a poem about a poem (for Ne----)

i dreamt i found a poem
about a song
about a story
about a river
that wasn't really a river
but a secret about all rivers
and stories
and songs
and poems

past the overgrown hedge maze
in the courtyard outside the ruined library
i found it under the roots of a tree
in the garden where no one is supposed to be

it was written in hieroglyphs
and thumbprints in chimney soot
and forgotten letters that have no shapes
and backwards misspellings in orange crayon

i looked at it confused
i turned it over and over in my hands
i carried it out of the garden
past the wilds
past the ends of the roads
past the badlands dry
to the place where the heather grows on the riverbank
and i stood with my feet in the water
and i started to read

when i finished i ran
fast as dreaming feet can carry
fast to the places where people live in my dreams

i ran to Polyphemus
the cyclops at sea
and i held out the poem about the song about the story about the river
held it out for him to see
and i asked
"have you ever read anything so perfect?"
and Polyphemus looked only out to sea
and pulled his nets up from the waters
and never looked

i ran to Eve
camped outside the garden gate
weeping in her patience
and i read from the poem about the song about the story about the river
read it out for her to hear
and i asked
"have you ever heard anything so perfect?"
and Eve bawled in her grief
and balled her fists at her ears
and never listened

i thought to run to the Huntress
in the part of the woods that is always moonlit
but as i ran i saw someone else on the road
i saw the valkyrie with flowers in her hair
and i rushed up to her side and pressed into her hand the poem
about the song
about the story
about the river
and i said
"take this here, this perfect thing --
it is a poem to read
and a song to sing
and a story to tell
about a river that is not a river but a secret about many things!"

and she looked at it confused
and she turned it over and over in her hands
and she looked baffled into my shining excitement
and she said
"it is a very perfect thing, i'm sure"
and she smiled and continued her way down the road
and i continued on mine the other direction

as i walked the wind changed
i stopped on the road
i turned to watch her go
wondering what she would do with my perfect thing
and i saw it drop from her hand and roll away in the changing wind
and it rolled to the sand and into the sea

and before i could turn my head back to look at her
the dream was over
the morning was come
and awake i could no longer remember the poem
about the song
about the story
about the river that was not a river

but a secret about all rivers

and stories


and songs



and poems




and dreams





and secrets

imago (to Le---)

you in a low voice
a funeral whisper unguarded
one confession of many

"i imagine
 crawling over you
 in the darkness
 your hands on me"

and what do i imagine?
how can i answer?
the sole syllable that comes is built from every word i know all at once
a roar
 a plea
  a gasp
   as loud as the world
   an old-testament deluge
   a desperate thunderhead
  at the tip of my tongue
  at the top of my throat
hopeless
senseless
breath
 less
everything
 my eyes are dead glass
  mumbling noncommittals in the vernacular of the inanimate
everything to say
 and it rhymes with silence

what do i imagine?

a traffic jam at my lips
maybe i could speak
if only i had nothing to say

what do i imagine?

i imagine

you
                  me
you
                  me
you
    crawling
             over


                  me

in the darkness
my hands on you

your forehead on my yet-dumbstruck lips
   my fingers knotted in your hair
 your fingertips tracing alien letters on my skin
  our fingers interwoven
 our palms press urgently together
our voices thunder the shadows
and then
our voices small in the night
and then
your sleeping breath on my neck
and then
your smiling good morning eyes
and then
and then
and then

what do i imagine?

what do i not?

