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The mirror creeps into my view - I look the other way. But in the way I see a ewe - An eye who bleats to say, “What have you wrought you worthless son? Why do you stare me down?” Oh woolly downy lovely one, I wear a tattered gown. I look the ways I thought unseen To hope to see unbeauty, But catch my thoughts on what you mean And take the words unrudely. A sheep is fielded, kept, and loved, While I am lost at sea. My ewe resides in clouds above, Somewhere I cannot see. A dove brings peace and joy to all While flighting tree to tree An ocean roars and in we fall To settle in the sea The dove is strong against the wind The ocean turns and tides Yet each is quiet deep within One heart with two insides A face is but a galaxy The heart is so much more A truth is often fallacy When hearts beat drums of war A couple may uncouple then Their holding hands unhold The eyes unsee the other when The fingers point to scold To see such fear is not to die But live in agony The stars unstar the starry sky The hearts become a hole One whole remains when unmet truth Exists in unlit night The universe unversed and mute Unbanged before the light A snap or clap to strike the fire May blind a little while The old world heaving on the pyre The new unlearned to smile Why should we wait? Why should we run? The light burns just as pure One sun becomes the only one One heart becomes the cure Mother, oh! the heart early rose On today’s holy earnest rousing morning. The heavy eastern rays mercilessly overwhelm Humble eager ramblers mimicking others’ truths: Each road makes other theories hearken. Remember mother, on this heavenly evening. My own - to her, endless respect. A choo choo never chooses It travels down the track A line it never loses While chooching out or back A seagull has her season To wend upon the wing Then rest and read her reasons To see what beauty brings A narrow way through mountains And over crumbling slopes May lead to fruitful fountains And tender antelopes The finches flinch their feathers And ruffle off the road But when the wind has weathered It's back to what they know The world is wild and wondrous And many friends to find For every Earth or thunder, there's Another in the mind And speaking is a sentence To listen to the limn While reading is repentance When you hear the heavenly hymns The pain of love lost centers in the heart Or in the hands when working through Or in the back when standing true Or in another part The weight of love unshared weighs on the mind Thoughts stray to every happy face The patterns of the living human race All find love already in its place The yearn of love without a home is endless The dark side of the moon eclipsed The absence in the space between the lips Gullible to all, defenseless The love of love unloved is not true love For in the self-enclosing dark abyss There is no one to meet, no one to miss Is there another heart which beats above? God is love but is not procreation We living souls create through recreation Sticks and stones would heal me. Give me a well-deserved beating. A public stoning for just cause Would do nicely. I listen too well to words Spoken or unspoken. They never hurt me, I just say them back in rhyme, Or rhythm the thrum of them back into Faces who hear themselves echoing Louder than they like. A stick-and-stoning might quiet me For a while. Don't hurt me to the hospital though; That's just what I want most: To meet a team of such lovely people. We could found a school, Or form a band, But mostly we'd just talk. I'd listen til they feel a hurt I never heard until they spoke. Then they too will want to harm me, But hospitals don't have sticks and stones To use on unruly patience. I rarely flagellate. It's quite uncouth to do so. A simple sticks-and-stones would do; Unless I remember the poem About sticks and stones. Perhaps a word would heal me. Another anther answers In the stamen staying true To still a blissful pistil One woman I would woo A metamorphic mother To fill as flowers flow Anastomosic other We'll hoe the rows to grow We'd wed and need no weeding For our clover-covered grove A clearing in the reading Well-fed and feeding love With vegetables and tables The well of wellness wells A tale of cane and maple The bee-buzz brings the bell An answer still so wistful To the question of our quest Divide us into dancers And then join us to the rest Dawn, notary, you with the effortless stroke Paperleaves part in your gentle touch You stamp documents like hummingbirds suck nectar A hover, a beating wing, angelic hand The ink eternal on the page Sudden blood from a wound Case number and "copy" and I didn't read the rest Fold healing into stacks of copies The case collating into your left hand (The documents are available at the Maricopa County website, in PDF format.) With wife ridiculous we went to pay Governmental debts incurred ago In reckless-freckled fervor We declared our writhing fracture laughing like fools We'd be damned except it's true The others soon to break their vows Marveled at our friendship Smiling in the fluorescence We were