BLUE CORN

Blue Corn 2002
Collected Poems
Robin Ouzman Hislop
Editor Poetry Life and Times ISSN 1752-3265
Published Poetry Life and Times 2007
Copyright Robin Ouzman Hislop
All Rights Reserved






Index




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Part 1

1.) Blue Corn.


i.


The first line on the page
thought to escape its life sentence,
as it struggled to be born & then be gone,
like an errant angel
falling into the breach
& then once more be beyond reach.

ii.*


Metamorphosis.


Implacable, jaw set,
crows feet dart in jet
brow frosts.

Only cheekbones
glaze & eyes glint
as Eurydice fades again

For a final time,
the towers of Babylon
at last fallen.

There is only exile now,
on the hills of hegemony.

*After Ovid.

iii.


We dream we are dreamt of ,
that we remember & are remembered
& as characters of a play come & go,
but  the stars plot their own destiny not ours.


iv.


Vertigo


The clouds vehicle to lightning
disperse never knowing the ground.

The crowd protest at cruelty
knowing blind indifference.

In the myriad of non entity,
the arrow makes a T on the horizon.

v.


War Paint*


In the beginning the first human ape wore war paint
& invaded all other ape territories bringing to
them berserk gesticulations & confusions.

Later humans turned again to apes & baked salt
where war paint laid waste & there were scars
& fissions on the face of the earth.

Then the heavenly ape descended.
Humans worshipped  it but it wandered
lost in exile & disappeared into the waters.

Humans lacked it, but it was too late
for on their markings was war paint.

*After Augusto Monterroso.

vi.


The first humans came down from trees because trees were trees.

Trees took the lightning flash & led them to the hearth.

Later they became letters of the moon, became almost human.

Roots in earth & arms that embrace according to the seasons.

Silent in the breath of tomorrows & their valleys of sorrows.

vii.


Transfixed the statue
 wears the same mask
as the crowd transfixed,
amidst its manifest
& unmanifest self.

viii.


Into the brightest day,
Van Gogh fugitive werewolf of the moon,
reaper of corn, dies
in a blaze of gold & fury at the feast.

ix.


Thesus returns with a black sail.

Icarus plummets from the rock tarred & feathered.

The ceaseless music of old that leapt in the lyre
ceaseth now and is cold in the halls of thy sire*

Hypolitus, star son, archer of love, the last hero,
runs with Artemis and her maenads.

Tomorrow he too will be hurled from the rock to Poseidon.

The rock imprisons Merlin, chains Prometheus first man of fire
daily devoured by an eagle who tears out his liver.

Zeus rules the rock & Poseidon the sea.

YHW is Lord of the Dead...

* Hypolitus. Euripides.
* After  the Marriage of Cadmis and Harmony. Roberto Calasso.


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Part 2

1.) A Rounded Character

i.*

Gandalf the ring shall be the end of your labours:

who is to say when one is ever ready,

who is prepared for the book of doom,

for the black riders on the rainbow of time.

Heaven & hell are on the spin of a coin,

the wheel of fortune glimmers the ring,

winter deepens  in shadows of the sky’s dark riders.

 

* After Tolkien.

 

ii.

Did not the Goddesses & the Gods celebrate the feast

in their exalted reaches of their lofty citadel & was it         ,

 

*After Herman Hesse. Steppenwolf

 

iii.

 

He wrote words

as pictures and

painted the poem

between the lines.

 

iv.

 

Bluebottle dragon fly, trans vein wings

driving unimpeded by reed blades,

meshed in spider web drawn on ripples

between lilies & lotus croaking toads .

 

v.

Blue Whales.

Now your melodies are turned to shrieks

Searching shoals for souls at the pearly gate,

With the voice of the ocean, annihilation.

 

vi.

 

The iceman cometh to explain,

he died a proud death of shame

in a duel to the glory of a name

by which he would be forgotten,

loved & unloved once begotten.

 

2.) Scaramouche

i.

Scaramouche.

This has been a lifetimes of caravans Scaramouche.

This cup with ball that to thrones for kings falls.

It is still you & I who keep the secret of one dream more,

Your joker wild, your last man at the door masked;

But you can no more pass through this gilded screen

Than I through this mirror before me.

 

ii.

 

What’s a mountain for,

As if to lose it were to lose myself,

To post on land & ocean without rest.

 

Archilles studied the girls as they worked,

Tis a pity she’s not honest, he mused,

An adulteress, more, traitor, bed swerver.

