the root of all begging: give me myself.
this is how powerful
we sense that we are.
give us ourselves,
the strong back,
enough tears
to fill the cup of healing.
the shelter and the table.
the invitation and the understanding.
the infant’s lips are milk
and within you
fields, limitless
the ceiling of your being
((((with its reachable sun)))).
cattle
who would butcher themselves
for the privilege of nourishing you.

rev. august 1^st, ’99

they tell you that you are not
listening
to the sound of one hand clapping

((((the music of their denial
((((drowns out
((((not a moment of it.

feb. ’99

man

she told him that she was cold,
as if he could change the world.

the trees trembled.

* * *

Vultures above the mountain.
Vultures above the plain.
Vultures carrying in their talons
a piece of your meat
towards the clouds
so ripe with rain.

Aug. 6^th, ’98

for L. W.

nobody

the one who bends at the stream for drink
and sees only clouds
floating across where
the reflection of her face should be.

Aug. 6^th, ’98

* * *

Drifter’s shack, ceiling repaired with loosely woven branches. Much of the walls have long since weathered back into the soil. Rotting joists plunged into lemongrass, thistle. Safe to light a fire while having a peek at the stars.

And when the strength returns I’ll rise and continue to wear the path a little deeper through the sage, to the stream. And there to search for what disappears beneath my reflection.

I’ll splash the melt upon my cheeks. I’ll reap the wild prosper.

Nadia

She does not stray from her doorway. Her celebration being the bed she’s chosen, soft greens of the willow lush against the mist. As in giving birth or eating. Or in listening to the spheres turning within their orbits, that rusted humming.

Never will she bid farewell to her neighbor’s chimes blending what dwellings of the species together.

How she seeds herself with this great joy, this glimmer.

May her fruit never drip with any less sweetness.

Nadia

With the doorway constantly turning, she enters
from where she has come. Through microscopic bends
in the fiber her existence has long been established.
With a song to coax one to believe again in words,
in rhythm. Yet considered so fragile that she did not
receive a name at birth. Nursed on whiskey and Genesis.
Sparking her hashish bowl from the Sabbath candles.
Exhaling thoughts, toxins….milk rotten pores. She
becomes the master, pulls the harvest from the air.
She sneaks low, into hell, stealing back our candlesticks.
She reduces all summits to foothills, and all foothills
to Braille.

Show her a stone and she’ll show you what can perish.

rev. July 6^th, ’00

* * *

Grape yielding slopes. Slopes abundant. Archangel fluttering
against the peasant’s shoulder, wingtips drenched firmament.
Down valley, from the direction towards the cellars, comes the
play of a harpsichord – dated instrument. More than unaccompanied
sound, no rustle of curtains. No shaking of candlesticks….master’s
wet bootprints outside the door. Does their direction matter? And
if time exists or no?

To stand somewhere, to have stood….leaning against a wagon
wheel composed of hooves and ancient labor. Or of fingers surrendered
at the winepress, to such crude and weighty machinery. To
parallel fields with the lowest of stone walls obliterated between
them.

* * *

In search of north and infamy, towards what loosely guarded
mystery, clouds making navigation all the more impossible….feeling
each branch on the way down, yet exhilarated by the loft. Yet not
yet being between the doing and the done. Constantly evoking
posture not merely pose, fruit of the pose, while inwardly reflecting
bone….lamp of the parasite, that means to cherish and with culture
to occupy even as far as print and decide. As lost from home
infants wail at the shock of bodily form.

Nadia

She is as a melody chosen then deformed to the times.
Broken in half. Pieces.

She falls in tune with the concubine of the host, our
supernal landlord. She dubs creation with namings,
with madness.

Confident that the walls will crumble after her exit,
she joins the rebels at their bonfires tall amongst the
coolings of the forest.

She is as a decoration upon the boulevard, itself
already laced with ribbons and musk.

Patrons appear, drench her palms with oil, with
pomegranates, mother’s milk, lush clusters from the
vine. Mandrake. A carpet of toads. An Orient of
days.

That if one cannot take poetic license
with one’s own life
why attempt it on the page?

Being a poet
is about being a poet.
A little of this,
a little of that,
((((easily hypnotized))))
a poem.

rev. April 2^nd, ’00

From The Beach—1

We loaf in the black well of your room
in the grey flannels and the emerging
conversation the impending silences
pauses between words, waking from the
Boat of Dreams. Were there dreams?
Yes, but we spoke more readily of those earlier
ones, signposts
along our paths to the moments
I’m recalling from this morning.

