God the Tosspot

Wild grape blossoms disperse upon a midnight breeze...
I see through this procession of vines
That the parade of all these flowers,

These florid vessels of time
Are empty, completely consumed
By a celebration of gusts
Trickling inside the belly of the wind,
Scattering confetti upon the wedding feast of
Time and Space.

Yes, the air is thoroughly intoxicated again
The stars gather 'round to sing
Drinking songs.
The sky above is an endless revel
And the galaxies fill the Lord's huge drinking bowl,
Pouring out their essence,
Proffering this wine to any soul
Who might keep up,
Because this drunken universe knows
But an insatiable thirst,
And it swiftly empties that bowl
And fills it again.

Drinking of Its Self
To the bottom of all phenomena,
Drinking of Its Self
To the bottom of
Thought and substance,
Drinking of Its Self
Into oblivion,
A riot of fruit
Amidst abandoned fields forgotten

But ever bearing a good vintage

From old vines

Grown wild.

This universe
Rolls beneath the tables of infinity,
The cloth of All dragged down
To cover Its nakedness,
Rolling on the floor
Of spacious eternity,
Reeling in the clay
Atop beds of minute grape blossoms

Scattered across this orchard.

Stars and galaxies
A mist of white inside a dream...


LVX
JAL

Dayears

Concealed
Before awakening
Seconds, minutes, days, years,
Dayears in a blink of an eye
Seeking to open anew

A place for a dream,
A pillow to display a jewel
Of concealed imagery
Floating on a surface of silk
Feeling
The unveiling
Of beauty
Sealed in power-
Unrevealed knowledge
Encased deep within the soul
Lost in dayears
Of slumber

Seeking to surrender,
To remember
A dream
Fleeing at the opening
Of the eyes
In a blinding flash
Of returning
To a dream

Days
Years,
Dayears later
As it is lived
In the hidden time
Of dayears
Spent dreaming
Until, at last, vaguely
For a moment
You Remember
Where it is
Or maybe never...

LVX
JAL

The Path Leading out of the Heart

I hear so many, so many whispers
Inside my veins
I hear so many names, so many
At the edge of silence and seas
They circle perfectly 
In a dance of blood
Holding hands with the stars,
Forever leaping on 

Fluid music incarnadine!
Cantilations! Cantilations! 
Of the uninvocable
Secret of All
Flesh and blood
That has known 
The whisper of touch
Beyond description

This circle 
Limning everything
In which the names, the stars
Do not speak, do not say
Only murmur hymns spinning
In the circle of blood,
The violet gateway
Opening into the sphere of starlight

Leaving themselves behind in whispers
Dancing in the liquid, crimson weight
Of names along the dusty path
Of this blood pulsing in the wind,
This soil of absolute mystery
In which I hear my footsteps. 

Moving of themselves behind those whispers
Along the open, empty path of my body,
This flowing outline cut by the wind
Against the blackness of space-
A road bearing only the fallen signposts 
Of stars leading the way out of the heart

And the names, so many, so many...
Stars in the sky like the fruit of wine
Overripe upon the long, 
Dark vines of night
Plunging down their secret route
Through veins
To the ground of blood, that road
That leads from out of the heart
To a destiny

Breaking apart atop the empty source
Seeding its own end
Upon the gnarled roots of the universe
Feeding the soil with all the names
That have wed the Earth
That have known the long path
Leading out of the heart,
That have known the vow of
I do
That have known the vow of
I Am
That have known the vow of
I Will Be...
Without end...

Undone, finished, undone, never finished
Only undressed, naked, divest
Like a lover's dress tossed upon the limbs 
Of the universe
In a midnight rendezvous

The faint rustling of a dress in the breeze
The faint, unmistakable rustling of lovers
In the vines and leaves,
In the stars and veins
The faint, unmistakable rustlings  
Of blood, of names
Straining to reach out, to communicate
To be known, but unable to speak
Unable to say who they are in the darkness,
In the darkness
In which lovers lose their names
Upon this path leading out of the heart. 


Travel Light.

I see
In the darkness
I must travel light
I must travel more light 

I see in the darkness
That if I am going to go 
Beyond this point
I must travel light    

And dance upon it

I must leave my name behind
In a whisper of song...

LVX
JAL

A Drop from a Fountain, a Waft from a Fan.

Listen:
“Good bye.”
These words always deep
Within the air.

Wings of a passing butterfly -
Bright sails of a fountain...

