as black, as dark
“An eternal dream, full of the sweetest surfeit of life – restless –
with fearful pains inside, in the soul.”
– Egon Schiele
“Out of fear of her fire burns; out of fear the sun shines.”
– Katha Upanisad 2.3.3
under world or walls her giving hand &
clad in space she flowers woods & wound
with ‘curling growths’ the skulls that carried
life or left behind in tree or drain / collected
teeth or nails the town its tawny bronze-dark
music (dead) outside the hills & sea beyond
the heart / to dance or lose the way to laugh
in tunnels fog or eyes or veiled by pain & free
like marigolds or tea her dusty train imagined
snow & skin all white as age or hell / her milk
a complex fashion from the north & born of fire
(or pictures of fire / the five-wicked pop of ants &
sound of bells) the uncooked food & fruits she lifts
marmotic futures higher than people grass or star –
a desolation skin of curves her diadem of bones to
have or draw some kind of silver horn or minaret in
red a devil (maybe french it’s monday made from heads
a plate of doves & sugar / water ghosts the river wears a
tongue & round the hips her peeling ichor birds & bloom
born from his dead father’s arm
“The trees are speaking on the far shore
we’ll never get there in time…”
– Robert Adamson, Black Water
“Like the swan which drinks milk only from milk-water
so should the substance of the world be drunk.”
– Kanhupada, Raga Indratala
go-round swings he hangs the orange
sky collides with shadows / people
haunt the thinning trees the punctured
eye & hair like lightning dust or bubbles /
years (abandoned houses stars she gives
her beaming light & tongue & vital airs
eclipse his head a light or vapour finds
her powdered breasts her lotus sword &
studied skull a southern-fire (delight or
wishing cow) & rubbed by sages in the
night his faces unclean peel a blackened
may: white-flock carpet heart & rain –
‘the fine grey nature’ of earth in mouth a
moonbeam’s grubby thread she sinks in
rags & callow youngsters folded back his
arms (the gallows bird the upward moving
other self he steals & rides a mouse through
time his face a rusty frying-pan or pearly tusk
& hatched the waters gold / the peacock sky
forbidden kiss
“Love is the law, love under will.”
– The priest of the princes, Ankh-f-n-khonsu
“This being-of-darkness spreads everywhere like unconscious sleep,
shapeless, ineffable, undefinable.”
– Manu Smrti 1.5
of person & nature he cradles her tit
& sounds like jaws upstairs in place of
feet or knobs of bone his nerve-wrack
sinews / seeds in pods or cold time iron
box her monster lump of quickness stone
& secret dresses (untouched, headless
gift of unseen rivers plants & rags her
breasts adorned with lotus jewelled with
teeth & horns a pair of wings a siam path
to sunlight edge of sea she calls the waves
to bathe or love to baphomet ‘all curious
looking’ covered in sores & balls like nandi
(fine & shiny mangled boobs & skulls / this
beast a hollow head with bag of bile he slips &
falls is dark & wants to bite her lips her thumb
like early gleeson / bloody tubes & sperm all made
of bricks & upside down in spring he dangles /
worms that end in mouths that end in crushing births
or 666 (caves with hermits, sex before used shadows
storm bones, sea
“Sleep is an unripe fruit of death. A dream is an unripe
fruit of prophecy. The globe of the sun is an unripe fruit
of the supernal light.”
– Bereshit Rabbah 17:5
“Go round the world and roar like a lion!”
– Sage Yogaswami (to Satguru Sivaya Subramuniyaswami)
whitesnake hair he sits in one more
sun & furs all black into the hills his cave
& to the sea the guest of men takes rice &
curds he speeds & is perfected as a corpse
concealing grace or into sparks to splinter
days & rise his ancient thread-thin ray of love
he drives a donkey timbrels flutes & harps a
road a sky-gauge span & messengers of winds
of man is old or is a serpent close to sunset
stands his mouth as earth or white & ruddy
tree & joined to days like flame to burning
coal to blue-green beryl eyes he bakes on
stones as light all dark from shining black &
summer opened blue to rise like cakes of oil
& wheat he kissed of oil & words of (don’t
look!) chaos: quickening / his sandal waters
leavings of his food & no place empty of it –
help for dead or thin like slice of ruby egg he
follows bones of storms & poisons morning
