BRENT HOUSE
Augur
of Authenticity
In
the fallen spring I switchback among hanging forests await
messages
from silent lars waived
phallically
from our home needle me insufficient accurate yet
I bleed a deeper garnet than he
who makes
words from numbers & how silent is the betrayed
voice
turned into a sibyl keep an orphic fail.
O how I sorrow & so sorrow for your body under
grotesque bones the godless home enclave of emptiness.
A fallow soil is embraced by a fool
enamored of his domestic goddess mantled with a drugged stench of organic ignorance.
I
buried my blood right through the soil
& clay still hangs on my heels like a mythic journey
& I stare
down into the baseness where you will bury the server
& I sorrow in your service for the buried.
Among
my hallowed pines I stand & beg you
read every numbered page of the covenant
& know each restriction you have biden.
O dear you should know the difference between a redneck & a southern gentleman.
Profane.
Profane.
Profane.
Uncle
W. J. says With the antebellum world removed to the realm
of retrospect
the
shackles of reality as so often happens in such cases fell away
from it altogether
Perpetually
suspended in the great haze of memory it hung as it were poised
somewhere
between earth and sky colossal shining & incomparable lovely
& in the great haze of memory you are still sheltered under shadows
dorics ionics corinthians
& you sit under the hanging
limbs of my stately oaks & I am telling you my heart is
crushed.
How I wish for you to comfort me
in the hazed scents of wisteria
royally-robed blood
blissful plummets of whatsoever
is of tantivy
loss
only yet I decay I sway from the true purpose
of my loneliness sojourn away
from a creaking sapling fallen in the fork of your vestal
relic
crying sorrowfully into silence a song
that the longest life must shortly come to a close. Blessed
be a world where sin death
vanity vexation cannot enter. Blessed be that even death
cannot part our truth.
Those whom we most love yea even our own bodies which
we so love must soon
become loathsome lumps of clays & be buried out of sight.
How loose then should we be
to all earthly attachments and adornments! Let us seek rather
that our souls be adorned.
Softly hangs from cursives you
have embedded in my soul the cones utterly opened
to scatter winged seeds to the extreme heat of your soil.
So may the meter & mourning
of lost love curse your radicle lack as I am torn by grace
denied to clay.
I pray & pray & pray
the compulsions of bliss instead
of fulfilling promise infinitely settle phlegmatically
deep in your lungs as a contemptuous mockery
of silence chosen a eupatrid visage
recedes
into a suburban darkness
You
all in a row & all in a row & all in a syncarpous row.
I remember laying rows across the
rolling hills of my native south & how straight
& far down they lay.
They were revered by a drunkard
who held them as an illusion of great proofs.
But only cattle were held by my fences as you will be held by your surfeit house.
Dear dear bounding dreams dear
bounding dreams I dreamt beyond every right
beyond my means
beyond
my soil
I passed light careful not to
tromp clods where neither grass nor shrub nor tree
will grow
& still dust embeds into flesh
until red
&
you cosset as bark for a beetle
&
you miss the spreading galax
&
you are clear cut into granules
so plainly settled to out of the wayness.
+++
Augur of Deluge
How I denied the gray coming you conceded & we walked to the banks
to face peals of thunder frogs welcomed us boisterous voices appealing
to clouds to come & the clouds rolled toward us pushed breakers into cypress
stumps
gave charge to the sky opened
& poured down upon us.
How long we waited for the storm to pass
impatiently we pitched how impatiently
we pitched you seeking shelter from a long dryness &
sudden rain
& I finding myself born to lay within
the shelter of your bursting pockets of water & air
the constant humidity gathering on branch
leaves washing through hollows
& the fire did not come until late in
the evening until lightning bugs
wove among the sycamores until our dog remembered its distant blood
gave chase
until sounds of crackling wood brought ease
to its hunger ease
to pursuits daddy longlegs easing the ground through our
night.
Shelter is a canvas hanging on two arching
poles tied to the crossing point
as we too are tied to crossing points
yours a bolt branching mine
a pine savannah passed through as we pass
through now
leaving deep prints & laying here for this night in the damp
of leaking seams.
+++
Augur of Mortar
Even by erudition we cannot bond our red clay cannot shore our foundation
cannot dawn boards of peaceful regalia
so we flail
barrages of aggressive groundwater against
our footings & spalls of us
fall
crumble in basement workshops while splints of heart
pine lodged in our walls & plastered
breathe such grey days of old
into presents of excessive shards &
loneliness thin glass & feeble
sunshine
& even by incision we cannot bond our red clay cannot lay tassels of sorrow
easily upon mantel bricks daubed with our own flesh so
we seduce doubt & build up a wall with untempered mortar
& empty
wares settle with
prepuce enmity until our void relucts
peace to reconcile
sand water & lime within this swayed ledge
of disparate loves bonding porous selves with little resistance
to infiltration
so by consecration we bond our red clay cure by degrees in warm & humid
walls weeping
into habitations barren &
ward
as immaculate desires refuge & cast humbly from a terminal dwelling
I am willing to entrust the entire order
of mercy to.