Becoming Light (2 page)

only she can fill,

her shoes of purple suede and green leather

the color of palm fronds,

her diamond-studded boots,

her feathered cowboy boots,

her flame cowboy boots,

her seven-league epic poetry boots,

her little silver haiku boots

with the tiny heels that twinkle,

her first-person platform boots

and her backless glass slippers

modelled after Cinderella’s

(one lost, at midnight,

because of a running man),

her huntress boots of India-rubber,

her lover’s boots joined at the ankle

like leg irons,

her pink baby booties bronzed

for posterity,

her daughter’s burning Reeboks,

her lover’s laceless sneakers

left in the guest room closet

for her to kiss

year after year

after year.

Darling shoes,

beloved feet,

ten toes to walk me

toward my true love,

fuck-me pumps to fuel his passion,

stiletto heels to stab him

if he strays.

Shoes tell you everything.

Shoes speak my language.

Their tap taptap on the airport runway

tells me the story

of a lovely, lonely woman flying after love—

that old, old story

in a new pair

of shoes.

I, io, ich, yo, Я,

uppercase, lowercase,

sometimes confused with love

which starts with L,

but could easily be I,

with a foot,

a pseudopod facing the future,

or at least the righthand

margin of the page—

all we know of life

and all we need

to know.

The poet must abolish I,

said Keats;

have no identity,

be as water flowing

around a rock—

a voice for all

the unsaid waves within,

antenna of the deep.

“Here lies one whose name

was writ in water,”

he would have graven

on his gravestone

had he but world enough

and time—

but the harpstring broke,

and his dearest friends

would not deny his I—

(they could not

for they still believed

themselves).

Ich, I, io, yo, Я

turned from
lettres majuscules

to minuscule

by Cummings

(ee, I mean)

to droplets of vapor

condensed along a blade

of grass

(by Whitman),

to Blake’s tiger,

to Dickinson’s

buzzing fly…

(we so insist

on having names,

then die).

For the poet

whoever he (or she)

may be

is always

beneath the violets

singing like wind

or water.

To become a natural thing,

eye of the cosmos,

sans i’s, sans teeth,

sans everything,

to see the rock,

the hand, the water,

rippling around

the thrown pebble

as part of the same art,

the art of the possible,

life passing into death

and death to life—

poetry not politics.

The abolition of the I,

eye, eye,

the end of i,

so that even the dot

becomes a flyspeck,

Morse code

of infinity…

The alphabet is

poetry’s DNA;

what sperm and egg

are to our progeny,

the alphabet

is to the poet,

germ-cells,

single, yet dividing

like a zygote,

characters

encompassing

the world.

We are all one poet

and always

we have one

communal name,

god’s name, nameless,

a flame in the heart,

a breath,

a gust of air,

prana whistling in the dark.

i dies—

but the breath

lingers on

through the medium

of the magic

alphabet

and in its wake

death is no more

than metaphor.

At dusk Demeter

becomes afraid

for baby Persephone

lost in that hell

which she herself created

with her love.

Excess of love—

the woman’s curse,

the curse of loving

that which causes pain,

the curse of bringing forth

in pain,

the curse of bearing,

bearing always pain.

Demeter pauses, listening for her child—

this fertile goddess

with her golden hair, bringing forth

wheat and fruit and wildflowers

knee-high.

This apple-breasted goddess

whose sad eyes

will bless the frozen world,

bring spring again—

all because she once

walked through the night

and loved a man, half-demon,

angel-tongued,

who gave her

everything she needed to be wise:

a daughter,

hell’s black night,

then endless

spring.

They conspired to paint the air

knowing that art

is not only a way

of seeing

but a way

of being,

a passion for the light,

a tenderness at heart

just short

of being wounded by the air,

a toughness too.

They conspired to paint the air,

to anatomize each light mote,

to imprism each speck of dust

until the air danced with color

and every inhaled breath

became a rainbow in the lungs.

Jasmine, tea leaf, camellia,

tuberose and thyme—the air

turning to color, the color

bleeding into earth, the

earth giving forth its forms,

its fossils, its sexual smells,

then closing over all.

They conspired to paint the air,

leaving their mark,

an obsessed life,

infinitely rich,

infinitely ripe,

tasting of peaches

and anemones,

red tile,

voile peignoirs

and air,

inhabited air.

People wish to be settled. Only as long as they are unsettled is there any hope for them
.

—Thoreau

My life has been

the instrument

for a mouth

I have never seen,

breathing wind

which comes

from I know not

where,

arranging and changing

my moods,

so as to make

an opening

for his voice.

Or hers.

