big billboards yet, they observed
the clear seabed at Silba.
There, where Azra coated you
with tar. Opened your throat,
spread it toward the sun,
as Isis to me, Anubis.
The Linden Tree
You didn’t satisfy to us, man from Australia,
in the magnetic field you acted like a she-kale.
Cuba squeezes out the blue snake. We hugged you.
A flash of lightning reports on heaven and spills Fatima.
Remember the asphalt for the million believers.
Remember that on those small gardens, among
ocean ’shrooms and the nation similar
to Slovenians—similarly suppressed, only that
they had three more rags in history (half the world)—
murmuring between Tomar and Fatima,
between the ordained fourth miracle and the piece
of cheese, happens. Did you see how the crowd’s voice
strengthened? Did you feel what the feminine principle is
(Mary) and how in Tomar (painted incessantly by Marko
Jakše, although he was never there) the hall
stirs, stirs centuries, and lifts freemasons
like some sort of dwarf. Dwarves
today just wrap ribs to pigeons.
And the pigeon (with the brush), another pigeon
(like wurst, in salted and cloudy paper,
feasting), Bob Perelman is the pigeon.
He comes (twenty-five years after
he drew his blood-tax in Arena), a quarter
of a century I guarded him like my own blind
beaver who will blast into the dark
corridors of America with the one
small, tram-like shift. To us instead of us.
Holy Science
doctorate man! fucking
otter: recommended, reading
fucking on beaches, on damp grass
fucking with universal doctrines: labor
fucking with steamships, in the clouds
fucking in the arena with moby dick, fucking with partisans
smog: hoarfrost
fucking on the cliffs of dubrovnik, the patriot
fucking with contessa adriana gardi bondi
she disappeared and returned with a towel
heard the awful splash and frodo yelling: auuuu!
fucking with the tatra mountains, with white wine
with radio antennae, I live off lights
I live off ljubljana’s liberation M.S., the signet!
imprimatur: fucking with chains stacked on cushions
the sun: corinthus
fucking under right angles, with fields
with the fast-turning cloud, with cinema
fucking with the colossal apparatus: bled
hey, hey, how are you? I hope you’re fine
I hope you’re well, welcome!
bohinj: fucking with aspirin
baltimore: delegates
barcaiolo sul mare, fucking with buveurs d’ames
that cathy barbarian would sing black is the color, fucking
the cat, the wolf, pasha who rides an elephant
that we’d drink wine, bread, indulge in grass around the house
se i languidi miei sguardi, enjoy boris’s first-class certificate
with fucking how, with tea at five
with regular life, with the pleasure of company and travels
with this that I wouldn’t let wicked people across the threshold of my home
because I stood up in solitude, because the sun bathed me
I’d gladly die mute, friend
pure as the oak
We Lived in a Hut, Shivering with Cold
Is the little bird torn apart
by a paw? Lights switch on, at least
one juxtaposition between
tree
trunks. On handcarts
(wheelbarrows) there are
blue baby
bags. An unguaranteed
growth ring is left
on the asphalt.
The gadget with which
you fatten
your ears,
rubbed out from sky-
lights. The other
will understand all of this
when he takes the time.
The Danube will open its graves.
At Low Tide . . .
At low tide the footprints are blue
and I long for the sinkhole.
Show me what you wrote.
My poems are genitalia.
Blue Wave
Where you offer your fuck-crazed mood,
I’m already relieved. Mantras
are morbidized. They recoiled
in loops on the racks, reflected
the mouth and voice of Prince Bolkonski.
I eat from the flock. You contributed
nothing to this. You gave
and then burnished. Algae turned up
beneath the backstay. You broke the incision.
You devour the fairy tale with an angle.
Like those weary menefreghisti that eat their fill
of the sun and fall asleep
on a wave. It’s hard to move
the solar system off the retina this way.
Colombia
Cats have set themselves on wings.
Buttons have buttercups. Hares are soft meat,
hares are soft meat, they quiver and throng.
They rise the sun, actually hold it
on little poles planted in the sand.
Water fortifies the poles in river sand. A pool
vibrates differently from clay. It spills itself
and does not come back rhythmically. The sea
is a guarantee and the nosy are full of adrenaline.