He had made a fool of himself.

 

Her astonishment was beyond expression,

This buffoon should be a eunuch, she thought,

Then what matter his rantings tell all & mean nothing

But now the disturbance of his mind was visible

On every feature, a comedy of manners,

Cold & unloved & less welcome than the winter.

 

iii.

 

My many faces my Liege

are but the masques of parody.

A dance of carnivals & pagantries,

a tale told by an idiot & heard no more.

 

Only my silence speaks to you from the shadows

& yours is the voice of one dream more;

but my silence prohibits

your final utterance of the word

I never speak, see then in the mirror

the lantern beckoning, cross the threshold,

leave your shadow at the door.

 

iv.

 

In a lighted window on an emerald sea

she whispers with her smile of the Nile

(her limbs flow over the carpet treading

water and reeds past vase, piano & archive walls)

gently to the soft night air she touches.

 

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Part 3

1.) Disequilibrium


i.


Do ye ken John Peel,
        John Brown’s body lies…

            accident causality chance
in the human dance
        with his coat so grey,

over the rainbow in a blue moon,
       
        mouldering in the ground
beneath the descending sky,

for the sound of his horn brought me from my bed
but his soul goes marching on

        to the cry of his bloodhounds,
Valahadoo, Hallelujah,

to awaken the dead or the stag roaming in the morning.

ii.


The Sea.


The sound of one hand clapping is the sail in the wind.

The sea shell speaks with the voice of the sea.

Wild search sea child borne of the sea’s nightmare
to leave & return on the ninth wave 
& emerge, submerge on the other side.

His imaginary woman is made from seaweed & stars,
black & silver gowns of the moon,
invincible on the lea before the imaginary
day & night on the wine dark sea.*

His imaginary woman weaves to aft due north west,
loom between her knees, as his galley sinks beneath
the waves of her seaweed hair.

iii.


The cairn of the poet is at the Kelpie Leap,
a ravine on Eillan Roan, where the sea roars
in & withdraws with a terrible sigh.
The wind blows through those stones
& the bones of the poet speak words
you heard before, as a child amongst
the rock pools & ripples on the pebbles,
that seemed then as true,  as forever,
on that thin trace of eroded shore,
even now, as another metamorphosis
would efface them and let the deluge in.

iv.*


El Sueño de la Razón.


The dream of reason begets monsters*
& what we might be or seem.
Until Chaucer´s Legend of Good Women
‘Mynos hadde a monstre’
ít meant deformities not diabolicals.
Cromwell´s wart was a monstrosity
as in deformity it was also his baby.
Cromwell, Chaucer and even Charles
the King, would be, according to Milton,
all men of Reason but then Milton
believed in his monsters more than his angels.

* A nightmare etching by Goya is inscribed
‘ El sueño de la razón produce monstruos’
 

v.*


Further Decapitations


After the battle, the gallows, the guillotine,
the garrotte & black box machine
were all that were left as syntax to write the day.

Groups of poets gathered dismally
in the forays & skirmishes to allay
the bubbling fever & make again.

They threw their spears to the waves to show
spells might be cast
for each bore their own fasces of office.

Now they’re buried on the cold hillside
where no bird sings.*

*La Belle Dans Sans Merci. J.Keats.

vi.


The final thought of life & final thought of death
begin & end in time.
War between begins & ends
in the chasm of time on the run.
After the battle
certain words are left to thread the hung day.

vii.


The time is undone
when terrain
& Shi were one.

The exalted dove
puts out the blue
to its unwritten love.

We only kill because we die.
We only mourn because we lie.
We only love because we cry.

viii.   


Over the faultless
sky day breaks fey,
In love & hate.

Haunted by our fears
we commit abominations,
over the breaking day.

Condemn our ancestors,
or honour them only to justify
strategies for the battlefield.

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Part 4

1.) Rice

 

i.

 

Write thin, rice words,

masticate each grain

to the roll of rice drums.

In the begin, the begin,

what are you going to leave,

what are you going to take,

words of sand ?

Eat rice, says the Saki bowl.

Give alms to blindness.

 

ii.

 

Rice paper,

papyrus on a brain stem

in a ventilation shaft.

 

Rivers of red

ink.

We scratch.

 

iii.

 

Cacti, bottle green: 

phosphorent to the translucent night

written in the desert wind on rice paper.

 

iv.

 

The fears of the trembling vertebrate,

the long field shrew

fleeing the hill to frozen waste.

