Yum the Lotus

Even the ghosts are conspiratorial.

They too suspect the massive old gods, thin now, and lurking in the attic
Or in the facets of a contemplated and exotic bit of junkyard jade.

Just as sneeze and the air fills with monsters.

If only we could see ‘em, they’re there.

Fuck it. I make for the bread mixer.

Relax into a serene considering
While the wasps probe the screens for an in.

*

I would rather not pull and
I would rather not jog.

I’ll take mine with lemon
But hold the sugar.

A touch of bitter enlivens the appetite.

A butterfly with broad yellow wings
Is heedless of the dropped birdhouse eggs,
Thieved from a thieving magpie by a
Sociopathic little squirrel
Who pokes his yellow teeth out and
Chitters, cute for the kiddies.

His eyes scan quickly,
But are void of intent.

*

Some find themselves here, and cannot leave.

They consider leaving.

They mull it over.

They have a sense that leaving might be right.

But it’s the might that ensnares them
When the crows lift chains and the dogs pull levers
And the sun is hoisted yet again,
Massive little stage prop.

I’m told it was a mystery once,
That sun. The theater of the sun.

They consider leaving,
And a host of wasps build a nest in the rafters
While the wind presses the keys of the leaves
As musical as the purely lost visual, the true visual,
Might ever sound upon the drum of summer window screens.

The idle, unforced consideration of the narrow nut of consciousness.
A sneeze and a crust of yammering viral bits
Makes quick for the warmest parts.
The sun was a mystery once.

They consider leaving.

The sun was a mystery once.
The theater of the sun.

Four Lake Winnepesaukee Poems

1.
We call the boy at poolside.
He is curled up,
His knees to his chest and is
Plucking ants from the concrete.
He plunges his hands into
The water and mutely, slack-jawed, watches them drown.
The raw state of humanity, inviolable?
The rough childhood of our species?
An anomaly?
Nature itself?

My husband mutters:
Stupid kid doesn’t know when
To come in from the dead god rain.
Dead god? She questions.
Doggone, I meant. Doggone.

And the rain showers mercy on the ants
For whom the flood is closer than myth.
We rescue what we can.
Inside, the gas fire and pecan pie.
It will be a good weekend,
Despite the rain.

2.
With shaking pink mitts
A big fat stone baby
Takes chips and jams
Them into his maw,

The sound is
That of crunching bones
And it wends off, skittering down the hollow.

Orah!
Oray!
Granny sits at the pump organ
And turns, mid-chord
To smile at her plum.
Orah! My boy, my baby!

3.
Her husband gone,
The summer home now serves year round.

When the snow falls, she
Doesn’t worry about groceries –
She, surrendered her appetites
In marked stages, and
Now the ceiling fan is
Turned, just slightly, by
Slight wind alone.

The vacuum cleaner – someone will come along some day to fix it
And it’s best to leave it there.
The plastic owl has, somehow,
Been taken from the lawn
And placed just here, on
The frosted glass.

In the distance, the ocean sounds.
A fat raccoon comes to the
Window and stares,
Perplexed.
He doesn’t get it, either.

She takes the clock from the wall.
The lilacs now grow wild and
Feral, hungry little mouths.
She listens close for ocean sounds.
Distant, but present.

That raccoon comes again.
“I’m not dead yet,” she says to him.
He turns to face the
Stones and clamshells of
Otter’s Hill.

He disappears with the moon.
Each rainstorm – the
Fan spinning –
“we’re not dead yet,”
She says,
Mouthing the words to
Him, the dear departed man who smoked
A pipe on the back porch
And posed formally, but with a hint of a cunning smile,
In tin photographs, painted with blue and white.

4.
We see in the faces of the youth
The all encompassing mind of God—
Blind, idiot, all-judging.

All our fears were writ out before.

Fear the old. Fear the young.

Frozen between, a brood of concern.
Not anxiety, hardly terror
But the lakewoven constancy of
Plain fear.
The gremlins have gone from the night.

We were promised wisdom and
Insight and sore bones!
Our teeth
Would be punched from the roots of our gums wabang
But we would
Face the ever gentle,
Ever wrathful God
With equanimity.
Did we self-deceive?
Or were we lied to?
I’ve caught myself in a contradiction.
I know I’ve made it this far
With awareness undimmed. I say this with
Humility. A stone for a bed. An adored skiff
For a bed.
Gremlins, be damned.

