AEAEA
Recurring Dream Island

January 2003
 
 

1 January 2003
 

HAPPY NEW YEAR!
 

Still-Falling Snow
 

The Ghostly Reel
 

Little ghosts go floating, a wan procession
that winds round smiling, the spiral curve
of a knowing sigh, a love-haunted blessing
unheard till now, as the warm reserve
of the lustrous portal that forms—oh, slowly
your pale lips part and their words move forth….
You were always heart-breaking coldness, frozen
snow-winds blown from the starry North—
now I hear us spoken as one round shining
full-Moon-door shudders, I wait for you.
I will always want you.  My undeclining
light goes hungry.  Come in, come through,
come know me whether green trees drip dewy
blossoms and leaves or clatter bare
ice-covered branches together.  You are
close, my chosen one—enter there,
the place in your mind that most holds you spellbound.
Travel fast, and yet linger.  Form
wheeling hosts of stars in my sky till telling
strangeness emerges from me—a storm
of soft lunar snow, all six-angled blessing
curving winds settle round you.  Feel—
love finding home in a heaven pressing
beauty upon you—ghostly real
as worlds fall away and you float on ceaseless
song.  I am breathing—sounds fulfilled
of all the long dreams I’ve sent to lead you—
here even we ourselves fall still.
 

***
 

2 January 2003
 

The Binding Light
 

Through cold holy darkness, the thread of you finds me
and gently enmeshes my thoughts till the skein
of both of our ghosts twined with death starts unwinding
the stream of a holier still secret vein
of immaculate silver.  The country it glistens
along below ground—somewhere, shadows of leaves
drip with tenderest love-songs.  While no-body listens,
an opening soul deep in wonder receives
this primordial vision:  The source of all silver
that shines though it flows in an underworld seam,
binding sweet ghosts so together their stillness
reveals our old world as a cold hopeless dream,
begins to evoke a strange longing to surface.
Gleam of a face in a drop of night rain
the Earth let penetrate, an astonishing purpose
behind your desire, you’ve spellbound me again.
 

***
 

3 January 2003
 

Not I!
 

The tinge of green in the pale night flame
that leaps up singing behind closed eyes
reveals a wildness no word will tame,
though it meet with….  Oh, you are very wise—
you have always known you would come to harm
if you held it open a spark too soon,
but the sudden clearing of Moon and stars
just above the portal of midnight-noon
that now holds us both within view—that spring
of all future leaf-bearing music seeks
an answer in kind.  While its tremors cling
to your eyelids, open the light that leaks
to abundance there, and recall its source.
Hail the vatic clamor of wind and sky
and the rush that calls you.  You knew, of course,
you would meet me here, but then—nay, not I!
 

***
 

5 January 2003
 

Watch-Fires
 

Fires of silver slowly turning
all this world to shadow-ash,
catch me dancing willing.  Burn me
down until the tiny flash
contained and growing faint inside me
wakens, gains release, and flares
to match your brightness.  I keep climbing
endless tiers of spiral stairs
in dreams that will not yield their central
meaning:  Melt them open.  Find
the hidden streak of elemental
wildness in the sleeping mind
that set you, ring of watch-fires glowing
pale against the night I need
to pass beyond.  A far-off moaning—
take me there at lightning speed.
 

***
 

8 January 2003
 

Soon—Any Moment Now—You Will Have Heard This Call
 

We are where the wind blows warm and
willing patience now.  A sky
that quickens silence into starry
brilliance—that is ours, and why
need not be far to claim—not any
longer.  Recent future bliss
conceived by breathing forward endless
union-songs, among them this
that winds you with a spiral form of
needing in and out till all
subsides—here breathes our waiting storm-and-
silence after-mating call.
 

