Speak!

True words aren’t elegant Elegant words aren’t true

(Speak!)

Place your right hand on the bible do you swear to tell
the truth the whole truth and nothing but the truth so help you god?

When I use a word,' Humpty Dumpty said in rather a scornful tone, 'it means just what I choose it to mean - neither more nor less.'

Don’t speak to me I don’t believe a word you say

Speak! (what is there is there to say?)

SPEAK! I cannot say it I cannot

(Help me)

Speak.

I am frightened, I cannot-

S p e a k!

...

I speak but do my words have voice?
I shout my evils to the sky.
I speak and silence trails behind.
I bleat the lexis,
then I sigh unceremoniously.
I speak and on the ground they lay,
the multitudes unspoken

. . .

I speak I speak I do not speak!
I have been wordless all the week!
My words give false hope, penniless, ill chosen.
They are least and oversized, they are nonsense, unsensational lies!

They twist upon me, unrelieved, and in my wordlessness,

I grieve through pouring.

More tremendous are little declarations,
the quiets
find no conversation,
they are small small small.
They come as wisps, escape as smoke,
the outed breath that thoughts provoke.

How tiny talk manifests no mind,
ear flaps tune excitement and decry
the constant flux! such flimsy fluff!
(now that’s enough,
that’s enough
Shhhhhhh…..)

O speak and lie speak things and die speak poly-tics and film speak prisons and pain speak capitol-ism I ain’t ashamed to say I believe in the Lawd and His angels

Hallelujah!

Speak calves and sex and rubric of love, speak niceties slow and undoings quick, speaking all the more might do the trick to make it real, so prefer the sham to the uncertain and speechless marvel that rests navel-height and… and…

severe

.. . .

Speak at me close and I trust not those that easily come.

Of fickle words, actions leave you most settled.

So speak by aimlessness and art,
by default there is no part or interest in the being-time,
and so by riddler’s right, it seems
That in composite, in between,
we are fewer and fewer of these that leave,
and further said by those that stay
silent, in the distance,
searching,
to hear less the turnings of those words
and more of what you have to say.

...

to M.S.

Across Thick Happenings, A Novel Rise

...

Generally, the nights broke phenomenal 

through the window

east, the din of gulls made known 

the clamour of day

none too gently; blue opacity 

of the sea’s plateau

eventually wound its way thru all the senses, 

the new-scrubbed Seattle grey

valenced in bulk 

to a crescendo 

that demanded  

eyes, provoked nose:

a wild 

earthly wheel’d shock 

of a land-locked  

mariner’s legs exposed.

 

Let’s say,

 for once,

 that this morning 

was different, whether

yawl or pitch of the wind 

lifted something else from blue

nothing to the sky above, 

or perhaps the weathered

nymphs, in their tide turning,

 knew (what had changed), and 

 

decided on that breaking 

to say something different.

Assuredly, I was not 

the only one to behold the

 

vivid spectacle, in new light, look 

on what was wrenched the night before 

into the Insatiable Darkness- we, suspended 

through Its vaporous demeanor 

on wings,

soft droplets of surface condensed 

to ephemeral stream.

...

...

August 17th, 2008 

Morning, after

Snowdrop Tulip Walker Festival

...

Inspirations from Barry X. Ball; An Ekphrasis

For Mark

Martyr,

dear muse, your right hemisphere emerged scabbed,

a tight interlocking of dead scar tissue

textured

to a hemorrhage indescribable.

You have earth on your mind.

You appear as death awakened.

Though my oiled fingertips, my digital prints

ache to savour you underneath,

I dare not disturb you into life, nor stir

the casting of your warm golem flesh,

pursed lips and plebeian nose,

nape turned oscillate.

And nestled in the curve of your heavy throat,

perhaps I derive a basal note-

O, surely it hums with unnatural vitality!

You and I are no more

compacted soil set apart, alone,

while in your igneous basin

vibrates the lowly vibrato of stone.

I cannot look from left,

it is the right that appeals to me,

Whilst from below

your unmaiden form wizens to a tarnished solemnity,

your thoughts protrude

unweeping buboes from your visage-fore,

though by no artistic measure did bone'd fingers raise those cold indented sores.

A face that is unhungry,

paused in marble-top relief

 finds a double

in the foliate margins of similar height.

I too am wounded on the right!

I too would protrude,

hideous, malformed, unsmoothed in my etching,

a rendering disparate from castings they make.

As I whisper in your ear do you silently quicken?

Do those utmost molecules begin to mistake

my sounds in the flushing of their own?

You and I, we are a bitter poignancy when the inside gives clue by the out.

Doubt in context, free from frame,

against the bitter whiteness we become

a tyranny of coalescence,

and those who made us,

man by machine by initial vision,

fall away when we stand singular.

No breath, no bone except for stone

no tiding shoulders to shrug the blows

no feet to move from this uncertain sight,

we in repose

with granite lids closed upon untold imaginings.

Yet I imagine my palm atop your conical cranium,

the cool permutation of flesh against skull,

burrowed in the ruddy slivers of

your offset widow's peak.

I would, if allowed,

trace the mineral rivers from occipital to unknit brow

and further.

And would you, of all,

alike as we are,

begrudge me the intimacy of my blind solemn tips,

were I to begin at the nape and linger

at the rose-aligned compass of your lips?

...

...

Pirouette, Simple Trappings of the Body

Here I lie

Pointer and thumb
Rub a dub dub
Within the creases of my dark-bonnet pleasure.

