ministrant angel

ministrant angel, come down on me
rain down your judgment in a heavenly fire

lock up my body in your flame lock it up
hold me down to draw out the human rot--the coating push

of original sin--thrust it through me
thrust out of me the evil in a sound of fire


play my flesh as if it were a drum
something so base to glorify god

fray my nerve-endings with your golden wires
unstring my veins and retune me in flame

resound in me with your celestial harmony
until the black pit of me is charred to nothing

but the echoing

the echoing of
a celestial strain

sequence: "everlong"

meditations on the impossibility of your eyes

1. your eyes know things.  they create the world out of your image.  the things i could tell you, the things i could say--the things i would tell you i knew that you know.  your eyes see no shadows, just objects, just the movement of what is, light or dark, each thing drawn

like the earth to the sun

to serve your purpose.


2.  the things i could bear witness to, the things i see in you
watching

just watching

you walk among warm cities, leveling them to plains
pulsing under the sun
of your gaze
sands shifting in the wind
of your
wet
blink

a thousand years of decay
in one soft close

soft as a breath
fallen from my mouth.


3. and so you create
you destroy

so you create
you destroy

easy, gentle
as a sigh

but giant as the sun
in its pale sky

the eyes of your face
usurp me
i could tell you such things
were they not
in the end
nothing--
what i saw
matters nothing
within the drawn breath
of your gaze.


4. don't release me.


5.  i am not ready to go,
god--

i am not ready
to be blind against
the only thing i see
from shadow.

i will be
your simulacrum--
i will be leveled
as low
as flesh can go.

sequence-form: schuman fantasie in C Major first movement

1.
the heart knows what it
wants              even in defiance
of an object.

i have made myself
sick        on the idea
of your face

but i did not
know you
from adam.


2.
i am wondering
in my slow way
if this makes you lonely,

to be
abandoned
to the garden of my mind

where everything
in the blue moonlight
has turned        to seed.


3.
oh my love
oh my love
on whom

can i pin you?
within what restless        wind tunnel

can i
fix your echo?

within what can i divine you?


4.
i looked at my shadow
in the rush of water

the water had come down

a mountain--the stream had
swelled

against itself

i saw the brief false indent
my shape had made

against the light on the water.


5.
vanesa you left
a room inside my heart
i closed it off to you

grateful and angry
to have felt       something

with a name as distinct

as that of love.

time wore down
the walls        until
the tiniest rekindling within them

burned them away.

heart, what will you do now?

heart, how will you ever learn?

proem: desperation

a cycle (this in particular) always begins where it left off.  i am betrayed; i do betraying.  my body, ever obedient, is about to betray, poised on the

cusp of betrayal.  betrayal of him, and betrayal of itself.  doing anything to be let off--fucking, loving the taste of being touched--i will let anything happen

to let me off.

goddamnit, moon.  even better or worse than where we left it, the feeling of you like a pungent sore in my eye.  like a sty or some other unsavory.

i want to scratch the self out of me; to simulacrate; to become some similar thing

and float free away

like moonlight

which turns what it touches

inanimate.

broad pointilism: "running up that hill"

making     the decision that     i am not ready yet          is still so hard     so hard to make    

in part because     because it implies     that someday i will be ready.

oh god why     why am i left at this angle.     listing to one side     with your name on my lips.

why is my heart broken

why was my heart born broken

why have i always to heartbroke becoming


god oh god where have you left me     what do i learn from herebeing
surrounded by lush stars     the hot dark velvet of space     the taut heaving sheath of time     bent all around me     waiting to be     taken up    taken up and in

ice-planet i am     a burning heart      ice piled up atop     nothing can melt

this vise of ice

poem-form: "sister midnight"

the moment of a leaf's fall,
its turn from stem,
its rest upon
the buoyant air,
a movement within

the pull of the ground.

these moments from time and space are culled
as if i plucked leaves from the air.

tum-tum tum-tum
tum-tum tum-tum
as if i plucked
leaves from the air

rennaissance: tried as kate bush, "running up that hill"

1.
scant,
these touches against
the exposed parts of me
the skin
half-dead
(but alive enough
to take you inside
the cell and
the barely-named
parts of me)


i know
next to nothing,
god.

i leave
all
in your hands.