Fading away over a horizon
Surging into the hush of sky...

All these sailing drops from a fountain
Fanning through the air
To answer for themselves
Their own mysterious question.
Don’t ask, listen:
“Good bye”

Wings and sails
Are ultimately beyond ken…
Beyond doing…
Almost hallucinatory
Flashes scattering into the white sprays of sun:
A foam of brocaded wings
A jet of fountaining sails
The sweep of a fan
Reaching everywhere
In the Permanence of Wind

All Thus Come…

Filled with tremendous greeting -
Splashing over with endless gratitude at leaving
And leaping into the air with
A brief, but forceful waving
Good bye.

And more than a thousand years ago
In Guandong province, China
A young student asked,
"What is one drop
From the fountain
At the Master's temple
Like…?"

One wonders how long he remained
When told by an elder, who had been there
That it was just like…
One drop
From the fountain
At the Master’s temple.

Listen: “Good bye”.
The ancient masters
Urge us to leave ourselves behind.
Each of their words is
But One drop from the fountain,
Fanning through the air:

A long stretching path
Circulating through the formlessness of sky,
A drop evaporated
On a ray of light down a transparent river
Leading invisibly back into form
One drop
From the temple fountain.

The silent event of an inner answer, a recognition
That is just as
The fanning of one’s self
To acknowledge a question respecting
The Permanent Nature of Wind,
And how it is that it reaches Everywhere.

As the Master remained silent
Wafting the air insouciantly about him,
The fan in his hand was as deft as a butterfly wing.
The student simply bowed and departed,
Not uttering a sound.
“Thank you”
Was already very deep within the air

This Time Is Mine. Michael McCulloh

The time is mine

I am of normal night

There are many heads

Wrenched upwards

From the tidal swarm

In the antipodes

But no man who dies here

Is buried

In his opposite yearning

Thin ground that blends feet to dust

Here is a placid library

Only stacked with the written rock

Some horde must steal the ship now

And sail out over what is written

Steal all heads stiffening upward

Riding on this… rodeo hide

I’ve never been sold

To the bragging operas

I tear only tunes from any score

Believing song a vice, a tornado

I’ll bring a dance storm for the dead, now

Who must strangle rocks even

To own their broken fingers

We’ll go marching rightside up

Against the opposite tide

Here’s the white bicycle

Where a man fell down, unfortunate

He was not buried there

A mere insomniac

On his own block

He follows me, sleeping now

While I drag his loud forest scream

At the crossing of wide streets

Here many drunks fell silent

Lamenting as I do, of burial and upward air

Struck by sudden impulses, I’d think

They decided then for themselves

And march, if they please, very loudly

While I tune up the edges of our own private tide

All these deaths written

Are so easy to ride on, their memories…

They toss me forward in pure folly

And I shock them beyond burial

As always toward Antipodes:

“I will untrace

What you are written

I’ve come to sow you

As forgotten”

Windows slammed then

And shutters too

And my written trade

Became too rough for wrangling

The winds that sting sideways:

Blood had swarmed here wrong

Stumbled neither toward me

Nor lively death

I could not read this sidewalk

Nor sing the dance of onetime

Toward the brutal broken truth

I lure only the dead from cities

But I know not the living spell

To break those shuttered windows

Rats, I believe, someone, who charmed from there

And children too, according to good legend

Was never paid in gold, but took his own…

I wish to peer inside those faces

That drop their terrible fear

On sidewalks the dead must leave

I am only caretaker

Of the Antipodes

Wrenching heads upward

From its opposite tide

To trance their spirits

Downward toward good ground

Still I wish to peer

Inside the sound of slamming

Shutters, do you sense

What happened there?

Those seamless whispers cause

My robes to crumble…

I am a legend too, no ghost

And remember nothing of my birth

But it was some shuttering window

That crumbled me to this:

Sweeper only of memories

Herding always the glad willing

From such places cursed by living hearts.

Kkachi

Kkachi
Omen of good luck, harbinger of guests
The Koreans said.
Kkachi
Bird of fables, trickster, figure of the oppressed.
Kkachi
“Springtime of our hope”, the children sang.
Kkachi
Clever survivor inside the concrete forest.
Kkachi
A place in nature for you best,
Your nest upon the tallest tree of every hill.

Kkachi,
Royal blue wings, clean white breast
Kkachi
Tail feathers nearly a foot long

Kkachi
Was your Name,
Your only Name.
Kkachi,
Was like no bird I had ever seen.

