MADMENS CALLING: pOetRy

Circling
My thoughts begin to circle

'round the interminable place
of birth
and the indeterminate space
of death,
where her love abides



and in me increases, the pace quickening,

like light, slowly, then in irresistible flux

breaking forth over Berkeley's hills, each morning

I return to the same place in a new body,



remade by hands that are hidden

throughout the world, doing that

which I am called to do, but fail

in every step at knowing you:



through the city of years, I step

and weep not knowing when I will cross

this place, I have named it home, where memory

matters, and the mind finds rest



in the sum of all things discovered

again and again compressed into lines

of a song that is sung now, at the breaking
of dawn,
and is heard in the late hours of a feast.

Sunrise

I return to this scene:



A broad window letting in the eastern light
,
in the early morning shivering and diaphanous.

A ghost wraps its arms around the world before me

piles everything into a larger-than-life heap atop the hills.
With the tip of its cold finger it lights a single tree,

a candle for the dawning day, then merges
with the fog, the wet musk,
the songs of birds in the cedars,
and is gone
before the sun has broken into the world again.



I lay in bed, watching the cold flames

twist around the streets, writhe carefully across the fence

into my room, burning up the crumpled papers

containing reasons to lie, reasons to live.

The familiar acrid smell rises
out of all these suspended promises

and I watch the past burning in today's sun.



All the scenes of life—imaginary and real—
go up in these crematory flames.

I doze off, then start again, a new man

with no history; each day discoated

from a nameless sleep. Off now to the field,

to collect more wood for the fire,
for the next day's sacrifice.
A voice calls to me now in this waking hour,
everything full
of light and distance
and a quietness that endures.
One can say that I grew up in a world of men
in which the only woman who had a body and voice
locked herself at home, alone with her mail-order martyrdom:
the sweaters & shoes, tirades & insomnia
& pathos of a love guilty beyond belief.

From across the city the campanile’s tolls carry
through the spring night in even strokes
like oars cutting through the undulant surface of dark waves,
and by the water an Amtrak train’s piercing ululation
punctures the silent world into which I almost glide.

Later indecipherable voices shrieking in the kitchen
wake me halfway to myself, immobile, as though I were
in a dream in the arms of my beloved and my head
could not signal to my hand to touch her cheek; instead
I now witness the small pity of a sleepless night, the raccoons rummage.

Over weeks and years this life continues.
I remember friends and family, they always will be
here with me, disappearing into the lightless margins of sleep.
The romances placated enough, a crisp, golden, wafer thin moon
rivals in its full golden glow the sun’s spring warmth.

Elegy

For Thomas Behrman (1976-2006)

When I am lost, I keep thinking
of times—two fellows like us—it could have been a stage,
that cafÈ where we habitually met, talked, and downed
iced coffee between reading, furrowing our brows, our heads

among the regulars (frittering away the time), sinking,
as the light pours listlessly across a glimmering, perishable age,
when here too are the unaccountable dead, their joy remains unknown
except in unread monuments poised & expressionless in survival’s stead.

Be concrete, you said, write lines that rise
from the stomach to the ears, and then—the voice:
cold flour-white dough in an early-fired oven fills the room
of memory with the scents of its leavening song.

That changes nothing, you might have replied,
neither bread’s buttered savor, as elemental as choice,
nor the flashing-dark current, the blood’s undertow—we’re doomed.
Chances once within grasp kindle now the fire like logs.

¥

Walking slowly through the gates at noon among the throngs,
numberless undergrads foist their pamphlets upon all, in vain,
as we edge our way through the crowd, but belong here, on our way,
the plaza’s movement orchestrated by a gilded tintinnabulation

into which your laughter rises as a transparent flame
entering Berkeley’s early spring sky. This—an image—is why.
Our shared anticipation of a longed-for world, perhaps unforgiven,
perhaps transfigured, fulfilled & released

like a balloon trailing off past the last clouds, a smile I can almost see
when I look. If I go back into the book in which it is written
that the truth is revealed from all our lies, I begin to remember
what we heard that afternoon and do not ask for another.

Was it a vision, or a waking dream?
The thing of which I do not know I do not speak
becomes part of the everlasting promise, luminous,
as real as this hand which now traces the air we breathed.

¥
In a story we climbed up the tree just like monkeys,
at opposite ends of a continent, neither speaking of falling
nor of what we would do when finally at the top...jump down…sing upwards?
I cannot say where I wouldn’t climb now to be reached by you.

Pan has put away his pipes for some time now
with clandestine fretfulness, lest some beast might awaken
in his breast and betray other daemons hidden safely away
for all posterity never to know.

