Letter Eleven – Slave of Life

(After Jack Spicer)

 

What

is the entity

that stands in the transom?   As I get an itch

to wake from the panicked dream

on a full ripe plum moon night

my inability to scream

arm-in-arm w/ terror to wake myself.

 

It’s

an inability to scream

old man    so eke out an unintelligible mumble  not a

Cuban

expression   but a message from antepasados on the wall.

 

Five skulls on the head of Yeshe Walmo     a

hundred different aspects of physiology determined by your pulse

miles & miles into this journey    far

away from

the fire    this slave of life made from

stars can’t hold the burn.

Are the sunflowers what bob in August Chicago wind & the

glass-eyed stare

that

is

breaking on your face   any kind of message or lesson   of this sought rebirth?

 

3:28AM - 8.11.03

First two phrases taken from an exquisite corpse

written by Paul Nelson & Lesbia Nelson on 8.10.03.

Otherwise from Ballad of Sleeping Somewhere Else

by Jack Spicer (After Lorca, Collected Books, page 37)