The greatest poverty is not to live
In a physical world.
—Wallace Stevens
Wave gull call
striped black fluent wave down an arm
Set back from the shore in blue water
a body in long strides walking in wrinkled shadows
walking into the water there is a system
of working one’s way out
wave by wave the common whiteness of grave
stones drenched in sunlight.
*
Coercive bridge and crease of elbow. Shroud liniment applied to its surface.
Gulf bones dragged into human lots. Back slotted spongy knots of coral.
Aroused one wakes on bone-mottled gray cloth.
And the wind that knots itself. One gray-green scarf coiled around the hand.
Plastic tarps spread on shell-soaked ground. Necklace bone shields borne out
[in a stream.
A grove of shells held against copper the color of sky at sunset.
The opacity of smoke.
*
(prayer bell)
Shoal surface shine. To go down to it paler in light to see the pale waters
[removed.
Low gull cry spilled downstream. Wind-yipped gulls in formation above.
Caught sight at dawn of barrier boom. Stray slotted bloom of ash in palm.
Another broken from the first uncapped. Bodiless mercy. A line pulled in
[two directions.
Stained sea mottled black then blue. Line flowing into line a flower of
[hands almost.
Stood under the surface itself a scenic cloud. Musical almost. Weightless
[beam of water.
Our hunger for the ordinary. Let’s see the very thing and nothing else.
Night after night no night but forms of waiting. One grows attached to
[the images.
A plume rising through half-light. Well wide open.
Bell buoys rising underwater. A crown of waves encircling soft black lines.
Plume night sail blue acquiescent at sea. Tar balls floating on ochrous flinty
[surface of foam.
Mute stars sited dusk inside its channel. Spume sea-white foam palm
[plankton side first.
Black wooded sea surface bucolic coral faded brown and bees of paradise
floating in ash.
*
A line in oil or sand is still a line.
To break the form of it to sing again.
Carrying some weight inside the song that opens and abandons one to what
cannot last.
White crystal under the tongue. Bleached hand folded black wing.
*
No child can wander inside its foamy circle.
Shed shards of its gull shape. Loose forms dragged bone. A pit where the
[hands were.
A child in the form of a bird landing beside it. Body’s bell diving for salt.
[Bone stalks of
black sand on white.
Color disappears from the world when you least expect it.
Gulf tide looping climactic shifts. Follow the cycle it comes around washed
[back to
shell-beaded shore.
Shapely brown combed shell carriers on shore gone on all fours.
An old man standing in the middle to find what is the middle of blackness.
Seeing anything gone seeing it go where it goes underneath it goes …
Carried back again piles of white plastic bags arranged in rows of white.
Nude hands weighted without shovels. Who is near when no one is near.
Edge to edge hooked smooth surfaces hooked together.
One colony below the surface one above shining aerial view of their forms
[silvery black lines
congregating at dusk.
*
No panic in the moon light it comes to nothing.
Surface of one then another like a hand
passed through black jelly.
Dipped below what one has lost or not known was there.
In place of it a shapeless moon eye. Beam and edge of beam
“the final mountain the last glowing tower.”
*
Sea bones passed through hands of the living. The blades of oars passed over
[and over
orange over black.
Bodies in a line of bodies
lined up to watch the sun rise fall silent.
Spectacle is what it says
it is. A sea garden dissolved within a beacon of forms.
The seal broken off.
*
Oyster shell in hand of a boy.
Hand the shells back to him they come back gray and black on white.
Small knotted pearls of flesh. Cupped hand of gray meat.
Not in his eyes he says it’s over not in his eyes but his hands.
Pale boy’s hands bearing no trace of black.
Gray husk meatless play of light on his hands.
*
(prayer well)
Refuge inside of it a column rises through black-tiered jewel of ocean.
Eyes shut or open opening into blue-green layers of sight.
The sun travels weightless over white sand refuge to what it leaves.
Without borders a slim space of light passing through the layers underneath.
Captive well capped light. A plume brown then black rising blue then brown.
No trace of their bodies when the rig is lifted like a tower into view.
What is redemption the cloud line of it rising then parting like prayer folds.
Stage by stage the serene story of living things below.
Green infused with brown blacking out the line
between death and life.
*
To share the day blue then gray in passing.
