JESSE GLASS
MAN WITHOUT AIR
No longer a young man, I
trudge the tarmad, my son in my arms
behind his eyes a crystal taken from the head
of a hawk
with one knife thrust/
a twist & a pull--
luminous point
pressed to his mother's belly
as she gave him to the dawn (2 Monads
dividing
in
vagitus
tumbling apart
now
speeding into the void)
that crystal--AZOTH--glows in his brain
the clean intelligence
frozen in flight like an osprey
in a
block of ice.
It's so hard to walk the grid Descartes plotted
in delerium/
nothing to hold me to the earth
but the weight
of my desire.
Future/past square within square &
circle within circle
convince me
that beyond the earth's curve
is a wedding
of sun & moon
the Golden Animal
in dance
mounts
the Silver
fits perfectly
until they are through:
jazz in the night
Angel Midnight
stops judgement. No
Satan
riffling thunder
like a deck of cards
but a feast
we are invited to/
catch the dark garter
father mother
son & daughter
no christ wiping
bloody
handprints on the wedding
dress
no thumbprints of aboriginal
blood on the
invitation
but we, in perfect silence,
ingest the body
of the alphabet.
Walking
in rain
over a hidden
desert
blooming prickly pear &
cacti become Wide and Soft embracing
Angels
with faces like shoe leather
tears of clear, bright stone
I stop, let
my son stand
in my shadow
he is afraid
trembling underlip
until he steps
into sunlight
hears a crow
call 3 X / now he
hurries
to the Angels
they surround him
whispering
the News.
It is as if a man could keep going without
breathing air
could build a world/fit it in a trunk/bury the trunk in
the side of a Mountain/
& when the trunk's uncovered & unhasped
unborn generations would see
a light-filled treasure,
no crystal skull of dark inversions/ clattering of sinful teeth
but a tree
that is a dead man's arm, each threw, each
sinew moved by a separate breeze
each breeze a thrumming wire nailed
to an angel inside the trunk
a village beneath the tree, huts
the color of dust,
& dolls hung by their chests
from thongs & hooks
All visions
distilled in the fire
of future times
(hot war burning the guts
of the Great Man)
into this diorama: the original American
Testament
iinvisible hands
will not let this world be taken
as a museum piece/
the dolls cry without mouths
to the Watchers in their towers
while the man who keeps going without breathing
air
could tunnel
out the other side of the world
perhaps bathe his forehead
in cool rain
but chooses instead to rumble under
the shopping malls
tips the sidewalks
at crazy angles
rattle the diamond panes
of mortician's windows
shake skyscrapers like accusing fingers
at the clouds, saying:
"If you could count my words on your pulses
if you could sing these words
to passersby who shield their eyes
from your face with dark glasss
if you could walk with your children
in the city
yet know the earth stretches out all
around you
if you could sit all day in the heat
without a job
without hope
& without bitterness
if you could stand on the top of a cliff
without leaping off
with the 7 devils inside you
but teach those devils
to carry you through the air
to Quetzalcoatl's side
if you could catch rainwater
in a jar & watch
the land precipitate
from the water
the water become air
& quiet worms
graze
on fungi
like the beasts
of the Peaceable Kingdom
& know that one
shake of your wrist
could send it all
back to chaos
yet resist that
movement
then a New World
will come, perhaps
& all things will remain
yet all things will be changed."
I am the Man without Air.
I hold my son close
& Look into his eyes.
What I see there ends this vision.