 

Rice burning the paper sky,

small bones in the stubble

frail nib at the edge. 

 

v.

 

Forlorn the streets,

we drift, we drift,

on waste, on waste,

no fiesta for the poet,

no poem for the feast.

Walk down, walk down

the western lane,

 

the sky pins down bleeding,

born of pain, born of pain.

Take heed, take heed

the locusts come,

take heed the rice fields

are a burning

on west, on west.

 

vi.

 

No need to sweep,

no need to brush,

when nothing´s done,

nothing happens:

fields of rice & mice.

 

vii.

 

Wake to a dawn of low vision,

low instinct, to hands that grope bonds

to bind a frail periphery on the threshold

of mirage, chaos & the resonance of a day

that will finally become an echo, moon on water,

rice & flamingos in small rains amidst dunes.

 

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Part 5

1.) Through a Glass Darkly.


i.


Arrow pivots arc
& the archer is transfixed
between space & flight:
Moving from towards
Finite from infinite arrow
Appears & disappears:
Angst of the arrow,
As string tautens, bow stretches
& the arrow flies.

ii.


The long day crane drops
Its breaking neck into a
Concrete theatre pit.

Through a glass darkly
Everyone imprisons in
Shadows of the glass.

In the telescope
Power & force in chaos
Become the deluge.

Attract & repulse,
Elements that twin the day
Into a weird world.

Day & night revert
To fleshly brutality:
Wounds of stars & dust.

iii.


The livestock rustler
At Stonehenge is beheaded
By an angry mob

& buried beneath
An ignominious stone slab
Beyond the Temple.

We dig him up to
Redeem him his ill won fame
& bury again.

iv.


A bleached pine branch floats,
Its sodden joint wrenched in a
Grotesque scream or smile.

Diabolical
In familiarity
Of brutality.

Light obscurity
Absorbed into distances
Impossible to judge.

v.


Watching two women,
As they talk, as they fall in
Love, gentle as doves:
Beat of the Metro,
Their eyes concealing desires
In secret kisses.
Far far away on 
The Isle of Capri
So long ago, Sappho, in
Beauty everywhere.

vi.


@ 17 read
Phonetic syllables a
Haiku goes bleep bleep.

Sacred numbers @
17 & 19 with
Eighteen in between.

Even cycles of time
Begin & remain at odds
With cycles of time.

Through a glass darkly
Glastonbury floods jade beads for
Avalon´s sceptred dead.

At the speed of light
Arrow pierces crow’s black heart
Through a glass darkly.


One many in many
One any poem writes one
Many in many one.

We scratch out the craft
Of days as etched upon stone
We engrave epitaphs.

The moon in water
swallows the mirror & shines
Through a glass darkly.

2.) Gorilla Sky


i.


First came the salad days
Fresh in sweet pods & green mush,
    Then as the squeezed juices churned bitter
There came,
    Chaos, diaspora, turmoil, shattering
& splitting,
    There came,
Dissension, conflict, sickness & loss of love,
Our earth’s archetypes rent asunder
& cast to the corners of the earth in their antagonisms.

On this tortured rainbow, on this threshold of kiss
On black lips, Earth Mother, your black omnipotent
Tongue licks this heart’s red blood trickling to feed
A handful of stars flight through the spheres.

ii.


Gorilla sky rains:
pug nose, pug eyes
in wrinkled bags.

Venus descends on
my spinning scorpion
kiss hissing in the rain.

In my dressing gown,
I watch cockroaches
singing in the rain.

iii.



Top of the
morning to you
top tilted top
hat tilted top
sky to passers bye
& I why, why,
why wonder
don’t look now
look away, look
away, look away
does she presence
beauty everywhere
all the milk
white spilt heaven
gone west, gone west:
if you were
the only girl
in the world
& I was
the only boy.

iii.


Ancestor of the stars
of sun & moon
of the first day,
the first sky, the first cry.

Ancestor of the wilderness
of earth’s heart’s blood,
descendant ancestor,
ancestor of the spheres,
ancestor of first fears
of 10.000 straw dog years,
ancestor of the mortal day:
who has left,
who was never here,
who will not return
but who has been
in existence somewhere,
ancestor of earth, sea
&  the Gorilla sky.

3.) Lord of the Mice.

 

 i.


At times I write in my white cell
that light shines through to where

I scratch in black ink
& watch vertigo cracks
for spiders to appear.

Outside is pandemonium,
a one word poem.

