Music Theory

for John Chance


In the beginning was Theory and the Theory was made flesh
so that we could find our way home. I walk slowly
through the points of rain.

In the beginning was sound and it was everything, against all odds.
“Never was there a time you and I did not exist, Arjuna.”
I am a ball of wings rolling toward you. Theory become flesh.
The music is in the gaps.

I enter the lobby. "I've come to see my uncle," I say.
"Where will you be waiting?" says the lady in the glass cage.
"The waiting room", I reply. She will not meet my eye.
I am announced through seven miles of hallways.

He appears, hollow and weary on his cane.
It is not a walking stick to navigate the world of the living.
It is a handrail to the grave.

He is an unanswered question. We step out into the mist and stop.
I watch him openly, as one watches a child, the insane, or the dead.
“Listen to the trees,” he says, rolling his eyes up and back.
“It is good to be alive; to share a little company now and then.”



asha


Blue Period


I painted a moon to look at
and gave it a wild sky to rule
then sat down and listened
to the night blooming flowers open
rhythm upon rhythm

I painted a blackness to sleep in
and forgot myself
among the
disinterested
layers of easy paint

I painted an empty room for clouds to fly over
I painted a silence and fell to dreaming . . .


asha

Torn Page


What do I begin with this ongoing
omni-directional conversation of ours,
t
hese fever dreams where meaning
evaporates just as everything is about
to make sense? So many doors but

turn back and the hall becomes a maze.
Going forward solves nothing.
I begin again where I fail to be.

The fever breaks. I am in a strange room.
I am no longer afraid. The white sheet,
which is the wind, caresses me naked.
Fire cools me. Everything is in reverse
and unraveling. Finally, I can breathe.

A hummingbird flits through my rib cage,
pauses on my sternum. I have no sugar.
I know the passing hours by their colors
and sounds, and I with them
an ancient tooth in the tide, visiblethen gone.


asha

Confessional


Come my dear deformed ones
who live after the fire,
my darlings blistered and raw,
whose eyelids have burnt off,
who sleep with open eyes.
Come you jackals of pain.
But there is a screen between us,
the confessional screen.
I can barely see you in the gloom.
A spider is caught in my side, a fly in yours.
I grab the mesh with my six legs and squint in.
You are dressed in black, sweating.
I lick the wire to taste your salt.
I hand you a tiny drum, ask you to accompany me
as I confess. You weep.
I hand you a violin, ask you to play for me.
My dreams walk behind me with hollow footsteps.
There are so many echoes I cannot sleep.
You are reading a magazine.
You hand me a gun so I can shoot myself.
I watch your booth fill with water.
You are circling mindlessly in the middle of it,
awaiting my confessionbut the land is miles off.
No matter how loud I shout, you can't hear me.
You press your eyes against the screen so hard
their jelly oozes in through the openings.
A thousand images hatch in the dim space,
writhing over one another. Some live. Some die.
Your eyes have a fiendish fervor.
You hand me a clock that runs backwards.
You give me an hour.    
AN HOUR!
Already the clock is disappearing in my hands,
images clogging its gearslegs, feelers, screams.
It’s a horrible sight.
You stand up.
Vanish.
Then call back,
"Sing the Alleluia Chorus three times.
Bathe in blood. Give your teeth to the poor".



asha .

The Dancer


She danced in her room
with god. Dream after dream she
lived in his village.

asha

New Madhuban

For Gajendra — West Virginia


this forest,   
planted for a loaf of bread
and a dollar a day,
          is a solemn place

the hill
       it has taken possession of
drops sharply
    to a holler
       too steep for pasture
a place where small skeletons  
                       slowly turn to stone
this is a good place to be alone

the sun seldom finds entry to this grove
is a stranger here
                           off his path  
                
its probing beams
only deepen the darkness
and threaten to ignite the brittle trees

one may only be here . . .  carefully    
this forest has no need of company
birds know it
they do not nest
                or sing
                      here

there is no undergrowth   
nothing pierces the needle mat

but the pines themselves who
     have shed their lower branches
 becoming heartless    
         pitch-steeped trunks
                   with shattered limbs
 that offer no place to rest

who comes here must stand alone
who comes here to dream
must dream
indifferent as the dead.


asha


Reconstruction


One word, one sentence at a time I will reconstruct the story. 
I've done it before. One world, one sentence at a time I will
reconstruct the story. Forgive me. The original order has been
lost amid a countless succession of beginnings. I rely on you
to restore the details. One word, one sentence at a time I will
reconstruct the story. Forgive me. The original has been lost
but I promise to stay true to its drift. One word, one world
at a time. Forgive me. The original version of this story does
not exist. One world, one sentence per time, this is the drift.
The notes are scattered. No. Not scattered. The noteshastily
j
otted down, scribbled on scraps, scrawled in notebooks, penciled
on flaps, saved in a succession of files—are lost. They were
seldom read. They were never read at all. They cannot be collected.
The words, disjointed, were set down and abandon. No. Not abandon.
It is a story in threads and tattersimages, ideas, phrases, paragraphs,
the disembodied alphabet reverberating, returning haunted
but I digress.


asha

Dead Reckoning

For Joe


WINTER

In the evening we
carry down our dead
they leave our hands willingly
above
Dog Star watches
cold, white
as on ancient evenings,
Dog Star—
bringer of rain.


SPRING

Listen to the grass
leaning
soft green
through the fence
singing.

Listen to the green
crawling
slowly
away from the yard
where the bones lie—
under their feet,
under the dandelion's,
the yellow dandelion's feet—
listening.


