BIRD SHADOW

"The dream in which all things are living....."
are dolls who drop dead from the tree.
On bloody knees they fold neatly
in the egg; they break forth
and eat the shell that reflects their face.

(From the study the sighted eye looks askance at the sun.
The sightless grazes. A bird overhead stirs up
the dust with its wings, clouding out the sun,
hiding even its embers.)

OCTOBER 3, 3:41

 

--seas of human faces go down like wolves
behind the eyes to fill these distances with fire.                 R. Duncan

Fuck im,         FUCK
          im        Soosaaay!

The lineaments of the years are
breached, flung back for the bee
maddened leaves to enter, to enter
and sting, to tear
at those damp, hidden things
left steaming in the mind: a bird's
dung heap, a viola of chatters.

Grampa bellows: I am the Patriarch, I am I AM!
Susie swoons: O, Ahm in luv with a cross-eyed gawd!

The penitent hold hidden in their hands the distances they crawl to.

The doe is blind to their advance.
For that she keeps the bird chained to oaths:

1) Eloi, Eloi, in your wounds sleep homunculi.
2) Doe under my study do not eat the bones.

On a tourist's forehead your prayer
is chained to its hunger.

Susie says: I eat the body of our Lord,
                                                   says:
() ()

I went down on my knees to the sea.
I went down on my eyes to pray

and from the water great swarms of bees
leapt up, filled my mouth with honey.

The one-eyed doe said Susie, flee!
before succumbing to the wolves.

()

Then Howard saw his mama's shadows,
the shadowed faces of the sea.

October 3, 3:41-- woodcut by Grant Miller

WOLF SHADOW

We enter the city and establish ourselves the way a soul is established. To sit down and with great art to free that which has been trapped in its hands, to make a ledger of it, to note the words stamped on its forehead, to take note, to report back:
                                             our best was a portrait once removed.

(We have glimpsed the sun through the dust. We have erected mirrors in the city, filling "the room of an empty space" with swords that prick the actual.)

From both sides we stick her.

The city sparkles
city of resemblances
as we resemble our father's words
and seek to slay them.