why does the phoenix (billet 3)
Why does the phoenix want to garb me in fire? Another pile of ash on my pillow. Phoenix fiery billet-doux. “Things unintelligible, yet understood.”
(click to read the previous billet-doux)
do you know what but not how?
you will lose the path
in the fog of your emotions.
do not regret the past.
understand it.
you are the mud in which a stone is sunk.
clear your mind.
pick up the stone.
wetness skeins it like marble, smooth sculpted on
what shore?
where did you find this artifact?
what you call your life
is how you avoid living.
living–the outrageous adoration, absurd affirmation
of is’ness amidst all-vanish-es.
throw the stone of your heart
into the fire.
it might be an egg or a seed
that must be scorched
before it will hatch.
figures
[ ] Odalisque.
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.)
coat
Lovers! Do not fling your carefully embroidered coat beneath the feet of your beloved! His beauty is appallingly evident but
you’ve pretty plumage, too. Keep the coat. There is a field littered with the stones that struck the sky’s tarnished mirror. The cracks in its mirror are trees. When you walk that field, wrap your coat close. It will startle the landscape with a mis-stroke of color. Tenderly, tenderly it will open (like an undergarment) for whomever watches, waits (tending what sure fire?) for you to come home.
I write the word…
(Odalisque? Tightens her robe, brushes a feather from her cheek, settles down to clean sheets and
a bottle of ink. She writes the word Bird.)
…
…
my friend. the black swan.
(feathers swirl the feather bed’s sacked black swan trumpets arches his long neck squalls
mindless bird! great beast!
shakes his feathers grooms sails black feathered from the high black room.)
my friend hawk
(The hawk gazes from the window
like a saint from the door of an altar-piece.)
(Beyond, a minute wilderness.)
my friend the phoenix
(The phoenix barters plumage for matches.)
my friends (starlings)
(Starlings swarm. Thousands of sutures in an immaculate sky.)
my new digs
I have taken up residence in an obsidian tower.
It has no chinks for the intrepid to grip.
It is an obelisk.
I am the odalisque who lives in the obelisk.
I converse with birds.
just moved in
I am the odalisque who lives in an obelisk. I converse with birds.