Soft civil bird bent low to ground finding sky and sun bleached.
This shine in place of white passed over mottled summer.
A zone of blue then orange opening out to sea lanes blackening far as the eye
[can see.
Sun when it sets black in the gray sky. Vigil in which characters speak
Against what they are seeing one speaks against half-pale reds in ocean sky
Gone black-sashed sky and sun bolted black to a black knot of oil.
Birds blackened foam-like waiting.
*
Bell buoys in motion beneath a cut-out moon.
Toothless black sky white sand coast hills no hills around the center of a
surface black tin scraping a plastic ledge.
Shivering heavy rains come down silver then white on black. Scarred lines
[of it.
Silver then black white surfaces blown open by white black hands.
Forged lanes of shiny black jettisoned to make memory a route of passing a
[phase
of unknowing. Bleached bones in a field of yellow sand winced leveraged
[back.
Laid end to end when the bags fill with them and are brought out put in
[a line.
As wind shears scatter salt grooves blackened newly tiered layers of black
[salt.
One’s history caught entangled marsh grasses
matted with death.
*
Marsh flowers stemmed slick.
Mute blaze field of wet flora
pressed into black. Sheathed
rib ends coarsened matted against hand-held silt.
Flown off wind
pelican beak wing forming one black ring.
Black pelican flight bright-edged wheel of stemmed flora
cut ice coral blaze.
*
In the visible sea locate the invisible sea imprisoned there.
Notes disappear written out dissolve blue gray as metal in hand softens.
Coral rose darkened funneling out blue then black squall sudden plume of
[gulls scattered.
Ledged sediment black conic silt uprising plume of salt whiteness as it burns
[out.
Echoes coloring the lines meeting boom barriers faint sound of their color.
A vessel
sinks from view reappears colorless splotch in rear of scene. Gull homes
[black window.
Orphic column of orange light burning at sea
brown plumes forested glow.
*
Flown low bright steps of oil in a line of orange.
Refuge attached to each broken trace networks of foam
broken open like cloistered blooms bright silver.
Rock surfaces submerged black green weighted down
waves crested rising against bolted shore.
*
Blue yellow sky and sun.
Bolted half piles of green white plastic.
Each lasting trace of black coating a surface of white green.
Buoy shell stern. Sun
clapped folds of crab shrimp sea turtle.
Netted pulled soft webbed shell.
Nubbed trace black silver needle beamed boat light.
Scarred bird-like no bird.
A scream softened settles downwind. Black
surface pluming beneath each edge of landscape
“swarming
with the changes that occur
living as and where we live.”
And this is what the serpent told me. The one in my dreams. She appears on the site of an ancient Greek temple. The temple is in ruins, but the power of the place is palpable, running in electric currents through my body. Olive trees with their gentle presence cover the hillside. She slithers away through the warm grass and a deep voice cries out, “Why have you abandoned me?”
But the meaning of her cry wasn’t clear at first
I couldn’t read the red bird inside a tree of fire
its meaning wasn’t clear when the fire rose
inside a crown of red.
What came back years later?
The story of the snake reddening in wet grass
A boy inside the tale breathing its fire
Once again the tale told to others the tale
repeated until it becomes what it must
hold—
Like a bashful virgin being lavished with compliments, it tried to conceal its pride in its beauty, and, having made certain of captivating its lover, the snake coyly twisted round and gently, gracefully, glided away until swallowed up by a crack in the wall … I rose from my place, overwhelmed by the feeling that I was on the brink of a new world, a new destiny, or rather, if you wish, on the threshold of a new love.
*
Do you remember waking I don’t remember waking
by the sea in the serpent’s house I don’t remember the name of She
who led me there woke me by the sea in a serpent’s tale
black like ash flakes in my mouth I tasted her metallic flesh
I don’t remember waking by the sea near the serpent my Beloved
I was told nothing near the sea my beginnings
were like reddened wood in the fire where the spirits watched
for me one by one they came to watch my beginnings
in the forked place where the wood ran bloodless through our palms
I was led there in the infinite ash in the pale sky skin like a snake’s
pale surface my palms cut bloodied on their hard surfaces
their twisted forms elongating in the dark
(heard her say)
I gathered by water I was alone the days it took
black days to see her form by means of two tiny fangs like pearls
and a golden tongue like a twig of arak wood
it smiled at me and fastened its eyes on mine
in one fleeting commanding glance.
