HEART THREAD 179 & 180

179.

Penny rolling down an inclined plane

or planet on its roll around a flaming doubt

I knew you when you were my mind before

no one took but everybody takes

cleared a forest to liberate the moon

beautiful astronomy before numbers were invented

one day there was nothing left to count

could you catch it from the bite of an idea

there are no comparisons or only one

paper doesn’t drink up the way it used to

one mind shadows another

wake up some morning and think with me.

180.

Trace the themes that wind the fugue

deep undergrowth this year in aspen grove

all lines lead back onto your hand

line of fate line of wheat

how many kids all the disasters of love

scribbled on the palm grey clouds coming

woodland cabin of the arbiter of dreams

where the bishop of permissions was conceived

it’s all a merry-go-round some horses go up and down their poles

some horses just as beautiful understand to stand

harnessed in pretty glass rubies of samsara

all the love you give comes back to you.

HEART THREAD 177 & 178

177.

Tongue the flute lower there is a deeper music

indefatigably mental a fiddle golf cart in Judæa

all I have are Promised Lands

spent this life writing down the  wind

spread on the lawn to welcome godly showers

hear the copter see only cloud how white clouds roar

indecisive moment the taste of glass

the great gate of Kiyiv never opens never closes

a gate is a man standing in the desert

Stonehenge is a ring of girls around a message

they said a storm is coming love gets lost in theory

revolutions are ninety-nine percent revenge.

 

178.

Swimming in rain the lightning swims with you

we still don’t know what it is this electric thing

hydrangeas struck by lightning reading Montaigne in the park

one fugue for a thousand voices

ghosts at midday the darkest time of soul

wait for the re-entrance of the theme the bay of Naples

dark as I am don’t confuse me with the dark

look at the sea through a man with an old straw hat

the sea you say is not the same sea

or we were tortured by our differences

I’ve been seeing ghosts all day

a ghost is a man without a man.

HEART THREAD 175 & 176

175.

Everything over the sheen belongs to me

schön shiny things are fair to be

privilege of silver your own moon in the sky

a body lingers telling time away from me

the belt of storms marks out the parallax of lust

is it you  or is it me stand witness for the light

hydrogen and helium burn to make us see

or is there a light that comes before the sun

come and come again disorder ferries me to you

through the window a warrior dying on the beach

once we were Vikings now we are stones

the oldest dream you ever had becomes your life.

176.

Some texts only dare to read by day

David’s harp strings cut for the sake of the song

how should an old man dance before the Ark

to what old music Biber Schubert Karamanov

body’s an embarrassment in church

folly to the Greeks dance with your tongue

till the song goes to sleep along the spine

why does sun on the sea smell like toast

the word remember is like roasted meat

when there is nothing left but to recall

call again and hope they hear you but who

when you meant me what name did you actually say?

HEART THREAD 173 & 174

173.

The rule is so simple make people happy

the method is harder live for the other

the gods come only when they’re needed

as that girl he thought he knew once

came along and guided Dante to the rose

but was she the same as the one who knew

or never knew, you can’t tell by looking

but the telling does no good till you tell it

the breath you breathe out different from what you breathe in

measure the difference in a world full of commas

listen long enough and learn to tell lies

don’t stand by your words walk behind them all the way home. 

 

174.

He’s getting smart it must be near the end

he has no clue to what the house is called

why does a castle need a name it has a moat

all we need is difference did he say

all belief is make-believe

deus adest alteri drink from the well

the healing breath of other people no help in same

stay far enough away so that they still are other

the mess of mingling knows no edge

boundary is all, we’re bound to mark

mark we honor by transgressing

travel far by staying home.  

HEART THREAD 171 & 172

171.

Rescuing forever from never I put the writing in your hand

come back from the place that never was

when the city deserts its gods flee to the fields

in the woods gods won’t leave you alone, you pray by breathing

and even so you have to write it down

this is your sole commandment listen and repeat

because the word you hear changes in you to the word you say

and only you can say it world without end amen

but the Mass your body is is always beginning

your body is praying all the time

knows more about the gods than Socrates

if you don’t know the answer no one does.

 

172.