2.  (life in all its ecstasy)
not yours
the seduction
the seducer's role.

the walls unchanging,
you become
a question of volume.
volume, time, and
the time of our several fears.


3.  (i hit that dead)
your are no
unchanging
phenomenon.

(the blossom of the
cherry
outside its
black-rainslick stem--
an eternity--i stared
at you
for hours

i attempted to enter
a stream
where time
did not matter.
did not matter
hardly
at all.
i held your visage
in the palms of
my heart.)

(i looked and looked
i found you
again and again

until i had
no room

no room
for anyone else)


4. (remembrance of things past)
i
i
i
stutter
when i
feel your name
against the backs
of my eyes.

(gold caverns await you.  ceilings dripping with gold.  you will never know
just how precious
i am)

(i am studded with cold jewels.  colors that have never taken light.)

my hands
are
skeletal gems.
each bone
a diamond

each joint
a bank
of your coal.


5. (echo)
in remembrance.

i ate her gnocchi that night,
laughing with my aunt.

(oranges...
crunk.
each segment segmented
jewellike
against a pavement)

i dig through all sorrows
to find yours.  i dig through
all sorrows
to find yours.
i dig through all sorrows to find yours

nothing i can do
deserves your trust
if i only could
make a deal with god
and get him to swap our places
when the night is dark
no i won't be afraid
no i won't shed a tear
just as long as you
you     you  
stand by me
stand by me
stand by me

essay: "prayer"

every day in the past a blessing wrested for me from time by some force that let me have it.
i am wary and that may make me stupid but always i am grateful, force that gave to me this time
in which i can be loved, and learn how to care.

i am afraid of the future to a considerable degree--for one thing, i am scared of being kicked out of time.

but there's something here:
if i cannot give thanks
for what will be
(the things in which
i have no faith),
i at least can thank god
for what has gone before--
that pizza restaurant,
as an example,
when we still lived in berkeley,
where we went with young
when she was visiting from japan,
and she told me the plot of
field of dreams.
the bathroom was small there.
or the chinese restaurant
off of shattuck
where she told me about pet semetary.
or in college,
its several abysses--
throwing roses
purchased on the corner
at vanesa's house
then riding away
on my bike
because i was drunk
and secretly in love.
or walking back from trini's
knowing
that one thing
at least
that i'd given away
could never be
returned,
and the pride in me
that it had been given
entirely
free, not coaxed out
by words of love or passion,
not the result
of a bargain.

it is simple if not easy to thank you for these things god.
thank you also for this fear of tomorrow, because, like everything else,
it is part of my time.

poem: "baroque execution/nonspecific as to how"

it is asking too much of
some types of pain
that they be always silent,
always contained
in a heart beating violently.

and asking too much, maybe,
of some great shames
that they be held so privately,
like flames
in a hearth

too old to be known,
deep down in the earth
where the metals glow moltenly.

the richness of them
like wide jewels, like amber
pried from the tree, like fruit
on the vine, like fine dirt,
like cold sky--

hurt
is mine
in all its
fecundity.

sonnet-form eventually: "sunlight lick"

thick hungry moonlight
touch as if it were leaves or bark
my heart
silver me over
lay down an ocean of inert white on me

that i may move
through this gross fire
in secrecy.


light me to bank me,
tamp me down,
light me to create
a shadow-ground
teach me that lesson
you've taught me before
the one i have learned
over and over--
teach me and teach me,
make me your trick;
teach me all night
until sunlight licks
the horizon, a white radiant skin
that makes shadows turn back, and turns me thin.

poem: "moon you asshole"

fucking blank-ass half-moon
with its fucking blank hungers
sucking the dark to its very edge
and then withholding its light
dyeing only the fringes of the objects
it touches
with white.


touch me o moon
for real this time
use me to your rhythm,
your circadian rhyme--
don't stop with the skin,
nor the muscle nor marrow
but down to the idea
of the body, to the narrow
est jointure of thing
and its shadow.

use me like a tide
driving to the sides
of a beach trimmed with cliffs.

fucking asshole moon
with your fingers cold and stiff.

poem: "i stood at a stone gate" x2

i stood at a stone gate--beyond it,
a city
blushed in moonlight.

its wide avenues
brushed by moonlight.

its spires, its monuments
touched by moonlight.

