by Patti Smith
patterns foreshadowing.
Darts of fortune scattered unnoticed,
flew like the raven in a twisting scrawl.
His transitive senses he left to his sister.
Her tears were the color of stone boy’s ball.
THE SETTING AND THE STONE
The setting is a barren place
colorless, with dry purple shrubs,
small rocks sheaved in light
and dust, dust everywhere.
The stone is betrayal,
rich, energetic,
the color of an elf ’s slipper.
He skips over the landscape,
his tiny tracks alive
with the lustrous fibers
of his soles:
The red beat of betrayal.
Three halves and the moon
is suddenly undone.
The mountain knows this,
as do all the idols
laughing at our futile efforts
to be whole, to be holy
without them.
The ring around our neck
has a weight, a weight.
Look, the prophet waltzed
this arid place and baptized
it with his sweat.
He was mad, by God.
Naked, he tread vipers
and felt nothing.
Yet he was drawn
from the smooth
crown of the locust
into Herod’s nest,
the palace of lust,
a teen-age dance.
She encircled him.
and he lost his head.
THE MAST IS DOWN
We lay in the cursed grass devoid of magic,
tracing our disintegration in the kinetic sky.
I touched your arm and the flesh fell away,
and my hands were no longer empty.
Our mount is made of blood earth,
when wet a clay thing writhing.
If you breathe in its mouth it will fly
above the Moorish towers into the blue.
The Pinta is a ship the lone navigate,
channeling the mind once beguiled.
I touched your hip, the bone fell away
and the sea was no longer empty.
We love yet reclaim our dark sails,
gorging the belly of a red dog.
THE BLUE DOLL
This morning I dreamed you returned and left a blue doll face down on my mother’s quilt. I reached to turn it over, as a black liquid seeped from a crack in the wall and bled into a pool, rising beneath our bed. The doll had blue hair and a blue face. I gripped it by the ankles and shook it like a medicine rattle. I shook it with such force, the head spun and I felt remorse.
I rose and fastened my hair. My robe trailed the rim of the black water. My nose began to bleed, slowly at first, then tear sized drops that slid down my throat, staining my collar and bodice. My dress was the dress on the blue doll. I walked on the water through the walls into the forest to a rocky hillock. I cut a path and ascended barefoot.
I lay face down on the crest, humming the music of a fluted sun. I was no longer angry. I was no longer than the span of a note sounded by a thrush in the wood.
EVE OF ALL SAINTS
The writer who did not write moved by feel alone, was eaten by his words, by drink, his own hand casting a line, drawing empty river. He felt a glow, not his, wrapping around him in the tavern—a silent salute from the strangers he loved and who loved him.
The writer who did not write suffered to return, dragging his foot. The willows swayed a greeting, ever so slightly. The shouts of little beggars, with their sacks and jack o’ lanterns, spilled through the dusk as they flew past him, trampling the marigolds growing wild on his dead end street.
She held the screen door open, as he approached the laughter of their children, the spoils of their pillowcases, fruits and candy soul cakes spread across the floor. He stepped over their masks—handkerchiefs with holes for eyes—and hobo shoes. The potatoes had yet to be peeled. His shirts were rinsing in the sink. He felt within his cheek and extracted a tooth, an ivory charm, for his love to wrap in silver paper. In her hand, beating like a small drum, he placed it.
The writer who did not write mounted the stairs. His children watched him faltering, his feet going on him. She followed and lay down beside him. He rested his head on her shoulder. A macabre magic filled the air. Little beggars raced from house to house, calling “trick or treat,” ringing bells, lacing the bushes with long veils of tissue. He dreamed of a fishing tournament, a musky strung up on the back of a truck. It was a lucky day for the old fisherman and he felt strung up as well and still aglow. It came in waves in his sleep—labor without pain. No life. No life anywhere and the blood had a metallic smell like a freshly painted retablo framed in flowers, carved in sugar.
