Forward From The Warnings

2006-09-29T10:28:00.000-07:00

The Doctrinaires

Invocation: This Work
I Dedicate to all True Theosophists,
In every Country,
And of every Race,
For they called it forth, and for them it was recorded.

- THE SECRET DOCTRINE:THE SYNTHESIS OFSCIENCE, RELIGION, AND PHILOSOPHY by H. P. BLAVATSKY (eighteen something)

" . . . It is a sottish presumption to disdaine and condemne that for false, which unto us seemeth to beare no show of likelihood or truth: which is an ordinarie fault in those who persuade themselves to be of more sufficiencie than the vulgar sort." Montaigne, from Blavatsky

Who is it that suffers the great
djinn fevers, cast off wedges of heat
from the maker of all warmths and favors?
Few survive the tempestuous drownings
backlogged, obscure in the mad-minded
focus, the cruel and hearty bone-diggers.
Escaping tragedy on each leg,
carrying every burden to the top,
they wait as progeny do, traitors to the end.
The foolishness of numbers, languages
and spot-checks, dramas of the ascetic generations
scanning for the manifestations, cropping up.
It is a map of purgatory they want, a way out
without the justice of asking, pleading
for a patience and thirsty as lions, book binders.

Two doors.

Standers and waiters. Banner wavers, four. Jeweled courtesans.
The advertisements of heaven and hell
seen between the crushed shoulders
of the walking revival, troups wandering between
mountains, through valleys and into the deep seas,
mother Mary had her inclinations, recollections.
What a show that is seen, what a problem!
How the red of dreams is graphed again in red.
Saint Vitus in a limp stampede, race on!
A devil in every room playing with the mirrors.

Poisons and paradises, opulent rivers above
as wide as the shores of all the seas -
the tiny maps of Gorge, as plain as day -
to taste that water is to drink. To really drink
for the first time in the eons, sealed wine
pearl agar, aged in casks of unknown depth.
To stud the cacti with the worm
provoke the dehydration of dementia, they try to lie.

Only one cartographer has the archaica,
knows the brocade language of the fish
which shines in their skin under
the broad white road upon the sea
where some could walk, some
others could see, and those that had to,
built boats on which to flee.
Then, they are the pretenders, the mocked mockers.
Salt-licked paths from underwater plateaus
constant in their undertow and taking.
The bargain of rain on the tumble of soil.
Split open dry canal of the ancients,
the forgotten tongue-tied sooth
whose feet coursed the mighty flow below,
the source of constant consternation,
to advance the best orations, the stock of futures
after the crowing of stones revealed: a gadget.
One big story after another, the sun sets, rises.
A big gap, light flux, curved broadbands
in the age of pirates, blue ox and steel.

Scorpion. Tiger. The year of our Lord.
Squawk-boxes of the forefathers, Topaz keepers.
No one gets out of this alive, labels perish.

Anatomy seekers and keepers, burial
experts and detectives, the borrowing of heads.
To examination tables and paintings,
the record keeping chronologers, pagans
priests and profiteers, bullies and geniuses.
The cadre of promise-takers and peace-makers,
hoteliers and pimps, giant-sketchers...

facilitators of the worst sort.
Forget what it is they make you say.
The drivers offer no solace for the unwise.
To the map-maker we must return -
naked, alone, worse for wear.

2006-09-09T00:58:00.000-07:00

http://carmenisacat.blogspot.com/2006/03/from-sister-cities-they-thought-i-was.html

From Sister Cities:

"They thought I was a tire burning.
They thought I was a Marine barracks."

2006-09-01T08:18:00.000-07:00

The Occupations

This occupation housewifery,
many things really,
from moment to moment,
you know? Starting out,
preoccupied selfishly
with coffee, cigarettes.
From there to lunch packing,
laundry folding, a bit Molly Bloom
a bit something else.
I walk the dog, half past nine,
looking forward to or avoiding
what must be done.
When it is complete,
each is satisfied, each go on
to other things.
Down in her polyurethane hut
sounds and smells no one understands,
she is looking forward
to my next visit or dreaming of our last.
The liberating sensation
out on the road or
watching her eat,
liberated from hunger
for affection and food;
liberated from
a certain accountability.

