February 2011
VOL XIX, Issue 2, Number 214
Editor: Klaus J. Gerken
Production Editor: Heather Ferguson
European Editor: Mois Benarroch
Contributing Editors: Michael Collings; Jack R. Wesdorp; Oswald Le Winter
Previous Associate Editors: Igal Koshevoy; Evan Light; Pedro Sena
ISSN 1480-6401
Joie de Vivre
By
Henry Avignon
Joie de Vivre
By
Henry Avignon
PREFACE
I awoke in you
filled to the lip of conscious- ness
ethereal and dualistic
with carnal patience exposing
mutual, expression- less
letting
muscle-speak in metered gesture
irreverently living
with fear(s) dis-
possession
owning
the confusion
not eating of joy
or of sounds
and thus now
inter-
locked limbs and lines
let’s taste of the other's peel
it’s hard not to feel
and harder still the work
of us
manifesting the real recovery
of multi-trinities
and shared satiations
the sexuality of all things
and taking heart
in the esoterica of discovery
its
self- less
we need as nothing else
and the echoes
of shadows reflecting.
1. WITHOUT A MINIMUM AWARENESS OF TOTALITY
I
Turning toward whatever might
is (it) possible
finding the orchard in heat blossoms
casting off chastities
every One permeated by perfume
like a swollen moon falling
off the night sky as tussled sheets
the slightly grayed potencies
of mercilessness
and perspiring night tree(s)
nakedly hung-
ripened
knives and restless horses
prickling breeze-
brushed bodies
seen or otherwise
II
You are whispered suffering
sounded off words like smothering
and covering
we are hovering over
red piled
leaves in a coy pond
rippling softly cleaving
undulating enchanted being
air breathing us across this man
bit of leaf clenched
between our unilateral teeth
tasting bitter than usual
silvery violins breaching the old
surfacing concertos
of fish begun
as scales glittering and musical
in what darkness?
III
Forwarding this fall
of time(s)
passing into the slave quarters again
extinguished flame
sconces of smoky breath
musk grazing
the skein of us. Being(s)
madly involved as mood(s)
writhing the horse(s) back
of August
writing off the storms gray
edge
toward being
in your colours released
by the galloping inch
IV
In mist of a great field,
among trunk of crosshatching
Dasein
of branches wailing beyond reach
the pummels
of horizoning encouragement
of shadows carving consequences
into the form of your hands
of wind
hulks moving gracefully about
their articulation
the gentle blows in kind
at once
your hand reaches me from here
V
Five fingered senses erupting
in me the ebb and flowing
ebbs of elemental fires burning
in honor of what
primordial water
flock of tendril like infernos
gliding across northern-most hemisphere
of clustering urge(s) separating
them by what percentage
previously was for silence
five incendiary petals
of transitory effect engorged
flower of garden(s) past
the courtyard of this
ignorant bliss
VI
among hidden weaves of vines
flogging bramble
with our song you are here
among turbulent arcs
of bird and warble
you are the dark throated howling
of the beasts
of your distinguished grace fanning
into panoramas
of fauna
of flora divesting
unknowable wilds
and dialogs of green symbolism
unfettered by this outstretched
wing
of you
mother
VII
Naked as vibrations
of bees
equally imperceptible
as their effigies
for mysterious pollens and God
here all the time
sixth senses dedicating
situational ironies
and laughter
hunters firing shots into animal flesh
of this confusion
crucifix of the caress
made by my own hairs
crossed and double crossing
VIII
Buffering against death
and triggering voids
moving among gusts of incandescent air
unmoved
tracking me down and alone
by foot-printed fear always near
this nowhere of the lazily pure
beginning
of the behemoth o’ feminine mystic
who bears witness
incapable of blame carrying
my burden of clothes
and bandages
to heal us and keep us warm
IX
Unbeknown to the fool
I am you were
there in the shoes of Krishna and Sigurd
in direct relation to realities of stone
readying sun rays
to anchor our feet
in some foundation of full appreciation
for areas vulnerable to attack
a dying man moving on
you will not let go
who
has lived in all the countries of mind(s)
besieged by war...
