Several

Several of these ways in

Which we left ourselves

Open to longing could have

Been clipped if we

Listened to others, could have

Been turned to ridicule and dust.

Never tends to evermore

Frequently skipping across the

Flagrant gestures and spirits of

Sanity running out seen

Through the window of a car

In glimpse of recognition formed

In complete faith and opportunity

Of sleep and all its stretching overflowing

Longing; listen to the heart of hearts

Laden with reverence of proud and

Ceaseless dominion; she couldn’t

Bear to fade and falter, handing off

Another loss to him handing him

Over to slaughter.

These are things that have

Been and are, these are things

That will be and are now, for I

Am with you for ever.

And the things that are can

Never be altered; only phased and

Passed through in slower or faster

Or different and various piecemeal ways; only

Run through wakeful or imprisoned

By doubt or completely unaware; nevertheless

They are unaltered, what is now was

And always will be several ways

Of knowing what is in your heart of

Hearts, what was in your dreams,

What is and was and always

Will be.

Dome of the Sky

Dome of the sky particular wide as the

Blank and everlasting beam across

Her frozen still inviolate face nevertheless invincible

The broad expanse of hastening breathing ceased;

Gong the bells their marvelous presence song

Arrhythmic out of shoulder unsure out of

Sync, long they sound their rankling low and

Long ungarden song ascending now expansive

Gonging luminous dread-bearing farewell

Undertaking song

Lifting up

Their song, two tones, is lifting her up and

Spreading her dissolving strange essential self

Eternal unto the dome of the sky and contained

For a flickering moment while the prester’s calming

Considered chanting oppression stream of words,

Doubled up with the call of the chanter responsive

Halts and halfway spills the now and forever

Over her lying down boxed and residual

Presence-felt cold colder unto the ages of

Ages

Dome of the sky lift up and spread her essential

Self dissolving out and on to other broad eternal

Bells arrhythmic gonging out of sync dissolve

And lift up her brothers and sisters and their sorrows

Spilled about the earth beneath your arching carved

Extension screen across the milky plaster of

Paris sky; call her forth now and forever summon

Her up and away from nameless fear decision

Unto the ages of ages away from this particular

Moment from the essential towards the

Everlasting cleansed the deaf hear the dead are

Raised from the soil of their symptomatic

Tangle of dreadful bells and voices raised she is unto

The ages of ages.

Water

Water welds the blackened heart

Under the words in which the concentrated

Weaver lies, flows about the berries

And the distal clouds continued round

The swiftly sailing songs about the

Wheat field ceased among the

Fragrant false and fettered seeking

Always the lowest ground; drifts

And dallies bitter cross the rocks and stones

To bear the dross away, water sifts the

Fetching thoughts anointed or ofttimes

Disappointed weeps leaking from the

Corner of an eye disjointed seeks

The deepest chasms of a frown;

Down it goes, all ways down and yet

It ferries all the life we lived beneath

Contented mudded dispatched whorls of

Sound; forging steady unrelented

Progress foregoing proximal obstacles away

Across around, always onward ahead and

Foreward, always towards the deepest oceans

Salted depths receiving always

Down.

Grange Hall

Figure it out some day how

To stop wasting near

Misses notes never sent

Obliged and discontinued the

Grange hall cascades atop the rise of

A green hill verdant even in healing

Solstice ride in solitude solicitous

To the point of one another;

Some day figure it out some might say

Don’t bother

Who wastes time on a space as open flanked

By streams and their running as this;

Flanked by a town that died and emptied

Itself left itself barren and exposed; flanked by

A highway that falters on alert to various

Instigations in the back of the car divert

Therefore the near misses the wastreling

Purposeful flocks flew by whenever he

Walks he sees things no one else could

See he enrages their talks de la Falaise their

Simmering submerges their discontinuity

Whenever he dies and passes on a space

As open as the field where the grange hall

Lies cascades atop the rise of a

Green hill verdant he says less and less he

Dies and passes on a space where the

Grange hall lies.

Fortunate

Fortunate soul growing neither

In night shade nor quite enough to

Allow no rhyme

Nor

Reason on behalf of

His shame,

His holy hand in fear.

Understand, this isn’t unique

To certain departed wilderness

Lives to certain

Elements of heart ache

Nor

Disdain; this is fortunate enough

To emphasize exactly how

Much a very small deadly

Dream could go on rummaging

The troubles of a compassion

That didn’t know how

To end.

On a bridge throughout a sandy

Marsh across a lake of mortal

Sins he swung along a

Curse nobody disappoints

A garden of

Diminishment and

Heightened unconvincing

Lies, in height

And in splendor does the

Beauty of her heart

Dwell, fortunate enough to

Lash one more time his admiring

Vesper resolutions his interest

Accruing flight across the

Heavens.

Review of Antiphony on "Thoughts with Nowhere Else to Go"

"Antiphony is, in many ways, an awe-inspiring novel..."

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Sacredness and Light

Sacredness and light fill the oracles

Of every halfmoon rescuer’s

Respite,

It was true the dogs and foxes cried

And split the night beyond the northbound

Houses block upon block;

So only noble staring courage came

Without a distant pale

Delight.