Not Krakow, North Hampton

We travel, but this isn’t Krrraaakkkkkkkkow.
We’re outside of North Hampton.

Caught in a snow storm. We have no money,
Meaning, very little

So we rent a room for the night
And the only one available comes with a whirlpool tub.

Through the storm, I drive to the convenience store.
Shit. The condoms are behind the counter

And I have to ask for them by name.
The kid at the register

Has a cigarette in his ear.
There is a teenage girl standing in line behind me.

“I had four guys come in earlier,”
He tells me.

“Prom night. And not one of them
Not one

Bought rubbers.”
I pushed a can of Red Bull to him.

“Shame on the new generation.
Now here’s a man. Red Bull and rubbers,”

I didn’t look at the girl but she leaned around to look.
Back at the hotel,

I held her up in the bubbles
While we turned the jets on.

“I’ve never done this before,”
She said.

“It feels good. I mean,
It really feels good.”

She came, once again expressing surprise,
and I went to the bed. The sheets were paper stiff.

We made love and then,
darkened the swirl with half-accidental drops of malbec.

We stood up, inside, shadow pink and shadow blue,
neon and suds with lights moving and water moving.

You asked if I’d take it personally if you went
Back to the whirlpool tub.

No. I took it as a sign of respect.
My heart was beating too quickly.

From the distance, in the deep shadows,
You looked reptilian in the bare light.

*

We stood naked by the window
And looked across the road.

A sign read: Special.
Beef with oven baked noodles 9.95.

Urgh, you said.
That’s expensive, I said.

Nothing special about it.
“Disgusting,” you said.

And the snow fell thick as fingerbones
And we took to the bed.

You were cold, but indulged me
And stayed naked under the sheets.

We were stuck outside of North Hampton.
We couldn't tell the cars, one from another, hills and drifting hills.

There was a painting on the wall, a flower,
And I must say, it wasn’t bad.

“So . . . I came three times tonight,” you said.
“that’s some kind of record for us.”

“You love the whirlpool,” I said, teasing.
And what shadows crept in moved from the wall to the rug

And the water burped and made for the drain
the water, circling shadows large to small,

Among shadows like wings,
a starlet at the window, a buzzard on the northern wall.

Königsberg

Some day the snow will fall
Sudden from the eves.
Smoke will rise from the chimney,
And the smell of baking bread
Will make my dreaming soft with pretty girls.

The winder hare will have the fox in sauce
The cathedral bells twice toll.

I totter, nursing a field mouse gray underneath my wool cap.

This stuffed tin used to contain
Cookies made with coriander.
I can smell them still,
As I can smell the letter writer
Or, if not her, then something of her.
A hint of unscented soap or
Balsam and that ghoulish monkeypaw ashtray.
Funny.
At the time, it made me realize how much I didn't understand.

I trace vaulted letters
And read them with a tea-stained voice. There’s
Poetry in the old yellow science.

Clear past the eves and the crackling coffee grinder,
The snow threatens and gives way.

Palms for the Mountain Man

I heard this,
That there was one in the blood
And one in the head.
I found it hard to believe.
But I did.
I was told of an angel of my better nature
And that this angel
Cast no shadow
And stood with tongue of flame in the palm in its hand
With eyes that looked forward
And eyes that looked back,
Itself divided and
Not without human anger.

A grey old man was the mountain.
The pine cones burst with minor russets and a deeper shadowed brown.
Iodine clears the spring of giardia
And an orange eaten quick clears the taste
Of iodine.

That’s a lost notion. The angelic.
Odd birds, who go in for seeing the departed
Reeling and napping in glorious afterworlds where
Every break in the window
Let’s you look down and back
At the world that was.

My old man went mad and lay on the front lawn
Saying, “Come peck out my eyes, you little black fuckers.”
The crows ignored him
But why were there so many there?
I’ve been in love with the only one
Now twice or three times only.
This shows character.

The grey old man opens his arms
And the deer run out
With quick fakes before setting course, desperate,
And he shows his teeth and his anger
And the fires rise up
Among the blue pines
And we were told with incredible precision
Of two selves, the one of blood
And one of mind
And that these selves
Were themselves constituted like moons in orbit.
We were fine in confusion.
We struggled to believe.
But we did. Muttering, dissolute, finding accord
By accident or design.

