Friday, April 24, 2009

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.

Saturday, April 11, 2009

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

Friday, April 10, 2009

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

Wednesday, April 1, 2009

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.

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About Me

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Greetings, My name is Jon Landon. I am a native of the San Francisco Bay Area. I I can write everything from Poetry to Technical Writing, I am a UC Berkeley Alumni ('88)