take the fading night

take the fading night
after 97 degrees—
another Maysummer.

tricking the grass
so you can cut
it. the weeds and

birds thrive, other
pedestrians just
fall or fall asleep

before they make it home.
don't cut your feet
on the blades of grass.

5/28/06

jump the fence -- run out of ideas and the yard

(Heraclitus’ feet are sore from stepping in
the same river over and over again.

8/4/05)

I’ve run out of ideas.
They’re dragging the river,
but they won’t find anything.
The kind of trace they look for,
they can’t pull it up.
I climbed the fence
when no one was looking
and now everyone’s on watch,
digging around for me,
in the wrong place.

“You’ll never fix the mess
you’ve made,” someone said.
“You should know better,
what were you thinking?”

I had to get away from that,
get away from the petty crimes
I’ve been committing all along.
You think, or you ignore
your responsibilities,
and they send the State Troopers
out to patrol the streets, helicopters
hanging in the air over your neighborhood,
shake the windows, wait for you to leave
so they can draw a bead on you.

Someone’s bound to smoke you out—
they can wait, have all the time
in the world to catch you
in your erroneous ways,
new crimes to compound
onto the old ones.

So I jumped the back fence
and got out.

Pretty soon they’ll forget
who they were looking for.
I just hope I don’t run out of ideas first.

8/5/05

storms in central Minnesota

Wind advisory
for the west
central state today.
Found birds blown
out of the Dakotas
in our yard—
nowhere after here
for them to go.

5/21/05

listen to the talk

mind-body nexus.
the diatribe
gets lost in all this noise.
a house on fire
cannot
divide itself for no reason.
listen to the talk
clicking.

5/2/06

Prologue to the Books of the Prophecies of Aaron & Miriam

The Lord repeats Himself,
as He speaks once
so He Speaks again,
visions to the one hand
are visions to the other
and prophecy comes twofold
on Shabbos, yea, on festivals.
Go and speak to them
that the roots of the world
descend into the depths
and all above is light
unto their faces and into
the deep places of their
waking minds: this is the wisdom
which I give them for all time,
in this place, eternally.

7/11/05

two on a paper towel in pencil, from the gym

be the hole
be the whole
be the mouse
in the whole

.

the oboe in Saturn
the tongue in the sheet of music


5/18/06

Every Time a New Hand Reinvents the Wheel

Every time I open up
I get this, “Why reinvent the wheel?”
But that's a lack of vision.
Every wheel needs reinventing.

New hands fix the functional circle,
Spread hub, set axle -- primary.
New hands, a new mind, every time,
Even if every wheel’s identical.

Manual is the new automation.

Separated wheel is distinguished
And the new hands also --
A spoke, a line, a circle of rubber,
Rim filling up on motion and air.

Automation demands hands.

Every wheel renewed! Who
demands dehumanization?
Even automation is a human pursuit.
Action, when we go looking for it.

4/25/06 (5/24/06)

body hazard: stains of life

everyone afraid to be stained by illness,
disability, bad credit, loss of motion or
freedom, the taint that you can’t shake off,
the scar that heals but in a different color
of flesh tone. everyone wants to be Scotch-
garded against mishap or damage, somehow
protected from imprisonment or attack—
as if living in a physical body could be
removed from its experience of physicality.
once you’re born, you’re stuck with nature
and an addiction to air, food, water, and love.
the physical nature of physical dissolution
is what we have. hold on: something rubs off.

4/4/06

the aliens aren’t what’s
going to get you—it’s
your imagination.

4/4/06

right now

am ringing like a bell.

shut the door slowly.

the walls are metal.

nobody travels astrally

anymore.

5/12/06

archive

godhead

A million, identified,
overwhelming: heaven's
transition to ground level
grows from the raw soil
then into muddy village.

God sticks to bare feet in mud.
They track the wet earth back to doorsteps, God with them.

A million not realizing in words
what the viewer feels outside of language.

In the one photo I saw,
mud in the path, where
the grass is flattened brown.
Feet stampeding away, people sent outside of view.
Dancing between doubts.