Inside is the silent white wall
with only the turn of the page.

ii.


Georgian coquette,
ruffles & coifed
wigette wrought
in cream merigue:
Ostrich plumes
delicately silhouetted.

iii.


The clouds seem as if
They are having a baby.
Keep your back straight
Keep your shoulders back
Keep your diaphragm in
& your chin level, look straight
Ahead, keep a stone face,
Wear dark glasses, listen to
The wind & walk on, walk on
..............& you’ll never...........

iv.


Alpha & Omega.


The cat stretches
like a penis
trembling into repose
but poised. Cat
God & Cat Goddess,
sleek as silk,
lick themselves asleep

& the mice
begin to play
< in the attics >
where I scratch,
Lord of the Mice.

The galley boy
on the burning deck,
the rubbish man
up to the neck.

I wash the floor
on which I slip.
I carry the rubbish
out to the tip.

4.) Feet


i.


Feet.


Flat feet
Down at heel.
Black feet
Running on before.
Washed feet
Alms after ablutions.

ii.


My dreams are living memories
In other worlds from which I speak.
Immanence is in my imagination
& what is imminence is also distance.

iii.


Life is the bird’s song as it leaves its
throat. Life breaks on its own wing.

Ravens & vultures patrol light limits
over burning precipices, rock flames
that keep the dark side of the hill

Where stray cub or foal would fall
forever on that fell, as the seethed
kid in milk knows the light of instant
blindness, as life shines on in the dust.

iv.


The years seem as puddles
in the rain, as I step through
mud, gravel & watery obscurity:
the door creaks, the knee weaks,
the roof leaks.

v.


Vixens at dawn, thorns in their faces.
On her scarlet pointed fingers she wears gold rings.

Dressed in white she blows a kiss sealed in a glass frame,

look hard to the rock bathed in lammagurian light,
time & distance shorten into shots bathed in flighr.

vi.*

   
The curtain falls to ruffles & applause.
The phantom auditorium rises up the walls.
The queen in yellow meringue pirouettes,
two massive guard henchmen are her gate.
Like pillars of Hercules they stand;
& out on the land:

The multi-mob glittering robot
infantrymen parade up & down in salute;

& this is the way the world ends
Not with a bang or a whimper*
But laughing through tears,
Falling in, as you write it.

*T S Eliot. Preludes.

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Part 6

1.) Luna


i.*


If cats were heaven & the stars mice
& all the rest gestation of rice,
then  how nice.

In the eye of the beast there is
the desert & moon on water.

*Animals in the Form of Spheres.
The Book of Imaginary Beings. J L Borges.

ii*


Altitude 2000 La Baranqua

(The Slope) Castilla Autumn


A  rock terrace leads down to the valley
now a full lapping bowl of milk, on
return squalls of mist gust with menace.
Darkness rises from the shadow cast
by the earth from the descending sun.
Geological time metamorphosises in
the stars  pursued in their own courses
in geometrical space to metaphors.

*After 24.IV.40075.3.30pm.G Snyder

2.) Scorpio.


i.*


Today is a day of
cripples, of the maim & lame.
Today is a day of blame.

Today is a day  I dreamt of
subterranean caverns
to which I always returned.

Today is a day when
we  are always alone
in the rain.

Today is a day when
we don´t have a name when
we ride the big aeroplane.*

Today is a day of
desultory fame, obsession,
possession & seized being.

Today is a day of
the absurdity of the cycle of pain
& mockery of the gods’ game.

Today is a day
I try to remember my name
& runaway children.

* Woody Gutherie.

ii.*


High Basin Manzanares El Real : Autumn.


At the gully´s mouth flashing torrents
Jet its throat with cadence & cascade.

In the pool power & beauty,
Dualities chrushed into each other.

iii.


Lilliput Woods.


Fluttering helplessly, it seems a wet bit
of black plastic bag caught in bramble:
Only the wind caws.

Expert, the boy with hunter’s noose,
wood poacher, approaches.
Darkening the sky brews to storm
but darker still the screech & swarm
gathering black gulls with beak & claw
hovering overhead poised to dive,
as the boy in terror flees through the rain.

3.) November Light.


i.


Bronze god, holy palm
in July sun with legions
in the corn grass.

I walk with you in the light
at high noon, at the zenith.
In November light the holy palm

Has gone, only a few remain,
they seem forlorn & waiting,
their blades sheathed again.

ii.


Blue Mountains.


