The Communication

And what the dead had no speech for, when living,
They can tell you, being dead: the communication
Of the dead is tongued with fire beyond
the language of the living.
                     “Little Gidding” T.S. Eliot

In my blood garden,
up the softest path
my hardy center 
lifts life like water,
holds death like warm earth
                            on a sunny day
on Sunday. Funeral spectators stand.

I do not sleep now.
“I do not sleep less,”
never-be daughter 
said, “first, lift me up
then, bury me deep 
                   build mounds, round with bone 
relics of my no-life to drunk Buddha.”

I do not sleep now.
I talk in questions.
Recite holy text
about life and grief
where no solace, 
                is offered by the dead
who must speak fluently without our words.

Never-be daughter
said, “I do live there
where splendor is lost
because of your grief
I tell you now, 
               the most beautiful life
does not exist on your death-wailing earth

where I am not real
as flowers are not
in winter’s reprieve,
a transient rest.”

Is there a date you will awake and be
a flower from my mothering sorrow?

We

We laughed as children
together 
         we played
games of my childhood
in reverse, like this:

You were old, Father,
talked like a perfect
child 
      as I once was

a beautiful child,
I sat under news

of the well-informed
mind of a distant 
father 
       I have learned
the art of reading
commentaries, or
obituaries,
in reverse
           Imprint:
You were a good father.
You will make a good son.

On women (at night); Manhattan, KS

Sometimes, anywhere, in transitory shadows which linger,
certain secrecies will form between a man and woman.
If you remain within these alleys with certain women,
life sometimes will remain, and it can not suffer, nor die.

Nor should it ever die in this remarkable age and town.

(every city is chaos in twilight, dark and touching;
remember the yellow and orange lights which invade night,
like angels speeding to enter the once and mythic hell,
the night which will forever and always keeps its first rule:
that all lovers will awaken and swoon.
-this is just a city, one that remembers.
forgive its endless turns and its endless round-abouts.)

We should do a very small justice to remember
its lovers, against lamp-posts, in cracks and in dimness,
eternally against black alley walls in forever white,
rubbing sex against the miniature wealthy,
in their white sophisticated collars. Or,
the dirty and remarkably strong hands, which,
more than often reach, reaching. . .
(poor servitude and poor belief should never forget.)
to forget the shuffling footsteps of commonality,
the shrugging shoulders of our spirituality,
the proud mysteries of our delicate and forgotten merchants.

I expect this already, tomorrow; let me tell it while i am still able

Expect I will want to imagine much, much, more:

I often make room for illustrious daydreams
in which I handle your superior mouth intimately.
I have already thrown your teeth to the ground
where you become a rich world beneath me-
a federation of forests, fields; the future
constructs of human development.

I expect that you will return to this world,
gullible to the green and fair,
spreading your familiarity of stars in night
and what it means for us to examine deeper.

You will return to this world to humor me;
tax my body in a field of green,
watch bluebirds search our bodies,
search the body moreover, close eyelids
and give me a fresh recollection of my purpose.

The Sun is increasing its final joke,
and death will remember us
until we finish with it and consider
that insane imagined death of Christ,
the one we all receive in the end.

I expect this already, tomorrow:
you will agree with me on a narrow street,
cover up my teardrops with a kiss,
spread your legs, swallow apologies,
sweep away fingers, release cries-
thank me for the slow thoughtfulness of my love.

daughter

I imagine men, such as me, have often stagnated in future visions and promised desires for mankind. The many are abandoned for the greater glory of immortality, creating a theology out of our pure minds. But you are rested in the sacred place only a daughter or long-time Pillar of love may preside, deep in a changed man's heart. -No promise of any god or any man's Heaven rest there in me; that was given up long ago and replaced with a kinder, more gentle outlook towards Our eternity. This place is far from the youthful wanderings between good and evil, Woman and Man, daughter and father. It is universal and anticipatory, and it is the beautiful beginning of it all.
----
No Man Really Knows, but I'd like to imagine I do for you.