During waking out of the boat of symbols
and images that waking brought words we spoke
there in the comfort well of flannel—our waking
conversation of yesterday,
the night after that day's drive, that night before our waking—
from pasts shared and those old dreams,
brought us to this, then me to this moment, recalling this morning's waking.

It was both late morning and early noon hour
like it was the first morning except earlier
when I believe you to have left the room.

Wanted to film you—stills not enough—moving you shy
my wanting to recreate an image of your moving in the
grey dawn through the house to pee or let Angus out to pee—
I don’t know but you moving the grey—gray morning
was it nothing more than my half waking you there moving
as grey or in grayness as the Princess of Cups?

III.

It comes vigorously in
the day, your motion, in the grey
light, grey, the grays.

Vigorously yet softly out of the past
those symbols, intimate there,
lingering, sober, really, as a hoot-owl
vagrants, as alert as the dawn allows.

Blacks, reds, two black dogs, the white walls,
the closet door, three sides of the bed,
almost white pinewood dresser then the light
through the shaded window and the shade itself—
a heap of clothes the art above the dresser its
variety of bright colors (African I think),
and you, at some point, having gotten up .

From The Beach—2

As you collect rectangular artifacts
every ounce born and surrounding you
survivors of skirmishes carved in
your mind from childhood—no
answers will let you die and nothing
is left unto you—onto you who
have so many faces—mother, mother
manna, evidence, both of us, but you stacked
like cord wood, that long narrow rectangle—
maybe you were once a Whaler on Cape Cod
the square deck of the boat, walking its wilderness

two plus hours at night to daybreak your watch
in time with the hypnotic waves white capped claiming beach
at high tide to retreat and free it as a night lantern
frees you from night or how the setting is freed from its own horizon

a thousand later years the round universe an immense
theater passage penetrating a cell the sperm the birth, the breaking
water, hear it all pierce the trees, then their stoic response.

A copper moon arrests sight
eyes a planetary eddy
exiled kelp looking off at the grey horizon.
The rock of our sea reclaims the beach
its sand dollars, human litter, dead sea-birds
children with kelp whips.

From the Beach—3

How sea wind shapes the coastal pine rounding out the Skyline—
the way it happens, the madness, its attempt to reproduce what only the eye can make.

Those who insist, coax, change names,
describe oil, wine, a tattoo, childhood, a dress,
a grandfather, a poetic, the language to describe it
all rough-shod sea stirring contents of the beach.

From the Beach—4

The dogs, dogwoods,
sand dollars, wind battered pine
kelp whips, carcass: black and white breasted
sea bird, crab shells, barnacles, and mussels ringed
by prints in the sand, having paused, shuffled deep
and scattered imprints of heavy boots, about the driftwood
log where in the soft conversation and long silences

the ocean came in then out
as we smoked, the conversation in its eddies,
some refuse left: the eddy pool, driftwood,
litter, remains of walks, alternating one day
through the forest on the east side of the road
the next, on the beach on the west side.

From The Beach—5

Friends reveal more as I spend time
with them—revealing perceived
inadequacies—where I’m unexpectedly
coached from my perception of their strength—
conch roars (above the ringing in my ears)
a mystery, a myth, histories, myopia,
asphyxiation.
Subsequent fresh air startles sleep.

Turning ourselves end for end
reading litter wedged between
heavily burled drift wood, beer cans,
distended cigarette packages, occasional hunks
of Styrofoam rounded by footprints
revealing inhabitant’s shuffle, kick,
dragging feet at, over the remains of the day.

To Say Unsaid

New Year 2000

Salt, Dead Sea salt
Protect the rooted hands
sifting, plucking the
little earth-grape.

Last year went,
another coming.
A going first
another going then.

A coming on going off:
Ishmael after Dante
Pym after Pim.

One gone one going—
it’ll be the third day tonight,
fourth night tomorrow
fourth day third going
a new year going.

Neith

Moving into subsequent
dawn, me weighing light
imagine. Light a tree
lighted its Silhouette
green against green, ever
opposing Winter
grey sky gray crisp
ears nose red. As
imposed, blood flows deep.
Surface of skin pulled
tidal ebb churns
rippling pulse,
impulse chatter and
there is meaning.

Hermes, neophyte, nemesis
garden earth man and I
find reference to past
work, American Dreamer, Book
of Prayers the geometry of triangle,
man's experience to relate his own
I can do nothing else—
Past subsequent,
curious that. Then
now after now, then again
believe all discontinuity
examine motion
in between it all somehow
makes sense.

Maat magic meaning
M, the meaning of M
say like grey gray, distension
distention, there is much
difference M is opposed to M.
Subsequent, I find the
Thread-word subsequent.

