We're really excited to bring to you a new suite of poems by Michael McClure, who began his career as a young member of Kenneth Rexroth's San Francisco Poetry Renaissance, read with Allen Ginsberg and Gary Snyder at the seminal Six Gallery Poetry Reading that launched the Beat Generation poetry scene, and then began a new phase of his career as a controversial playwright in the 60's and 70's. McClure was part of the 1967 San Francisco Be-In, co-wrote "Mercedes Benz" with Janis Joplin, and continues to write fresh, lively and relevant poetry infused with nature consciousness and textual experimentation.
Mysteriososby Michael McClureMYSTERIOSO O N ELOVELY. LOVELY AND ANCIENT AND FOXEDwith rusty brown spots as the oldest IMMORTAL PRINCESS, or the Bodhisattva Kannon as a simpering and infinitely generous OLD WHORE. How surprised we are at what passes in past and future for the scent of apples. I M U S T know more about the skin and muscles and the wall of stars two billion light years long; I T I S all QUICK ! ! ! MYSTERIOSO T W OHUNGER. HUNGRY. HUGE CAVERNOUS HOLE.HOLDING TORN BEINGS IN TRANSITION. Lives devouring the path into light of blackness. Inside of a cricket. A BIG SHINING FACE WITH EYES filling the room. Roaming without movement. Searching for food ARISING AROUND. Hormones, fats, and proteins WEARING EMERALD G E N O M E S in a boiling sea vent. There is a cloud leopard with a baby's face. MYSTERIOSO T H R E EHORMONES. HORMONES WITH LION FACES. EVENWITH WHISKERS. MANED HORMONES GRINNING, and swimming as they swim in deltoid shoulder muscles --as our arms beat on the warm high waves. V E N O U S meat soup on a wheel. Spinning. Splashing out walkers. Singers. Flyers, TINY EATERS. Innocence is driven by lion faces. Dreams being flesh in a universe of wings R E A L M S of glorious sound. MYSTERIOSO F O U RA CHUNK OF LAPIS. (CHUNK) HELD BY THE SILVERON MY WRIST. ORANGE beads of coral. Pitted with cavities OF AGE. Encircling the blue-black stone flecked WITH GOLD. (T h e m a g i c.) THIS SCIENCE IS LOVE. The tiniest microbe lies adjacent to the larger. A CHUNK feeding and receiving in a secret ocean. Glowing like a new bodhisattva and an etched line by Rembrandt. Plain as snakes' eyes. MYSTERIOSO F I V ECORRUPT AND DIMPLED BY IMAGINATION.Nothing corrupt. Perfect as a griffon by Blake. Corrupt as a cloud of unknowing visioned beneath the underside of the belly. ME, OUTSIDE OF IT RISING (while it rises) INTO BEINGS WITH CORN FIELDS. A REDWOOD FOREST. ENCIRCLING A DAYDREAM growing living fur of sables. I K N O W T H I S and remember old friends living or dead for a moment. Reflections around MY BARE KNEES in the stream. MYSTERIOSO S I XPAWS. TO ALL PAWS LIVING AND DEAD.Nebulae glitter on claw tips by soft pink pads. No pause to the smell of bosomy fennel in vacant lots by crumbling RED BRICKS when the rain starts. A DEER AT THE TOP OF THE HILL. Mist and a star in his antlers. I am here without paws. Searching for the trillion billion senses. • D I S P R O V E all but imagination, INSPIRATION, and the reflections, and counter-reflections, of energy. Sow bugs sleeping in cold owl burrows dream destinies AND FIRE. MYSTERIOSO S E V E NSENSE. SENSE OF THE CANDLE'S LIGHT.SILVERY GLOW. FEATHERY STAR OF THE HALO. Sparks flicker the fingertips. Field of creatures nestled on the tongue. The nose. The fern. Feel the real muscular animal power. The sense of haunches and wrists is reason. Reason is non sense draped in velvet of senses AND WHISKERS and blood streaming veins. Blind till caution is shattered like a wind shield. H E R E I S SOUL MAKING. Ordinary, useless, lovely as a beggar dying in cold shadows by her cardboard