SHADOW BOXING

"Tell me Oh great King
What I have suffered."

"Whether shadow boxing in 'Lord Weary's castle',
Or off on some expedition into the hinterlands,
You bore the mark of Cain on your forhead.
You carried his fear of love
To the heart of innocent worlds.

As minister plenipotentiary of a dread Lord
You moved into the future
Guarding the sacred knowledge
That it was already doomed.
Your life and body became a cenotaph,
A shrine, a temple to the perfection
Of your father's despair.

And now as you come up out of Gomorrah,
(my daughter) you are tempted to believe
That the only thing you ever loved
Was the night mare that ruled
The black hole of my faithless heart.

As you leave Gomorrah, don't look back,
But carry and keep the silverware and plates
Else how will you cut
And eat your father's heart?"
January 1998

Dear Pop, Here I go

Riding the giant Sand Worm of the past

Hurling myself willy- nilly into the next wind mill on the horizon...
This hell is the only heaven I know...
Here I'll worship the chains,
Thank the kind gods for my cell....scarf up with gusto the gruel slid under my door...
Look at this prison, this body, this mind,
these feelings, this cascade of rainbow memories...
How did I become this butterfly
hovering over a garden filled with flowers?


Love Allen

LAST DAYS AT LINDENWOOD

Not many are the days
That we can call the last at LindenWood.
We count these burning days of July among their number.
Days whose heat shrinks the mind
And expands the body 'til
We seem ready to break forth into a new dimension:
No thought, Sensation rampant.

The generations commingle
And rehearse the Blood's passage through time:
Flight,battle,passion,sacrifice.

Our bodies prepare themselves
For this latest disintegration.
Imagination begins to sharpen
Memory's haphazard freight.

We shall build temples at every turn in the road,
To mark our passage,
Never guessing that
We, ourselves, are the gates of Heaven.


July 1986

FOR BARBARA UNDERWOOD

Dear Barbara:
You tear from heart a cry of love...
The strange joy of your fearful journey
Bends the knee of the beast in me.

I bow my head and burn my hands on the thought of love left undone
I shrink in horror from the fear of life
That in the past I called prudence.
Now I race heedless toward the battlefield
Freed from thoughts of victory or defeat.
"Lo, I am become death the destroyer of worlds..."

Our father who art my God bend your glory down
To touch my pitiful and aberrant imagination...
Now I lay me down to the triple world of densely populated sleep.
Oh hallowed Name brush your bright wings
Against the eyelids of the deep.
Send a tremor through idiot grammar.
Save the words that we murder for the sake of community.
Save the souls crucified on the dead words.

Ah! Eurydice, at last you sport with Orpheus
Here in the Upper World.
I rejoice in your dark passage
And see in it the only light I know.

JUNE 1980

HEY MOM, HERE IS A FOOT NOTE TO THOSE NIGHTMARES

The outer world is a dream cocoon, a feather bubble, a translucent shell, a
compendium of glass beads and bits of string, a series of endless mirrors in
which to catch the gleam of that most ancient one: the self-luminous,
self-effulgent, birthless, deathless occasion within which Allen or Alice or
anyone can take a peek into the looking glass and behold! What?The infinite
peregrinations of one's own mind. There's the field, the fight and the foe all
tightly wrapped in one. Imagine looking anywhere else, when all the while this
human form is home to endless dragons and is temple to Gods untold. Here I'll
make my stand and fight and worship each day. At night I'll wade into the
arms of sleep singing battle hymns and chanting psalms of praise.

And when little Ali-Bugs raises his sleepy head and says " Who are you Oh God
and what about the nameless deep? Something will murmur from within,

"It's not who I am but where I live and as for the nameless deep,

you remember it as the sheep dip, Foster Falls, Fiery Gizzard,
the ocean at Squirrel Island, Quogg, Tibie Island, the Lagoon of Yalku,

the pool at Hodge Road: these are all but the shadows of that deep

whose real name is MOM.


SEPTEMBER ,1991