It is, here, a winter of bone and wire and mist.
I have named each dead tree after a ghost I�ve seen
in a mirror.
Collapsed, once, under my own spell and was sold in bondage to the daughters of doubt.
Back on the trail and, like then, now, I seek a dark and unknowable gold. In short rivers, in sharp stone, I am drawing nearer.
Here, is ice-blood. There, shanks of land. Knife and tooth and spear and rod. Slipping about on the entrails and entreaties of Natives. But we all make our own wilderness out of the comforts of our realities. After all, we went to the heavens and found no God.
The sea a woman that fought back less and less.
The soil, too, will yield to my hand.
It was a hard winter when I stepped into the Last Frontier
determined to kill what I find in there.
We fell in the ship of waves/toes like knowledge and a glide in the waves
we were not ever there to be saved or to save but we were not there to be saved
such a bit of silk robe such. a bit of tight weave
still the words were not there to remind us of sleeves
I found you
again
in your rot and turmoil rotting in oil rotten and toiling
Silly to love in the Nuclear Hill but there we were
not willing, still not there to be saved or shaved or to glisten in the straw and crucify grapes or to lay naked while sons walk backward with cloth.
Back. Word with cloth.
There was something not still in the sickness, something either moving or still not deep in the sickness as we were
not ever there to be saved�but that ship�.
It rocked and cocked up on a chin of spun water and crashed back in wet tracks where the green and black met in the wet air and the spray and the salt and delay and the waiting and baiting the lines
the moment that hung in the air-all senses stopped and reflexively we stepped out of ourselves and looked at these things in the detail only viewing a painting/a photo or something else we could never be in then first to return was the sound like a rush of blurry hot cycles and air in our ears then the speed of life truly
the speed of life truly
the speed of life truly revealed and everything ended in a crash
but it must have been a ship
only a ship makes things this sudden slow.
Whichever, I imagined it so.
Whether I had been asleep or contemplating, pointless, adrift, asea, awake�
The world that was coming was constantly coming. I swallowed your �big bang second.�
Finally pregnant with
Your random poem fell
out of the lies you tried to tell
out of the words you couldn�t spell.
Your random poem fell
in love with that engine smell
and I broke my hands against myself.
In you I found my face of God:
sinew, cigarettes and sod.
I found your random poem wound
in threads of gold and ribbon-bound.
I shook it twice and put it down.
Mother came in to my room with the rapist and disassembled the machines in front of me while I opened the window and threw the cat out of it. Out of it. I stank like mines and had been up all night removing letters from the alphabet. The princes climbed over the razor wire and cut their legs. I was able to preserve last night�s dream in a jar of disinfectant. My father is still suspended in the cold air high above the mountain that I can see from my window when there is just the right crescent moon. Not like tonight. Tonight the trees are all daggers sticking out of the ground where God throws the best angels. The rapist and the surgeon tell jokes at the foot of my bed while I try to sleep. I am reading a book about cold water. Tomorrow I will fill the graves in the basement with the petals of daffodils. My best friend is a Tutsi from Rwanda who escaped the machetes by joining the resistance. He is thirteen years old and made of polished chrome, honey-bees and sweat. He has killed ten men, I am one of them. There is a storm every night. I am paid to remain silent during it and wait for the seance to begin. The river below my window is a haze under which run dogs and rats. For my birthday, the world was transformed into a maze and I was turned loose in it.
A thick scar bends
over a side of cracked face and lip
but no one can see it but me.
But no one can see it but everyone everyone.
And everyone can see it but me.
In other times,
women wore scarlet letters and handless thieves and the eyeless...
Now, there are those who are drunkards for rage, there are lines carved in arms and noses and further there are double chins and fat asses
and invisible scars on invisible faces
seen by invisible strangers.
So, one could walk the streets, I suppose, apologizing to
everyone everyone. Or hide.
To you I can never say I�m sorry.
But if I was beautiful, I wouldn�t have to.
In the fog on the windshield he�s written
the word �time� with his finger
and he drives deliberately into it.
His old blue eyes, his silver hair.
When he gets where he�s going, he won�t be there.
I say: Tie me up �til time is up.
Everythin�
is dead.
Everythin� Dead.
African Rattlesnake Up Strum Hum/
Great City, Great Flood.
