Abramelin

Carl Sandburg’s Connemara

Cramped and tired, in my office of the
House, I’m lightening
Up to go sit at the waterfall, where
The cold water flows,
Crashes white and misty as snow, below
The wooden bridge, while the moon
Shows on the pond
And the crickets ring,
And the toads croak, and the
Sky is full to the edge of the
Earth, with stars that are bright,–
While in my heart I think it
Wouldn’t hurt to go pet the
Furry goats, in the barn,
With a lantern in tow, with its
Quiet little flame, its glow,
As I think they’ll be happy too,
Then return to
The house, and trudge up
The steps, in my boots to the
Little nook in the roof,
And write a poem or maybe two
Till I see the light, rise in the night
And go to bed instead of waking
And hear the day, the children play
And do their chores on the farm outdoors.

Jump!

We see ourselves as we always are,
picked apart, hung, quartered.
Mythological constructs existing
amoung the few and every.

A righteous search for beauty, yes.
But we will never see a cent of it!
Long and convoluted-
places we’ve been,
places we will never go,

Complex organisms in a simple place-

to exist, amoung the flowers or organs
is a blessing-

but when the truth of the cartoon bites into your neck
lays you hard amoung the tall grass as it comes,
a god or not, a love or not
a bright student or none
won’t damn the flow.

A long, foreshadowed,
violent movement toward the absurd will
send you through the basements of the ordinary-
through the doors of logic-
out the windows of self
and Jump!
splat into the pavement of the future.

Impressions

Memory is in the fingertips

Colors are in the eyes

Infancy is contained in the backbone

Worlds are born in broken shells

There will always be a sign in every object

made vague in the horizon

An infinite omen in the night

A sparkle suspended on the forehead

An old smell beneath the pebbles

A red sun behind the hills

Sunrises in the eyelids

Balloons floating in the sky

Villages unsuspected in the soles of feet

Giant anemones in the clouds

Beings that walk on their heads

Suns like pupils

Divers drowned in a glass of water

Stranded of desperation

Locomotives exhaling a swarm of flies

Trees that understand what we say

A clock with arms and legs

A tower submerged in a puddle

Eyes crying birds

Dreams that drive their cars in the night

Rafts that go through the arteries leaving a trail of stars

Songs searching for the light

Skies tense like elbows and arms

Cities built in my left hand

Suns between fingers

Tides of deaf ears

Pieces of beaches in the retina

Aquatic insects

Maps of remote places like galaxies

Discussions over matters that we will soon forget

Islands that are nested sounds

Impressions of everything dreamed

seen

smelled

heard

sensed

felt

liked

forgotten…

Translation of Emanuel Xavier

Two Seconds

I turn my back, and in that second

you flutter into a pile of flakes.

There an eye, there a fingertip.

Before I return, your second divides into millennia.

Flakes find each other and adhere,

at random, but do.

You smile, as if nothing had happened.

Then you blink, and in that dark line

I fly around the room,

orbit the Earth and back.

At the end of your second, I smile too.

lyric, lyric

so, why can’t I

contributing to waves

the rainbow in a clam shell

waiting out the sun

* *

evenings on the sand

listening to wind slip by the surf

on feathers of music

my heart breaks

* *

when the gods announce

they speak in my mouth

incomprehensibly

* *

only the same messages

and they wait until we carefully choose

to understand.

Easter at the Children’s Ward of Acadia Mental Hospital

At the picnic table BJ, Little Rob, and Billy Jean

play poker with marshmallow bunnies and white jelly beans.

Little Rob calls for ante while BJ stuffs

the remaining fluff (like clouds) into his mouth,

shouting: Fuzzy Bunny!

An hallelujah-drenched

chorus. Nathan and Olivia recline

beside newspaper, painting black, globulous smears

on black construction paper: Easter eggs and flowers.

Lacresha sits in the sandbox, surrounded by plastic pails

and shovels in a tutu from Belks (It was a gift

from her grandmother). The dress reminds her of pink

frosting. It rustles as she sits—butt squashed

in sand, lace popped around her like a sea anemone.

Happy Easter! Nurse Tess belts from inside a wire-framed,

felt-skinned Bunny Rabbit with convex lens eyes. The children look

up to themselves upside down, smirk,

and return to their own, right side up reflections:

Where is God?

And does he wake in the night

tangled in black blanket sky

frightened of all that darkness?

And while Mike Number Two sits on top

of the monkey bars pretending he can fly,

Lori underdogs it off the swing—grit stuck in her palms—

and cries into her hair, only to rise three minutes later

and eat the rest of the jellybeans.

Things I Know About The Things I Don’t Know

The way people save broken umbrellas. The way dried-up pens

love trickery. The way photographs retain their gloss years later.

The way black takes

what it wants and can never be extinguished.

The way oppression overeats at buffets.

The way certain words razor-rip the throat.

The way night sneaks up on day, but never the other way around.

The way babies jump at loud bomb sounds.

The way the sun writes what it wants and shadows really don’t.

The way you say his name after parties, in the shower,

while dreaming.

The cuckolded way I watch you apply eyeliner.

The way lovemaking can sound symphonic,

like a deluge of hailstones

or like nothing at all.

Moth.

Moths bump into me-
I can only see few feet
Past my open palms.
If only for those moments
I could hold
Our breath and words.
Stepping into
These I do not
Kick in doors or put weight
In my shoulders- in the depth
Of it there’s love, it opens.
We’ve seen the days
And learned, but there’s only one-
It needs to be heard,
Needs to be spoken. We are
All seeds of the same row except
You and me broke
The grounds closer, in different
Days and years.
And we’ve seen the nights
Growing on them and up
To the stars, calling
The names of others but also
Down into the soil-
Listening for ours.
Why can’t we just extinguish
These lights and catch
Each other in complete darkness?
In time, we’ll stand there and sing-
Hand in hand, mouth in mouth.

I just wanted to take a moment to wish everyone a joyous new year, solstice, christmas etc…

It’s been a fine year, I think, for good old Abramelin.
We are getting about 400 readers a month.

I can tell that the new poet’s market has just come out because submissions
have exploded all over my email. Messy that. I’m keeping up with them well,
but competition will be keen this year – around 2 to 5%.

v.

Pathway

The power
and the moon and the bride
ducking behind snow banks.
Weather, may I have you to own,
be reborn in the dead afternoon like
a hawk that circles the windless skies?
Sleep, with all the dreams and shapes of dreams
tucked in your mind like precious stones.
I carved you out of grain. I stalked your elusive
steps, looking for you at each corner. Down I went sliding
into open houses searching for your seed, but your seed was
a balloon I could not catch and my child-grip is short, as are
my obsessive desires. Too far down is the raging river’s floor -
I am carried off. This time I will not panic,
but sink and imagine I am growing gills. I will relax the
burning in my mind and enjoy the end and then give in
to the continuous flow.