There is opposition to balance
Will, Paracelsus
Imagine, I must not
forget, implore.

Question. Will. Make
imagination subsequent
be outside in side to side
means back to back then
forth, outward, big
these words. Describe
could describe Will
is good. Natural laws can
determine direction when
you let them.

A said unsaid an unsaid said.—

We've entered the land of sound
sing and figure
some way to tell a story
there is story sing
a song subsequently
sing it lastly.

Name a ritual call
it rite give name
call it ceremony make
it make give
it call it us
now or subsequent

And what is now
out of Sound, of sound
an abstract, free floating idea.

Three thoughts occur:
divine, sublime, recurrence.
Simple to recur, sublime to
rise, divine not visible
day-to-day.

My weaponry is a chant,
reversal of order, ritual, make
it undone recreate.
That is a naming, now we are
sublime out of the sublime audio
articulating chant, a back and forth one
equals everything with One unmanifest.

It self one of one,
self some awkward notion
caught out one eye or the
other it's the disappearing
you catch at that flash of moment
a thought an idea an image to name call
make it call it a story to say unsaid.

Unsaid

The first word tonight is triangle,
three containing
one each sphere, square and crossroad.

If there is intention it is solitude
loneliness not intending but
here in old habit of heart.

Writing to you speaking
matter, bread, muter first
solution an end to night.
First salutation last cause
cause solution first end
last end end.

All the while I’m writing
my breathing rocks
this table, a creaking floor
so mindful of itself teeming
strange teeming
as I sit here waiting silent
for next first thought and
ride it as it is,
suckle the meaning of its center,
meaning to recall the first.

Contents

I. To Recollect
II. Evocation
III. Moving On
IV. Along the Surface of the Planet
V. The Incest
VI. A Cup of Tea
VII. The Mystical
VIII. To Suckle
IX. To Enter

I. To Recollect

To cast out oneself
at once alone, secure, weak.
Odd balance found
unexpectedly off kilter joy
estranged heart reckless
libido, music from the radio
and a dripping toilet, cat
jumps to table then down.
Sun out unexpected February—
To cast oneself, the daily
man out of a crippled whole
satisfied to wander on trust toward two
and three.
Cog-wheel weep turn both
heaven soul release
all to first self, goal.
Sometimes strong other times
weak, pace fluctuates, inert if you mark
time—mark time stagnate
not attend time not building
on the counter of minutes.

II. The Evocation

First cause erect
a swallow
just cause juggler
last minutes swallowed.

Install balance
appellate unbroken hymen
gateway—
Stimulation of an inert
and foolish notion—
My love
while the cat batts cork
while I write a notion
a story a story to say
to tell how to say
to articulate to have one tale
tale unsaid unsaid untold no calling
to say a saying said
to say to say unsaid
not said unsung unread
not say not said said
what said said.

III. Moving On

In my dream a drowned man sobbed out his love for the holy and luminous sea.

— K. Patchen

Mem, sea, there's a code
an arrangement that forms a hand, name
heard to swallow find
first a guttural plea building
a waning moon, a new star simultaneously.

A reconciliation of opponents
facilitates affairs of the heart
lilac flesh to hold
even that occasionally brings
with it ejaculation sobbed
talisman made sweet and
taste of salt demands clarity
disobedient dream
sobbed out the holy larynx silent.

IV. Along the Surface of the Planet

Footprints in old soil
failed by passing
light of day
stars, how soil creeps
first one direction
before another.

Matters of the earth
to accept the last host—
the weight of a cat.

A hoof-print
a boot, the lifting
of iron razing bridges
hotel basements
hold 30 cars each
of two levels.

Asphalt, yellow shoulder
stripe, white strobe center-line
the highway breached
long sob the hollow heart
things somehow change searching
through mood to mood.
Heave out words
document a going from
here to there, transition lost,
no fade up fade down.

Potatoes, carrots, pot, wimpy, lettuce,
party, guest, peeing, on, chard, keg, footprint,
tennis shoe, yard, one, tumbleweed, too,
far, west, cat, Sun, died, kitten, on, porch,
step, my, hand, his, on, his, belly, felt, going,
all, this, recalled, from, Summer, 1976.

Boot scuffs soil shifts
another wind, gravity, Dung- beetle nesting
in the ribs of a corpse
springing flowers yellow
probably yellow.
A season that.
Is that what.
Is. Is what that.
Which is not but what passes.

V. The Incest

It will always be a yellow star
the fond womb
pink grotto, lust for cosmology
some vehicle
a way to get from
here to there.