II

Running through the life,
the work and the play
we stay more or less, occupied.
Free of this sort of thing,
we are the irritable, restless ones.
The necessity to survive,
the creation of things:
money, pride, sorrow, guilt, honor,
and full blown shame.
Excessive masturbation and gambling.
Lists full of results. Foreign occupations.

The Shrines

I keep them holy, a kind of mother tending,
a real tenderness,
for particular reasons or none specific.
I've a card on which two brass buttons
are still stitched in place,
removed from her sewing box
after her death, the death I missed
from layovers in Beirut, delays.
The bottom reads, Germany, US Zone.
In another place, a ginger cookie jar,
where my mother used to hide things from my weight,
there where all our problems were:
vodka in the fridge and a dog
who'd be put down for his hips,
waited outside for his deliverance.
I learned to lift the lid
quieter than a pin dropping to remove
a childsize handful to share
with the Lab, on the front step,
while they were napping
peeking through the screens
as afternoon light swirled the forms
into resting, crying, or just lying there.
Maybe she was thinking of Bethesda,
the burnt soldiers she tended
as a wave, whole armies covered
in bandages, thinking of the US Navy.
On the bottom of the ginger jar
with orange blossoms, still with a crack
in the lid glued-tight, Made in
Occupied Japan. Once I dropped it.

The Garden

In the philedendron that needs watering
is a jagged knife which arrived, steaming-
war singed, after the long whistle of incoming.
She turned just in-time
with a stomachache, saying mom, oh,
her hand holding her guts -
how children are occupied with that!
Avoiding school, avoiding the battles
of humanity and chalkboards,
telling us their stomachs are hurting.
A piece of shrapnel is redeemed
by returning iron to the ground,
saving the lives of plants.

There are two pieces of petrified wood,
one from the petrified forest in Egypt
the other from an ancient
stand of trees in Arizona. I've never been
in either place but I have that stone wood,
I keep it for unknown reasons.

III

It might be time to change, occupations
make some money, give this up.
Some things, you are born into and others
are your calling and you go there.
Palestine, Iraq, the Ivory Coast.
You fail to resist it or give birth,
dissembling like clouds over continents
and moving on, like lines drawn on long,
black highways, passing or no passing,
you drive on to get ahead.
There are times when I ask myself
Why did you marry an Arab?
Wendy Waldman, Midnight at the Oasis,
send your camel to bed. Still know the words.

IV

I am the long line of nurses and soldiers,
occupations, sisters and mothers
some of them, just trying to keep things alive.
When will these wars be won?
When will our occupations
be done? When will I finish
the epic of the Aleutians
and my father's frozen shanks?
Finalize the wave gone AWOL?
The story of how my mother hid,
the cookies in that sort of Japan?

V

Two years after they both were gone
completely, the two of them
I was on the freeway going up
Greenfield or Higley in Mesa.
I had no one left to answer to.

VI

I don't want to know the Mind of God,
only the Mind of My Mother.

2006-08-27T11:44:00.000-07:00

T-bird At The Gila River, Summer '05

"Advice: learn poems so that you don't have to write them.
Strategies are useless testimonials." - The Book of Warnings, D. Whitehead

This pretty life is death's comma
and we are between, constructing
the darkest layer in the top soils
over which the eagle flies
with the owl, as same as the bug.

Once I stood on a reservation
for natives and thought.
The wild wisdoms entered
like drugs with the cackle
of gypsies and caw of old birds
into the world's big recorder.

When suddenly! Like that!
The newest grand canyon opened
her secret vaults to receive
the sound and reek of vomit from the throat
of a drunkard who turned in and then, sped away.
Ah, the stories the rocks will tell!

2006-08-23T07:43:00.000-07:00

My newest book is available at selected bookstores in the metro areas and is called:

The Book of Warnings. An excerpt:

Dogs

She wants to understand betrayal
the unseen, the protected law of the universe
in all of its blinding capacity
although it is wrong and impossible.
She tries anyway. Leaves everything else alone:
socks, ashtrays and friendly letters
platonic unifications of her very own soul
which is so valuable anymore to her
and no one else. No one else bothers
about another man's soul any more,
his own wife or her dog's soul
the same to him as they are to her
but in a different way. In such a different way.