Hordes of sleepless friends wrestle under sheets,
each in their respective, respectful, individual beds
becalmed only by a fancy of morning—the world is not what it seems
Ah! you not you, here, where no one screams, not even…God!!

Was it not Thomas who pressed inquisitively, wanting certainty,
his fingerprint into the palms at the end of time?
Waving these words now in the night, alone watching the fog
draped on the hills like celestial cerements—beautiful and true—I bid adieu.

¥

Thomas, gaze some evening upon my staid face
raised now and then to find yours among the stars.
Look back: when we wondered, as if old, was this planned?
Travelers destined some way to find each other across the distant land.

The scenes have all been rearranged by their own accord:
What is it you seek, you asked, as if I were a man
with unshakeable conviction to find in this life full of scars
and tearful absolution the secret of grace.

In the bar, we met at last for the last scattered chat
about Lacan & your novel & the indelible rest of all that
we would never know about each other. Come Friday,
I leave, not knowing where or when we will meet again.

Over the words of our generation comes a terrible silence,
unforeseen and powerless in its unblinking power, to strike dead
the place in which the heart, the voice, grow wings as you choose.
Now I look for you—always—having no one to lose.

Into the Central Valley

As I descend the long,
barely sloping highway,
I look out across the valley
—full of light, without shadow—
and am suspended in bright reunion
with a place whose brindled coat masks nothing:

Motionless, prosaic cows chew cud—
their eyes too notice the figures in the carpet;
the intermittent, hypnotic faces
of towns, billboards, and a few dilapidated shacks
(left standing among fields that return beautiful each year)
convoke a cadence of place to guide the traveler;
as I am watching, I move across the land,
passing Vallejo, Fairfield, Vacaville,
passing people in warm houses with the TV on,
passing farms with dusty boards that reflect
the sky's slow burning patina.

In my movement I have recalled
where and to whom I am going:
eastward, to the source of the sun,
I am driving and am driven
to the far end of these fields
knowing that you are there.

A Walk Through Capitol Park

As we approached the entrance
from the east,
a column of light filled the lane
through which we walked.
The capitol building overlooked
carefully groomed paths,
which turned as effortlessly
as the words we chose,
in an inexpressible stillness—
a cat in the sun.
You led me through the roses
and noted on our way
recollections, coming as freely as our steps,
intimations, the return
of that feeling never known,
at which point you smiled
to me, to everything in us and before us,
revealing a part of your life,
exclamatory and fragile,
like the unclosing of a corolla
that would name this moment
and grant it a world and time.

By the River

When I look back at all the years passed by,
all of the rivers glistening away at dusk,
rivers never seen until now, here in this one place,
alone with you on a walk, with no destination but to be with;
and when I remember a wish made long ago,
before I knew what it was,
while looking for something in the water that shines
with the beatific glimmer of a thing made sacred,
like the name embodying flesh,
the spirit rising from the foot a mountain
which falls again for ages, everywhere in rivulets leading nowhere
but to that same place, always different,
in which we sometimes find our home, sometimes lose ourselves;
and as you tell me a story, making it new once again in your eyes
for the sake of that wish you made before knowing,
about dinner on a riverboat with your father,
first days and nights whose onlyness remains, but does not return;
whose silent singing reminds us that the sacred lives close to the scared,
if only because that inexpressible power we have in living,
in having loved and having been loved, is colored too by loss;
as the pictures emerge from water and sky,
the rippling body of the past always telling it like it is, like a song,
you make as if to turn and walk further along, or perhaps back
(but I know it is onward)—and I stand with you
wanting more than a wish, wanting a kiss,
being embarrassed by something real, whatever you call it,
what it is that makes me walk alone,
or walk along with you, back the way by which we came,
never forgetting how we got here, nor how we are here,
nor what names we give it;
not forgetting where I must to go to speak of it,
to ask with acts, celebratory and forever new:
the sacred way in which we must take part.


The First Day of Fall

"Nel mezzo del cammin di nostra vita..." -Dante Alighieri

As I opened my eyes,
the early light eased in through the window
as gently as adolescent love.
You slept peacefully beside me,
your hair strewn over my eyes.
I watched the leaves falling into the air.
The wind's hands moved through the branches,
and as you returned from opening the shades
the silver white sun scintillated across your back.

Here it is that shadows dissolve.
Our arms let fall the weight of expectations,
which from the heart extend to the limbs, to the senses, to sense;
while under the bare breathing of your voice
I hear a song that endures.

Now, as we kiss again, look inside:
an alchemy of grace suffuses our presence.
As I form your name, my voice resonates
from my breast to yours; and as you laugh,
russet haloes aglow in your eyes,
we nestle back into bed
and dream our way back.

