I've always thought Champagne is the fiercest thing. You open it, it explodes into the world and forces you to drink it all at once, otherwise it goes stale and pale like a blood-sucked old man. Her eyes burn with a fire stronger than anything else on this earth. Yes, champagne is the fiercest thing.
Well, not really. But I started writing and I feel like I'm figuring out a way into that place where poetry comes from within me (I think somewhere behind the spleen). And like whenever I call its name (and say "behind-the-spleen!") it turns and beckons in a way that strips me of attachment to my former place and draws me to it inexorably, intolerably, until my words are sprawled all over. And the next day is the same. And the next. And the same.
•
departing from Brahms
Ah Brahms Brahms
who gave you the key to the dam
the cord that pulls the cork
asunder
afire
athunder
what good is it
to stretch the visceral
wide as the sun
to feint a cloudy sky
opening up rainbowlike
rainbowlike in the glory of its blue
Brahms Brahms
like all your kind
you dip your soul into the lillyblossom
and it starts to sing
far away
behind a dirty stainedglass window
curtains made of fire and iron reflected from a faroff place
how dare you
take the name of love
in vain
~ changement
how foolish
I bring the water to boiling
before the tea-leaves are well hid
in their transparent little bag
and throw everything together
make a mess of things
stumble, strain my tongue
on an imperfection of the sidewalk
and it hurts
like numb
and pretentious
an earnest turn-of-word
turned vagrant
gone astray
like cigarette decay
only more abrupt
stylish at first
but suddenly
I start coughing up the cool and trendy
my skin turns grey
my eyes fill up with mist all the way to the top
eyelids heavy with debris
from an unsolicited
welcome
and then Brahms, Brahms
is there for me, to console me
to exalt my brewery
such as it is
ignore its faults and welcome me
to his strange little house
an infinitely vast manor of a shack
full with marble staircases, old dusty
instruments of music
that will welcome all your passion
and torture it to its delight
and your dismay
daily I walk into the shack
isolating my desires from the world
watering them, feeding them
the imaginary stuff
that makes them grow and tower
terrifying
over the ghosts of the desired
for want of what I want
only makes the wanting more severe
the want more definite
the resolution hang in the air
carried past me
deep into the future
by a whimsical wind—
no, not whimsical:
a deliberate
kind of wind,
resolved and resolute,
intent on losing focus
losing contact
blowing it
all away
which he
would
chase
and
delight
in touching
~
and how
how
will I
turn a caress
into an open palm
an open palm into—
have you ever considered
how a walnut (surely
you have) is like
a brain, and also like a mind?
—into an open wall-nut
(the walls giving way softly to the touch
revealing that which, concealed,
but blushes at the mention of intent
then takes a shallow breath
and ravishes the air with hurried words,
always concealing, always deceiving
itself in its concealing
of itself),
make nuts-and-bolts give way
reason give way for no reason at all;
how if I know only the reason,
how if I know only reason,
how if I know reason,
how if I reason,
if I reason,
I reason
(and then the choice disguised
as the primordial question
or more than that,
but looking beyond the mere
livery of words
into the same
I see
that I and reason
are both the wrong answer
to two different questions)
?
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