The thought of killing left me the thought of
meeting her tongue like a twig of arak wood
I felt a current a radiation from its eyes
ordering me to stay where I was.
I became the serpent’s bride
I saw her in the realm of reptiles
I tasted her flesh in the form of the djinns
I coupled my form to hers I was brought
beneath the red ash winged like a cut piece of flesh
I was made to lie down until she fled at morning
There was not whispering in the trees
A house near my vision the days going past one
by one I didn’t count them I sat near the woodpile
and tasted fern and ash white palms struck
what the flames were what my body was
made visible against the light
Whenever a snake appears, you must think of a primordial feeling of fear. It is hidden and therefore dangerous. As animal it symbolizes something unconscious; it is the instinctive movement or tendency; it shows the way to the hidden treasure, or it guards the treasure.
*
What is forbidden?
Red wing dust birth what is forbidden
the snake’s forbiddenness inside
the red hand revealing itself to
sight potent night a stain reddening
working its way into consciousness
the hawk’s piercing eye from above
as the snake is a form of beginning
blended with red wings & clay
*
Lost everywhere without you I am black teeth black on a ring of cypress I am holy flesh of the goat pierced by fire I am the name it carries stained red black meat on a red flooded pyre.
*
(after Rumi)
And my branch of olive is bottomless
my ship steered under gray falcon-less skies my skin flecked
with ash one is returning one is forever not returning
And the root is a reed blossoming chain
Blood flows between the florets my mouth and gums bleed
to play its bony structure to hear itself in half measures
as if grieving as if in prayer to the goddess torn
limb from limb its heart eaten in the shade of cypress
And the origin of its secret was lament
And its reed a white palm of bone
And the reed’s sound an amulet of fire
lifted to the Heavens
telling of the road that runs with blood
telling the tales of Majnun’s passionate loves
The lover is a veil that roams without beginning or end
And their children were squandered edge to edge
Escaping its music the children
pled for their lives and did not return.
*
When I was a boy, thoughts born out of fear struck me in the face and told me I was a coward. That was because I was still bad at being afraid. Since then, however, I have learned to be afraid with real fear, fear that increases only when the force that engenders it increases. We have no idea of this force, except in our fear. For it is utterly inconceivable, so totally opposed to us, that our brain disintegrates at the point where we strain ourselves to think it.
Nothing is when light is nothing
upon the flesh of the seeker nothing can
alter wood formations built on sea’s inlet
And our skin is squeezed from within by black
coils of its being we are what it coils around
black speech in the mouth of a parrot
Let it endure us we are liable to say
Let it coil around our waist & begin the crossing
Let it settle around our torso’s blade of black coral
And seduce our mother from her depths
And hasten our father to his death
*
Let me die near your coiled being let me know fear of your metal black form of death my living wish Being afraid does not mean feeling my body shake or my heart beat … I want to experience the world as something to shun as black ghost of kin.
*
But the woman and man were blind
in his dream they were blind walking into
daylight turning to one then the other
blind voices crying out to one then the other
And god was outside their solitude apart from where they lay
And the man arose and knew in the distance
their house with columns and saw her move from its interior
Blind as she was blind to see herself moving from within
A bright stone the color of water moving beneath them
And the serpent moved through their days & nights
And he saw what it was came before there were two of them
A door opening on the right onto a garden and the figure of
Odysseus reflected back through waves of light
“Do you know where you are?”
“I am a stranger here and everything is strange to me.”
“Do you know where you are?”
“I am a stranger to you and to all who come after.”
*
As if bird & snake were messengers
One calling to the other in terror at dawn when the skies opened
And light poured forth upon them
Earth and light from above when the Heavens opened
And they saw themselves out of place
Orphans in each world
“My soul, my sister, from above …”
*
See what has left us what begins anew
as if in a dream of paradise we can never know.
NOTE. Eleonóra Babejová’s “She Will Wind Herself around You” (Jung Journal: Culture & Psyche 5: 3) and C. G. Jung’s The Red Book: Liber Novus were the sources for many of the references and quotations in this poem.