X
scintillating un-
seen like the underside
of a lover's diamond
out of reach of the light
of luxuriated landscape(s)
harnessed moons and planets
her fine braided selbst knotting
us into tomorrows extension
of the moment(s) dying
demonstrating not more than great
feminine principles
containing her paradoxical inverse-fountain
of life o’ gateway
of the source
of the womb
of radiance and lucidity...
XI
Of my stare across this universe
stranger by the inquisition
the fracturing armor
the matted hair
the flawed heart
of a lifetime
of surgeries
committed under duress
according to the importunate laws
of masculine tendency
to signify strength only
the ground swell of adversity
with drunken hands
like rusty blades
and illegible maps of paradise...
XII
With empty nets
For your oceanic plenitude
So far
from notable places
from accessing eternity
fumbling to pronounce you
Codex Spheare
both of these feet
my ink and sheets of white
land of infancies
Probing
probing
probing nothing
physical spiritual psychic
corresponding to what physical phenomenon
of the body in time and place
woeful
unconscious
consequential
fruitless
nostalgic.
XIII
Dream of loneliness is the voyage
of sensual love
Aromas of fortuitous glands and crowns
of breasts
bejeweled dark ruby areola
cast cerulean blue shadow across us
milk of stalactites
milk of ephemeral bone
alone in this dream of Greek tragedies
playing out
alone at Roman banquets
alone at the brink of never
occupying absolute center..
XIV
Part lion and eagle
clown and child
bird and beauty
old serpent of the whore
full and artificial
heavy with interference
empty of legendary symbols
at war with interdependence
to lay claim on the flies swarming
full of mystery and illnesses
man nailed to his Christ
adequately suffering
transparent man
stained as man
fragile as glass
XV
Sun rising
a Kilimanjaro of angels
with inglorious heat
widespread(ing) to the four poles
of limiting consciousness
palms riddled
palms like oysters ajar
in the sand of your eyes
a gyration of castrations
of wasted sexuality
of existence before
and after and before
after
was the child demanding
was a tongue withdrawing
to what holy grail...
XVI
This endless chase separating forever(s)
that I and thou may no longer move
the mover across
the lie
by sacrifice alone
become the inconclusive hunter
mired and sleepless
sweating blood or vacating secrets
at the brink of calling hell
a routine
standing without energy
enough to feel apathy
as shame
XVII
thirty-eight years pregnant
with still boring points of view
So come
all the angel(s) digits
maniacally associating
come all the employees
of compassion
quintessential ode to five(s)
ishtarisisastartedemetermagmamater
reaching at objective truths
at Nature and cosmic force
in a night gown
o’ savior
I could not save her
my maternal woman
from gilded convention
1. 2. THE MOMENTARY LIFE OF CONFLICT AND COUNTERPOISE
I
Is that not the angel's nomenclature
to define the animal's man and stature
to be the tree of life that perches Phoenix
and calls Raven down to caw
to consecrate the impertinent details
of Plato's law
in Plateresque style
to heap upon her own bitter roots
and gnarled shoots
a panoply of applicable grotesques
II
disheveled garlands and rotting fruits
crossesboltsbrackets
and swords--to disseminate
to articulate how to fondle
and what is lost
what is Savior
and what is Antichrist
to show the sun it's pride
and the moon it's sloth
explain how white is gained
at a cost
to black
to paint the face
of the King's son,
make a seducer
of his wife
and a servant
of his clock
III
Against the final intrusion
man's hours defended
by her willingness to flower imperceptibly beyond
ambivalence
and discontinuity
while adulterers
and rapists of the spirit malinger
at every stage till thresholds peak
you are no less than Earth in deed
more than infinity's part
of the whole
cancer in the pancreas
of hostile forces
Madam of your mastery
so violently good
IV
With a key to the doors
to the towers of mind and (B)eing
of all thought in pernicious mind-swarms
of the powers that be (unworthy) o
Invariable guardian
my irrational lover
who's fingernails are in the skin
of my unknowing
who knows
I am barely this body
and mostly unaware of human kind-
nesses
I am deeply unfamiliar
with your dark soils
your cluttered tree
instinctively thriving
V
Rise of a tide of electric aureole
embarking upon what trim path
of total asceticism.