I am aware of a secret in you and in me
and in the scattering rustle of the leaves on the ground;
but like all secrets I cannot speak of it.
As we roll around longer than expected,
seeing each other on this first morning of fall,
the close warmth of our bodies,
placed side by side, intertwined, undifferentiated,
the light dawns on a horizon closer than our meeting lips,
illuminates a part, and then the whole, of being here.

We have made this place,
a place of first permission,
wherein my fingers mingle
with the little hairs on your arms,
and your hands trace images
across my back; our smiles crystallize
into something too right to fall.

When will this end? What next?
What secret is it that I speak of?
Do not ask these questions, but listen
to how the wind is always, always
repeating its song,
a song to which we listen,
in which we find the secret,
find each other, changed, held
in the midst of it all.

At Benny's

As we went inside, I bought you a beer.
I didn't expect this gesture, a sign,
to distill the mood of the evening
to a smile, a word, a movement in time.

And then you became the night's cynosure,
eclipsing the bar's boisterous laughter & din of glasses crashing:
Tonight is made into a flash, a glissando
sparked by the touch of your voice across the room.

Thinking of the right word to say
is like the toss of a dart, impelled
by a loose arm's fling and finger's release,
by a smile, a line written in the air by the truest eye.

You then would come to talk to me
in between turns, giddy and resolute,
then turn again in a minute to go back to the game.
An irrepressible joy flung me into the air.

The bull's eye remained untouched
and words tickled the space
between two hearts, searching for that spot
which we hit seemingly by chance.

And once more you came back
and smiled, while I wondered
without words, how we are always placed
in the center, and how that sets us free.


The House on the Corner

Walking through the streets in the morning,
I remembered how I felt
when yesterday, with the dry afternoon breeze,
good news came.

No one heeded the message. No one answered
the door, which swung open
soundlessly like a child asleep in song,
a rueful glimpse of the long road ahead.

As we walked towards the house, one hand held another
for the length of a block, like a refrain, a memory—
an epilogue that will soon find me in the disquiet of being
without the person with whom and who I am.

I became aware, as we crossed the tracks,
of how touches such as these are laid to rest
in the wake of summer's penumbral dirge—
the song slowly fades but doesn't end.

We spoke yesterday, your voice touched my ear
softly, as the sound of sand under waves,
(waves that flow when between the silence that only the heart pierces
words flow secretly below the ground, below roots & rocks)

while today our ears collected unobserved movements
—the windswept grasses and gathering leaves—in warm, whorled palms;
at a turn of the corner, which turns into wonder,
you showed me the house we came to see.

I am not afraid to imagine how the rooms look inside,
or how within a friend, a lover, a person on the road,
a space darker than the sky at night waits in silence
while an echo passing across the street calls the name of this day.

You may press your open hands into the soil,
touch the seeds that grow as we speak here, unsown,
and wondering but sometimes forgetting that we are
always upon the verge of discovering who we are.

After crossing over to the other side and back,
returning to the unforeseen, the joy of finding a reason,
a light for our steps and our stopping—
the space between our words traced the sadness of weekend's end.

I would do anything right now without fail,
I would hold onto your hand, to this scene as it turns,
as houses change, pulses change, scents change;
eyes change too—they transform the light of a lake,

each point of shimmering light,
and shatter this broken world with the hope to remain:
You are with me as we walk back to your apartment,
and also when we kiss goodbye in the car.

And on the train ride home,
I watched the mercurial folds of the sunset,
the reddish haze like a bleary eyed angel
washing the coastal mountains with an impossible beauty.

I stop here and think of you.
We are still on the corner,
falling forward in time and into ourselves
and pressing our hand into something deeper

than the sky at night above all our understanding.

On An Afternoon

Quietly I remember you, without words,
indifferent to the indifference seized upon
by our age, the countless many who do not hope
to listen, who listen to what they want.

I have spent many springs in this neighborhood,
far-reaching mythological afternoons spent
roaming among my indolent thoughts,
sparrows and finches singing from the cedar boughs.

My life is still small, and to you I am no one
whom you might care to recollect, dream of,
despite the unforgotten forgetting, the repetition
of those unsaid words, as clear and unfathomable as the air.

Look at the sky today, that is all
I ask. Look, but do not think of me
here writing this, my veins full of that song
which once startled us awake and close.

No, do not consider even for a second
that you have lost anything, or you may
give way to the slightest trepidation, the unseen
falling at your feet as a servant to wash them.

No, do not listen for that which you want
nor for that which you wish to hear, but hear
the song I am singing now this clear afternoon
though you are not here, it is still the same sky.

It is silent—“no motion now, nor force”—
this instant which understands you and I
and despite the terrors of the age, one and all,
calls us back with an abundance that fills our ears.