Be careful of numbers that come into your head

light-filled windows of an empty house

listening is filling a terra cotta jug with water from a slow fountain

listening is walking down a street you never saw

walk the grass between the sidewalk and the curb

to be in the between is to be born again

any tween space is the primal cave

the folk you see around you are bisons on the wall

every salesman a highpriest grammar a wizard’s spell

the witches love you and the birds are all machines

you wind up the engine with your first breath

keep breathing or all the lights go out. 

 

HEART THREAD 169 & 170

169.

I think I counted wrong I’m not the only one

there is a wolf beside me and a kingbird in the tree

beast and bird and me together can’t know as much as one woman can

call us all to bed and see what happens then

the Irish poets worked for pay the pay was praise

fat salmon in the cooking pot poetry is war without an enemy

when ‘faith’ replaces cult the polis is dead

the Greeks never had to believe anything, they knew, they did

as Jung at the end said “I don’t have to believe, I know”  

faith cuts us apart from one another

believe nothing and do everything, and conversely

both ways make wise, help the wind blow, paideia. 

 

170.

I’m never shy of naming elements

the things that were here for us before we knew

so those are the colors of my spectrum

those are the blocks I fiddle with

rousing to you impatient to stroll

road in shadow past a donkey in a field

a hill up ahead but everyone speaks French

and none of this was here before the hill

so I will go to my mothers below the hill

and live among the ferly folk as though I were a man

and listen to their practice of sun and moon

and learn enough to come back in a hundred years and all for you.

HEART THREAD 167 & 168

167.

Open the door and let your neighbor out

always somewhere waiting to be else

you know your dove by how the tail is shaped

what will heather do when weather changes

or rabbit in high grass or the four rivers of Kailasa

where the wing begins to wonder the chicks fly

thus go I clutching to the shoulders of the world

around me wrack of history walk on clean feet

feeding ourselves on what no man knows and all women do

each polis had its cult and we have none

the Reformation broke all that away

and ‘-ation’ made nonsense of what was left.

168.

Be suspicious of Greek models we are not Greeks

have no polis have no common practice to the gods

education is sick with Hellenic fundamentalism

Greek can be as bad as Bible for the soul

yet the poetry of both perdures illuminates

Dante is close because each walks the woods alone

the matter world of things receding

tailor sitting on his table stitching what we all must wear

the technology of magic haunts us now

to walk invisible in Google goggles isolate

how soon Ariel goes into Caliban

when once before the magus left the island to the sea.  

HEART THREAD 165 & 166

165.

Or morning only comes when something breaks

how to tell your mother you’re gay

the stains your pleasures leave on you

the roof cracks the birds fly out

it was no house after all it was the woods

only halfway through the catalogue of sins

remember never to confess unless confessing is a pleasure too

girl fell off the lighthouse made her lover fall

both drowned our coasts unguarded

deep-rooted on a shelf of rock below the sea

some sins will never wash away

one slight twist it comes off in your hand.

166.

A wave is pure motion in substance with no substance of its own

a brilliant shadow of a man at sea

left in a terra cotta lekythos takes two to hold it up

ten to drink it dry not ten of our kind ten of theirs

let Ovid tell the story his own way forget the Greeks

they are not in your blood your bloody veil

Mavors inside me made me leap three times

over the solstice fire into the sea of Seven Oxen

I swam to Venus though I cannot swim

walked gingerly on my friend’s adventure

at the intersection of now and then a yellow flag

come not aboard this plague ship of love’s sicknesses.

HEART THREAD 163 & 164

163.

Hard to read the numbers in this light

go by the feel of the machine road through water

voices in the street fear of believing

whatever they say must be wrong way round

nobody out there speaks our language

urgent children touching in the dark

who are those who move around inside me

she walks by with a woodpecker on her back

to prove that language is a function of the skin

because language is all boundary

a walled garden and a maze at the middle

and a mirror globe at the center with roses all round it. 

                                                           

           

164.

Collecting stamps and never sending mail

nobody writes letters anymore

people are afraid of words in the hand

let Bach tell me six times what to do next

translate into something we can keep inside

inside us or in our household god domovoi

Lisa’s plump white arms in Ivan’s dying brain

we have to know though where everything belongs

o Egypt I am weak the rolled-up carpet weighs too much

all the streets led up to the castle where no one lives

you have to keep it all inside la musique

and when the morning finally comes the string will break.  

