Another Dream of Beginnings
—after “Portrait Now Before Then,” by Michael Palmer
This is one, hoping to exist. This is one, holding out against zero: its reign of absence, its absolute winter.
Down for the count, which needs or does not need our factories of charge.
This is not about language.
The river that might or might not flow. One & naught locked in battle for beginnings. From the. & if this is an illusion, sum of none?
This river black as never. Speeding a child’s bowl of numbers to the greedy sea (apples, wishes, middling C, bounteous regrets).
Or blink off, denied like a dream, urgent & unspeakable as any secret itch.
In your dream, buildings without windows, faces without eyes. Dodging Newton’s apple, headed for another fall. Silvered in the resistant air. Isaac waking to our unlikely, unlikable times. Recoiling, appalled.
In the next fall you are together, blurred as one line or many. The line dragging your point forward, towards the cliff, towards answering the call, towards admitting what you hear. No one a bigger zero. As the impossibles pile themselves in babbling towers.
Polishing the luster to no shine for no clay-footed idle. That which is given. How many of how much. Signifying nothing, without which something would be nothing.
In my dream, the tree of numbers sags under Nature’s limited attention. You multiply yourself & wave your dizzying limbs, sinking slowly from my incidental frame of reference.
In your dream, this is about language, which suspends you, in which you are suspended.
In my dream, your dream knocks on the so-called door.
This listening more difficult than archery, than intercourse, than monetary easing.
This listening to nothing, as if something will emerge.
What the numbers spell.
When the tree caressed the soil until its branches became roots. A marriage giving rise to dreams of its own.
What the numbers recount.
Until the trees reach back into the mothering soil. Numbers divided in their loyalty, harking back to n/one.
One more dream of beginnings, until the future swallows itself.
November, Quarter Moon
—after “The Meteor of August 13,” by René Char
In real time. In double darkness. Red spire bloodying the sky. Piercing the shadows.
Rigid wedding of eyes and light. Event unfolding to missed vision.
Listening without hearing, contained by time & rancor, the rancid shadow of death.
Stars bowing to the red glow, furrowed brow of sleep, beds of ivy, childhood sold.
Provisional assurances. Smiles corrupted.
Demented cheer, false enmity, hollow grandeur, gutted signals. Red glow drowning the soil, burying the water, stampeding the frightened frightful beasts.
Wisdom swaddled in blades. Touting the sovereignty of mammon, the small hands of extravagance.
Not to lose ourselves in yesterdays. Ignoring the gnawed façade of fall’s eviscerated days.
On the morning stair: the turned back of those sleeping in denial, running in fantasy, grasping at latency, stalking their young & their old, in phase with the red storm.
We who are prey & predator, swimming & drowning, wielding the blade & bled by it.
While the future looms & recedes—a renegade spark drowned by blaze.
Saving our lies, hidden in the grass, turning our back to the killing frost.
The weeping soil marvels at our refusal.
Bird’s sorrow hoping to be heard.
Extremum Terrae
—after “Sunland,” by Edmond Jabès
my child a planet
whose cortex downs its best idea
eyes scaled to the hurtling dark
droplets gathered in weary cycles
greyed by our assault
my child a planet a nation
in virtual glass where “where” no longer counts
for most of everything
trapped in the argument of disappearance
thrashed by the threaded heat of logic
my child a planet a nation a code
dangling by a glistening threat
wild life clinging to its appetites
a bloody web tangled up in code (blue)
spiders in murderous love
wolves howling for balance
babies of all shapes startled
by the vast explosive background rumble
my child a planet a nation a code a cove
more lost more hidden than this spiral map
windswept & poisoned
joy & fear caught in media res
counting the beads of our mewling souls
my child a planet a nation a code a cove a cover
for ragged shreds of peace
the silent toxic stampede
a suicide in tooth & claw by cartoon memes
in candied kitten camo
while we windswept tear the other victims’ hearts
from their bitter solitude
my child a planet a nation a code a cove a cover a promise
the fault is not with bits of loin & coin
or bright windowed promises
the owl has no need to question
nor the shark Samaritan
my child a planet a nation a code a cove a cover
while we destroy as we yearn
to resist the grim promise
my child a planet a nation a code a cove
no hope of cover
my child a planet a nation a code
trailing from the cove’s torn mouth
my child a planet a nation
code-choked
my child a planet
nation-ravaged
my child our child
orphans on this
orphan rock