I woke up yesterday.  This is what I remember:

I can’t help but think that some of this was due to one of phoenix’ flaming billet doux.

But there was no ash on my pillow when I woke up?

It is on fire.

Wake up.

Fizzling like a sparkler.

Billets hard to hold through waking.   They sizzle at the edge of dream.   Wake up.   They burn themselves out.  Pillow ash brings intense, peripheral feelings, mis-sequenced, uncertain, numinous.

***
BURNING DOOR.  IN AND OUT AND IN
LET US BE WITH EACH OTHER
THE DAYS COUNT THEM]S[?]
STAND  BESIDE
PULL CLOSE
IT IS NICE TO BURN
(  OH
INTOXICATING THE LIGHT

One, when empty (by man). One, when full (by glob-footed organisms).

Glob-footed organisms cannot live inside aluminum cans.

Shells do not litter the streets of major cities.

Broken shells can mulch flower beds.

Crushed cans cannot be used as vases.

Neither makes a tasteful ashtray.

Neither illustrates prayers or sells in tourist shops.

Neither is likely to be gilded, to impress ladies at a luncheon party, or to evoke true love.

Either might evoke memories of an ex.

Neither can nor shell should be clutched too tightly to the bosom.

Neither is an apt metaphor for the muse.  Neither inspires odes.  O cracked bit of shell O crushed aluminum can

And so forth.

The shell, broken, reveals a lustrous encapsulation of roseate dawn.  It is pleasing to the thumb.

The can, crushed, is  illegible.  It’s crinkled lip flashes in the sun like a razor.

More sea trash (read bones, candy wrappers, a winnowing basket here).

–The Odalisque

moon.  across.  sun.

seize [   ]

breath

startle.  her

flock scatters

breath [   ]  swells

[  ]  [   ]  [   ]

be what.    rush of feathers

thousand-fold

let’s go to the kitchen and stand contemplatively in the light of the refrigerator door.

Let’s grab leaves and roots and pulpy ovaries, throw them on the counter and make choices.

Let’s use sharp knives and pull with our fingers.

Let’s put things in pots and boil them.

Let’s stir and sizzle and poke until they’re done.

When they are, bring out the earthenware and a bottle of something intoxicating!

Let the night burn like sugar!

Let the days be warm and crisp as a salad!

Let us be bountiful with each other and sharp.

Let us labor and be well fed.      (    oh

it’s  nice to smell oil burning

to cut into gourds and hearts

to come inside when the sun gets all teary-eyed

and sit close in the last bit of warmth.)

my refrigerator

figure [unenumerated]: boreal

ODALISQUE

Midway on life’s journey, the right road lost, I find myself in dark woods

pursued by armed men crying: Nymph!  Goddess!  Celestial Queen!

They say they are artists.

Their eyes are on me.

They do not presume that my solitary repose is neither for being seen nor to better see them.

(I include the confounding nor:  boys, you forget how

pretty you are.)

I will not play hunter, bewitcher, or conquered prey in this interminable masquerade.

Is there love otherwise made?

Leave me alone.  Go away.

(foot fiercely stomped.)

(bows lustily drawn. )

(swift incurable flight.  hooves.)

figure 7: boreal (otherwise)

otherwise

click to enlarge.

Fig. 1

Fig.2

Fig.2 (Verso)

Fig.13

(ghosts carry blessings & strange dreams around sharp corners through cracks in the sill.)

(moonlight turns the turn of the stair into an ascension.)

(nails loosen.)

(boards creak.)

(ghosts carry blessings and strange dreams in their open palms.)

(breathlessly.)

(careful

they are exquisitely delicate

accumulations.)

(tangles of dust pins string hair.)

I sit in the window arranging grass in glass bottles.

This is my life, you see, and I’ve a blue box of a room,  but all, in its arrangement, is still.

This is my life, you see,  but all is restful, all is still.

Sometimes I do feel faintly sad

like a flower in the mossy shadow

of an earth-shaped bowl.

2.  Take a lover.

!!THIS IS NOT ALLOWED!!

3.  Obscure all outlets of communication.

4.  Exhaust yourself with a task that is never completed.

5.  Exhaust yourself by uncompleting your completion of a task.

6.  Slumber.

7.  Imagine the seeds in the earth.

If it is summer, and it has rained, imagine the seeds need to be scarified by cold, thus cannot sprout.

If it is winter, know it is not spring.

If it is spring, imagine it is unnaturally dry. Imagine the prescience of a seed that knows it is not yet time.

Imagine yourself slumbering like a seed in the earth but

Panic.  Swift flight from time, the static time, which you must spend waiting.  For?   If you are longing for a man (that man) do not think of death, of your body languishing, a flower with no fruit. You do not want to bear children but to be held full in the grip of a man, as he might take a fruit, whole in his mouth. What ripeness before rotting and how many men wait

with just the right curve o’ their lips, strength o’ their hands, for grasping, for lifting to their lips therefore to turn o’er upon the tongue?

You may–

(Snakes converge like sperm from all directions to the black stone, warm from a whole day’s sun, beneath which they nest.)

–find that waiting is only for death, all said and done, and that your most fertile preparation is for the moment of no personage when you fall without ceasing to stillness (not conscious of any distinction between the two) into a darkness that might be like earth or like outer-space, or the consciousness that there is no difference between them.  How does a bird distinguish earth from sky?  The earth offers roost and sustenance, the sky is ascent, never ascended.  Between them, the space it travels through.

But you are not a bird.  You are waiting.  You are turning yourself over like earth, in preparation.