A Combination of symbols
bring women to my bed engage
in giving what
is given back,
that ends love.

Lips mesh in the chaos,
thrust until one is another.
Mesh heat lips down is not
then one is before each climbs
free to embrace.
In each other one one.
Entered now two wed three
hungry golden womb star star.

**********

II.

Knowing you well keeps me away
and wanting to be close—
The desire to bury
my face in the soil of your arm pit which sprouts
a drowning man—
whose legs grow to meet the ground—lips full enough
to suckle the origin of the moon's white fingers,
to burrow and root in furrows of soft light.

III.

This is not much of a story of love, but
a charm, a need not wanted, a want not needed.
A seeking Mem in a place when found
dissolves her name. The end is returning.
We have no name
no lover nor daughter.
Night fills day empties morning,
wait in the nothingness for a hand, a token,
chant, charm, something meaning
carry on.

The last swimmer sobbed out,
out of the charming depths
a talisman, the sea sobbed out Bieker
naming one now gone.

Just days ago I had
constructed his return.
Book of Names write here a tale
a story of whose name once unsaid
said here now written Bieker.

Escort the boat of illusion
out of the belly of language.
A name unsaid said.
I wept at the kitchen sink
spoke no words for anything,
nothing to say. First moments a watery
chaos went, gone not gone, gone
what went unsaid gives
a life said unsaid, what in word
say inward, name self, self-said,
name Steve Bieker drowned.

VI. A Cup of Tea

Falter start,
start on.

So said so unsaid.
What undone, undone.

Stand done, stand undone.

Back in the sixties I was in my twenties. I was nineteen in '66 when The Rolling Stones came out with a slew of hits, Paint It Black and Under My Thumb and Time Is On My Side. This was the year Norv and I drove out west in a black '55 Chevy dreaming of girls and drugs and sunny California. I was 48,000 light years away from where I was born. I was in San Francisco, city of garlic and spiders and Mozart's nose. City of splendor. City of fog and mental landscapes baked in poetry. City of the Six Gallery and City Lights and Howl. City of the golden bridge and fisherman's wharf and trophoblastic druids riding glass dragons and stroking the velvet penis of a locomotive valentine. And Coit Tower and the city aquarium and Madam Toussaud's wax breasts weren't enough for me.

     Because I was such a hot and crazy teenager. And in America everyone gets
to be a teenager until they turn 40. This is a full quarter century of
teenaging. A full quarter century of shenanigans and volcanic ejaculations
and blazing hardware and fruit. And although the government strongly
encouraged me to go to a distant country and shoot people I said no I don't
want to go to a distant country and shoot people why would I want to go to a
distant country and shoot people when they're not coming over here and
shooting at me or even threatening to come over here and shoot at me or shoot
at you or shoot at anyone else walking the streets of Monterey or Petaluma or
Manhattan I want to sit on the dock of the bay I want to be a teenager I want
to hone my consonants and vowels into guns of breath into guns that shoot
wild brilliant metaphors and cause heavenly disruption and bluebells and
leopards. Most of all I want to be a beatnik!
   Like Jack Kerouac!
   Like Philip Lamantia!
   This was my greatest ambition. To write a great poem like one of the
great poems in Donald Allen's anthology The New American Poetry. Which I
completely fell in love with. Which sustained me spiritually and
psychologically for decades.
My heart burned like a mushrooming borscht of Rabelaisian vitality. I had to
construct a poem as terrific and complex as a chromosome. Or a cockatoo. Or
the chromosome of a cockatoo.
   A cockatoo at sunset.
   A cockatoo at dawn.
   A cockatoo preening its feathers at noon.
The nights were huge then and the days were long and buoyant. My eyes
clutched the shirt of the sky. I was writing such terrible poetry it clanked
like a bad muffler. I didn't know how to gun the engine. I was still
learning to shift gears.
   San Francisco was like a huge wedding cake iced with fog and purple haze,
St. Francis of Assisi cathedral and the wonderful extravagance of the
streets, whose irregularity corresponded to the clouds. And clang clang went
the trollies.
An old monk read passages from Rimbaud. I was hungry. And I was learning
how to interpret symbols and omens. I saw crows everywhere, and starlings
drunk on fermented berries. I waddled around like Baudelaire's albatross.
   All my memories of that time are made for the night. They come out at
night and make me feel young and promiscuous again. Like crickets and stars.
And sticks on a drum. Sticks pounding beats on a drum. Sticks pounding
tender buttons on a drum.
   Still, I was a really bad poet. I didn't know how to shoulder a harbor or
squeeze liquid into a tube of hot Mexican sound. I didn't know what an
Appaloosa was. I thought it was some kind of horse. I didn't know it was a
cathedral of bone. And when I discovered it was a cathedral of bone I didn't
know it was actually a horse.
And all those days and all those people and all those aspirations were a
beverage. I wanted to drink them all and then spit them out as poetry. All
those windows and all those streets. All those license plates and all those
fish. All that breath and meat and armor. All those clouds crawling over
the hills to turn into nasturtiums at the bottom of the valley. At the
bottom of Lombard. I would have liked to have ripped them out and made
electricity out of them. Youth requires grandeur.
   One day I saw Egypt walk by clutching a ghost.
   And the sun was a peach bleeding light and heat and cumulus and wheat.
   I went to San Jose and swallowed an orchard.
   I went to Petaluma and fawned over a fern.
   I went to Monterey and studied a nipple of sand.
   I went to Santa Cruz and got no satisfaction.
   I saw images of Vietnam the wounded carried on stretchers. Young men
began to return home missing arms and legs and sanity.
   It sounded like a lot of people were dying over there.
   And the bell of madness that jingles like a final desire in the bluish
air.
   That's a line from "The Prose of the Trans-Siberian and of Little Jeanne
of France" by Blaise Cendrar.
   Who also said "we are a storm in the skull of a deaf man."
   Velocity is feminine. It will save you from logic.
   And so I will tell you a story.
   All the orchards are gone and so are the affordable apartments.
   San Francisco is still a wedding cake but it is a very, very expensive
wedding cake.
   A multi-tiered wedding cake.
   Iced with Ice Age algae and a symphony in total darkness.

