My Own Places on the Earth

...
I smooth my hands upon the witgnarled roots
of this great bulbous tree
Sunshiny brilliant golden above the living canopy
Under from which rain gentles silver cool, tinklesplashing laughter
Into the many little pools deep with their blue wisdom
and their ripple-ripped self-reflection
That lie scattered between the witgnarled roots
of this great bulbous tree
Motionless
Resonant
Kept in my own places on the earth


I

In the scenter of a pure white rose sits an opal spider like a
pearldrop tear
Like a little gem of dew
With eight legs
And Teeth!
Ah the unsuspecter who would drink this ambrosia-fount
without permission
As the poison mandibles descend upon his comely neck!
The gods saw fit to robe the ladder to heaven in thorns
and appoint a guard after
Lest Prometheus have an heir.
So the little spider sits there a-weaving
A-weaving, a-weaving your fate amidst the bloodquenched
scarlet petals
Wishing a less gruesome task might be appointed it
Than keeping you from seeing what you should not see
Here in my own places on the earth


I’ll corner the little creature so you can have a drink –
I’m not sure why I’m doing this for you –
But sometimes it gets lonely being alone I think –
Alone in the immortal beauty of myself,
and my own places on the earth.
You’ll babel a bit, for it’s strong and heady
Try your new wings, you won’t need a pilot’s license for these
Tell me when you’re ready; now off we go!


II

Upon a time I could lie long and harmlessly wonder
Sheltered in a little stony hollow from the rain and thunder
While gray rain falls from gray clouds onto gray stones
across misty gray land
Somewhere near the tumbling washy sea that polishes its
trash and grit
Into selkie mermaiden jewels that shone until
I drew them from the foam
And took them to the cave under the hills to inspect the pirated
and re-pirated 100% recycled treasure
With the lamp I kindled from a wick of mind and whale blubber oil
Where they fade and lose their luster
Where they grow dustier and dustier
Lit in my own places on the earth


On a mountaintop neath where the moon glows cold
Ancient withered conquered castle ruin rises black
when the werewolf howls
Answering with its silent memories of ravenous men clutching
at fleeting glory
Over and over, and over again
Til the cars shone red and the stock market snorting pawed
the ground in its golden age
Where the wind howllowly mocks from its far-off height,
‘And did you, too, dream young of being happy and forget
to know what happiness is?’
Like they all did
Building their self-betraying fortresses out of unbreakable stone
on unshakeable mountains so they could starve and dehydrate
and suffocate behind the walls of the unyielding homes
That would not fight their battles, but remained
Solemn in my own places on the earth


A star falling catches the edge of the world
To stop it spinning and burns,
And burns in the oxygen that it dying breathes as the world continues
on, crushing the coalbright seraph
Between its own slowrolling unstoppable mass and the nothingness
of blackempty space
And goes on, heedlessly
To retrace its historical steps around that big white burning ball
of damnation that
Shows up the stage crowded with blind actors while the deaf mute
playwrights in chorus
Pitch to the tune of a single harsh arbitrary piano. No curtain and no
place for an audience
The world rolls a cratered star into shadow once more
Lovelonely in my own places on the earth


I know your dreams
Little girl who sleeps on her featherbed pillow with one
courageous candle
to keep the monsters at bay outside its magic circle
Whose tomorrow will bring daymares worse
Whose father gives everything for her outsides but takes
everything from her insides in exchange
I know your whimpered cries
Ensconced I watch cross-legged on the mantlepiece, waiting
with my fairy dust
For a happy thought and a missing shadow
That may never-never come for her with directions leading
straight on til morning
Bitter in my own places on the earth


Time grows dim in the northforests dark
Daylight is slow to come and slower to leave, confused in its
navigation among the branches
And time opening its yawning maw catches its stretching
cloth garments on their needles
Leaving behind tattered scraps of itself that flit around like moths
Among the willows growing up from the swampy mere
Where wisps of fading light deceive you among the
disoriented memories
Forest of old age
Where old trees die slowly and are buried under leaves
without a book to hold them
Before they understand what their lives meant,
They dropped their seeds to start again and gave up
on themselves
Leaving their posterity to lichen unto them
Forgotten in my own places on the earth


There is a little hall on a coldfrosted plain
Falling snow-crystals slide off its invisibly pointed roof and down
its invisibly fathomed walls
Through it flows a little steaming stream like a river of dragonfire
In the palely illumined everdark writhing throughout
with fay-ribbons,
Holy remnants of the lost sun that used to light this world
Centuries and centuries these pillars have stood, but one day
the mountain will erupt underfoot
And sometimes, when you are hotbathing and frollicking
in the snow, you can feel the tremors
Eternity endures – oh, how terribly it endures! – But time is telling
And ticking and tocking
And leeching and locking
Time will take you with it and you will be the one blurting alarm
Intruder in my own places on the earth


III

Hsst! Wake up!
It is not safe; you should never have been here.
You must leave, now, and forget what you have seen
Forget all that happened and never return!
These are the last of my own places on the earth
And I’ll be having those wings back before you go.
That’s it. Just vomit. Now go.