To be a writer, you must be always in love and never in love. The paradox wasteland. Madonna, I was a grave then. I am not a saint but flesh and sometimes a fire.
“I feel so strange, as if I were living in a myth—”
“Myths are dangerous places.”
– The Green Knight, Iris Murdoch
Larkspur days I heard the Absolute
Carthage came in the thunder of ruin and rapture
She said: I dream crossed twilight
Like the drowned Phoenicians
To deeper seas of Being
I drank I burned I gathered dreams ⁂
Belladonna burning in fire-currents
Like whispering whirlpools of Charybdis
Do not leave me in this abyss where I cannot find you ✬
(The rest of Heaven was Blue) ❈
(While I was burning in azure dunes)
The commandments were stone agonies
And I witnessed
Lovely-asunder starlight ✣
Soundless spring in its savagery
Madonna Sibyl and Sorceress of the mountain tombs
She said the Womb-World was Memory in reverse
Turns of tempest in candle-carvèd darkness ✣
Lifeless Ophelia slept in the lilacs of Deadland lakes
Trenched with tears ✣
Martyr-master: the mark is of man's make ✣
Madonna the fire-Sacrificed
What an awakening, I was incarnating in the treachery of flames
Madonna had the heartbeat of the dead
The splendor of undoing, I witnessed the ruin
From gutter to god
Wake the dawn I had forgotten
The divine occupation of fire
Doomed to drown in the dark side of the bays ✣
I gazed at late Madonna rising from Lily Oblivion
She shattered into constellated fragments like earthquakes
God of the gutter in golden splendour
Graduate of the Devastations
Madonna I called
And she came
Paradox Wonders of the Wasteland
Glow glory in thunder ✣
It was a grace and a grave
The Word within a World
Madonna the Maimed
As kingfishers catch fire, dragonflies draw flame ✣
O and the night the night when the wind full of Worldspace gnaws at our faces ⁎
I thought it was dust
But it was Man Rising to Devastate
I woke and felt the fell of dark not day ✣
Now done darkness I wrestled with the God-storms ✣
Asato ma sad-gamaya
tamaso ma jyotir-gamaya
mrtyor-ma amrutam gamaya
Your shadow at evening rising to greet you
(What would the dark do without fevers to eat?) ✧
Sacrifice was freedom
The hanged man in a handful of dust
In Death’s dream kingdom
A population of god-devouring voids
Samsara like a Scythe of Arriving Sunlight
I could not forget the whimpering way the world ends
What would the light do without darksome devouring eyes to knife? ✧ ✣
The opiates were missing lives to hide
Always I walk into the fire and come out more alive ✦
God of the storms, That Darkness is no Door
This is the Rapture you waited for
Thou martyr-master: the mark of the beast is of man's make ✣
Madonna the Sacrificed, Maiden-god of the wastes
Pray tell me, who is your namesake?
The stars threw down their spears ✺
And watered heaven with their tears ✺
Late Madonna of the Mysteries
(The majesty!)
Darkness breeds many mirrors ⁎
Beast of the waste wood ✣
What distant deeps or skies
Lit the fire of your tempest eyes? ✺
And with fire forge your will stealing as Spring ✣
History an unwinding helix, I witnessed
The dance of the Dream-led masses down the dark mountain ✣
Oblivion’s soundless spring
It was your shadow striding behind you
In spring mornings that felt like evenings
God of the doors, I was as unmoored as Madonna of the Inferno
During her darksome devouring descent, the last lights off the black West went ✣
The Antagonist! Fell with us!
Madonna I witnessed the dizziness of the abyss
A blaze of elms and yews like burning effigies in the lost woods
House of Hades House of Dust (even in another time I say someone will remember us ✪)
I speak because I am shattered ❉
Babel feasted on languages
Bearing dark gravities
and I panicked—
Worship me
Not midsummer fields of stoic lambs turning silver in alchemical twilight among flickering fireflies a ring of fire burning through the firs ❉
alloys of moonlight ❉
Ashes to ashes after the abyss
I thought it was salvation but it was a grace and a grave
Sorrow’s springs are the same ✣
(I blamed the fault in our stars)
To flash from the flame to the flame then tower from the grace to the grace ✣
The waste! The waste! The waste!