No Pity.
Eye Blood.
Some dead are buried alone, not you.
Some dead are buried dead, not you.
Everythin� is Dead.
Darlin�, Everythin� Dead.
The lazy ol� Earth is doin� nothin� but makin� trees
that flutter their eye-lashes at me
in the wind.
Oh, there�s the sudden cream of sun, of course.
Cold and warm white windows at rest.
The Hand that draws lips on young ladies� faces
has drawn a clever, full heart in you
and filled it with gold so-
so much that you can just carry it.
Usually.
That lazy ol� Earth manages to turn it�s hungry cycles over and over, of course.
Even with you and me in it�s sack.
But it has the milk of it�s sister moon to keep it nourished-
it has perfect pink roses somewhere to inspire it-
it has careless downhills half it�s journey-
it has volcanoes in winter, it has glaciers and oceans in August-
that lazy ol� earth.
So, you see, love, it�s pointless to paint you. May as well go for a walk by the ocean and imagine what might have been, with a little effort.
I was swallowed by a serpent ten miles beneath the sea. I cut his belly with my sword and began to struggle free. This is all that remains of the temple of my family. Tomorrow is the first day of the year. I lost air as I fought to the surface. My eyes climbed quickly into my skull and hid. I shouldered back down into the dull green abyss. I landed on a hot beach in the path of a wet wind. The sun directly above me smiling at the gulls. I was standing in the center of a twenty-five yard hand. Time is vulgar and love is a lie. We cannot live long on the flesh of our masters. We shall have to set out on our own. The serpents in the trees whisper mystical secrets. Everything that�s left here is poison. A few of our own have begun worshipping death. They pray as they lie on their backs clutching bones in the moonlight. The space heater has failed and the cold is upon us. I am feeling erotic about dying. The speakers are wrestling with the space around them.
We had a sanctuary and now we have tongues.
The electricity is climbing the stairs like a drunk.
I am menaced by fragrances.
The sonnets
The swamp where we feasted on shadows,
where you spoke to me over a meal of furrowed
brows,
I went there briefly again today-
not to visit and not to stay-
but to pore over the bones of burdened beasts,
to scratch my legs on the fraying seats,
to love God for His conceits?
To be reminded of a deceit.
That swamp of coal and pride and tin
where the ghost of an unforgettable sin
met the apostasy of letting memory in
to a stomach of water and death and din.
I was feeling dead, just to begin.
I think I�m ready to be born again.
My name is Daniel Pearl.
I am a Jewish American from Encino, California, U.S.A.
I come from, on my father�s side of the family is Zionists.
My father is Jewish. My mother is Jewish.
I Am Jewish.
My family follows Judaism.
We have made numerous family visits to Israel.
In the town of B�nei Brak, in Israel, there is a street called
Chaim pearl Street
which is named after my great-grandfather
who was one of the Founders of the town.
Not knowing anything about my situation,
not being able to communicate with anybody,
only now realizing that some of the people in Guantanamo Bay
must be
in a similar situation.
I�ve come to realize that this is the sort of problems
that Americans are going to have anywhere in the World now.
We can�t be secure we can�t walk around free.
As long as our government policies are continuing and we allow them to continue.
We Americans cannot continue to bear the consequences of our government�s actions.
Such as: the unconditional support given to the state of Israel;
Twenty four abuses of the veto power to justify the massacre of children;
And the support for the dictatorial regimes in the Arab and Muslim World.
And also the continued American military presence in Afghanistan.
We sang up in praise, our voices raised
We sang lay on say rai niler blaze
Eyes closed like forbidden mail.
Right sen grey triangle moon.
Left in slick hedge brush tuberculosis.
Everything wax and made out of God.
My hand greasy on the yod.
The Dogs are out barking in the yard.
I Love You like free jazz loves nothing
in a cup of old water in a dead cupboard.
Moler to yes sumin dry xasty.
Greater than greater than greater than.
Greater then greater than greater than.
Alto Ids stalking stockings in Stockholm
I�m not I�m not I�m not ever home.
We lay there she and I naked but for leaves beneath
trees of green rain and bodies pierced by light.
Her body and my body spoke a language our mouths didn�t know.
And we were turned to one before the end of the night.