And now? How are you? Is there also a membrane
in the volcano along which the tongue glides?
That which stirs the cells of memory
and undulates the body and screams
when the sun soaks, soaks, roasting in Iška?
And On The Slopes of La Paz
Bushels full of little lymphs.
Paper caps of endless yarn.
There are no more yards, Thursdays,
orphans released in rows of four,
blind men playing the accordion
beneath the chestnuts or at the corner
of Langus and Jama.
Only flagellates yearn
and die with comforted,
lamenting lungs. Where are
the trash bags I smashed
on the heads of maids and their
officers, so that white Jules Verne
balloons kept escaping from them
on footpaths in the park, like those
found these days only in Persia.
In Shiraz young men grow out of Cretan
vases. In Knossos they are showy,
because there’s no more dust and macadam
and stockings anymore. Are you falling? In Lisbon,
at Alfama, you ignite the birds, and in Trieste,
in the park of Villa Rossetti,
there are black turtle bellies and fathers
who portray themselves as goldfish.
Coat of Arms
The wet sun stands on dark bricks.
Through the king’s mouth we see teeth.
He sews lips. The owl moves its head.
She’s tired, drowsy, and black.
She doesn’t glow in gold like she’d have to.
Fiery Chariot
The bull’s berry walks on wires.
The windowpanes are wounds.
They hiss when the jet streams from the silver
kettle and a giant flings a discus.
It turns its head. The helmet touches the tip.
Shifting The Dedications
The juice is sore. The stupor endures the bag. When you hurry,
you
stand up, smith yourself. The vault is still coming.
You believe, you believe, you believe in your fruit.
Exhausted, cruel, and lazy, do your eyebrows blaze
with your loot? What else do you still know, incised one?
You mellow from sores and pains, no longer mine.
You bound yourself to nothing. Are you betraying me
to awaken me? So I would squeal and hurt?
You drown in your huge shoes, soldier,
naked to the waist, drawn by the manuscript.
One could hardly see water under the thick green
August leaves and the flickering of the centurion.
You rolled, as a priest would sneakily count
handfuls of earth. The sun was worn out.
Washing in Gold
Dakinis dig and plow and babble
and push shingles off the roof.
The clod is microtone.
The pane shakes against the steamship.
Isaac Luria wasn’t for food.
He was for strong ingredients
in an obscure diet
like hair, bonbons.
He smelled sweet and emptied himself, hugged.
He stooped under the water because he sang.
Brahmins came for the signet.
Roe deer drank off layers of water.
Crickets still had extra buckets
on their backs, they poured themselves.
Sometimes, an entire bucket would roll off
a clumsy cricket, with the sponge.
Before, the sponge swam in the water in the bucket
on the cricket’s back under the water.
Light and light do not touch.
The belly of God is between, totally stuffed.
He barely breathes and unfolds.
Sometimes a butterfly’s wing tickles him
when he starts to eat his own pupa.
The Wood’s White Arm
You don’t have the right to eat even the filly
of the little paw. Nathan’s headboard is in Prague.
God knows if he sleeps peacefully. The little paw
wears out and drinks by the stone. The will flies around
the birch. The firewood is weak from waiting.
Are the green birds already throwing up at Komna?
To want and wish to follow into a duvet.
Push-ups are done there. Towns are built
there and shells are sought, the handcarts
in the mines prepare. Did I comfort
you then? Do you still wonder,
when did I comfort you? There were needles
all around and a spruce and soft moss
and as now: spring was announcing itself.
The Kid From Harkov
Strips of thin plate tissue are love
without a cell. Snails gush saliva
and toads. They glaze a cotton wad
for the orthodox church growing on
white sand and from bones. Madam
Yaremenko says there was no right
tone. She missed the czarist gestures
from Bijela Crkva. Katarina liked
Onjegin and Ivan the Terrible lions.
Karadjordjeviĉes killed the Cincars.
The Hellenes lasted on vases.
I reached with a hand under the napkins.
There was straw, and here and there some
gefilte fish. Send me the recipe for borscht.