In blue mountains
there are lonely blue skies,
yet lonelier still, lonely blue eyes/



4.) The Double Face of the Moon.*


i.


The moons face is overt.
Bold & free she proudly leads.
A woman’s eyes lift, its nice
to be here, she humbly says.
I hear her voice as within
the chasm of echo in which I listen.

I fear the moon, I awe the moon.
She gives me life & collects my death.

Her dark side covers all secrets,
love, blood & labyrinth:
I am alone with this woman.

Aren’t you sad, you are not so free,
I say, as from her eyes blaze
Bodecea & Deborah’s
chariots of flames that fall on the fell
side, suicidal on that starry hill. 

It is a new moon revealing
The line of an invisible sphere.
The moon’s face is covert.

* To Sylvia.

ii.*


A long blue white eye sky
with its unravelling fleece
in ferment from a tiny window
on the world seems so deep
that I seem to fly or die
its prisoner as time goes by.

To Oscar Wilde ( Ballad of Reading Gaol )

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Part 7

1.) Fragments from Seizure.


i.


Red trod sludge of autumn leaf is winter’s blood,
black trees grope in grotesque dance,
warp in primordial core.

ii.


Let the stars let fall their spears,
let on the dance, the river is a serpent,
the sky’s tongue is forked.

iii.


Night is a bed
furrowed on the hill,
a feather eye on the horizon.

iv. 


Shoulders lose to the gallows’drop,
soaring kites contest on high with blades
to flutter fallen on antipode ramparts, anonymously.

v.


The serpent unwinds, veined, supine, flowing,
haunting the phantom music of  its prey’s
pores’ pollen, in the swollen skeleton dust.

vi.


Tabloid skies & laminated banners,
beyond our hands, beyond our promised hands.
Time is the neck of the swan with tyranny against her.

vii.


Walk away from the coin in the fountain,
all too soon, all too late, our crepusculums &       
the waters ever returning music to our mortal odes.


2.) Seizure


i.


In the rain streams of window
branches shriek & scratch
its divides of dark & light.

Its divides between blind chaos
seeking an entrance
& a nebulous threshold.

Away from the dread window
shadows break & merge
shrinking into flight's diffusion.

Low full moon accompanies
receeding distance
on a shifting horizon.

The door opens to the wind.
The window stains faces.
I am by mistake, a ghost

Who enters by the exit's
parallel divides
between coming & going.

So stricken we are seized,
possessed & dispossessed
to be again an obsessed.

To less than our sides we thin
Between the stricken
& the sudden so seizen.

ii.


Last Day on Alcala.


Self is non entity & there is difference.
What´s sauce for the goose
is sauce for the gander & the band
played on into the auditorium.

Life goes on & stops. There on
 the pavement wrapped in
a white sheet, a nameless one.

About the head  there´s something
like ink marks, like the cordon
of the boys in blue, sprite on
duty, guarding with indifference
the delicate shroud: further on
a few bawdy characters joke along.

Only a small enthralled crowd fronts
the hotel, the visitant seemed to have left,
like it, waiting for the ambulance.

iii.


Big Bang Son of a Gun.


Bang bang bang goes the drum.
        War is on the run.
Gladiator emporiums in arenas
of lions & lambs with priests dressed as
        businessmen & businessmen
dressed as priests crusading with religion,
selling it as nationalism on the battlefield of bedlam.
       
A dance of mayhem,
neo barbarian to the tune of your maker’s
making, but consider it all a game,
        killing’s part of the fun,
    can’t help loving, can’t help hating,
we come, we go & we’re gone.
        Heaven & hell’s for anyone
    in the song of the swan, son of a gun.

         

iv.


Harlequin.


The game is done,
my race is run,
you’ve won, you’ve won.

Throw the dice once again
into the myriad of harlequin,
for which so ever of anyone

I touch will on me turn
with a disappearing grin,
where I stand as nothing

In the ellipse of a dancing harlequin
abandoned to a dream sublime
or the nightmare of the abysm.

Both are one, both are none
in the harlequin illusion,
the game is done, you’ve won.

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Part 8


1.) Narrow Straights


i.