The yester years deliver drowning

Words and wounds and half-made

Smiles we never will remember;

The forward tears rescind our

Burdens they

Could scarcely bear

By way of visions fear

December.

Especially she captivates the

Shaking she denies

The need to

Break the stifled glory might;

The precedent resurges only once

Or twice a night instead of

Hiding sinking sliding out of

Sight.

So go without, decide what you must

Sign and verify; forsythia will not bloom

For five more months or more; hedges

Will not harbor blossoms hallowed

Out their colors

Layered row upon row;

Leave them now, their branches empty

Arms aside abandoned lulling fall

Of winter tide and evening quiet long

And wide.

200 Words with Chris Katsaropoulos

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Mirror Expectation

Across one sea and through

A hall of mirror expectation

Thorough-going trials which

Glimmer souls their duplication;

Deny the symbol at your peril,

Fly the angels’ punishment and rage

A smothered laugh and jails of

Sons who welter gold and

Silver on the page.

These friends of mine were once

A bothered staff of worn down

Weathered imitations; those faces

Frowned their curfew smiles and

Glimpsed a wall of lucid

Variation; each liquid glance along

The surface wavers any chance

Endeavor of the stars and

Moon among the clouds.

Ghosted streaks across the sky

Initiate the unity and trinity

Of matter; their harmless howls

Around the neighbor’s yard

Reflect the rift and wrack

Of fear and tatter; the painter’s

Brush denies his violet iris mirrors

In your eyes and souls may never

Doubt again they once deceived to flatter.     

She Thrones to the Countenance

Farewell forever she thrones to the countenance

Of outcomes mine with whiles and

Wherewithals she shakes the river

Bridge asunder;

Yearn forever blank and empty free from almost counted

            expectations;

The bluster best forgotten

Whelps her heavy crying

Paying then for jumps and hindrance left beside the crumbling gravel of the

            road;

Give a picture portal through the silence and

Her recognizing several ways to rake

The lock outside the door.

In vestments of skin and arabesque of sweat for

Trying infant’s rage the secret castle lots

Embodied through her final torrid

Trade in time and willful ways the

Tendency to mete her punishments to no other won’t let go;

After any whim and gesture strays beyond the

Crowned deliverance of her carpenter’s

Control forever goes her freedom thrones

To windows never shuttered never

Closed.

She frays the droning midnight bell she

Smiles beyond the towers dust begotten

Every slim eternal necklace brims beyond the sympathy

Engenders breaks and skimmed

ascendancies;

Needless to say whoever staked the

Claim removed the clouds and fevers reeked the habits and imagined

            alleys back behind the garden sold;

Never mind another distant breathing feral ghost

Inside another clearance kept the crawling painted wrinkles

daft beside his hand;

And any chance to somewhere crash the cymbals left the

Happenstance in many ways she couldn’t

Seek to perch around her house her waking pillow nights

Against her spoiling glove and severed thrones.

“I love those who yearn for the impossible.” –Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

Consolatio

Rest and close your eyes, your

Grimly gathering finally eyes,

Water falling on Agamemnon’s

Scepter severed all their lies

Lay your royal head aside rest

And grow your fine familiar

Tries, for all the evening

Dance and sing is finished

All the hampered

Happenstance has afflicted

Narrow limbs and bones and

Coins against the skies.

You wouldn’t want it

Otherwise you came here

Knowing it were true that if

You troubled the branch

And beam the thoughts that

Melted through ambition

Any sorrow like unto your

Sorrow lonely words there

Wouldn’t be a doubt

A cause to follow through

The children hoarding

Games and painting songs and

Dances shout the summer’s

End the rain is falling on

Agamemnon’s head

Even as you rest and close

Your eyes, your grimly

Gathering finally eyes.

“All men who have achieved great things have been great dreamers.”—Orison Swett Marden

Complex Knowing - Number 9

Very much so inconceivable

In the laughing days surrender

Clinging to him forsworn

Forgotten

Very nearly something must

Have happened instead

Of being relevant sundown

Stars began to reap.

Found out of nowhere indefinable

Under the veins and forcing

Patience prayer whether

Soon he would commence

Distraught

Blotted out the eastern

Scattered light as well

As pale impressions of the

Night the hunted relegated

Meanwhile versions of the

Statuary motions wrapped

Around his heart.

Anywhere would utterly

Swing the wide

And lightning forest

For fifteen days the

Bethnal green divided

Bright his gaze

His interrupted

Whispered out of sight

A compound mass of

Footsteps falling from

The tapered whirlwind

Stripped and locked.

Fortunate reminders fell

Between the realm of

Permanent distinction then

And wasn’t only the

Diffusion of receiving

So that nothing

Trestles dreamed

Illusion raised the brightly

Sunken down and tender

Courses fear could

No longer

Fail to bind him.

Beholder

Now a new thing

Settle for something never

Anticipated

Step carefully and

Speak less and less.

