Portrait

.
From what appears to be
the pocket of your vagina,
you pull out a chair--
from nowhere--and take a seat.

All of us over here
on this side of the train
work our eyes back and forth
beneath our boldly knitted brows
as though we've finally understood
the words that have always been
written halfway up the sky.

Our first urge is to want
to share this shining confusion.

But how can witnesses converse
in the words of the world they left?

When two small children meet
their first act is to reach
through all the sky that falls
between them.
They grab hold
with nothing in their eyes.

Lost
over here on this side of the train,
I pull out this blank
sheet of paper from my pocket
and draw this:
a tree growing
from a howling table-saw.



by jerry gordon
5.8.05

You Reach into the Mountain

.
With your robe seemingly of
the same stuff as this sandstone sky,
it's hard to see you apart
from it all; to get that high
alone shows wisdom,
so I wonder what it means
when you softly roll back your sleeve.

How to do nothing damage?

But then you reach into the mountain
and pluck the jewel out of the rock.

This crack remains
to bless all we
who can see it; the sun breathes
just enough to whisper
the fingers of dark.



by jerry gordon
5.8.05
on a painted screen in a hermit's
shack painted by Soga Shohaku (1759)

Sweeper

painting by Soga, Shohaku 1762
.
Instead of sword
you sweep
each particle of dust
clean and in its place.

That must be
what you're counting
with your hands too kind
to even cut a nail.

Either that or you're going
down the list of
all the names for nothing.

Old, rock-backed man
and joy-spring bastard of life,
I roam the mountains today
searching for a bristle
from your broom.



by jerry gordon
5.4.05

Sharp-Clawed, Wrinkled and Blue

painting by Soga, Shohaku (1764)
.
The enlightened baby dances
in the dead tree bursting blossoms,
alive of all
the parasites of beauty:
the ivy growth, the mistletoe
and his orange robe of waterfall.

I sit
below,
sharp-clawed, wrinkled and blue
looking past the shining child of sky
into the hand-sized stone in my mind,
for you.

My antelope daiper itches.
My holy bangles have lost their high-C chime.
And even the grass has gone
grey and flat.

But when he flashes me those five pearl fingers
and his two raucous curving thumbs,
I smile with a little more than joy.

Then, I know
he's me when I am free
enough
to not want him as you,
when I can sit
between the tree and grass
letting my horns of calcified wishing
drop to the rutted mud,
my anklets singing
in the rain of falling fangs.



by jerry gordon
5.4.05