With infinite seriousness it flew
Sincerity the substance of its wings
Carried between Heaven and Earth
By the Sons and Daughters of the Elements
Lifted in the Emptiness of its progress
Upon unmoving wings
Its destination already perfectly Accomplished.

Flying across the fields, then gone…
Yet the image of this bird was creased in my mind.
Its flight an utter epiphany

As if nothing had ever moved
As if nothing had ever occurred
As if nothing had ever arisen

But had always been there
Because it had always been here now
Within this field so subtle
That it cannot perceive itself

Within my mind
Without words to describe
What I had just seen,
Everything so wondrously Nameless.

And I asked beautiful Hyun Yoon that day
What was this bird I had just seen.
I could only draw a foolish picture on a scrap of paper
That did little to convey the wonder
I had felt at seeing this prodigy
That had blessed the rice fields like
A Buddhist priest
And rose above the pines,
Its tail feathers trailing long robes
Across the temple floors of sky.
A headcrest like a bonze’s cap
And a song in its throat
Like a small bell with a broken clapper
Like one used in a meditation hall
To end a session.

And full of charm she informed me:

“Oh, yes, that’s Kkachi.”
I still didn’t understand.
What was the name of this bird in English
That had translated me into the Nameless?
And the dictionary said,
Magpie. Nothing more or else.

But Kkachi,
Not Korean magpie
Is its only name

And I realized that there were endless names
Throughout human languages
For the same things, often just bare equivalencies.
Yet throughout this huge world
Each land held unique treasures
That only were seen in that land, only were known
In that country’s language,
Everything else only
Mere approximation.

And I knew
That all Dharmas,
All things, are but temporary
Names taking place in the void
And not real.
Only brief addresses
To aid us on our journey through
The Unknowable.
And I realized then...

JAL

The Birds of Asia

There are birds in Asia
Which I have never seen
And will never see
That I do not know
And will never know
The Names of
In any Language

Like shimmering dawns
Rising within
Plumes of violet mist
The rays of Sun
Startle into a horizon’s wingspan
Upon the vans of whistling dawn…

Ball of blazing feathers
Across kaleidoscopic cliffs
Swirling into the prism of sky;
Plumages of stone and vapor,
Crags of claws, eminences of beaks
Pointed suddenly toward the Infinite.

Aura of sun and wings, sun and wings
Above jagged spires
Of temple candles.

New flames
Like stars still upon the firmament.
An eruption of wicks
Secreting soft downs of wax molting into sunrise…

Feathery clouds arising from joss sticks
Circling above the Buddha altar,
Flocks of incense spiraling into blue-white wings
Overflowing into a thousand temple courtyards
Awaking to the brilliant singing
Of the birds of Asia.

And dawn’s swift choir of eyes,
Piercing rays and voices of eyes,
Singing mindlessly into eternity…
Exotic chorale of chanting colors:
Indigo pupils, fountaining pools
In which rainbows play…
Spectrums of streaming light
Splaying within the temples
Of my mind

I hear…
Sun rise, sun
Rise sweet
Hear here

Songs viewed in a beating instant
Of visual music
Inside the aviaries of one winging thought.
Birds I have seen and birds I have known.
Those assembled in a concert of memory,
Fluttering like qifu strings into the soaring wings
Of the deep revery
Of my life’s journey through Asia.

Unfolding across the dressing screen
Of my vision,
A coy hint of flesh only hinting
At what truly dwelt
Behind it all:

The sweet call of an Asian bird
Coming forth from behind
An ethereal screen of painted sky,
Giving soft wing
To a downy robe of silk,
Molting nakedly
Before my gaze
And leaping gracefully into my arms
To delicately alight upon my lips
Endless night songs.

Ah, so many…
Wings and bodies coalescing
In soft, feathery beds
Between midnight and dawn.
Spiraling in the air,

Springing in coils of flight;
Gliding daydreams
Streaming aside a ray of light
Abounding with the sweet, eager faces
Of birds and women singing
As they took flight.

Of oriels of golden orioles
Inside the Maiden’s Hair,
Of radiant presences of gold and silver
Pheasants bursting through sylvan ravines
Past carved stone bridges over rushing streams, and
Winging rainbows
Of Mandarin ducks
Splashing into jade pools,
Of Egrets sunning beside tea fields
In ponds of setting bronze that beckoned from afar
The rays of the sun heralded
In the loud, colorful necks
Of boldly crowing roosters
Ringing rudely, day after day,
Through cackling Korean neighborhoods.