blow by blow of intellectual vigor
and mystical aspects
cutting me down to terrestrial characteristics
leavening the cuttings to spiritual asset
I climb from head to heart to joie de vivre
of mineral dirt
and your hand is always there
brutish in the mane
steering me like Pan
onto metaphysical planes
VI
Then a thrust into entrails
a procreative scope
into the lower oceans
where legs are impossible
and the depilation of a haircoat
complete
five knives proliferating
this alchemy of genesis
five spectacles passing
over testicles without hesitation
five blunt radical branches of what
Supernatural force
with spherical mood
and tubular temperament
deeper than flesh to what vestments
of black sound...
VII
How the Popes and Presidents
are assassinated
how men are degraded
to unconscionable nigger
how Muslims are lynched
by American vigor
there is not true calm in men
outside of the flow of this
particular river's basin
where the Stranger is renounced
for the Other
is renounced for the Brother
is renounced for the Mother
is renounced for Light
is renounced for the black
before and after life...
VIII
As stalk and leaf
like beast and flee
Our bulk was never our own
men among their winsome falls
are flesh dissolving to its last lie
nimbushalo and luminous circle
meet tooth and nail
by the bucket of corpulent fission
and chaotic travail
no prefiguration of mind(s) have been
not routed
bricked off
and grouted
to her circuitry of orchestrated energy
IX
What is spelled by her five brazen letters
What is meant by “sound of truth”
never heard only seen
heroes are not fallen in battle
but remaindered to mourning
to rising up in coffins and urns
to ancient gods by false premise
to misshapen gods
and disfigured paradise
to embark upon fiercely cyclical prisons
of memory
without hope of transformation...
X
This ritual of declinations rousing at birth
our one choice and death
not a way or means but a weaning off
from false light
from the sordid bedroom of hope
to breathing a perfect amplitude of stench
mimicking the tabula rasa of maggots
in full mindless harmony
with scatter
of dung beetles.
XI
Passing the tongue over lime
pooling saliva in the crevices
of ancient aquifer
Porous and ever increasingly proof
of nothing
“I” is not the Prince of Denmark
he does not exist resolved
by a monstrous proclivity to self-destruct
dematerialized without glory
more than naked I am
less than alone
XII
Like the drepression
of repressed oppression
but infinitely more
decompressed not so much
scattered
as paradoxically lessened
to more than the absence
of something
being less than the instance
of nothing
like eternity again is an hour
and heaven seems not wild flowering
and eyes
not the palm
nor the mind
has devoured all sand
we see anew the world
but strings of white hold us
as strands of black yank back
XIII
There is no theory for living longer
than the bliss of noneness.
3. TO THE NATURAL LIMITS OF RATIONAL ORGANIZATION
I
It’s a tangling tree of light
where the roots of cause and effect
intersect
darkness rests by a column holding up death
and I sound out
strangely hieroglyphic
postulations of erratic breath
or jagged confirmation
or acoustic precision
some facet of esoteric forms
ordering and reordering and generative
sequencer...
II
I in her virile complicity
and tacit humanity
and ovarian manus
the incomparable dexterity she managed
in manipulating fear
toward abandonment
of the carriages of metaphor
while signifying transparent purpose
endowing this space I find
one self or other middling in between
the right and left hemisphere
surmounting a signum of apocalyptic familias.