She clipped a lock of his brown hair and wrapped it in the silver paper, with his tooth and a gold ring. She made a reliquary of him. His half-empty can she drained into the mouth of the river. She flattened the tin and painted a fish hanging in the green sky. She sat in the grass where they sat in the night. The willows swayed a greeting, ever so slightly, as she prayed, not to God, but to him. The stars scattered like a rosary suddenly unstrung. Medals embossed with saints rained upon the grass. The little beggars filled their sacks with them and handed one to her—St. Federico, the writer who does not write, the patron of forsaken fields.
My dove, your name is water in my hand.
I will offer it with salt and bread and the charm extracted
without resistance from your silent mouth.
I will canonize your name for mysteries unsolved,
words unborn,
because you suffered, my calavera, my sad, sad saint,
my writer who did not write.
Because your beautiful sorrow sprouted like a stalk,
blossoming calligraphy.
SHE LAY IN THE STREAM DREAMING OF AUGUST SANDER
for Diane Arbus
You, I write beloved black ace Ophelia
extravagantly pierced dread pale moon.
Negatives inflame your immutable eye,
hands face feather soaked in love.
Cast your pearls pen the pink fat night.
Comb ashes from the garden asylum,
the white cliff of ambition shedding.
Shoot baby shoot, powers can alter.
Her human cathedral hung with tassels
of hair threaded with golden string.
And she sang as she slid dangerously alive
through long arms of trailing algae.
I have collected children. I have felt
the museum fled that mountain—viewed
with suspicion memories snowing.
the white cliff of ambition
in those soft trine
She unfastened the strings and fruit erupted.
The flayed mule became one with her,
they lay uncorrupted in the deep grass
pecked palm to palm by ebullient fowl.
You are my summer knight she whispered.
The spokes of the wheel bear witness.
A barren heart is a heart that does not choose.
Beloved, come down fluid like naked convinced
a heart has stopped floating orchid child.
Horns of angel turned in virulent dust,
being to feel found shelter in fire.
The first roar dry and blood brown
crisscrossing the kingdom of a wrist.
FOURTEEN
There will always be devotion,
smoke coiling the open wound,
snaking the deep loam, molding
a clay head twittering the end.
There will always be romance,
the tit and the mouse,
and the defecating louse.
A curtain drops cabbage-edged,
anklets slouching schoolgirl shoes.
She tiptoes the stage, curtsies
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her closing piece and purses
a mirror anticipating a kiss.
Invective pours an unruly mouth.
She is as hard as you, hard
as your dreams rolled between
fingers, bled out of the blue.
Fourteen, each year a station crossed.
Her head droops, a capricious rose
crushed by gravity. How so and why
sours the tiny bud. She was fouled
in the leaves and the negative space
between them burnt into tears. She was
fouled in the leaves and the earth
shuddered, as the clay heads spoke.
What will we learn from all these words?
There will always be smoke, a satchel
of crumbling verbs, lusted by gods,
devoured by birds as they hit the sky—
their bellies full of India ink,
tales of assassins, the death of a pink,
extracting from its scalloped heart
pollen that could bruise a child’s cheek.
Clambering, grasping a small handful
of grass, poets and liars moan in the glass—
the glare masking the green of her eyes,
that moisture absorbed, the salt of the sky.
They sing of her lovely life,
what a number she is, a form of prime
strung like stars circling the throat
of a petulant muse whose crinolines
test cultures’ wriggling death.
BIRDS OF IRAQ
March twentieth
awake spring.
The birds are silent.
It is happening again.
I rise yet cannot rise.
I take to my bed
wind the sheet
about my head.
It is coming on
a nerve storm
triggering
the current
source of suffering
stones pelting
the human spring.
And I am myself.
And I am another.
And now my mother
stretched retching
in a bucket
fan spinning overhead
her children in a row
observing by the door
with scientific wonder
they’ve seen it before.
No dinner no story.
Hammering the wall
wet cloths and balm
hennaed strands
soaked in sweat
loosening her sun dress
barely casing toppled flesh
howling Jesus
Mary and Joseph
my head my head.
I the eldest
administering
in dutiful silence
condemned
as I am now
administering myself
grasping the towel
the storm in the air
is also my brow.
