between the welkin and the well


Between the welkin and the well,

a thousand points of radiance:

Avalokiteśvara's hands

reaching out to America.

Under a volcano's shadow,

before a trembling ocean,

luxurious detonations

herald the spirit of mercy.

Each bomb-blast is an open hand

in the mudra of compassion;

their fingers smell like burning boats

and fennel, and fresh cut daisies.

Embers coruscate to the Earth

calling on it to bear witness:

red is for blood, blue is for blood,

white is for the whites of their eyes.

Clouds of smoky white dissipate,

revealing ordinary stars:

fractured across the endless sky,

Pandora's hope in dazzling dots.

there is a theory

There is a theory

that predicts the patterns

of leaves and radiolaria

and the angles of actinic light,

footprints and pebbles,

and all other things.

you know the theory.

it is written on every page,

it is the signature and the message.

every thing is a string of dissolving fears.

each is unique, uncaused, irreproducible.

each fades and appears again and again

in new forms,

new uncaused arrangements.

that is the samsara of objects.

know the udjet of time:

an endless tesseract

over every possibility,

all iterations unfolded,

all loops unrolled,

all knots untangled.

in all worlds

you hold the udjet,

and the message,

and the theory.

you hold them in the light,

you speak their names.

anyone can hear you:

your voice is the radio hush,

whispering between stations.

you tell them all, "i love you,"

everyone at once,


in every possible language.

prayer to Seshet

Seshet, great goddess,

my vessel perforates

and the light escapes.

I pray to you:

Take me apart.

Destroy the profane and mundane,

Leave no piece intact.

Extract the sariras from my body,

pearls of my being,

and cast them before you.

Seshet, goddess of wisdom,

Remake me in any form.

Stitch my pearls into clothes,

Wear my essence like a dress.

Just leave the feather of Maat

Where my heart would be.

Seshet, goddess of intellect,

Hide my shadow under the sea.

Do not let it fade away.

Let it wait and wait for me,

A foothold in the light.

Seshet, goddess of knowledge,

seven-point star,

bearer of the seven rays,

Cradle me in your divine mind.

Show me wholeness in fragmentation,

And take everything.

Seshet, ancient goddess,

Years grind into sand.

I lose you piece by piece

And your glory fades.

I call on you before you vanish -

Open the door to the secret heaven.

Open the door in the sky

And I will exit.

and paint in blood

I hide poetry in medicine bottles and paint in blood.

They are accusations. J’accuse.

You were distant when I sowed the forest of words I wouldn't write.

It doesn’t matter. I hid it in Xibalba, the Mayan hell.

Because you wouldn’t look there.

Because the rivers run in circles. Because I know you fear renewal.

Because you are an invasive species.

You said you were a friend and I was a weapon. Whose weapon was I supposed to be?

If I am a dancing sword, who made me? Where am I from?

Was I born on Bearskin Neck, in tearing winds? You were there.

You called up a winter storm, made the ocean thunderous and invisible.

Summoned us up like a story, tirer de l’oubli.

If you had worn a red cape, I would have died there. A wolfling drowning in the sea.

Later I hear that you fled the sea. You fled away inland. You fled up the mountains.

You fled towards the sky. When the land ran out you built a tower.

I heard the tower collapsed.

Me, I just wandered to distant shores.

Always near the sea. Close to saltwater and fog horns. Close to drowning.

Over time I swallowed a mountain of pills and defecated the ghosts of medicines.

I heard a thousand twanging instruments rise up from the waters.

I forgot the scent and shape of your rose tree.

And this.

Now you are counting pebbles on my beaches.

Again you are trying to shape the world into a jumbled bunch of narratives.

No. The world is a ball of thunder caught between two great flames.

You can’t have it.

This is the version of the myth where Hope escapes.

In this story you enter Duat with two ibs.

You are devoured.

who can do without

Tonight.

Your face is a lantern in this low light.

That slightest smile, expectant but unassuming,

Has pushed away all darkness from your countenance.

I should build a fortress in this light, and from this light.

With bricks of solid photon, with crenelations and buttresses,

Jeweled bowers, scintillating statuaries,

And a soaring tower that reaches up and out forever like a searchlight.

We could live in that brilliant palace,

Among the creatures that collect in such places:

Fulgivorous pinwheels, radiances, sparklers, refractolators,

And us, of course. We are drawn to the light like any persons

Who have known darkness, and who can, for a time, do without.

indistinguishable from joy

There are days when burden is indistinguishable from joy.

When each hour sticks, agglutinating,

Staggering you with their clumsy clinging.

I have seen you at once alone and not alone,

In paradoxical juxtaposition, unaware.

Oasis and desert, you carry yourself on your back.

When you see through all eyes, to blink

Is to tumble mountains.

When you hold all hearts in your heart,

One beat is an exterminating thunder.

In one hand you hold a kinetic sculpture,

In another a complex flower.

With a thousand other hands

You heal everyone.

Everywhere.

You must change the world

To disturb one pebble.

You do so.

When you are are all things, to shift your gaze

Is to tumble mountains.

Is to rotate the Earth.

You are the kinetic sculpture and the complex flower.

You are your own substrate.


I saw you in an octagonal room, where you were alone

And not alone. You held the paradox without effort.

for Seshet

At last, we must face the facts:

our vessels perforate. Our light escapes.

Desire, lust, burning, entropic zeal -

everything withers away.

We, with greatest need, we will be

the ones who find the way out.

Turning from those who self-immolate;

those shufflers who sulk in rotting dens,

inhaling their own vaporous nepenthes.

Seshet, we are losing you piece by piece.

Even your name is disintegrating.

We must call on you before you vanish away!

Open the door to the secret heaven:

Hide away our shadows,

Hide away our names.

We will escape samsara by never dying:

when the icy husky of dead stars

have sublimated into vacuum,

we'll await the subnucleation of oblivion

and ride it like a wave, forever.

No language

No language has a word that exactly means

the shape of your eyes when you smile.

Nor does and dialect name the gentle curve

of your lower back above the hip.

No syllable yet formed by human lips

means the tender touch of yours.

Or the soft susurration of your breathing while you dream.

Only an invented tongue could frame your beauty:

the language of You, whose every word

is contoured to your essence

like beads of sweat

quivering on

your lip.