Thursday, February 15, 2018

The Testament of Adam

Old Adam Snores

Adam was saved from death & put on the stole of glory...

-Cave of Treasures 51: 20-23 
 
 
 We are, we feel
a shunted thing
homunculus of our own 
unmaking
sloughed off
cradled & unAbeled

mind unsound 
broken in spirit, in body bowed
ouroboric
Omega 

O, Adam! Immortal!!
trembling monument to 
Doom
First Father Figure
the one who
of precursors none
his curse's cant
the obituary of all my incarnations

moulting an ornithology of wings
men litter the sky
lit by untempered demons
nomadic ash, fugitive dust
of cowardice & courage
the soul campaigns
to furnace ash a finer mill

long smouldering
barely lit & sputtering
embalm this fire
Heraclitus
& call it a day
 
---------------------------------
 
 Hevera Devera et Cetera
 
 
 a temple in man
exconjuratory in ruins
rubedo gone awry
every third thought
the magic of tears
recovering sonorities of the Rapunzel Suite
summoned by her black skirted billows
the tolling of the 13th bell

vaulting the stampede of circumstance
in the still embrace
of Before and Everafter
the two arms of Eternity
Hereafter apriori
wherewhen confounds 
the go-between
scampering therebefore
metronome 

and there the robin dropped his worm-white sign

clock unfroze
a flock of crows
stroking the balls of
the bell
the cockledoodle
lock down

what is this moment
stripped of its crypto-currencies
implausible
fashion's tattered brocade of empty epithet
hibernating

an aeon yawns Old Adam
dimly seen in the zodiac arcade's
unseemly spooky action at a distance
what lips may moan its name
portent of doom and all looming 
intrigue of terrorjoy?

before the pulse and demesne
of clockworks ratcheting
 now
into hatcheries of soul

a fractured thought
unmarked deficiencies
gravestoned
deface the mask
of these aeternal goodbyes
by seasons weathered

honor these vulnerabilities
descending into dust

Madam I'm Adam
lone below
chanticleer
in the cool of the evening


--------------------------------------------------------
 
 
I in Everyman
 
 
 I, in my broken Adam
fallen
through shattered worlds
& scattered sparks
the Tree of Life's
cradle craft & broken bough
fruit unfallen
wings for the furthermost

created a crown
but craved to crawl
there she found me
in the desolate garden paradox
where everything promised
her pilgrim soul
 
-----------------------------------------------------
 
 
Mammograms from Eve
 
 
 I am the jealous store-house of candle-ends

That lit your adolescent learning"

-from: Songs to Johannes- Mina Loy
 
 
 "If we had worlds enough & time

this coyness, dear, would be no crime"

 -Andrew Marvell


circumscribe the libeled bride
her sugared refineries
the muse that dares
the daemon dotes
demolishing etymologies
& fable quotes

suckled on outlaw milk
& mutterkorn
the dreams of matter
lactescent squeal
blood writes in ritual
sleeps seeping
beneath intimate & unknown
veins & membranes
tissue & terrain
surge uncurl the chambered
tabernacles of the living

she told me her name
the one she had chosen for herself
 
-----------------------------------------------
 
 
Her Tides
 
 
what is this ocean 
that pours from my shores?
I stand
combing dolphins from my hair
as slumber ebbs
of these powerless hours
unbound
in every grain of sand
these final forces freed
the microgram & the atom
creation destruction
whispering into the abyss
my precious antiquities
by Love bequeathed
skry a driftwood druidry

and I, dreaming
neath thy mermaids throne
hath seen
Dominions dark
Principalities, virtues
submarine

she in her
shouldered cape of isotopes
& boots of Spanish weather
her tides
& by the heavy artillery
of her soul
shelled

lusts wrapt
in the measures of surf
& seizures of thunders
from within
dabble in sunset explorations 
of self
ebb, return as tears

there are no left-overs of wisdom 
at the end of things

erect, then
and make of it a mast
last to vie
with the Siren's final cry
 
---------------------------------------
 
 
Sister Before the World
 
 
 when the first sister 
bade fire her body consume
from the ashes a paradise arose

-this the hummingbird 
from its office of nectars relays
whispering into the abyss:
"the butterfly is equal to the wind"

let these words an altar be
in that temple of ravishments

we fashioned there
tentative conjunctions
fervent alchemies
an eidolon unformed & void
for a descent of incense
attar
rose arising
from the bower of your ash
this slumbers affliction
urn of my heart's repose
a dithyramb's alembic

how lonely was I
for thee Muse
I could never call my own
for shame of ardor
& a thespian distress
abcessed & mute
to fetch forth the kernal & corona
lambent & lustrous
the shame of poets
plundered of dark vapors
from sibilant vaults
the pried fibre from shroud & caul
this unprofitable commerce of Shade
to pay for that emergency operation
the tracheotomy of word
to free Her
that she might live again
a breath of relief
 
