Consonance V

the question of the matter of

what we prevent ourselves from

            the matter of from

the rusted iron gate of from

what history welds with corrosion

                        the stuck thing inside

                        deliberately made

                        encouraged to disease

lean and answer the question god dammit

show me the limits of the city

where inside and outside draw

their invisible threshold

                                    tell me

did the gate open out or swing

in

where is the child with the bronze key

sewn into his breast pocket

                                                under what

lake is he standing with eyes bulging

            his fish hand at his side           reaching

prepared to give to you

                                                it

if you ask

not question or answer                                                it

then,

Print

to the road return breathe

over the bloody footprint and return

to the black ribbon edge

northeast home

often movement          this way

you the traveler become the bloody print

that you were here and left a living sign

what made the wolf paw bleed though

is what brought you here to the mystery

and what calls you away          the ricochet

the ocean singing in the bare trees

singing the losses that register as human

and what comes after                          becomes

becomes)

the moment that made the paw print

and the moment it imprinted in you

tying off the moments in between

                                    now becomes then

in the wet stillness of your breathing

kneeling over   and under        the stain

inhale

                                                            stain

become

breathe                                    return

face the child standing in the snow staring

at the child in you staring back.

Consonance IV

                                                I the

                                                body

singing

Modoc say:      I

                        the song

                        I walk here

            a prayer sung for

            the body of the

            people

I                       the song                       I walk here                  in the body

I                       the body                      walk in song                 within

the body is the song

place sings the body

I soon will travel

for the sake of

transport         to make

                        money

and to sing

else  where                  not

                                                                                    here

I will drive three

days back to

familiar skies                                       singing home and not the body no

Black Ribbon Edge

how the hole inside grows                   and the road

                                                the road unspools fills

feeds inertia to inertia

as a river feeds water

into lake

            how a sunset

in Arkansas sits four hours

in your blurred mirrors                                               dying

                                                            over Texas

                                                            I think to myself

reflect later that the evening sky

is a lady

painting herself for a night out

with

but the image is a dead end                all

                                                            images

but a few

                                               

kaleidoscopic

                                                            dead ends

in the stellar vacuum

of intentional speech

                        the song I am become

sings to turn on you now glittering assumptions of flesh

as soil

            and all that the sky makes of our eyes.

Eleven

            the finger

of a candle

you point up

            slight number

                        point to

the awareness

of the heart

not to a con-

ceptual god

but to the mystery

                        you

slight number

                        stalks

with no flower

heads

            remind me

of the work

I have here

remind me

of the dead

here also.

Consonance III

not now            but wasn’t there then

a store at that end of town where one

could find scottish thread and egyptian

needles

where one could shout             hooray for love

                                                            hooray

as if balloons bright primary colors

might float up inside the swelling self

            the savage mystery of it all

                        that many make religion

                                    out of

or worse

            that sadness makes its music of

the alone                     the alone that live in memory

for no sake but survival’s churning muddy sake

                        the tears and anger that incinerate

us from the inside out

                                                            alone

as the oyster must be

                                    as the single shattering drop

of rain must be

                        there               there at the edge

                                    of sadness        of a town

that forgets where it once ended at the edges

of cornfields and quarries                   this town

that swallows itself daily as Saturn did his sons

as the mantis does her inseminator who is never

privileged as mate or lover

listen to the music of these clustered ruins    hear

valves slam shut in the dying human machine

Consonance II

                        is a matter of

                        what we prevent

                        ourselves from

                                    knowing

a legend is a made thing                      a thing

made out of circumstance

that a story cannot carry

            in its making

            it is made

            & to say what

                        it is

which is to say that the making of a legend

                                    the making is retained

                                    by the made thing

that the legend tells the story of its creation

                                    how it came to be

                                    what it came to

that this man

            an oak tree of a man with an infinite mind

spilled into violence so to be seen as not short tempered

as virtuous      instead

and by extension

                                    unedited          ineradicable

and so towers the legend over his poems        the thinking

swaying and unquestionable

                                                every move every physical

every intellectual & musical move like a bear emerged

and drunk from her cave returned to creation creation

itself.