Ombré

How strange I thought the word “ombré” in the middle of the night,
stumbling in a small pink bathroom lit by hidden pinpricks of light
on my own stinky body, like a dog found in a park.
Chestnut branches in an orchard mere feet from this receptacle
throw stubby balls of thorn on the dark piled on grass not green but dark blue
and gray at the edges that slowly rise to a pale rose at dawn as in ombré.
The shadow becoming its greater self, or is it dissolution?
You seemed to indicate both ways at once.
Washing out my mouth with pink soap so that the gums are pale now
with cleansing of the scum of invective
in a variation of the shade of sun setting over the grapevine fields
and coming into view over the road and two farm houses simultaneously.
A sky of wavering cloudy evaporations,
a field of broken thistly corn.
A skin that encumbers itself as a web and ombré blanket twisted into form.

Systane

I’m instructed:
Wet dry eyes four times a day with salted water from a tiny bottle.
A centerless shadow and luminous verge.
Nothing Happens In There, they said of poetry today.
An argument ensued.

Observe through the saline bubble
that hangs like a silver pendant the molten flow
not of tears, unfortunately,
but of the thick absence of tears.

These late May days are like wet magic envelopes
you find sodden on cement.
Folded, sealed, a name written on
by blue inky rain
that seems to spell “Mrs. Gorensen,
Park Avenue, New York City.”

Nothing in particular, actually,
may scar one’s eyesight. Creates
a kind of puddle that sags.

If only the visualized gardener who rakes the skin
and exfoliates the dirt
might water with his kindness
the Jeremiah resurrection plant
that seems like an eye also
on the sill in a glass dish staring at the sun.

A brown dry circle of leaves that cling to the orb
tightly as lashes.

Coffee with Lavender

A milky, violet froth
that makes one get out of bed
and climb down dark rickety stairs to the daylight
to drink liquid soap.

Is it my throat that’s dirty or my mouth
Generalities are such dust.
I mean, we are dust.
Accruals of facts are another thing.
The last generality is that we
are all more like each other
than anything else in the cosmos. Probably.

A violet froth encircles the sun.
When I was four, my mouth was washed out
and I was purged of worms.
A lot of good that did.

Wormy, dirty, ill in speech,
one drinks the essence of a flower.
“Drunk on nectar,” wrote ED.

The conglomerate of thoughts
are dust then dirt then a clot
of gray milk in the mouth.

Sweep dried broken lavender with a broom.

The mouth being something like a room.

Could poetry circle the sun.

A bloody wheel

purgative in nature.

Purple black knots on stalks

perfume in my mind.

Dark Stair

By the rays of the sun
on a penetrable longitude where it’s lucent,
I walk in to agglomerated particles
washed of the solar communication.

With a rusty key in a pouch of seal hair, I tramp over the dust.
The violet haze in the afternoon
pulses as children scramble,
communicating their reports.

In the later twilight, the dark blue veil
hangs as an emergent airspace
divided by the six leaded panes.
Inside the dark stair,
is a portal rarely utilized but present.
As prayer is an intercessory orb,
as crimson petals of a spreading mental flower
in the William Morris cottage by the sea.
A habitat of leaves, elements of a kind of clothing
lain in between lamps in the near dark
and the vast civilization of leased and vacant edifices
on the perimeter of manifold utterances.

I promise myself to contend with the newly apparent
intrusion that has scarred
the cornea moistened with saline.
Feels as an arc of electrical mountains.
A dome of capillaries emits messages
that I receive without completely blacking out
and try their applicability to a sustaining exchange
of the right words but really are not
in a circumference of light
that you cannot know for sure what it is.
Like the bouquet of enormous dried leaves
wrapped in old paper on a bed yesterday.

As we sort through what fits,
many of us would desire the objectively universal emblem
that occludes transcription.
Unfathomable talisman of just the initials
with the remainder broken off.

What is there are these things
such as the cheat sheet manual
found on the sidewalk among damaged combs and brushes
until they are pulverized or reused
or eventually untouched in reversal.

Flew Away, Flew Away Backwards

Part I. Flew Away

An inundation,
packed, sparkling and flung.
Here it is. “Splendid,” I write.
A word Brit boys use in children’s books
but I perceive the plunge into the sea.
Something unendurable you foretaste by licking the edge.
Here is tomorrow today,
gallant as a mirror in an old hotel lobby,
and speckled yesterday collapses
into asymmetrical corners lined with faux gold
to be destroyed when the sun collapses outward finally.
“If you are searching for a new home,” a kind voice advises from the radio.
The trees today are like gaunt old men
bearing their load without complaint.
I shall visit them soon, their little sister.

To contract as self-direction.
To observe and sustain without the outward fling.
To inhabit space and decorate it with dimensions of peche and aqua
that could be the Goddess of the Sky.
The whirling skirts of a tilted universe.
The instructions lead in several directions simultaneously.
White as a storm and lit with shadows, the room is sculpted.
A porous consciousness to live within.
I heard I Am Here one night,
as quietly as a torn letter you find on the sidewalk
speaking in shambles.
I had asked. The reply was casual. Neutral.
The remains of the storm drifts in today,
“binding to the dust,” the poet wrote.
What is this flickering in its chamber?
Now the strings gather in the sweep and search and diminishment
and something begins to roar.
Scrape off these sounds and underneath
being silence is being built like a formation.
The rusted lid of black cast iron
could be a universe flung back hardly discernable.
I wait and notice the torn branches.
Their spidery fingers or hairs or antennae.
Everything falls into a cauldron of dark particles.
An ember arcs in a mouth.
I say the big wrong words.