HEART THREAD 161 & 162

161.

I had a dream you told me you had a dream about me

part of me on the other hand already is a dream

how many do I have to be to be one

it is a question of what kind of blue a flower

what kind of kind

when there was nothing but sea there still was me

I am plenty of you

an unfamiliar bird just now Berlioz must have been like that

little histories of what never happened

country A beats country B but war beats both of them

who are you crying to on your hilltop

the wind knows how to take your breath away.

162.

Far pillboxes over the heel of her island

sideways to wind sucks my breath away

all the familiars sieve through the mind

into the dark of other people’s memories

what I lose you find a carousel of naughty children

seacoast is never far from mind it is made of it

ocean our first brain

resemblance is a wilted flower

no one told me anything but you

the stone that sealed him in he carries in his hand

every funeral seems to be my own

all religions are none I thought he said.

HEART THREAD 159 & 160

159.

Binary as if a double star you are

two houses and two voices to proclaim

absolute and relative are the same

two doors to every thought like Boston homes

the law makes difference the will makes same

watch the sun rise little by little the light says yes

the wind is always coming from the night

the dark breathes for us

lost in childhood with a single book

greatness means to have no private life

sun up now and here the great one comes

all work is play at best.

160.

Ate roses from the rocks along the shore

one day she’ll come walking over the sea

to restore us to our original forms

we mild impersonators of another story

cantilena of the obvious desperate for theophany

pick the ocean up and do what with it

one crow before anybody

I don’t send news to the tailor how I wear my clothes

but I tell every sailor where to steer his craft

helmsman of absence monsignor of milk

scared except to be at home and there too

we have come to the midpoint of time.

HEART THREAD 157 & 158

157.

Asprawl on lawn in the pose of Titian’s Danaë in exiguous bikini

she welcomed the island weather the sun knew her deep

and I looked away at all the other pictures on the air

every mistake needs its own footnote

everything means he said again

if Offenbach can be a Jew then I can too

the gondola took all my doubts away

I too heard the dead contralto singing from the wall

and all my tragic love affairs are comedies

the Muse told me stick to the skin you know

the giddy surfaces of human life, skip the abyss

forget silly Scamander where silly heroes fight and die.

 

158.

Only in the heart does the blue flower grow and tells the one who finds it

climb into your body and drive to the other side of truth

someone is waiting there and always for you

the sentimental abstract blood trickles sweet bite

grasses on the high moors unanimous in wind

nothing can live at this altitude a steeple

I want to be at home as things are

but that’s a kind of cardboard Africa

live where no one ever imagined

is that the famous blue flower

or the White Rose of national decency

for which the young students suffered and died?

HEART THREAD 155 & 156

155.

This still is Eden but who’d believe me

I meant only to complain the lawnmower erased the cello suite

but then the sun suffused the fog and no one listened

to anything but the noise that silenced me

this still is Eden some of us never left

a flaming sword that keeps you out lights us to our beds

because we sleep in matter

mind has burned away all its guesses

too much weight groan of a physical world

the wind in Eden my mother crying

or a story she could understand when I had come

beyond all stories to the untellable itself. 

156.

One of those days when all music sounds like church

the wind is up to something

breath tries to remind us to let go

it has no natural end no golden fleece

only the dragon car on the merry-go-round

I rode it pompous to ride with Medea

the invisible beings who guide and protect

y ddraig goch for instance small monster in my blood

enough of Being it’s time for the Is

the self-existent the shadow of a woman the mother’s dream

Amphitrite comes before all and Ovid names her first

goddess of the ocean from whom we come and we are hers.  

HEART THREAD 153 & 154

153.

A man’s voice and a woman’s voice at once

I have to check these clues with my therapist

my vow stands beside me and saves me from myself

leave your letter in plain sight to baffle the police

bird further away the hill to hear us

one day I swear it they’ll come out from the hills again

cleanse us of this debt-crazed world

whip the money-makers out of this temple world

how dare you listen to music doesn’t it tell you something

fragments of silence all we need at a window

to believe we are the only ones is blasphemy

listen to those who walk invisible and talk to them too.

154.