Now it�s morning and the grass sleeps in wet dreams
and everything is quieter than it seems.
And the seeds of life may yet burst our bodies at their seams.
And the tops of the trees shook still from our screams.
And the fingers of God came through the leaves in long beams
of light and tomorrow so ged she slay tan ghost lips.
I sailed away on a slavery ship.
Leaves of breath.
I�m following the Star of Death.
The war sways the sun this way, then that.
One day all the poets confessed all of their sins at exactly the same time
and every sin was a lie-
they had committed none of them.
The next day all the poets killed themselves
at exactly the same time.
Only three died.
Six required stitches
and four of them had their stomachs pumped.
One day, the most beautiful woman in the world
performed oral sex on all of the remaining poets.
Later that day, she drove a station wagon off of the Pacific Coast Highway
and died.
Today, all of the poets are at her funeral.
Tomorrow, all of the poets will write erotic fiction on the walls of all the churches.
On the day after that, all of the poets will die of natural causes and be forgotten forever.
�Oh, my darling, oh my darling, oh my darling Clementine....you are lost and gone forever, oh my darling Clementine...�
While I think of it, it crawls
like an assassin, expert over my
waking, my tea, my classes, my
fitting pillow cases-my own scant
stream of day. Black-dressed and
oily and shy. It won�t be either
seen in full or ignored. While
I try to stop thinking of it, I
smoke cigarettes. �Those things
will kill you.� He says.�I know
that.� I say. �There�s always
something killing me. You,
you old fuck, were the first.�
Click break make dank haze take for gray.
Stop here mid strophe, mid stroke, at the genesis this is Napoleon.
Pop hiss I�ve shattered it I�ve gathered it together in dead places
tender faces mending fences in the dense dead senses.
Come here, I cry so desperately at the bridge.
Come here, I say/ I�ve found a place where there is no justice/ come with me, we�ll go there, we�ll stay there.
You should see the sunsets like bullet wounds!
You should see the mad rapists like mustangs!
You should see the mountains like fangs!
Radio transmission New York gas and glass and commuter lanes and
on the beach in the oil vinyl couches and green windbreakers.
The codebreakers are sick in the sinks and the bathroom stinks of finks
and the chain link fences are red with blood and mud.
I�ve found this place! I cry! There!
Are no symbols here!
There are no feelings!
There is suicide instead of sex!
There is permanence instead of war!
There are lotuses instead of whores!
One thousand times I climb this vine to find my mind entwined with yours in whores and wars and laws and booze and madness and lined paper and unsharpened handwriting torn halfway up the middle.
When we meet in the paradise to come I want you to be the one to put the gun under my tongue.
Some summers come undone but this one�s just begun. I can�t remember what we�ve done.
Or rather I won�t.
Please meet me along the green fence at ramp 2B at 10:oo PM on July 3rd.
Not for letter writing or cloth. Permanent on most surfaces.
You fucking godless bitch.
I am on an overturned table at sea with no land in sight
on a starless night
hunting the moon with a stone and a sling.
The waves sing
the following:
Say summer Sunday,
it�s run away, it�s run away!
There�s no one in the blue grass-
hide behind the glass...
I floated into the end of Temples.
Things are getting simple.
I love the desolation.
Sex inebriation.
Can I love you �til the bell rings?
Can I kiss you where you sing?
Can�t tell you how I�ll miss you-
it�s much too big a secret.
I would jump out of my soul!
Next time you come around,
you�ll fall in a pool of my poetry and drown.
in the rain the circuits
wed to a feather and
worn out leather
mana til fiel
life is a veil
this is the meantain
the tide held and lips pursed
some gay down wind river
senses stirred
hedonist and magistrate
I will wake when the echoes
have finished their journey
and Sunday comes lei rai
two fish in a portable stream
two dreams in a movable pebble
the thunder and pick-up trucks tremble.
I learned how to walk like the gods
me are sen rose face sen yod
To ray in the sun wear ink clothes
yellow existed before in the ayj
time dust and well water
daughters of sons
suns and wire
fire and rime
signs and alphabets
she hen turn fai I cry
the dry earth rosen on the wingspan bow
suicide salt
this is their fault
tomorrow is my great sun
hide in the last brick
glee horn dive sweat
She was a smooth cemetery, the Matriarch
of the calfskin blues
tortoise shell boots/and she sang like Mahalia Jackson.
