77 Spirituality poems

Among other economies, I’m of two minds, one possessed, the other a deep peace. Violent trembling seizes me, launched in the interval. Enemy of children, of quaint little things, of jokes and pictures. Enemy of comic papers and caricatures, of water-drinking. Too short for tragedy. Rarely has a large or distant expedition ever succeeded in its object, as may be seen in the failure of foreign missions, of human development, the immediate phenomena. Sympathy for the victors, who gallantly perish. Collateral catastrophes, as if they had a will. The more distinctive visual images sail too long, relinquish, burst. The “inner voice” is playing a game. Eagerness and obstinacy. A mysterious invisible placed in the mouth. We know too well how terrible it is to contend against personality. The whole idyll vanishes. Southward along a coastline, down among cities. Across the gulf to the promontory. Probably astonished. Not without mistrust. You are now my prisoner. Physically I am myself. Cultivated living, good manners, rich food and drink, order and elegance in my house. Erect military bearing.

I am putting makeup on empty space all patinas convening on empty space rouge blushing on empty space I am putting makeup on empty space pasting eyelashes on empty space painting the eyebrows of empty space piling creams on empty space painting the phenomenal world I am hanging ornaments on empty space gold clips, lacquer combs, plastic hairpins on empty space I am sticking wire pins into empty space I pour words over empty space, enthrall the empty space packing, stuffing jamming empty space spinning necklaces around empty space Fancy this, imagine this: painting the phenomenal world bangles on wrists pendants hung on empty space I am putting my memory into empty space undressing you hanging the wrinkled clothes on a nail hanging the green coat on a nail dancing in the evening it ended with dancing in the evening I am still thinking about putting makeup on empty space I want to scare you: the hanging night, the drifting night, the moaning night, daughter of troubled sleep I want to scare you you I bind as far as cold day goes I bind the power of 20 husky men I bind the seductive colorful women, all of them I bind the massive rock I bind the hanging night, the drifting night, the moaning night, daughter of troubled sleep I am binding my debts, I magnetize the phone bill bind the root of my pointed tongue I cup my hands in water, splash water on empty space water drunk by empty space Look what thoughts will do   Look what words will do from nothing to the face from nothing to the root of the tongue from nothing to speaking of empty space I bind the ash tree I bind the yew I bind the willow I bind uranium I bind the uneconomical unrenewable energy of uranium dash uranium to empty space I bind the color red I seduce the color red to empty space I put the sunset in empty space I take the blue of his eyes and make an offering to empty space renewable blue I take the green of everything coming to life, it grows & climbs into empty space I put the white of the snow at the foot of empty space I clasp the yellow of the cat's eyes sitting in the black space I clasp them to my heart, empty space I want the brown of this floor to rise up into empty space Take the floor apart to find the brown, bind it up again under spell of empty space I want to take this old wall apart I am rich in my mind thinking of this, I am thinking of putting makeup on empty space Everything crumbles around empty space the thin dry weed crumbles, the milkweed is blown into empty space I bind the stars reflected in your eye from nothing to these typing fingers from nothing to the legs of the elk from nothing to the neck of the deer from nothing to porcelain teeth from nothing to the fine stand of pine in the forest I kept it going when I put the water on when I let the water run sweeping together in empty space There is a better way to say empty space Turn yourself inside out and you might disappear you have a new definition in empty space What I like about impermanence is the clash of my big body with empty space I am putting the floor back together again I am rebuilding the wall I am slapping mortar on bricks I am fastening the machine together with delicate wire There is no eternal thread, maybe there is thread of pure gold I am starting to sing inside about the empty space there is some new detail every time I am taping the picture I love so well on the wall: moonless black night beyond country-plaid curtains everything illuminated out of empty space I hang the black linen dress on my body the hanging night, the drifting night, the moaning night daughter of troubled sleep This occurs to me I hang up a mirror to catch stars, everything occurs to me out in the night in my skull of empty space I go outside in starry ice I build up the house again in memory of empty space This occurs to me about empty space that it is nevered to be mentioned again Fancy this imagine this painting the phenomenal world there's talk of dressing the body with strange adornments to remind you of a vow to empty space there's talk of the discourse in your mind like a silkworm I wish to venture into a not-chiseled place I pour sand on the ground Objects and vehicles emerge from the fog the canyon is dangerous tonight suddenly there are warning lights The patrol is helpful in the manner of guiding there is talk of slowing down there is talk of a feminine deity I bind her with a briar I bind with the tooth of a tiger I bind with my quartz crystal I magnetize the worlds I cover myself with jewels I drink amrita there is some new detail there is a spangle on her shoe there is a stud on her boot the tires are studded for the difficult climb I put my hands to my face I am putting makeup on empty space I wanted to scare you with the night that scared me the drifting night, the moaning night Someone was always intruding to make you forget empty space you put it all on you paint your nails you put on scarves all the time adorning empty space Whatever-your-name-is I tell you “empty space” with your fictions with dancing come around to it with your funny way of singing come around to it with your smiling come to it with your enormous retinue & accumulation come around to it with your extras come round to it with your good fortune, with your lazy fortune come round to it when you look most like a bird, that is the time to come around to it when you are cheating, come to it when you are in your anguished head when you are not sensible when you are insisting on the praise from many tongues It begins with the root of the tongue it begins with the root of the heart there is a spinal cord of wind singing & moaning in empty space

