The First Hand Reaches
“Civilization”
is a wound
still bleeding
Pregnant
She gives birth
Eternally
even as she bleeds
*
You are the Sorcerer
With the many hands
He is Rebellious
and rebellion ever stands
or crouches, waiting
sweating, bleeding
in a Lodge of Flesh
for the raging dawn
Waiting
for the light to come
*
See now in the distance
Sorcerer ye’
nine yards away
a small sacred mound of flesh
and wood
with smoke rising up
subliminally
There crouches
Face down
In the doorway
That flap of skin
A man who sweats
And sweats
And bleeds
Reflecting he
On sin
Now one step closer
One step toward him
Is a start
But not enough
Frozen then
unmoving
From his crouched pose
He raises a hand
The sky parts, black
buffalo skin sliced
from flesh and bone
and laid out over heaven’s
brow
He raises a finger
The earth shakes
And we shake
His left hand was in the dirt
Sodden, drummed down earth
He has lifted that hand
And pointed it to the sky
Now he moves his hand
And points to his right, open eye
From still nothing:
this
From his lips
this:
*
Hear then now of the battle
between the eagle and the condor
That of the Bone and the Sorcerer
Reborn with each passing line
Of 9 hands, attractive, and one
from the marrow shorn
Of slavery ancient, wickedness
overflowing throughout the land
where the homeless burn down
your homes
Of a war recent won
and babes hung by boughs
nailed there to die alone
squirming as they go
Oh woe
They are hanging the native men
Oh woe
This land belongs
to none
This human sacrifice
Sacrificial bones
From scaffolds fall
one to one to one
and the shit drips down
on newfound Christian soil
Oh woes
Of a great long tribal drumming
Upright hands, hands to the sky
Rebellious hearts can never die
And loyalty
Is paid in blood
Rivers flood til symbols drown
The upside: small, sour towns
built red upon the lie
Til comes a channeler
whose right hand withers dry
Against the coming tied
Against the bones
piled to the sky
he asks:
Who was the Diamond Maid?
And did she really die?
Who was the firstborn son?
And where now does he lie?
His asking
Splits the sky
His asking
Splits the sky
9 Hands
The Great Breakneck
or
How to Hang Yourself without Dying
Scattershot the dizzy wheel
And crown yourself with thorns
Break your back, no even keel
And speak now Rebel Bone!
Scattershot the ancient tide
And dead! But you’re alive
Round Light
No Light!
Proclaims
The mystic drive
Now break her back, and she returns
To stab out your wizened eye
Yea’, scattershot a bitter pill
And aching you reveal!
You break your back upon the stone
to speak now
Rebellious one:
I am
Christening
Myself
With death
The riverbed
The riverbank
Are all that I
Have left
And whispering
the humming moan
All torn and ancient
Spent
Modern I
As old as dust
I make a
Second chance
Oh
Jubaal
Baalum
Ah
Jubaal
Burn now the blessed day
Burn now the small event
One that takes me west
And westward I am gone
Two that shows the east
The brilliant brightborne thrum
Three that northward comes
And four that southwind runs
From points to cross
to the point
to the square
The sun shall never set
As long
As she
Shall dawn
Bloody
Memory
Red Rose
White Sun
Rose Cross
I am undone
I shake
Shiver
And Repent
Oh
The break the bones of memory
Like sticks of craving time
Sucks once
A melting driver
Then again
The river born
Heraclitus
Said it best
The stream
Is always shorn
From time
And time
From time again
Till death itself is worn
A crown of thorns
A crown of boughs
This rope
This angels’ share
A drink A flask A flash A cage
The wages of a slave
A dance A fall A page A wall
My wages from Theal
Mysterious
god
Theal
Births he the Diamond Maid
Sacrificial made
And from her he was Born
Great Time
Scythe Time
Reaping
And what then
Was first sewn?
I wonder
One thing I know:
I am
The breakneck
Owl
Head turned
Upside down
Head turned
And gazing at the all
And falling
I fall
I fall
Until I am
Gone under
Until I am
The Low
Reaping we all sew
What then
shall we sew?