its center, a fountain,
engulfed by moonlight,
light-washed, cool light,
even the depths
sparkling

like a diamond.
i thought
i walked
the avenues,
plunged

my hands, my face
into its waters.

but the moonlight was
a chimera;
i touched only
the stone of the gate;
i felt only

the raw warmth
of my own hand
against stone.

poem: "i stood at a stone gate"

a blank
fulfillment
--

despair is
something like that,
if you can call
what i have been
desperate.


ridden, trembling,
over a crumbling plain
i was pulled up short
at a rough stone gate.

beyond it, a city of bone
encased in warm silk,
in red and black depth.

i felt the blood beat
in my lips and tongue,

all eager to taste:


the hum of my mouth
was the fulfillment.
the emptiness of my mouth
was the blank.
i stood at a stone gate

and said your name.

ravel: "the enchanted garden" orchestra

there is an absence in me
fed
slowly
by remembrance of you

the cadence
in which
my heart beat
at your closeness


so
hard
to acknowledge
the passion
that i felt

so difficult
to become what i am
wholly
so wholly i was

yours

ravel: "conversation of beauty and the beast" 2 pianos

i never thought
that light was anything more than a refraction,
the beam from the stars
a wet nightmare
the shreds of cloud

across the moon
a strange dream

a familiar vision of
bleeding things...
fingertips, gums,
the place between the legs
all sticky with it.


it is not beauty that makes me
love her

nor is it darkness--it is
the simple fact of it:
my love is a briar rose.

ravel: "laideronette, empress of the pagodas" 2 pianos

never doubting
that the silk i wear
would be any more sweet
upon my skin
than rough fiber--

that i am myself
whatever i am clothed in.

secret life,
watching the clouds float
through the roof of glass.

nobody ever guessed

my thoughts to be
of something
less than silk.

ravel: "little tom thumb" 2 pianos

it might have been
a blade of grass i lifted

but it was my sky,
my all.

i have never lived within
a small struggle,

never covered myself
against the rain that covered me
at a single drop.

i have never shown
less than courage.

ravel: "pavane of the sleeping beauty," 2 pianos

i was dreaming for a long time,
lulled as if by the sound of the rain:
dreaming of the open casement,
the copper-colored silk
of the window hangings
bellying slowly in the wind.
my golden body draped
as if it had dropped diffident
as a petal to the shade
under the rosebush--
the gentle rise and fall
of the breath in my lungs,
the caress of my dark curls
against my cheek,

always fresh,
always new.
i dreamed of myself
against the stone of the tower

the bellying copper silk...

in at the sill
a green strand grew--
it traced a pattern
that became
new
in the stillness.
then i wished for you.

no longer old in my freshness,
i dreamed myself awake--
i dreamed myself
entwined in your arms
draped
against you
as if
you were
hot
stone.

block-form "restless mouth"

the thing inside i carried, that i housed,
swells outward, as if ungrateful--as if incapable
of more than feeding and growing--
but it is i who have fed it--i who have housed it--
it has dined in my hell.

perhaps i have let it become me--perhaps
the thing i swallowed has swallowed back--
perhaps i am no longer more
than a blind white mouth
and a rapturous white tongue

tasting, tasting everything--tasting
without feeling.

in the mirror i see black-silk head
and green eyes--they obsess me--
nothing like me

who is, inside,
only flavor.

poem: block-form 1

i am going to be exposed like 
the inner curve of a peony's petal.
as if that thing was in the palm,
as if it were within the caress
of a setting sunlight.
i am going to sink into transparency
like a dying day, dissolving into water
as if i were rock for a thousand years.



you broke the back of my horizon.
you broke my world.  at its beginning
i was a broken thing, a mold
through which thick white trickled.
i was the plains to your river, and you would
flood, map me, draw your world over me
like a thick down quilt
put me down in softness.
put me down into your glory.



i turned to the wall
i turned to the wall
i turned to the wall
and said your name.
i do not know
if anyone could hear it
over the sound
of the rain.

intro

restless mouth is just the name of a concept.  at this particular point, the concept is horror stories.  i am going to write a series of horror stories, and call them restless mouth 2.  the concept of restless mouth is that a repetition never repeats, which doesn't seem that important until one considers the number of things one expects to repeat.  this is intrinsically a horrific concept.  if the concept changes, i'll note it on here.