from The Speak Angel Series

from The House Gone

Poem of Leading

It’s like asking how did I wind up in Paris it’s just a story
But on the other side of the fabric maybe we aren’t friends I
Say to no one in particular I am the soul sheltering poor matter that’s
All maybe everyone’s just been playing a game with it matter I
Used to be angelic then I decided to be coarse and corpulent
It suited a mood to become ugly rocks it suited you to be seedy

I lead across the glass plain the mass of previous-
Ly pained entity some of the it remembering or bleeding
Do you know how to be different I call without looking
Back because we dreamed everything we once were
And now there may be new shapes to walk into
Tan whirlwinds or doors polished elemental what
Is really there a voice asks all I can remember from
When I was alive is that I was always wrong do you
Remember that it was in pieces or now I’m not
I died because he declaimed to me knew how to I didn’t
They all said what everything was I didn’t demeaned told
You some image you might recognize for we all tried
To be mirrors everyone does do the dead they see a
Partenariat wherever they look not a parrot they
Hear like this spontaneously to speak and create some being
When I lost my eyes someone says is this a renaissance
I am I say willing to say anything I feel you in
Place and gliding I didn’t know how to be it differently for
The adjustments are subtle first don’t think except as a
Poem and second it’s not that I shouldn’t hurt you I don’t
Know how to now it’s that you’re learning the segments
That aren’t sentences at all and converse with each other

So does he see you who I can’t look back I’m leading you
Words tap me they’ve always been visual slinky and carven
Somewhere here I walked into it leading where not breaks but bind-
Ing unperfunctorily what does any glyph said sing and the dark
Snakes near the old place into a river or chasm beginning as
Ancient the counterfeit was to see smartly I tell into the flood
Pushed back so we can walk on nothing leave the old past
Take the new past no can’t you seeing uncling any story dis-
Appears and the lipstick on judgment’s mostly wiped off
Not a face just a mouth and its demolished words I’m swept up in
To here for words rain down without discernment a role they
Say I have to lead I say why fated something was once I
Might lead myself out but I think I’m for you who are
Small in this one you’ve made so large that is billions and
Billions of light years is it really or is that a definition be-
Gun in the random quarters of a body once I’m vast I
Say leading you away from parochial conceptions of the cosmos
Not that it isn’t that big it’s that there is no big
Again I love you the arrow bloody heart of my deflection
There isn’t anything to call it anymore the snakes in the cave
Utmost speak called in stress like snapping winds we
Found it exactly here in our once variably shaped lengths our
Proneness whipping so stand among the words of your source
This basin near the wild vines is holy nothing made it
The words here are for you and your tired lips
Someone says vanquished by my foul deeds but I am beautiful
Vanquished by our foul deeds but we are what’s there
Voice clings across bats squealing brush your face tenderly
Swarmed from caves my loves word howl no fences
And I copped the air a voice says and I copped you if I could
Swearing to make a likeness to my active thought later
The images seared are these images I sealed my eyes extern-
Al and inward memory’s only of the words that fly and crawl
I like this storm I like the whirlwind conveying me to the
New justice of origin the beginning will judge what we’ve done

I’m following the map of forgetting on the other side
Of the memories of the alive I think I know where we are
For I have destroyed scale every part of the cosmos is where-
Ever the same size as one and as everything you think
This epic might be experienced any other way
With matter or image reinstalled as if I were another though
Being myself the observer that anyone has to be
Tell me then voice as I face frontward what can there be
Thought and how can you keep thoughts or voices apart
We martyred ourselves and each other to comparisons
And I told you one said and I told you as if telling were more
Words sudden the only thing of it help me speak them I say
You are there ahead of us in origin a voice behind me cries
They are the phosphenes to be said mother of phosphenes
Alive brutally someone says you can never be dead but
What you did is just a sound phosphene words map of a map
I remember you martyred me where birds crawl and blunt voices
Little nonthoughts scratching together I wanted to be here
Forgot everything to be here I forget where I came from they say
You’re rushing towards me for you don’t know who you are

from To Paste On

Alice's Soul

I entered where I was sent wearing small earrings
don’t know if these are the right words from your mind
syntax gold that there was a glyph the universe I’m reading its mind
but I’m reading yours reading mine whenever we are somewhat enmeshed
I entered where I was sent to spy for the system I had come from
I had no form before I was madly born but I was there then who I am
the one you to make make others listen I know I suffered with you
there are red stripes across my unhappy face as you describe your calvaries
and then from as if afar I say or am I she to become you or am I you
so serene again I remember being this soul the spy and savior you are
it hurt you too to be neglected because you know too much so skilled
do skills have merit or does suffering do you now deserve to be me your soul
I don’t know if this is time but you have never been a piece of meat
resplendent from ashes grown tall we are ready to name ourselves



From The Speak Angel Series (Fonograf Editions, 2023). All rights reserved. Reprinted with the permission of the publisher.