Poemunity — your poem community

At midnight, in the month of June, I stand beneath the mystic moon. An opiate vapor, dewy, dim, Exhales from out her golden rim, And softly dripping, drop by drop, Upon the quiet mountain top, Steals drowsily and musically Into the universal valley. The rosemary nods upon the grave; The lily lolls upon the wave; Wrapping the fog about its breast, The ruin moulders into rest; Looking like Lethe, see! the lake A conscious slumber seems to take, And would not, for the world, awake. All Beauty sleeps!—and lo! where lies Irene, with her Destinies! Oh, lady bright! can it be right— This window open to the night? The wanton airs, from the tree-top, Laughingly through the lattice drop— The bodiless airs, a wizard rout, Flit through thy chamber in and out, And wave the curtain canopy So fitfully—so fearfully— Above the closed and fringéd lid ’Neath which thy slumb’ring soul lies hid, That, o’er the floor and down the wall, Like ghosts the shadows rise and fall! Oh, lady dear, hast thou no fear? Why and what art thou dreaming here? Sure thou art come o’er far-off seas, A wonder to these garden trees! Strange is thy pallor! strange thy dress! Strange, above all, thy length of tress, And this all solemn silentness! The lady sleeps! Oh, may her sleep, Which is enduring, so be deep! Heaven have her in its sacred keep! This chamber changed for one more holy, This bed for one more melancholy, I pray to God that she may lie Forever with unopened eye, While the pale sheeted ghosts go by! My love, she sleeps! Oh, may her sleep, As it is lasting, so be deep! Soft may the worms about her creep! Far in the forest, dim and old, For her may some tall vault unfold— Some vault that oft hath flung its black And wingéd pannels fluttering back, Triumphant, o’er the crested palls Of her grand family funerals— Some sepulchre, remote, alone, Against whose portals she hath thrown, In childhood, many an idle stone— Some tomb from out whose sounding door She ne’er shall force an echo more, Thrilling to think, poor child of sin! It was the dead who groaned within.

I see a beautiful gigantic swimmer swimming naked through the eddies of the sea, His brown hair lies close and even to his head, he strikes out with courageous arms, he urges himself with his legs, I see his white body, I see his undaunted eyes, I hate the swift-running eddies that would dash him head-foremost on the rocks. What are you doing you ruffianly red-trickled waves? Will you kill the courageous giant? will you kill him in the prime of his middle-age? Steady and long he struggles, He is baffled, bang’d, bruis’d, he holds out while his strength holds out, The slapping eddies are spotted with his blood, they bear him away, they roll him, swing him, turn him, His beautiful body is borne in the circling eddies, it is continually bruis’d on rocks, Swiftly and out of sight is borne the brave corpse.

Henri Rouseeau, 1897 In the heat of her dream, she hears The iron kettle boiling, its scuttle and hum As hurried as hoofbeats across a plain. She drops in two guinea hens. Dancing In a ring round her skirts, the children Cheer, “Auntie, the English song!”  Lifting Her lute, she sings of the cat and the fiddle, The cow jumping over the moon.  How the little Ones hoot when the dish runs away With the spoon.  Ah, spoon — an uncloaked Lute, it waits to be strummed. The temptation of London, of Paris, Of bumping along in the carriage with M. Philippe In his top hat and greatcoat to visit The peacocks, turquoise and gold and green, each Roaming the Bois de Boulogne with one hundred eyes. She sleeps in the desert, under a smiling full moon That shines in the teal night. Quiet behind her, A lion stands, tail erect, having sniffed At her onyx flesh, at the ribbony stripes His color-blindness darkens on her muslin dress, All rainbow hues. She is lost in a dream, Always happiest out of doors, without shoes.

It is easy to love a pig in a nightgown. See how he sleeps, white flannel straining his neck at the neckhole. His body swells and then deflates. The gown is nothing to be ashamed of, only the white clay of moonlight smeared over his hulk, original clothing, the milk of his loneliness. The flickering candle of a dream moves his warty eyelids. All sleeping things are children.

Sleeping sister of a farther sky, dropped from zenith like a tender tone, the lucid apex of a scale unknown whose whitest whisper is an opaque cry of measureless frequency, the spectral sigh you breath, bright hydrogen and brighter zone of fissured carbon, consummated moan and ceaseless rapture of a brilliant why. Will nothing wake you from your livid rest? Essence of ether and astral stone the stunned polarities your substance weaves in one bright making, like a dream of leaves in the tree’s mind, summered. Or as a brooding bone roots constellations in the body’s nest.

