[Beloved dark devil]
Beloved dark devil, drinking bells
the sweetest sound on earth
A word about my future
fulminating in silent prayer
The deaf dog wears
two crucifixes
The present Queen
pulls up all the roses
All the eating and drinking and
being shut up in the dark
They reverence my gifts,
though God has left me
How beautiful your soul is
and your hands
-
This poem is contructed of words and phrases taken from Virginia Woolf's letter to her sister Vanessa, written July 28, 1910.
The Battery
What represent living and what lifeless nature?
Photograph in a bag, shuttled
to its thousand pieces,
matchless. But love
is a sacred thing like the mysteries
And I pour the ice out of tired drinks
What is the composition? In what special way?
caught in a starstruck hoping you'll never
a night not bearing change,
is it change or paralysis keeping
keeping us alive and staring so
What are some of the special and terrible forms?
hold-tightedness spun
in your electric fibre, cordless and windless,
sky-sized, operatic, tree-lorn.
It's real
life, I swallow my tongue,
a film forgetting its tool of suspense.
I painted
a room and while I was painting
the room the air and color was what
I wanted. On the film
you cannot tell.
What is distillation?
It would be like saying love
is a sacred thing
It would be too-
Mention some facts.
Have been a handcart,
sheeted duomo whitely squaring in bluster
Spill like a cadenza risks
a draft of pure pine-
One spring a tree lifted a girl atop a building where she could see
a city equal to desire, say, and hang out a shingle
What are the chief functions of the brain? the heart? the lungs?
the stomach, intestines and liver?
the kidneys and skin?
I washed it. Empty
the house was whole, had room for us,
a love note wrapped
in leaves and hair and blood.
Of how many layers composed?
I would repeat my dream like a web-
the one where you are back from prison, the one
where I am obsessed with the incredible floor.
I held out my arms you took my picture a picture of me in love
What is a function? What power has each cell?
To make a decision. Yellow.
Bitter. Action-adventure.
-
The questions in this poem are taken from an 1800's text on Physiology and Hygiene.
