Compassion

---

I fucking hate compassion.

It’s always a five-day surgery,
some gentle detox—

a chisel perpetually chipping away
the skull, wanting to crack it,
make an omelete,
sprinkle pepper to see
if the brain waves are on fire,
do the patterns dance in normal
line dance fashion,

or are they strewn across the stage,
a postmodern jazz number
writhing and convulsing in the strobe lights of
why aren't you right with god? you worry us,
we pray for you/did we do something wrong?

One wants to pull all the eggs from the carton,
smash them on the kitchen walls and
spread them across the body, smearing the
questions accusations confusions into one's pores,
set fire to the house,
ask them to use a more blunt
or sharp instrument—

a crowbar, please, the chisel is too soft–

so the extraction can just end and
the patient can finally sleep.

how the poem and the painting made love

it started timid,
virgin,
not crass,
or violent,
no blindfolds or
pick-up lines
but the erotica of
black-and-white lovers
with their hands first conjoined,

the poem with its honeyed words
and the painting,
bashful,
holding back its oils,

until the poem, emboldened by
a scripted and sensuous need,
lifted the pastel to gaze in wonder at
the canvas underneath,

and the painting,
with quickened breathing,
spreading its colors for the
oncoming stanzas;

and the poem slowly began

its tongue,

forming words of
aesthetic bliss and pleasure--

the rhythm and
the rhymes,
patterns retracing the first brush strokes,
taunting the painting to come forth from its frame;

the painting,
unhooking its clasps,
slipping gracefully from its mat,
stepping forth from the glass,
coyly shaking the dustcovers off its feet,

bending this way and that
to exhibit its carefully drawn landscape

then curling its deckle edges about the poem,
urging the words to melt from the page,
wanting the ink to mingle with its mediums,

-- and the subsequent,
not so spontaneous
but rather sumptuous
combustion of image and word,
wherein the rivers and mountains and
the walking in beauty like
the night, the pretty how town and
the impressions of some
starry night
became one --

and the one,
and the other,
one pointing,
one singing,
now joining,


then collapsing,
and stars,
afterglow and punctuation mark,

both spent as a child's allowance,

whereafter cinema,
their love child,
took its fragile infant form,
gestating from the union of
poem and painting.

faith. a poem cycle in the form of vers libre.

*****

"This is the way we go to church,
We go to church, we go to church;
This is the way we go to church,
So early Sunday morning."

~ 1966 edition of My First Sing-A-Song Book

*****

the first rotation--
"god is the divine abortionist."

...when i was a child...

i felt as a child
i thought as a child

(i hurt as a child)

my elbows, alabaster
my smile a golden calf

and scevah knew my secrets
(did abel love his cain?)

and my knees were child-knees
scraped by unchild worlds.

-- when i was a child,
god forgot me --

...but now that i am grown...

i put childish things beside me
i hold them all more tightly
i place them around my room

my walls are scarred with ponies
the ceiling knows my demons
my bedspread is a doll house
i wear my captain crunch

now that i am grown
still i am child

and nightly as a child
i have a nightmare vision:

the children rise up against god,
and god will lose his children.

*****

the second rotation,
being a variation on a form

here is the church
here is the steeple
open your hands
see all the people

open your eyes
see all the people
here is the girl
here is the preacher

open your ears
hear the girl screaming
here is the church
here is the steeple

*****

the third rotation--
"in honor of evagrius; in contest of pope gregory; otherwise entitled acedia."

we are the dark-skinned.

we are the children of the night and
the inheritors of the earth.

we are the children of the morning and
thus eclipse the sun.

it is not that our skin has burnt,
that our pigment flows thicker,
more crudely, than yours and your oil

it is that our souls have swallowed our skins
and we do not mask our pigment

we do not blink with fists
and we do not take god lightly.

