poemimage

I swallowed so much ash a charcoal-grey forest grew in my aching belly.

Somebody standing in a boat said, ‘How did you get here?’

I followed a procession sounding chants & reflecting sunlight. Gold & cloth & wood embroidered &

dotted by the chalky wind fluttered evocative shadows. Preparations for industrial-age conflict trembled

upon the earth, in place, anchored in grievious position, growling, pushing emotional tremors

into the gusting easterly wind. The invincible wind curving & curvilinear shaped like an ocean swallows a

storm cloud. I shaped my raspberry destiny & toiled in ash. I climbed a swaying tower above & beyond

blood & mud. I knew nobody and nobody knew me. I swallowed so much ash a charcoal-grey forest grew

in my aching belly.

I walked down grey-brown streets at dawn seeing the innocents shrieking rage, vomiting ivory ghosts,

spices & musical genius on the sidewalk. Civilizational egregores & robed shadows possessed by animated

entities, riddled with animated entities, like raisin bread sticky with raisins, chew the bones of the

innocent. Perversely & theatrically

working their rubbery mouths around entire buildings & bridges, horses, games of chance & games

of sport. Grandiosely igniting wooden spoons, cameras, even termite colonies buried beneath ancient

settlements with the grinding friction of their well-worn teeth dusted with particles of shattered & baked

clay. I swallowed so much ash a charcoal-grey forest grew in my aching belly.

Dogs in obedient joy welp at the scent of hellhounds in chain collars on upper floors lapping at

overflowing overturned goblets. LIke a technicolour movie about Rome, in spine-tingling chaos,

fiery destruction, distressed crimson robes, abandoned fire departments & the final telephone dialing for

an emergency ambulance. Your gloves & hat, your embroidered boots & even your body worn by an

impersonator. Somebody in difficulty has taken your tin of aspirin. Somebody standing in a boat said

nothing.

Darkly the personification of this civilization, impersonating a previous heartbeat, sits on a stolen throne

missing a screw. Twisting the cork from a painted glass bottle retrieved in some primeval epic (or cave

in a distant land stripped of its artifacts) within one of the later chapters. As floodgates release

confusion; flooding day with a deepening pungent twilight (released within one of the later chapters), a

wind-roaring brilliance strikes into this Dark Age of facsimile with the flat edge of the Sword Of The Sun.

Wielded hypnotically, silently, within a whirling whorl, the whirring centre blindingly radiant, unseeable

without special sunglasses & revolving in the fury of a gold-plated prehistoric & fiery flame-winged

monstrosity, hallucinating incantations, hallucinating three-dimensions of whatsover is rare. Whatsover

incantatory. In Naples yellow. In geometric technicolour. In the eyesight of a sprite. In a double-feature

at the silent cinema. In scratched B&W. In poetry & prophecy. In wicker basketry. In green

depths of hollow reeds. In great depths of a swallows nest. In the chiaroscuro forest raining & rinsing.

To rinse & to rain. To make the motion of sifting. In grieving. In fractal mandalas & labyrinths. In forest

mushrooms dripping rain. In lullabies to the unseen. In lullabies to the always, always, always seen. In,

within, tumbling dance. In passion voluminous as the punctuating dragon-like war horn. In harvest-moon

ritualized incantations. In sifted snowy flour. In the cracked mirror. In deeply-lined cracked hands. In days

and hours. In dreamtime interruptus. In radiating steam. In radiating yellow-orange rays of the sun. In

translucent radiating orbs. In the flat edge of the Sword Of The Sun. In a bevelled edge polished

clockwise using a soft cloth.

The Age of the Golden descends upon us like an upside down cauldron. We stagger in veneration,

beneath a charcoal-scented shadow we can almost taste, stumbling down a hillside in golden clouds,

irridescent gold imbued & perfumed with engraving, wispy yet real as a dragon, clinging to the corners

of our mouths, into a tattooed landscape of wind-tangled tasseled banners in geometric formations. In

symbology. I strip to my white underwear stiff with sweat. You will never again be swallowed. Never again

permeated with dark matter & stuffed into the mouth of ancient springs irrigating olive groves, apricot

orchards & the habitat of four-winged songbirds singing to you in your original name. Reeds whistle to

you in the depth of your golden name.

You will never again lose sunlight, as invisible as jet fuel, or whosoever sunlight in fine-grains of astral fire

serves in golden obedience, or whosoever sunlight in iconographic fiery rags serves in golden

obedience, or whosoever sunlight in raising & aiming mighty beams of energy serves in golden

obedience, or whosoever sunlight in billowing sediment crisscrossing eons serves in golden obedience.

