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Where have you come from?
What work do you make?
Glittering, aspire —
What beauty do you take?
Paint like children,
sing like children,
breathe like children,
see like children,
when do you pour out
your tastes and trials
into the world-pool-bath?
When did you burn this path?
Warm like children,
song and the kindled,
divine the first match.
Does it rest unbridled?
Does the hand stop its wrath?
So it's death by altar,
and fear by face.
Blush; just see what you've done:
The wine and fishes changed —
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A blue, a shine
the deep dirt pulls forth
a darling girl, a sign —
Look inside to find this
little one in the course.
You're polluting morning's mist.
Love to say, you runneth under
(the burning, terrible clouds)
Love to say, you enjoy her
(bubbly laugh, yet fasting, frown)
Love to say, unshaméd mother
(you've got all the right cows)
Love to say (father of the man)
Love to say (father of the man)
A life, inside
our woman gives birth.
New touch, to be named (hide / Hyde)
A swimmer yet bathed;
poured across with brand new eyes —
not hanged, not chastised, not chased.
Lovely bud-time,
(some) sacred old things
floated out to concrete (blood)
and chopped; their laughing sings
the chorus and blood —
the chorus and blood —
Love to say, hold on to your sense
(the frigate comes to peck it dead)
Love to say, become your parent
(you gave them life, you feed them bread)
Love to say, your memory daughter
(she's red and gold and in your head)
Love to say (father of the man)
Love to say (father of the man)
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Do me a favor,
and expel all of your sacred notions —
Climb to the top of your
swirling, burning hill
and crucify your new word, the oceans.
The sun it eats me,
and you'll sink and swim before you notice —
the book that defeats me
is the hope of man.
So let the shepherd and the brier live.
Please your shape of shame —
shake the shell of earth in search of real masses.
A song of two hard rhymes,
floating, descending,
the body with the sky and the dances.
Swear you won't tell someone and pour the river out —
Ruin the precious something and flesh details out —
Writhing in the surface of name and knowing
lets the blood dry and the bones start blowing.
Worry about me
if I ever whisper in your ear that I know something about God
that you don't.
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After you are done washing your feet, leave this place.
Leave your home where you have made your livelihood.
Travel to a desert land which I will show you.
I will show you this way.
Do not fear this change, do not fear any obstacle which you encounter. I will accompany you for the first half of your journey, then I will die.
You will become a camel and you will
bear the burden of the world on your neck.
You will know suffering.
You will know jealousy.
The challenges of your life will be many, and your resolve will will weaken.
You will be defeated (and you will emerge victorious).
You will endure great pain (and immense happiness).
So travel this way and I will let you know what will happen to you when I die:
You will have five sons, and you will have two daughters.
Your first son will be a frothing wave, and he will consume the second son. Your third son will be a vicious beast,
and your forth son will be a gilded archer and will shoot him down.
Your fifth son will be a poem and he will float up and his letters will fill up your tent at night.
Your first daughter is your fifth son's twin, she will be a scholar and study the ways of the ground beneath us.
Your second daughter will be a furnace angel.
I will leave you when you have become a rooted oak, but not
a minute after will I stay.
You will relinquish the color-water that churns within you and it will sink deep into the sand.
The stars you shall not covet any longer, and
the Leviathan
you shall not imagine.
A great lamb will lead you to this place, then you shall extinguish it.
Do not fear this new place, but know that the jaguar will be upon your neck, the eagle will claw your head, and the snakes of the ground will wrap themselves around your ankles until you are unable to move.
Do not fear this strange world, but know
that it does not enjoy the rapturous play of the herd and the school.
Now, open your arms and embrace those nearest to you, for they will accompany you when I have long died —
You have two who live in your sand and under your moon with you, let me tell you how they will betray you —
The slave on the right is a cupbearer, and when the time comes, he will not tell your savior of your vividness.
The slave on the left is an interpreter of dreams, as well as you are, and when your savior decides his own nightmares are cryptic beyond his own, this man will step on you to be freed.
These will be the days of the years of these slaves' lives:
long and full of remorse. Your days are
unknown and plentiful.
Friends will lie in ambush and strike you
with their love. Trust in it, for these friends will write markings and signs upon your thigh, and they will swear by them.
You will travel in a cloud of flames by dusk, and by dawn you will be submerged in a glimmer pond:
Do not fear, for your reflection is a false prophet, and your friends will attest to this.
And you will dip yourself beneath the shining water that breeds itself in the pool. Here you will be tested in your melody to your own:
What are the images that bring harmony to your song?
What are the mirages that harbor discord?
And those who are nearest to you will disrobe and bathe here, and they will stand their own trials. This is why you shall not try to wipe the dirt off their backs,
or the stains from in their hearts,
for they are not shimmering yet, and you shall not balance their
soul against anything.
And them to you, for you are a disgusting creature, revolting and ugly in meaning.
You are below the crawling-things in the dust, and you are below the squirming things in the mud.
But this is why I am leading you to this land,
and this is why I am leading you to this pond.
You will clean yourself when I am dead.
You will wash your feet and you will wash your nails.
The feet that have trekked through the same dust as the skeletons who rot underneath it. The nails that have peeled skin from flesh to savor a meal.
These things, you will find them in the reflections of the silver fronds in the place where I will show you,
and you will not harvest the shine that echoes from within
their spores.
Now, go from here —
Leave this land in which you have made your livelihood
and where you have known comfort in friendship.
Now, go forth from here —
Go forth, yourself!
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