These are birds I have seen.
These are birds I have known.

And everywhere
The mythical image of the Phoenix
Throughout Asia, drawn and carved
In a continual reincarnation of carving,
Rebirthing the wood
In which it forever arises in chisled flames.
And I too beside
Her and the incredible remains
Of ancient palaces
Faithfully guarded still
By magnificent peacocks making of them
Perpetual nesting grounds.

Yet the breasts of birds
The color of jasmine tea
Were the breasts of birds
I loved most to drink
And meditate upon
As I sipped a morning’s cup.

Pouring in endless flights
To find the Real
Mountains, temples, palaces and
Birds of Asia.
And knowing the mountain
I needed to climb
Was just the very beginning of thousands
Not even conceived of yet
And all aflutter with birds
I would never know the names of.

Only
Envisioning them forever
At Move or Rest.
Metaphysically suspended
… endlessly… stretching
Within the Supreme Ultimate.

Living arrows of birds and women
Held inside the timeless extensions
Of bending bows and arches

Of exotic trees hurtling toward me in dreams,
Shafts entwined in Maiden’s Hair,
Speeding through
The tiny limbs of Rose of Sharon:
Quivering darts of leaves like gorgeous faces
Tipped with soft, languorous arms
And long, long silk kisses
That pierced keenly to my heart.
And only when it was done, when I entered
Dreamless sleep,
Only then did relief come
As a bird that comes to a tree for rest.

These birds and women of dreams and remembrance:
Captivatingly bound together with them
From midnight until dawn
In Asian forests.
Under sheets of pine
Upon a bed of orange or apple, pear or cherry blossoms,
A whiteness of spring
For my journeys took me past all such flowers
And all such faces,
Flying between flowering magnolias or mulberries
Amidst the limbs of small peonies or
Across wind-swept rice fields.
All these birds and women
Suffused against an opiate-like liquid
Drop of blue-green silk
The electrical color of Asia.

Only
Before I came,
Inlayed in shimmering, metallic rainbows
Of mother of pearl
Into exquisite boxes and chests
A conception swiftly brushed
In a delicate wash of water colors,
Or a stream of thread deeply embossed
In robes of finest tailor,
Embroidered into sweeping fans
Or evenly sliced into endless paper cuts.

Only there had I seen before
The birds of Asia.

But now in this valley of clouds
Which I discover myself,
Filled with a sea of electric
Green-blue rice fields
Beneath the endless blue-green
Mountains of Korea, Taiwan and China,
All is One,
And
All Times and Places are Now,
And too, All embodiments of Persons.
And that is the mystery I ponder here and now
From a house I newly call home,
Atop this rooftop garden
Languidly drinking tea
Beside a woman I have loved.

And as of her
I see for the first time
A bird spontaneously arising
Before my eyes,
Beginninglessly gliding
Across the durationless sky,
Never reaching the end of its element
In this place so
Nameless for me

One married to another sky
As all birds, it appears, must be.
In this place of mysterious dawns,
Mysterious evenings. Imponderable nights.
The streets of endless cities filled with multitudes
Of light and bodies
Extending through them for centuries
Below skies that forever await the flight of dawn.

And all days and all nights in Asia long, I would learn,
If there were no birds, unattached to even the sky,
To greet my waking eyes
In the morning.

Only loneliness
And yearning for the bird
Who could fly into my heart
And freely accompany my travels,
Unattached to it all,
One knowing only how to sing and fly.

It is said that
Journeying Far
Can arouse
Enlightenment.

To gaze upon a flower,
To hear the sound of
A waterfall
Or the song of a bird
In a foreign land
Can arouse
Sudden enlightenment.

Yet, I have found that the only thing
That arouses enlightenment
Suddenly
Is love.

More has been gained by one kiss
From an exotic woman
Than a thousand hours of sitting.

JAL

Maithuna

You come,
Rose for my kiss,
Your face an effloresce    as
Our lips together softly press.

A kiss: 

Velvet petals jetting,
A fountain of whorls
Inside a rosarium of gazing
Cascading
At the center
Of sudden beauty,
Rising into a liquid pillar
Of love and giving.

You flow
Over the undressed stone
Of my body
Like a luminous fountain

As birds of the temple garden
Applaud us in secret calls
“Shakti-shakta-shakti, yab-yum-yab-yum,”
This mysterious, twilight language below the rose
That, teamed together, a part of each of us
Decodes a tiny feather of.