*****

the fourth rotation,
being entitled,
winter.

is it possible,
when we feel we need
ten more begotten sons,
a hundred of His daughters,
two more virgin (repentant lesbian) mothers
and hell itself,

that, in the aftermath
of the passionate expression of
our sacred freedom,

hearts,

long toyed with,
held in suspension by puppet-like fishing string,

break into a million sacreligious pieces,
yet someday mend?

understudy, or, aesthetics pt. 6

"or was it backward,
I had to ask
as I turned
to reach for a faraway towel."
~billy collins, "the long day"

it seems trite to tell you
that i write,
while sitting in the rain on a black metal chair
with a hole in my left shoe and
a cigarette in my right hand,

about the galaxy in her eyes
or the homeric epics in his head,

or to bring your attention to
-- is it a fact? --
that "homeric epics" are an understudy
to the pain he felt when he,
but a solitary astronaut,
realized he floated in plantary rotation
around but one of her planets,

the pain itself, having broken its leg,
being unable to stand for itself,

and wondering,
is it coy or crass or perhaps
is it a moment of poetic fury,
to ask the illiad to take its place on paper?

would it be heavyhanded,
to point,
line by line,
to how the poem,
more thinly constructed than tinkertoy windmills,
rose from dust into its eden home?

but most of all,
to end the poem,

not with some profound utterance or
subtle nod to the more favorite of plato's forms,

but rather,
languidly, as if intentionally,
an incomplete sentence,
an unfinished phrase.

an exercise in rhyme, or, aesthetics pt. 5

“And I wove the thing to a random rhyme."
~Austin Dobson

it is the weight of love on water
it is peter's feet on water
it is the smell of fishermen's daughters
it is pure and sweet and true

it is true and it is lethal
i am the bells that grace the steeple
i am the coroner and the preacher
i bury thoughts in moss

still mermaids hide in brambles
it makes no sense to ramble
it makes much sense to dally
you are the posterboards at rallies

i pen these words at midnight
i burned your words at midnight
i burned your words with daylight
i cut myself with love

not birds, but bees

should you be a flower,
i will find you among
lilacs and lilies,
growing as bramble and beauty
between the orange blossom and
the aristocracy of the rose,
a buttercup your friend and
the iris your companion,

and i, a bee unto your pollen,
will tread the stairs to heaven,
trace your winding,
graceful stem,
behold the ground below and
breathe the heights to which you brought me,

i will place my nose among your petals
to gain your sweet and nectar scent

i will drink the dew that lines your blossom,
take mementos to remember you in flight.

jealousy.

i could not help but notice
the way the shadows traced
the outline of her cheek,
flaunting their airy fingers
down her neck and arching spine,

the candle, with its
seductive scent of lavender,
flickering exotic
erotic belly dancer fashion,
tempting the shadows to
not only touch, but caress

the rise and fall of her
soft breasts,
recently intimate with sandalwood soap,

or how her bra,
daring to be lacy
and knowing full well she is mine,
wraps itself around her bosom,
its clasps on her back
where my own hands belong,

and the quilt,
taking my place between her legs,
draped languidly as if to say
oh yes, i know she belongs to you,
but see how happily she lies with me,
how she stirs and sighs when i,
smoother than your just-shaved face,
embrace her napping form.

had Marc Antony a child,

it would be in September
that I removed the mantle from my country,
spread it upon the imperial ground, and
unfolded all its humble creases so that
all the blood stains were there,
so bright they were almost blood stains on my own blue eyes,
almost blood stains on humanity's chest,
almost blood stains that I created when
I strangled my country to death — or was it to life? —
I cannot remember,

for so long ago I forgot
my country had been murdered,
stored away in the morose attic,
thumping away like a telltale heart,
(did I panic? I cannot say,
being enraptured with Poe I had neglected the moment) where
so gently encased in a trinity of colors
it was so unaware, it seems, that color is a treacherous friend —
unaware that I, lover that I am,
Whitman-imbued soul that saunters like a god,
mouth of spewing prose that masquerades as poetic sapphire,
might have felt December a more satisfying month,
or February,
sweet February,
Valentine epoch of capitalism and orgasm,
was February a more fitting conclusion to infidelity?

— or was it betrayal?
So often the blood and its vampire nature sugarcoat the whole affair
that it becomes a difficult question,
whether the lover murdered
or the beloved embraced suicide.

Sometimes I have an ocean
that I call passion

— and oceans tend to not be subtle
or distinct —
they tend to exaggerate,
dramatize themselves into nightmares
so that I, patriot and rebel, even sinner and divine
("human" if I were cliche),

I seem to lose my train of thought
and choose to mourn the death of majesty

— then live,
perhaps to grip the nearby shotgun,
later to write similarly of Poetry.

aesthetics pt. 2

one by one, she said,
& she placed yet another on the string—

her hands, stained by ink,
rummaging through a dictionary &
thesaurus & the wet negatives
in her mind, brain synapses
becoming words, women
becoming fairies, dreams
becoming figures cloaked in colors,

& everything becomes a
clumsy chaotic pile of beads saturated with melody,
an audibly acryllic symphony of sperm & egg
& yesterday's conversations about god & history & dinner & why he loves her,

& her fingers grasp bead on bead,
stringing them on form and flavor,
how they roll sumptuously off her tongue,
until a necklace emerges &
a poem receives the breath of life.

