fled
(Scavengers, my father said)
Gone to feed the countryside and fill his sack of lead
Gone to offer carrion to eaters of the dead.
12/08/91
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Mercenaries
I dreamed again last
night of war
I was in the land of Albion
On the day of her destruction
And turned her bay into a burning lake
Until her boats were blackened heaps
And all of devilry had danced upon her cinders.
I dreamed again
of monuments
The cairns along the Roman Road to Gaul
We torched her villages in rain
And smoke obscured the fire
Marring valleys with a thousand scars.
We are mercenaries
living still
With memory fresh burning in our minds
We still see the wounded and the dead
And ruined hulks our fires left behind.
I dread the eve
of conscience and remembrance
Of enemies we laid upon the clay
Who torture every sleep with accusations
Until beleaguered night surrenders day.
12/29/91
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Wardens
of Protection
Wardens of Protection
hear my pleas
For I appeal in supplication at Your altar, on my knees!
She cut me dead
with icicles and doom
She drew the curtains of her lace assassination
Privately she drew the curtains closed
And lighted black-edged candles in the gloom.
And then the witching
woke
Mascara-limned and taut against the eyelids of her night
She blinked the litanies of lace assassination
She woke the witching at the elder home
Where she waited at the crossroads
Waited with the curtains drawn full fast
Against the prying eyes of light.
The witch's wrath
is like a seething
Like a lightning bolt of breath
Coursing like a flood through intellectual designing
Hidden with a painted kiss of sainthood
She cut me dead with teacups and with spoons
And wards and prayers of madness seeking form
In deepening gloom.
Wardens of Protection
Cast your eyes upon the curtains of her lace assassination
Upon the painted kiss of sainthood
Curb the dancing angel laughing death on New Year's eve
In the bowels of the elder home
Ease the pain that grows like gunshots in my side!
For she I loved so well has come and shot me in the side
And stitches me with wounds which bloom from ignorance of pride
Do not let the wounding of her ignorance
Keep piercing me inside!
She cut me dead
with icicles and gloom
With angels armed for dreadnought
Cast your eyes upon the signing pentagram
And shout her scorning winds to zephyr!
I know that blooming
ignorance will die upon its vine
If I will seek your altar, and forsake her poison wine.
10/18/91
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The
Dawn of Yahweh
Could it be the vigil
ends
And breaks the mordant peace of centuries?
A madness is upon the earth, a sudden storm is wrought
Mountains fall as shards into the seas.
Fast escape on
terror's wings
Flee the martyrs from the crumbling land
The glaciers flow as water, and transform the pebble sands
While far below, the brutal Fury sings.
The morning greets
a molten day
A golden calf is singing to the Sun
The word of Baal is spoken now, a language long forgot
A deity is fashioned out of clay.
The steed of terror
flees its groom
To trample on the hands that bid him hold
The hulk of Marduk's tower is a temple for the dead
Whose sacerdotal bodies line his tomb.
Blame not the
priest for Yahweh's wrath
For death cannot be held from rampant youth
Vengeance is illusion on the straight and narrow path
Vengeance in the pain of knowing truth.
12/13/91
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The
Winter Song
Who had rippled on
the starry ocean
Crashing waves against the light
Who had driven suns into my eyes
And molded shape to formless night?
The gasp of bold
discovery is gone
And cold the iron's metal touch
The wind of that magnificence is fled
Now silence has become my winter song.
I have traveled
storms behind Your cloak
And I have sailed the inner sea
And spiting eyes of demons in the rock
You hastened me to set the Titan free.
Now winter shakes
the trees, and I am dumb
And wait the shadows out to dawn
While eagles scratch their talons at the sun
I wake the Muse to bring my winter song.
12/08/91
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Critias
The Rhetorician (after Plato)
I am rolling in my
grave
While Critias debates with politicians
He overends ideas like rotting fruit
He thinks our petty tyranny is saved
With scheming words in straining ears
While I am counting spearheads in my side.
Critias is Caesar
of the streets
Battling Justinian with oaths
And senators now listen to the champion
And hearing him, remember me
Each expostulation is the hemlock for my tea.
12/13/91
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Kingdom
of the Air: A Mystic Tale
He commenced investigation
from a pit in Middle Europe
In the fractured year
When they carried Mussolini from the gibbet in the Square
Priests and poets lectured there
A soggy sop of intellectuals
Expounding on the sorry state of morals
While he observed the humans from the kingdom of the air.
