wafer thin

the host, is it a car for the almighty
or the host, is it the guy taking your coat
or the host, is it johnny or jay or
colin, behind a desk, cracking a joke
???

the host a large group
all the faeries and sprites
all the angels and rebels
the vast crowd
others of us and you and
myself before and after
we breath and speak
that audience that doesn't hear
me that ocean of recognition
eating, shitting, fucking
killing each other
itself

and the melody lingers on
it is its theme its meme its
leitmotif trundling
notes always the overture
never the coda ultimately
the host overwhelms us all
becoming a transient memory
briefly on the tongue
his flesh or Her's
my flesh or your's

consumed

Brought about by that discussion about whether it is possible to desecrate a cracker, because someone believes that it has been magically changed into the flesh of the man-god. Although I do not believe in the magic that way, I do actually believe it is possible for the physical symbol of the host to embody all the human consciousness that has ever existed and that will ever exist. This is the function of symbological thought. And it truly is a kind of magic, though not what the Pope would like it to be. Memory is the true act of magical being.

Bond Street Memory

this rhyme flies in the face
of your dark time couched blank
behind the walls of bond
street logic, an apparition now
your skinny thighs wrapped in
blue silk a violence trapped
my hands capturing all the moments
tears and remarks candles leaking
waxy white streams your breath
itself a storm the weather pre-
figuring the bucking gilded girl
catching herself wiping away the tears
still languid on this altar
introibo ad altare dea
thor's hammer ends the roman
dias seeks the maiden's startling
orgasm the cross itself trembles
the fingernails transfiguring
pain into sorrow the thick memory
your time behind the camera
your embarrassed wordless poems
were they pleasure were they desire?
typical catholic girl never all in
balancing the idea
she walked a hard path
a granite wall from her father's
account book the desire chosen
the other blood bonds equally
sardonic every night portrayed
as the party at an irish wake
this girl on bond street wrists high above
her golden face urging a transition
and just as quickly as peter
denying it three times in as many
decades all short of meaning
thor batters the structure
accomplishing almost nothing

interference

winds of these prayers
paint the flatlands of my father
these words chill me
and no one comforts me
keye luke returns to mars
the lunar was explored last year
there are no angels
in the recent snow
and only a photographic
image of the girl's wings
in the album now
my hands are pale this season
there are no excuses for
letting myself drowned
the noise has segued to interference
it has lost its sonic white purity
there is no wisdom in the static
no messages from the yellow man
on the red planet
the plains spread away from
this door forever
no moon, no stars




More private language. Besides the Keye Luke figure this poem also uses the reference to the Lunar Explored, a manuscript of poems written in the mid 1970s. The lunar in the title referred to the female principle, the moon being the ancients direct icon for the female. For me there was always a sexual, or at least genital reference in the word lunar. The snow angel reference is once again to a poem of Alison Gaughan's about making snow angels ("our angels never touch"). Later Gary Adkins used it as the title for a novel he wrote that took the Maltese Falcon story and retold it in contemporary Springfield, using Bill Lambrecht, the journalist, and his partner, Sandy Martin, as two of the main characters. The reference towards the end to static and wisdom come from my first novel manuscript, It Seems So Long Ago, which is set after a nuclear holocaust in the american southwest. There is a character in this book who watches the static on his tv (no broadcast signal) and imagines he can see things in the snow that give meaning to his existence. You can see the cross reference to the snow angel at work in this. I had a period between the first and second Scarritt groups where I felt completely abandoned by my friends. This piece comes from that period.