The Eremite Addresses the Self Conceived as a Dripping-Wet Hostage

If you're trying you're failing.
You're not here if you've got here
Clutched in your fist. Or

You're not here, period. Or
You're here but not you. Or
If you're not failing, you're not

Trying. Prisoner tied
To the bowsprit of life's
Imperial, colonial armada, you

Would love to surrender, you 
Peruse pithy sayings of mystics,
Monks and philosophers of surrender

But find yourself still borne forward
Into the salt foam and headwinds.
Here has got you. How trying.

Gypsy Laughter

Why aren't we more disturbed 
Our dreams are so detailed?
Bad enough that our brains
Are mostly unconscious.
Why do they generate
Night worlds to scare us with?

Last night Sarah woke me
When I was deep enough
In a dream to hold on
To the richness of it
For one waking minute.
What a frightening glimpse.

A dream world is as rich
As one awoken, but
Lacking all rules except
That the self is helpless,
Emotions run riot,
And it's always darker.

What is my brain doing?
How can I trust daylight
Given the detailed night?
If the night world can feel
That vivid in the head
How substantial is day?

I dreamed I heard singing,
A pretty chorus with
A pretty melody,
Somewhere out in the dark.
The melody escaped,
But I've kept the chorus,

"Welling up from midnight,
Welling from the night,
Clear, bright gypsy laughter.
Welling up from midnight,
Welling from the night,
Clear, bright gypsy laughter."

Everything Eroded Away But That

"I think we crave animism. We miss it."

The last stone standing wonders
How it was whittled from bed
To shape a separate thing.
When it first stood free and clear,
Sculpture let loose from the rock,
A pillar among pillars,
Was it already itself?

And now, after so much wind,
Reduced, is it still itself?
Had any other stones cared?
Were any of them aware,
Spilled so far down that slope there?
Ever? The stone on the hill
Listens closely to the wind.

Stone Drunk on the Desert (and Fistfuls of Sarah's Cornbread)

Oh gods, the sacred
Desert, no wonder
Humans, inventors
Of so many things,
Here invented djinns.

It rises, it sends
Itself over me,
Over everything
Born not of barren,
Nor simplicity

But of the heavy
Hanging abundance
Of green oases,
Tropic plantations,
And English meadows.

This is not our ground.
This is Vulcan, Mars,
A place to believe 
In bone-dry spirits
Truer than wet flesh.

It will kill you fast
If you tempt it, if
You walk waterless,
Coverless in it.
Who knows that you're here?

Indirect

Every afternoon I'm treated
To a total solar eclipse:
Long before the sun sets for real,
It drops behind Porcupine Rim.

Sitting on the stoop of the porch
In the cold bright light of winter
When the lower sun seems whiter,
More precise about its shadows,

I get the full show from the start.
I see the curtain of the Rim
Slipping over the valley floor;
I watch the neighbor's house go grey.

And then my own eclipse begins.
In front of me straw fields still glow
And behind me the sun remains
Too glaring even to glance at,

But the shadows of the bare trees
In my yard, like my own shadow,
Hesitate, becoming lighter,
As if darkness were vanishing

Not gathering mass for the night.
The light is wrong in that weird way
That has nothing to do with clouds
As the disc slips down by degrees.

My house and I in penumbra,
The other side of the valley
Glowing red with late afternoon,
The snowy Rim already dark.

It's day, and the sun's still shining,
But falling apart, piece by piece,
On the stone facts of perspective.
A flash, and dimness commences.

The Collector

There were artworks on her walls
With personal histories
Dear to her that she rehearsed

Daily, in part or in full,
Depending on how much time
She spent home alone with them.

She imagined narrating
Each cherished acquisition
To whomever might enquire.

That no one enquired did not
Constitute a tragedy,
Nor even disappoint her.

She enjoyed her private game,
Sanding smooth the difference
Between facts and narration.

To say that this photograph
Or that painting had been made
By such and such an artist

Using such or such techniques,
Completed and then purchased
On a particular date,

For a particular sum,
Was not really a story
But joined seamlessly to one

By the magnification
And detailing of sequence,
Rich in adjectives and verbs,

Richest in relationships:
"My late husband bought that piece
Some years before he met me.

He was traveling down South
When someone deluded him
Into thinking he could judge,

And profit by purchasing,
What he called 'Outsiders' Art,'
What most people call 'Folk Art.'

What a lot of foolishness!
When he died, I gave away
Most of his monstrosities.

But I kept this one, you know?
I love the figures in it.
I love knowing it's worthless

And that he gave it to me 
On our honeymoon, saying
It would be worth a fortune,

Some day, it would be like love,
Like our love, worth more and more
With time. He had a sweetness,

But I could tell even then
This anonymous 'Garden
Of Eden' would never sell

At auction or end up hung
In a museum. Still, look
At all those silly creatures

From Genesis, the tropics,
America, you name it,
All jumbled up awkwardly

Like the guests at a party
Where no one knows anyone
But the host. God, I suppose,

In this instance. It's not art
To brag on, but I like it.
It's like Genesis itself,

Anonymous and awkward,
Not really pretty, and yet,
Somehow, you know, compelling.

I keep it for its patterns,
Colors, what it means to me,
And because Adam and Eve

Look brown, and small, and naked
As if they've already sinned,
But are still in the Garden

Like all good sinners, hoping
Not to get caught. Some evenings
I'll fix a drink and ponder

Art, artists, and collectors.
I'm no collector, myself.
But I can imagine one."

Resolved

To make no resolutions,
To compose no lyric poems,

To offer no predictions,
To perceive no patterns,

To repeat no offenses,
To return to no crime scenes

Recognizable as such.

To discover the never
Hidden inside the always,

To neglect constellations
And forget about the stars,

To reinvent prosodies
As mystical narratives,

To sack the Roman calendar.