box. MYSTERIOSO ( ( A ) )BUILD. BUILD BOLD LOVING ARMS.Build new love. Over and over. Boulders on the sea shore. Build with the fecal smell of the final wreckage and roaring smoking destruction. Morph the feared and debased into luxury OF CONSCIOUSNESS as a microbe on a wet boot sole in a movie theater creates the energy of stars. NOW WE ARE EAGLES in the realm of eagles' wings. (NOW WE ARE AUTOMATONS of reductionist technology. ) BUILD LIFE. BUILD DEATH. FREE OF THE WHEEL. MYSTERIOSO (( B ))STAND. UNDERSTAND. STAND PAT ON THE SENSES.THE EYE SEES MORE than the heart knows. Stand up in the peace horrors and decadent war. Admit the deep power and your love of torture. THE TEASING OF FLESH. Say, this too is a shape of love before love. Now it is time to choose: "NO! NO, TO THE HIDEOUS LOVELINESS." Soon I will protect all beings and stand softly with a big smile. MYSTERIOSO E I G H TBLACK ARISEN TO BLACK ROSES IS VOICESBETWEEN PETALS. The yellow centers with anthers B E G I N WITH BLACK. Lonely. Sweet as honey. Overpopulated by blossoms and petals. Consciousness narrowly streams like a nematode, muscularly, between plastics and hunks OF MANUFACTURED THOUGHT. Through births of new hatreds --poisonous as ever. Greedy for ignorance as a sitcom. And we stretch in this bed touching shoulders just as whales and mice do. MYSTERIOSO N I N EFORGIVE CORE OF THE MEAT. FORGIVE MEAT FLESH.Forgive rage. Also kindness. Touch gentle in this strange spot. ALWAYS VISITED. THE CORE OF ALL REALMS --of chickadees, tadpoles, living droplets, blazing minuscule FURNACES. A TRILLION BILLION INSIDE OF ANOTHER LIKE AN ONION, spraying heavens that intermix while we slide through shallow crevices. EMOTIONS. WATERFALLS. • Frozen ponds with goldfish alive and swimming in the black water. YES! --AND MUCH MORE SING! MYSTERIOSO T E NGREEN GRASS IN RAIN. BLUE-GREEN EYES.Grass calling up yellow violets. Root notes seethe back and forth. Aligned to the flash of no matter. NADA OF GREEN SPRING in midwinter. "Spring up green freshet." Blue-green eyes, nourish like the storm and horse head cliffs. PLIANT DIMENSIONS. Interludes L A U G H while lipids turn over dancing and thundering under deer hooves. A HANDFUL OF MYRIADNESS. Finished at Tulum, Quintana Roo, Mexico MYSTERIOSO E L E V E NSTREAM OF FACES. FACES ON SAND GRAINSUNDER THE OSPREYS AND HIGH GREEN WAVES. STREAM OF ROARING NEURON LACE, S I L E N T as pink buds of peyote. Free in the preserve the soul inspires. No beginning or end (like a pelican gliding low over breakers where the night will be star sparks.) M E A T. PLAIN RED MEAT, PLAIN DULL THING. STREAMING BULK OF DELICATE HULKING IMAGINATION VAST AND FAR LESS AND TINIER TOO. Tulum, Quintana Roo, Mexico MYSTERIOSO T W E L V EENERGY OF DARKNESS. ENERGY OF LIGHT.Each is a speck of the other, hallucinations of being, when what matters is the interwarmth of our eyes IN THIS almost secret place. Mined out of a wall of turquoise and gold SOFT WINGS ON OUR BROWS ARE NOT like the sprays of the blue-black spumes from our foreheads. THE NEW BLACK COAT is the skin of a mammal in candle light. War enters on mammoth feet, and courage and the energy of Reason respond. MYSTERIOSO T H I R T E E NSMILE. SMILE WITH THE SOFT EDGEOF THE MIND. Pliant as the lip of an abalone. Strong as the smallest worm in it's harshest and tenderly nourishing realm. NO MIND. NO BODY. GONE. GONE. I stroke my hands over my chest and your buttocks WE SMILE INSPIRED by protein pleasure and loveliness. So solid. We defeat presence or nothingness. All of me and all of you ARE this cameo of perfection with smooth polished edges. THIS IS REALLY IT! |
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