Between what should and what should not be Everything is liable to explode. Many times I was told who has no land has no sea. My father Learned to fly in a dream. This is the story Of a sycamore tree he used to climb When he was young to watch the rain. Sometimes it rained so hard it hurt. Like being Beaten with sticks. Then the mud would run red. My brother believed bad dreams could kill A man in his sleep, he insisted We wake my father from his muffled screams On the night of the day he took us to see his village. No longer his village he found his tree amputated. Between one falling and the next There’s a weightless state. There was a woman Who loved me. Asked me how to say tree In Arabic. I didn’t tell her. She was sad. I didn’t understand. When she left. I saw a man in my sleep three times. A man I knew Could turn anyone into one-half reptile. I was immune. I thought I was. I was terrified of being The only one left. When we woke my father He was running away from soldiers. Now He doesn’t remember that night. He laughs About another sleep, he raised his arms to strike a king And tried not to stop. He flew But mother woke him and held him for an hour, Or half an hour, or as long as it takes a migration inward. Maybe if I had just said it. Shejerah, she would’ve remembered me longer. Maybe I don’t know much about dreams But my mother taught me the law of omen. The dead Know about the dying and sometimes Catch them in sleep like the sycamore tree My father used to climb When he was young to watch the rain stream, And he would gently swing.

I show her how to put her arms around me, but she’s much too small. What’s worse, she doesn’t understand. And although she lies beside me, sticking out her tongue, it’s herself she licks. She likes my stroking hand. And even lets me kiss. But at my demand: “Now, do it to me, like this,” she backs off with a hiss. What’s in her little mind? Jumping off the bed, she shows me her behind, but curls up on the rug instead. I beg her to return. At first, she did, then went and hid under the covers. She’s playing with my feet! “Oh, Boa, come back. Be sweet, Lie against me here where I’m nice and warm. Settle down. Don’t claw, don’t bite. Stay with me tonight.” Seeming to consent, she gives a little whine. Her deep, deep pupils meet mine with a look that holds a flood ... But not my brand. Not at all. And, what‘s worse, she’s much too small.

After Octavio Paz What’s most human must drive an arrow to the heart. Ghosts, too, must abide by this directive & remain transparent, going about their business in old houses. Before I was an I, I longed to be ethereal. Sprouting wings at will & gliding through cul-de-sacs and malls around the valley. My hands, too, would gradually disappear followed by my arms, then neck & head until my whole body was slight as allergen. Before I was an I, I spoke an old language that would return on drowsy afternoons. Therefore I struggled to say the simplest sentences. So much so that the maligned semicolon became an ardent ally, an island of pause and the deep breath. The comma, too, bless its tiny soul, was the crumb which the god of small favors multiplied tenfold for my morning pie. Before I was an I, knowledge clung to me like burrs & hunger guided my ship like the barefoot light on the sleeping land & sea.

In the evening she comes to me like a child ready for bed. She slips under covers, curls into my curves or stretches against my spine. Some have said they fear I might crush her, but we're a tender pair, each aware of the warmth and the other. I knew a woman once who kept an orphaned antelope, let it roam her kitchen, sleep in her bed, musky scent and hooves. This dog looks like a small deer, poised and silent in the lawn, but at night, she is a dark body, lean and long against the lavender cotton of my summer sleeping. We are bone and bone, muscle and muscle, and underneath each surface a quiet and insistent pulse.

I beg to dicker with my silver-tongued companion, whose lips are ready to read my shining gloss. A versatile partner, conversant and well-versed in the verbal art, the dictionary is not averse to the solitary habits of the curiously wide-awake reader. In the dark night’s insomnia, the book is a stimulating sedative, awakening my tired imagination to the hypnagogic trance of language. Retiring to the canopy of the bedroom, turning on the bedside light, taking the big dictionary to bed, clutching the unabridged bulk, heavy with the weight of all the meanings between these covers, smoothing the thin sheets, thick with accented syllables—all are exercises in the conscious regimen of dreamers, who toss words on their tongues while turning illuminated pages. To go through all these motions and procedures, groping in the dark for an alluring word, is the poet’s nocturnal mission. Aroused by myriad possibilities, we try out the most perverse positions in the practice of our nightly act, the penetration of the denotative body of the work. Any exit from the logic of language might be an entry in a symptomatic dictionary. The alphabetical order of this ample block of knowledge might render a dense lexicon of lucid hallucinations. Beside the bed, a pad lies open to record the meandering of migratory words. In the rapid eye movement of the poet’s night vision, this dictum can be decoded, like the secret acrostic of a lover’s name.