Sunday, November 18, 2012

Dog Star






These days?
Well these days

I'm just a lame dog
in cold mud

Once was a wolf
probably be an old coyote one day

but now I'm just a circle-walking wound-licker
tethered to a sinkhole

My how I could howl
at a bulbous moon

and I can just imagine
how I'll croon to find a grave

but here my hum's a whisper
with a little too much tongue

and though as beautiful as blue
and shining like the Dog Star

my song won't raise a hair
or even reach the ear I'm singing to

only muddle my understanding
of an otherwise comprehendible world


Friday, November 16, 2012

Summer, and then





from "Aestivare"




                              was is the earth-shone moon?
                              that shook my hammock
                              that dawn before the birds
                              began to sings as if
                              telling me to remember
                              to look up and see
                              the white sphere of Venus
                              at its zenith
                              in the light of day













in the blackest waters
of the depth-less quarry
I lost my lover
to the Bull Frog King











what bird was it
that sent me wandering 
this orange evening?
to the edges of the hollow forest
echoing with day-fade soundings,
where spears of yellow mullein flowers
bloom in spirals by the road,
where yellow-jackets hover
by the ground, their wings displacing dust,
where I am sent chasing songs as images
that fade as dreams do 
when touched with sunlight 
with the parting of,
at dawn,     my
heliotropic
eyes.









o field          of night

o night        of sound

come into this room

o broad darkness

lay down across me

o field         o sound

of air                 o dome

of night

o  sky of     quiet light

o field           of air

as   room   of   night



o feather by my head

that holds the sun

move        that        night

may come           may lay

its sound          as field

upon my head



ah,

the night
is
a
room
of
dark
light










back now--
my mothers favorite moon
low and thin
facing away
here again from swinging 'cross the sun

                   [emerged in twilight
                    as white piercing red dusk,

                    and Saturn
                    --a shimmer beside]

the summer triangle
rising east and up,
the acute angle points
to the galactic center, behind Sagittarius

those Great Birds
[Eagle and Swan]
spring forth from early dark
and dance     /      their following

the Lyre of Orpheus
alights the sky
[its moving over; the song of summer]



















from "The Ego Poems"



I, as sunlight
sometimes will,
aim for the leafs inheritance









I, with wounded foot, advance

I limp towards a dawn unwoken for










                                    late,
                                    on dark avenues
                                    I watch gods walk by











The Trembling Way

I sat         and rode

the winds pattern

on a feather

in golden flame










We lose our gifts as we claim their giving


Tamalpa




                                          o! sleeping lady
                                          'cross the water
                                          whose hair unfurls horizons

                                          your mountain-breast
                                          tit-tip points
                                          at sinking stars

                                          o! one of some wet gullies
                                          though mostly sloped and dry
                                          and yellow as the sun

                                          you smell of sea-wind
                                          and among your powers
                                          the command of fog

                                          and you hide sometimes
                                          but I have known
                                          the wet webs of morning

                                          on your side
                                          and the shadows
                                          of the North

                                          walked heel around
                                          to heel,    across
                                          your flank  and

                                          crouched in rain wet
                                          thicket with a lover,
                                          cold,             in awe.

                                          But I still have questions!

                                          Who are you?

                                          When you roll,     in sleep
                                          must you turn the heavens so?


Little Mercury




just what Earth secrets do you seek,
little Mercury, that you keep your ear
so near the ground?
your aphelion from sun still finds you close
and just before the dawn.


---


in a mornings time
or evenings, even
I can measure the Sun.

o little globes
from far you teach the
circling
circling
spirals
seem to make the movement
[form]
but down, WAY down
the snowflakes shape

:


angular



columnar.

Tuesday, November 6, 2012

Old Moon


John DeMartelly "Old Moon"




Memory, it turns out, is a persistent ghost


I stack books
bury my face
but it walks by
every other minute!
---specter of joy, passing.


Yet, joy remains
in folds of happenings
as learned to love
from the well I'd fallen into.


The only mediation:
long glimpses of the
old moon at dawn
and dark rooms to laugh in
at the marvel-web
thats been spun upon itself.



Wednesday, October 17, 2012

The Sky and Love



                          I precede on time and space
                          with my body
                          to create
                          my being

                          I apprehend my being
                          to know its measure

                          The apsidal points of my mind
                          around my body in time and space
                          measure how
                          I know my being.





I smoke to the night stars

obscured by smoke-light

as my grandfather

did, with deliberation

an affinity I hadn't

known I'd gained

when I first tasted his

pipe-piece,  its mellow

taste in childhood rooms

I knew him in his chair,

as he died the pants he wore

and thick round spectacles

--- the smoke the color of his hair

and how they said I'd be a priest

when I blessed them at his funeral

and now I see his gift given

years away, a changed way

to know the night.