2006-08-23T06:59:00.000-07:00

http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=1714466442511220171&q=Captured+Prisoners

Film about the "Israeli Prisoners" held in captivity by terrorists.

2006-08-20T10:57:00.000-07:00

I. The Chastisement

Thou shalt not read this
furthermore without the slim slap
of the mother waiting for her sons
at the doors of the ancient cathedrals,
down by the polished stones,
reverent river rocks of the Apache
in the oldest canyons of purgatory.

There is a wine-red glow in the shallows,
a tin flash in the sun dazzle.

A grim voice, no comparison.

On the deck we watched Bayruth
until the night churned a path
away into the foam. The sea
already spread into an oily wound
of war. There were no choices
but to watch and wonder, pray
for the steadfast. A telemachas-vision in the mess
bright with simple animations; children and women
held tight to the cots and cribs
of the Navy whose cargo was labeled:

The hypocrisy of mighty charities,
dry forms in the ether
the pirates of democracy contained
in the hold of great ships made
of steel and already sold to India
to outflank the archaics
in the next war, pirates
who pimp ships to battle, the
slaves in the caves of byzantium:
someone's children, someone's baby
no one knows how hard they've tried.
And few, if any, know the seeds
that are planted on distant shores,
no one knows this Obleo.

II The Reckoning

One vessel after another was boarded,
time zones failed the miserable ticking,
sleep impossible and tears plenty.
Some had been herded three times before
and others returned to the docks of Bayruth
unwilling to flee and able to bear witness
if only for one more day in the longest history
of the utopias, proud and prejudiced, as if to say:

we are not your playthings and your pathology
isn't what it used to be, a kind of show business.

O pathologie of the ancient
twisted mind rage, a cornered
battered animal with false teeth
shriven to the core, cavity stricken.
Blind, belligerent, cursed and chosen
for a confessio of popularity,
a pharoah's shadowy throne?
The several refusals and rebukes
are all out there, the big stone
idol witnessed the smaller ones
being beaten into gravel
and was silent, like so many poets.
Pardon and unpardon the pastors,
reveal and unreveal the pleasantries,
make and unmake everything into barter.

III The gray steps lead up to the Cedars

The creek Zacatecas meanders downhill,
swells and shrinks, borrows rocks
bones, marbles and screws.
Older stories are told in the silt beds,
grass returns as green
as the day grass was born.
No one knows the ancients
when time speeds up.
An ant carries the dead body
of an ant, drops it
then walks in a circle
around the corpse, nudges
his comrade once more and moves on.
War is the basic story of all things
pleasant and otherwise, empires
fall in the anthills eternal.
Forests plead with the fires and wind,
the ever returning floods.
Nothing lasts forever except the creation
and even that, is a trick of light
a toast to the cedars!
Mighty cedars in rain, cedars in mine
and bible, perpetually holding still.
Continually growing old for Gilgamesh
and the return of the ancient teacher,
the boat slayer, the little green man Kadr
with his problematic conundrums.

IV. To The Immortals

A great throng, generations of nostalgia
and those who believe they will remain

a thousand years more to discuss
the outcomes of Armageddon

your masks are made of stone,
metal hip bones and gravity defied
by the priests who guarantee
a kind monasticism, pedantic really.
Monk, Priest, Idolatress
are the foods of the iconoclasts
and the sand you leave behind
is the same sand to build more.
This awakening is only a taste,
there is no recovery room in hell,
no narcan and certainly few surprises.
Spring is for the resurrected
and goblets are full of rain.
The descriptives escape most,
the heat waves closer and the constant
night in the outline of shadows,
the gap free echo of the ether
is the chalk outline walking sideways
towards the joining hour, the eden time.
Do you not visit the graves of the ancients?

V. Mankind

In the days of distant myth
local stories drew close and closer
the parables of the future lay
dying in grassy fields full of markers,
where flocks used to go, herds
there, where seeds are planted
one by one, the now burnt
forests. Men like the sea
gathering the fog to themselves
in the dreamy coats of dawn
in tents of stone, breakfast gardens,
where graves full of saints stay sweetly buried.
How the mule used to bray
when one of them died but now

there are too many

and the herds run amok - invasion weary,
people rebuilding for the 100th
time, plaster gives up to the rain
before it starts and rust is soon.