The Unofficial Record

1.
Black stars.
White water.
Beef and baby food:
Under the ice, sea monsters:
In your mouth
I hear them bolt
and gnash their prey.
The mouth and the sea.

2.
Weary, almond-fed,
and I can hardly care if the flitting wings
are bats or sparrows.

If I opened my palms
I wonder:
would the winged creatures
unfold into the air?

3.
A land and law of spectacular limits.
And for the myths of the wanderers and
for the few who plunder on
against all will and impulse,
for those who harbor no ambitions
but the most clean and eruptive:
my back is bent in mere half belief
as occult little black fish
needle each other in the silver starlight.

We would have grown old,
Soothed by the creek's movements
as the sand made its long crawl underneath from the
mountains to the forest and back, perhaps.
A widening groove.

We would have held hands here.
We would have read the bones of the forest:
the chattering skull of the fisher cat
who terrorized the children
now perilously fragile among the leaves.

The eyes of the fisher cat
alive would turn you to stone.

The creek can brook no return course
in the smaller sense.
Only the world knows the way back.

4.
And where is the lost fire of the constellations?

August and simple sounds:
uncompounded:
trains and wind.
Passing sounds.

5.
We dreamed of going to Paris
we dreamed of having a daughter,
of getting out of debt:
we dreamed your son would one day
be an artist.
We dreamed we'd own a houseboat
and live among the feeding pelicans at dusk.

You hoped someday to travel.

Another match for another kindling word.

The moon will not burst into
lightning and the sun
will not rise up
in miniature
out from the morning glories.

Nots and dreaming nots.

Some cradled aspirations
now bawl like waylaid babies
like sidewalk stoves
kicked into the riverbed.

6.
And for a moment, we forgot that the world is not just
feel and thrill and
annoyance.

The mind can frame events,
make sense of them
in ways subtle or clumsy.
Thought is key and keystone.

The wind is a thought
and it not only carries birds
but birdsongs!

What hopes
that seem
gift and punishment;
what hopes are beyond hope
and what cleans its paws,
blind at the water's edge?

7.
There are raids and freak winds.

We are not here
to ally ourselves against the burdens of the world.

We are not here
as antagonists.

There are aims.
There is a justice.

This, at times
a crippling expectation.

8.
There are rings of water
lazily flowing in green spaces.

A clear mind is a ring and a stone.

She blinks slowly
so you can see her eyes change color
in the light.
Unhurried dragonflies linger and form
bracelets and barrettes.
The long embraces before sleep
linger still.

And if we can hold to
memories of holding to,
and if we can't, and here
all is lost in the moods of the wood.

Some lost love, some childhood.
The red brick mart sells wine until nine,
and night crawlers for the early morning.

9.
It took 10,000 years
to produce these teenage dreams.

The great green heaven!

The deep heaven,
deeper than the wake of a
sleeping teenage dream.

10.
The purple hills roll on.

Among freshly laundered sheets
the nine tailed fox
chips her tooth eating rocks;
the other foxes went away
and she is bored.

11.
On the waxy field
of the skin of a grape
worms push through the drum;
soundlessly, they beat the skin.

Mallet headed worms,
and words countless,
magnifying not sound but sorrow,
dimming sorrow,
spreading sorrow
they consume sorrow and
they spread sorrow.

The way the strings of her voice
vibrate, drunk or flushed
with love:
this is the way the rains fall.

12.
The sundial of Occam
Demon cynical Occam
the gentle waters of smiling thought
the gentle turnings
of a lavender
wing as heat
lifts falcons up
above the mice.

13.
Gold:
the ring and the heart.

Symbols from a child's chest
golden springs
and golden dogs
golden windings
touching, cog to cog
turning cog to cog.

The long rains have ended.
We open like morning glories.

14.
The Northern Frost tracked her blood-soaked trail,
bells on his belt
and she turned to run.
Her hand touched the doorknob,
it's toothed metal, its grin
and the Northern Frost, laughing,
crashed through her shoulders and into the house.

The Northern Rain rose to her neck.
She reached for bird bones and a star
or a branch, or a skeletal hand,
some shadow among the shadows of the skies and trees and night
or the hand of tough hearted chance.

Her cheek scraped on the rock
and the blood charted the waters,
black silk in black petals.

15.
Lift your skirt.
The drought demands it.
Lift your skirt
for my hands and my heart.

Some want stillness
and some want motion.
Stillness is an echo of death
or death itself
or autumn and the end.