Together we take a destined step
Toward a bed of flowers
Yearning for knowledge of the other's body,
And not even knowing how,
We are transported by seeming happenstance
To this temple of the erotic.

Two figures
Cast into a myth.
Neither a sage nor an adept,
Nor in any way equipped
To play the role
Of a god or goddess,
But with a tender kiss
Any lovers, whomsoever,
May embody the archetype,
And what was carnal
Is now transcendent…

Your soul to mine,
My eternal Savitri,
You who have elected me
As your chosen one,
Your Satyavan
I behold you now,

Soul of Woman in flesh divine.
In splendid form of youth
You lift me
In white election
With your eyes of love
To re-embark with you
On the long ancient tale
Of how we were born and both began,
And hearing it once more
To die inside each other's arms
And so to truly live again

As you take me deeper in embrace,
And soon we are hand in hand
In the halls
Of Shiva and Paravati,
Lotus hipped and
Hard as rock.

Our clothes fall there
Our names, too.
Their echoes heard by none
Save the immortal gods
At the core
Of stone.

This core in which we move
Inside each other
Like the gods through this very power
Of love,
Conjugating a million verbs
That never move, never separate,
Our mouths closed
Upon each other’s in hunger,
The secret language of stone
Accruing no way else.
This cibation, this feeding of the alchemic crucible 
This act of taking food,
This mixing of the inner elixirs
That turn to gold,
This rolling and spinning
Vocabulary of speechless bodies
For a man and woman
To speak throughout eternity
In sighs and moans.

Your body declares itself to be the knowledge of
What it is that made the stone
And mine the temple made from it
As we build higher and higher, making it
A tender edifice of sighs,
A temple we adorn
Like Maithuna,
Fashioning each other into god-like shapes
Of male and female
In divine embrace.

Your bold caresses stun me,
Turning me to stone.
Your kisses carve me,
Revealing the buried form of a man within.
With the hammer and chisel of your sex
You break me free some more.
I emerge in clear relief
Inside this breathless gallery of gods,
A panoply of reverberations ringing across my skin and
Pounding within my heart.

You let loose a dallying laugh
Like a rivulet of joy in my ear,
I float on your beauty like a river
That sculpts your figure
Into my wide eyes.
A tear of gratitude flows and I laugh,
Incredulous at such great fortune.
My eyes and ears are four rivers of paradise
That overflow, winding intimately
Through these curvaceous interiors of sandstone
Ringing with pleasure.

We pass through the archway of each other,
Exploring every hidden recess
Of the sacred and profane,
Past every last bold exhibition there
Until we find
Within this insatiable gallery
The alcove reserved for us.


We couple amidst
Anatomies of lapping stone,
Tier upon tier of us
Inside this temple of sexual love.
Immortalized in stone,
That part of us that consists of time
Melts and is quickly carried away
Down the confluences of limbs and endings
To merge in a final sea,
Writhing delicately upon telluric waves
Gently turning
As we turn
Into one another,
Solidified in ecstasy.

Together forever possessed
With the appetite of stars utterly ravished,
We devour the fruit of each other’s flesh
Through layers and layers of sensation
Down to the stone,
To the seed we throw to the earth
That once finished, immediately re-grows
Into a horoscope of our heavenly bodies:
Oppositions, conjunctions, strange and rare alignments
Of sextiles and quin cunxes.
All of these erotic poses
The syzygy of heirogamos

As we recreate in the fields of procreation
Like fools gaming at horoscopes,
Like babes toying with holy fire.
Yet, we are the only children
That we desire for now,
And we give birth but to each other
A new man and a new woman.

Our birth  accompanied by cries.
Yours building
Into a screeching monsoon,
My breathing
A howling wind therein, panting
Gusts of wind and rain beneath
Mad cloud chase,
Our bodies forks of lightning
Inside this hurricane,
Our limbs uprooted by
A storm no walls can sustain
We lie drenched:
Naked casualties beneath a rubble of sheets.

Dying, we learn we survive
All possible disasters:
The carnivals of treachery,
These masquerades
Of adulteries and deceit,
These saint’s feasts
Of vengeful martyrdom,
The birthday parties
Inside orphanages of need,
The casinos of love’s bankruptcies,
The long careers of deprivation and loneliness,
These medal games
Of all of love’s defeats;
The rejections, the disqualifications, all the disappointing finishes
And injuries, some life-ending.