Birthday of Light

Under palms of the milk moon
    you gather to the bloom
and savor an ancient light that
    crossed two thirds the universe
to herald her news.

The music of the jetskies
    rings round like Tibetan singing bowls
around the mayhem laden mountains
     that rise high into dreamtime
too high to hike
    yet so gentle and
ever maying
     relative to the Himalayas
now the time has come
    when you must quest,
climb to the top of the world
     and when you get to
the top keep climbing and finally
    present your song
to the spheres and seers,
     bring the incense of breath
through the thin reaches
    above the stratuslines and
clouds shaped like Hebrew letters
     above the planes
to the twinkling plains
    lapis lazuli blue
where sutras mix with solarays
      stirred to a sparkling froth
    by miniature harps and invisible winglets in
wet falling diamonding bright      dying words.

Summerworld

The summerworld
        sows the lowlands high
             flowers, flows
                blooms to moons in
        spinning spirals
    which writhe lightly
      in the simmer sun.

Sweet confection.
Honey, chocolate
     cream, raspberry
        pistachio, almonds
           raw bee pollen
               mint, cinnamon
                    crystallized ginger

             under rose incense
          a rouge plume
      the aphrodisiacal twilight
                seeps over rooftops
                       to indie theatres
                           where myth and music
                                court, wed
                          and take turns
                                            the lead,
                                  triage of the masses.

Swathed in light
             and freedom’s rings
          sometimes the locals fall near the sun
                 but are granted
                        forgiving wings
                              when they cannot
                                        summon their own
                    metamorphously, like the hummingbirds
                          who’ve been on the increase
                                    in recent years

out here
       we are flora and fire
                feral allies
              twilit hectares
                 webbed
             and trying
                        not to die

we play on
        the city’s courts
     or in the canyons at night
          along lush hillsides
            under wheat and beams

shoot for reeling salvations
     as the people try to breathe
          when the words
                 call the tune
                          and have the next dance
       like in olden times
      when more than sixty thousand
                willed a gone, glowing mojo
right up in the middle of the
  sky above the marble and domes

swarms of human fireflies

one mid south night
in July
right before the fourth.

Summerworld.

There is only one law.

Flyboy

As through magical theorems
           you apply a tourniquet to hearts
                           and titrate a new sight.

Where there’s fire there’s water.
    The cold fusion formula
        is packed in salt
            and spirited away,
                as with electricity or orgone
                    the proofs go
                                                            poof.

Euterpe, please pick me up in your taxicab tonight
usher me from this sick desert, its black glass buildings and
rigged chance schemes, hook me up with my road pirates
reincarnating on Angel Mesa now while a white owl ascends
please give me your dance lessons and tablets of statecraft

    for this morning among jars
        is a way of life
            four horses forge
                in red dirt storms
                    for the archon
                        the eaglestar

        to see and to soar
            to wing and wind down
                from Sky River
                        around Bell Rock six times

        to back over Coconino
            where streaming systems collide
                into the sierran combine of iron age skies
                    blinding dust tempests in the high desert

            and west along the edgewinds
                    to the rushing sea
                            a fellow light
                                            to disappear into the city.