Madonna of the tombstone roses
We were mutilated by fire-genesis
I witnessed the screams of summerfire
The revels ended, breeding the Deadlands
God of the wind under the doors
God of the bruisèd bones ✣
I wanted more I wanted more
The testimonies of splendor
and I remembered—
Madonna of the stars’ dark accessories
These were the Deadland Lily Centuries
Sirens singing the falcon’s storm-song
They astounded and then devoured souls
Madonna lived in the white towers of Oblivion
moonlight river nymphs with hymns of the abyss
Mermaid-muses in sea chapels
I wanted to sink in the existences I witnessed
Madonna of the Wastes
Burning newborn to the world Doubled-naturèd name ✣
The heaven-flung heart-fleshed maiden-furled Miracle-in-Mary-of-flame ✣
Madonna of the violent delights and the violent ends
Madonna I was a grave then (because I prayed this word: I want ✪)
(I was dreaming of you but) Dawn in her gilded raiment (woke me) ✪
God hews mountain and continent while nature’s bonfire burns on ✣
Mornings and evenings
In summer and autumn dust
Oblivion was soundless spring
From gutter to god
The occupation of fire:
flight into fragmented stars
I had forgotten
God in the gutter
Shield of strange lands, I witnessed terra firma disintegrating
The core of Earth as hollow as drowned Ophelia’s lidless eyes
A lantern of dawn moved along the night, birthing a myriad worlds ✣
with all down darkness wide wading light ✣
„Was wirst du tun, Gott, wenn ich sterbe?“ ⁎
Madonna of the labyrinths was crucified in fire
A fragile thing, she was lily-veined like undone Eternity
Immortal Virgin in the miasma
Rising with that ruin, fire!
Madonna Sibyl-Sorceress-Saint of winter’s wheeling fire
Before the dream of death, Burial of the Living
Graduate of the Devastations
Madonna I called
And she came
I witnessed fear in a handful of summer dust
Summer as an alleyway of bones
It was oblivion I stole as soundless spring
Madonna of the wounded gods gospel, she rose in a shadow-storm
Your hyacinth girl in fire fragments like the garish stars
Moonlight river nymphs with hymns of the abyss
Madonna the foghorn moon is no door
Be a dayspring to the dimness of us ✣
Madonna Dame at our door Drowned ✣
Desire the heaven-haven of Reward ✣
I wanted more I wanted more
Devastation Desire breeding the Deadlands
Madonna doubted that the stars are shifting fire
The splendours of god were testimonies I witnessed
A scavenger of Deadland lilacs
These were the obituaries of springs
and I panicked—
Shrine nightingales singing in the Decay
Upon the shores of Ruin I sailed to fragmented wastes
I witnessed the shores of soundless spring
Blind Tiresias tightroping the ravines of oblivion
Woe world-sorrow, the mind has mountains and mountains ✣
Belladonna Lady of the Red Rocks, I slept under obsidian moons
While the fire of winter led to soundless spring
Madonna of the redrock shadow canyons
Like the Wasteland, the Immortal Virgin was in fragments
She rose and spoke with desire’s honey poison hive
The soul filled with the fire that is moonlight ❉
Your pearlèd eyes sent me to burning Carthage
On the barge of blind Tiresias
I witnessed wine-dark sunken seas
Then the hornèd Gates of Dawn opened for me
A night without ships foghorns calling into walled cloud
and you still alive drawn to the light as if it were a fire kept by monks ✿
to be eaten to be divided (by Memory and Desire) to be drunk
(dark barges drifting with turning tides in wine-dark nights)
These were testimonies of the hyacinth girl:
There was wind under Oblivion’s doors
White fiery whirlwinds of light
Every prison of desire is a palace of light
Lord, from a match you never lit, such fire ˚.⋆
Madonna of the incoherences
A prophetess towered in the tumult ✣
Seal of seraph-arrival ✣
Of so many soundless springs
We were driven to extinction
Every murmuring summer was lamentation
The living Virgin dissembled in a death-dream
Lady of Silences
After all things occurred to me, the void occurred to me ❉
In the sterile exile of Eternity, the Deadland lily was defiled
Madonna I called and Madonna she kept arriving—
God burdened us with bruisèd bones
And the mother moons brought storms
During soundless oblivion spring
Go toward the light always, be without ships ✿
And I witnessed flowering Judas in the summer dust
Like judges burning the Blood of the Lamb
Madonna of the Arcane Ages, pharaoh graves circled by carrion crows
What shall we do in the day-graves, tomorrow and tomorrow and tomorrow?