We remain in each other's arms anyway,
Your victory guaranteed in my embrace.
I sheath you like a sword ever-ready,
For we are both edges of the blade
Of the legendary sword of Zain
Which we have pulled from each other,
From out of stone, from out of our hearts
And we sharpen each other to a fault,
Blade to stone, stone to blade
Until the blade vanishes
And the stone is sanded away
With just a sigh.

Maithuna, Octavio Paz

My eyes discover you

naked

and cover you

with a warm rain

of glances.

A cage of sounds

open

to the morning

whiter

than your thighs

at night

your laughter

and even more your foliage

your blouse of the moon

as you leap from bed

Sifted light

the singing spiral

reels-in whiteness

Chiasm

X

planted in a chasm.

My day

exploded

in your night

Your cry

leaps in pieces

Night

spreads

your body

washing under

your bodies

knot

Your body once again.

Vertical hour

drought

spins its flashing wheels

Garden of knives

feast of deceit

Through these reverberations

you enter

unscathed

the river of my hands.

Quicker than fever

you swim in the darkness

your shadow clearer

between caresses

your body blacker

You leap

to the bank of the improbable

toboggans of how when because yes

Your laughter burns your clothes

your laughter

wets my forehead my eyes my reasons

Your body burns your shadow

You swing on the trapeze of fear

the terrors of your childhood

watch me

from your cliffhanging eyes

wide-open

making love

at the cliff

Your body clearer

Your shadow blacker

You laugh over your ashes

Burgandy tongue of the flayed sun

tongue that licks your land of sleepless dunes

hair unpinned

tongue of whips

spoken tongues

unfastened on your back

enlaced

on your breasts

writing that writes you

with spurred letters

disowns you

with branded signs

dress that undresses you

writing that dresses you in riddles

writing in which I am buried

Hair unpinned

the great night swift over your body

jar of hot wine

spilled

on the tablets of the law

howling nude and the silent cloud

cluster of snakes

cluster of grapes

trampled

by the cold soles of the moon

rain of hands leaves fingers wind

on your body

on my body on your body

Hair unpinned

foliage of the tree of bones

the tree of aerial roots that drink night from the sun

The tree of flesh

The tree of death.

Last night

in your bed

we were three:

the moon you & me.

I open

the lips of your night

damp hollows

unborn

echoes:

whiteness

a rush

of unchained water

To sleep to sleep in you

or even better to wake

to open my eyes

at your centerblack white black

white

To be the unsleeping sun

your memory ignites

(and

the memory of me in your memory

And again the sap skywise

rises

(salvia your name

is flame)

Sapling crackling

(rain

of blazing snow)

My tongue is there

(Your rose

burns through the snow)

is now

(I seal your sex)

dawn

from danger drawn

circa late 50's, early-mid 60's

Temple within a Seashell

Unseen seas within you sound…intimately…
Spiraling currents of space weave slowly round
An absence living deep inside, without bound
Its murmur dreaming you out…infinitely…

And you are all that you know... this vast depth
That within you flows… layers of being
Billowing out, liquidly emptying
In hollow waves of sound… a long song of breath…

Birds cries, galing winds, screeling sands, tide impacts.
The sound of every force and form that has moved
Across the seas… indelibly grooved
Within your core… one vast note held awax…

Measure after measure, which your ear begins
To behold … to encircle… each instance
That unfolds as you deepen into trance,
Awakening as you look into the winds…

Listening steadfastly to your treasure store
Resounding with boundless echoing
This teeming absence within… beckoning
You to the entrance of the ocean’s endless roar…

JAL circa 93

Cardinal Motions, Michael McCulloh

Leaning up against
All cardinal motions

When frozen

Otherwise roiling out,
Wraithsmoke:

Exhalation compressed
Or otherwise decompressed

By a slight flaw
In the mathematics
Of distance

Washes over
The battered trails

And curdled mud,

I had a bad day once.

