36 Chambers: Canto V

Canto V

that we be a descent, serpent from high

where our path winds to travel swift

one cycle to the next we six times level

through chambers guarded and don’t you know

blocked paths mark our particular tests

how far long will you stand to gain entry

so too this chamber is where we let go

too it would be weather fair and rainy

this cloudy version of design was desire

that held us down in lifetimes, it was desire

that shaped its jealous tongue into how we

would be clipped of wing, clipped of song

you will never wander farther past this door

if you don’t learn to surrender all that you

would grasp, love itself can be twisted

let not the width of how long we carry on

here confuse that it is not dangerous, let

not the width of that path make you believe

many can fit upon it: we push against

an always dream, and it’s no matter

what else you got left, he sings to the wind

whoever you are traveling with now is who

you are traveling with now: poet is prophet

come to any of this with small intentions

now i am the door of adoration

how devoted to this animation

can we beset as it were to a billion

where there is light there is reflection

of sound, where there is sound there

is an echo of what we hope to contain

a poem is imitation as sure as the line

of our own songs is a mirror of all

we choose to give attention, that not

one story be held over another, that not

one breath more precious in the evermore

we confuse here the terrible rending

of what is offered in a temporary held

for an eternity, here in the manifest

we dense matter into what can possibly

surface for sane. we held tears back

now we share newly minted tales of our

dear suffering & cry in the bliss

of devastation, this is how the stars

were seduced down, she hisses, we were

winded by how much it took to cross

the sweet twinning of self mirrored back

all the other could hold was our dreams

& how we were hungry, oh how desire rode

us as if we were winged starlings, a susurrus

branching into constellations dressed in faces

familiar: better remember her name was Eos

better watch them gather there on the levee

at dawn, will you with me, will you with me

I spent all my miracles for two gallons

of gasoline turned round just after the new

year, right below the rim of dawn, you’ll

catch the shades of us wandering always

at that end, river in doubt, river in trespass

be careful or you will erupt into the next

lost of your own grounding, lost of the name

secreted under your tongue, you can find

yourself spending a whole life chasing what

is just a glamour,  flash of I have summoned

you with love & to be nailed to the source

that each poem is a love poem, each song

our desire to be beyond the border of skin

  

here like everyone I love who I can still touch

and not, we think loss is what breaks us

in this silly temporary shadow swan song  

as if love so small between just two had any

reason to be named in the universes, walking

around dead and with your ghosted head

specialized love was a poison we poured

hand over hand and spoke so sweet,

feathers fold over your ears when I come

home, treat me as you would no other

arms once accustomed to the thrum

don’t give to deities what you would give

to any, surrender absolutes, the digging

to the core of conversations, a coupling

divides, invitation to betray, this lie

as if thrown from the garden made

some sense, a man & a woman forms

an incomplete gesture, some loving

but the mothering of all is a chaos

that would never tolerate such a miniscule

thorn in the bounty of these misgivings

to look to any other to fill us is a closing

our eyes to truth: there is no other

who can love you outside of you

any other feeling is the pretend we mask

in this place of plenty, watch it turn

to suffer: what they name love is a little

wind blown off course, not the storm

not the tempest of consume that served

our earliest poems, our songs of union

no simple cadavers bound to a touch

but of fire burnt so hot at the core

when a goddess calls, you answer

  

how to out that net of lust, for the body

is a war, for the body is template for taste

and touch and all that would fill, oh poet

willingly, we nestle in the womb and pull

sound from the heart’s beat so all of us meters

to a tune we watered on, shelled monsters

emerge to a coddle, seek all our hours

a way back: do we surrender to desire

or do we surrender our desires, are we

branches calling bird-song closer look

in the mornings i would weep under

the clouds and healthy the lungs gasping

healthy the heart beating and still i could

not hold it all, the unbearable being, names

listed of the dead unfurled and not like a poem

a poem is a song not a death note reminder

of how we failed one another always, We’ll

let them hurt us, even as we tore each

other apart or worse, how our greed

colored nature till we believed we needed

to suffer to even be alive, we needed to cling

in fear to the scarcity handed over and be

grateful they say as the cell doors lock

be grateful they’ll say as the noose tightens

sad eyed lady of the low lands hums air

cooled to the touch and my skin is barren

my heart is a sieve, nothing holds here

Monsters do travel outside. this chamber

is my whole life, don’t speak. i’ve

been in this wound so long i sift dust

In the end there was so much light

it stifled, from star we disaster, this

game is a matter-if-you-choose-it, stay

inside if you want to live, hide away

Everyone I think of is alive somewhere.

i forget how to be a belief, even here

I chase tail feathers instead of choices

no one has ever kissed me and meant

any thing more than damage, poetry

is an imaginary maze you can tread

here thinking there’s a solve in language

it’s a waiting, at the door to death, let

me in. i will knock here for all of time.