& you can almost see it:

the naked, youthful poem
rinsing the blood from its emancipated body,

how it stretches its gaudy limbs,
rubbing the sleep from its newborn eyes.

aesthetics pt. 1

what is poetry
if not
a complex underground of scribbles
holding back the hour—

the way her arms
make triangles around his
soft clock of minutes and seconds—

words growing nimble legs
& dancing a spritely jig
disjointed
harmonic yes
and no
the monkey will not dance without his forest—

the oceanic overwhelming
warmth of
joyous mass
when her arms & the words & monkey & scribble
become one
titanic frankenstein chorus—

an infant suckling upon the breast of
hypnotic misery—

the moonlight, blushing,
as it slips quietly between lovers' tangled limbs—

the titillating tick tock of surprising syntax,
where vocabulary has a harsh & violent undertow
& death remains the midnight chime.

words unlike woman, or, aesthetics pt. 4

words
don't
come

like
a woman
comes

they don't grow,
surely,
quietly,
arching their
backs, their arms
stretching above
their heads, eyes,
wide open to the ceiling,
building,
blossoming,
into an overwhelming
backing down of
soft,
hard,
beautiful words—

faster words—

more complex
rhythmic lines of
orchestrated flutes and violins of
symphonic lingual rolling-off-your-
tongue-and-heart words

they don't grab your hair and
press your pen onto paper and
yes! write a stanza here, an ode!
there! a haiku! a sonnet oh god
write what you want! and
misspell! write sloppily! or
calligraphy! an epic of titanic explos—

—

—

—

no,

words are juvenile males—

they leap on your mind

they come,
they go

lot's wife, or, aesthetics pt. 3

i am full of blinding visions
i am chock-full of first attempts—
revisions—
weighty,
symbolic
tangerines dancing—

i am the pomegranate and the apple
i am the teeth of eve on apples
i am the beauty of the apple

(i am round
ripe
ready to be plucked

i am the serpent and the temptress
i am babylon and israel)

i am pregnant with metaphor
as mary with messiah;
as judas with his master
i sell meaning for thirty shekels

i illuminate through symbols
i am sodom and gomorrah
the salt becomes my tongue
my tongue salts the pillars
lot's wife becomes my rhyme

my words take on divinity
thrice they smote the angels
twice i ransomed syntax
once i sound the bell

(my words split hairs in heaven,
my words are kept in shells)

The discourse lies in the dust like fragments,

and I asked myself about beauty and freedom
and these golden wings I daily clip to keep myself grounded.

I dreamt that the Wind carried a whisper from someone's tears,
inviting me to lie in its ocean of hue and calm.
But dreams are a cripple that Jesus does not heal,
the epics of yesteryears when questions had no legs
and there was a peace we did not know,
the snow-soft bones of which trembled beneath the fragility of words.

Sometimes I wonder whether this human inside
is a phoenix, or whether the skeletons in my
closet, closed, clothe me in the cloths of colorful array
merely to invite these strangers to dance
in the moonlight obsession.

Are we the embrace before the sunset?
O lilac, riddle me this:
Did the blood turn violet yesterday on its own accord,
witch-like, this cackle on fire with hysterics,
when it seemed the shadows laughed
and I was the silence in someone's eyes?

a more human space.

"We were contented
with constant things, and stood there
in the interspace between world and toy."
~ Rainer Maria Rilke, "The Fourth Elegy"

***********

Let me say, old children,
let me say to the angel-crumbs,
as I flee to play
in the attics of dreams
and yesteryears,
that you, whom the angels embrace,
you who feel the hand of God
on your knee--

you are clay and kama
and I envy your buoyancy.

You age like a bottle of wine
in the belly of an unknown virgin,
you sing of the swelling ocean,
you are pirouette and hunger,

while I, cosmic astronaut,
orbit round Babylon and its whores,

I suck the marrow from the steeple
and spit the stained glass nativity in the offering plate,
I arrange the shards in patterns
that reflect the Virgin Mary and her gestation.

I weep over my thumb-sized spirit,
bruised from the slamming of Heaven's door.