Jeff Swanson

 

HIGH UP HERE IN THE MOUNTAINS

High up here in the mountains
I sit drinking wine by moonlight
This gorge filled to the brim with sky
Blue as the dark wing of a bird
This moon is a pearl of bone
And everything is ghost-white
I am a ghost in a house for ghosts

The wind creaks below in crags
In the twisted yellow bamboo thickets
The wind tonight is a ghost of a wind
Murdered in the mountain passes
Ambushed by bandits in the mountain passes
Skulking in his old haunts, the crags
The broken peaks of rocks and scree
Moaning among the trees he loved
Sighing in the leaning pines
Crying in the pines he loved

Time is sharp, a jagged dagger,
A dagged jagger of oblivion
A dragon with the claws of time
Is hanging in the stars, waiting
Black against the stars, it waits
Lingering in the stars, it grins
Guarding the pearl and also the jail
The bars of cloud and rock and distance
For the criminals of time and space

KITE ANGELS

1
Time is sharp, a jagged dagger of broken glass, a dagged jagger of broken glass. A sharp handaxe of chipped flint. Only nowadays, we can cut, with angstromic precision, the seconds apart from each other, like fathers carving a turkey. Swiss knives and their surgical precision. Time the surgeon. Dr. Time with his scalpels and bone saw.

2
You'd think they didn't know each other, and of course that was the point. Finally he couldn't avoid her in the hallway. "Hi, Sheila," he said, in the way people do when they know you well. In the same way people say Let's get this over with.

3
He came alive sometime in his first few years, having no memory of events before that. One day he looked in the mirror and noticed this scar above his nose, something like a staple scar in a piece of paper. They told him that one day he and his sisters were playing blind man's bluff in the backyard, and he ran into the brick of the chimney. But, he had no memory whatsoever of any painful event or even of having stitches during any sort of convalescence.
     It was as if he were a soul that had moved into a body which had been auto-piloted until then, semi-animate, having only the massed little intelligences of the cells to go on. This kind of thing happens all the time, though. One day, a mother will notice her child suddenly appear to come alive with personality. There aren't any set rules for the procedure. Being born is a terrible shock, at any rate -- scientists say a baby during delivery has adrenaline levels twice that of a person having a heart attack.
     He also didn't remember a high fever that'd almost killed him. Perhaps that swelled his brain and pushed out its own memory. Perhaps his brain crashed and had to be rebooted.
     A vague memory of being in the crib in a moving car -- that could've been anybody's. Sky scenery and ceilings moving through windows and through the bars and toys of toteable cribs -- a viewpoint common to babies and to victims of car accidents.

4
Upset and disappointed! How could a birth go so wrong! I took drugs and they ate away my soul and my illusions -- the world is illusion, and I lost that ability! So then I made myself a naked skinny soul on a rock shivering in the wind, and made myself the man without skin walking among the saltmonsters of the world. I became ghosteyed and stupeyed with despair, and chucked away the reins of my own life -- I sat in the stern with my hands shoved under my armpits, watching the tiller swing free and wondering why my life wasn't taking the course I wanted!

5
Black ice over the black eyes. Stuck in the hell-ice with the crystal visors of tears. Crystals visors of eyce.
     She extruded a frozen glance of eyce at me. You could walk on the Frost Bridge between the two of us. It was Bifrost, the legendary bridge of the Norse Gods, leading to Valhalla. Although in this case, I had no idea what surprises awaited me in the warrior's paradise of her eyes. Tossed from the jagged towers of dilemmas, snapped with the jagged towels of ridicule, pummeled with the knotted towels of boot camp. Broken in half over the knees of Viking giants out for a good time. The kningly knees of vikning gkniants.
     Gkniagnts. Giant knight agents. Giant kite agents. Giant Kite Angels. Like the Chinaman who flew on his kite. An angel climbs into the kite cockpit, then sails out over a park for a look see. Count the upriding string trails, then count the dancing kites. The count won't match. A kite angel never misses a chance to socialise.

 

BOOBY BAY

Babes in mink! Pink babes in mink. Makes ya think. Pink babes in milk. Milky-shinned babes in sin. These babes are sinners! The thinner sinning babes. That city's filled with thin-sinning babes, with sinsinging babes.

Ten tin tools. Tin tits -- milk tanks. Milk bombs dropped in the boobsea. Churning the sea into milk, with the help of Mt. Mammu.

Jasmines floating in the Coral Sea. Tilk tan teaks. Tilt at windmills of teak, bobbing on the Bobby seas. The seas were blue and have no guns.
     The baby seas. Embryonic waves on the baby sea. The sea spits up babies like a Jonah-whale, from the baby bay to the strand, where they dry off in pools of flaky mucus. And that's where their legs appear, slowly at first, then more distinct as the days go by. Soon they're rolling and hopping here and there on the sand.
     Eventually it's time to move off the beach and inland. That is...you can if you want. It's good to make a change now and again.

Babies sailing on the milky sea of Booby Bay. Invasion craft filled with babies who spill out over gangplanks crashing into surf. They must reach the beach! They must establish a beachhead! We can't have abortion babies bobbing in the bloody surf, can we? The bloody seaweed surf, the salty, iodine, hemoglobin, RNA surf? Send in the nurse sharks.
     Babies bobbing in the placental surf. The gore that attends a birth -- tastes like surf. It's an ocean in there; hence the smell of brine. She's a little estuary. Every womb is an estuary, an inlet from the sea, a little baby bay.
     Sex in the estuary. Breastuary. In January.

Nancy Noosey. Get thee to a nunnery!
     Nurse Nancy Nookie. Nancy Fantasy in a nursey outfit. Nausicaa of the milk-white arms. Ivy clings to her. Ivy clutches at her skirts.
     Nappy Nancy Nookenstein. Hanging her milk-laden boobies in the nursery. Nancy's got a new baby. Milk spurts from her nipples. With each long step, milk jets from her bouncing jigs. Her balancing rigs.
     Her anglenipples. Angled like the nipples of angels. Angelic jugs on the angelpies. Anjelica's got the angelicjugs. Bug juice from the asian jugs. Swag dripping from the Asian jugs.
     Angel juice in anglers' jugs in Los Angeles. Anglers in Los Angeles throwing lures off the dock at Santa Monica. Dr. Angler is a plastic surgeon fishing for asians off the Asian Docks in San Pedro. He wants to westernize the Asian Wandas. The 7 Wandas of the Asian world climb down off a container ship where they've spent 24 shitty days at sea. First stop? The nunnery run by Nancy Noosey. There to watch the daily hangings.

 

DAMP DOGS

Damp dogs in the dog dolly dawn
Empty dog shape in the damp grass
Dog roof in the cold doggie dawn
Four-footed god in the dogyard grass
Go dawn gold near the steaming doghouse roof
Fresh new poopie in the dog-gold grass

The damp damn dogs of Golgotha
Dog run down the hills of Golgotha
Some of those skulls are doggies,
The doggies of the prophets.
Doggies live in skulls of prophets,
And bark through their ears at night.
The damp howling awakens demons,
Who, muttering, damn the doggies.

Doll doggie gone to Dog in Heaven
Where all the singing children are
And each with a toy in a robe pocket
For later play on hills of grass,
And nary a leash in sight.

 

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