Song in the Blue Corn


grey sky heat pours dark rain
drenching the green
& then sudden explosion.

as if the centre of the universe
& not some small place in the world,
a whip´s crack
lashed in the middle of the year,
bang & blind
into the man in the room.

out in the rain,
in the garden in the garden,
in the dream in the dream,
who lightning
does not cut down,
as heaven splits open
& the newsman comes on
with his voice from prison
& his promise utopian.

measure of all things,
who rose from the glaciers,
to whose village the tiger came
& the polar bear to his igloo,
as the last call blows for home
soon beyond living memory,
a veteran of once four million
but today but four. *

man in the room
you are a celebration,
only the world moves on.
who knows but its fame
& the newsman in prison,
who knows no completion.

final man in literary name,
first dialectician of interlocution
to a third person
in hypothetical argumentation
of an imaginary plot.
final fallen man in
a gallery of allegory, a museum
of sacred & profane names
with their banner crusades.

& the last woman you knew,
when you were alone
in the room.

& remembered
she went to a barn
by moonlight in a white gown

across fields of blue corn,
where silver wolves ran
& ravens flew on the borders.

where nightmare & the world
meet for the sake of freedom.
winding zig zag

the cliff face in a night
obliterated of stars
in the wind´s black maw

& the sea´s exploding roar,
as you stare through a screen´s
shattered transparency,

translucent in those cold
waters, suspended
in an almost absolute

vanishing moment,
which the edge of the world
grinds beaten black thin

between water & time,
as ephemeral as dream
& the shore of the world.

*The reference is to the Veterans Day Anniversary for the First
World War 1914-18

ii.


Narrow Straights.


window in rains,
night´s water runs
in molten flames
a liquid reflection
of distances binding
broken & thin breaches,
water & time
in narrow straits.

they have all gone,
but for the stall,
& then no more
but a space between.

in the gallery
the street is too near to hear
the disseminating day
or the roar that raves
a wave on the hill.
they have all gone
but for the stall
on the knoll.

it turns
the thresholds we cross
through a looking glass,
sighted & sightless.

the clock in the glass
warps in zig zags
moulds without holds
in ice & in fire,
gone in thin air,
face to face
in twin embrace.

ice & fire through narrow straits:
we wear different helmets in the battle,
moulds of our guards of honour
their banners flying royal colours
to come & go, as we must, we do it well,
pass on, but wear different helmets
in the battle, black out at the shoot out
to but appear & disappear
as the sky gravitates our fall
to no sky at all, no vaulted arch
over ice & fire, ice & fire,
words that once set alight the knolls
& now grow old in a book of sand,
ancient mysteries, unuttered
& untold, lest they explode.

i return to a narrow strip of land,
in banquets in display of poison bouquets;
a world - a description fulfilled:
their cemeteries & their dreams
phantoms of the moon´s,

bride in ice & fire
of creation myths & ruling powers,
of deities fallen to common thrall,
sand timers of our candle hours,
primal desires in the limits of first fears,
isolation ....

ice that breaks the rock
& thaws to time's articulated perception,
unfathomable longing & impossible question,
image made flesh, voice, the gravity of motion,
she in earth in moon of he of sun of sky,
a line with no other representation
but its manifold variation, engendered
of sky rent asunder from earths´s embrace,
beyond becoming, returning or remaining
or the poles in the edge of what is & is not
in & of from ice, from fire

in narrow straits

in a few days i´ll have left this room
perhaps forever,
this room visited through
seasons´ years.
i remember clear days,
days bright with life,
not here, now,
today is neither bright nor clear.
dust of my tracks stain indelibly,
where light struggles
to gleam yet & if it does
it is a glimpse, no more.
i have been here before,
have stood in other ruins
that i´ll not remember, as this one,
which i leave,
where once bright days
spilled through its bars
& lingered on the floor.

last look at the skylines,
la maliciosa, no footnotes.

once three lean spanish cats
ate the kitchen lice by night.

borgesian strindburg theatre,
ether of the nether other,
ariel alchemy.

the rain in spain stays mainly
on the green house effect plain:
bafflement reigns, eerie speculations,
skies scorch, spring’s buds are nipped,
nature amok, her spawn wild, reckless
her tide, the stars pursue their courses.

cat’s eyes watch you from the mirror,
you gaze into them, they blink close,
the mirror is all fur :
the greater than i am thou, that:
to know you know what it is like
with all consolations from nature.

you ask who´s in the house,
outside & out of sight
the moon´s ebb is a communion.

you see through trees’ convoluted branches
a house of stars whose littered scales spangle
the leaves of branches that grow darker still
in their reaching to unfold ancient & fettered,
earth´s dreams:
down wind their voices
carry with the voice of the turning moon,
the call of their unfathomable pleading.
in narrow straits.





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