"DRAWN BUT NOT SKINNED; A Cento by Jeff McMillian

Tonight the mean winds of November
have begun to blow Indian Summer away,
pointing you north and north against your will.
North is easy. North is never love.
Without a shield of hills, a barricade of elms,
one resorts to magic. It is called breaking out
of the ground and it is done by force.

On the wind like something out of Leviticus,
a bat quivers across the porcelain of evening,
deep horror of eyes and of wings;
more come in watery flocks,
each one woven to the other like bubbles
in a frozen pond.

The dance winds through the windless woods.
Fires started by lightning make up the telling
of men: we were the fine shavings of sheepskin
mercy and love were not.
We for whom grief is so often the source
of our spirit's growth, whose veins Death
the gardener twists into a different pattern,
wonder, "Out of such numbers how will I be noticed?"
Whether caring accomplishes anything is irrelevant.
Every angel is terrifying.

It is the image of the ungraspable phantom of life,
and this is the key to it all. There is a wisdom
that is woe; but there is a woe that is madness.
It is all you have and all your father had
and all your brothers. We live in
an old chaos of the sun, one sun,
one journey here and everywhere,
of that wide water, inescapable.
At evening the diminishing of the dance,
no, not night but death, makes constant cry:
Disturb even a seed sleeping and you harvest stones.
It is called breaking out of the ground and
it is done by force."

(Shakespeare)

Insulting tyranny begins to jet
And bury all which yet distinctly ranges,
To villainy and vengeance consecrate,
To desperate ventures and assur'd destruction.

And caterpillars eat my leaves away;
And botch the words up fit to their own thoughts;
I am a tainted wether of the flock,
Never was such a sudden scholar made;

To nothing but despair. A thousand knees
Rot and consume themselves in little time.
With an untitled tyrant bloody-scepter'd,
To second ills with ills, each elder worse,

But I will sort a pitchy day for thee;
Which is as bad as die with tickling.

09 03 04

"In the Forest of Estrangement"

our knowing of the rats
and that stark gnawing sound
at night
not to call it what it is

too long afraid
till all is scary and wrong
all but this phony flag
as if it could hold us

apart

as if it could
in storm or ruby flow

09 02 04