Kayo Dot

rom a sky and its stars
It fell from the night like a wraith in a rage
The prayer that journeyed from the abyss
To the lush of the earth
In the hush of the night
The stone from the sky
On the outskirts of town

All the stars will fall from the heavens
Into the ladle of gathered rain
To those who thirst: drink
There is water enough for all


2. Crown-In-The-Muck


Nearby the moldering bridge and the stream that gushes from a fatal wound
The quiet town in its hallowed hollow, waking while still sleeping sound
Oblivious and dreaming, its people always dreaming
Of nothing and no one and nowhere worth speaking!
Oblivious and trivial, uncomplicated people

But the sun shone forth one Sunday morning
And stretched its arms toward the evening
And a beam of light fell on the stone
The black eye sleeping in an open grave

What is this thing? the crying of the throng
This ugly thing upon the ground that smokes and
Smolders with a dismal sound?
A nightmare, infidelity!
An offensive darkling augury!
Shun this horror!
Shun this omen fallen in the night!

Only one awake, and one that hates
His very life
A poet’s soul
And a deeper sea
The stone bore waves into his mind
Seared his eyes and washed his hate away


3. Thief


That cloudless night by the waning light of a tired moon
The poet stole across the town
(Sleeping, always sleeping
And dreaming, never dreaming)
A shadow and a shade
A ghost that just was made
Creeping across the common, past the bridge and past the fountain

He pushed his wheelbarrow forward through the gloom
And rested by the river where
He could see the stone
The shape of it alone
Made him grasp his heart
An artist when his art
Stares back at him, a fount of living inspiration

The stone, he brought it home beneath the secrecy of night
The thief cometh like the Lord
Into his house where it was stored
He crept into the dreams of the townspeople
Like a knife into a vein
Or a rope around a throat


4. Vision Adjustment To Another Wavelength


Oh, the dust and the dust and the dust
The ages of neglect by the
Cover of rust
The stone was alive, he could feel it
Breathing beneath his hands
On the table in the kitchen
By the light from the lamp
Burning high with olive oil

He touched the stone, like ice from the sky
Like ice from the eyes of the hangman
He touched the stone and wondered at it
Caressed the coarse rock and was humbled by it
And he knew not why
Why the others hated the stone from the sky
This gem that felt warm amidst all the cold
The breathing and pulsing of life in the stone

And he put out the lamp and crawled into bed
And dreamt of the stone and a tree
And the tree grew up from the stone
Watered with blood in a watering can
The blood of the pen
The pride of the poet lashed to his misery
And up into heaven, a fathomless tree
Where it bore forth wonderful fruit
The fruit of the stars from the womb of the Earth

And he awoke amidst the shudders and sighs
The tears that drip-drip from a faucet of eyes
And he saw the poem written before him
By the olive oil lamp in the kitchen
Of a seed blown far by the winds of the spaces
To the far-off planet and its secret places
To the home of the anguished and longing
The hope of the hopeless, the name of the nameless


5. Zodelida Caosaji (To Water The Earth)


The hammer and the chisel from out in the shed
Pulled out from beneath a pile of time
He remembered that was where he left it
Though it had less rust back then
Sunlight pushing through the eaves

The poet and the sculptor
The hermit and the madman
The chisel shattered into pieces of dismay

He dropped the stone from the cottage roof
It hit the ground on a bed of dirt
Rolled to the grass like a tired old man
Turning asleep away from the sun

The distant rumbling of thunder made him stop and think
The rushing of the thunderhead
A storm blown in from heaven
And rain like whispers in the nearby forest leaves
The forest roof and the swaying of its cathedral eaves

He glanced up at the LIGHTNING ROD
And rushed toward his ladder
He fastened the ROD upon the roof
To the dream that promised meaning
Promised purpose to his life, his loneliness and love
And dancing naked as the rain threw down
Its pitchers in rage upon the ground
He prayed and wept as the lightning crept
Above the poet and his rite
And when the day had turned to night
With the fury of the tempest
A splitting of the laden sky
The LIGHTNING ROD exploded
With the stone upon the roof
And left a seed magnificent
With these words inscribed thereon


6. The First Matter (Saturn In The Guise Of Sadness)


A ghoul amongst the graves
The poet bore his song into the forest
And there was no moon, the moon was new
A silver coin snatched from its purse by thieves
Drank deeply of the night, down the path and through the trees
He trembled as he strove to find
The secret ancient grove mankind
Was all too busy to desecrate
Where he wrote and wept and pretended to be
The only entity left in his beautiful world
He bore his prize before him, his passion and his effort
The seed was dressed in the poet’s cloak
Occult…
Concealed…
An infant spirited away by its wary watchful mother

