SAN FRANCISCO TWILIGHTS
for Stella ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ ONE: THE MANY-CITIED WORD ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ The heart of the word splits open In the night air, ink and smoke Out of the gothic wells of sleep. Sea-voices, blue voices, White bells rolling down the hills, Hyancinth and lilac, To the smokestacks. Wood-voices, mist-voices, Oracles of the thrush - Emerald gorges, cities of breath, Waterfalls of silk - Invisible birds dive through dreams Into the solitude of your breast, Where ghost-suns flicker Under leaves of crystal, Buried in caverns of tears, Your eyes in the dark silver light, Hours of rain turning in secret letters To your face, The darkest song of the season, Gospel of stones Speaking the language of dead leaves And empty streets, The winds come home to your heart. ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ Moments between dusk and darkness In the haunt of animal ghosts, The shadowlands of sleep across a white face, Leaves behind the wind, A sudden barking, a gull's cry. Gothic days return, Gargoyles carved in the rain, Windows layered in blue-green light, Footprints blown away from sand, Becoming fossils in the air. Away from the gloom of summer Trees walk through the night Towards the birds of autumn. The book of dead leaves, The bible of bone and weed, Opens into russet and blood, When the song of the hermit can be heard, Rising from the fields, from lamplight, Rising from the flesh of silence Beneath the dark moon of her face. ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ Words surface from the paper As from a white still pond: Rabbit bones, mummified lilacs, The sun eclipsed by crows. Pages of shadow open Into infinite depths of gold, A voice of leaves from beneath the earth. The ink of black moons Fills the cracks in the air, Absorbing eyes, lapping at rooftops. The pen goes down into the paper, As branches cross one another, singing: The blue fields of stars, The long grass lit by hidden crickets. ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ At three in the morning The full moon passes across the bedroom window, A white fire igniting the curtains. Before it disappears Its light melts our bodies Giving ancient voices to our bones, Giving scents to secret totems Behind the concrete and the wails of dogs. Lying motionless, suspended between dimensions, I watch your face being formed For the thousandth time From the drifting mists Into masks of leaf, fur, stone Until it settles again at last Into the melancholy sigh of your lips, The still beauty of your brow, The hollows of hidden flame Deep in the seas of prehistoric sleep. The moon haunts the clouds and freeways, Passes into distant fields and cities, I close the wings of my eyes And watch you From behind the bark of trees. ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ In the kitchen, I sit and listen To the distant fog moving around the city, To the stars that breathe out pale leaves of dust, To the slow crumbling of sidewalks under the wind. I listen to the faraway evening Settling onto stones and moss, The last light moving back into the trees. Sometimes there is a stillness, even here, That I can cup in my hands, like candlelight Or water, and that is what I always listen for, What must exist somewhere In the hours when only the dead Are awake and speaking to me, As they rustle in the darkness, The gold speech of my bones. ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ When I turn out the last lamp at night My hand reaches into the blue room Of a castle where my breath Is painted on the air To carry my voice Through the dusk On gold waves that vanish Like the sea rippling back into itself, Until everything that is invisible comes forth In the stillness into which I stare And see you sleeping. Centuries pass Before the lamp goes out Completely And I follow my hands To your side and sink Into the stone room beneath the light. ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ The ghosts of stones inhabit The white spaces my eyes have become. The sirens become red owls That fly out over the fields of waving shadow, Where the streets end in a murmur Of black water filled with voices. In the night we inhale cities of smoke, Walking towards the clouded hills, Away from the ranting concrete, Bending to drink the eyes of deer From pools of pure dream. ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ Around us, towers of fog rise From the sidewalks, windows Cry out to each other From room to room. The trees by the freeway Breathe out the night, We are their shadows Under the hurried cars. Deep in our bones, Where sleep has never reached, A bleak wind blows away The light. The days are inhabited By the white sand That is our blood, Our skeletons slowly re-enact The history of flesh. ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ Words float in the air, Serpentine and jewelled totems, Golden insect wings, The clustered eyes of Saturday night. The kitchen in candlelight, A castle of hyacinth. Visions of rain, sleep, A thrush deep in violet shadows. Stillness of pastures, The wet grass between midnight And dawn. Pages turn, Blood and stars on the windows, Black freeways, Television murmuring. Someday I will carry you Like a young tree, to the woodshed, I will lick your sap and sing The woodcutter's dirge, Bending over you, nymph of maple, As the hills finally bury us. ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ The fall of light. The city rises from my body. I can see my mother's hands, I can still feel the last time We embraced. Shells fall from my eyes As the pages turn from her flesh Into the dark chant of the sea That covers her. The graves of our living, Copper and crystal, Remnants of sea-nights, Wind and ghosts holding The house together. The white egrets are our thoughts As we walk the cold beaches For the last time. ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ Up late, sitting with ghosts In my mother's room, Wrapped in dark feathers. Breezes stir the onyx chimes, I unlock the speech of night And listen to the nests of bone Crumbling beneath the bushes, Through the songs of the crickets. The white hands of the sea Reach out, turning in my body The shapes of herons that dissolve, Becoming the deep mist That moves out of the moss-green Shadows of late dusk, Changing everything into silence. In a trance of stone, Wandering the dunes, a wraith of sand, I rant to the waters, Waving my arms wildly Into the last light. ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ While we sit The room turns deep grey The hands of the clock fall Into piles of sand on the table The dripping water becomes stone Cascading into the earth Ashes float through the air Our dreams remember us dimly Their ghost-fingers resting On pages of gold The windows covered In years of long grass Time opens its dead eyes We move through dark rooms To sleep beneath the chiming Of the sea. ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ Drunk, In the realm of ghosts and demons, I can hear the pathological songs, The slurred speech of dead poets, See the ecstatic lips of suicide opening, With the dark eyes of the centuries watching Me in double vision, States of poison, I lift my glass again and again To drink, I breathe the rank smoke of life In and out, Obsessive, delirious, Digging pits in my body To bury the week, Keeping only the unseen, The unwritten, Secrets of the second shadow, Passing out at midnight Next to you, in the shared coffin Of our sleep, our pale grievings Sealed in drugs, Awaiting the night of our Departure, The annihilation Of all light. ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ Mist, white dragons lifting from the bay Into an infinity of black clouds At dawn, the full moon over the monochrome city, Water towers, smokestacks, hush of sleeping metal. Deep blue air washes the condominiums, Freeways unfold beneath chemical yellow skies, The moon waits, omen of fall, For the words scratched under street lights On the Greyhound passing through The dry husk of suburbia. Turquoise neon, dark red jets, incandescent eyes, Molten orange fields of industrial fog Over the tall palms, Under hills so distant they exist Only as superstition. The moon sets, A circle of shadowed bone. ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ It rains forgotten words, Windows streaked in ink, I brood from a mask of feathers. You are my solitude, Into which I enter, An ancient animal, To find my gold oblivion. Storm of crows, Fall of white violets, Shadows of lilac and mint, Under the haunted waters, Time and silence, pools of birdsong, Irridescent tongues, The emerald suns of summer. I move my hands over your face In the dusk, Uncovering deer heads, silver bones, Dark bird eyes, the souls of leaves. In the depths of autumn, Pods rattling, moon calling out To the long stillness of the fields. Prayer of grey antlers, Song of weeds, Her face lost in green echoes, Dreaming of winter, The hills moving down to cover her In fur. I come to bed and Touch you like Moonlight. ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ In front of the laundermat At first light Under the red clouds I crane my neck until My head is straight up Even with the rest of my body. A tongueless, ancient cry leaves My eyes, I cannot think how I have Come to lamp posts and Telephone poles and spinning dryers. At this moment before full sun Breaks over the grey houses I inhale the sere, sickly air And dream of cool mountain abysses, As the moon fades I return to the washers, The hallucinations begin Where they left off, And all the wolves melt back Into the grain of the streets. ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ Sticking my head out the living-room window, Into the greasey stench of the alley strewn with Garbage, I look up and see two golden stars Gleaming above the putrescence of the city, I smell in the slightest of breezes The scent of the whole ocean, Heavy with salt, pearls, the feathers of gulls, A brief moment of stillness In the blue of the night, And I turn back to the kitchen, To the notebooks, to prepare for morning, Sleep, the work ahead, As the stars darken, As the sea fills my lungs. ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ I put out all the lamps but one Close the curtains over steamed windows Sit down once more Ready for the night's work Surrounded by notebooks and pens I change into the skin of words Galaxies swirl around the grey city Sighs and coughs tremble in the air Phrases on the edge of sleep Traffic flowing through the X-rayed streets I run my pen along the lines Of my nerves Search for a cool blue flower Singing deep in the flames of concrete Finally pushing all aside My head dizzy with too much consciousness I put out the last light And come to your side Floating in images I wrap myself in your scents And sink into the dark summer sands. ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ Words dissolve in blue ink As the cold June fogs move slowly Through the ocean of nights I can hear autumn coming On its dark paws The voice of stillness settles In the breath of small leaves Waiting for the years to fall I walk through windows of violet Into the waves of gold Doors of stone close And the light of roses Holds these words In the nest of your hands. ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ It is too hot to write Too hot to do anything But sit at the kitchen table On a Thursday night in early October Smoking, pretending that I am not In San Francisco, but on an old grey Porch overlooking a wood, listening To the darkness while you sleep In your bed of moonlight and flowering Maple, in a room close by. To make the city vanish into the mist That begins to rise from the damp earth At the first call of an owl, The distant bark of a fox. I come to you, exhausted, To get through one more Night full of concrete voices To dream us home. ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ Claws scratching at lips of concrete A wounded siren wails in the cold grey sea The air broods in the foam of white suns Eyes of cinder watch the leaves fall Wind demons hiss words of dust At the shadows of the houses Before dawn I stalk an unhuman voice My true speech rising from a dark murmur Above the croaks and rasps From my bones like smoke To the moon buried in night and fog The screaming of ghosts and the howling of stones Ripping my words off the page. ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ Days of ash, When the cold winds Blow through our bones, And the leaves rattle all around us. In this ocean of melancholy breaths We are changed, We become each other In a time before our births. Our faces in the rain, Or waiting at moonlit windows, Remembering our shadows On familiar walls. The air is a grave, There is no way out for us, We will die here together, Speaking quietly of our precious moments Before the wind buries us. ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ Glancing up Market Street Into an eternity of Distant kingdoms Over the grey fields Mountains of white clouds On which castles Of silence float Their windows my eyes Of cold crystal and snow Their turrets my hands Steeped in ancient woods Where my breath dissolves Into chimes of light And the winds enfold The thrush's shadow song I wrap myself in A cloak of blue streams I vanish Into the mist and stone Of last dreams. ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ TWO: NOCTURNES FOR A BLUE WOMAN ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ Blue cities, White castles floating In the mist, In the moon-filled Streets, Perfume of autumn leaves, Shadows of lace, Faint breath, Her hands. ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ Through the gates of the Gothic city Smoke and fog move slowly Over the dank breath of stone, In the stillness of leaves Where the eyes of birds Return my glances. The empty branches, reflected In black windows, etch the moon In acids of sorrow That eat graves into her white face As she weeps alone In dark rooms Where my hands cannot reach But pass through nights of bone Into the solitude of pain Where the shivering birds Take flight into her eyes. Mist fills the streets With a silence Close to the dead And I can hear Bells of stone tolling In her breast. ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ Your face, half-hidden in the dusk, In a cowl of silver. Glittering spores float from your hair, A cascade of tiny suns. Ashes fall from the castles of your eyes, Down to your hands that rest in your lap, As though they lay in another century. Tendrils of dark green light Enlace with the violets of your body, The misty voice of the moon calls From beneath the melancholy waters, And my kisses die like moths In the lamps of your flesh. ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ It is the light From another sun That falls from your eyes, Cataracts of green, Into the wide fields of sleep, Surrounded by golden trees. On your lips are always The names of absent birds, Like their songs sounding in the empty places On a planet of deserted cities. Under hooded skies Time closes its eyes And listens to the auras of your hair, The light falling from your face, Before it dies. ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ Your hands in the night, Rooted deep in my body, Your breath filling the air With gold, The lamp of earth carried By unseen fingers, And words of glass Falling from limbs of shadow Across your face, Half flesh, half bark, A flower of darkening sand, And your soul, in the evening, That covers my bones With the stillness of frozen Lace. ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ When the day has ended, I know that we will meet again In castles of the dusk. The faint scent of your perfume Will float in the cold November air, Like white stars blossoming around your neck. I will cover you in a cloak of moonlight, My kisses will be leaves Falling over your body, When you are asleep I will speak to you In secret voices, The beauty of these days will last forever. ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ THREE: THRESHOLD OF EARTH ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ On sheets of paper the color and texture Of dead leaves, I write the history Of the alleyway that exits into the past Where you once waited for me In a coffin of time, In a womb where my seed was planted Deep in the woods By an ancestor Wearing the mask of my face Who took your ghost quickly and hard Before running off into the underbrush. Late in the night An animal was killed on the road With your name on its lips. Tires brought its remains down the freeway That curves into the streets And turns into the alley That comes past these windows Where I write its unheard voices Here on leaves like paper Hands trembling In the light of evening winds. ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ In the heart of spring Autumn throbs through my bones, A cold black stream. My fingers pupate, My face turns to rust, My feet become a feast for snails. I pull a cowl of leaves Over my dank hair, The glance of a crow Turns my eyes white, I breathe out weeds, My stomach gnaws at beetles. I vomit clots of fur and teeth, Ancestral voices ring in my ears, Muttering the speech of wind Through fields of stubble. I hear seeds rattling in my skull, My hands shake violently, My heart explodes and the rot Of autumn gushes out, Wrapping the spring in rags And crowning me with dead suns. ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ Too many years have passed by. I remember crawling on hands and knees Through summer fields, And looking into that world My eyes turned into emeralds As I watched the katydids, garden spiVders And green snakes moving through their silences. And when I stood up I was thirty-five years old And dreaming of luna moths In the heart of the city, November darkening my eyes, And all the lost visions Nesting in stillness For my return, Crowned in dusk and lightning bugs, And wearing a living cloak Of whippoorwills. ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ Sometimes I forget That I hatched from a chrysalis of blood That my wings dried in long prehistoric afternoons That once I wore antlers That once my hands were gourds Sometimes I forget That my eyes once lived in giant wolves That danced in lakes of moonlight That I rode down the hawk's cry To sink my talons into stone Sometimes I remember The red-horned gods mounting the night On all fours Heads raised in frenzied howling Eating the stars from darkscented thighs Sometimes I forget That before I was an animal I was a human That I wore furs stitched to my back That my voice was thunder Sometimes I remember Coming down out of the trees Seeing the cities boiling in dust And returning to the swamps To crawl back under the black mud to sleep To dream myself back to what I was Before this world happened ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ You must crawl back Into the swamps of blood And live there with the fetal ghosts Until the moon sucks you out And you are a writhing larva Ready to feed until you burst You must wallow in the mud of carrion Wrap yourself in the black rotten meat Of the whole planet Inside the howling skins of the dead On your knees you must Twist your head around to follow the moon And the stench of the winds Push sticks into your entrails And wear stones dangling from your arms Then you must Begin the rites again And give birth To the animals within you. ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ My tongue is buried in the hot mud Of swamps My speech is the speech Of the oldest living rock Behind the backs of the technocrats I chant the bone-song of the wind Blowing the rags of scarecrows While the terminals hum and whir I growl deep in my gut While piledrivers slam and pound I howl And trail slime across the sidewalks With dank claws I file the documents of delirium In my gorey beak I carry messages of total doom In the age of word processors I write in blood On dead leaves In the age of computers I call up the stench Of the putrifying earth From beneath the streets. ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ FOUR: THE JOURNEY OF THE WORDS ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ My fingers turn to ash, My face to sand, My hair whitens slowly Under the wings of mist. I enter hollows of dark gold, My eyes see only the greys of dusk, The moon passing through time. The streets tremble In the last echoes of the sun, And I turn to your branches, The body of your leaves, I fold my arms into sleep, My breathing one With the breathing of the birds, Their throats pulsing under my fingers When I touch you in the night. ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ Gold leaves, Mysterious beings of silence, The stars hurry by you Light years into the past. Distant trees, Hidden in brocades of rain, Your bark grows along my arms, Your roots make jewelled thrones for my eyes. Wraith-towers, The blue clouds surround you With a steel voice that chants As the darkening air folds into the hands of autumn. ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ The sun turns to stone, Eyes to sand. Through doors of fog My hands reach To the remote cities of sleep. I taste iron and water In the grey winter air, I turn my head from light. The hills wait, Their eyes closed. The year folds Its somber wings. There is a ring of white bells, Owls of ash fly through the rain, Trailing shrouds of parchment. I follow a path of moonlight, When my hands reach into the pages Of mist I touch silver moss Covering the trees that root In streams of pure silence. ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ There is a lamp, There is a silence. There is a phrase In my throat, I spit it onto black parchment. There is a lamp of blood, An unheard-of silence. It is in my throat, I cover it in words. I stay up half the night, I can hear it in a distant room, The silence, a womb of scales, A pupa throbbing in dank leaves, An unimaginable sweetness, An unheard-of word, A black pen stabbing the paper, the throat. ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ The sense of strangeness deepens day by day. The feeling of not being a part of all this, The species or the planet. Shifting slowly into a world of moonlight and fog, Eyes peering from a tower of iron Adrift in an ashen sea of ghosts, With the gulls and the winds and The passing of the years. From this place I watch you, Curled in a pool of candlelight, The shadows of dead leaves Covering your face. ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ There is another world, far from here, Where the moon passes between White towers beneath the sea. There is another planet within this earth, We watch it flowing by outside the windows, Silence, stone and shadow, Lit by our lamps in the twilight, Where the leaves grow back into themselves, Towards autumns past, wanting to die again And fall through the air of that realm Not where we are but where we live most deeply, Part animal, part ghost, Buried in dreams, our bodies floating Through the drowned city To where birds unfold from bark, Luna moths sing to the streams, And dark blue flowers open to watch the night With large, wet eyes. ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ Your breath in and out Against buried wings, My fingers following Shadows across the paper, As we sank into the gold Hollows of the evening, And egrets rose into The mist, your tears Beneath the grey silence Of the breakers Where the sea-thunder Wrapped us in its voices. We disappeared into the Distant blue tapestries Of a medieval landscape, Where hawks watched from Lamp posts anc angels hung, Rotting, from the powers lines. In this book Our hands are illuminated, Unfolding in stone, Returning the rain. ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ Paths through evening, deep red in the sun, Under hills of stone folding into chant. Your hands, a painting, under flowers Of water, weaving lace in hollows Of light, surrounded by the breathing Of silver animals. This city of ash falls into its Afterimages, racing into whiteness, Sinking into the weeds of time, Oracles of autumn on the tongue, Telling your lips, on this night of oceans, That I bring you the gown of moons, The gestures of unwritten prayers, And a crystalline eye to wear On this dark planet. ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ My paths through stone Have led to this lamp, This table, this pen. And to this night of winds, Under the wall of ghosts, Confronting the horror of time, The rustling of pages deep in the lamplight. ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ The words do not exist. Completed pieces are only The imagined color, The light of long dead hands Reflected, in a mirror of sand. They are the dreams of an hallucination, What the inhabitant of a mirage sees, The rain that comes for the mist, Takes it, and stops raining. Someday I will vanish, Sink into the poems, Pulling the words in after me. ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~