Our fingers touch
and our lips and
our legs, half in lamplight.

16.
The sun is out.

It bans all chattering ghosts from my side.

The sun won't fathom a shade.
We could have kissed,
eyes squinting
under this sun's even warmth.

We could have stared at kites
run streaming down to eye-wide children.

We could have waited at
the crosswalk, giggling.

17.
The night crawlers
struggling against storms
surrender and become bitter men.

Under the soil,
they slurp against the glacial remains
of granite and mica.

The night crawlers carve out pockets
of precious stones.
The stones are passed through
dim-heard tunnels until
they drop ever distant into the blue snow
at the earth's core.

Snow flecked by dragonflies,
their wings agitate the air
and the storms fall and the storms rise.

18.
Against jokes and hand holding
old signs
these bits that spin
as they float on the surface,
downstream,
and only noted in reflection--
in the small spaces underneath the fallen leaves.

Pan has dashed his bottle on the rock.

The human history of drunken wisdom
is over --
we bow our heads.
We smile.

No words take.
She is gone.
And even willows snap
and even willows take root
in waves upon the grey fields.

19.
I've had dreams of clocks
eaten by night-eyed grizzlies, clocks like salmon,
skeletal to the spawning grounds,
guts and bolts and rumbling down the weeds
into a distant stream.

20.
Your two eyes,
two moons.

Your hands lifted by dragonflies
their wings synchronous and invisible.

The stars grow red in their heat.

You open your mouth to speak
the secret words of us all.

It is time to be holy;
it is time to sweep the floors.

Two eyes, two moons.
Your face is a shadow and the night is a shadow.
These secret words:
the shadows are a wind
that passes over the highways
and the moon
and the beating wings.

Mandrake

Mandrake is a bad man. A man known for learning sewing
So as to fix up babies in sealskin
And send them oceanbottom.
Suckers for a ransom,
Their parents only knew in nightmares the dreamlife
Beneath the waves, where jellyfish glow red
And monstrous fish hide among the shadows of the larger whales.

The hours never reaching dawn
He sits alone in flannel nursing a lovingly repulsed craving
For a small cigar.
There will be no smoking here. Not a single, pleasurable puff.

Below, his mother knocks upon the ceiling.
“Mandrake, turn down that foul bass.
It interrupts my shows!”

He’s listening to Verdi
And his eyes are filled with tears.
“Mandrake! It's time for bed!”
His eyes are filled with tears, and they are cracked, raw, and red.

The nearby woods are filled with ghosts.
They come a welcome sight
Like lanterns on a darkening street.
He finds his plots by their reflections in the pond
And, even in death, they keep their space
And let him pass
Mumbling and reckoning their retribution
But only waiting.
He keeps a bottle hid behind the books on his bedstead –
A Bible, the Gita, and the Field Guide to Birds –
Filled with clear fire, with the loss of memories
And the gentle shores of distant sleep.
Perhaps tonight, he’ll fall away.

The young are calling out to him
In voices empty of forgiveness or anger
In those hours when he tosses and seeks to turn
Another day to night.
To find a little quiet,
They speak to him only of their presence
In their outlying hold upon the words of the living.
Of their unalterable spirits rising up daily
And breathing stains upon the window pains
And casting viral dust upon the floor.

In all this, he sleeps.
Only when the hot drink has pulled him there
And no further,
Not to the place of horned toads and belly rot
But to the finely balanced spot
On a seacraft: at bed on the pull of the lapping tides.

And there his victims call out below.
And there we too will go.
Just a curse we’re left with.
But will we go with him?
Mandrake thinks of all his little children dead and gone
And he lets go a storm
Enough to people a blue girl’s face
With tears and his rank come.
He gets this way when angry:
And his anger grows in widening fields.
They never trust him, those girls.
So fuck them in the end.

But it all sleeps
This madness, too,
And final memories haunting longer than final pains
All of us passing
Dragged down with subtle force
Or in the grip of motherly jaws
We might sleep tonight, Mandrake or we,
And let our heads crack with majesty
Letting pearls of cackling voices tell
Of children buried dead and gone.
Of little boys in spit shined hair
Who wander out from lightning-illumined woods
And, with their glow worms held like baby pink sisters,
Stoke the lines of signal fires
Guiding futures we were promised would appear.