Catalina Ferry On the Looking Glass (A Sestina)

She and the Red King waited for the boat,
When it arrived, the boat was eager
To depart; a hurried announcement filled the marina with echoes,
Standing too tall and too quickly, Alice
Cannot be sure which is dreaming
And which was now, such was life;


So she promised the Green Sea her short life
As she stepped up onto the boat
And it occurred to her it is the Red King dreaming—
That she must not be eager
To wake him from his dream of Alice
Lest she vanish in waves, houses, or echoes;


It is suddenly quite obvious to lose oneself in echoes,
To take one’s turn at forgetting life;
See the ocean that once was Alice!
See her white waves splashing at the boat!
See the Red King leaning off the stern, eager
To discover what she is dreaming


When she isn’t really dreaming
At all, only mentioning echoes
To dolphins; Here is land! Raise your eager
Gin & Tonic to the ring of a pledged life!
Disembark, leave this boat
In your walking wake, but there will be others, Alice;


Mirrors and kittens for you, Alice,
Who will not long stand for simple dreaming,
They require more than merry oars and a boat—
For sustenance at the very least—because they are, after all, echoes
Of a mother’s young stopped life;
No one is eager


To die in this way; no one is eager
To remind Alice,
And the Red King convincingly promises life
So long as he remains dreaming,
But it was Alice who awakes with echoes
Of sound sleep in her ear, a vague recollection of the boat.


A boat is always eager
For departure, seeks out echoes from what has not yet been; Alice,
Certain she is no longer dreaming, ( ) claims her ( ) life

It Might Be Difficult to See the Map

some mornin aisle put a period at the endya and if that were a bend


O Merlin O John the Baptist O Enkido
be a tame miser o wild woods be calm
be still and know Always—



—it was a woman that Eden ended you. Cradled yur Tarsier cock in her left hand and emptied you onta her belly. That was that is that were the iron rustin on island tables. And you had lace on yur pink pillows and the sticky perfume o lavender soap on yur thighs and prickling in the heat of armpit and crotch hairs. The deep satisfied breath of a fat gray donkey.




carrots apples dried grass tin tomato cans goat hands
black brush tail
chomps with
wide tongue saliva of a glottal clop click clop click
carryin packs o dymamite into giants’ rocky ring n

Only dragons know the language of gold
Only bridges may draw
Only heaven breaks trust
Only love is permitted to level

damn devil o Black Forest
n figs dates tobacco pomegranates
grapes maples blackberries yellow moss
red lips witch cunts Kappas salimanders
mountain cats honeysuckle groves ice on
the toes o Europa cold curve o Saturn
n Neptune’s blues r the sea strings o pianos
n guitars

Whiskey n walnuts
n black breads
n meads
n halls
n hallways
n mirrors n sun kings n mazes
n little sticky berried leaves
n white beans n plums
n sugars n
syrups n pineapples
n plantations n queens in congress
n more pineapples n
plates n presses n papers
n a man with a camera obscura in old deserts


Studies of John the Baptist’s corpse reveal his head was gnawed off s l o w l y by rodents n he’d’ve had to consent to it.

n caps n sunglasses
elephant guns n jeeps
n fake ferns n dogs
campfires n bandanas n mosquitos n fevers o dengue




n


A------AAA------A [Jonny Weismueler’s apey palindrome.]

witnesses [why is this trite?]

the wonderful demons

The wonderful demons
Ogres of japan
At least in your mail to Turtle Island
How far
Sing o sing us into existence this dance
To occident your orient
And hush your face in the basin
That new world wastin’
In the west where the rain tapers
In tilting the dip
Of the 100th meridian

Where the saints grow alfalfa and kiss
Casino concrete
If you can believe it
Remind recall invest if you can invest it
Into Ue that went marching south from
China
Disaster disaster my master
Bumming out the Koreans
Just leave us alone and see if we
Don’t mind it
A bit
Empirial Shang Kai Tease

You please please Chinese
Gimme my city back prune
Stroke won’t write no more
Will come back to myself involved self involved
My german mostly fingers occupado
Mestizo es verdad
Bloody
Bloody
Cromwell
The german invasion of texas
Scandanavian conquest of
Politic pose prose on silver toes
Of tax deists
Rationalize your fathers’ fathers’ fathers’
Founding faults.

Granted granite pomegranate
Chickens cows
A little orchard
Vegetables
In stumpland grand grand
Down to build San Francisco
That’s where the lumber went
You shaky waist Lutheran you

Heifer heaven hollow
Hand on golden heifer stone
Done done turn turn
Getting up
Getting up
Getting up
To Buddhism teens would call
Seekers on the way
Who owns those shit
To pigs
In the river spirit mountain
They can see you brother
See right through ya man

Rocks and trees have sweat lodge eyes
Wildcat bones
Wildcat bones
Wildcat bones
Down underneath Mount Shasta
Until human beings
Come to their seeming senses

For more dangerous observations
Testing testing
Loyalties
Rice shot shot gun
Proposition of the modern type
Deity-free
Ancor field
Yama yana yama yana yana yana
My local gods goddesses
Go with the flow
Easy brother easy
Toilet gods elite
Your street leads to sutra elimination
Nation
Convertible zen men other
Who why who I was myself
In a larger set wet dare
To worry rational royality

Roshi roshi roshi
Rensai rensai rensai
Sota sota sota
Inka inka inka

Too much coyote to become a monk again
I’d better not go on.

I simply want to know that you are

this warm sleep blanket next to and skin still breathing when you wake,
a hospital of ladders, bind and twist to the very small diagnosis
blood tube form name scrawled nurse label lens bulb visit you remote
shrink shrink shrinking along shrink shrink shrink down
to passengers

DNARNADNARNADNARNADNARNADNARNADNARNADNARNADNARNADNARNADNARNADNARNA

perfectly transmitted let us hope and hope
and hope and hope and hope
let us hold and hope tightly
so tightly,
that hope is life itself,
it is a child,
a grandchild,
and quiet as joy
as joy as you please

freedom, a way forward we think, a way in, a ways to go
I worry

and I could not take you in, big everywhere everything big
fat pop frying pan stick a.m. missed you with butter, coffee,
bread, milk, egg, avocado, corn, mushroom, parmesan, honey,
meats, small small cherry tomato, basil, caked on plate drying photograph
still

I have a box of you near my bed, and
I worry

to the Save JKS Players

that we are sculpting sculpting
preconstructed space
a line and bulbed finger curve
down the position position
of the tongue in exhalations

that we will be brought
in some uncertain future
to a place of deep remembrance,
scaffolding to paint paint in celluloid
in that way we can be made to
remember with another's fingers

[Artifice is also a truth.
The audience also the protagonist.]

that we might mourn, and sleep, and gnash.
and gnash.

bellevue rd and nothing to see--

and that was littleton
in the dark
making sara's tall skin freckling the eyes to thin
kiss in the watery pool spotlight

:that she was as you inflexible remain:

I hear she is a mother now.
That gladdened highway, all beckoned
the broken columns of college.

Ey, the broken collars,
Ho, and lingering guitar necks in her name,

she the
artist hand defying that mother's
beorne fences crossed of christ in
manifold!
in epic!

what to west mountain ocean spirit thing
to burrow to limestone texas and
fashion blackened chains to twisted live oak
flash flood gauge cactus collections
palms in the walkways
never in hallways
and once along that bright body

she makes with you the silver end
of a moonlight trend to ecstasy
a sorrow recalled at the height
release!
how you coil into your warm present
just begging to forget

it takes her mouth to form your name