57. The Amorous Amorite’s Replies

Crossing Potter St

These ugly dispensations

– you don’t need them

– divide the text

as chance wishes

Church Lane

passing a funeral

always remembered?

soon forgotten?

decrepit origins

at last lost

Coffee Corner

this jewelled head

odd & old, raised up as

the perfect mystery where

ritual expresses ridicule

dangerous for something

beautiful to shame us

      really share w/ the brain

                      the body

                      this whole world

                      our senses

                      live within

Sandle Road

A stare at our hearts?

The wounded pulse of our humanity

Will survive your gaze.

Rodolfo Do Bassio, “Poemetta dell neve”

il graffito dei giorni

che ingloba sole e azzurro

il fremito il guizza del sangue

che si disfa in modiglia

edited Dana Gioia & Michael Palma, New Italian Poets (Story Line Press, 1991), p 98

United Reformed Church

at this chapel

bread was broken

and the word

danced despite

Lyn Hejinian, “Masks from A Mask of Motion”

you choose your truths

tired.               

A Mask of Motion (Burning Deck Press, 1977), n.p.

Potter St (seated)

Desperate times

living in dreams

drinking milk

in token of

our innocence

Hockerill

Writing our language into a scary mask –

isn’t that what we’re made of, then?

Lyn Hejinian, “Masks from A Mask of Motion”

“. . . somehow, strange as it seems,

completely unrelated events can

intertwine in my memory and then I

see they had something in common.”

Hejinian 1977, n.p.

56. Question: Who Is the Antitypical Amorite?

We are they – no other but us

The ugliest dispensation is rioting fantasies

Burning within a decrepit landscape. Power

That is this world’s origins as its wound.

Rawness will remain when the dream is done.

That and origin’s jewelled head. Our ritual.

All accusatory appraisal a stare at our heart.

Uneasily its business inside us a knotted wound.

We are poets, we are people, we act especially drunk

Within excess, collective actuality not utopian now.

Decrepit sky, casual language, all just memory anywhere.

At the chapel then things opened a luminous wound

Inside our meat. Imbibe it like a pie. The poets

Could be a major utopian fantasy – their sober stare

Engaged inside our dreams. How really could we rename this?

In these decrepit times what we are jewelled wounds

Writing our language as a scary mask.

We have no other anywhere. This dispensation’s strict acceptance

Will remain. It’s difficult but it is collective. The sun

Will remain. Memory will remain, especially when a wound.

55. Within the Chapel of the Opened Book

             this dream

           these places

             major fantasy

        we embrace

               power anywhere

                    you imbibe

             they are meat

dreams

                              a casual acceptance

                                              but here we are

                                scary

   all drunk as well

                                                         rename

                   language changes power doesn’t

                   the world becomes all much the same

                sober actuality

           that ugliest thing

      decrepit fantasies

                         luminous appraisal

some times                 rawness not enough

                      part how

falsifying the world              really

                                  but how

                                    especially when engaged

               and    doing          done    done    that’s

like anything

                          we come to the algae on the lake

                          dear old sun

                          dear old sky

                                              things are back

                   all day

then                                   listen

they don’t                     OK it’s

     mainly                     some days

really       here

look yes                           stare         if you have to

                          fantasise

     is called   utopian            ‘s                could

call                             fantasy is                 difficult

                              will remain

     knotted up             the sun blinds          will       be

  fantasy                     ‘s

                              so much easier

                   help us

                                                            just the mulch

        silence

the search for origins

                                       accusatory fantasy

We could talk

                               Collective Action

                                                        some business with

                          memory here  

           our friends the poets burning

                                                        past the chapel

opened                                                  to meet & talk

                              inside only           that head thy golden head

           oil & guilt

                                             move on and act

at the heart                 wound

what is actually

       no other people

                             it’s writing or rioting

                 do it right now

                                                         all

                                                         uneasily claiming

                                                         strict dispensation

                                                         that jewelled mask