Yesterday
the nineteenth
her birthday
St. Joseph’s day.
She will not
return as swallows
to perch on a rock
in Capistrano
with the casual
symmetry
of a setup
a shooting gallery
bird heads
plopping
basket of ironing
that I will have to do.
Throbbing images
melodies looping
mother wailing
our childish games.
Can’t I have some peace?
Can’t I have some peace?
Can’t I have some ice?
What are they doing
wild little mice
bombing
the first day
of spring?
Baghdad
the city of peace
the caliph and the thief.
I remember nights
swept by the sea.
I read the Waves
but never ventured in
the polio epidemic.
Indians don’t swim.
They worship the tides
and they are coming in.
Virginia praying for night
refusing to be black
for the moon is full
spilling the skylight
dripping voices
or are they birds?
Why did they cease chirping?
When will I cease retching?
And how did my head
learn to swim?
The equinox passed.
She marched
to the river.
A letter for L.
A letter for V.
Stone by stone
the ring ouzel
and starry rooks
the weeds floating
the pitted mirror
a glimpse of gone
a quiet hand
twisting a sheet
between her teeth
pleading amnesty
whispering
nervous hummingbirds
dreaming of asylum
Saint-Rémy
impossible peace
hammering inventory
ruthless embroidery
painted trays
ambulance spattered
in Julian’s blood.
Madder palette knife.
Discard possessions.
Cut hair cut hair.
Rose growing annuals
thorny hair
would not stop
piercing her scalp
thick-walled gardens
Vanessa in heaven
Thackeray’s great
glass-fronted cabinet.
It was a dream.
It was her head
hammered head.
And she wonders
how could I think
such a violent thing?
How could I think
such a violent thing?
And Buddha
was unaware of Isaiah.
And Isaiah unaware
of Heraclitus.
Yet all existed
in the same moment.
And who exists as we exist?
Fingers inch by inch
spread the country of her bed
through the window
shattered cabinet glass
shams wet with tears
spittle and sweat
desperate eyes
clasping vines
counting beans
the murmur of leaves
a history of the world
written on the humps
of broken beasts.
The birds are silent
before they cease
before the bough breaks.
Iraq spring awake.
Bombs fall like fruit.
The peach trees
lining the boulevard
behind the mosque
in flames
the hoopoe
the turtle dove
showering
remains
spattering sheets
children toting guns
women soldiering.
And I am not them
wrapped in muslin
bric a brac flying
no connection
no culminating
piece of action
no end no end.
Over the Tigris
the Euphrates
helicopters
drop leaflets
for people to eat.
They paper the moon
the hammered mind.
What century is this?
Truly the last
as camels race
freed from embroidered
vests and leather saddles
sacks of spice
and water gourds.
They run and the sun
explodes.
&nbs
p; The lamb of god bleats.
Goats separate from the sheep
their beards are woven
into scarves
adorning priests and freaks.
Camels in the dust
astonished by their wounds
their racing minds
Ata Allah—bedouin name
their small ears lined with fur
filter dust and sand
double row of curly lashes
shields their large soft eyes
from the desert sand
hair they shed in spring
highly sought
for artists’ brushes
Vanessa’s
Duncan’s.
The band tightened
around my head
slid, encircled my wrist.
I couldn’t write
couldn’t grasp
a single thing
not word
nor world
just time
beading
a long
fragile
string.
When you snap
a neck
something stops
turning in
a jewel box
beneath a hammered lid.
We met in the spring house
enacted our play
slept in a tent of sheets
and dreamed of the desert.
We heard the call to prayer
and the sky was magic.
Men were leading camels.
We knelt in the thorny scrub
and when I awoke
there were scratches
on my knees.
And never again
will vision be so acute
that dreams could
produce blood
a thorny path
littered with wings.
If we tape them
to our shoulders
surely we could fly.
We would be free
like the hoopoe
like the curlew
singing in spring.
Are you coming
my sister?
Are you coming?
Mother’s better.
We are flying
on our own
flapping
up and down
up and down
discarding
sweaters
baring