November 1941 We sat in the park, but there was a war between us, A dead moon over us and all around us The shy and secret whisperings as of the tiny Woods animals which in the high forest gather Wind-fallen goods before the frost comes. We praised as lucky all whose sure existence (As of the careless moon, the dutiless squirrels) Is not responsible for human history— Feeling how our happiness, how hope must mount Machine guns which other men yet have the firing of, How liberty is seen in the form of a fighter plane Millions look up asking, Is it ours? Our despair was temporary but not less painful. Over us the moon was quiet about its business, Pouring its constant light upon the naked beaches. The squirrels built up their small defenses Obliged to the fulfillment of a natural process. Their leaf-lined cell, the brilliance of the moon, The winter cannot touch and no touch tarnish.

There are many people who come back After the doctor has smoothed the sheet Around their body And left the room to make his call. They die but they live. They are called the dead who lived through their deaths, And among my people They are considered wise and honest. They float out of their bodies And light on the ceiling like a moth, Watching the efforts of everyone around them. The voices and the images of the living Fade away. A roar sucks them under The wheels of a darkness without pain. Off in the distance There is someone Like a signalman swinging a lantern. The light grows, a white flower. It becomes very intense, like music. They see the faces of those they loved, The truly dead who speak kindly. They see their father sitting in a field. The harvest is over and his cane chair is mended. There is a towel around his neck, The odor of bay rum. Then they see their mother Standing behind him with a pair of shears. The wind is blowing. She is cutting his hair. The dead have told these stories To the living.

No sooner does the plane angle up than I cork off to dream a bomb blast: A fireball roiling through the cabin in slo-mo, seat blown loose from its bolts, I hang weightless a nanosecond in blue space then jerk awake to ordered rows. And there’s the silver liquor cart jangling its thousand bells, the perfect doses of juniper gin and oak-flavored scotch held by a rose-nailed hand. I don’t miss drinking, don’t miss driving into shit with more molecular density than myself, nor the Mission Impossible reruns I sat before, nor the dead space inside only alcohol could fill and then not even. But I miss the aftermath, the pure simplicity: mouth parched, head hissing static. How little I asked of myself then—to suck the next breath, suffer the next heave, live till cocktail hour when I could mix the next sickness. I locked the bathroom door, sat on the closed commode, shirtless, in filmy underpants telling myself that death could fit my grasp and be staved off while in the smeary shaving glass, I practiced the stillness of a soul awaiting birth. For the real that swarmed beyond the door I was pure scorn, dead center of my stone and starless universe, orbited by no one. Novitiate obliterate, Saint Absence, Duchess of Naught . . . A stinging ether folded me in mist. Sometimes landing the head's pressure’s enormous. When my plane tilts down, houses grow large, streets lose their clear geometry. The leafy earth soon fills my portal, and in the gray graveyard of cars, a stick figure becomes my son in royal blue cap flapping his arms as if to rise. Thank god for our place in this forest of forms, for the gravitas that draws me back to him, and for how lightly lightly I touch down.