III
That a white horse could vomit symphonists
and strings of theory be
untied fabulous
come the black hoof till the gut falls out
without guilt
as punishment
this carnage and others
like distant gardens dysfunctional with desire
freed to be a moment of anguished vanguard
moving gallows themselves to tears.
IV
It doesn't anymore matter
if the song bird croaks
or the mad man in the square
remained vanquished
to his cripple's chair
then and still
silenced by the ashes clouding
his twenty yard stare
because the armies of longings remain un-
fulfilled
unable to move this earthly fever
our universally plebeian plague
we swallow shadow cast by light
chance and change met too late.
V
What matters is turning back to her
what matters are train whistles
and engine plumes heaving us back to her
what matters is the black string
bellowing its black sound
what returns us from the void
to the ground
of providence to the hills
of her body to the rivers
of her blood to the hurricanes
and tsunami's of her kiss so engendered with love.
VI
Despite angels concerned with our grave
and muses infernal
with discordant blazes
tear the nipples from the chains
of thought
concentrated as they are on what
must be got and bought and sold
from young until old
Glittering barriers of the construct-self
tireless campaigner to further what
brooding elk let go let open
our blind eye to the grandeur of her
Quintessence
VII
And no longer be past between masters
never again overrun
by the immensity of MASTER
instead undertake the conquerors way
from signpost
to bed post
to closeness of flesh against feast suddenly alive
not begrudgingly lie fallible in the tar
of smutty amusements
like snails in doubling shells
but right to the point of nature with utmost
brevity.
4. ON THE DIMENSIONS OF TERRESTRIAL ORDER
I
Where she is my savage love
my black stable
all of her speechless beddings
and rushes of embryonic air
slashing across the asymmetrical planks
of incurable desire
to live unto death until life do us part
to bed down forthrightly naked
in her
multi-dimensional carrion
made soundly and evenly
of afterbirths and before deaths.
II
Beautiful Harpie with animal-demiurge
stacked and brazen
with all of the defining concepts
of Being
naturally moral as amoral equally
heaven and heavenless
my deathless child
my wingless bird
woman of no means more or less
than the entire pantheon of embodiment
whom I cannot explain or symbolize
III
My Hecate hate me Harek
My love
strung and tense as the sad guitar
of a million Andalusian gypsies
yellow yin my moon lit red yang
in the cycle's ditch
crucifying men who've turned away
(for) riches
I am pour(ed) through you
from deeper levels
mother of flight keeper of the secret
that breaks generations apart
IV
My helix of mirrors we are self-same(ly)
a brutal cosmogony
by you doubling as creator of atom(s)
always white in all ways black
as the vestiges of night
and these "I" parts of "we"
echoing-echoing of a next level
of Sattva mechanics
of deepest logics
of swarming moment(s)
of conception in a sky
of our close attention
elementally colliding collaborating
swiftly on beautiful notions
of immobility
V
"I " of the black moon eclipsing
"you" of the white sun eclipsed
we are together
all that goes on moving
taunting the gardener of strange things
to tossing wild seed(s)
across the galaxy to feed
the allegorical anima of my unrehearsed animal
great weeping phallus muzzling
the homeland
o’ shrewd observation of the scent(s)
of you
sweeping at marks of solid body
VI
I admit Paradise lost is still a place
with as much space as before
but the inner tapestry of lace
was wasted
here by the palace curb: "I" see(s)
slumped among melancholies
through membranous eye into cults
man sacrifices his verb "to be" for need
of clarity to herstory...
VII
Face offing now forever
release the architectural pillars of hope
in all six directions of space
hold by my serpents stem
black fleur-de-lis of my endless
ox-headed bloom
let it be siphoned o’ mutual moon
enough milky nectar to make a septenary center
a compound for these blushing chambers
from denserdenserruin...
