The Mind

we all got tickets to The Truth
finally we thought finally
when the curtain fell away
our indrawn breaths could be heard
even in the next theater
even the gasp of the mime
who had slipped in among us
a loud whushing like reams of litter
whirling upward in a gale
hands shot to mouths and mouths
fell open I couldn’ t say within
how many seconds
all our minds shut some
slamming others just a click
like 300 parallel
rows of tipped dominoes
a racket of almost unison

A momentary rupture to the vision:
the wavering limbs of a birch fashion

the fluttering hem of the deity’ s garment,
the cooling cup of coffee the ocean the deity

waltzes across. This is enough — but sometimes
the deity’ s heady ta-da coaxes the cherries

in our mental slot machine to line up, and
our brains summon flickering silver like

salmon spawning a river; the jury decides
in our favor, and we’ re free to see, for now.

Brutal to give
the prisoner a window —
a blue sky glimpse —

as if an afterlife
existed. Brutal
for you to parade

in a body
in the same
room where I dream you.

That you, Father, are “in my mind,”
some will argue, who cherish the present
but flee the past. They haven’ t my need
to ask, What was I? Asking instead,
What am I?, they see themselves bejeweled
and wingèd. Because they would fly and have value,
their answers are pretty but false:

Transfixed to the, by the, on the congruities, who is herself a vanishing point coming to closure — dusky flutter — trilling away like a watchdog on drugged sop, channeling her mother and grandmother who’ ve engraved on her locket phrases in script: “glide on a blade” and “rustling precedes the shuck.” This is not my teeming fate, my rind, my roiling ellipsis or valedictory spray of myrrh.

And I was born with you, wasn’ t I, Blues?
Wombed with you, wounded, reared and forwarded
from address to address, stamped, stomped
and returned to sender by nobody else but you,
Blue Rider, writing me off every chance you
got, you mean old grudgeful-hearted, table-
turning demon, you, you sexy soul-sucking gem.

I.
The empty of stomach
manifests silence
a stillness
that levels
coffee in a cup
and in a respectful manner
allows steam to penetrate
the surface.
Reversal of action
has created my sandstone canyon
rooted cedar and sage at my feet.
This movement is where
a tranquility stems.

You would have thought it foolish to speak to the dead,

but I have lived two decades longer now than you

and all this time I have carried you in my head

so I think I have the right to question what you said,

dear teacher. My religious upbringing’s residue,

you would have thought it foolish. To speak to the dead,

however, is sometimes necessary, especially haunted

by all the things I know you hoped I’d do

with all this time that I have carried you in my head.

In a dream last night I followed where you led

That which installs itself in the mind embraces sound

Rebounding,
rounding the fecund earth

Birth, as in what is not, as in one makes one,
is a mighty absence to understand

(and there are those who fail to get their lessons done)

Dun is the color of submission

Unfledged, she leafs through what has been nothing never
Never to be what she is/ or could /or hope to be
Bewitched by dictions (fictions) on the surface —

Face naming that which she must save, polished like an apple —

... some days ago I saw the picture of an Angel who, in making the Annunciation, seemed to be trying to chase Mary out of her room with movements showing the sort of attack one might make on some hated enemy; and Mary, as if desperate, seemed to be trying to throw herself out of the window. Do not fall into errors like these.

— Leonardo da Vinci
It is time to speak of the lies
of images, omissions, insertions —

imitations of reality,

but whose reality, Leonardo?

For you she’s in nature —