Two Kinds Missouri
There are two kinds of people. There are those who see the skulls, and there are those that do not. There are those who see the bones, and there are those that do not. There are those who burn by rhythm, and there are those that do not. These all go on forward, forever cascading and imminent underneath it all.
If you had an opportunity. If you could see with an inner eye. If you had eyes that see. If we were together, smiling teeth. Diamonds exploding in our minds, that cut.
There, above the trees of fall. There, in the hard unforgiving dirt beneath. There, the twisted head of an owl. There, the highway. There, a thousand cars pass by, and then a thousand more, merciless sucking going gone.
There, underneath and inside the river valley lies a man. The man lies, staring upward, and digs his hands into the earth. He sweats though it is cold. He thirsts beside water. Awake, he dreams.
Living, he digs his own grave.
Dying, he finds that he lives.
There are two kinds of people.
The Four Trumps of the Dakotas
(Things Aren't What They Seem)
In which we learn that Ray Lahoon walks on water when crossing the frozen Missouri River on foot in an act of unique, hallucinatory penitence, abandoning his rented vehicle on highway I-94 after it runs out of gasoline and he hasn’t enough money to purchase any more. Upon crossing the river, winter melts into fall, and Lahoon must race against the melting ice or die of drowning before he is able confront his nemesis Rebel Bone and attain resolution thereby.
Part the Fourth
Mindscape
Escape
Don’t panic but
Things aren’t what they seem
Things are never what they seem
A snowflake falls from roof to floor
Blood red suddenly, then fourscore more
Making five, and five melt to three
Me oh my oh me
Things aren’t what they seem to be
Bloody fingers on my left hand
In my mind’s eye I see
Done driving, we run on fumes
These cars aren’t built to last
And neither were you
Dear
The cup
Is a triangle
Turned upside down
And one is three and three is one
When Ray Lahoon comes to town
Tripping
Over snow and field
Sliding
Down the river valley
I am coming home
A water road and snake
As far as the eyes can see
Which is quite far
When one has a diamond
Lodged within one's skull
And sees with only triads
Seeing well beyond
the two and into
the rich, ripened three
Oh me oh my oh me
The gushing upward cup
From the north down
Infinitely
Toward the south down
Infinitely
The world triangulated
Between the killer
The daughter
And we
And the fourth
Is the bone
And the fourth
Cannot bleed
Nay
The fourth
Serves to bleed
With blackhorn eyes
And darkborn sighs
The fourth
Serves just to bleed
Blood pounding
In my ears
And the freezing
Turns tragedian
Tears at my face
And snowblinds my
Tears
Here now
Slipping past bough and stone
Toward the river down below
Come I to a revelation
a revelation revealeth itself to me
my brow glows bright with heated
polyphony
and sayeth this:
Whence goeth thee
Sir
And from whence
From east to west
Or west to east
The river flows
From north to south
And changes course
Constantly
Though to eyes
It remains
A river
The river
Is not what it was
Just now
Nor will it ever again
Be
You might take this
And shake with fear
Or take it
And draw strength down
From the snowcapped
Waves
From the icy
Dredg
Rock hard sediment
Sand and stone
And beneath
The freezing
Holy water
Above
Landblown thee
Snowblown thee
Driven here by memory
This I say
And shall say
Until you resolve
Your fourfold flow:
Drum back the dead bull down
and hold down
your bitter contumely
Drum back the dead bull down
and succumb not now
to unwound memory
One is two and they are three
Ho’
The river’s flow
Will hold thee
The snow and ice –
Tread lightly
And so it is
And so I do
From east to west
Go I
Against the flowing
Northward sud
I go
Not wandering
But on a path
And mission
Here I see
The tracks of a jackrabbit
Jackrabbit tracks!