***
 

9 January 2003
 

The Broken Rule
 

Shivered sound!  You were dreams uncounted,
blinking half-sleep in a thin strict row,
keeping a winter’s watch as rounds of
spirits swept by.  Where unclean winds blow
only sighs straight back to the haunts they’ve rendered
meaningless, we must wake by turns
weary and shocked alert.  Lament with
rivery eyes—but snow-fire burns
and sends up gust of circle-spirit
incense that mounts full high, aswarm
with nightwinds and lustrous songs to hear with
heartbeat desire.  Weep strangely warm
delirium into folds no drifts of
Moon-glittered silver echo low
to Earth—even so, you shiver-shift:  You’ve
broken the rule of straight-line snow.
 

***
 

10 January 2003
 

Still Magic
 

Ardor, a lake of never basking
riddled by headlong rays of gold—
sparks struck and dulled at once by rasping
principal parts—a word-wet hold
of longing profusion, fluid wisdom’s
hollows deep-fraught with stealing fire
drawn from a lored reverse-elision
more than pure dreams alone require
but far from enough to bridge the sighing
distance between two tongues that cease
their stuttering—not their breathing—lie in
wait for the next arcane release
of blue-dappled silver—darker—violet
light—welling joy—the lake implores
still magic, Pervade this place where timeless
syllables meld my voice with yours.
 
 

***
 

11 January 2003
 

The Greeting of Ever-Death
 

Knowing the longer you wait the more wounded
and bled you will find me, you choose to delay
the blue-gated forever of death.  Let the Moon in
your eyes show you, moment by moment, the way
you are going—to lead me—to cross the same waters
that gate opens onto.  The blueness that shines
in their depths is so easy, the weight of the bodies
we’ve borne for so long—oh, the flow undermines
all unwilling resistance—shifts into their hue of
intoxicant music and sheets off in thin,
fast-dissolving idea-like layers.  The truest
of faces below the pale, slow-moving skin
of the river of night—close behind us, the click of
a latch met and locked in an instant says Aye,
you’ve been shown.  The lie at the back of the trick of
false light never says, You are there now—good-bye.
 

***
 

12 January 2003
 

The Storm Blows Over
 

Haze of astonishment, limitless basking
of eyes in a mist by which strength is dissolved,
then brought back raised to magic—I want you to ask me,
Wherever was I when this vision evolved
out of dead useless layers of flesh, human tissue
of lies, motley scraps, a death’s-bridal night-gown?
Showering light on the eve of a blissful
reunion, who hands you a twisted green crown
which, unspiralled and patiently righted, reveals its
true nature, a strong three-leafed wand, live and wet
with a secret you make rise to flood you?  Come, feel its
great imminence:  Shudder it into the net
of a touch cupped to love’s understanding night-longing
for visions that surge, the deep pulse of their own
mixed with….  Flesh is still deathfully, hatefully strong in
your mind.  My sweet strength is mislaid—overblown.
 

please visit brokenshells
 

***
 

14 January 2003
 

Synchronicity, aye.
 

Willow
 

Willow, come laying down long plaited ribbons
of river-like hair that is really fine reeds
of impossibly green shafts of light, shining dripping
designs, finely lettered demotic witch-weeds
wound in veil-like transparency over and over
the body of music I AM to become
when the source of this liquid desire, the fey lover
who languishes all in your shadow’s sweet hum,
hears the whispering flow of night-secrets in lunar
delirium here, as my brow springs with small
silver beads that hang silently, slip, then attune their
round mysteries clearly toward the dew-fall
of your quavering branches.  Come laying down lengths of
exorbitant music, its sparkle caught well
within audible limits as he—give me strength to
begin such deep telling—rests under our spell
only long as need to be remember the grace of
his own twisted leaves coming wetly alive
into silver-hung spirals that branch into spaces
where musics and lovers alike meet and thrive.
Here, below the soft murmur of waters that gather
from multiple sources, the very night air
shimmers misted with storm-portent words we shall weather
as one—though the bodies we were are nowhere.
 

