your lidded eyes lift from a swamp

Let us touch—for if two lie together

Then they have warmth.

We shall sink in this heat

of our arms

Blankets like rock-strata fold

dreaming as

Shiva and Shakti

And keep back the cold.

ARTEMIS

Artemis,

Artemis,

so I saw you naked—

well GO and get your goddam’d

virginity back

me, me,

I’ve got to feed my hounds.

MADLY WHIRLING DOWNHILL

madly whirling downhill

THE WITCH

who can make the electric lights go out

who can, as she sits in her apartment under the street

make you follow.

the two of them lived for years

in an old house in town.

no one ever came to see about bills

no one ever entered or left it

that house.

he knows what the end will be

calm and he doesn’t care,

there is no one, no way

to save him.

XRIST

Your hanging face I know, I know your tree.

You can’t hide under Hebrew

& I don’t pity you

Burning yourself alive in Athens to impress the mob

Having your last wild fling—in drag—at the altar—

robed in cornstarch

and stolen Toltec jewels

Ziggurat rotgut

Cutting your own balls off—dog priests—kybele

The mincing step—shy glance—Graves thot you lame

Horrified virgin dropping in a pool.

whipping the bullshit roarer

Your flayed penis flaring

Gold wrought infibula

—circumcized girls.

New World popcorn, Polynesian spit—

Dropping a log on the couple where they fuck

the dance, the whips,

Saviour of Man!

—who put the hell to be harrowed?

The bruisd snake coils in the grass

He is wise;

there are trees in high places;

Keep your blood off the crotch of our tree.

MORE BETTER

Uncle,       Oh uncle

seventy dogs

O centipede

bit me in bed

wind in the red leaf berry tree

whynes

Bull you are

too brown.

The Persimmon

was too fat       the tree its

branches too bent down.

FOR PLANTS

The ancient virgin

picking mushrooms

in the damp forest

gloom

Peyotl

dream-child bud

glowing in hollow desert

HO       hands

gather the holy baby

faceted jewel bush

child of the

sky is solid rainbow

squash maiden

corn girl

hair prongs       seedbed root

suck magic from dirt, rains

wash down rainbow

and bury him under the floor.

long trumpet of thornapple flower

datura highsmoke

scoopt in blanket

james. town. weed.

gum of hashish

passt through the porthole

bumboat to tanker

half-glimpst

“glow of red lips in dark hair”

slave-of-god-dancer

hidden

in glittering fall.

ear, eye, belly

cascara       calamus

cut bark is vapor

of paradise odor—

brick for a pillow

rolld in a blanket,

to see

Artemis naked:

the soft white

buried sprout

of the world’s first

seed.

WHAT DO THEY SAY

The glimpse of a once-loved face

gone into a train.

Lost in a new town, no one knows the name.

lone man sitting in the park

Chanced on by a friend

of thirty years before,

what do they say.