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Friday, November 25, 2011

Nuremburg

Tonight I set fire to a very old book

The wheel was in sage and in frost

It was not my tempest but my midwinter night’s dream

As I struck the lucifer to the side



The sun blazed

An infant on a virgin-tipped breast

And reached out its flames towards strength



Fifty-six pages and twenty-one keys

They burned like the nails in a chain-smoker’s coffin

Speaking in whispers they opened the silence

And let me hold stars in my hand

Five staves were prepared

But nine daggers burned me

The fool all but danced on the flames

The moon broke the chain, and I started again

Eight pentagrams led to the star



See how the hermit lights his poor way

For his brothers all eager to follow

Judgment leaps higher

December winds lash

At the blaze of great Gabriel’s horn

Ten knives mark the night that the tower stayed hidden

Ka as the wind that sweeps ashes aside

Three maids toast the land and their very good fortune

While two more are never here found



Another lucifer

Pope Joan’s benediction

Outlives seven chalices promising dream

They offer their gifts to whoever will take them

While one more is supped by a king



They folded and furled beneath Agni’s stern gaze

Their coats worn thin as a Dickens-book pauper

They turn to black moths

Glow and are still

Sixteen years old the same age as a daughter

Now the world catches fire and is ash



It was the fool who started the fire

But the magician ate of the ashes

Friday, November 18, 2011

Knightwalk

          KNIGHTWALK

The billboards scream commands at me
By day as far as I can see
The sun’s offensive to my sight
So I walk by the voice of night
The grass is blue, my shadow green
To insects’ songs I walk unseen
Nothing between me and the land
The moon rolls, falling from my hand

The silence of the night unbroken
By combustion’s screams
The promises of life unspoken
Save in elven dreams
The tribe of tiger runs with me
We hunt beneath the stars
My mother fills me with her life
I walk upon her scars