My grandfather--     a star

that fell with night,     in smoke.







...

Creation is a poem.
       Poem, which is "creation" in Greek and thus
St. Paul calls God's Creation, POIEMA,
like a poem by Homer, Padre Angel used to say.
Each this is a "like."
               Like a "like" in a Huidobro poem.
The entire cosmos copulation.
                And each this is word,
                                      word of love.
                Only love reveals
                          but it veils what it reveals,
alone it reveals,
     alone lover and beloved
in the illuminated solitude, 
                the nights of the lovers,
word that never passes
                while the water flows beneath the bridge
                and the slow moon above the houses passes.
The cosmos
                secret word in the nuptial chamber.
                           Each thing that is is verbal.
Lie is what is not.
                           And each thing is secret.
Listen to the murmur of things...
                 They say it, but say it in secret.
Only alone is it revealed.
         Only at night in a secret place does it lay itself bare.
                            The cosmic blushing.
Nature: timid, bashful.
                All things lower their eyes in your presence.
                        ---My secret is for my beloved alone.
And space is not speechless.
        Who has ears to hear let him hear.
                  We are surrounded by sound.
Everything existing united with rhythm.
         Cosmic jazz not chaotic or cacophonous.
In harmony. He made all things singing and the cosmos sings.
                Cosmos like a dark record that spins and sings
                            in the dead of night
or romantic radio borne to us on the wind.
Each thing sings.
         Things, not created by calculus
                                    but by poetry.
By the Poet ("Creator"=POIETES)
Creator of the POIEMA.
         With finite words and infinite meaning.
Things are words to whoever understands them.
                  As though everything were telephone or radio or t.v.
          Words in an ear.
Do you hear those frogs?
                   and do you know what they wish to tell us?
Do you hear those stars? They have something to tell us.
                   The chorus of things.
Secret melody of the night.
Aeolian harp that sounds alone at the mere brush of the air.
        The cosmos sings.
                                    The two choruses.
"The yang calls;
         the yin responds."
                                    Dialectically.
Do you hear those stars? It is love that sings.
          The silent music.
                    The sonorous solitude.
"The music in silence of the moon," mad Cortes.
Matter is waves.
                    And waves? Questions.
An I towards a you.
                                    That is searching for a you.
         And this because each being is a word.
Because the word made the world 
        we can communicate in the world.
                                        ---His word and a drum...
We are word
        in a world born of the word.
and which exists only as something spoken.
        A secret of two lovers in the night.
The firmament announces it as with neon letters.
Each night swapping secrets with another night.
People are words.
                  And thus one is not if one is not dialogue.
And so then each one is two
or is not.
Each person is for another person.
                  I am not I rather you are I!
One is the I of a you
                               or one is nothing.
                  I am nothing more than you otherwise if not I am not!
I am yes. I am Yes to a you, to a you for me,
                         to a you for me.
People are dialogue, I say,
if not their words would touch nothing
like waves in the cosmos picked up by no radio,
like messages to uninhabited planets,
or a bellowing in the lunar void
        or a telephone call to an empty house.

(A person alone does not exist.)
        I tell you again, my love:
               I am you and you are me.
                         I am: love.



                                      
from CANTIGA 2: The Word 
                                      in Cosmic Canticle 
                                      by Ernesto Cardenal.



_____________



                                            for Hesiod (lines 190-206, Theogony)

Formed from frothed
semen, foam of the sea,

how long did she travel
on the crests of waves

before,  at land she took
her shining form and

with sea-feet weaned
on sprouting leaf

tread upon the hearts of mortals
and left as foot-print, love.


_________





Sun sets due west


                                                                                             Arcturas

Moon

                        Antares

                                                        Mars
                                                                                                  Saturn


                           The Lonely Star of Autumn rises
                           I sit with the quiet birds
                           and welcome the season
                           with an unstill heart

                           The Moon rests in the 
                           winter house of the Sun
                           I am young but feel old
                           as the Great Northern dark descends
                           another year turns
                           another breath
                           the Earth moves
                           I move within 
                           its motion


_________



Equal Night

The cat was speaking
with ghosts


The moon came out of the teapot


And the birds
that hunt in daylight
sang from the tree tops
at midnight



__________





as a binary star!
you've gotten used to it.
suns implode, disperse.
there is no telling.

learn again to spin alone
or else form from the dust
with your gravity alone
a pivot -- fresh matter
[dark as it may be]
gathered to dance
in loves continuum.


photo: Pigeon Swamp Milky-way Aurora, Lawrence Martinez