[100 Challenge] Ocean_19

Lazarus’ caterwaul

father drove the volvo into the flood 

the water came up through the floor 

his shoe against the pedal filled with water

then up ankles to shins the car

wouldn’t go anymore he left it behind 

like a dream walked to us mile on mile

through the rain like some Lazarus of the flood

he left a puddle at the door mother said you smell like dog 

he threw his head back his 

laughter flooded the house

++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++

Burn Burn My Friend, and Continue to Become the Wick Maker

Far-flung from the staggered pavilions in neon waymark

The solitary half-man hunched

Dreaming of the spaces between the leaves of books

How can words breathe pressed one to one in there

Stories used to breathe through throats 

In the ancient recitations

But now

Only prayers see us into this world only prayers see us out

You reach for the spokeless wheel you pull it down over your hair

Does the blankness from which we assemble differ from that into which we die

Might there be a multiplicity of nullities

Star-freckle

Lank and honey

Melanin spray over skinny bloom

Hanging there in the dark in the shape of a tear

Noose as vaginal passage

Birthing canal to the next world

Head through as the newborn crowns and jump!

The leap which never lands

The feet only hover 

As in those dreams where one falls for infinity

Never to touch ground

…And then blank

The ancients who inhabit the far shore 

Reach their palms toward your frail ship of twigs 

Not in welcome but to push you back into this same bewildering fascia

Where vertigo and ecstasy twirl together at the event horizon

Of the black hole in the brain

Where the nucleus of oblivion 

Wrestles the formshifting desiderata 

Whose object and subject are identical

Named life

—A gust of air exploding backwards through the body like a shotgun shell

And you’re shackled to a hospital bed

A necklace braided into the neck

As though scarred in sidewinder

And a wonderment

Plumed and jagged

Flashing in your skull like a siren

They had found you soon enough

The rope inverted wick

With your head at its center a flame

And now far-flung from that prison

And placing in your wake rarefied marks in the tangled geometries of the twigs

My friend, now that your will has overcome the animal instinct to persist

Now that each morning rushes in with its shotgun shell

Onto an existence startled by its own anorexic nonextinction

Now that the lamb becomes the lion

And you step like an angel among holy and unholy alike 

Leaving not a footprint

What are you?

A new form of man

A half-king

++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++

Mulberry Scaffold

Every family hauls its nest of silkworms when it comes season to decamp and rotate on the great wheel of the world

The children harrowing the oxen with willow

The grandmothers shouldering their baskets of grubs

Up the Jataransi meadows for muskroot then over the chipped mountains of obsidian where so many grave middens stand stacked beneath the wind

Placing our mark too and a leaving of fishtail braid from the season’s dead

Every family is wide every family its own People

Ours skid out through the landed waste toward the meetingplace of the families

Stretched doghide veils when the sands blow and camel shadow at high heat 

The grandmothers howl at the prairie sun-mirror

And after the mountains a halfmoon to arrival:

Without delay the falcolners strap up to ride out hunting fox and hare

While the sister-wives and the children cousins all 

Take to the work:

Trim out the saplings

Heave the poles up one to the next in the pattern and spreading the nets across them in overlapping arcs

Singing the mulberry song the grandmothers smear the mulberry paste  

And to great celebration the small dragons are released upon the frames

On these the worms will weave their shapes

Spin the tents beneath which will gather the People

++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++

Jumper

I was at the deli i ordered a ham on sourdough there was one spot left at the table 

Man next to me said he joined a monastic order left the world awhile sat in silence ten years he saw 

his lives splayed behind him like the tail of a peacock 

I’m a jumper he said

You meet some crazies up there but some know exactly what they’re doing

And what exactly is that i said squirting on the mustard preparing he said

Once i let someone else pack my chute my main didn’t open 

Now to access your secondary you gotta jettison the main so it doesn’t tangle you understand? You abandon your lifeline it’s no shit

I let it fly the feeling is incredible 

Time was getting critical i pulled the secondary it left me just like the main

What the fuck i said

Wasn’t attached he said now they done autopsies on people that died diving and most are dead before they hit you know why? Fear

Know what i thought those seconds before i hit i thought since this is the last thing i’ll ever feel i want to feel every last iota of this 

It was the most relaxed i’ve been my whole life and you know what i just bounced fifteen feet

I was broken in about every place you can get broken they had me zipped in a body bag i came to inside 

The medics said i was laughing like a maniac i don’t remember

Were you afraid i said my sandwich about finished at this point

He said listen kid his throat sounded like a pyramid

I saw exactly what i saw meditating: if i had been shot in one of my previous lives i saw who shot me and i loved him like my brother i made all my pasts right 

there’s lots of ways to prepare to die not just jumping no i ain’t afraid 

I crumpled my sandwich wrapper it flew through the air we both watched it hit the waste bin

Ciao i said

This whole thing is a dream he said when we wake up we wake up laughing