Quiet describing landscape never seen

by names alone a wind comes through the fog

the way a wave moves through the sea displacing nothing

matter is not the same as what it does

there is a mindful moving in all things

but talk about love instead the cellist’s bare knees

press the earphone closer to the silence

wanted to sit all day and think but not think thoughts

just the ordinary mistral just the light passing by

impossible angles the edges of lost things

they scare me more than a half-eaten apple

Eve’s disobedience still not quite complete.  

HEART THREAD 151 & 152

151.

Anchor lights the masts are gone now

blue collisions in this fog

a master of humility aquifer unsalt me

cleanse me of all matters till I am matter alone

much so much to ask an alchemist

chewing roses the taste is late to flower

then from every taste you’re in the sudden garden

Gan Eden where the atmosphere stands guard

our other planet we are programmed to forget

each one of these must be at least a stone

how they look beneath an inch of clear water

how they look when you see me in her dream. 

 

152.

Time a shadow cast by heavenly event

name me in your sleep

for when I sleep it is a fierce and silent place

I don’t know how to touch you there

and then the birds are slow to sing at dawn

birth cry of a lone old man hoarse mourning dove

I move my head the face in the mirror doesn’t move

at night she can’t escape the color of her dress

it makes the sun keep rising everywhere she goes

I dare you not to look at me I am a mirror

I wear glass wherever I go no wonder you’re silent

not even the morning has so much to say.

 

HEART THREAD 149 & 150

149.

So some words banish us from us

and some are singing as they leave the park

maybe a story is a wicked thing

tell what happened but not the happening?

better the man alone in a room

music comes somehow in

and nothing said or said not much

just let us look at a man all by himself

a woman sitting in her house alone

what kind of story could be better than silence

as if in Ovid a girl is changed into a girl

and there is no self to distract us with green leaves.

 

150.

No special moment for the clock to stop

o I’ll get a headline out of that

you hear me better when you aren’t listening

government a fancy word for the police

anybody knows what you mean but not what you say

saying is dark dark a tree lost in a forest

pluck this fruit and name yourself again

a nobody slipping under the giant’s reach

Polyphemus is radar crouch to be unknown

miracle of neglect the oil of absence sweet

and so Blake seldom saw the sea and if he did

its size itself dissuaded him from the transports of love.

HEART THREAD 147 & 148

147.

Ariel pretends Prospero’s his master

but no one rules that bright air eye

God’s Lion strange name for a little bird

master of the island, human books flutter useless

no magic and no science stilts his liberty

to go and come and speak and ply his appetite

humans rough or gentle are his toys

he teases them by seeming to comply

catch wind in a handkerchief palace in your pocket

o I tried to rule those wizard wings one time

all I got was flutter and flap all my words dispersed

yet he brought me back my drownèd book again.

148.

Eden syndrome the better the place the more fear you’ll be cast out

fundamental neurosis of the ecological moment

paranoid planet ruled by demons still

still we have to do something else about it

something abstract something works

footsteps down some distant wooden stairs

who comes to thrust us out we’re not yet in

selves run out of self a damp fog rolls in

bird feathers and no rain a song instead

meteoric solitude hurrying through emptiness

to be with you before you get to be

inconceivable meaningless such energies so-called stars.

HEART THREAD 145 & 146

145.

One cloud in no sky

dying later sooner never

constant supervision of the real

humid means the air was breathed before

mean room in empty touristy hotel

only believe what wind tells in that other language

in brightest sunshine heard the child forgets

Ghost Trio playing to the sunset phrase

cart full of dead trees Atu XV everything changes

oxygen found on Mars iron on earth Blake in heaven

slowly adding and adding up to zero

the old couple next door suddenly look like kids.

146.

And ate this flower Old Man Is Young Again

I found it where the new snake left it

on cool cement by the house door agathodaimon

all the ceaseless gifts of living things

to those of us who soil the air with speaking

all our religions and dollar signs and sighs

and these sweet people gave us bass and fluke

to wind again the clock stopped when the old man died

the song they sadded me with when I was young

overwhelm me and be better each of us one step

use me all the way up

the strangest things can break the heart an empty room.

HEART THREAD 143 & 144

143.

