Empty Body

for Yangjah

In so many places,
we have seen you dissappear.
It's happened in rooms for plants
and middle floors,
in white dresses and near boat motors.
We've seen you vanish to biwa and be-bop
and a rattling can.

It starts
as less a look and more a distance
arrives in your eyes,
and then a mask as neutral
as the sky rises into your face
from some cabinet of the heart
that isn't measurable
in dimension, depth or moments.

At this point, we know
you have become somewhere
else, leaving your body
available for ghosts or localized gods
that may be
passing in need of form.

And then your motions get real,
hinting at some fragile narrative of echos
and secrets that don't belong to this world.
Your body churns through the space
of some parking lot, stairwell
or other ephemeral spasm of ambition
and leaves a twisted intestine of emptiness
shimmering and suspended in the air.

Like the beat of a sparrow's heart
sews a slender thread of warmth
into a wind,
into the world
your body draws out a blank enough for being
and a private history of strangers
with strangers finds form in our brains,
letting the ancient blood and milk within us
flow again of pulse and urge.




by jerry gordon
12.16.09

God's Flamable Dandruff

I take
what I get
of you and the rest
of beauty,
these scrapings
off your heart
and God's
flamable dandruff.

Collectable sparks
to start forest fires
in my hair.

And like the fragments of some
rumored completion,
I hold them to my eye
and ear and lips.
Sense them.
Not to build a shape of
the Big Deal
from their pieces.
Instead, to read
in them their intimation:
that bits and bits
of disparate beauties
predict these patterns of
perfections
repeat.



by jerry gordon
7.29.09

Skeleton Day

Today is the kind of day

where I walk just behind my skin,

my skeleton's rattling clatter

echoing off the buildings and car windows.

Poem for the Rooftops of Iran - June 19th, 2009

Tonight the sound of God is Greater can be heard louder and louder than previous nights
Where is this?! Where is this place where everything has been blocked?
Where is this place where people are just shouting the name of God?
Where is this place where the sound of God is Greater can be heard louder and louder?
Everyday Im just waiting to see if there will be more and louder voices at nights?
My body trembles
...and I wonder if God trembles too?
Where is this where weve been imprisoned so innocently?
Where is this where no one gives us a helping hand?!
Where is this place, where we are getting our voices heard worldwide through our silence?
Where is this place where the blood of its young people is shed on the streets..., where people stand and pray on their blood?
Where is this place where its people are named Gangsters & Thugs?!
Where is this?
This is Iran. This is my land and yours!
This is Iran

by an anonymous woman in Tehran


This is your and my homeland.
I am born in this darkness with you.
This is the homeland of you and I.
I shake within your voice
and tears flow to my eyes on your sobs.
The wind at the microphone.
The voices pleading
from the dark sky. The only light,
dots of distant occupants.
This is my homeland and yours.
The threat of tomorrow and its promise.
Iran is where each of us is born.
From here we reach out
to touch a new birthplace only imagined.
Come daylight.
In it raise our head.

by jerry gordon

6.20.09

Concerns

To Whom It May Concern: And just like that, the phone went dead. And something else too. But the new day will ressurrect the dead and call upon dormant hearts,  kiss the mouth of the sleeping, suck out the bitter taste. And all will start again. Now you have a choice. Make it happen now. Don't count on the next new morning, each day weighs a little more on the heart and the bone.

by Nili Roberts


This does concern you. Your choice. Don't go back to sleep. Live a thousand dawns within each taste. The day's lips to yours. Kiss back before there is time to count befores and afters, before one more something else is buried beneath another name for separation.

by Jerry Gordon

Cries

I was born
and when I stopped crying
I was shown my home
I loved it
I went through a wall
and I was taught everyone was an angel
I learned to speak my tongue
I was told,
"With these words you can tell the truth"

I climbed the mountain behind my home
I could see over the walls
and as far as my eyes reached,
everywhere were angels
and there were no ends

But when I came back down
my home was gone
and no one welcomed me as an angel.
My tongue sounded like nonsense.
The mirrors said,
I was a foreigner.
The silences said,
my words were noise.

Not heard
not understood
I cried
without meaning.

I cried, my tongue a stump of sorrow.
I cried, my lungs a bellows of joy.
I cried, my mouth like the open hollow of the sky.
I cried.

I cry
and in it find a home
not of place or flag or time,
but of this lost and momentary
bark of the heart
echoing off from others' lips.

I live
in this ever unnamable emotion
always breaking
open like a seed that can only grow in abandoned soil
and takes each road back to wild.



by jerry gordon
5.13.09

Circus

The circus feels in town.
The town being my mind.
Its three rings my doubt, trust and fear.
The trapeze this emotion
swinging from wires I as yet have no names for.

The clowns dive into a drinking glass.

I jump in
to save them from drowning.



5.9.9