SUMMER

Sometimes we take
our measure from the dead
as from a stone that
sits unchanged
amid the changing seasons
like a departed shore
the dead mark
how far we’ve come
through mystery
and how far
we’ve yet to go.


FALL
—Solve et coagula

The small things go first
over the blue salt
edge of the world
followed by a
deconstruction
of their tracks
by the wind
that covers
and uncovers
the same finger bone
my own
where it fell
in confusion
trembling
at the slow moving
wheel
of the desert's rim.


asha


La Tormenta

              Yucatán Peninsula
          
for Lee


This is how the world was
lightning on the rim
and a small boat
moving away forever
lantern swinging
over a veiled sea.

We had the world to ourselves.
I was the veils,
You were the boat.
You were the lantern.
I was the swinging.
You were the lightening.

I was the waves,
You were the sea.
 I was forever.
We were the horizon.
You were moving away.
We were the storm.


 asha



Border Crossing

... excerpt from Obra Inconcluso — Mexico


Leaving my language behind, I enter the labyrinth. Its streets are narrow and old and crowded with small fruit-colored buildings made of mud and stone. Here dogs speak in tongues and saints make deals with passers-by. I am greeted by a cockroach who kindly explains their price, plastic flowers and bottled flame. I see within the wicker shadows of their tiny huts how each saint stands stoic and faithful before their candles and the litter of past offerings; blackened, shattered glass and dusty clods of petals and wax but, at the hour the church bells ring, they wince in their solitude. I ask the cockroach if anyone else is in the business. The dogs, she answers, adding that I best consider carefully before choosing among them. Before I can ask more she scuttles off, disappearing into the crack of a flame red wall.

asha

Something much older


Something much older
quietly calls. I almost
remember. Almost.


asha

Reminiscence


I am sure it was you
                   looking back at me
                  hand reaching out.
     I knew you would come,
              you waited there
 just below the surface

            moon over my shoulderHello Moon.
the only way I remember you is sadly.

I hesitated as though it would be too easy
      to touch your close-enough-to-touch face,
            then there was no time left,
      just a dream almost breaking through
                                    almost
                      one last touch
               from the world
  beyond the watery sky.


asha

Desert Crossing


This dark blood that binds us
cheats us of our truth, brother
only a desert's dead center
can compare

but this creeping emptiness
like a desert devouring itself
oasis after oasis
has a true ring, does it not
a solidness, a comfort
we survivors can depend on

come on, need me brother
without a truth
no heartbreak is enough

I seem like one going
to meet a lover
but behind my eyes
sighing, shifting ashes.


asha

Skin Trade


Mother,

There is always a market for flesh
even now
sunlight in thorns
they are hungry for us
make ordinary what is not
dying
the innocent know this

they reach back
future to memory
faces repeating themselves
a lime-green inch worm
toiling over jumbled foot stones

in the membrane
the breathing cage
there is no short cut to the old cities
in the necessary air

I am sitting in a chair
          imagine me
I move my right hand
          move yours from the dirt

touch me

it is easy
this regeneration
a habit natural as spring
we the living have come to
expect it

you know it is a gift
the last thing
the dying pup saw from the heap
after they skinned everything
but her eyelashes.

asha

Pele



Somewhere nearby a fly is the last
friendly voice of earth where—
with broken pieces glinting
everywhere—
and unbraided fire hair
the literal eye shuts
lured beyond by what
cannot be seen—
what has not begun
stretches out
what cannot be imagined—
takes shape under my feet
the bloody red sulfuric
sweaty birth of future worlds.

I never wanted to return,
she says,
never wanted to leave
the white plume—
the stinging rain.


But we come back
from the boiling point
of hurricanes. We—
walk back together
over burnished glass,
Anna Sadhorse
from the fire-eating sea
and me, back past
tiny ferns busy in their
grottoes digesting
the volcano
within the thin
moist shadows
caught in the upheaval’s
crust.

It has never been so fine,
here—where the foot
does the thinking
finds momentary
balance before
the body falls—
again forward
into unforeseeable
circumstance.

Pick any thread
from the loom of chaos,

she whispers. The wildest will do.
It is our job making sense of nothing.


asha

Animal Life



For every prayer
there is an equal
and opposite prayer.

She was curled
in the corner
and too starved
to flinch when
they tossed her
in the trash
where she died
three days later
pupless and
full of milk.


asha


Then and Now

The picture is from a photo album
my mother request on her death bed.
She is the girl sitting on the dock.
This poem is for her.

then and now - poster poem


Shall I bend or break...

That is the question.
I am like a word
that has been overused.
Daughter.
Sister.
Cousin.
Friend.
Student.
Girlfriend.
Boyfriend.
Member.
Stranger.
Mother.
Father.
Aunt.
Uncle.
Teacher.
Expert.
Ruler.
Grandmother.
Grandfather.
Confidant.
Castaway.
Enemy.
What do I purchase
in exchange for my integrity
and my freedom?

                                                               
 asha



Horary for Winter Solstice


Near the South Galactic Pole
between Cetus and Sculptor
beyond the universe of naked eye
the Silver Coin Galaxy
shimmers—

to its west
near the galactic equator and ecliptic intersection              
the diffuse nebulae M20 and M8
stellar sphinxes,
guardians at the solstice point of our sun
shimmer—

on my earth    
wild roses perfume this afternoon’s rain—

on my earth
in the 21st century after Christ
after countless way-showers and seed-sowers                       
the only revolution left
is love.


asha