The number of corners in the soul can't compare with the universe's dimensions folded neatly into swans. In the soul's space, one word on a thousand pieces of paper the size of cookie fortunes falls from the heavens. At last, the oracular answer, you cry, pawing at the scraps that twirl like seed-pod helicopters. Alas, the window to your soul needs a good scrubbing, so the letters doodle into indecipherables just like every answer that has rained down through history, and you realize, in your little smog of thought that death will simply be the cessation of asking, a thousand cranes unfolding themselves and returning to the trees.

Little soul little stray little drifter now where will you stay all pale and all alone after the way you used to make fun of things

You wanted to be a butcher but they made you be a lawyer. You brought home presents when it was nobody’s birthday. Smashed platters of meat she cut against the grain. Were a kind of portable shrine — I was supposed to cultivate a field of  bliss, then return to my ordinary mind. You burned the files and moved the office. Made your children fear a different school. Liked your butter hard and your candy frozen. Were a kind of diamond drill, drilling a hole right through my skull — quality sleep, late November. What did it mean, “field of bliss” — A sky alive “with your greatest mentor” — I wore your shoes, big as boats, flopped through the house — while you made garlic eggs with garlic salt, what “represents the living teaching” — Sausages on toasted rye with a pickle, and a smother of cheese, and frosting right out of  the can without the cake — You ruled with a knife in one hand and a fork in the other, you raged at my stony mother, while I banged from my high chair, waving the bloodied bone of something slaughtered — I was a butcher’s daughter. So all hail to me — Os Gurges, Vortex Mouth, I gap my craw and the bakeries of the cities fall, I stomp the docks — spew out a bullet stream of oyster shells, I’ll drain the seas — the silos on every farm, the rice from the paddy fields, the fruit from all the orchard trees, and then I’ll eat the trees — I’ll eat with money and I’ll eat with my teeth until the rocks and the mountains curl and my blood sings — I’m such a good girl to eat the world.

Not in the world of light alone, Where God has built his blazing throne, Nor yet alone in earth below, With belted seas that come and go, And endless isles of sunlit green, Is all thy Maker’s glory seen: Look in upon thy wondrous frame,— Eternal wisdom still the same! The smooth, soft air with pulse-like waves Flows murmuring through its hidden caves, Whose streams of brightening purple rush, Fired with a new and livelier blush, While all their burden of decay The ebbing current steals away, And red with Nature’s flame they start From the warm fountains of the heart. No rest that throbbing slave may ask, Forever quivering o’er his task, While far and wide a crimson jet Leaps forth to fill the woven net Which in unnumbered crossing tides The flood of burning life divides, Then, kindling each decaying part, Creeps back to find the throbbing heart. But warmed with that unchanging flame Behold the outward moving frame, Its living marbles jointed strong With glistening band and silvery thong, And linked to reason’s guiding reins By myriad rings in trembling chains, Each graven with the threaded zone Which claims it as the master’s own. See how yon beam of seeming white Is braided out of seven-hued light, Yet in those lucid globes no ray By any chance shall break astray. Hark how the rolling surge of sound, Arches and spirals circling round, Wakes the hushed spirit through thine ear With music it is heaven to hear. Then mark the cloven sphere that holds All thought in its mysterious folds; That feels sensation’s faintest thrill, And flashes forth the sovereign will; Think on the stormy world that dwells Locked in its dim and clustering cells! The lightning gleams of power it sheds Along its hollow glassy threads! O Father! grant thy love divine To make these mystic temples thine! When wasting age and wearying strife Have sapped the leaning walls of life, When darkness gathers over all, And the last tottering pillars fall, Take the poor dust thy mercy warms, And mould it into heavenly forms!

Who includes diversity and is Nature, Who is the amplitude of the earth, and the coarseness and sexuality of the earth, and the great charity of the earth and the equilibrium also, Who has not look’d forth from the windows the eyes for nothing, or whose brain held audience with messengers for nothing, Who contains believers and disbelievers, who is the most majestic lover, Who holds duly his or her triune proportion of realism, spiritualism, and of the æsthetic or intellectual, Who having consider’d the body finds all its organs and parts good, Who, out of the theory of the earth and of his or her body understands by subtle analogies all other theories, The theory of a city, a poem, and of the large politics of these States; Who believes not only in our globe with its sun and moon, but in other globes with their suns and moons, Who, constructing the house of himself or herself, not for a day but for all time, sees races, eras, dates, generations, The past, the future, dwelling there, like space, inseparable together.