8/12/93...5/11/06

nobody but us. call back later.

not only here but us.
call back later.
get back to us later.
come back home after.
state your name and play
it back for us, later.
not only here but us.

4/6-7/06

poets

"I'm not interested in poetry,
I'm interested in poets'
biographies," she said.
And shot him in the leg.
Called someone to come for him.
And she left in their car.
"I'm not interested."

5/9/06

Divine Triptych 3

It was God’s confusion,
not mine: you can’t
hold me to that rap,

can’t pin it on me
‘cause of something
built into the universal matrix.

This is God’s problem.
His dilemma, and if
He comes calling for

a fall guy, tell Him
I’m taking a break,
I’m out of the business.

July 2005

Divine Triptych 2

God laughed and
took a piece of cheese,
then sipped coffee
from a celestial mug.

God laughed with
cheese in His mouth,
sipped coffee and
stared at the table.

July 2005

Divine Triptych 1

Says the Lord,

"I wear a circus tent for a mantle to alarm
the spirits of those who follow false gods,
bow to idols on the prairieland, set up
on poles or stones along the ditches of the wasteland.

"I am crowned by a prophecy staked
in the black soil of your homelands,
where no weapon has been lifted
against the brothers of the earth.

"The planting and the sowing is mine,
taken as the growth bestowed
from serene, limitless rains
that drown nature’s indifference."

July 2005

old moose in the forest, live

old moose — it was incredible:
you could actually hear
a hat drop over the loudspeakers;

not the rush of water
along the rocks in the fissures.
great brown forest, microphone.

February 2006

The magician must not believe in his own magic

The magician must not believe in his own magic,
or the spells he casts overwhelm him.

Not these beyond endlessness,
out of spells the one -- heaven.

His quest is the pursuit of endlessness,
an eternity or permanence outside him.

A desire to reach the final state,
the perfect state, beyond metaphor and limits.

One object or soul must reside in only one place
at a given time. Massy superabundance in singularity

It takes the mark of several deities simultaneously.
The endlessness of heaven, the beyond shapes the believing magician.

Its object, which marks metaphor -- eternity,
and deities that are forged out of what is, what he is.

The supreme existence is forged slowly, in peering
out the window, away from all these experiments --

The believing magician is shaped by endlessness.
The magician must not believe in the spells that overwhelm him.

November 2005

editing books of Magick

“We make it sound as complicated, learned, and cryptic as possible... to veil our humble, anarcane origins. Coaptation of the mundane with the sublime!”

neologisms:
“dubieties”
“suffumigations”
“deosil... widdershins”
“bornless”

Hand of Light.
Burden.
Take on the weight.
Sightless.

Shem ha-Maphoresh
(the Name Unpronounceable)
ΘΕΟС -- ThEOS

He wears Truth as a Breast Plate
and sacrifices Smoke before his Altar.
“Holy Guardian Angel,”
incanting, serene . . .
He kick-starts Astral visioning
and wreaks the machine.

September 2000

Vanguard Poetics plus 2

a poetics to hijack,
duct-tape, and throw
into the van. there,
that’ll fix its little red
wagon, its pretensions.

.

he draws a line.
he traces an X
at the exact center
of the page.

.

objects in built space
are meant to be
accessible and useful
for their
intended users:
consumers --
victims --
dolphins.

4/11/06

state meant

American World
K-I-S-S
E-N-D.
Compromise is not an option.
Adoption is not an option.
Save yourselves before
the bat bombs drop
across America.

4/15

Opening of Beethoven's Fifth Symphony

The Sound of God
Clearing His throat.

5/3/06

three poems

good old Minnesota --
I accost you at night.
ladies bring in their little
pups from the back porch.

.

the spilling, the river.
just who do you think
the river god is?

.

drop it. now
you’re bare-handed.
and he said,
“watch the snow fall.
did the weather ask
you to breathe out?”

3/4-5/06

© Tom Lewis 2006

pen

this black blood
this blood of ink
flows without effort
and stains the skin,
and possible report
of standing waters
(now they churn):
thought, ideas, think
another word and
put it down along
the banks of the flood.

8/27/05

© Tom Lewis 2006