There I see
The fox’s gait
And now a deer’s
Hoofprint
These animals understand
The cold
And know
Where they might
Go
The water’s hold
Is good enough for they
So too it’s good enough
For me
A revelation revealeth itself to me
What pain I have
Might dissolve
Beneath this pink hued sky
The sun revolves around the earth
A dozen times and again
As I cross this river here
There now! Those trees
Look turn! Once gripping
Fingers turned: gray-brown
Beauties yearn
Now regrow their leaves
One at a time, a sucking pull
Upward the leaves undo
The smells that change
From snow to fall
Backward the seasons
Turn
Beneath my feet
The river twists
And I feel now
The water flow
Halfway o’er I must
Go
Running
Against
Her undertow
As the leaves
Levitate up slowly
From the unwinding
snow
Oh me
Oh my
Oh we
The Four Trumps of the Dakotas
(The Shovelman & His Nine Stops)
In which we hear told of the weird turning of spring to winter, its significance in the mind of our narrator Ray Lahoon, his remembering the deaths of his beloved girl at the hands of the sorcerer “Rebel Bone,” and the Maid’s occult burying thereafter.
Part the Third
The Sage Lord Buffalo
Is my herdsman;
I shall want
Only ever light
From ash
And from bone
He is my Lord
Light
Light
Restoreth my souls
To soul
Reconnecting one
To the other
To the third
To the fourth
Princes all
And lords each
Of war and of peace
Of north and of east
Light restoreth me!
And rebuilds it thus
The house
That was my home
Before
Even then
That day I slipped
From womb
To the hard earth
My home
A temple
Transfigured
To flesh and to bone
All fades
And it is good
That it is so
Driving past
The Town of James
And a giant buffalo
Brown like drawn tight earth
you take and must stab
rip, pull, draw
and hold between your hands
that soil
raw
Strange
Statue
Worshiping
Nothing
An ounce of Plastic
A pound of Metal
Where now
Have gone
The
Tons
Of bone?
Strewn
Over plain
And prairie
A nation
Built on bones
Goliath
slain
Yet I am not a settler
For I have never settled
No instead
Claimant
Scream!
Dig! Trump
I am the Shovelman
the King
who’ll kill the giant
bone
Dig! Trump
She is the Maid
who died in the unblemished
snow
Dig! Trump
There stands the other man
Resting upon his spade
Dig! Trump
And I alone
Drive drive drive
Harping so
Drumming
On my turning
wheel
My devils
Fly
I have none
Anymore
They are gone
With the turning
Seasons
As the seasons unwind
surreal
As memory
Arrives
So flies
The devil
For what god
or fiend
can stand such a
sad
scorching memory
or dare interrupt
this
renewing dream?
None of which
I know
Nor care I
For I am my gods and fiends
And they’ve been
Good to me
I shall loose them
When I please
Oh snow
Snowflakes
Fall
Soon I will
Thrust tongue
And lap the infinite
As they fall
Like a child
Muted in pleasure
By the first season’s
Snow
Unbound from spring’s
Bright insolence
All things
Transitioning back:
I am aggrieved
At myself
And at my past
And at the land
The very land
Beneath these
Wheels
These very wheels
That speed me along
Aggrieved
Yanked, torn
Broken
I can feel
My very bones
Rattle
As I go
As the sun
Turns to snow
My bones
One day
Will turn to
Ash
Will turn to
Stone
Downward
I shall go
And I want so much
For light to rise
From those spectacular
Ashen bones
For an abysm
To open
And swallow
Me whole: light
Triumphant
Over stone
Light
Shall triumph
Over stone
And somewhere
Between the two
Bone
And there
My rebellious heart
Hardened
Melts
Just one flake
Of snow
*
He digs once
And his fingers
Bend inward
I am guilty, complicit:
me
He digs thrice
And his arms
Collapse
T’was that elusive Rebel Bone
born of the triangle
of the word sprung
from the girl’s lips
shot east to rest
with me
T’was he that murdered
she
Resting
He digs three times three
And rolls the body in
Nine feet nine chambers
Inside
The secret lies
There shall her shrine
And temple
Be
Buried
inside
Beneath
inside
Hard earth
and
under
snow
There shall her shrine
And temple
Be