It was cold in
Middle Europe
And it was cold in southern dells
And it was cold as ice in Africa
As he discovered later, on the sand
He had come to teach a lesson on the humanness of man
But he couldn't find a bed without a flea
He couldn't find the missionaries traveling in bands
And he couldn't feel the fabled fires of Hell.
It was colder
still, but quiet
In the precinct of the sea-god
And he kept it there, the sanctum of his sanity
For torpitude is valued by the races of the air
He didn't comprehend it, all the bleeding in the Square
He was sure he found the right peninsula
And yet there couldn't be a Renaissance unfolding there.
All of middle
Europe spelled disaster from the air
And all of southern Asia was a wound
All of northern Africa was skeletally bare
So he retired early to record his contemplations
Retreating from the humans to an oceanic lair.
The dawn of inspiration
came to light his ocean room
And consciousness awoke and led him out
Back to Middle Europe, to restore a commonwealth
By telling fabled stories of the kingdom of the air
To the children who had witnessed all the killing in the Square.
1/2/92
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Sostenuto
Querulous, the wandering
shade of Empire
Ghost without a haunting place
Now that Rome is burning
Now that Venice is an island full of gulls
Betrayed, Religion, by the blood upon her doors
Witness to the martyrs of the Empire.
Let there be no
martyrs here
Let morning shine on reasonable men
With no secret passion buried in their souls
Who have no torch to symbolize their burning
And no brethren prisoners of Rome.
Rain...
Let there be rain upon the blackened ruin of Empire
And greenest shoots will rise in flame-fed soil
These are our only memories of martyrs
At last we have outgrown them, every king
And every head Jerusalem had rubbed with oil.
2/14/92
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Continuity
The single footprint
on the shingle beach
The interrupting waves destroyed
Imagines for my eye the break of continuity
A single-legged stranger leaping for the void.
Here the silent
counterpart of time
Imagines me tonight an ocean
The ancient water, home of Continuity
A metronome the Moon inspires into motion.
Yet here, one
mark upon the shingle beach
The interrupting waves destroyed
Ebbs against the ponderous urge of continuity
Mortal answer to the challenge of the void.
3/2/92
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The
Hill of Red Flowers
It was the Odyssey
I started
When I left the hill
Covered with red flowers
And followed the trail of nine
And bound the city to the earth with nine
Leaving behind, wistfully
The citadel of the Women
With braids of yellow hair
And started on the path
To the town made of wood.
I left the hill
(red)
Squeamishly by two and two together
And found another hill, another citadel
Ruled by a kindly king, also red
Rather more a knight (I wasn't sure)
In the town they made of wood
But could not stay although he asked me to
And promised me that he would keep my epistle safe
And I found the five and the two and the two
And journeyed by them
Until the four and the five made nine
Until there was only five
And by five I followed the blue
And the white and the red
Guided by the white, flanked by the blue
Into the Royal City.
Psychosis is a
rare and wondrous thing
A country full of simple nouns, of numbers
And of colored inspiration
And every man a priest, a king, a noun
And every girl a queen, a witch, a wraith
A princess in the citadel
With braids of yellow hair
On a hill
Filled with red flowers.
I waited in the
Royal City.
I breathed in numbers and ravens and light
And watched the boats of blue
And the rivers of the night become the streets
I had sailed the royal road
Guided by the blue, heralded by white
And fell before the Numen with my eyes reflecting night.
I gazed into the
meaning of the not
And gasped as only rare and wondrous minds can do
And for moments I saw the earth was full of dashing priests
In flashing robes
And all the sun was flashing strobes
I slashed across the ravens and fought against the fours
And broke the blue and stabbed the gold, and knew.
And I left the
Royal City, crushed
And the hills did not reflect the golden hue
That I had rushed and breathed,
I carried not a book, and not a message
And sank, a hollow earth, and became a hollow man
A wraith, a shadow of the golden dream
And blue became the sky, and red became the sunset
And all the fives returned me to the freeway
But the radio was whispering
And the radio shrieked and sang and lied
And I broke upon the freeway
And all the meaning died.
And I came back
to Woodinville
And a man, more blond than red
Gave me back a book that I had left with him,
And I traveled by way of Redmond home
And I saw no hill
Covered with red flowers
And no citadel, and not a single yellow braid
Hanging from the heights of Alphagraphics
And bound no flailing demon on the Route 90 bridge
Nor saw a priest, hailing Helios
Descending into dusk upon the Sound.
