the Final Circumcision the Final
and Great Circumcision –
Broken down awhile
and cowarding
in the blasting rays
of Hideous Enlightenment
but now finally surrendered to the Great
Resignation of Poetry
and not the kind of Wise Experience
or the false kisses of Competitive
Insight, but my own sweet dark
religion of Poetry my booby prize
my sandals and my shameful prayer
my invisible Mexican candle
my useless oils to clean the house
and remove my rival’s spell
on my girlfriend’s memory –
O Poetry my Final Circumcision:
All the pain was in fearing
and ignoring the girl’s voice
and the girl’s touch and the girl’s
fragrant humbling girlishness
which was lost three wars ago –
And O my love I love you again
I am your dog your cat
your Cleopatran snake
I am bleeding painlessly
from the Final Formless Circumcision
as I push up your dress a little way
and kiss your miraculously
lactating knee
And may all of you who watch
and G-d forbid!
are in a suffering predicament
as I go sliding down to Love –
may you speedily be embraced by
the girlishness of your own
dark girlish religion
SEISEN IS DANCING
Seisen has a long body.
Her shaved head
threatens the skylight
and her feet go down
into the apple cellar.
When she dances for us
at one of our infrequent
celebrations,
the dining hall,
with its cargo of weightless monks
and nuns,
bounces around her hips
like a Hula Hoop.
The venerable old pine trees
crack out of sentry duty
and get involved,
as do the San Gabriel Mountains
and the flat cities
of Claremont, Upland
and the Inland Empire.
Ocean speaks to ocean
saying, What the hell,
let’s go with it, rouse ourselves.
The Milky Way undoes its spokes
and cleaves to Seisen’s haunches,
as do the worlds beyond,
and worlds unborn,
not to mention darkest holes
of brooding anti-matter,
and random flying mental objects
like this poem,
fucking up the atmosphere.
It’s all going round her hips,
and what her hips enclose;
it’s all lit up by her face,
her ownerless expression.
And then there’s this aching fool
over here, no, over here
who thinks that
Seisen’s still a woman
who’s trying to find a place to stand
where Seisen isn’t Dancing.
MOVING INTO A PERIOD
We are moving into a period of bewilderment, a curious moment in which people find light in the midst of despair, and vertigo at the summit of their hopes. It is a religious moment also, and here is the danger. People will want to obey the voice of Authority, and many strange constructs of just what Authority is will arise in every mind. The family will appear again as the Foundation, much honoured, much praised, but those of us who have been pierced by other possibilities, we will merely go through the motions, albeit the motions of love. The public yearning for Order will invite many stubborn uncompromising persons to impose it. The sadness of the zoo will fall upon society.
You and I, who yearn for blameless intimacy, we will be unwilling to speak even the first words of inquisitive delight, for fear of reprisals. Everything desperate will live behind a joke. But I swear that I will stand within the range of your perfume.
How severe seems the moon tonight, like the face of an Iron Maiden, instead of the usual indistinct idiot.
If you think Freud is dishonoured now, and Einstein, and Hemingway, just wait and see what is to be done with all that white hair, by those who come after me.
But there will be a Cross, a sign, that some will understand; a secret meeting, a warning, a Jerusalem hidden in Jerusalem. I will be wearing white clothes, as usual, and I will enter The Innermost Place as I have done generation upon generation, to entreat, to plead, to justify. I will enter the chamber of the Bride and the Bridegroom, and no one will follow me.
Have no doubt, in the near future we will be seeing and hearing much more of this sort of thing from people like myself.
MY CONSORT
There is this huge woman,
(O G-d she’s beautiful)
this huge woman
who, even though she is all women,
has a very specific character;
this huge woman
who sometimes comes to me
very early in the morning
and plucks me out of my skin!
We ‘roll around heaven’
several miles above the pine trees
and there’s no space between us,
but we’re not One
or anything like that.
We’re two huge people,
two immense bodies
of tenderness and delight,
with all the pleasures felt and magnified
to match our size.
Whenever this happens
I am usually ready to forgive everyone
who doesn’t love me enough
including you, Sahara,
especially you.
HISTORIC CLAREMONT VILLAGE
I don’t remember
lighting this cigarette
and I don’t remember
if I’m here alone
or waiting for someone.
I don’t remember when
I’ve ever seen so many
beautiful men and women
walking back and forth
in Historic Claremont Village.
I must have been working out
because I don’t remember
how I got these muscles;
and this serene expression:
I must have done my time
reflecting on the bullshit.
Children are pulled quickly
past my bench
but the young are deeply
interested
in the fate
of this unusually bulky presence
in their secret cemeteries,
and they twist around
to look back at me.
The bench says,
“You’re going to blow away.”
The wallet says,
“You’re sixty-two.”
The seven-storey
Nissan Pathfinder says,
“Try to put your key
in that silver place behind
the steering wheel.
It’s called the ignition.”
– March 2, 1997
DISTURBED THIS MORNING
Ah. That.
That’s what I was so disturbed
about this morning:
my desire has come back,
and I want you again.
I was doing so fine,
I was above it all.
The boys and girls were beautiful
and I was an old man, loving everyone.
And now I want you again,
I want your absolute attention,
your underwear rolled down in a hurry
still hanging on one foot,
and nothing on my mind
but to be inside
the only place
that has
no inside,
and no outside.
BODY OF LONELINESS
She entered my foot with her foot
and she entered my waist with her snow.
She entered my heart saying,
“Yes, that’s right.”
And so the Body of Loneliness
was covered from without,
and from within
the Body of Loneliness was embraced.
Now every time I try to draw a breath
she whispers to my breathlessness,
“Yes, my love, that’s right, that’s right.”
ALL MY NEWS
1.
I was not meant
to be renown
in the present
market town,
but in the future
some may find
what might be used
to change a mind
from slaughter
in the name of peace
to honouring
complexities,
and thus influence
politics
with