My appetite, never one for forfeit,
Shall bite decidedly
With portable skill
On the damp little figure of my pick-pocket thrill.

O the dimpled exterior of screen, spot blue
My swifting fingers slowed by a thought,
The ready nonsense that was my open mouth-
Cavernous portent wanting for you.

Nestled extension of my thimbled self

Peeks behind careful stitch covering, until

Your nimble digits pluck me

Susceptible, but still,

Burning flame circuitry and consuming
The imprint that is this mysterious union.

...

Loose Jargon of the Shaman

Worried willow

keeps me wispy-eyed

in its spotlight, by and by.
Magic Mister,
wire blister,
how my fingers fly,
fingers fly.

This night I'm gathered in my battle dress,
my quiet gown is simple.
Nonetheless, I'm open toe'd and feverish
O, now I am,
I am, I guess.
Let us sit and find an alien muse awhile on the springy lawn,
the earth's envelope.

See now, this goose is grounded in her doubts from
crazy silt
sidelong glances,
contact,
brushings,
sleight of hand,

where do I stand, man?

When all is boiler perfect,

how pot belly can your kitchen stove be?

Hop,
stew your gaze upon my power windmill salute,
juxtapose the funeral march over my quick Budda star-
I'm weightless and defining,
suspended from threadbare elastic lining,
dangling from the loose jargon pocket of Mr. Mojo Risin.

Collect the leaves
and we "Roll, baby, roll"
like a divine trumpet scale of old,

but not before the fireworks of offset lunar light
shady stories,
captured cloud visions,
Ferric ringing,
"Waking Life"

Mad juncture,you leave your needle track marks
on the bruise-easy flesh
of my good-time loving soul.
You are my smack,
my flow,
tall man's big celebration
stomped in the icy melt snow.

Again I capture the fuse of the floating negative,
lazy white on my dark lid hinged,
The words replicate distance,
better used
at the time
when this porticus indian will skim my news.

Then it's the bright sober fish belly,
flashing white and supernova,
cornucopia of the color-wheeled projection we are audience to.

Through one billion window'd etchings,

I have seen the exacto-edge of the morning,
boldy jaundiced eyeball, blink
behind white puffy lids.

I have seen the peripheral puncture of the rising,consecutive blaze of the blurry-eyed
surruptitious sister star,
red-rimmed spectre of the native man's fount.

I have seen the polished armour peak,
the quarried silver mount.

Now,

I have seen.

And how now, Horatio,

my breath-checked diaphram's harpooned me some control:

I recollect the gaping toothless maw
of a friendly boardwalk demon,
a lazy serpent log,

pickwicked lighter,
cigarette fingers,
barely believable three-legged dog.

And through the pinioned tumult,
these pinwheels we've over-thought and undergone,
I've known the light fandango-

Incredible Night,

Incredible Dawn.

...

From 3/27/07

Even Messiahs fall on hard luck

I’m a sculpture.

An elegant origami crane in flowery print,
A fierce little poise
of impressionable paper ideals
hung on thin wire,
perfected artful arrow in moist resplendent hues,
a faint, muted monument
suspended
in an airy eggshell room.

A child of good manners and collected interest once fashioned me,
her voice a singing breath in cold
but how she worked
so quietly.

I know that she meant well,
creasing each permanent fold
with innocence assurance,
shaping every point in careful execution-
but little did she know,
as she created her bird of paradise
-perfect prototype of wings and beak and breast-
how fragile her creation would be;

No one told me, in my still exercise
that with one swift blow at best
my folds would yield and cease to hold,
creases no longer straight and precise
but crumpled and messed,
that form of innocence no longer pressed
into my colorful pulp.

Wings that once modeled
in detailed distinction
jut from a brittle ball.

A color-masked mound, wadded,
once paraded permanence-
now a maimed existence,

a thousand and one wishes

crippled to a muttering ruse
on a rough stained floor bed

...too soon a nest for naked pups,
no gallant end when I am ripped to shreds.

From a lower weighless vantage I recall
a windy breath,
a sweet slight afternoon
that called me to blue abovein practiced ease.
No longer will I please
those upturned eyes;

Smiles, whispered admonitions
will not reach
this bit of me that lies
forgotten and discarded in a corner of disillusioned dreams.

...

From 4/9/06

Dampened Portraits: A Dream

So tickled the thought
when once I knew
the sky was suckled up with dew
with leavened folds
that brighten hollow scarlet cuckolds

I tasted in dreams
those fuzzied few,
and 'ere the morning away they flew

Then all I held
was bleak and fey ;
a soldier in garnered swift array

But let's not talk of tin toys press'd-
It's Orange who's the adulteress ...

She peeps from every bauble'd surface
of white teeth
that sink
into ethereal fruits
..those insubstantial
still-life delights

...

From 4/20/06

Practical, The Rash

Skin skin

skin,

Leaving in tender sheaves
like layers of pastry from week old baklava.

Some say that we rot
from within,
like old rusty watering tins,
distilling in ripe, peppermint gin
from 1967.

I, however,
seem to think
that appetites reflect current trends
and clinical propaganda
rather than the latest tasty dish,
but who’s to say the initial itch
isn’t from that fermented cream
you force onto it
day after
day

without a thought as to why
it pricks in the first place?

...

From 3/12/06

Saline, Postmortem

The sea once visited me in New York.

It rang with strands of likewise separated pearls
and crashed with keen croonings of pleasure upon my summer afghan.
The pearls were dislodged;

they lay like eggs on a cushioned spool of milk,
warm and fresh in cream linen.

...

From 3/2/06