Cedar Sigo

I come from Inuit oil money, From instruments of chance and divination. The most loose, shut in, wavering mind, Recording my day with recitations, antennae, Narration and figure, my phone might die. I'm walking dirty. Shop and mob cops, not to touch my mother's breast Or the queen's royal crown signature Izzy Juju—hijacked, forsaking all others. The untamed scotch is mine. It cost the picture a fortune To say nothing of my turban, costume copies Of topaz bracelets, the umpteenth translation. Did you ever know Micah, Gay Sunshine, Grace Cathedral, Coconut? I went from heels at Barneys to the depths of the bins. Who could be like dropping in? I'll fold both my hands In gloves and wait, Hope Diamond peeking out.

Life in unbridled collapse, Let tuneful praise ascend Not a single line out of step with my band, aboard the riverboat when the sun shown red and especially dark upon my room I was shown to 3464 once Jack Lon dons I was told. The black forest alcohols filled my mind, my one & only skull with rock crystal (The Butchers Field) Its grass & the stream cut my rooms in 3. I write & I laugh to think again upon the stream, its demon black mask lights under- neath My servants stay fine & lower their eyes I proclaim the empire, my coat of arms & cigarettes to be held across façades of cathedrals, crimson the flight. More than one death from a square bottled ink The MARVEL brand I enjoy reading signs through the fog— -HOTEL HUNTINGTON- Then that evening and all of Fox Plaza  was the same white A permanent stripe on my blue bike I raise my hood I think there are other lost men in surrounding blocks alike in their thinking “There is no other man to enjoy such fog besides me.”          to wander tracks in clear star cut ground I am sorry I said he was already high We got so high together and I forgot to say I had invested a lot in my first walkthrough the greatest Marco Polo single file best roulette There’s a bad moon on the rise and I’ve got quite a stash rubbings from the calligram graves, I have explained their hollows and brick a cross where it is written in script YOUNG BLOOD STRAIGHT EDGE Impossibly accurate                 the fifth wristwatch diamond on the 12 I have reached the cave    it has been shot up. & I am punished to this day ruby under black letterpress My name goes first.

for John Wieners I cut out the “Heart with Snowflake” Myself but it is not mine, Forget This bloody coat bloody shirt, I Think it is the writing that makes Me sick, The scores and scores of Incidental music, this nosebleed all Spring all wet, I’m positively angry with the Impertinence of it! I’m Sewing up the kinks in this film, I’m Trying to! I’m trying to burn a light Between, There’s a light and I cable my voice on it but it rips when I trace Anything! WORKS ON PAPER, THE SHIP OF DEATH “Oh build it!” Sings the Heart, “My coat would be so bloodied I could wiggle out of my coat!”

The mouth of the cavern is cut along the top like snowy peaks in cartoons—it zigzags. I sweat onto my violet shirt in the shape of a heart, lock that away behind varnish, a hidden floor between stalactites (long trick knives) A lady of Falconbridge & lady of Dorset torn back through the center & made quiet A paper cut black branch set on a red field. A horse draws the carriage past a lake of blue & all the kids are laid down in the forest to live tilt their heads back, Don’t think of stopping your shooting, more drinking! These are to be among the permanent (wrong) colors Ice rats in stairwells, above us centaurs smack their heads into light bulbs. They get excited over massacre Who were once the innocents who never hoped to live out unspoken prayer. A country that laid so dark so long Pyramids send word to the painted mountains don’t try to lie down as it gets late. stay on guard study your drums & then tighten, pound back a few shots more ash on the sea floors Don’t you scrape away too many organs or paint over. Do not temper the spirit. (4-27-07)

The Age of Gold cracked me up last night, asters and sparrows to be exact, that unrelenting knot in the choral fire. It’s good exercise, to get out on stage, to stand in the silvered chamber and deny emptiness, when the pocket falls so deep one could mark anything out over the top. The India ink drops continuously, its likeness, still Helen as phantom not the truth of the state of her body but being awash in a sound uprooted. The desk is still a symbol I pile things on, pin down elegies, illegible dates, introductions scrawled on slender backs of envelopes, receipts, small machine-like cloud chambers, talon disconnected. Sunlight burns my feet putting away the wet mop, where I am stopped from almost killing myself. All that wobbling of the lens nonsense, I will cling to the truth of the soundtrack tearing through the unveiling: Jeanne Moreau’s scepter coated in dust a darkness poured from the open door, crowned enameled teeth of Tyrannosaurus rex • Their portrait is crushed to the point of flowers Their lines are reaching arms out from the center Their lace is torn over the image at points a flame-like insistence flaring this all up from behind one piss-driven, lifelike icicle the diamond district through a downpour past the love-sick dungeons of Dante, a cleaving after in Sappho, what remains of a dialogue? The small, blobbed cellular enclosure slipping it into strings letting it wither • No god but the act creator eternally rested in light fears for my life dissolved in the booth largely unknown fire exit back/ of the hotel closet door satin sheets light foot thunder lover impaled/ outside of that world cutting young poets much slack and the box for the board missing: remains of the maze spit out from a star

