[Photo by Warren Falcon. Click image to enlarge.]
Apprehension...the leaves, the leaves,
still, as still as everness returnd,
defining distances with green. The space between
alive with each upon each barely in motion...
Far down--I voice in the wrong beauty
better than no beauty--to see a still world still
hopping mad among its calm of leaves.
- Robert Duncan, from Selected Poems, 17.
defining distances with green. The space between
alive with each upon each barely in motion...
Far down--I voice in the wrong beauty
better than no beauty--to see a still world still
hopping mad among its calm of leaves.
- Robert Duncan, from Selected Poems, 17.
Notes About The Cipher Poems Below
for Mary Kerney Levenstein
The first poem below was written at least 15 years ago upon the death of Mooky whom I have known since he was an infant, who was only in his mid-20's when he died, a long awaited heart transplant extending his life by only 2 years.
I dreamed, and what are dreams but "the space between", what is also called "liminal space", just after Mooky died that his life work was to fly handmade paper airplanes from his inner city brownstone roof praying to catch an air current which would take the planes high aloft over the "City of Brotherly Love". His laughter alone made us all soar perhaps in preparation for the grief, sore, sore, come with his passing. The humorless paper planes were downers yet provided many moments of good-natured clowning between the pilot on the roof above and the taunting friendly crowd hurling insults below between guffaws and questions about the sanity of the mad maker and launcher of perpetually doomed flights (homo viator, "man the flyer/traveler", indeed). Upon each choreographed toss of plane Mooky would loudly expound:
"Remember now thy Creator in the days of thy youth,
while the evil days come not, nor the years draw nigh,
when thou shalt say, I have no pleasure in them...
and those that look out of the windows be darkened,
And
rise up at the voice of the bird, and all the daughters of
musick shall be brought low... and the grasshopper shall
be a burden, and desire shall fail: because man goeth to
his long home, and the mourners go about the streets:
Or ever the silver cord be loosed, or the golden bowl be
broken, or the pitcher be broken at the fountain, or the
wheel broken at the cistern.
Then shall the dust return to the earth as it was:
and the spirit shall return unto God who gave it.
Vanity of vanities, saith the preacher; all is vanity." - Ecclesiastes 12.
And the dream crowd of congregant mirth below would bellow back," ALL IS VANITY!" The plane would be thrown to its fate with cheers rising from the cracked street.
Each plane bore a written prayer within its folds.
On a clear, windy day of the dream Mooky ventured to the roof slowly, slowly, up the doubtful ladder, each rung "clumb," as he said in the West Philly tongue, "a labor of love...I clumb because I can," between heartbeats, "I haven't much to do but pray, make my mama some glad-days, and to the god of skies say, "Thanks anyways."
My poem, unlike the dream full of feeling, is a rather cold, blue poem--more cipher than poem--especially if most people now associate poetry mainly to emotions, sentiments and, all too often, sentimentality which may indeed propel a poem into existence but as quickly kill it by emotional surplus, by excess. Emotions may inspire poetry but are not poems. Although Mooky was never understated, the powerful grief and strong love in this poem is, yet hopefully reveals itself in the labor and the longing to see "the space between" where presence partakes but does not necessarily concretize space but for negative relief more leaf than tree.
Mooky's poem, and the others, rather, see death liminally, betwixt/between, as intended occurrences within life fixed only in human memory, momentary spaces between preeminence ripe for nuanced existence hopeful for essential being before postulant poses and disposals dance with and beyond enduring impermanence, then the always eventual departures. And silence, the richer, always emptier for such richness. Let us each bitch about that, rendering praise to the end.
These cipher-poems below, visual space between each "stanza", are intended to be bracketed moments, meditations, sculpted emptiness as we each all are. In the first, repetition of images and phrases only slightly rearranged may rearrange awareness, perceptions, surmises, via resonant conveyances. The reader can fall perhaps between cracks of space and jarring syntax. Most readers of poetry in general do not want to work so hard with poems such as these below. Quick and easy, in and out, shouting sentiments and slogans, are much "the poetry thing" these days. I am not, obviously, of those braying schools of poetry slams and "performance" though I know these are in the history of oral poetry performance mostly for religious/shamanic purposes.
