There is no Shadow

In ruins, Some affection surfaced
in me (as late June's sun rose)
for monsoon-crimsoned stones.
Lacking any sense or basis
(typical of mine), I sat and chose
until one rested, palmed, alone.

Sitting, cross-legged, pale-pink
beetle ambling indifferently by
the brick-pile, my selected one atop
its path-mark pyramid (Ring
of stone-wrought lukewarm fire,
failure of an insect tourist trap).

With trembling fingers, I slowly
Halved the highest rock, and smeared.
Polished each with traveled beetle-road,
and left its residue to follow.
Cut, it wept its own tears.
and gently shed my blood.

How I Will Explain Sexual Intercourse to My Children

May I have a lover (in May would be fine),
adorn her with seventeen chrysanthemums
(nine in her hair, two-a-shoulder,
and six split into three on each wrist).

What man can bear himself for such time
(and in such times), now. Amidst this slum
epoch; each one of us, bolder
and emboldened by living we've missed.

I say, how dastardly this line
of work without a one
to share it, and much colder
without any to kiss.

A grand thing to hope for, and with speed!
One lover too many, a grand thing indeed!

Aubade on Kho Samet

Lying on the salt-water-washed
stone in the evening, I might look like
a floating thing to a tern. Some Casanova
wind cavorts about, wooing trees.

The sea sings somewhat bitter elegies
and I look on. What do foam ripples say
about the state of things? It is so many
things, the sea. It says and is, even now, so
many things, in me. How so gentle to sight
and perfect skin and so lustfully burning
to the eyes and tongue? How so terrible
and tremulous at one end? How so tender
a baritone? How so deep (and how deep)

And how so crushing in its strongest blow?
The sun bares its breast and scatters all
who take their bit of light to sleep:
I wake in waves, and think that I shall never know.

Ghost Dance

Blood-wake
spilled from metal slugs
smeared forest souls
and men's
and mixed.

Oh why, Wovoka,
did you think
your sheets
would stop their
rampage,

The sheets:
and now
the soul
of my tribe?

To Aphrodite

Imitate an earthen jar
and siphon off this heat
in me, my makeshift oars
are burned alive.
Impenetrable me,
corruptible, though
and something died
nearby.

Oh rage, oh rage
the sea, the sea,
such fire has overtaken (me?)
What childish dream,
what fool's delight
have brought me here
to this! Delight in
yours, delight in mine,
delight and suffering,
pain and wine.
Oh muse, oh tempered chain,
now hold this Fenris maw
from thee.

What wretched blind shell would
bear thy weight?
What bird to trumpet sound
and 'cite my hate?
What dire shore to welcome
you dark tread?
What wind to fan your hair
about your head?

Oh why would you know me?
How merciless your whim!
Upon your face, my blindness!
Upon your conscience, then?

Upon your breast, upon your hand,
upon your very first step's sand,
A curse, a plague, a gout, a blight
on each and everyone whose sight
befalls the misfortune of your eye
and dies to himself, sigh after sigh!

Take back your radiance!
Take your pride!
Take your fairness!
Take your lies!

For all your worth, all of it stored
within this heart has gone, is gone.

An Exercise - 1/27/08

Acetylene and altitudes,
Aristides, his platitudes on
Augustus Caesar, August Wilson on Auguste Comte,
August when the rain began to fall
and dripped between the knees of Spring:
on Autumn.

Ethylene spilled on Chopin's third Etude (in E-major)
Euripedes' ethereal tragedies dripped flames upon it,
Engulfed, ensconced, in love on Elba's shore,
Ending march when their eldest sons came home
to eat their young.

Iodine changed ivory dark (like ink) when
Ixion cursed his in-bred ilk (with illness),
icthyology has always been the fate of kings
the whim of gods, and the irk of well-known physicists
(who consider unreal i to be important in inductance).

Oxygen, oh oculus of octopus pores
over one gerontion of ore,
our generation, oddly owes its order
to oriole orifices osculating
on Orion.

Uranium (what is) unilquadium, unknown and
unundulating, Ah-un (says Faulkner), ukelele
and unction-full urns. Uriah's gun ululated
into the umpire (after disagreeing), saying
I, a guest, and you were duped?

Yttrium laced wyrms of myth (wyvern-eyed and yvel)
dynamically yearn towards bryn syzygy
Hyppolytus in a yurt
that stryves towards yggdrasil, my and thy ylem,
we shed bytes and type so boldly at Ypres.