Into the chapel where he worshipped tree and cone
And leaf and stone
The swaying evergreens caressed him
Stroked his cheek, the fireflies blessed him
He used a sexton’s shovel and spade
To dig a bed for the cowled thing
The thing that made the town afraid
That no one caused and no one made

The nightingale poured out its dirge
To accompany the funeral
The grave is dug, the seed is sown
The stars snuffed out, one by one
And as the morning crept ashore
A mound of earth on the forest floor
Where there was only moss the night before


7. The Second Operation (Lunar Water)


Flowers bloom at night and throw off phantom darts of light
Living little opal stars and little phantom shimmers
A shadow with a watering can crept in to tend the garden

The soundless shade made its way as crickets all around
Chose their nighttime music and made their nighttime sound
Within the grove the shadow flowed and knelt before the moss

Shadow water sprinkled on the earthy forest bed
The thinnest grin above the trees
A secret joke
A sliver peeking in through a starry door
Shadow water sprinkled soundless on the mossy forest floor
Water drawn from a well, secluded on a hill
In the summer of the poet’s youth
Before he learned the poet’s truth
That life will never yield to Will
That life will never yield to Will

And that watering can held tightly in ghostly hand!
Where is it from, where has it been?
The shed by the house of the sleeping poet!
It sits there still on its shelf!

And he dreams in his bed as the moon overhead
Sheds light from a silver crescent
He dreams of the grove and the mound and the seed
It was watered that night with the water of need


8. Floodgate


When morning cast the stars aside
And the chill of night had all but died
As sleep removed its blanket pall
From the waking eyes of all
The poet stretched his limbs and dressed
And wandered out to see the blessed
Grove and mound, but with a sound
Of water that was not there before…

A singing stream had grown overnight
Centuries old, with smooth stones covered in moss
The path to the grove is overtaken
Its source bubbles up from under the earth
From the seed…

The poet drank sweet water from a cupped hands chalice
He was baptized at the stream by a mourning dove
All the loveliness in the world was in her
All the sadness flowed out into the forest and into thin air
Mist-wrapped trees, the tattered shrouds of night, as she
Beckoned downstream

Nothing but death, the ageless kiss of the queen
The most beautiful thing is the deathless unseen

No end to the miraculous waters that stream forth from the earth
And the stream grew into the blue royalty of a river
The cascades that tumble away like lives into the æther
Surged forth ceaseless like wasted time

As the moon grew fat with days
The river widened and wove its way
Deeper into the mist and the trees
As an unfinished rhyme, as a grief-laden breeze


9. And He Built Him A Boat


Out of the west the evening-colored air
Made a music box out of the treetops
A wind harp out of the stars
Velvet waters tumble out from the fountainhead of
Inspiration and played the rushes

Wordless song on the river sighing
Forgotten the pipes and the flutes of the dying
The air is alive with the stirrings and turnings
Of phrase in the twilight like petals flying
Into the waters and dreamily floating

The poet felled him a tree
He felled him a fir and was shriven
He drew from pine his boat
Simple, imperfect, with evergreen dressing the air
He fashioned boards from his longing, and
Sacrificed food and rest for ever

He forgot himself
Distaste in this thing surrounding him
Decay
The poet amidst the musical waters
Became the song and what he had
Dreamt of being all along


10. Passing The River


Nameless, a boy upon a rough boat
He makes his way downstream under the candles of the stars
The great chandeliers of the mansion
The moon in her fullness, she waltzes across the singing surface
As animals and insects sleep peacefully in their places
Water passes softly by
Drifting up from silent wells like memories in meditation

Count his bones, the boat drifted as a young leaf fallen
Hapless and helpless, and he blessed the mossy stones

A night and a day of longing is as nothing, as a shell cast into
The raging sea is forgotten
A star swallowed up in the void that pulses
A life expired that never blossoms

The music is his, the boy in his trance
He wrote it across the mist and the rapids
And it carried him away from the forest
And it carried him away
He gave himself to the river
And it carried him away


11. The Wait Of The World


Blood circulates slowly through unhurried and thoughtful veins
He sat in his body and wondered how the sweetest of his strains
Could ever lay a bow to the violin before him
Ended is the passing at the silent, secret gate
Where the temple universal stole away in sublimation
The garden was like brilliance unto the blindman without measure

Entranced by the advent of oblivion
He lay back in his boat, his arms poised to
Embrace the entirety in one embrace and throw open its doors

And he died at the gate that will not open
That will not open for the flesh that is weak

Unknown and nameless, the lyric of the ghost
Haunts the garden and the gate and is happy
The ideal outlasts the flesh that is weak
Yes, and the well outlasts the drought that is momentary

Trees in the garden that tower and sway
Raise up their boughs to whisper and pray
A sweet gale swept in, the breath of the poet
And loosed another seed to fall in the hamlet
The eye of Leviathan that fell from the sky
To enchant the lonely, to love and to die