The Ouroboros & Other Poems

Hibernaculum Oraculum

in the cemeteries of paradise
in spite of any story you’ve been told
in the repositories for human cadavers
          and relentless probing
in large part created by the CIA
in a vision of Mount Rushmore look-a-likes
in anti-imaginative blackouts
in a small world no smaller than a firefly
          flickering at the end of anything
          beginning with a vinegary salad
          dandelion greens, artichokes
          & drunken goat cheese
in an elongated pattern of sub-zero hue
in a state of ashtanga in a hot room


The Abecedaria of Unwriting
 
from knossos to gnosis
first ur now pluto
the abecedaria of unwriting
has no origins
we are its placentum
a place teeming
with life’s leftovers
neither cooing baby cadmus
nor ignoremus
nor ignoromulus
(mere polyglot amputees)
can account for this
prelexical sensate
bypassing every humanly
obsession to cease to surcease
as in monstrous or magnum
wont as we are to be the fore
bearers of the bleak ages

The Ouroburos

with men as with caterpillars
nothing was chanced
the penniless world was hemmed-in
by mountains on three sides
with gibbons and cranes to seem endless
gradually three or four flowers
tiny divots of earth
by the tens of thousands
and a skein of fine white sewing silk
appeared on my coat and hat
but to allow for the ouroboros
that lives inside my head
perched on the caldera’s rim
and over my shoulder
like the white bird you can’t see
the spyglass drew a cocoon
beating a drum in the doorway
of my own raising
so many misshapen wishes

too tired to rest or return home

 3.v.08