I believe magic, in magic, that it
is a magical universe created.
And it's an unfashionable belief,
except in some areas of the Bay Area.
Anyway, this was written over a period of 10 years
or so, thinking about alchemy and creation.
Thicket Group, also Tucson, a burning liquid
that was called the original force of nature.
It's in five parts.
It's got these little droppings, drippings down
at the bottom of the page, little parts of language
that fell out of the poem.
Why not use them, right?
A power, for some reason it's likely to think
of the insides of a thicket as a five-pointed liquid star.
A group of us not knowing how to stand in nature
in the '60s, each breath sponsored by that.
Possible friends nearby smelled like hemp, white tortillas,
and 12 ounce Coca-Colas.
The fire in their fingers talked back, had feelings.
Locating consciousness, where would you say it is?
It was the happiest moment in the first 20 years.
And why do we seek to destroy it by changing?
Mottled doves, garnets, empty spines.
Magic fought with the ideal time, curved the barren glow,
and animals called from their nests
at the center of the world.
I had been a child being guessed at by onyx, fresh
from nothing, dimension's pawn.
My brother okayed the ground with sticks.
When something called, we answered it.
With a drop or two more of that inherited chemical,
we would have been a schizophrenic.
Empty spines of sticks filled up with liquid fire.
They had done this before, we just
hadn't been quiet enough to mention it.
Making theories of creation is about repetition, though even
the infinite happens just once.
Xx, sticks, cross-referencing each other.
A window had intended to climb out a window,
but intended is not what makes it happen.
Delicious to climb out a window.
The weather was not the window's fault.
Smears on chrome fenders like pet clouds
between which they might see a body coming curve to them.
Before the thicket, your mouth stopped off at a boy.
Going back a little, nearing them
was faster, that which owned the thicket also owned the flower.
Either tell the story or don't.
Narrative is such an either/or situation,
like a window, just as sex is a metaphor for not getting it.
You have changed the assignment to swirl, voice from a thicket,
surfaces meet where you live into things.
A body is a place missed specifically.
They met you in your body where you couldn't go alone.
The spell, unable, unable, unable pretty soon.
The thicket, a power came up.
It was in between the voices.
It said you could stop making sense.
Have you seen it?
Of course you have.
Based on what?
A red bird that caught fire on the alchemist's table.
The girls stood around in long paisley dresses,
coyote cries coming through them.
Something frightened and being canceled.
We weren't on drugs then.
The thicket looked like the star of pubic hair.
You always want to control how everything will turn out,
is the problem.
Suburban kids on the edge of change
give up hope of being understood.
Why did the fire need to rest in us
after that fluttery little absolute terror of childhood?
Wands being on fire.
Dust devils, a power came up.
It flew toward the guessing cloud.
It was not as curved as night or straight as day.
Have you heard it?
Of course you have.
It settled in the Lyndon Johnson desert, supervising funnels,
Eisenhower birds egg head, stomach of peace and battles.
Standing before the thicket in long clothes not having sex.
In the Bible, you can't worship fire without worshipping dust,
and whether you fought depression
had everything to do with this.
A fire undaunted by the place where the years live.
To be patient with the kind of plot in which nothing happens,
alchemists devised a burning water that didn't wet the hands.
Elements mixed, swirled together, became decorative.
Art comes from loneliness.