paul skyrm
paul skyrm, a most remarkable cleveland-area dharma poet,
has been accepted to the jack kerouac school of disembodied poetics
at naropa. spskyrm416@aol.com
DEMONS QUIVER
i.
Trod up hill,
walk along humpback crest
flick ashes where mole holes are not dug
in tall grass.
When rain falls upon the mount,
course is taken South towards my backporch
although defiant teardrops fall North
towards Varanasi.
Trip inside, slide patio door shut & lock having to lift
door, line lock with hole and pull it closed.
This house is without light.
We sleep back to back.
May my heart drench in the sorrow of December moon; Her in
midst
of
birthing babe legs suspended 'bove Crown spread in HALLELUJAH!
small back inclined upon the bed of shadow sweat steam gushing
such light!
Birthing Mother! May heart be skinned in the friction of your
body thrust
strained
asphyxiated so the stallion may charge from womb and
shatter
this blackened palimpsest leaving only river reflection
'cross
bosom.
ii.
Her stirs measured, the silhouette shutters.
I asked the moon who fucked her.
She said it was I.
She showed me the chariot I rode and the coyotes who drove
me
away from love to nocturnal liaison.
Coyotes panting.
moon
her body spinning in morbid elevation I have no recollection
of
this
yet
there were moments back to back to my love
I
could not see the moon
in
blackened palimpsest.
iii.
She lies still.
Rivers & brooks thread in figure eights
on the bottom of my soles,
cumulonimbus break apart overhead.
I sleep with my back to my love, recounting nights
contemplative meditative of Four Noble Truths
numb to her arms spider-ing around me, slinking over my chest
kissing the nape of my neck. I sat in lotus.
So many moons spent searching for what was right here.
I forgot to turn over &
drifted
into numbness.
iv.
I lie in bed,
my love dead
next to me.
Eyes open, sleeping
back to back
a hollow love decomposing
under flesh smoldering against my spine.
O! What devils do I not see? Why doth I not turn over to rid
myself of these Hells?
Press chest into love's back?! feel Her resurrection against
charging heart?!
my back to past Hells?!
Why do I not sleep heart to heart with my love?!
O! I do not seek this monster who lies stinking & rotting
in my belly!
The smallest fraction always pulls the chain
dragging out
Hell's mammoth starving Hounds
to
RIP & TEAR & MUTILATE the Mahayana slain!
O! Palimpsest shatter from the raising of these open eyes!
Stand before
me liberated from strangling brutes of youth!
What
inferno waits in closure! What inferno waits behind your
coiled
truth!
The snakes of deception suffocate the
ghosts of Law until
a chamber
of cortical shoot their voices like hurricanes shattering Yama
into lotus
and the smell of marrow burning in short hot bursts of volcanic
dye chokes the snakes
themselves
for how can one break shadow? How can one suffocate sunyata?
And not extinguish their own flame.
So never shall I sleep again!
So never shall I sleep again!
So never shall I sleep again!
v.
I see the moon offer her waning bosom
coy behind lace of sierra morning mist.
Nipples stretch like Great Spirit emerging from womb
straining against the veil that nursed,
I turn towards my love, her naked body unsheathed golden as ripened
lioness
heaves on Sarengetti dissolving into the gold sands.
Her naked body stretched out as the horizon beckons Earth
to dip & kiss the Sun,
a naying wind gallops 'cross our pane.
it is time we walk home.
Her breath bringing my placid heart
to boil.
vi.
Pull my body across rumbling distance passing from youth to
antiquity
Breath grows quick heavy.
Limbs slump & the demons gnaw at my genitals.
I crawl to my love; strangled heart mind,
collapse and this life-less descent carries me
where rivers do rise from beds &
and spill into endless streams.
It is time I rise from this strange bed
head
North,
for
my love has yet to sleep.
July 26, 2002
Aurora, Ohio
3:38PM
SATORI SEEING THE VANE OF NUTHATCH FEATHER
Long bands of silk
threaded stretch exhausted like Christ en crucifixion -
Jesus' sopped beard funneled the blood running from thorny crown
spike bludgeonings
down skinny chest over burping navel
streaming down prayer joined legs
& open mouths fell upon knees
covered themselves in afterbirth
like blind fawn convulses as lungs
grind & burn
breathing air for the first time.
Long bands of silk
threaded stretch between two v-eed pine board railings,
brother Raun's backyard deck interior.
Spider no where to be found,
but here is his home
and I want to pull it down as if it be Sujata's silk panties
transparent and saturated with rice-water.
I want to lap at her pink moonbeam lips
for the pail is empty and I still can not pull myself up
by this rigormortic branch.
But this rice-water is not meant for me alone.
I call upon the vagrant shit talkers of this world!
the
Buddhas of Ten Directions
I call upon the crucifers who climb their ladder, arms decapitated
for hammer and spikes!
the
Buddhas of Ten Directions
I call upon the crucifers who lurch through petrified mud, splinters
of wooden Cross
impaling
humped shoulders!
the
Buddhas of Ten Directions
I call upon the Inuit! Apache! Nez Pearce!
I call upon the Lakota Bull! O Great Dreary Heart of Intractable
Sadness!
Sitting
Lion Haunches Tremble Still As Dormant Volcano! O Silent Smoke
Eater!
I call upon Lakota Bull Chief offer your ghost dance with shattered
skull!
I call upon the Ghost Apples rotten & teeming with worms
boring through their skeletons!
O, those Indians who renounced their tribe for white man,
slaughtered
their people for want of King boon!
O no longer shall we call you Apples,
red on the outside, white on the inside for I call upon you!
Buddhas
of the Ten Directions
I call upon Grandmother Spider
who fashioned a Hundred Thousand Ten Million Two-Legged Forms
from clay in darkness,
filled them with Grandfather Sun
and scrambled back over this web
showing The Thus Come Ones there is no teacher, there is no master.
I call upon America! India! Pakistan! Afghanistan! Saudi Arabia!
Israel! Iraq!
kneel eye to eye with me,
here is teacher! Here is Isvara
at this morose bridge of threaded bone!
spider
scooters
across
silk.
bee
gutted
squirms.
decapitated wings
still
between
entrails.
SEE! One River sews the hunter and prey,
we thread the web promulgating birth & decay!
Listen dear ones!
It is time to leave the web here
for the hurricane & the calm come this way
threaded through single eye!
Aurora, Ohio
August 26, 2002
12:18PM
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