It is a test you have to pass. Then you can learn to heal with the finger, said Essie, pointing over our heads. Notice how the hands rise so easily to grasp the skull. As if the most important reach was two hands around skull fingers above and beyond the ears the thumb catching on the jaw. That jaw place is where you start and make it hurt at first. Rub and pull all your flesh away from your skull so you see your skull floating there like the most anonymous skull not yours at all but the one that belongs to all relations. “This is why I wear binoculars, and enjoy riding in elevators.” This is why “A waffle lives in the universe like your ass in juicy velour. What determines your ass you ask? The construction of the bevatron in Berkeley. The naughties of quaranta of the tenera of rapita of his vostra Zed il donkey the one of localizzo of riflessione I gave convolusis I gave them a cut of the dulie.” The troglodytes came dancing out of their caves to welcome the dead woman, not in the light of the sun or moon but in pearly mist that generated its own light. The caves looked like holes in a huge Swiss cheese, and the cavemen, phantoms without your human dimensions, cheerful and even laughing, swarmed around greeting the newcomer. And so I went. Thru the rolling hills I walked and walked, mountains and valleys, and rolling hills, I walked and walked and walked – you hear many things there in those rolling hills and valleys, and I walked and walked and walked and walked and walked. I just walked and walked and walked, and then I heard an animal, sounded like a huge dog, and there was a huge dog and next to him a huge lady wearing blue clothes, and I decided I had to walk right thru – I did and the dog only snarled at me. I am seeped. I am steeped in the clean white shirts gouged with pit stains, the busted feathers lapping up entire legs, the animal blood on the mambo’s dress, the island under the water where the dead live with the loa / the gods / the spirits that wash into the Voudoun congregation, the touch of the possessed person that burrclaws possession and divine spittle into the other nearest thriving person, the belted khakis spinning, the patient slow delicate and the back and forth-ness of the dance, how clear it is that they have been passed through persons in much the same way the loa have, the pulse music, the thin details of the flour drawings that indicate which spirit is being attended to, the altar space clutter, the hairy wind deciding the direction of poured libations, the hip maps, the sparkling shorts worn with deep sunglasses. I think of plants, for example, which can be underwater, carnivorous, ash-producing or divine. The lotus that splits into a thousand petals at the tip of the spine: pink, bitter orange and gold. Yesterday, I took the 13, 439th walk of my life, along a path that went through the forest from the library, my arms full of books, late already for a union meeting. Along a dark blue eyeball filled with trees:
Watching
the tail end of a film running through the projector
Gate
--- blackness, random design, blackness, a few numbers,
Blackness
a pattern blip blackness
L I G H T
[Note: Essie Parish, as quoted in George Quasha, “Essie Parish in New York”, sent me via email attachment by Jerome Rothenberg, 5 Jan 013 (“Essie Parrish, a Kashia Pomo healer from California, spoke at the New School in New York on March 14,1972. This poem is a reconstruction of her narrative of a dream-vision”); Bett, “an ancient future practice from an unknown land called here”, at bett’s blog, 5 Jan 013; John Olson, “Diamonds”, Bill Luoma, “The Concept of Math”, “Some Math”, as quoted in Eileen Tabios, “HONESTLY ASSESSING MOI 2012 POETRY READS”, at The Blind Chatelaine’s Keys, 5 Jan 013; Jean Genet, Prisoner of Love (tr. Barbara Bray), as quoted in Tim Keane, “‘The Line Into Which I Shall Merge’: Jean Genet Among the Painters”, at Hyperallergic, 5 Jan 013; Carrie Lorig, “‘The Divine Horsemen’ by Carrie Lorig”, at Delirious Hem, 5 Jan 013; Bhanu Kapil, “Walk 13, 439: Yellow Tara Notes”, at Was Jack Kerouac a Punjabi?, 5 Jan 013; Philip Whalen, “The Talking Picture”, as quoted in Jean Vengua, “Friday 1/4/2013”, at OKIR, 5 Jan 013]
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