a zinc tart with tarragon coffee

You can be taken
as close or as far
from the bite machine
as you can recollect.
Summer victories
—healed hands, whole heart—
remain ultimate
even in shallow water.
Grass is growing
over the fire wreck,
crisp occurrences
breaking with hope through
a crust of gravel,
brick crumbs and seed hulls.
A new map achieved
every weekday yet
rescue collapses.
Three-quarters solace
in clove and camphor.
Sooty acorns clatter
and squeak on the roof.

What comrades must do, you have done
—exploring east through mountains,
boxed in longer boats suspended
from night skies—or flowing west
over the ocean, a blue star
far off, not yet invisible.
Your former journey, once hardened
in situ, in true numbers, square
and level, now must wear other
aspects more kindly, other ideas
in points, lines, shapes, surfaces
—crosses and rails—which cast
themselves into iron, into coal,
falling through blank pages,
falling through straw penance,
falling through pine needles
and salt, falling through winter's
silence into the uptilted mosaic
of dust overgrown, overtaken
by the next conquering season.


Copyright © 2012 LCMT

These are the latest pages from the manuscript for my asemic novel, Esgr Navigator.

You can see more pages here.

© lcmt

© lcmt

Illustration for my poem "Winter Faith".

Although it's not so much an illustration as a coincidence.

I've got a poem in the second issue of The Longest Salmon. Look for the last poem on this plain and pithy page. It was great fun to write, and is, I think, great fun to read.

lcmt

I.

Your eyes are nothing like a sonnet.
I know you are not the faceless sun growing
large with patience and yellow tempera, growing
upward into uncertain washes of firmament.
Your skirts are predetermined and aligned
by acute focal tilts of movement—sitting on
somebody's cigarette—sweeping down
boundaries of open night—burying
instant daylight in the underside
of absence, in the drop
of dissatisfaction, in rare
chains of desire, rare
as sardine cans,
emptied.

II.

For you, I can inscribe awry
fields of silent touch in points
of ink—an interior landscape
following trails (of mold? of dirt?
of ash? of mascara?) that first
appear smudged but will soon
resemble a mosaic of disquieted
coasts and disjunctive hollows
hidden within blind spots, within
sun spots, limited by declined insults
written, then spoken in disorder,
fluctuated words in five minutes
becoming tissue-wrapped skull plates
—knocked off aluminum components
held in my fist at arm's length—
and the rest of me naked
as an emperor under
masterly camouflage.

III.

You come from the imaginary space
that cannot be colonized—I live outside
myself, observed in the clean fabric
of narrative and habitation. We can speak
to weather, we can speak photosynthesis,
we can speak acknowledgements to
the disappearance of summer predators.
This is the polar attraction called travesty,
called abandonment, called permission,
this laying down of possession
for the sake of discontent, for the sake
of indifference, for that lack of recognition
from the one who will free us.


© lcmt

A connotation of my shadow—that is to say, soul—
goes in and out with me,
and stands between two deaths
(or maybe three),

and long before I am done with my irritable body and my obscure angles of consciousness my shadow, my stain, will awaken and perish

and so will I.


Had a strange, rotten, surreal day yesterday, but woke up this morning and all is sunny reasonableness again.

© lcmt

Dissolve kosher salt, dilute cider vinegar in spiny Plantagenet emergencies.
Hands on please.
Zest lemon fingertips, and genuine tigertips
pound with a mallet, then fan parallel
to sectioned tangerines, Satsuma or Honeybell.

Avoid floral wine and extraneous bologna.

Prune bay trees when days grow shorter,
nights grow longer, underscored weekends
condense into fidelities chopped
from dusky onions. Steep opportunities
in vinegar and rosemary. Repair and gild
comfort with persimmon skins.
Surprise the strategic moss
inside helpless complexities,
quartering a pentagon cast
in non-urgent iron, hundredfold. Pierce
the silent foil, ease with a steady awl,
hand to mouth to stalking manroot and ergot.
Speak faint of whiteness and numbers
but call dogs and roses loud, with drums.

This problematical alchemy cannot end
in the perfection of matter, but ends
as the have-not grasses never

end.


© lcmt

My response to the challenge of a poetic form called “asdfiwvcbaxnf”.

I have a new poem published in the first issue of The Longest Salmon. The first issue in this online mini-mag is plain, straightforward and easily consumed. I like it.