***
 

16 January 2003
 

Listening Airs
 

Whose were the weary, weakly shining
lunar blue lights behind sealed eyes
beset by ideas twisting, twining,
tearing their way through gloomy skies—
that shuddered wide open?  Listen:  Hear them
listening back, a breeze of airs
lifting the shadow-cast of eerie
silvery sheen, the little hairs
between spine and sight.  They bear a message
we are ourselves too weak to catch—
until it decides us.  Love addresses
whose hand and bids it lift the latch?
Behind burning eyelids, overflowing
music pours down, a flower-rain.
Ghosts yield a certain form of knowing
insight that now can no more wane
than we can resume our useless languor.
Merrily reel, cascading scene,
summoning lunar spirits hanging
miracle-hues of silver-green
wherever we turn our smiles, inviting
whisperers courting blossoms yet
to come in the silent distance—eyes wide-
staring and you grown warm and wet.
 

***
 

17 January 2003
 

Poured from the Palm of This Hand
 

A river unfolds, a live vellum map-letter
inscribed with strange characters, two of which form
a revealed transmutation of grey-earthly weather.
From out of that half-hidden brilliance, a storm-
cloud appears, its huge density hiding a lantern
of liquified moonlight.  It pours itself down.
I spy there the place of prefigured enchantment
I knew in a message incised in a crown
of living green leaves on the eve of first hearing
the syllable one of the characters sighs.
Now I am frightened to find the sky clearing.
Who must have seen me?  A steady wind cries
through an air of bare branches.  I breathe it—and flourish
with laughter.  I make a fast sketch of the sound
in the palm of my hand with a twig—and then worry
it into the tissue.  I wheel round and round
in the magical shadow a shaft of pale moonlight
casts lightning-like down for my sole use and joy.
There I wait now.  Will you find a mere human?
Read me the message no word can destroy
mispronounced—out of season—in doubt:  That is all in
the old hopeless distance.  Your half of the pair
of mad characters dreams the raw throat of long calling
down into a body that rivers with rare
incandescence.  See here the broad translunar channel
by which we communicate.  Silver-wet line
in the palm of a hand—if a tear falls, the span of
its passage is how far we are from the fine
recognition awaiting the map-reader’s secret
imagining.  Read it out loud to me, your
lettered hand, brightly wet with a thousand times’ leaking
desire.  Let a new storm of wild moonlight pour!
 

***
 

18 January 2003
 

Letter to Follow
 

Lilting with stars, the long dripped-over image,
the here-resolved tissue of human-hand hope
would deliver a most ardent message.  Though timid
you are, do receive it, this blue envelope
in which heaven itself is at issue.  It reaches
the far edge of insight this moment:  It flies
through the sea of half-dreaming:  It rests on a beach of
bright crystalline footprints where dances the prize
to the hitherto all-unrewarded companion
of spirits and ghosts on a plane the Moon haunts
from within the great vault of his mind:  It is chanting
the lay of the wet-looming distance that wants
to draw ever so near—and then nearer—as near as
the tremor about to possess you at length.
Stars fill your eyes, shining tears, each as clear as
the spiralling dance that is gathering strength
in the limbs you’ve engaged to divine and inscribe it,
this message the Moon shines upon from within:
Dripping with love-lilting stars still arriving
in waves—and most lucent when read through live skin.
 

***
 

19 January 2003
 

Seizure
 

Only walk along frozen edges
with restless urges a cold wind drives
into barren spaces where leafless hedges
seethe and moan for their very lives
while a strand of hair whipping to and fro in
a tangled gesture of where you were
when the last leaf slipped and fell down keeps growing
stranger fast till it’s just a blur
to be stared well into forever.  There a
waiting moment blinks back a tear.
The veil that strand-shadow casts is fairly
wet—an ocean:  The world right here
streams liquid salt on a slow horizon.
Here—this margin, this reach of sand
that gleams star-like—this is where meeting eyes and
then love-locked hands seize a leaf-green strand.
 