VI. Troy

A summer it was
the city full of hot dreams
Standard and Quaker
the sea just full of it,
unquenchable, out of reach
near the boat wrecks there.
The head of Augustus, El Cid Pimpus
Aquarius, maybe two-hundred
thousand bronze cast idols lay
over it in the churning
deeps under ossified
strata, girder strata,
the strata of the quiet
years foreign between layers
Corinthian to the modern treasuries
cast into the deeps, strata
of sewage and sinew,
the lightweight strata of letters
fixed in juxta
bracelets of ruby, garnets
for eardrums, her eyes
were sapphire in the sweet wood
of the mines. Nothing but teeth
and guesswork in a blanket of fuel.

That summer the voices brought flags
to the indigenes, herded them into trans-
ports, gave 'em a bit of water,
some bread and cheese maybe
and told them to cry

A stalwart muslim's ha been killed
now cry, an easy compliant crowd
of schoolchildren and house-help.

I know it is true cuz I wuz there
minding my own business, plying
my trade quietly not asking
for forgiveness or barter, few
friends had I save for the tricks
of the fathers, doting diligent men.
Schoolmasters 'til ten then after
lunch the brazen begin
in offices and backstrips.
They'd see a Russian bargirl or Romanian
or an Asian, no funds ever changed hands
until day break in a distant room.
Sometimes up in this very same edifice.
She'd come in as if to clean up a bit
for the tenant 'out of the country'
who'd left his keys with a friend.

So I know it's true, all of it and no
one can pay a woman
like me to lie, I won't do it
although the tenant did try -
gave mepickled batinjaen
and clocks. Oh he'd do it alright
but I never turned by back
on him, a daring
thief from the Be'aaah Valley.

What a dear valley for potatoes!
Potatoes like human heads, pearly
white with thin skin and guns.
So what I relate is true, belligerent
with the good intentions to advise
the innocent. I once was that too
disbelieving, minding my own business
plying my trade, not asking
for barder nor accepting any bribe.
In other words, I was trying
hard to please myself sometimes
but not more than that.

Late at night -early
in the morning sounds in the stair
well, he'd be carrying a crate
of tomatoes, his pockets full
of cash -he worked as a newspaper
salesman, so he said, so the hours
were quite odd, deliquent even.
There'd be the sound of a bag
placed near my door,
then he'd go up the last flight
of stairs, the lock would groan
and his keys would be finally
silent as he made something
in the kitchen, cold food
for a bachelor somewhat
of a criminal but a passionate one
who'd touch any woman he could:
wife, sister, baby - he didn't care,
just wanted something feminine
to take care of. I'd pull away
and complain to mi esposo
pero no mucho entonces
I pitied him and he pitied me -
a tenuous love and honesty
is the issue when they pay
poor people to cry.

Beirut is mostly tent and the buildings
are sometimes stone and sometimes
sticks. It is a mobile edifice
for treason and statuary, shifting
shadows of the markets, a newspaper-
man is a convenient neighbor
when a Valentine arrives -
Bloody Big Hole in the Heart
of the city, the blood ran
for two whole years in the aquaducts.

All the while he'd bring his
cash and tomatoes in the early
hours and I'd wait morning,
then afternoon, then eveing
plying my trade of watching
then writing the treaties.
I never wore shoes and contracted
the hookworm's cough
so I could reach his door
unnoticed as if a sleeping baby
was inside, the big door would open
and his eyes were large, they'd open
more, he was twice my size
and kept a toy gun in the foyer.
He'd grab me and pull me close
to catch my old thrills
if only tangentially, his hands
were very large.
Then he'd hury back to bring
some chocolates. He loved
chocolates, really really loved
chocolates, German ones.
Near the settee where once
we drank tall glasses of apple
juice and the Philistine for hire
thought we were drunk on whiskey.
He was a cheat and I caught
his eyes in a glance at my breasts -
didn't like it and the philistine
thought I'd not notice nor would I
notice he'd started stealing
my properties, one and the same.