I called the dark Madonna and ecstatic the dark Madonna came—
Ruin and Rapture
Like a shore of soundless oblivion
Cruel summerfall I desired killing spring
Goldengrove season of gash gold-vermillion ✣
Belladonna Lady of the Rocks
Burning sunrise with her rosy fingers of light
Witness the whirlwinds of Oblivion
The Wasteland was a Wreckage of Angels devouring gods
Madonna the world-arsonist
Madonna I was a void and a vortex
Wanting the Gates of Dawn
I was drinking silent spring rains like dark God roots
In the dull furnace of summerfall, Madonna the Immortal remained mute
Madonna of the revolving worlds of Memory
Madonna of the midnight polyphonies
Awakening in cathedral hearts
I listened to voices of the holy-blood-drowned
Like the outcrying of torched oaks
Madonna the frosted corpse in winter wildwoods
Shivering like Sylvan Ophelia beneath lidless black lakes
The infinity of suffering at the bruise of shadowed daybreak
Madonna of the god-sarcophagus, dark as throat caverns
Hierophant of nightfall, she was metamorphosed by madness
Levantine lamps in the marshèd darkness
We dream we are rooted in earth—Dust! ✣
(Even in another time I say someone will remember us ✪)
Madonna of the Miracles, she obliterated Oblivion
Saint of Winter’s Fire, she was Miriam of the dead mountain mouths
My life still strains me like hanging from the viscous eyelids of night
Blackfall ascension the day descends into dark
Horn of the hours, the angels transited to everlasting twilight
(What was the feast that followed the night?) ✣
(I am without fire, my marrow is ash) ⁂
(I long and I long and I seek after) ✪
(What by your measure is the heaven of Desire?) ✣
Buried beneath the shroud of sunlight I died in Decay
Beauty the unbearable
Madonna, du läufst wie ein Rudel leuchtender Hirsche,
und ich bin dunkel; ich bin Wald ⁎
The Wasteland was a fire plain
Kingdom of burning sunlight
Like a merchant of hostage heavens
I stole from the Druid twilight
Beauty was unbearable Wasteland
These were the failures of silent spring:
I was still here, witnessing
Demon hordes on the misty-mantled night horizons
I burned, I pined, I perished in desire’s limbs ✻
The moon was blooming corpses at twilight
Every soundless spring oblivion I tried to die
Hornèd hours like the hooded man I was hanging
Rebirth of salvific spring
A savage season imitating fire plains
You know nothing you see nothing you remember nothing
I am an Unreal City that does not want to surrender ⁂
—beseige me, Beauty the unbearable Wasteland
I transited twilight
Existence, the Jeweled dream-crossing
Abundant as cornucopias with first disobedience figs
This was the kingdom of burning sunlight
Madonna came and Madonna she kept arriving
Defrauded of delight, it was Desire like a fire plain
In genocidal paradise, the Gate of the garden-god
Afraid of beholding the revolving worlds
Madonna I was a ruin of wings
These were the failures of silent spring:
that I was still here witnessing Carthage burning
We were wingbeat prisoners of twilight
Liminal as the birds
Oblivion splintered cruel spring
Belladonna Lady of the Rocks was burning in the night rains
„Wer mit Ungeheuern kämpft, mag zusehn,
daß er nicht dabei zum Ungeheuer wird.
Und wenn du lange in einen Abgrund blickst,
blickt der Abgrund auch in dich hinein.“
O Brave New World, The Word was Vapour beneath the storm moons ✻
And then a million Oblivions rose!
A heroine on a burnished throne
I was a solitude like Madonna of the Rocks
Ecstatic Carthage came burning in fire-currents
the spin and spin of light the whirring of it light in search of the lost
there since the era of fire ✿
Desire exiled in Paradise
Behind the Time veil
In the midnight rains
Madonna I called and she came
Mary Maia Miriam Mut Madre Mère Mother pray for us pray for us dark Mary Mary mère mer this is the nightmare this is the dark horse this is Mary Maia Mut Mutter this is Gaia˚
I desire the things which will destroy me ✧
This is the way the world ends—desire sentences me
For a Muse of Fire that would ascend ✻
Madonna the Martyr of Carthage
Burning with what I wanted
The desires I tried to kill
The grasses unload their griefs on my feet as if I were God ✧
Madonna of the golden worlds with shut doors
I resurrected my second self
She was afraid of sentencing herself
I spoke only to angels in the language of the unreal ❉
Forests Bridges spanning luminous voids, the sun awakening above the dream-darkening land ⁎
I was a wingbeat prisoner of the liminal
The thunder said „At vove er at miste fodfæstet et kort øjeblik.
Ikke at vove er at miste sig selv.“ ☼
To burning Carthage then I came
Like Madonna of the Rocks
Burning burning burning burning
and I sought— (to become the Fire Sermon)
ॐ भूर्भुवः स्वः
तत्सवितुर्वरेण्यं
भर्गो देवस्य धीमहि
धियो यो नः प्रचोदयात् ॥ ☽
the lazy reference list: louse gluck ❉; ts eliot (groan) ; the upanishads; the gayatri mantra ☽; nietzsche; shakes-a-spear ✻; sylvia plath ✧; rainer maria rilke ⁎ ; gerard manley hopkins ✣; ˚.⋆ ilya kaminsky; H.D. The Gift˚, anaïs nin ✦, hélène cixous ⁂, edgar allan poe ❈, emily brontë ✬; søren kierkegaard ☼ (to dare is to lose one's footing for a brief moment. not to dare is to lose oneself); the lady Sappho ✪ (translated by anne carson); william blake ✺; carolyn forché ✿; my homeboy homer
