understory [2001]

best not to speak when the grey misty mountain
hovers the blue ghost above this canopy envelope
i twist and turn in my own sock puppet sheath
only to be awakened again by rotation of the slope
lights creep into the spaces no cloth can shut out
when we hide, we hide together.

everything before and everything after
is much more verbose than he
talk of gulls and the Pacific yew
larch, pine and soapberry
has the effect of drawing down the rains
over horizon's eyes.

enter darkly to a room filled with imps invisible
vectors of the sickness between bookends
cannot we with opaque paints that quickly dry
erase that ghostly picture's warped lens
or say that time who, like Arachne, waits
dim the light, the light antique.

lest you remember or lest forgotten
yes is a more dangerous number
old debates over spirits and linseed
ochre, titanium, burnt umber
reach into the sinus to dowse the brain's
understanding.

oscillate halations through sculptures of brass
melodies sudden crescendo and slowly die
fold away over the edges of the silent planet
only to reappear through the brambled sky
mussed by travel across a thousand phantoms
rise again, again it plays

yet above humus soil and underneath
ever tremble breaths impure
feral vapors which valves and fingers
tempo, counterpoint, embouchure
unhinge Cronus and Absu's lightless trains
here and now.

terrorize the laymen with simple flashes of light
august its golden sheen pierces softer minds
unreality strips her satin skin to the metal beneath
never to be truly alive along these logic lines
rather to be never dead in the space between
live for it, for it begins.

ever the dark volatile wind blasts through
incinerated, the limbs maimed,
whither the torn cotton clouds rend us
fragmented, redeemer, condemned
after abate its pantomimic sadist pains
enter the world.

selah.