To break old enchantments
A woman in the shape of a monster
a monster in the shape of a woman
the skies are full of them
Prayer and art are passionate acts of will. One wants to transcend and enhance the will’s normal possibilities. Art like prayer is a hand outstretched in the darkness, seeking for some touch of grace which will transform it into a hand that bestows gifts. Prayer means casting oneself into the miraculous rainbow that stretches between becoming and dying, to be utterly consumed in it, in order to bring its infinite radiance to bed in the frail little cradle of one’s own existence.
Max: Can you do me a favor? Can you describe the day for me? What’s it like outside?
Liesel It’s cloudy.
Max: No, no, no. Make the words yours. If your eyes could speak… what would they say?
Liesel: It’s a pale day.
Max: “Pale. ” Good. Go on.
Liesel: Everything’s stuck behind a cloud. And the sun… doesn’t look like the sun.
Max: What does it look like?
Liesel: Like a silver oyster?
Max: Thank you. I saw that.
Come with me this morning to the church within our hearts, where the bells are always ringing, and the preacher whose name is Love — shall intercede for us!
cupping palmfuls of petals you and I we picked leaves of basil
gray-eyed with owls you burst forth bark flaking off tall trees revealing underneath a cream color
it was the same with your heart under my nails hand over the port side
dipping our fingers into an ocean of flowers
broke them over bread and tomatoes from the roof cut so thin like us they trembled in the wind
I want all of your skin in my mouth at the same time
a summer with nothing to do but sit on thrones
white as a mountain peak the inside part of your thigh
my teeth upon it
every church bell leaning in the direction of our wild un-wildness the place where the sun does not reach
that the earth might use us to feel something warm upon it
—an ocean boiling the brass casing spent and hot after the shell has been shot from the rifle
the launching of music into the breaking of vases
limes and avocados carried over our state lines pushing the wagon filled with your body of birds Mexico was a time without goddesses
our heat unbuttoning our top buttons my body laid across the balcony to catch rain
drinking the water off of one another
wishing to sip your lip I wished only one wife in my lifetime wished for only my tongue on your neck
only your legs to push my mouth between wanted husband to remain
a beautiful word for you wanted to be husband as your mother is mother
as your sister is sister your father is father still
the garden of your love was a strangeness and still I loved to lay amongst its strange things
the cruelty you at times stretched upon me simply because there were arrows within reach pulling the shaft through the other side
for so long I did not know the wound could only feel the feathers brushing their way out of it
even after it is all done I am learning what marriage might mean what the ever-changing relic of self means
—bird of my heart that is not a bird
separate of the seasons I pass through my body remains a springtime
the truth is in the life
la verdad de la vida
Say for instance you’re a girl/ but citified/ a hard sister
like to keep her eyes open when she fucks/ carries weapons
for the urban night creatures on the prowl/ Say you ain’t
got no freudian thing/ but you packing none the less:
your mucous is acid
your anger on a leash
& can’t no wish from the mouth of a warm eyed boy
make you blink
Before the girl mist can enter you/ before you ever cop
a feminine buss/ blow the urban rust out of your uterus
you got to clear house
you got to clean out
all the greasy fuzz/ left behind by the rat pack lot
of ex-lovers
You got to celibate/ in silence
& wait & wait for a red blush to rise up
a sparkling rush as radical as your first blood
as muscular as your momma’s hands in soapy water
cold as the shock of the first breath
the earth blew into your lung
The black sky wants your ass purified
& clear enough to release this city’s fear
free enough to close your eyes
go inside & hear her.
The stone cocks turn to crystal
They defend the dew with battering crests
And then the charming flash of lightning
Strikes the banner of ruins
The sand is no more than a phosphorescent clock
Murmuring midnight
Through the arms of a forgotten woman
No shelter revolving in the fields
Is prepared for Heaven’s attacks and retreats
It is here
The house and its hard blue temples bathe in the night
that draws my images
Heads of hair, heads of hair
Evil gathers its strength quite near
But will it want us?
Destination, in the land of never enough,
is the cornice of all I can give / all that I know,
given over to deep blue sky.
The confirmation of poet is doctor;
the consummation of doctor is poet.
I have a black, silk-velvet gown.
In the composite, stranger / oh most intimate
incarnates the lens, eyes promontory, body oblique.
Her lover is a dried red rose.
At her feet, finch eggs in a blue ceramic cone.
The injured pigeon, now set free, nestles at her hem.
She is barefoot, primed to fly / to fall.
End print, half-kneeling, deep set in dark, clavicles
encrypt snow-angel wings / the stethoscope’s repose and
constellate the white line of her throat.
The universe is my obsession:
the sea and the sun are
forever mating.
Some of the things wrong with the contemporary is some sort of mis-seeing.
She is standing on my lids And her hair is in mine She is the form of my hands And the color of my eyes, She is swallowed in my shadow Like a stone against the sky
Her eyes are always open And she does not let me sleep In the light of day her dreams Make suns evaporate, Make me laugh, cry and laugh, And speak when I have nothing to say.
IMAGES
- A Promessa B, Dalton Paula
- Sick Bird Syndrome, Wangechi Mutu
- 16, Ruth Marten
- The Walk I, Mary Wafer
- Melancholia, Penny Siopsis
- Untitled, Ilse D’Hollander
- Valley Pool Party, Jules de Balincourt
- Preferring the out to the indoor night, Hernan Bas
- Of a Child Taking its First Step, Jure Detela, Translated by Raymond H. Miller.
- Origin Drift, Suling Wang
- Big Blonde in a Red Dress, Chantal Joffe
- The Victorian IV, Berry Bickle
- Sam In Mother’s Factory, Kudzanai-Violet Hwami
- Retrata Maria II, Dalton Paula
WORDS
- Canto II, Derek Walcott (Culled)
- From Planetarium, Adrienne Rich
- Franz Kafka
- Conversation from The Book Thief, Film.
- Emily Dickinson to Susan Gilbert, 1852
- Anis Mojgani, In May she came, in May she stayed, in May she was gone.
- Problems of Translation: Problems of Language, June Jordan (Culled)
- Solitude Ain’t Loneliness. Michelle T. Clinton
- All Paradise Is Not Love, André Breton
- Self Portrait , Serena J. Fox
- A Funeral March for the First Cosmonaut, Etel Adnan (Culled)
- Ben Okri
- Lady Love, Paul Éluard
IX by a.o
SOCS 