Blessed be that celestial eye upon you.

Repeatedly. Repeatedly. Repeatedly.

Blessed be that celestial eye upon you.

You shall receive this day a gift beginning The Age of the Golden. In animated cartoons, in

the box of breakfast cereal, in the Brueghelian mud & dust & rolling hillsides of War and Peace directed

by Sergei Fyodorovich Bondarchuk, in the battlefield veneration of the Virgin of Smolensk icon,

in a processional winding (groupings of figures flow like rivers), in chanted prayer, in mischief, in radio

silence, in the apple, in the oak, in Morse Code, in the Song of Amergin, you shall receive.

In the simplicity of heartbeats pounding, in the golden teardrops of this planet, in butterfly migrations, in

chalk-dust on your eyelid, in the casting out of invasive demons & entities, in frightened & exhausted

soldiers chanting music of the spheres with tears in their eyes, in the paper-thin skin of a snake, in this

impersonation of a civilization, you shall receive.

In Concerning the Spiritual in Art by Wassily Kandinsky, in beams of light, in right angles softened by

coincidence, in reflective globules, in diagonal patternings, in wallpaper configurations permeated by

cascading cosmic dust, in eyesight, in the soft, swaddling clothing adorning your infancy, in digging with

a shovel, in fairytales, in noir, in carved stone spirals, in burial & planting, in perfuming air with original air,

in defeating the oppressor, in the discovery of zero, in perspiration & exhaustion, you shall receive.

In crimson berries pulped & stirred in a glass jar beneath sunlight, in the flooded courtyard, in a

songbird’s love for lily-of-the-valley, in swans washing feathered wings, in swans stirring the heavy air, in

overthrown (triple reversed) curses, in the illuminations of Merlin, in your mother’s laughter, in your

father’s final resting place, in their fingertips & heartbeats, in their breathing, you shall receive.

In choosing magic well you receive. In choosing well the coincidental & original magic. In blessings

beyond improbable synchronicity chosen. In overthrown curses. In power manifesting power. In chanting

the blessings of rainwater. In chanting the blessings of sobreity. In meat-hunters bringing to table. In fish-

hunters bringing to table. In honeyed drink, plum pie & roasted walnuts, in beginning

The Age of the Golden.

Burlap curtains twist into sculptural forms, seen by the neighbour sworn to silence, in the

investigation of you into yourself, in secrecy & stilled breath when somebody is near,

in opening a wooden drawer, in towers of grain & memory, in bricks fallen from the low archway,

in mouthfuls of green vines & tiny flowers, in a forced march, in the shade beneath a dolmen, in the

centre of a sacred grove, in beginning

The Age of the Golden.

In sleep & sleeplessness, in waking & wakefulness. In foolish pride. In tears. In realization you have

thrown so very much away. In all you have lost. In the movie of your life retold by witnesses.

In eating ash. In the bark of a tree. In the return of sacred lore. In the timeline of the liminal. In the wound

you heal with ash. In chanting, in celebration for drawing breath, in defeating the oppressor, in beginning

The Age of the Golden.

Some information about things I mentioned in the poem:

War and Peace is a 1966–1967 Soviet film co-written and directed by Sergei Bondarchuk adapted from Leo Tolstoy’s 1869 novel.

Concerning the Spiritual in Art is a book by Wassily Kandinsky, Russian painter and art theorist, published in 1910.

Pieter Brueghel the Younger, born into a well known artistic family in 1564 (Belgium) was known for village & rustic scenes as well as religious images.

The Song of Amergin is said to have roots in the ancient world and to be the first poem in the Irish language spoken by Amergin as he stepped ashore.

(Old Irish Gaelic) Am gaeth i m-muir, Am tond trethan, Am fuaim mara, Am dam secht ndirend, Am séig i n-aill, Am dér gréne, Am cain lubai, Am torc ar gail, Am he i l-lind, Am loch i m-maig, Am brí a ndai, Am bri danae, Am bri i fodb fras feochtu, Am dé delbas do chind codnu, Cia on co tagair aesa éscai? Cia du i l-laig fuiniud gréne?

(English Translation) I am Wind on Sea, I am Wave on Land, I am Roar of Ocean, I am the Stag with Seven Tines, I am an Eagle on a Cliff, I am a Tear of the Sun, I am the Fairest Flower, I am the Rampaging Boar, I am the Swift Salmon, I am a Loch on the Plains, I am the Defiant Word, I am the Skill of Art, I am the Spear, Battle Hardened. I am the god, who puts Fire in the Head. Who but I knows the Cycles of the Moon? Who but I know the place where the Sun Sleeps?