Every work must be cosmology before biography

but the dinky little bits of life come in too

I tell you you are you and what can you contest

the lawn needs a shave it’s Sunday and no bells

the mathematics of the wind mathom is treasure

rises when the sea heats up long after dawn

everything tends backwards witchcraft was no religion

we knew the things before we knew the knowers

now float rudderless paradise a lake not a garden

a well ensouled by circumstance

the ash we find after a stranger’s bonfire on the beach

the old lost word that once meant god.

144.

Of course still worry about these things

the wind wants in

wind carries in its lap the seeds of sleep

mind in sleep renews its contract with the earth

the dance we call dream, that forgetting thing

there is no natural end to nature

hence all the busy carry up the hill

higher as if wiser so the sea forgets us

brass doorknob warm from the sun going in

how many times does a house get born

the sea’s ceaseless baptism of the shore

and still we live in sin elves without a hill.

HEART THREAD 141 & 142

141.

Mix the grains again for Psyche’s pleasure

mess is comfort and the law-book torn

restore all the seeds to our original chaos

don’t wander trying to set things straight

things are right to begin with, confusion is organic

this mess reminds me Psyche yields to pleasure

always here and always now and always elegant

maiden gypsies tend their stallions’ fetlocks

heel white runs right heel dark can’t walk

o fall over lightly Kentucky dreamer round heels

drink to soothe the seething a lie to cure the truth

so much sun today I can almost see.

142.

A word is as wide as the will and it’s all for you

the hedger at his trim the blackbird mum

no sound but peopleness menskr all we bring

to the world is religion it does fine without

trying to find the way there he found a white lode

soft as clamshells of no use but to  witches

his satin armband her linen garter bind

the meaty parts of going or of handling things

throb of artery renews appetite aloft

everything was right there the chemistry the harpsichord

some Chinese whispers from Ernst Toch she played me

the virgin queen with all my Tarot cards.

 

HEART THREAD 137

137.

Open door frog croak man lifting lumber

longer than I am this matter I uplift

subtended by substance the soul unveils

the Middle Ages never ended the pilgrims saunter

all the kings of earth still fail their pentecosts

only the beauty is missing the flowing spontaneity of stone

Autun, we have our weathers too our smooth

flaming sunsets in suburban  prose

will the sun on the sea be enough for me

sit on the ground and let the world tell

all your talk is reference book and parliament

what your body knows only body can pronounce.

HEART THREAD 135 & 136

135.

No waiting it went and was now

 all those old words that meant me stopped

as if the chalice never touched my lips or never left them

the weather is inside us too

knowing litters small birds along the sky

you are the architect of the obvious

things bow down at your feet you know me cold

morning was never meant for this to be obedient at last

hide your confession deep in your tract on ethics

explore the dream life of Immanuel Kant

exalt the triviality of poetry

where three roads meet the god is always present.

136.

Slow down a stoker in a locomotive old

Zola by Renoir Kafka’s steamship balancing nowheres

can’t help but make luminous mistakes

bathroom down the hall barefoot dawn

a room is just a footnote to its window

sun gleams on steel a pen seems muse enough

over the harbor slipping her sail so quiet beauty come

Azure as ever he teased the war over at last                L.Z.

now we can go home home is always somewhere  else

I watched my father shovel coal into the furnace

hand on the throttle of the door I made the house go

talked about coke but it was anthracite and Ellington.

HEART THREAD 133 & 134

133.

Heal like an open window an opus number a lost quartet

the sheen of shadow as if a word once spoken

the leaf speaks louder than the tree

the thing you need to know you never trust

Nietzsche in the rose garden Bolzano smell of asphalt

suicide because birds can walk but men can’t fly

beautiful vow I vaunt that vaults to heaven

shield me from the hailstorm broken scraps of human will

because the will can live without its man

bring me unconsenting to my deed

a vow is medicine finally a use for pain

hawthorn berries to help my love’s heart. 

134.

We’re still in opera that city where the music counts

intervals between the notes men do things to each other

a ring of rising thirds a single leap a ninth

girls turn into goddesses gods sweat to keep up with them

a handful of sunlight a head full of wheat

sleepy grain sleepy sunshine morning comes in vain

in sleep the words are hard to read

even a woman on the sofa what does she mean by sitting there

or the one on the floor reading the paper she is the news

touch the over-energy, energumen each one has

flows into other making both strong

it is the breath of the daemon who lives in our lives.