This is the winter of her wishes-
An old woman breaking dishes.
All in the days after beauty.
She sits on my lap and whispers in my ear:
-there are two kinds of people in the world,
those who accept that mystery and solitude are essential facts of life, and those who don�t.
I said, is it that black and white, my lovely little Time Spark?
The angels of gratitude turned back at the grey of the sky and surrendered to the ghosts of pirates that had been tossed into the sea.
I lay awake and listen beneath the lava, breathing between clashes.
We are deep in the night: a stitch of perfection.
Then her eyes left for the carnival
gravestone gravestone
ink jet french
ultra marine
one zero one zero one
I think my one true love is come undone
one zero one zero one
naked in the bed of the truck
one zero one one one
while all the boys climb in for a fuck
white and thighs and fights and lies
one zero one zero one zero one
she begs me please to loose the ties
one zero one one one one
my one true love has blue blue eyes
zero zero hero one
and when all the boys are done
we dance a jig to the setting sun
one zero one zero one zero one
abraxas paralysis tin drum
ammonia nine
Memory
Spoke out
Of position, wringed
On a blank sea
Naked
As cauliflower sitting,
Chalk, rank.
It's bare movements shake, then shake,
Sick as neon,
Tepid, unseen, trotting
Now, and again, here,
Then-my own picture:
Glass folding down like a pitchfork,
Easy blue posts
A sandy shatter;
Silicon vomit of ice, cars themselves
Banked under hydrants.
Memory comes on a flower,
Fibres protruding like fire,
Stilted young bits of Forgetting,
Their Teeth Gnashing at the Tide.
In the raindrops
are words God forgot
that fall to earth
to give rivers birth
and give children mirth
when God weeps
and the sun pretends to be asleep
and nations make war on each other
when God feels pain
and cries out mute
mouth syncing useless
without the words
that fell to earth in rain
for children to pick up
from rivers like gold
for future use.
When we dance
We dance in the slight of a fault
Tipped in a clay Mandala
Wasted and filled with our oaths
The shake of your head is
The Devil's sugar
He clips a cigar and retreats
Fist in the rain like a penance
This morning I slept for a night
Wretched with smoke and with knowledge
Carried under seas and in thunder
Fat in a sand of wrought sun
Alone in a denseness of muscle
Things came to know and be known
These things in a turn of fit spirits
Me on a porch in the sun
Riding away on a wave good-bye.
Today is the day, perhaps-
The End of It All
Is coming sometime...
Say the sinister sisters:
a woman can destroy a man
just by being vulnerable.
The elephants have tramped the hills!
The tambourines, the daffodils!
If you wish me to remember this I will.
Tell me when the water is still.
Then, until-
today is the day-perhaps-we die
I�m riding away on a wave good-bye
Coiled abbreviated warm in a sun
Wrenches of grass pulling staked light
Down in a hill of set leaves
A tongue of a fury a fur of bit teeth
Thieves taking picnics back on asses of ants
Sweat cornered and eyed across tumult and rest
Restless young dog rolling back on his chest
A paw in a wave of cut grass and trees
Manicured fast in a break and a wind
Boys watching boys playing games on the rocks
Head lamps that dance still in a day
The dog
And the cut lawn getting out of their clothes.
Battle rages on.
Afghanistan, Iraq and elsewhere
points East of here.
Newsworthy warfare of Anglican Angels and
American Boys.
And I am in Love.
Warm Jewish woman,
old soul cold blue grey eyes
I
sigh
a lot these days.
Like heart lips.
A day like
a snake
at a carnival
in the wind
at morning time
on the bottom of the
world
several days ago.
I have finally learned
that nothing means anything.
The eyes of prisoners
have the great luxury
of being hidden from
the world that is locked to them.
The rest of us wade
in it and smell it
every day without being able
to touch it.
His lousy poetry is as follows
and I quote.
�Crimson, Crimson, Azure,
Moat, Goat, Throat.�
I�m gonna tell the teacher exactly what I wrote.
Please never read this poem.
Sweet and bitter and out of key.
Choking old tears with open hands.
Sea gulls kissing in the sand.