Growing Boy

White wings flutter to a blur in diffuse white morning light
a few score leagues above California earthly delights
white satellite dishes and red Spanish tiles
curved and dangerously late for rain
out of the blue, cobwebbed in pale white contrails
cast across and spread out like broken bread
while I sit in gold sun wash
and smoke gold leaves
hand rolled from Costa Rica
so fresh the mouth
waters all day.
Yesterday was hazel
stringent and seismic
the abacus had fallen
I got home
from a study of portals
and fractured, glossy
plates in a picture book
from fifteenth century Netherlands
once I thought I would join
the foreign legion
but followed the rose light
that emanates from the
top of the sun
and though I know no word
for death
ended up
down in choppertown
strung in
listening
to the all clear signals
on the hunt
among ampoules
in the jihad rubble
where the shadows of the extinct
are yet fleeting
along comic colored walls
and concrete riverbeds
up and down in hatchetland
to live out a thousand lonelinesses
each pure enough to kill a man
just one of ten thousand kids
who hold lighters to the sky
but the only one
to compare string figures
to string theory
eleven dimensions or
twenty-six
men attempt to affix
a number to things
everything
but the point is
to hold the world
together.

Wheels Up

There are many worse places to be
than the sunset strip on Thursday night.
Hell or not, L.A. always has its
head in the heavens,
for all the sharp knives and fault lines
we are a fireworks of new bands every night
a vaporous cobalt blue
in the fair, rare humid evenings
jasmine and oleander power flower
perfumed waves and noxious, lustral dusks
a single bright Venus and a wire thin new
moon.

A boulevard rally in shakes and calls
sleek baby curves, gridworks of straightaways
flexed muscle cars in metal blare
coming at it with old stuff and new stuff
vintage moves, breakthroughs
cosmic, mobile, surrounded by desert
cliffsides twisted and falling
hypersexual billboards, devilish messages
twenty-four hour news and funerals
stillborn mornings, ravished witching hours
false dreams and dramas so terse, tense
paced just like story
with casts only of characters
yet looks alone could never be anything
other than destiny.

Murky, purple skies as if bruised
by the whispers of murder
a color of corrupt orchid
the city fuming in gun smoke
a ghostly white glow holding us hostage
trapped in vespers, trapped in time
trapped in America, trapped in
our solitary shacks stacked up
against the factories, in violation of code
trapped in rhapsodies in black
trapped in double crosswalks where no one
ever stops let alone slows
here, at the tunnel at the end of the light.

You write with a feather.
Ink is a thick, black come.
Swan days gone
like ash rise again.
We are the church of life,
the boys from the flatlands
out past runways, highways
but now riding high, we are flying high
in the milky green neon
we say
if you lived here you would be here now
more equatorial, sultry hot spells
break down boundaries
a fevery crowd in a quickening time
aspire theatric chemistry
where the soul of man never dies
rocket past gravity, a unified
field
over and under, one tree to another
once you’re gone, you’re not gone
when you take the leading edge
and chrome it in classicism
of course you get the next generation.

Land of Roses

Now that you are in my dream
from the mica skies to a topaz sea
from the pearly earth to
ten thousand miles gone in a low chariot flashing
across the dotted lines, through the lights
into the misty morning caws
this continent’s song
the planet’s blue mythology
her rich trillions of flora, coral, gems, fertile valleys,
red rivers, deltas, and kingdoms by the score,
the lands translate living colors
into new arrangements.

To gaze out on a California skyline
        composed of treetops and transponders
     you can recall the juncture of life and death
            or the crossroads of this dream and any other.

Lost natural powers are inside you, like a voice
only you cannot feel or see them.
For more than two fortnights
I’ve been hanging out on the vine
you can solve the mysteries of creation
but the one of salvation vexes me
like a puzzle no one can believe was
really meant to be, not this way.
This erotic orbit has begun to decay
and the fountainous passages at immortality
I tour each morning by dawn’s early light
seem no more than treading water or
a dead man’s float.

Staying alive is everything except enough.
We seek a more graceful stroke
      various yet symmetric
    balanced yet freefalling
muscles ripple like waves in rays
to ache in exertions against wood, stone,
attacks against gravity and moves of every kind,
tough love for I and I.

