Evil Stanzas

No spirit seek here rest.                    —Stephen Spender I Breath defines line length As does notebook shape / size Yesterday afternoon hearing      Archie Shepp play full breath, rich-toned      saxophone chords   think language too   can do this /   make feeling evidence   sound can evil stanzas As one sufferer said: unto us denied blessings Make characteristic failure our tautness—a trance II           after Juan Sánchez Peláez If snow falls now on a street without course nor sign, myriad shades inquire from the foyer if our errantry is fleeting, will it last or not and they point toward the actual path always attentive or dressed in night cloth thus from what north or south from what east or west these prompt shadows arrive or amble through fields in stables and cottages, no one knows save at dusk’s thin beam when we can glimpse the absent when our big hands talking alone open toward the other cold. III Taking stanzas at three breaths per lyric—the landscape digest in journal form  /  small pressd        figured language        thru prayer & magick        verses hymn transit        afterwards prophet etc. at evening’s husk our trees their carved bark, memory how our airs take care to translate by image by image IV How do we survive these torrents of violence and animosity, filtered through daily routines of Empire and neo-colonization? Violence of gesture and language underpinning all social relations. One must be lithe, agile and strategic—patterns of inquiry  /  Breath gleaned or entire libraries memorized. Ancestry combined by sensibility and Dream-book futures. Method divulged to none. V The poem arriving in gusts of wind              directly off the Charles My left hand              keeping the pages down This eye turned down in the pages—        disappearance map career & sun drops        into the city ever-taut and reluciente My feet dragging under weight Denied entry to the halls because of a tone or shade all physical qualities count