I found my way down through
The hideous freeways

Clanking and guttering

To a very long, silent stretch
Of dangerous rocksand

Deserted,

For such things existed then
On the edge of Mall-hell

Where the riptide threatened
And generated signs of warning

Against itself

I think I dipped my toe in
And then dived

And paddled around
And wallowed

In the deadly contagion of
Riptide

Without the slightest
Inoculation of
Lifeguard

And the grains of rocksand
Though not your classical

Powders of seaside comfort,
Were the very diamond fragments

The very purest remnant
Of any bang

Big or otherwise
That might have shattered them

Into such a raw state
There by the unfettered
Desert of no boundary

And I think now
That I knew the future:

Walking by a corner several times
That had some wispy tree
With cranberries in it

Ought to paint that tree
Somebody

It has a pretty good
Corner under it…

And I think then
That I lost my
Fear of sharks

Knowing that
I had become one
Of the riptides myself

Such a pretty place
Down through the Clanking
Beyond the edge of the Hell-mall

I remember that place
As the definition
Of battleship gray

Without the blood
And without the fire and kamikazes

Just a shard-diamond sharksoup
In a free-wailing whirlpool
Of no fear…

I did have a sinking feeling
Because the loss of then
Was happening

Then as it is now

But I didn’t have vagrant books
Or planted thoughts
Or any possessions

Beyond prurient organs
And a blob of clothing

Left to the vengeance of any tide
And that loss of then
Still seems to bother me now

When cranberries don’t grow
In trees
On just any corner

Just on my corner now

When the exhalations beyond cardinal action
Blow me out of the present

Into all other shattered winters
Of loss and never

But that wasn’t
The bad day part…

Actually,
I’m just not sure at all

There might have been
Some demented
Woman involved…

Maybe she spruced up
Some quarrel
To ruin the day for all time

I should try to remember…

I’d like to count her in too
You know

Maybe name her
A frozen fiend
Of the bad mathematics

Maybe call her
A smoke friend.

Curtain of an Eye, Part I

Lifting,
Drifting
Inside
A door of wind
 Waking dreams sway through
 The pleroma
Of white curtain
Billowing into my room.

Shifting
In the re-creating breeze,
Billowing in

An aroma of salt
Over the sill
Of a wandering dune...

Tracing
Pleats of sand
Beneath the surf...

The streets below in six ungraspable directions
All a dream’s dispersion and a dream’s return:
A recollection of
The sea, the sky, the earth
Inside the eternity of awakening...

Contained within the Seven rays and rays
Of lines and light
Penetrating the radiant glass
Of a single wave,
A suspended prism
Within an open frame, glittering...

As a seagull’s cries
Turn the sky, the wind
Into the room

JAL

And So I’ve Awoken… Michael McCulloh

And so I’ve awoken
With a sulfur taste

Of an afternoon
After one hour’s sleep

Drilled down to ten,
Ten thousand…hours

And the arrival
Then completed

All departure.

For I was not slapped back
Into the same manchild,

And I believe
I, he… truly died then

In a desolate moment,

Abandoning all that had then
Forsaken him

And diving into all that remains
When the world is truly gone,

Severing as sure
As birds from eggs

All visceral slimes
And cords of connection:

Yes, this joy of flight
Is the core of all prison breaks,

But I mother you with
No regurgitations of Christ,

And the term “forsaken”
Is not cribbed from Jesus:

This egg/flight prison chisel
Is a handy tool

For anyone all-contained
Or all-removed

And is much described
In many forms…

And so I’ve awoken
With the sulfur taste

Several times
In automobiles

Which were my sleeping quarters,

Sometimes on a long journey,
Under the pressures of haste,

At others by utter necessity
In large cities, randomly parked

Or under that first
Wind-spoken,

Branch, leaf and
Scent speaking

Eucalyptus tree

Where stopping
Insisted like a magnet.

I’ve awoken so
On beaches:

When love is gone
Or seems gone

By the abandonment
Of either party,

I have found that beaches
Are often the dying

And the waking place,

However the getting there
Is accomplished:

You could be in Nebraska,

But you’d still find
That beach to die on

And wake up different.

I would not recommend
Traveling to escape

As an overt means
For such self-annihilation

As a practical matter,

Until, of course,

All the hotels are booked,
Or you are penniless

Or lost on night-trams

Far from your own mental maps
And beyond the conceivable

Memory of friends,

And thus you have driven, or ridden
To final exhaustion

And awake by the roadway,

Down the mountain slope

Or on the church-bitten rocks
Of north-eastern Spain,

Which,
Like the plummeting Big Sur,

Or the weedsnaking
Quartz-graveled North shore

Of the South Fork
Of Long Island,

Or the black-phantomed
Sands of San Torini,

You can be sure,

Will have preserved
No imprint of… me

To disturb your dying.