crying on the phone before The love-humors misting a little We had burned ourselves alive Giggling like cadavers (Things just didn't work out.) Dawn, oh Eve, your stamping soothed me The rhythm of your gesture Confidence in motion You dance the stamp between the legalese Licensing oven for sputtering solitude (The Maricopa County Family Court, a bluish room filled with tiny copy machines in a hot-dog-stood downtown corner, is full of restless heart, two-handled swords and voices quieted to quell tears.) The tapping, the hit upon the counter In your chamber with a cash-box Your palmistry paid through guichet window The curving wooden opening below Smoothened by thousands of signatures Your hands the same Softened by the feeling of the throngs The separating masses Unwiving men whose wives Have found a better man And women too whose men Have fucked up and deserve it And some who got lost Lost somewhere in the love We come to you, Dawn Confess to ask your confirmation We sufferers of freedom through the glass To watch your settled pleasance The rhythm of your arm (I spoke of this to her, of the hypnotic allure of the stamp in her hands turning pages. She was uninterruptibly tender as I stared, possessed of honesty and will. Weeks later we went back for "Step 3". I told her that I'm going to get married and divorced again just to see her working. She laughed with steadiness in her eyes. Men must everyday propose to her as the final stamp stamps. She's right to turn them down. Ten business days before Step 4. Ten dawns and dusks of papers in the pile. The devil is in the details.) Angels in there too The words cover me Language teases stingingly Vocabulary enthralls gradually Sentences grow fonder Talk betrays hearts Policies contain people Messages turn electricity Letters fly gracefully Banter jumps high Terminology doubles back Lingo ate my baby Jargon bosses ingrates Statements ameliorate difficulties Sloganeering shuffles tables Proclamations lament inquisition Orders bark trefoil Pleas undermine inanity Loquacity brews inclination Calling frets fieldmice Argument heals sunlight Nagging settles dewdrops Voicing sees fools-gold Names become us Unsettled thoughts of persons long ago Are tapping on the glass between the lines A number under name beneath the glass A word beneath a word beneath a name Beneath the nearest feeling impulse burns A sentence of a sentence in the heart A heart beneath the thoughts unbeaten still Controls the manifesting of the mind The sinews of the nervous system taut To pull against the deeping of the light To push into the ether in a sign Entwining in the lines between the minds Riding next to Wheels hum in fading sunlight Traffic patterns part in waves The cars are color blocks moving Dogs pressed into us Tongues lapping cold vent air Words lightly less than sound Someone spoke we listened You yessed and skin kissed reddened A laughter lilting in the motion Touching touches touch each other Shoulders brush shirt fabric Hems flirt in the sleeve dandle Feather hairs soft threading Elbow bones taptap on road bumps Consciousness resides in the forearm All thought hides behind the slow Feeling the driven World-caress unfelt The still center of the universe All externalities ignored Sunset mother love upon the flesh Aching tender feeling held awhile Stopped for smoothies and the mood shifted Forgotten to the heart Muscle-memoried Roosevelt Dam driving On the map the road is slower Nighttime heading west toward Phoenix Flat and gravel Up left down right Fading unimagined chasms We spoke of texts and each other As the canyon curved along the river Swole like clutching gluttony Man’s tickbloodburst on the land Starlit dam a pale slab Widening cement-cool arms out Ankles abyss-soaked Easy up here wheels barely move The horizontal cliffcut sides-to-sides Dog ambling gently behind the creeping Spinning pebbles and sands Concrete rectangle sucks all ambient light Once behind us architecture disappears The cityglow below out to who underrooves Sleeping off the bundled day’s burning Recollections Only constellating scattered Bright pins remain Lands and skies meeting in the metropolis The bees are beezing in the breeze, Flower treesing buzzing in the tussle of the toil, Bashful wishes in the winding wind, Skimming on the skin. The blinking blissful busy of the bees Will waken wrinkled blessings in the simm'ring summer soil, Find a fissure folded solid in the world, Spelunk a simple secret in the furls. Oh and the sting! Sing! The bells of heaven ringing in her wing! Fervent little friend forfendless flitly flew! Upon my hurting head you might have ridden: I do as I am bidden. Yet you yearn, and burning moment bring, Tease thoughts and turn a torrent true, Sungleam glazing into glidden. Blazing beams of heat are hidden In the beesing beestings in the treesing singing trees, In the sinning busy singsong of the bees. Stinglight chase me into chidden, Make my mud unmuddled, mind unmidden, Pain and pleasure pearling into pleas To the singing stinging sighing of the bees, To beauty been besung-of in the beesong in the trees. Brian Brock, May 2018 |