Stranger Music

Hurry to your food. Finish the feeble prayer, your stonework, your golem duties to the woman being born. Hurry to the thigh on the plate and the cloudy city. Lean over your round world. Cut off rusty talk with the unfucked woman, the unconvinced friend, the countless uncertain universes, avoid diplomacy with them. Hurry to your appetite. Hurry to your birthright and the night of long knives and grease. Hurry, worker in the realms of song. Hurry angel, covered spirit, minstrel of my greasy pilgrimage. And hurry back to the warm bed where she is sleeping, where it is dark, her face turned away, and you meet in half sleep, kind to each other as if newly met. Sleep against her back, your arm across her dark waist, your hand under her breast. Until she thrashes in her sleep. The flies walk over your face. She does not know how to make you comfortable. She never has. Hurry to sleep. Find a way to get upstairs. The bells have rung, the faithful are breathing frankincense. In a crack of the wood shutters the morning has begun. Hurry to your stretched-out nakedness and to lightly touch yourself as will some time the woman being born. Jiggle your knees, mind worker, hurry through your testament. Invent your song. Invent your power. Hurry to be born in the bed beside her. Hurry to the fish hook. Hurry to your destiny. Hurry to your cunt. Hurry to your vision of G-d. Time is like an arrow. Hurry to the bank. Hurry to your unborn children. Hurry to your thin body and your suntan. Then the slugs will dance, the pure night sky will not mock you. Hurry to your discipline and your bland regime. Move faster than the stain, the fat, the disappointed heart. Hurry to the peanut butter and the cool summer drink. Hurry to your miracle. Hurry to the empty stomach, the victory fast, the unbuilt temple. Wake her up and quarrel in your bed. Eat together through the dark. Seize the round world and stop it from struggling and plant your mouth in the burnt skin. I am your dead voice.

COMMENTARY – HURRY TO YOUR DINNER

Many thanks for deserting the tongue. Many thanks for the calm breathing of the defeated intelligence. Many thanks for clear intellection in the realms of loss. Many thanks for keeping still while a flood carried off the world. Many thanks for restoring every detail of what it was before.

SLOWLY I MARRIED HER

Slowly I married her

Slowly and bitterly married her love

Married her body

     in her boredom and joy

Slowly I came to her

Slow and resentfully came to her bed

Came to her table

in hunger and habit

     came to be fed

Slowly I married her

sanctioned by none

with nobody’s blessings

in nobody’s name

     amid general warnings

     amid general scorn

Came to her fragrance

     my nostrils wide

Came to her greed

     with seed for a child

Years in the coming

and years in retreat

     Slowly I married her

Slowly I kneeled

And now we are wounded

     so deep and so well

that no one can hurt us

except Death itself

     And all through Death’s dream

I move with her lips

The dream is a night

     but eternal the kiss

And slowly I come to her

     slowly we shed

the clothes of our doubting

     and slowly we wed

THE TRANSMISSION

received from Nadab and Abihu as they cried with one voice out of the consuming fire of punishment

received from the king of Ai as he hung from a tree fully embraced by the reality of his huge mistake

received again and again from the circles of Noah’s raven

received from the riot of women in Samson’s heart

received from the high forehead of David’s giant

and still the heart does not open

received twice from Amnon and Tamar, one pressed on the other, once in the form of loathing, once in the form of desire

received from Solomon in the strategy of his old age: the worship of women

received from the first veiled bride whom the bridegroom did not love

received directly from the honeycomb

received without a language in the Vehicle of Ignorance

and still the heart does not open

received on the crown of my head from the lips of

an eleven-year-old woman in the dark pine fragrance thirty

years ago

received through the crystal of my child’s first snowstorm

received from the one who destroyed The Letter of

Consolation, saying: There is no consolation, there is no need of it

and still the heart does not open

received from the music in my mother’s wrist

received from Rosengarten’s measuring stick, which is unmarked like the fretboard of a cello

received from Hershorn as he covers his head and begins to live without a wife

received from the buttocks of my dark companion as she dances with my head in the presence of other men

and still the heart does not open

received and received

until we come to the heart that does not need to open

received in six tongues of smoke from the cedar guitar of the dancer’s fiancée

received from the eternal smoke of violins and shoes and uniforms

received from the extra light of Jesus Christ failing into the extra world of pain in the new formation: Be your enemy

received from the consecrated ground of a buried pig

received and received

until we come to the heart that is free from opening

END OF MY LIFE IN ART

This is the end of my life in art. At last I have found the woman I was looking for. It is summer. It is the summer I waited for. We are living in a suite on the fifth floor of the Chateau Marmont in Hollywood. She is as beautiful as Lili Marlene. She is as beautiful as Lady Hamilton. Except for the fear of losing her I have no complaint. I have not been denied the full measure of beauty. Nights and mornings we kiss each other. The feathery palms rise through the smog. The curtains stir. The traffic moves on Sunset over painted arrows, words and lines. It is best not even to whisper about this perfection. This is the end of my life in art. I am drinking a Red Needle, a drink I invented in Needles, California, tequila and