4/24/92
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A
Mortal Day
And so, I spring
again, newborn
A sprite full-formed and heedless
Of the headache pangs of birth
Minervas give to Jupiters
Who grant them life again on foaming tides
Without account of troubles
Every one commits against him
In the name of love.
Would I be a parricide
to smite him
Little Goddess that I am,
Toddle bold against the forces of his cold implacability
Claiming immortality with smugness
Like my bold half-brother on the stone
Looking for a flame to steal for men
Or a sword to lay him out?
But something
hid matures me as I play
And I am lost among the fantasies and shells
That danced, or seemed to dance before me
Living playmates in the foam
They danced away
And left my bright divinity to fade in mortal day
And I become as you
Another mortal made of clay.
3/9/92
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Requiem
for the Beats
The smoke in Sausalito
creeps across
The yawning sill,
Invokes the spell of San Francisco
Where the city lies awaiting light
In paralytic chill
Prepares the hue and cry of mourning
As the final beatnik poet starts his journey into night.
This was the place,
fantastic as a seashore
Where hills were carved in neoprene
And floored with acid sands
These were the stairs
Where saxophones were held by angels
To the lips of jazz despair
And cries of eloquence were dreams
Forgotten in the fogs
Drifting from the heights of San Francisco
Lisping from the mouths of garbage cans.
This was the landscape
that beheld the beatnik age
Slipping like an isotope into the midnight bay
Beneath accusing moons and scientific waves
They moved, like walking dead, across a moving stage
And worked their twisted anger to an ecstasy of rage
Gulping youth like crows afeast on carrion
This was the beatnik age.
This was the empty
stairwell where declined the beatnik age
Where gentle mist obscured his last lament
In corridors and halls of fabrication
Where vomited the last of them the Muses sent
To rail in monotone to a riff of jazz despair
In cloying smoke, in moisture-laden air
And die of emphysema under roofs of wet cement.
The smoke in Sausalito
is a pall upon the town
Where once there shouted meaningful abuse
Beneath the foggy moon there waits an empty limousine
They bring him out, the last and lipless poet
To a resting place above the lofty stairs
To a tribute far beyond the subtle urgings of a Muse
To a tomb among the hills of neoprene.
3/8/92, 8/8/93
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One
Summer
I once turned my
eyes to Babylon
To wait the surge of sun
To wake the passion, wake the flame
To seek my bright escape again
One summer in the flame.
I had the turmoil
pressing me
Like waves, like thunderous waves
The lure of Sirens toward the rocks
Like teeth, like jagged staves
They drew me like an Argonaut
Toward their lifeless caves
One summer on the waves.
I once turned
my eyes to Babylon
Searching for the one I once beheld
In flaming noon;
But evening proved too cold for such a visionary charm;
That fades like dew, and dries like dew
That dries like salt, and stings like salt
In love's imagined wounds.
3/1/92, 8/8/93
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Priests
of Rationality (After Plath)
Twilight has come
to the ancient land
And patience has tumbled Olympus
From heavy moorings of epic and song.
For we the priests
of Rationality
Cannot be swayed by the thunder of an oracle
Nor Yahweh, nor effigies in stone or stick
Nor even, in our solitary sanctums
Bow, or find a moment of humility in atoms
Slicing radiation through our bones
The age of wonderment is fled
Its passage breaks the fundament of youth.
No longer injured
by your inattention
No longer crushed by prayers unheard
We rush to fill our barrenness with life
Our wombs with Hierarchs new-formed
Whose countenance reflects our everyday
Whose sacrifice of clay remains, unburned.
3/7/92
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A
Case of Synesthesia
(The King of Jazz
has packed it in
And fled from demon heroin;
Hosts of angels guide him home
Bearing gifts of methadone.)
Who am I to tear
the vision from his eyes
Confuse his limpid view of clouds and chords
Or halt the synesthesia
Of philosophers and trumpets?
How shall I sift,
as sand
The solitary teardrop of his poem
From nightmares painted blue
An ignorance enforced
By imagery ill-wedded to ideas?
For emotion dressed in intellect
Is just as raw
As nightmares peering from the mouths
Of trumpets painted blue.
Once again I see
the form of pilgrimage
In atheism's garb;
Another seeks the metaphor's salvation
Imposing verse on his impinging nightmare blues: | 