 
 ------------------------------------------------
Tracheotomy of Word
 
fashioned in the forge of misprision
there are words at the
heart of things
that ask us to hear

it is not through memory alone
that we have heard their
voice
but through the calm bewitchments
they have lain upon us
by charm's grace hither

entice this entanglement to cohere
curdling upon the tongue
siphoning phonemes
to free these heathen partridge
singing unbearable cherubs
of despair which hover

dark lunar kernel
into parcel poured
haunts me with its
unpronounceable hounds
occulted
an accomplishment of
tarnished volts
& unbolted consonants
capacitor incapable
of current
dissembly

O little Monster
come forth from your merry shell
in triumph's talon

the star in man
will rays him
hold this charge
everready


-----------------------------------------------
 
 
Wild Holy Boys
 
 cruisin' for a gutenburger
wild holy boys, we roared
rapt in our roaratorio's
chorus
throwback's fossilized
thesaurus

upon common battalions of stone 
& wrapt fierce in thy bitumin shawl
we had coaxed these
engines of transformative delight
to sing with changes
to purge & flourish
our flowers of anticipation
their bouquet abandoned
long years hence

all poem
exquisite!
in their own subsistence
asaphoedita pearls
though I may make neither
hide nor hair, head or tail
of them
-do they admit their authors?

bad taste is in the mouth of the beholder

escape the confines of ensorcerating tongue
a tale told & story signed
an autograph all our own

so spread your bread with stutter
and honey it with word
shutter both your eyelids
& pray you never heard

breathless is best
stir me deep
O daemon sleep!
 
 --------------------------------------------------
Afterthought 
 
 
 burrowing into the brood
daemonic incubations
living now on spiderdust & lacy
inchworm lingerie
laundering ashes
& verities honed through polished evasive gazes
smoke comes from our eyes in aimless signals
betraying origins

the stirring of leaf
& murmur of winds unseen
cures the serenity from my blood
this sibylline listening
ushers me on

loathe to commit blasphemies
to the visible wave-lengths of light
silence sews its silver thread
pulled
from Diana's quiver
to repent the urgencies of word
sprawled in chains

I shed  the pwned chlamys of Hermes
now 
naked with discovery
our ravelry is ended
a stitch in time bespoke
sewing wild oaths
 
 
--------------------------------------------------
 
 Reliquary
 
 
 echolocation in the land of the dead
domain of the impulse
my heart had a concussion
& whispered some final secret
I've forgotten
spellbindings all ravel down to the
bald palimpsest of nought
nothing up this sleeve
& the hands gone missing

why lift this lid of ashes
& stir the cruel wind of memory?

secrets out
perhaps the dead 
communicate by symbols
we have yet to imagine

bird looks underwing:
-did I just fart?

abacus bonepearls undimmed
symbologies broadcast
from the Orisha Radio
correlate with us
counting the ancestor forth
in whisper's rhythm

dead & well read
geographies of my impassable land
where goeth I
vanished in abundance
and yet there lingers
a nameless
writhe & roil
 
 
------------------------------------------------------------
 
 
 Arbor at the End of Day
 
 
 to harken unto daemon
or muse
is not to kneel
for what authority in
a conversations of aethers 
is?

what counsel with clouds,
a pillar of fire?
a conference then
negromantia/Nigredo
dark speech of ravens adream
where I purchase my ink
anthropocene

via mirrored curtain of the 
afterlife, this
"styx of quicksilver"
communes through the 
looking-glass
not one wink
 
 
------------------------------------------------------
Undervow 
 
 queasy greasy
wipe your chin
eager ogre chew
no marrow within the morrow
a sparrow then 
to sue for your hollow sorrow

losing weight's a worry
a pound of flesh the loss
a bright & golden tongue
when once a wordsworth was

profess thyself no poet
tis for silence to attest
word secretes in shadow
to shape the lips a jest
----------------------------------------
 
 
Assayer Prayers: 
 
 
 cold pie for breakfast
& peonies in the rain
hot coffee cupped
in cold hands grateful
children, their mother
and the cats
butterflies that listen
fireflies that dance
peepers that stamp out winter
and the songbirds' rendition
of tyrannosaurus romance

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