Epic composed of lines from About Now: Collected Poems of Joanne Kyger
Superabundance
May it shower
down
like baby
peony
petals.
I am brave
I tell him the truth.
I need:
Replacement Buddhas...
The secret of the spoon...
which although they do not exist in reality
seem to do so.
--I thought I could be his nurse
& heart & soul
and I see he is the leader
I look at him emotionally
sexually...
Deer Lady
is dressed in human clothes
Someone wants to make love to her.
She kisses him...
In the dark
the spotlight shows the passionate couple
in a yabyum embrace. She is the rustle of
the top most branches and the sigh of
new green grass.
His eyes they are the same
he has been here for three
thousand years.
"I see the unicorn before me"
thinks she.
An excitement from the position of
his body.
He is poised as if to make
balance
in the universe.
For how long we sit
in quiet
no speech
creates a
tie
between us
for I am young & yet
I know what I am doing.
Heaven
explodes the walls
against the pattern of fleur-de
-lis and marigolds
And seasons spring
and fall.
Soft as
a throw of silk
she said, perhaps
I dreamed it all.
The length & breadth
of all that chasing
&
how Homer dislikes Paris
sneaking through his home.
He has little rival
and lets no one know.
The real earth
moves and falls away into pieces
in the north.
I am mortal.
You dream of me
a deeper forest I came from
running for
the center where you look too.
A jeweled tree poet's tree--
I look around at the shimmering
energy
from things that seem as symbols.
I am curious
for what you can bring
from the tree.
You called to the words
and the waters went up in mist
then the soft earth came to sight.
We shall circle here
singing for the evening star.
*
Time is moving out from under us
Who are we
Who are we
violet of memory's flat plain
we embrace, swallow the sea
walk, past centuries into poetry
form pleasant contemplation of innocence
in lucid suspension sing.
*
Monkey man is leading me by the hand
past lovers so entwined
I levitated
in the most elevated
State of the Union.
And back to the body
where I was born:
pink tips that are fingers
eyes sparkling
heart-shaped bottom...
I love her
and him.
Can you see you're it
Oh Moon
He makes love to you
a life time. Plays
to as many people as he can...
*
Who am, was, I?
All of it, all of it.
I am here at 3
now it seems I lead.
A lady in white
bathed by my own silver light.
*
FATHER TIME
& MOTHER EARTH
thought about all of you last night
and a great blue heron came up
and the other animals came close
all gods in the human breast.
O don't let me swoon
You intercepted my vibes.
that's fine.
Now you have a sweet tone.
tree holes.
boobies.
smooth countenance mind transmission.
*
I am a writer.
I will not dwell
on the question
of why.
Psyche is not a personal
but a world experience.
I am in a bed in a hotel
having a talk with consciousness.
OK, I am actually in bed with _____.
I exist outside time &
this world I called my own
opens out.
Sometimes I lay in the bathtub chanting OM
I know I don't suffer more than anyone
I read Cixous, Jung
The feminine spirit infuses these words.
*
I sing:
You showed me the meadow
and milkwood and silkwood
and you would if I would
because threads that are golden
don't break easily.
Joanne sings:
Me is memory
take me out
May your flowery face
bow
In the teeny
trembling world.
*
I am that which god wants
brilliant quince in bloom
we meet once again, friend.
*
Electric enlightenment
is in
your sexy heaven
which I am inventing
O My Big One
(we make it up as we go along)
Come back!
Your presence is an aphrodisiac.
*
I know this is a detective story
of passions, blood stuff
around which our lives crank
in a friendly sinuous manner
sultry as a New York poetry trip
where we danced all night under
electric candlelight. Worthy
to uncover the hidden home
of the Dakini, wash, bathe, lay
papers with meaning aside.
The rare jewel, the rare jewel
caught in the net invisible.
I must be transplanting thoughtforms,
like transplanting poppies,
I am noting your strong ripply
vibration aura
and making you a new flower
from my inner world.
--Ann Arbor to Pennsylvania
May 11, 2008
Comments
quite a read.
felt like sex. and more.
at the end I wondered at how well the last few lines conveyed all the others.
AXE HANDLES
One afternoon the last week in April
Showing Kai how to throw a hatchet
One-half turn and it sticks in a stump.
He recalls the hatchet-head
Without a handle, in the shop
And go gets it, and wants it for his own.
A broken-off axe handle behind the door
Is long enough for a hatchet,
We cut it to length and take it
With the hatchet head
And working hatchet, to the wood block.
There I begin to shape the old handle
With the hatchet, and the phrase
First learned from Ezra Pound
Rings in my ears!
"When making an axe handle
the pattern is not far off."
And I say this to Kai
"Look: We'll shape the handle
By checking the handle
Of the axe we cut with—"
And he sees. And I hear it again:
It's in Lu Ji's We Fu, fourth century
A.D. "Essay on Literature" - in the
Preface: "In making the handle
Of an axe
By cutting wood with an axe
The model is indeed near at hand."
My teacher Shih-hsiang Chen
Translated that and taught it years ago
And I see: Pound was an axe,
Chen was an axe, I am an axe
And my son a handle, soon
To be shaping again, model
And tool, craft of culture,
How we go on.
*
So you see Math, Joanne Kyger is an axe (also) and I am a
handle making my own axe (my poem)... I am referencing too
my Vox friend Kris' motto: "Art is the axe that breaks
the frozen sea within us." Do you still think the end
of the poem is lacking?
The axe lines are powerful, pithy. But you are considering again if they are the ending for the galaxies of touching that precede them.
thought about all of you last night
and a great blue heron came up
and the other animals came close
all gods in the human breast.
O don't let me swoon
You intercepted my vibes.
that's fine.
Now you have a sweet tone.
tree holes.
boobies.
smooth countenance mind transmission.
Those meditations are powerful in non-axe-like ways, eh?
Anyway, thanks for the ride.
Hi Math, I changed the axe to a flower:
I am noting your strong ripply
vibration aura
and making you a new flower
from my inner world.
It's not the perfect ending, but I'm ok with imperfection.
Thanks for your close attention, I appreciate it.
For how long we sit
in quiet
no speech
creates a
tie
between us
for I am young & yet
I know what I am doing.
(His world is slippery to hold on to)