*     * *     * The third arrow flew upward and stuck we rode back sun birds bedeviled the great stem its reflected words fast thunder hills a molten mass small clouds of stones green rushes waylaid spirits onto lava beds post removed stone broken face turned down to earth *    * *    * I dropped out the little hangnail blanket of a door sun strapped to my back so everyone could feel I was sinking *    * *    * I dried out woke up sprouted wings and flew away *    * Looking Glass is dead The circular blue paper is the sky We see some green spots which are pleasing Are the commissioners clear as I am? I gave them a blue flag which they pretended to cherish I live in hopes I do not have two hearts The Illinois River will rise A single warrior to write beyond without me Death at the hands of the long guns Did I say death? Or the springs are drying up? Find the break where blood runs clear Through the love you bear your gallant little band *    * “Not to reverse history but to draw out the strength” * Write in the corridor to be no speaking Sing in the hall to be no dancing Cry in the street to be no leading Break into the house to be no sleeping Feel in the closet to be no running Fight in the dome to be no screaming Lie down in the dark to be no changing *    * Are the commissioners clear as I am? The dampness of night pierces my shield. Two dead men push a stick through my buttonhole. The sun looks down on me as complete. I want you to look and smile — red with iron black. With all of my heart I thank my black-robed friends for their kindness. Columns of steel rise. I was glad to hear the black robes had given you this shimmer of elongated nights, left to waver in the void. They know how to die in battle. They are a twist in the black mirror, that river between the city and the mist. We will produce no sane men again. They come back different and the same. They roam over hills and plains and wish the heavens would fall. You issued the first soldiers and we only answered back, seeking air. I have sent many words that were drowned along the way. The wind is full of bottles and the air aggressive, a red feather placed into black hair. * Joy Harjo in a 1989 interview with Lewis MacAdams

For Julien Poirier Eke out a few more bars for the jewels behind doors. Lutes and harps lay up to bolster language out from underneath. More absentmindedly walking the room, swishing about beyond argument or caging names. Calling out over the whole wet season, commercial speculations (cycles). I love that edge the wall makes — casino game-board green — my love comes bursting out the center of the glass (foiled) I abandon my trap in fragments. The grand terrace band (it’s waning) finale of synchronized dives, straight to my deepest forest overnight, this unfinished, uproarious music for vacuum.

When you hear the knives ring Turn the page. I wonder why I am not Myself of late, ridiculous glass edges Turn back on themselves And soon reveal The hand of an apprentice And godforsaken embarrassing torch, Stormy back hallways Out of the black and wooden theatres. Crystal Waters plus her driver Plus her entourage is still rolling out Of the Sands, Atlantic City On the soundtracks to shows Held over at The Fairmount She is throwing back shots With the mafia. I have learned To take apart this American Songbook And very fortunately as I would take My audience in confidence Threads of gold fall closely together Coming to break us off. At the first of the shows I sang this song And in between I saw him in the hall, What could I tell you? “Someday we’ll build on a hilltop high.”

I almost insist on the words as doors left swinging from the force no one saw A wrap around hotel with empty courtyard boarded up, sprayed white Hiding Out. Nick is too kind two black and slowly moving marbles against flesh Sara, a model of containment Brian is luminous (all eyes) twin fires beyond the pit that only crackles green brighter than the edges of the neon lining Fairfax Family Books The Films of Robert Blake We score a trim ocean blue windbreaker and Dinosaurs of the Land, Sea & Air I slipped away from the bench when they brought the car around My black hobo sack abandoned and thought a bomb. I was seamlessly high on my air heels and driven away to where the camera could not follow 8-4-13

The neck of the flask pitch black-getting bored jacked also madness, insidious intended ghost (days late) I cross green & white flowered seas Valentines, May Day conferring with henchman one must keep holy the edges of fragments slots used clothes loose dried bloodspots bolster elegance Found a goldmine outside a mansion a prolongation of the art of very rich hours oil in childe ballads sung, unsung against I should say “over” though, The Cosmos slows it for us The heretofore unmentioned 26th Series (he gets the girl) sparks fall     call me if you do die