5. ON REVELATION AND SPIRITUAL ESSENCE
I
Forever now effaced
Anxiety-taxed eyes at the orgy
voice-descanted drunkenness
and saturnalia
orientation and sexual license toward being
handled
by the call of her c h a o s
of libidinal love's embrace
north hand
south tongue
west hand
east tongue
is the way into c h a o s
against all norms of apprehension
I-pray is prying us free toward what carnival
II
And vice of voice a thousandfold scream
and shadowy reverb without attenuation
white lightening and black darkening distances
between you
and yestermoments of what
diminishing apocalypse
great sound beams over-strumming
the whole silence
vast mindscape picked clear
of archaic cloister
juggernaut of intercommunications tuning
uttering this
emergent thousandfold
III
Tuned & forked dynamics of soul(s)
against sonorously vaginal instruments
a thousandfold wind-tongues whipping
at labial heart
slapping against your shudders
by savage increments
blowing us to post-human collapse
all naked weight and nebulous conviction of time-drifts
and cellular note
shifting along lines
of light
between the double-mirror
and extent grace...
IV
I blinded
unmade irrational
as you order us some continuity
growing within you expounding on blood
because of what beckons
the material order of feminine nature syncopating in form
functioncharacterorigin and color
with your gender encompassing
the earth as double-current as energy
moving thus toward roundness of grandeur
that expands the sun's form
lessness...
V
Because I am a man I am
the moment of conception elaborated upon by Fate
stretched for years hours minutes
seemingly endless s e c o n d s
to fit between the miraculous
and the mundane
I am
modes of constriction and a particular challenge
for sphinxes
in the unwritten folktales of my life's summation
I am
all of these parts of your whole
as something less...
VI
Who said
I must die for me do you
remember
Are you here this day I clean my weapons slow
Do you see the map on the table
smudged with coffee
the red x at the old sled park
the scribbled down date
of snowy march
Masterfully deep in these woods I am
teasing my suggestion slow
VII
Will you remember my ripple in the ocean
that every woman is darling
and every woman is beautiful
that every woman is sacred
and every woman is extraordinary
these are my obligations
the mother the sister the daughter the lover
will you remember I said of all women on the earth
I adore you
VIII
And you are my conception of ocean(s)
the great wound of such
depths azure skin
salting all grains of sin
by your tide(s) I come defining these words
pronounced both ways stable
and formless
equally solid and airy
both empty and whole
across a body of time
across a plateau of sand
daily imposing a drop of water
into a glass of existence.
IX
Last at the shore of men born
for storm(s)
by eroded thought
and battering moods
and rush after crush
of souther-most sevens
the years of categoric nightmare in fierce opposition
to value
a systemic worsening of conflict
and counterpoise
and the immaterial dispersement of time
in the triangle of sanity
living out the oppositions to love
to Creator
to Nature
to the nucleus of matter(s)
X
Sense you see you and repent
birth zenith and decent
had I known the bottle of wine in act one was a rifle
I'd be dead
my four dimensional horses hover too high
in the groves
trampling our branches my good and evil studs
all foundational
external meaning outside of reach
corralled breaches of faith
This heralding of ones natural limits
as self-evident
with minimum awareness of reality...
XI
And by my exhaustion
the inimitable rightness of surrender
the unfathomable embrace of the womb
once and for you I impose not death
but selfless life
to be your fetus of knowledge
a fragile and watchful eye and planetary sphere
with basic flesh of musical note(s)
with blood of pure color(s)
with harmonic soul
to extend by arterial wonderment
past the end of ends
acoustically alive
into your song of everything
(c) 2011 by Henry Avignon
Additional information:
Artist Statement by Henry Avignon
All poems copyrighted by their respective authors. Any reproduction of
these poems, without the express written permission of the authors, is
prohibited.
YGDRASIL: A Journal of the Poetic Arts - Copyright (c) 1993 - 2011 by
Klaus J. Gerken.
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Distribution is allowed and encouraged as long as the issue is unchanged.
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