These below, however, are more cerebral, not meant to shake or stir or whirl one into extroverted states and thoughts although they do disrupt confluent agreements regarding texts and contexts. These are more moments of conjured instasy, not ecstasy, these are inner stances invoking trance, altering scansion, possible expansion of spaces between, ending in silence, in stillness.
If one is caught, a sparrow in a sparrow net, in a conveyance or two, arriving within or near instatic states then my little sparrow poems may serve, and your reading may free them, hidden prayers written in mendicant wings.
**CIPHER ONE**
Minimalist Death Cyphers, A Meditation In Nine Rounds
for Mooky,
not even two hearts
could contain your
great spirit
1
Blue cornflowers
lean forward
Reach again
One hand
What cannot be seen
in spaces between
matters
Sky has no memory
2
Lean forward
One hand
in spaces between
Sky has no memory
3
Reach again
What cannot be seen
matters
4
One hand
in spaces between
Sky has no memory
5
What cannot be seen
matters
Blue Cornflowers
reach again
6
In spaces between
Sky has no memory
Lean forward
One hand
7
Sky has no memory
lean forward
One hand
in spaces between
8
Matters
Blue cornflowers
Reach again
What cannot be seen
9
Blue cornflowers
Reach again
What cannot be seen
matters
Lean forward
One hand
in spaces between
Sky has no memory
**
**CIPHER TWO**
Three Tracing Infinite Musings
1
Beside hewn stones
on rotting plots
an unseen Chiseler
2
Here is a presence
something returning
in spite of melting clocks
3
Striven from
white rock
a wider sky
**CIPHER THREE**
Where Dispose Of The Joke Of Bones -
Minimalist Cryptics Sometimes Metaphysical
"Is that dance slowing in the mind of man
that made him think the universe could hum?" - Theodore Roethke
for two:
Agnes Martin, American artist,
minimalist painter extraordinaire
Elaine Bellezza, artist, too,
and traveler,
and early Anima-as-Fate,
and 'eye giver'
1
tell me now
glass-handled knives
I'm not clear where we started
2
off the square
in the darkest cell
where darkness is at its deepest -
some sense of home
those forms bursting forth
3
seal us in
ascetic fire -
and the cave become a dissonance
the lament on your face of saffron reddening
4
but the grids never are
little girls jumping rope
5
challenge circle words,
the self of rings
like a brown back
the empty form goes
extends outward
yet these words do not contain you
6
you have an 'element'
the word is ugly too
dearer than a son
cut cut cut out
the heart that lies
7
walking seems to cover time
the summit is rounded
outline of a foot on a rock
8
you speak in circles
though loving squares
when I cover squares clad in ashes
are all questions then mother of pearl
9
the pilaster speaks
loudly of days
dearer than wealth
the silence on the floor
10
discover the last image
how skim the ocean of brine
you wear on your face
that gray weight
11
the plain can do almost
nothing but weep
to turn my eyes away
destroys its power
the untamed fire
12
between the rain
whose throat is blue
like a wild fern is clear
I am sad when I see you
13
your letters arrive fat
swollen with human form
they fly out from my palms
look around you
14
mind now
mistaken
dying flowers
not traceable
instead -
believe the sky is not so wide
it reaches forward
(let us pass)
it is a far cry
is pervasive
get rid of everything
only see in me a part
15
the pagoda and the spire
poke the eye
I once understood you as
articulate who couldn't stand
now knowledge is less and less to
me
and a clear mind
16
the rose
are squared
white edge
of the world
ugly
sitting in
snow
17
where dispose of the joke of bones
one must feel the forms
bursting in the tranquil shade
the reality of virtual form
sitting in said snow
the beat of a wing we grieve
certain words repeating -
the world 'ugly'
and just is the 'plain'
what becomes of skin
what becomes of a lotus petal
it tears apart
18
believe the streets are blistering
Nature is the wheel
settle for less
some sense of home
those forms bursting forth
between the rain
whose throat is blue
they fly out from my palms
look around you
*
