5 Hands
The Fifth Hand Baptizes
“Heat”
is as cold as glistening
white-hot stars
burning your retinas
out
from proximity
they burn
if you roll close enough
to them
What is beautiful
Destroys us
For what is beautiful
Is strong
*
The judge
is not named Gabriel
Gabriel is not the judge
The judge is I
Staring
The judge is thou
Revealed
Ahoo
The Caretaker
Ahoo
The Judge
Ahoo
Lahoon
The blood
*
Black dog soldier
Red dog soldier
Stand like pillars
Two
Hot stones in hands
They tend the fire
And heat the stones
Their hands are ancient hands
Revealed metal
You throw away
The ring from the good
One hand
I dip my head and bow out
To pray
The only good thing in this is connection
To the other
And that
Is all around you
It’s true then that the only pain
Is disconnection
From this other
That which is
All around you
Let the rain come down
And the blood, pulsing
Drown out all sounds
I pray
But no
No disconnection
A hand
To forehead
With water
For I am now
Not yet sweating
It rolls down
Soft
As a teardrop
Your daughter’s hand
Cut
It is your own
Your father’s hand
Torn from bone
It is your own
Thinking on this,
I step inside
Thinking on this,
I go alone
Posted by Kevin Kautzman on Thursday, November 27, 2008
Labels: Poetry
6 Hands
The Fourth Hand Caresses
“Gold”
never glistens
unless you circle
the sun
With a flash of light
Everything emanates
From this
This one
Secrecy
Hidden in the open
Upon the plain
Inside the heart
*
The bird stares down
From the woody copse
His left eye
The sun
His right
The other one
His head twists
Round
And stares
At the stump
That was
The hand
of the descending
bones
a man and bull
joined
weirdly
*
Sitting there
In the sweating lodge
Is the man I have sought
I Lahoon
A bag of bones
Prisoner
Dissenter
My right hand gone
I see his left is shorn
Strange that we should mirror
Even in memory
Nothing is clear
And there he sits
With the flap undone
A blast of smoke above him
And below him the cold hard ground
There to his side
The skull I recall
A bone as old as God
A buffalo’s
Skull
No flesh now
All bone
Upon which
Blood was spent
Of my Beloved
Wasted,
Homeless blood
A hand as long as horizon
Eyes as dark as sleep
Left hand
Trigger finger
Torn from knuckles
And white knobs revealed
Beneath
Yea’ he is my enemy
But here no malice
Remains
We are the same
We are the same
His hand caresses
The stone-hard bone
Again and again it moves
With slowburned delicious
Grace
Traces he upon the bone
His name
in
wet, with sweat
not tears
with sweat
not blood
writes he
Across the day
And through the years
Speaks he
He’s whispering my name
I’m whispering his
We are the same
We are the same
Brothers
With two eyes
Between
And three
In twain
Lahoon
Rebel Bone
is the name
Posted by Kevin Kautzman on Thursday, November 20, 2008
Labels: Poetry
7 Hands
The Third Hand Strikes
“Thirst”
Jabs at the tongue
Of this one
In a moment
A throat is cut
Like a bird cuts
The sky
Chemtrails
And a cloud parts
Dropping rain
Raining blood
*
She is the Sister
with the swollen eye
She is bleeding
And her blood flows blue
And bright
She arches, bends
Billows
And gives birth
To death
She is the night sky
New won
*
Between the instance of my willing it so
And the happening itself
There falls the blade
Slow, slower than the seasons change
One, two, three, and four
A drumbeat down below
Between the instance and the happening
One must will it so
Yet still I cut
And won’t be stopped
The blade drops
Fast I strike
The memory of it all
Of Black Maria
Lahoon, swoon Sorceror
And the boon of Bone
Informs, nay, is the striking
And it is good that it is so
The knife goes
The clouds burst
The sky parts
Darkens – I pray for the rain to come
But none does, though the sky
is dark as pitch
and down below
in a small temple made
of flesh and stone
there sits the villain
smugly so
under grayblack sky
It occurs to me now
In this moment
Floating about the sweating lodge
Where sits this man and bone
(Skullbone – the memory of murder)
That this is a lesson
And I am here to learn
And between this occurrence
And my descent, a voice
Speaks inside my mind
With clarity
Crystalline
Before the bones will walk
West over the horizon there
You must lay up your hopes
To eternity
And having done
Despair
Yet beyond despair
something
will undo
the knife
and sew
the tear
will lay the worm to ground
and shake the earthen lair
I listen closely
And I listen long
And I listen
Repeatedly
To the words
I listen on
And abruptly find
As I crash down
To red earth
This voice
Is mine
That voice
Is mine
That voice
And song
Disappear
Into the black clouds
beyond
Posted by Kevin Kautzman on Thursday, November 13, 2008
Labels: Poetry
8 Hands
The Second Hand Grasps
“Seconds”
pass as our lives
die away
Every day
Is human sacrifice
As hours pass
Is human sacrifice
As lives are laid up
For nothing
For illusions
For a lie
*
He is the Emperor
With the many hands
He is sweating
And his sweat shall never end
He reclines, rests
Crests, wanes
In a Lodge of Flesh
He is the moon and sun
Undone
*
There upon the total sky
a great altar wide stands
bright – light
eats light eats light
and makes a tabernacle
delight of all delights
the tabernaculum
bleeds white brightness
bleeds white hot
lovely light
Laymen all we down below
split quaternity, everything
here down below
split four times and four times
four
is not what it seems here
down below
Ludibrium
A mockery and a sport
It’s true yes
Spectacular theatrical
Sporting fun
All but for the blood
Which cannot lie
Nor would could it do
And this
My one hand reaching
Is true too
As too as that man is real
He there
Who may have killed the Diamond Girl
There across the way
Sweating, with his
Cloth-made crown
There he sweats
So near so far
Shall I rouse him?
Not yet
For he has not seen me
And surprise now is
all
I count
One
Two
The heartbeat
Is a drum
I hear
alone
I rise, my feet light and free,
And look for the happy blade
above
Hejana Nethai
I go but do not go
It is so, for
I am wishful
But no longer shy
Have come a long way to stare
at this
star-gorged
this split and bright darkened sky
So weirdly right
That it should be
Now above
Now below
The whole of me
So I will stare
And staring
Assuredly arise
to once again become
and becoming once more be
Eight yards hence
Now low
Arched angle
Low there, the suite
and sage
A wolf nearby
But not
(The wolf makes its home
in a den of wood and stone
hard born, hard it will die
There are few wolves
In North Dakota here
but those that glow blue
are here and everywhere)
And arched backwards
Supine near to split
There, sacrificial
Lies the Maid as she once was
There upon the tabernaculum
And there upon the sky
A sheet of light breaks out
A blade across the sky
A bolt of light, and lightning
Bolt
And knife
Aloft, I reach out
And one
Two three four five
Pluck it from the air
Pluck forth that wolf’s tooth of light
And hold it
Above her belly
For a second
For a second
For a time
I hold it
There
So high
Posted by Kevin Kautzman on Thursday, November 06, 2008
Labels: Poetry