Notes:


Italics: 

Jerika Marchan, Swole

Jessica Smith, Trauma Mouth

Hanif Willis-Abdurraqib, Vintage Sadness

Rebecca Wolff, Warden

Paige Taggart, Last Difficult Gardens

Travis & JenMarie Macdonald, Graceries

Megan Kaminski, This Place

Annah Browning, The Marriage

Sarah Mangold, The Goddess Can Be Recognized by Her Step

Kris Hall, Dillinger on the Beach

Jen Denrow, How We Know it is ThatJessica Fiorini, Take it Personal

36 Chambers: Canto IV

Canto IV

From Lethe lept, conscious
breath takes surface suddenly
the roar of this place, its cacophony

of angelic howlings, oh i’ve seen
the letter of law: now pass we
liminal jaws: the great scaled

hall we crawl upon, who goes
empty handed. the boundaries
of a god are doubt and danger

inscribed Hecate, her crows
keep time clawed. we practice
low we move carefully

no crowbars, no flashlights, no
clever ideas: language be so
fleshy, so jealous             fire

three of swords, she draws
etched here: if my name is part 
your name how shall we walk

it, how shall we play the game
“a man was shot for asking a woman
to wear a mask. a mask protects.

a mask conceals self. a mask is a debate
inside the circles of no evidence to contrary.
your self is a mask on the unconscious

the masking we do to fit in, the masking
we do to not fit in, the masking we do
to be other, the masking we do to be

truth. cahun sd: under all these masks
other masks. do you know you cannot
talk to dragons—we have no idea

what year it is.”  uncoiling beneath
us the serpent’s color rainbows,
it is the color of everything, and you

are it too. “you come from the world
of angels” forked licking at the air
“oh winged things—there must

be some symbol that speaks
to your soul about why you suffer
would you whisper it

into the beast. and so be it.”
the slithering holds lighted
cues in charcoal tongues: “repetition

does not exist. you can’t return to
any earlier place in the poem.
you can only move one way now.”

and the caging descends. we both
know how to make a pattern. all
this time, all this time estranged

the caught notes, if you have not
cultivated love on this side, you go
through the portal empty handed

it’s all that will pass
can you imagine coming
into this place, hands emptied

of what we thought we held
two of swords, she draws: balanced
blindness, you better learn to hear

water at your back. they remind 
the stars of other stars. funny
when every song counted

it took everything to move
forward in the lined horizons,
a story is a beginning and an end.

love the language flabby
white America was protesting its right
to die. the way we’ve always done

before. the fourth chamber is degrees
in listening. how does the system
operate. we all receive same vibration.

you must frame me when i’m finished. 
you can’t really create considering
every thing that’s been done and yet

imagined. you can’t think at all.
so you make a container. to hold it.
that’s the extent of the magic. so far

and the invocation. and the calling.
well of course, and forgiveness.
yes, we put it all in the code.  i broke

the gargoyle. again, remember you forgot
to add the part about childhood
it’s really just a reflection

of what you were. the sadness
mirrored out. karma is our DNA.
just sit here telling myself all these stories

the “plandemic” flies through the wires
do you know truth when you hear it
or do we listen too often to one another

a poem is a landing. this river where we
poured dead, do you remember we held
grief in each arm, pulled it so close, to taste

the tremble of life leaving, there was nothing
man made about the way the body knows
how to take care of its own. remember that.

when you get over there. the delusion of division
will be set against the delusion being human
is a single species experience, not the complex

fragmenting that occurs within each one. each
cell erupts from division, division is what makes
us and division is what life struggles to overcome.

Insert I’s aubade in the epilogue. to light
we went on thus as far as the silence
kept us, the great worm taking back

its sleep. the gentle wound we laid down
for it to keep would be our treasury, wealth
for the coming travel. you have to seed

the path so you can map it home
seven times clockwise you round
whispers: i see you changed

mark the eye of that lizard as it slips
into sleep, mark the eye of that cold
heart, as it carries the rivulet of fire

you spoke into the program, enter
seven portals and as the old year
descends, let us walk along the path

to a bridge, where she will pour
water over your head, she will
incant by name: poet, i see

you, and deep in the eye of another
for as long as you tread where eyes
are used to catalogue, you will be

held in that light. echoes and reflections
are the glamour we use to entertain
here, the delusions we spin to keep

the matters at hand, to sort the macro-
and the microcosm into a balance
we could call up by number and name

To be lonely tightly until still sleeping
eight of cups, so we walk away from
what we know towards what is empty

But I’m still awake with eyes open 
like two triangles it is natural
to be deadly, but oh, humanity

a country is divided in earnings
as much as in compassion
how many have to die before

we recall the connections that boated
us shore to shore. and after this
cycle, did they arise like smoke

tendrils curling in the dome above
the numbered beast, ninety three
counts round to escape a housing

Who could lose their skin and still 
own it all could you break them
with one song: we are all abandoned

by love, you’ll repeat it till the bands
of fear loosen, while the bands of fear
On the teething field. It’s all over

grasping, still we ache but trespass
as intended from the snake, her dreaming
and from her dream of us in the belly

a morning where we wake to a nothing shine.




***************************************

italicized lines:

Spite, Danielle Pafunda
Sleeper Cell, Michael “Quess?” Moore
Death Industrial Complex, Candice Wuehle
Fake Moon, Alban Fischer
Some Notes on My Programming, Anselm Berrigan
Lizzie Speak, Kailey Tedesco
Sojourner Microcosms, Anselm Hollo
The Romance of Happy Workers, Anne Boyer
In the Key of Those Who Can No Longer Organize Their Environments, Stephanie Anderson
All the Garbage of the World Unite, Kim Hyesoon, trans by Don Mee Choi
IC, Serena Chopra
Something in the Way, Obstruction Blues, John Duvernoy