Behind the back corner

Of the house

Where no one

Ever goes dust

Of a dry summer

Layered on the boards

Of a fence

Chrysanthemums bear

Their blossoms in

Shadow withdrawn

From the light and

Withering heat in their

Quiet corner where no

One ever goes nor

Sees them except me

In this one glancing

Moment quick gathering

Lavender and gold

Catching and holding on

Never to let go.

Every adversity, every failure, every heartache carries with it the seed of an equal or greater benefit. —Napoleon Hill

Even the Sun Must Die

Unknown firebrands suppose to him the ways

We could not be, except for public discourse

On Saint-Emilion Val de

Loire Grand Cru and shoreless marches

Through the requisites and objects of

Our nailing cross.

Open fashion lapsed the

Comprehending boulevard and schemes

Around the gaunt and farewell fleeting

Hour failing to be lost, imagine

That she would not go and

Would not harbor barrels

Further than the sideslip

Fortunate Eglise de

Poinchy.

For every Coteaux

D’Ancenis

There are a thousand million

Brusque defenders of the

Law, a ten part eight

Part worry stone to drag

Us to the depths. Even the sun

Must die some day they

Tell us, ringing the remarkable

Dearth of desperation

Underneath our fabled hammer

Toss, for now it must do

For what they could not

Recompense is that our eyes

Are wild with joy and

Even though the sun will

Die will suffer and shrink

Into a disparate auctioned

Dross our eyes will still

Be there to witness

Cold extinction and only

Then and therefore will it rise

Again anew.

“Each bird must sing with his own throat.”  —Henrik Ibsen

Octave

Nearer now than never was the note

Ascending through the stages

Whenever up the downward hope

Begins the lurches through the pages

Homeward bound and tuning trope

For ever was the marvel open

Heaven in the eye abounds and

Completes the steps unto the ages.

“Be patient toward all that is unsolved in your heart. And try to love the questions themselves.” —Rainer Maria Rilke

Genuflect and Shield Me

Genuflect and shield me

From instruments and doubts that silk

Beyond the hemlock indecision,

Prosper me and rejoice

Over my wakeful inside

Outs and secret

Time

When

Nothing matters except the downward

Shiny figures weeping in the joys of

Thy deeper nightward watch.

Intensity and separateness have

Haunted all our days, and did

We not fear the clouds

And reckoning when the sea had

Gathered itself together.

Only once was the ghost of teaching

Children harried on the stone and

Oozed upon the witless

Spendthrift

Sages

Who

Incorporate the paradise offending

And swaggering their own invincible

Invective. In the secret time when

Nothing matters come with me to

Eden leave behind the strange

Instructed longings for

Calumny, take to the burning

Sea and wishful instead for the

Selfsame misread star and

Bleeding, never mind the farewell

Stop the vicarage houses veils

The blissful enter into

Oblivion and trail their

Final visions on a

Separate

Rhyme

Which

Insinuates the forever rock of

Mourning.

“None of these things made me feel at all cast down. It was as though they happened to someone else, and I merely watched them.” —Way of a Pilgrim

“If we differentiate things according to their differences, everything is different from the other. If we consider things similar according to their points of similarity, there is nothing which is not the same.” —Kuo Hsiang

Benediction

Say the words you

Want me to say,

Whisper them into

My ear, the right words,

The holy words, the words

You want me to hear.

Cast away the present tense

The parting child constrains,

Build and forge the dying

Cause, the onward human

Breed, the wearing thin

Abrasion night in silent serpent

Creed, the mother’s fight against

Her chance decline, whose

Dominion liveth for ever,

Hold fast unto these righteous

Words and dole them out

According to their need.

Say the words you

Want me to say,

Tell me what we must

Do, to flail the ways

That come between us,

And fulfill their partial meanings

Until no empty cup remains.

“Within is so great as to be Beyond.” —Emerson

“I know but one freedom and that is the freedom of the mind.” —Antoine de Saint-Exupéry

“Wherever thou seest a great end, be sure of a great beginning. Where a monstrous and painful destruction appalls thy mind, console it with the certainty of a large and great creation. God is there not only in the still small voice, but in the fire and in the whirlwind.” —Sri Aurobindo

Occam's Razor

Thus he and his conscious

Body were worthy

To walk this

Earth

To simplify,

Simplify

And go on pausing slothful

Missions, go around

Erecting thrift and farms and

Cash box priests and voices

Calling out when the land

Beneath

Them composed of judgment if

Ye seek him if ye forsake him,

Which they have wrought upon the

Earth

The land beneath them

Yearning to liquefy

Masonry fire on water, the abundance

Pointing across his face, shifting

To simplify, to

Justify.

If only he and his

Conscious body were able to

Try a little bit harder to

Do a bit more, if only

Carrion plentiful borne by

Waves of plummeting fires, shaking

Graves the price of his calling,

But simplicity is not the only

Elegance and chaos stretches

Beyond the lust for

Ease,

The error in his conscious

Body flexed against the

Onslaught silently

Surging against his knees

Bare feet and arms carved up

And smashed against the

Toothpick buildings and

Flooding trees,

To simplify and justify, and

Seek to call a treason for his

Voluptuous life he

Will forsake you.