A little night driving to
blow away the stricken, hazy prime
and straight up south of the south coast
from Venice to Cambria
the earth eminently complex and possible and beautiful
but you cut it so many ways every day
hush and you can hear a silent, knowing laugh
as she spins rolls and plays
a galactic fractal that morphs in helices
generates in rings to evolve in weaves
still legions of lonely people
lost down the highway of sighs
as we vanish into cyberspace
and another million miss the ride
to the great road
every corona around the sun
in a head rush
every chromosome
drenched in entheogens
no one knows what day it is
what age, which season
or even the year it may be
but as in the end of a beat dream spree in Denver
or like the next to last stylus in Memphis
feels like time is running out.

Absence, Airs, Desert, The Dream, N.Y.C., The Return, The Flower; Gadflies; Highs; Rembrandt, Etc., and Jane; Sketches; Trio; Window

SB: The following films were all made in 1976. I do not wish to describe them.

When I entered films in the Experimental Film Competition of the 1958 World’s Fair, I included the following statement in protest to this demand for ‘summary of the subject’ (description). I’ve finally got around to reading my own statement and taking it seriously. In 1958 I did provide descriptions of each film entered—my only mistake. Now I simply quote the clarity of that long ago protest, finally comprehended:

‘I want it understood that this ‘summary’ is written for identification purposes only and that it is not intended as a statement by the artist on his work. It is my belief that statements by the artist, particularly in print, aesthetically speaking, would better have been included in that work in the first place.

‘If a film is a work of moving visual art, it is its own subject and subject only to itself. The extent to which a film can be described is the extent to which it is deficient as a work of visual art. If the ‘summary of the subject’ of a film can be interpreted as that which is intended to inspire perception in the viewer, rather than as that which attempts to describe the film for the viewer, then (the title) is my ‘summary of the subject.’”

The Dream, N.Y.C., The Return, The Flower (1976, 24.5

minutes)

Shown a little faster then intended they were

brisk in some way unintended—or so he was

busy when summer came into the house—

winter was black and “The Dream” was craven.

taffeta linen silk and satin

only a sudden summer sun this was as it was—

what you didn’t understand was that this

was where we came to the end and walked away

but this was what I wanted when I wanted to become one

NYC

The model in the garden doesn’t move,

must be frozen—some assembly required.

What were you saying?—what was the matter?—

were you worried, did you remember what it was?

Was it worth it, did you see it then,

were you ready—was one Jonas Mekas?

He brought his camera into the kitchen,

then destroyed it in slow motion.

People walking to the Cloisters through an alley,

in them he found a symbol for his shattered no love feeling.

red hair

red light

red stripes

redneck

in the subway

where they enter

city hall, from the

desert into this one—

such a one the sun is

maybe someday someone will say something about the subway

such as this: unable to open my eyes I kept them closed, barely

letting light enter them—now that others are watching us, what

if “The Return” was what we really wanted, what if this was

something for ourselves now—would it still feel as if “The Flower” was opened only to be torched in darkness?

Gadflies (1976, 12.5 minutes)

white winter

summer stars

star blossoms

what were we drinking?

no one noticed

what you had you

gave it all away—what if

the words were recorded?

They were remembering—

did they mind the camera?

Did they wish that for a moment

he was with them? He even filmed

their goodbyes—the trees had that

black sabbath glow between them

and when the sun set they returned to

darkness—then the trees again until

someone took the camera away.

Rembrandt, Etc., and Jane (1976, 17.5 minutes)

“Rembrandt” was dead for 400 years before the camera

was invented, and so he used whatever he had at hand to

hone the object into what he wanted—how now the lens will

do it for you, but you are stuck with what light has entered—

a cell phone is ringing in the dark auditorium in the

first row—first its sound is muffled, then it enters

into the room and a woman’s voice says happily “hello?”

Send me the film and I’ll splice it

black as it is

water currents

what this trance really was

Michael McClure was there

and so was his wife Joanna.

What was he thinking when he filmed this?

What went on when he was in the room?

REM

BRANDT

& Buddy Hackett were on TV and

sort of out-of-focus.

ETC.

came next—the House of Commons inhabited by angels in the darkness—lords and ladies paraded through the long halls until there was some kind of disturbance—

someone turned off all the lights and lit the candles—a ghost’s face floated

above them—no one knew who she was–she may as well have been

a sunspot or the Northern Lights.

They went to the pub—the neon lights

on city streets, behind the shadows

of the automobiles as they

drove around the block.

Through the curtains someone’s shadow fluttered and left them, trembling.

AND

An ampersand or whatever.

It’s lost to me now.

Clouds are to sky as

foam is to ocean—

under up.

What did the recording angel bring me

this time? He brought me a

postcard.

