ASPERITIES
poems by Timothy Lavenz
2015-16

Langscabs
true to continue paining
confer on the conference-
less earthface
beings—

Mortals made Woundling
immortal in the Wordobey
wound up with reraise
in the others’ mortal
fullest space.

(Excavate, behind,
into the murmuring deceit,
recover the pearl’s keepsake,
make it thought-
treat in your treasure chart,
leave.)

Unburied, a surface
tension breathes, eyebrows
bend and speak – seeing out
into each creak:

Songswept millstone
hung to the ghost’s raving nape
seeking longingly for memory
as the treetop bird
cries safe.

*

Compress of ahead
chills the power of shackle,
contact-fissure grapples
with oblivion reactor,
forms burst forth with matrixial
voraciousness as care
cleaves to the post register,
dashed-by destiny pasture
rebloomed:

Etched in the lightache,
trembling, waiting trembling
for speed. The mind chases
shadow’s brittle battle,
forcehogs grunt and spleen,
coolants feed the dry vents
into fleshhot eye crevices
weeping prostrate repeating
craves for the unreadable.

Conclusion consents,
unstably; the agent clambers
silent from the wagered defeat;
but the bed spreads and the
seeds wet, drown into
resurrectables, found out now
in press retreat.

*

Frigid time’s gilded gale winds
whip up light in quick sediments,
in this dungeonous letterbit cave
lavished with stolid stirrings.

Belted, ripped, flung, shot:
grains flash-attack, linings give yield,
scrapes of unnatural beatings peal
as disharmonious ticklings set congeal
into starcrushed soulshapes slow-glittering;
bubbled-hollows reverberate kiddingly;
colorings clump and interweave in
abstract close range quantafigurines –
an eternal numeral, upstanding, log-rational,
love-graphic of the turtled skeleton.

A madhorn insignia escapes there –
forehead force gashed into the lately
reunified code-capitulation
until the unstained granite bliss out
and composite stroke eyes brightly see.

(Every steed comes whinnying
to an execution held hell deep
in wombfolds nurturing echo’s eek:
harness snap, unclasp, bail, repeat
into psychic glue outpouring
unbelievable: tongue, lick, greet.)

So pass the vial of that demented elixir
till rat gains entrance to the stone,
till it grasp the nebula in rotting torso –
humble portal in clay organ invisible
of demon-blessed, aged, porous
sudden airless taste vision
where lay down warm lips in dead gold.

*

No sentient remainder in the peat, tulips
despite the wipeout sprout craniums
fervent to wander thru the sprung leak –
drowsy outing to the unfathomable cling
of sleep’s whole silver possibility.

Humanless was that splendid offering:
pinecone, coast, and dropping heat.
I surveyed the dawn’s benevolent creep,
the honey-orange spirts and mockingjay peeps,
with a meal of torqued words snagged
from the mute chalice of the charred hands
eager to drink in the mixed relief,
tomorrow’s grief-delivered people
clarified to perfection by extinction assumed
and the hard-won gallop of final innocence:

Unglorious, ungodly, divine release;
Medusa’s blithe gift: free feet.

*

NATIVITY

An ox to manage the cradle
through the wasteland, with dry lips,
cracked hooves, and an anvil
to mark the pacing,
roughs it through the biting sand’s
indifferent heap.

A burnt catalog keeps the grainy trace
of every leg: those met archangels or
frowning faces, oceans or severed
toes – shipwrecks of belief (if you
can still imagine a flag
raised for poetry):

Embroidered on the canopy of that wagon,
conveying mind-wise the covenant creep,
transporting time’s unpassable channel,
is hoping; the word snorts and
eats a growth and goes ahead.

What remains is little tug,
sad chipped red left cleat;
fortune’s cause of thought
tumbled in the damaged deep
of an embankment, the old ropes
fraying, alone stuck on repeat.

A baptism in the palace of emptiness
is expected, to forbid relief.

The mute beast
affirms the necessity, almost
peopleless, as the child
readies its heart to peek.

*

lack of axis
cracked the motor,
time the road twice murdered
by two gunning pumping
human legs –

break! shouts the ladder
fall back! sighs the lone
sing again! rises mourning
denegatived –

erases the lag in the towline
to sow secrets
secret to both our regions;
across it, mirror shavings
waiting
for a line to be seen.

whose
is anyone’s misery or
in-running ghost-
being.

*

Out of the veil
in light the barrier,
I reckon lots out
with the stars,
come out empty-handed,
insolvent;

beneath white I carve
the gawking stares
led up high to the high landing;
underground I stand preparing
for the gate to go up, but
nothing, yet

asked for patience,
large starvings,
as the black beyond rises
to speak.

*

A phlegmatic film of
friable spirit and naughty deed
over drool-wafting nothingness
is our prime world decree:

A spider’s net, prepped to catch
drift of notion and animal sneeze,
casting safe lines to unsuspected regions,
levitating in the rugged elsewhere.

(Scamper faster, knead.
The gaps and leaks
sliced so cursorily in the shield
run deeper.)

The vacuum eats the weave,
the weave feeds the vacuum,
love and scar tarry
piquant
in creation’s unequal:
the existence of poetry.

*

METAPHYSICS

Carefree chassis and access
whistle another hill due west
onward on the sacred road
promising victory in distress;
concepts offloaded, roughened,
understandings bite-sized, up-to-date;
for insight: vision is mastery
staring violet irises wild into sun tapestry
plowing down haply shimmering corridors
with flags strung mad honking and
seven plus 70 sonnets to future glory,
until the final line jolts us
from the eased pavement; the image
on the horizon tapers, emulates

Accident , where
startled the encounter actions
in the absence of met doves:
fate unsealed, beloved drive
canceled: a word generated
in fog of mysterious gentle
lifelong soul commiseration
in a ditch of lost numbers
where death awaits initiation.

*

Sky
ripping at the saw,
first perception’s
awe in the rift:

cut time
incinerate infinity image,
sun pinion on slim
revolve – a caption
standing resolve
let sunder.

O empirical crumple,
unresolvable episteme,
bracket dough being in fall;
total up to tea towel
in sludge;
disavow, become;
tell look again focus
and pull.

*

Trial myth of fire
on the explosion’s scream,
a clock that has you
alive and asleep,
rapt in contention
with the crackle’s glow.

(Gather the logs, guests
are entering,
set up more chairs
in the snow.)

Distorted the conflagration
unlags, it sparkles
in welcoming shadows,
legs out, footprints made,
announcing converge
on that damned clockface
where counting’s nothing and
elixirs goad the indemonstrable
into that oratory emplacement
of chuckling silence, standing or
sitting round the echo labor
in memory of chances
past earning.

(Friend’s intrusion
learns my inner memory;
I listen for the countdown
in our go.)

*

Imagination’s urgency
deferred into rumor purge
plans demonry.

Pronunciation of the thing
debates intangibles;
organs denaturalized
relearn lassitude;
the clasp on the ape’s back
refigures human
anima.

Perennials
pop into purposes
unnoosed. The grey
lark chooses not to move
yet falls in for the truth:
petals touching, tardily,
the wind. –

Heartily,
for the cage flutters now
and the chairs up-tip;
a channel into dark
amber begins.