This past summer, on the last day of June, we had a fire (isn't it odd that a fire is something you can have, as if it were a slice of pie or a cup of coffee). For the rest of the summer we lived in a hotel while contractors pulled down our ceilings and cleaned up our attic. I took a sketchbook with me:

http://ablackbrick.tumblr.com/tagged/the-lost-summer

Variation 3, Dragon


( Read more... )
Copyright © 2011 LCMT

"Hence this broad family is known for the dissimilar elan of its behemoth figures. Which embody pyramids waxing light to lighter, in rounded understructures, and above the hand-shaped yearner."


From "Roman Dog Units and the Emperor of the Valencian Column" by Howe Singer, published in the quarterly Verify, Sept. 12, 1956.


Copyright © 2011 LCMT

Question: 6, G or e?

Answer: Eye
Answer: Clarity
Answer: Black with iron oxide staining
Answer: Inclusions may still be visible

Copyright © 2011 LCMT

Hotel Frieze #14



Hotel Frieze #9



Copyright © 2011 LCMT

lcmt

Of omens both good
and bad in Malabar
the following list
is given by Mr Logan:

Good are crows, pigeons, etc.,
and beasts as deer, etc.,
moving from left to right,
and dogs and jackals
moving inversely,
and other beasts found
similarly and singly;
ruddy goose, mongoose,
goat and peacock, seen
singly or in couples,
either at the right
or left.

A rainbow seen
on the right or left
or behind prognosticates
good, but the reverse
if seen in front.

Buttermilk, raw rice,
snake-gourd,
priyangu flowers,
honey, clarified butter,
red cotton juice,
antimony sulphurate,
a metal mug, bells ringing,
a lamp, a lotus, karuka grass,
raw fish, raw flesh, flour,
ripe fruits and sweetmeats,
gems and sandalwood,
elephants, pots filled
with water, a virgin,
a couple of Brahmans,
Rajas, respectable men,
a white flower,
a white yak tail,
white cloth
and a white horse.

Chank shell, a flagstaff
(but not a flag?), a turban,
a triumphal arch, a palanquin.

Fruitful soil and burning fire.

Elegant eatables or drinkables,
carts with men in them,
cows with their calves, mares,
bulls or cows with ropes
tied to their necks.

Swans and peacocks,
and cranes warbling sweetly.

Bracelets, mirrors, mustard,
any substance of white color,
the bellowing of oxen,
auspicious words,
harmonious human voices
and such same sounds
made by birds or beasts,
the uplifting of umbrellas,
hailing exclamations,
the sounds of harp and flute,
timbrel and tabor, and other
instruments of music,
the sounds of hymns
of consecration and Vedic
recitations, gentle breezes
all round at the time
of a journey.

Bad omens are men deprived
of their limbs, lame or blind,
a corpse or a wearer of cloth
put on a corpse, flowers used
for funeral ceremonies,
coconut fiber, broken
vessels, hearing words
expressive of breaking,
burning, destroying, etc.,

the alarming cry
of alas! alas!,

loud screams, loud crying
from the east, cursing,
trembling, sneezing, the sight
of a man in sorrow, the sight
of a man with a stick, the sight
of a barber, the sight of a widow.

Pepper and other pungent substances.

A snake, cat, iguana,
lizard or monkey
crossing the road,
vociferous beasts
such as jackals,
dogs and kites.
A buffalo, a donkey,
or a temple bull,
a eunuch, a ruffian,
an outcast, any
horrible figure, vomit,
excrement, stench.

Bamboo, cotton, black
grains of lead, salt,
liquor, animal hides,
grass, dirt, firewood, iron.
A cot, stool or other vehicle
carried with legs upward,
dishes, cups, etc., carried
with mouth downwards,
vessels filled with live
coals which are broken
and not burning,
ashes, a broomstick
a winnow basket,
a hatchet.


© lcmt

Text is from Omens and Superstitions of Southern India by Edgar Thurston
McBride, Nast & Co, 1912

lcmt

Who has lived a life interrupted
by fire? Joining that company of salt
wives, I cannot look back or step forward.
Reconcile me, please, to this interim
shelf. Soon enough, a life divided
by cataclysms will resume.


Copyright © 2011 LCMT

lcmt

Impoverished, aging, beautiful once, loved
once, but only once—such domestications long
over, now only the wildest regard of fierce neglect
swallowing half-made space, weightless. A house
becoming sky
—stucco and weeds becoming sails and spars.


Copyright © 2011 LCMT