JANE

Summer storm brewing.

What do you think of this?

I think it’s a “mind moving over the waters”

brought her face to face with earth.

This is a summer song—

how even I wanted to touch her skin,

her shadow in the seaweed

fluttered.

The red of an oak forest;

the flora’s green shadows,

disappearing into arbor darkness.

Then the sun again—

spring’s sweetness glistens

on new leaves—

suddenly over

when the film splits.

Almost now.

Sketches (1976, 9 minutes)

the crowd has considerably thinned

the motor hums

I want a body now

in and out of focus

he returns as one would

who is running past them fast.

Nightfall. An old tree stump darkened by no moon.

A stoplight the only color, although the distant streetlights

glisten, a thin strip of aurora exposed along the rim.

What did you

think of the dog? What did he think of you doesn’t really

matter now or ever—and anyway not in a dog’s world

would any of this matter—did you mean what you said,

was it over? Over as it ever was, but never over as I

thought it was.

Listen to the blood flowing underneath the skin.

He filmed their dog and then her, sleeping, white on white.

Trio (1976, 6.5 minutes)

I heard her mumble in the front row several times now—a deep

rumble like a hardwood floor—she leaves the theater—not every-

thing we do has meaning, for instance in its dimness gleams

a dog’s paws—a shiver, dreaming—bone and muscle animates

what I have tried to say, such as how I’ve been sitting here a

long time. And that there is a man here who is coughing.

Maybe no one will ever know what this was but I will.

Many remain but many more have entered the night air with all its January chill—what would be in summer a “Window” is frosted—

how chill it is. Cruelty, Vice, and Sin.

He caught the window waiting as it’s waiting still—

Then he lost focus

and came to a bad end.

Window (1976, 10.5 minutes)

The circles in a woman’s skin—

did he wonder if anyone would

wonder or watch this—

shot from the window of a plane

the trees shiver—

the snow slowly ascending above the flats

emptied out in a hurry.

Bird (1978, 4 minutes)

SB: “This is the first clear vision I’ve had of the

hot-blooded dinosaurs still living among us.”

BIRd:

sunscreen somehow in the cloud

flitters sunlight into shimmering

skies blueredyellowrainbow light

transparent clouds leaves unfocused

in the dark animal shadowforest

studied fowl.

Burial Path (1978, 15 minutes)

SB: “The film begins with the image of a dead bird. The mind moves to forget, as well as to remember: this film, in the tradition of THOT-FAL’N, graphs the process of forgetfulness against all oddities of remembered bird-shape. The film might best be seen along with SIRIUS REMEMBERED and THE DEAD as the third part of a trilogy.”

dropped dead bird begins

some scurried blizzard—

clustered icicles flash

I remember the first one I saw

later developed a way to see film as

mysterious thus this one is as it is

not as a new seeing but that this is a

color corollary joining flowers with

a cement floor—some of it is just too hard—

did he know what he had made—

bruised by the end—a sibilance to color.

Centre (1978, 13 minutes)

SB: “A series of narrative events, stories if you like, but so clustered visually as to have a center, so to speak, slightly off center.”

Back to the Centre star

caught the lines in space

what we work toward is an order

or here we move toward pure color

that is seen, that exists as object

that I have returned into light

that in light I am dissolved

and that in light it is removed

that in definition it is solid

but that on film it is something

made of light and light only—

its shadows deeper—and here

the film becomes a Turner,

moving canvas swirling yellow,

white, and dissonant with this world.

Blue Ice

met a camera moving silently in wilderness,

Alaskan ice fields, shiny alpine lakes, Yukon

forests, perhaps snow and boulder fields

slowly moving as the moving film is moving,

lens deranged, unarranged, oblivious

red summer stars behind subtle clouds coiling.

Duplicity (1978, 23 minutes)

SB: “A friend of many years’ acquaintance showed me the duplicity of myself. And, midst guilt and anxiety, I came to see that duplicity often shows itself forth in semblance of sincerity. Then a dream informed me that SINCERITY IV, which I had just completed, was such a semblance. The dream ended with the word “Duplicity” scratched white across the closed eyelids (as the title “The Weir-Falcon Saga” had been given to me). I saw that the film in question demonstrated a duplicity of relationship between the Brakhages and animals (Totemism) and environs (especially trees), visiting friends (Robert Creeley, Ed Dorn, Donald Sutherland, Angelo DiBenedetto and Jerome Hill among them) and people-at-large. I saw that the film shifted its compositi

	For Immediate Release guest-edited by Darrin Daniel
Volume II, Number 7 July 1, 2002