***
 

21 January 2003
 

Dawn
 

Fine as lawn, amid feathers flying
low and high, a ghost-visage rose
in the pallid azure of dawn-light sky in
a fit of weather where no one goes
who has not been often invited.  Eerie
twinkling sounds—were the birds that shed
their down wafting round us, their final weary
breathings seeking a soft new bed
in our single hearing?  Were crystals thawing,
cleaving, coming apart in scales
hidden lyrics mournfully climbed and haunted?
Who was watching it all?  The veils
that trouble possibly superstitious
inquiries wound about like weeds
as we stood wondering:  Smooth bright tissue—
feathered over with floating seeds,
but pluming fast with long pinions canted
skywards—music be praised—the ghost
is only—You were the one I wanted,
deeply known to the weather most
inspired by dreams of their own arising,
songs that breathe of their own accord
this pleasant seizure of—No one lies in
love with you who is not restored
to a former presence of beauty almost
angel-pure.  Living graveyard-lawn
giving over all to the lure now calling,
make the music of heaven dawn.
 

***
 

22 January 2003
 

Wounded Heaven
 

World out of bliss, reverse your falling.
Star-splintered evening coming night,
love and its sweetest dream are calling,
yielding a stream that seeks a height
from which it can reach return by floating
freely upsky—no weight works here.
Search out the beast we’ve both devoted
serial lives to saving:  Peer
deep down in his throat and find a spring of
tender melodic mystery.
Open its first sweet note by bringing—
body and soul—that beast to me,
then gaze through his eyes and mine and whisper,
Splendor of evening—nay, I sing
this love-lay to you; but as you listen,
feel your own voice unfurl a wing
of watery sound then wave it, starlike
flickering growing swift and strong.
Beast, at your ease you’ve lifted heart and
soul out of me and made them song,
playing them through the sky like feathered
rivers less human-made than sprung
from hell to the height of wounded heaven,
healed on the way by being sung.
 

***
 

23 January 2003

Deep and Deeper Spring

I awoke frozen.  Icy crystals
broke with a willful spirit-chime.
I heard the wildest hope.  It whispered,
Under this bitter mist of rime,
someone is breathing softly.  Who will
claim the dear dreamer locked inside
such an unyielding nightgown?  You who
listen between pale havens ride
a long course of snow-white silken wonder
gazing two ways, all snow on both
cold hands:  On the one, a blood-beat running
fitfully fast repeats an oath
the dreamer under the other frozen
moonlit grip will awake to hear
with fey recognition.  Lovesick rose of
crystalline vision, loose a tear
that springs from the same deep source as this, your
heart-mirrored partner-song.  Because
you know you can hear me sing, a bliss of
numerous intertwining awes—
not two only—rises wreathed in mists of
beautiful heat you breathe.  I swear,
you taught it to me.  Come reaching, whispered
mystery-dreamer.  Sweet live air
we promised each other when the snow was
eerie blue light and we were tired,
dawn as the Moon’s most liquid glow, a
luminous gown of night inspired
by hunger for death you’ve long since sated.
Loved one, this new long night bereaves
only the rime of ice.  I’ve waited
weaving a rosy crown whose leaves
are wet with the warm wild spirit-blessings
flowing between two planes of spring.
You feel them both now—wakeful, rested,
rise up and take new vows to sing.
 

***
 

29 January 2003
 

Vanity Revealed
 

Don’t only replace our old mistaken
vanity, turned nigh inside out—
make me in riddled haste a wakeful
seer and wind me round about
with fine-lettered laces, swathes of silver
air, sleepy beams of lyric light
that leak through a thousand layers filtered
each time by dreams that reel more bright-
of-sky inspiration me-ward out of—
you!  At the center, smiled and slow,
answers are forming.  Rendered-doubtful
drifts made of strange discarnate snow
seep meltingly into living rivers
soon to be rushing torrents.  I,
old landscape, am come unraveled.  Give me
traces and clues and cloaks of sky
and find me capacious here, where empty
space is a ceaseless wonder song
envelopes:  Its veils set free, not stem, this
loveliest nowhere we belong.