fragment from a handheld device #8

(on the exquisite tortures

of public art galleries)

please

do not touch

the exhibits

remuneration

oh 3 shades of Christ
6 shades of perdition
i don't even know the numbers
 - are there numbers?
which delineate, propitiate,
and otherwise appease and
placate those whom we fail:
our humans.

oh the 7 veils of Mary
the umpteen Houris
and You, God
yes You;  empty-headed fool
all beard and robe and no
answer
no answer
even to the meekest and most  childish
question

oh by the 12 apostles and why
just 12, or why so many?
i will break my fingers off with counting
give up my my toes
and cast about for more limbs
be they mine or others'
to sacrifice

oh Rosemary oh burning bush
here is my firstborn.  Look:
all that i have, had, will have,

i offer up
to a wisp of sky, a plume of smoke
the scent of fat and flesh and herbs

are we permitted salt?   from any pillar?

these days we call it a pathology
all the counting and numbering
off
by the 10 judges of Hell
i count backwards towards the unreal
the anti-knowable
two, one

then begin again.


here is a step.  Let us
call it
the first.
i wait for the telephone to ring.

fleet air arm

fatherhood, you are reduced
to the status of Aircraft Carrier

your not-inconsiderable bulk and attendant
fleet so many enclosed emptinesses

in service to the planes
the planes, with all their takeoffs

their dangerous
landings

refraction

Too long it's been
too long
since i've been down
to this coast   and out
along the promontory where my sea bashes
pulsing
on my rocks.

Water-words nibble and worry and drip at
my soft sandstone underbelly:
phrases spinning on a wire-wheel wind
strip and shape my dunes,
and mountainous huge whole
weed-wracked poems bight
my continent in that part where, thighs
spread, things once borne under water
loll & roll in the muck
of an ebb tide.  My apostles, paragraphs,
erode erode
twelve, eleven...
my seven sisters six..
these penurious countdowns
toward some feeble sputtering
blastoff - five vowels
here, in the roaring four-three-two

    one

   more
ejaculation
should do it my sea
will cover my land.  splashdown -
there'll be no more walking then;   no
coast patrols..

for an epoch, needs must, i will swim

fragment from a handheld device #7

See how high it jumps:
the blood
before it dies away

fragment from a handheld device #6

mare's tails in the sky
who's gonna ride
these wild horses?

fragment from a handheld device #5

who would know better than we

to fear

the ones who come in boats?