Porta Di Leone
Sand and rollerblades and a tailor,
he keeps bedsprings in the pigment and the mouth.
It seems he thwarted the upholsterer.
Do you keep flour, too? Do any flowers fall
on its head? In the narrow streets they’re tall.
What if a gas pump hit someone
walking the street? He didn’t walk. He didn’t
walk, it just happened this way, what if
it didn’t happen? Little donkeys
keep coming back. They bray before evening.
The door opens, the dung doesn’t disturb.
Frogs approach Porta di Leone
and we quelled the mosquito with poplars.
They grew up under Mussolini.
Paleochora
Ron’s land is veiled by a padlock.
Men are on guns.
Time doesn’t have a dark suit anymore,
cows have stovepipes in their stomachs.
Multiplied, they give a cleaver.
A white meadow, white millet,
white millet for brother horses.
I snacked on a strap.
The cave got larger.
The blueness didn’t start to tremble only around
birds, the bird itself turned
blue, constituent.
He invented a typewriter
on a vacuum, a tunnel in a cave
that failed. Bill Gates
sealed off his ear. The hut
changes into fear. Fear
opens itself into the dark slippage of cards.
I wanted to oblige my friend
so he could play bridge.
The pea, too, is a miracle of the Trinity.
Persia
Hey, monarch, ferry me across
the river. A nettle nips, a nettle
does not nip, a nettle
does not die from frost. We gurgle
tar, still unborn
piglet with pretty and white and long
hair, else
sorrow, sores, pain,
and vertigo.
Do you also fight for her like a lion?
For screams I’m patriotic.
Sidewalks are kind.
The corners of sidewalks are kind
to invalids. To return love to the blind.
To make it dewy, to make it
seen, to make it watered
by their gazes. To return sight to the blind.
I will thrust the smell of river sand.
In The Walk of Tiny Dews
Parafiled little wretch on a morbid plank.
Bronze radiates. It pours from leaves and creaks,
rends grease. Phantasia kataleptikè?
Rabbits, snow, bushes, boots leak,
I lie unconscious by the river. Outer space
gulped dumplings. The smell was constant.
Inside we stored pieces of gold and wiped,
wiped river stones. Is it worth
tipping? Certainly. Then where is
the sail that cleans the gazelle’s leap? We leap
through soot. Through flaming hoops,
twice. The animals’ skin crumbles in the cinema.
The slippery surface turns and changes.
The podium creaks. The road is fresh and aches.
Olive Trees
The act is luminous. Out of wire, out of
sage, out of gray green puffs of air.
I dreamed Poof had brambles instead of
fur. The foam had patience.
Did you find a chanterelle? With every layer
of night a little coat is pulled on.
The word made the river and the waterfall
and the power plant and the mill. The Mitchourins
already to the Mesopotamians. They rolled
rocks in front of a town gate. They stood
on a hoop. The space between the word
and heralds (the shoes pinched) was changed
by the view. By the pressure on the skin
of olive trees’ drums starting to ski on the wilderness.
Mornings
The poem shines the saw. I don’t know it
by heart. The spit is merry and embraced,
soaked with bast. The white one wants, the dowry
wants, you climb and hurtle on spikes.
In front of Agnes Martin’s canvas (Pace
Wildenstein) I came across two
dervishes. They were Turks. They had
hair combed like a black app
le.
Are white caps humble?
Isn’t the strike the sun brings on beams
(laid down with force) too dangerous?
I kiss the earth. Deepen the air
and dust. I shift gears
and stand up. Lapis lazuli blots me.
It Blunts
Only protosynaptic measures have blackened
God’s blueness. Nightmare is balsam sleep.
Rivers smell fragrant, the gallows. I’m worth the brow.
Weary and wooden. How are the legs?
Some say they’re real.
Will he snatch a bigger slice of bread of God’s love?
Marasca
The sour cherry is a steamship’s body.
Panta rei sleeps.
Scarlet Toga
Overnight snowfall filled everything.
The pools are emeralds.
I talked to people
with noble mouths.
They brought cymbals and bronze,
a chafer wrapped in stiff paper,
they swung it in a handcart and sang,
we heard how the fortresses were knocked down.
Woods and Chalices Page 3