Maybe the walls were more shawl-like,
bendable wool with windows in the weave.
The day will gather to a wide wave of ultramarine.
How does the wave spread over the land
as sparkles and dust, virus and ice?
The sparkling stains of a book
buried in a suitcase in the sand.
Everything there inside an alphabet on skins.
The poem crawled out of its leather cave.
The epic that begins with a wedding.
I look out at the tracks in snow and vapor lamp
flooding a street to illuminate what.
Conceive of a contraction to a space of tilting orbs.
Instead of inundation, the smashed objects lasso the bright.
Maybe, I should have left that book alone
in the tangle of leaves and letters with the little dragons
in the bestiary entwined environment of the Book of Kells.
In the dream, I asked the bride, “Do you need a lace tablecloth?”
No, she said. She had one in the suitcase
of lavender shadows cool as an eye.

Sleep becomes another book.
The shadowed snow under a green lid.
Writes: Hold your tongue.
Jupiter, a runaway ball with a teal scar of magnetism.
Space may enlarge with desire beyond the boundaries
of the surmised circumference.
Read Transformation of the Soul at dawn.
Here is an oblong collage of yellow blocks come out of blue.
But the birds persistently chirp in their frenzy.
Collect or disperse I can’t tell which
and work on the soul transformation
by crawling along a periphery of the day.
A skeleton of chaos inhabited by electricity
from within the inundation.

Rocks fall from the outer universe.
Now the walls are lemon and the branches black ink.

I read in the book that
if in our time people were not so wedded
to theories about everything. That seems right.
Within the bombardment, humans try
and a single pussy willow in a bottle
is resilient with a gray eye that peers out.
Go through this day guided by the sparkle
of an incontrovertible promise.
Look for a green curl somewhere in the dirt.
Architectonics making themselves in the forge of gas.
Be the speck that you are with gratitude, I tell myself.

A writhing speck inside the gel of today.
A reader of a book made of leather and spit.
The language I flew away in.

Part II. Flew Backwards

I flew away in language of a book
made of leather and spit.
A reader is a gel inside the writhing speck.
I tell myself: With gratitude, be the speck that you are.

In the forge of gas making architectonics,
dirt somewhere curling green
promises incontrovertible sparkles.
Peers out of a gray eye in a bottle a pussy willow.
Try humans, bombard within the right that seems everything.
A theory of time wedded to people
in the book I read
from the outer universe. Rocks fall
and black ink the branches. Lemon yellow are the walls.

Inundation from within.
Electricity inhabited by the chaos of a skeleton.
The day a periphery along the crawling transformation.
The soul work tells: Disperse or collect.
In their frenzy chirping persistently are birds
out of the blue collage come oblong blocks of yellow. collage oblong.
At dawn, read transformation,
circumference surmised.
Boundaries beyond desire may enlarge space.
Magnetize a teal scar, a ball, Jupiter, your tongue. Holds.
Write green shadowed lid.
Sleep become another book.

Flooding a street to illuminate what.
Conceive of a contraction into a space of tilting orbs.
Instead of inundation, the smashed objects lasso the bright.

An eye cool as shadows of lavender.
In the suitcase, she has another, she said.
A lace tablecloth, the bride in the dream.
The Book of Kells environment. Entwined bestiary
in the little dragons with the letters and leaves of the tangle.

Alone, that book, I should have, maybe.

Lamp, vapor, and snow tracks. I look.
A wedding that begins with an epic.
Its cave of leather out the poem crawled on
skins an alphabet buried there everything
in the sand in a suitcase buried.
A book stains the ice
and virus and dust and sparkles as the land.
The land spread over the waves.
Does the ultramarine wave gather the day?
Weave in the windows
wool-like, bendable, a shawl were the walls. Maybe.

Words. Wrong big, I say
in a mouth arcs.
An ember of particles dark cauldron
falls in. Antennae or hairs or fingers.
Spidery branches. Torn, I notice, and wait.
Discernable, hardly back, flung universe
iron cast black lid.
The rusted formation.
Like silence then being built
something underneath sounds.
Scrape off roar. Begin something.
Diminish and search and sweep.
Gather strings now.
In its chamber transpired this flickering partly.
“What?” wrote the poet.
Dust binding to today?
Drifts in the storm, remains.
“Neutral, casual,” was the reply. I had asked.
Shambles in the speaking.
On the sidewalk, you find a torn letter quietly one night.
Here I am, I heard.

Within live consciousness, a porous sculpted room.
Shadows lit a storm. White simultaneous directions.
Several instructions lead.
Universe tilted skirt whirling.
The Goddess of the sky could be that
aqua and peche dimensions.
Decorate space. Inhabit. Fling outward
Without the sustenance and observe self-direction.

To contract little sister, soon I shall visit them.
Complain without bearing their load.
Old gaunt men are like trees today.
From the radio, a kind voice advises:
“A new home a search for you are finally
outward collapses the sun.”
When destroyed, faux gold lined the corners.
Asymmetrical, yesterday speckled
in an old hotel mirror, gallant today.
Tomorrow is here
by licking the unendurable foretaste.
The sea you plunge into something.
Awkwardly, I perceive books, children,
use Brit boys’ words.
Write “Splendid, here it is.”
Flung, sparkling, packed.
An inundation.