Ivan Arguelles
Ivan Arguelles is the author of many poetry publications, notably Looking for Mary Lou:Illegal Syntax (WCarlos Williams Award, 1989); "That" Goddess, and most recently, New Poetry from California:Dead/Requiem (w/Jack Foley). He's nominally a librarian at UC Berkeley currently looking for enlightenment and can be reached at iarguell@library.berkeley.edu.
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(an excerpt from) a trilogy from
SATURDAY AFTERNOON IN THE UPANISHADS
an electronic chapbook by
Ivan Arguelles
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RASLILA
(whispers in the eaves
it is more like dawn than milk
this whatever you call it
all around
galactic foam)
how quiet before the
illegal press-release
ink-fresh prints upon the leaf
bent inwards toward Dhyana
which equals ZEN No-Mind
if that were the case instead of this rushing
from hospice to tavern and back
in a day's wink the bright blue
like a flower just opened
then threshed neck-worn
the bow has been bent
never more to see again
how the light slants off the mountain
her eyes were moist was it Green Street?
her pulse like champagne in the morning
before the milk-carts have set off
for the mysterious trek inland
toward the unravelling light
there where ecstatic singing
in pre-dawn indo-iranian dialects
suffused with enigma and Transcendence
toward No-Mind the shoreless
we must pass-over Stranger
over the depthless holy lake
but that
everything exists in a state of utmost precariousness
all faltering to fall
like gigantic elephants of epic myth
their tuskers entangled in dream-green dew
this is about to end
the grand summation being the question Mark
the infidel ingot in the heart of the soul
"we are not meant to last"
HUNH?
dubious lyrical techniques piled up rhetoric
evasive syntax and corrosive semantics
it was ever out of dalliance the Knight
his sword the One Word
came pricking 'pon the Plain
as it is to see
we must be ever strangers in the fell passage
adumbrations of eternity in the quoit
quivering in the mind's last closet
given that we are not able to spell
what was it she was trying to ?
the ensemble of different voices
broken up at starfall
just two hours after dead-delivery
I wonder if it will ever come back
her tender the remote flower
corollary between skies the color of plasm
some kind of editing it is
comment c'est
or some kind of ending you can never
the rush to enigma a sudden whisper
hundreds of voices in dead-letter box
endless detail of recall in water
five ells deep the ex- plosion
of whatever it was my ears!
you will remember that night in May
the stars were bright above
SHOO-DOOTN-SHOO-BE-DOO
in a car with King-of-Gods-Indra
shaking like a leaf behind the wheel
he'd just seen a Ghost
virtually everything in state of utter precariousness
the machine grinds and grinds in its novel
electing a fiction of non-returnable homes
the inner sanctum of dead-radio-nite
when all the raindrops clamber for their bell
fleur isotope hydrangea weather cycle
SHOO-DOOTN-DOO-BE-DOO
in the grace faint traces of ammonium
but no palpability to speak of
the failed contrition of the greater Beings
who have ransacked myth for history
and left us to cope with empty bag
outside hospital closed for repairs
and the cab-driver turns his great indigo Krishna eyes
in the mirror all backwards
taking us to a junction called
No-Resolution No-Resurrection
"I've gotta get outta this place"
frantic being alive conscious all wet
depth charge for a heart in love
frantic for next hit a fix with death
she could be my girl
SHOO-DOOTN-SHOO-BE-DOO
the sanskrit implication being the Void
itself a hangover from pythagoreanism
bright the stars shine high in May
her wings were just gossamer
you coulda pulled em right off
moonlight and madness duality
the monkey in the mirror that's me, Mom
comment c'est
heaving their white breasts like
coils of damp dark hair
their delicate white white faces
mind and body dissolved in Krishna's Round Dance
unwinding cloth they become slowly naked
an evolution of form into ecstasy
ankles to top-knot all dissolved
in one vast whirring the sound
like a razor cutting air in half
melting in his enormous indigo eyes
Be My Gopi Be My GOPI tonight
shine high white starlike night in May
what unutterable Phantoms!
a thousand million kalpas below dust
and turn turn turning around the music
SHOO-DOOTN-SHOO-BE-DOO
melting swoon evasive nowhere drive
over the next life I wont see you again?
HUNH!
drifting just drifting into next
worn out the thing was just
what a pair she had you coulda just
mile high starfoam galactic stuff
mystery of adolescence grassy clouds
white physics something squirting
so lazy it felt and hard too the
between the other what was dark
I couldnt make out she was on my lap
maybe puking or the floor going round
a song stuck in my brain she coulda
just drifting maynight flyboy hey
almost a fever in the grass
and everything spinning hot
thick the denim stiffening wet
was it the sun?
took my hand and called me Ulysses
flyboy go back to your cavern
drink a lot race from door to door
looking for the Prophet
utter precariousness of everything
this whatever you call it
night after night until no more
wont see you ever again
lapse horizons blank
(
comment c'est
WORLD
Ivan Arguelles