“Star of Araby” has reached an interesting point, a question or problem—think of it as a landing I am paused at. The movement up and down the ladder of Sefirot has allowed me to touch on a range of ascent/descent motifs. One is related to a tension I think of as related to different between a poetics of light (ascension) and shape-shift (descent). I found myself struggling, as I stepped from Yesod to Hod, understanding a movement upwards. I've been noodling on the landing of Hod since. Here are the notes:

!. At Hod’s Well Stopped

I

triangle of sense sequenced hometown like I
dream it, this time lions with my earphones on
only Gram Parsons fills the second tray we
normally find by an half-opened window to
mix sun and shade//that’s the trouble a series
of clouds does not dispel more than dipping my
hand into the water so I suspect I am too deep
in the well again to see the third star make
sense of this constellation of limbs bend her face down
over the dark water I am slept in still reflection

II

stars beg for us, and nights
equally numberless days pass by
wind in prairie grass
and furrow

why sing of old dead things
in old dead words, lift stick

wind, again
is not leaving us,
nor sky

last harbors
fox-hole death
at any time

***

is abandonment the only answer
to all prayers, what is realized
by more intensely saying the sun?
not “throwing ourselves farther”
but alone, a late winter light,
some spring we do not know
near off—to be abandoned

heart’s mistaken instinct
folded in each breath we take
a lover’s perfumed note

lost, after all mooring

III

what light shows we are here about to shift,
sift yellow, a sun taped to stage flat (he said bar)
written Keys of the Sun come slant wise
what Blake didn’t (that time)

dusty paramour here at the tor’s topple steep
vista vista in grey grape distance (think Italy
document from among availed) winter edge
off north, we climbed, some below

ferret mountain a bit to say era proper & hem
foot—he became air which was not light
blue, red shirt edge, or just white Joseph
put your hand into a dream to get it

white was said we mean changed like coins
to translate it meant a shift not yellow but
a foot in the air I suppose he hung there
see that

at the same time avenues under Saturday
under red sun he said Friday, expect it,
desolate factory eternity edge Whitman
was painting, at the same time

Elijah sand & Moses reed grass a step like
on billows of Gobi rock, aspects blooming or
asters I meant slipped lock moored
no sky order to it

sweet grass was burnt in May he said because
transfigure there’s Alice you could say
this above to aside—all the clues are there
you want to listen

lights full what changes to dusk
frogs bullet a Kore, rushes and fringe
what’s full changes to back
we are to die, you too

bend it blue baby blue each day slight
breaks you we are flowers and sky
oh honey-white, star-stone misgiven
I can’t stop your turn

I am white thrown could be nothing spirit said
associate cluster necessarily mis-read I
put in your pocket
fold it there pat your heart take it


2. Ascension and Descent

Ascent is pressure towards sublime and production of affect weight left by finger touch of what’s only light. Towards thin horizon, light, water wicked off.

Joe writes about Sobin and thinks about motifs of ascension, stones that become words become light. As alchemical restoration or fulfillment. Recapitulation.

The first time I saw Ram Das/Richard Alpert he told this story about a guy from the North Woods who’d brought a sick bird to a guru. The guru held it in his hands, maybe turned it over and then threw it over his shoulder to someone inside the hut saying, “more water”.

I have always thought of myself as alighting in this life, that my task was to get into color and form, to get something into form, to fall, to step down. Landing.

I remember the song on Patti Smith’s “Radio Ethiopia” that I really hit on was that song that goes “Landing, When will you be landing?” I’d dance around small basement room Bruce and I lived in in Charlesgate Hotel when I was still thin and graceful.

Not as against ascent, but that I am over here doing this thing here. Stepping down into the grass. Like stars that are metal arrows in autumn come flashing down.

Like La Jete, there’s a file of guys on the esclator, think like Brazil, some atrium interspace, they are going up. I am going down. I miss them, going up.

Not that they should be going down, but that there is this going down and landing too. This step that makes place. Work to do.

Listen to it or not I suppose. I am only saying it continues this rhythm, this snap.

All that ascent, the sun goes down, doesn’t stop at Brookyn Ferry or Friday Afternoon in the Universe, drifts to dusk.

Light in you bends down anyway, prism, a bowl of fruit you hold Rilke into death.


3. That “Being Put to Death” Thing

My friend Candy climbed through a long, maybe mile-long cave complex to caverns associated with a Mayan death Cathula (now tourist location you pay to see) where prisoners had been taken to be sacrificed.

Wind (which means “heart humor”)
in bitter leaves//I was dreaming but then
that tobac slipped off my tougue//drifted
bubbles collage//a day//no
dream as indirect and thin light//left in a room

guilt and amusement have a stubborn hold
I’ll throw the I-Ching about why it will
talk about watermelon leaves I tug at
the wet cloth of this dissatisfaction I once
killed a man// now have to write

or throat-cut before God.

***

required infolded sisters at the ribs would make lungs we walk among
(at the last corner, by the last house, night was pushing I was gathering
my feet beneath to push harder a stone weight cut once the blood flowed
unevenly in I throat disjunct am splay//history of this my back
you don’t see it white she recalled a cave they’d taken hours
to go through narrow fat snake under root to mansion lime
trees without sun under a canopy of dyes—our eyes open them
wider are the only light white to the edges we see

throat cut this way smell of grass as arm opulent pellet carvaggio
sicsors back flesh flap down a cut between colors
cubist difference you feel folded between two worlds death
peeled Rembrandt back to reveal bloodstained rock and stars
mute beauty in soil, bedrock, toil and leg

we’ll leave flowers in your smile May 5th, crocuses and marigold winter
seen around that door jamb that door jamb full of the hand of the sky

***

I do have dreams in which I suddenly remember that maybe twenty years ago, I killed a man. So powerful is the feeling, the memory, that it takes a bit when I wake to convince myself it didn’t happen.

4. Salt Woman

The Opponent Inside takes a George Jackson voice a sec

is angel.

***

salt woman nurses along shores of bleak I am autumn find her there among brown rushes don’t you a solace, star, stone of she is suppurate

replete afterwards she leans down difficult star blue grief shawl succor, dipped in such dye we are day

one change, flocks of bright ladies silent from the prairie grasses what changes to become pheasant sudden as wings, her hair put back

***

as women one side as men mascu-light all-color sent shadows in their so Hercules eyes, we record what sloth he re-languished

one side all gowned in stones and stars, the other a flame pillar or loss, doorway we sit before as tax

***

bowl of congregants and morning wash//through rain as scent//his shoulder rides

ill wit among Ivy her downcast & tears make arcade//wrought, willow and store affords a chance flagstone

circlet as device to call her landscape, ragged flag//how far down I bent//If you are not here by the river when I come

nothing to report we often must wait, wither, time undoes never does


Salt Woman is a Navaho form of feminine sacred I feel a strong relationship to, difficult solitary but benevolent or just gal.