legendary (for An---)

you have the look of one fast asleep
but about the anchor of you
left in the dolor of this waking place
the ears of my dreaming pick out the staccato pitterpat
of bare feet on the wet
of the courtyard stones
somewhere
nowhere
in an afternoon rainshower
where little eyes are peering
out
at you
from between the jitterbugging leaves of the garden
and then when you turn
tangled in the sheets
you have the sigh of one dry and defeated
but echoing
in the canyons of your shadow
in the tides of your blood
in the voiceless thunderclaps of your breath
in the bottomless pools at the backs of your eyes
once upon a time
and never
there is hissed the memory of hoofbeats
and heavy drums
and armies marching
where your hungry gaze scarred the world
and i think
as you curl
and bury your face from the moonlight
streaming through the frosty glass
i think i see vast shapeless things
moving
flailing
lurching
dancing
in the shadows beyond your shoulder
skin turned an angry red border
by the blood-glare of the clock
too afraid to smudge the canvas of you
painted red and white
by the brushes of the night
i lay and
see the shapeless things beyond the horizon of you
and hear the war-drums from within the labyrinth of you
and smell the rainstorm behind the dream of you
and and
and
the night is so concentered on the whole of you that i feel
i feel
if you stir
it will blow me apart
and if you wake
i will burn away under your gaze
and if i remain
your armies and your worshipping monsters will drag me away
just another gravestone
in the foundations
of the temples and palaces
constructed in the wake
of your passage
but i cannot even imagine creeping from the bed
stealing to the window
running mad into the night
i am but a footnote
to the legend
of you

armistice (for Ne----)

sand on arms of breeze
tonight's devil wind
its whispertaps on the window glass
and in splintered hour
i stir to the sound

hyphens of waking confusion
in sleep's paragraph
shredded by fingers of storm
the night is a crossroads
of what is dream
and what is known
and the countless blind eyes of the unseen walls
black in sidelong vision
bear useless witness

disorientation
goes on and on
i wake from a dream of you
you're not there
i wake
from a dream
of you
you are
not
there
i
wake

and torture is gradually reborn
in impossibility smuggled back
within unlabeled snarling crates
in the backs of creaking wagons
across the borders of the counties of dream

loathing of covenant
sealed in your snowy strength
(i have no strength to be cold
i have only the weakness of hunger)
a ceasefire
drafted in your ice
signed in my half-extinguished ink

night eyes watch
devil winds listen
i confess to both
hatred for the waking world
without you
hatred for the dreaming world
with you
veteran of a fool's crusade
expatriate by armistice from all territories

and you
and you
and you
you
you
when the slivered moon is low in the sky
do you sleep the flawless slumber
of the victor
or do you toss and twist
and wake to the wind
briefly confused
saddened
at an unnamed absence
with the silhouette
of a man who misses you?

lilu

no eyes cry my likeness
struck indiscriminately witless
living the trembling unrest
of fear-summers and ghost-lessons
worlded by winters' pleasant moonless mischief
fragment of a wild jezebel
her small-hearted beauty
her blood chilling like clay
her caress crimson and wings liquid white

thoughts at the outset

sway at the precipice
the face on the darkness sneers back
we've been here before
the fathoms and i
eye to eye
tongue to ear

paralithic

i'm tangled up in green plastic coils again
singing my secret song
halfway between Hell and salvation
(which may turn out to be the same place)
it's taken so long just to begin
and i've left my passion asleep under the tree outside your window
so i walk these sheetmetal corridors alone
and i come, breath by bated breath,
closer to your light.
closer to you.

under the shadow of a heavy cross
and through the lands you trod long before
i follow the traces of a passage i cannot yet understand
to a destiny only half feared
as only half seen in fever's troubled sleep
footprints in fate, the perfumed notes you've for left my soul
signed in quiet kisses and locks of red hair
through time, from the deep i seek,
closer to this mystery.
closer to you.

but to an emerald end unknown
like that of any man, troubled or graced
along the river's bank i drift
back to the barrows of my ancestor ghosts
to the breath of black dogs and prayers of horned gods
to the elder stone places where now only you are dancing
beckoning like love for me to take up the song
and fall into the ancient future i only suspect,
closer to madness.
closer to freedom.
closer to you.

untitled (to Ne----)

ignobly
i tried to excuse myself of certain feelings professed
i told a woman i loved only the echo of the girl she had been
and she knew i lied
but she knew not how
and the time never seemed to come to tell her
that what i loved in the girl she had been
was the glimpse of the woman she was to be