Brushes With The Dark Law

(Three poems with an interview by the publisher Jen Knox published in February, 2024 issue of Unleash Lit) 

Escape from Belle Isle

in the prison of pines and parables and lost time
on mountains above the bay of shadows
you hunger for more than liberation
now you know that all bridges are lies
…you are stuck in the middle
in the mean of metaphors that darken custody
 
in such a cage you read your own palm
looking for a lifeline
 
the truth you long for won’t say its real name
and in the solitary confines of subject and object
you fake escape, you claim roots, with a faceted rock
you slough off the words rationed; you make new words
 
you wrestle an angel for ladders
 
in the canopy of tall trees
in the bells that ring the hour
in the tide below flowing with its rules
and in the simple conjuring
in the red notebook
you hold so tightly --
that truth, the soul’s truth, sets nothing free:
a metal key 
jangles
on a jailor’s belt
 
the tide rises to cover the narrow beach
a limb falls to the ground
pounding the earth with sorrow
the late hour closes every door to you
 
here, you learn that thinking you are a god
does not make you a god
these are the rules too
 
the mark of impermanence is on everything
and you only can lock yourself in such loss
you can only scratch the days passing on the stone walls
 
one morning in fall, in the cooling sun
a map falls from the notebook
you can get lost on this map
but a florid compass rose points directions
it is a chart to the northwest passage that surely
takes you out to an end
who knows?
you ask the sailor in the next cell
 
he says
“row, row, oh sweet and wounded pilgrim;
the oar in your arms loosens from the gunwale --
your body, too, loses chains
and sinks in the certain tide”
 
in this school for scoundrels
you learn not to wait for magic
for charts to secret islands
you learn the sacred improbable
has buried stolen jewels in you
           
            your shadow
            draws stickfigures
it is the author of your numerous mistakes
 
one line, two lines, cross four to make five
on the wall
in your notebook of thinking
in the deepest sea you must cross
while you are still alive
 
who can tell what rends the veil?
but it is the moon that pulls you apart
and takes you down to the wooden wharves
made of roots pulled from the dark earth
free for only this moment
when you taste the salty sea
 
what’s torn never mends
and you would stay in one place then
if you wanted to be a hollow diamond
so you write definitions of freedom
on each white page
then wander
a little longer --
the rules may follow you
before you bend
 
the fallen branches
form a raft
in the diaspora of sense
as the merciful ocean
carries you away from shore
the bell on the buoy rocks and rings
behind you
and you begin the voyage out of your hands
 

The Hut of Otherwise

the table of splinters
sits in a fallen shed;
 
it is a rectangle of ash and dust
and human labor left
in the middle
of the hut with no walls
 
the roof burned off
and now it’s time
to recover stars
 
the cottage wants cleaning
sweep around it! get rid of it all!
leaves and fur and rust
the particles of first cause
the sweeping never ends
 
the broom catches galaxies
yet misses what is small
 
bring a cot, two cots,
and arrange them against
the hut’s missing walls
sleep the sleep of the wicked,
there’s space enough for all
 
no need for walls anyway,
things are too busy becoming otherwise
 
and the absent roof?
that’s an ancient fiction,
nothing but made-up stories
 
a wooden table sat there,
arrayed with archaic tools,
all temporary
all already gone
before you can hold them
 
your memory is a hut burned
before you build it --
it’s to its ash you will return

Star Songs

A woman is singing down in the valley --
you cannot hear her as the night covers
you with deep violet silence.  You’ve picked the mountain top
to sleep.  To distance yourself from such songs.
 
But the stars, whose lights do touch you,
tell you her story, warn you –
you misunderstand, you think she is the predator.
You freeze and pull in your nubby claws
to sit in sand at this saddle
between north and south
 
and you pretend
you can hear her --
you think this lie will hide you;
an ostrich’s head in the sand of evolution.
All your performance buries you.
 
You deny the stars’ comfort tendered.
You let them spin away.
You are relieved when you think you have no guidance.
 
East or west, paths climb
in both directions.  The sawtooth ridges on both
sides scrape the sky for impartiality.
You’re on the edge of something,
you can almost smell it.
 
But you won’t climb; it’s yellow-golden
morning and you must choose.
Yesterday, in the valley, thick with both
aversion and obsession
your body stopped in its tracks
to stand like a shield. Only dusk freed you
and now it’s day again.
 
You must simplify your life.
But don’t expect to sing.
Song isn’t something you earn.
 
The lilies in this valley,
are planted by spinning stars too.
You think you have been abandoned,
though you are held in an embrace

by what you cannot hear.

So you walk south, hoping
the woman follows. Hoping
someday you will hear her.
Hoping she catches and consumes you.
 
The stars have a green power
to answer these false hopes –
their melodies purge
the madness and its monetized residue. 
Do you know why you’ve lost
the ability
to fly? You must change your life.