Muse, White Goddess

mother with invisible

milk,

androgynous god

in whose grip

I struggle,

turning this way and that,

believing that I chart

my life,

my loves,

when in fact

it is she, he,

who charts them—

all for the sake

of some

as yet unwritten poem.

Twisting in the wind,

twisting like a pirate

dangling in a cage

from a high seawall,

the wind whips

through my bones

making an instrument,

my back a xylophone,

my sex a triangle

chiming,

my lips stretched tight

as drumskins,

I no longer care

who is playing me,

but fear

makes the hairs

stand up

on the backs

of my hands

when I think

that she may stop.

And yet I long

for peace

as fervently as you do—

the sweet connubial bliss

that admits no

turbulence,

the settled life

that defeats poetry,

the hearth before which

children play—

not poets’ children,

ragtag, neurotic, demon-ridden,

but the apple-cheeked children

of the bourgeoisie.

My daughter dreams

of peace

as I do:

marriage, proper house,

proper husband,

nourishing dreamless

sex,

love like a hot toddy,

or an apple pie.

But the muse

has other plans

for me

and you.

Puppet mistress,

dangling us

on this dark proscenium,

pulling our strings,

blowing us

toward Cornwall,

toward Venice, toward Delphi,

toward some lurching

counterpane,

a tent upheld

by one throbbing

blood-drenched pole—

her pen, her pencil,

the monolith

we worship,

underneath

the gleaming moon.

My daughter says

she feels like a martian,

that no one understands her,

that one friend is too perfect,

and another too mean,

and that she has

the earliest bedtime

in her whole class.

I strain to remember

how a third grader feels

about love, about pain

and I feel a hollow in my heart

where there should be blood

and an ache where there should

be certainty.

My darling Molly,

no earthling ever lived

who did not feel

like a Martian,

who did not curse her bedtime,

who did not wonder

how she got to this planet,

who dropped her here

and why

and how she can possibly

stay.

I go to bed

whenever I like

and with whomever I choose,

but still I wonder

why I do not

belong in my class,

and where my class is anyway,

and why so many of them

seem to be asleep

while I toss and turn

in perplexity.

They, meanwhile, imagine I am perfect

and have solved everything:

an earthling among the Martians,

at home on her home planet,

feet planted in green grass.

If only we could all admit

that none of us belongs here,

that all of us are Martians,

and that our bedtimes

are always

too early

or

too late.

Driving me away

is easier

than saying

goodbye—

kissing the air,

the last syllable

of truth

being always

two lips compressed

around

emptiness—

the emptiness

you dread

yet return to

as just punishment,

just reward.

Who

loved you

so relentlessly?

Who lost you

in that howling void

between infancy

and death?

It is punctuated

by the warm bodies

of women,

who hold you for a while

then run

down that echoing corridor,

doing

as they are told.

Here I was begging the Muse not to get me in trouble with the powers that be, not to make me write out all those “filthy” words…pointing out in that deaf and dumb language which I employed when dealing with the Voice that soon…I would have to write my books in Jail or at the foot of the gallows…and these holy cows deep in clover render a verdict of guilty, guilty of dreaming it up “to make money”!

—
Henry Miller

The land of fuck

is not for sale.

Caught between

the muslin curtains

of the nursery

and the red damask

of the whorehouse,

the gambling den,

the mafia chieftains’

restaurant

(in whose backroom the big men

with big bellies,

big guns,

and little dicks

gamble lives

away

on a flipped card

or a throw

of bones)—

the land of fuck

is not for sale.

You can steal it

if you dare.

In a dream

you can ascend

to that special room

above the shadowy El

where, amid the rattling trains

carrying bug-eyed

exhibitionists

and drooling

adolescent boys

with perpetual

hard-ons,

the students of Fuck

go to spill their lives away

and the semen pools

under their luminous chairs.

The land of fuck

is not for sale

any more than

the sea is,

and it smells the same.

Ocean wreckage

at low tide: salt and rot

and sea meat left in the sun

too long,

sweet slime

between epochs of bone

and dust.

The land of fuck

is not for sale—

which does not mean

it has no price.

The tax

is tranquility, calm,

and the stillness of life.

The land of fuck

has a price.

Unable to bear

the uncertainty

of the future,

we consulted seers,

mediums, stock market gurus,

psychics who promised

happiness on this

or another planet,

astrologists of love,

seekers of the Holy Grail.

Looking for certainty

we asked for promises,

lover’s knots, pledges, rings,

certificates, deeds of ownership,

when it was always enough

to let your hand

pass over my body,

your eyes find the depths of my own,

and the wind pass over our faces

as it will pass

through our bones,

sooner than we think.