dear beast loveliness by tim j. myers

7/30/2019 Dear Beast Loveliness by Tim J. Myers

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DEAR BEAST LOVELINESS:POEMS OF THE BODY

BY TIMJ.MYERS

B L A Z E V O X [ B O O K S ]Buffalo, New York


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DEAR BEAST LOVELINESS: POEMS OF THE BODYBy Tim J. Myers

Copyright 2013

Published by BlazeVOX [books]

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced withoutthe publishers written permission, except for brief quotations in reviews.

Printed in the United States of America

Interior design and typesetting by Geoffrey GatzaCover art: 'Birth-Ascension' by Tim J. Myers

First EditionISBN: 978-1-60964-123-8Library of Congress Control Number: 2012920899

BlazeVOX [books]76 Inwood PlaceBuffalo, NY 14209

[email protected]

Publisher of weird little books

BlazeVOX [ books ]

blazevox.org

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Portrait of Anyone

At first no more than microscopic pearldescending on dark watersthrough strange passageways deep in a woman's body,there to be met by ecstatic crowding messengers eachbearing a kind of self--at first no more than pale sun surroundedby insistent burrowing stars:This is egg and sperm.This is one of us.

And then: eyes looking around,maybe brown, maybe blue flecked with gold,two small round skies that see.If you remove a cell from a living heart,the cell will continue to beat.

And me with this tree in my chestthat breathes my life,

this blood-fountain at my center,its innumerable riversflowing to distant countries allwithin--

and then the meat that thinks,that dreams of roses here behind my eyes.

Exactly what stupendousinaccessible secretof mortalityare we?


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Hymn to Carbon

Oh you run dancing through all my cells!spinning yourself out in this vast strict flowingof miracles that I am--oh Simple-made-many, wild Intricate,pure and prime as the number one, yet multiple!Naming myself I numberblood, bones, flesh, heart, mind--but you run deeper than these,far deeper in all that I am or do,

root of the roots of myselfand of selves uncountable.You are the inconceivable Brahman downin my joy at love-making,you the seminal smoke of my anger, core of my reverence,power beneath my muscles as they thrill to their special electricity,beneath my kindness, my memory of words or faces,my waking, my sleep,there at the very tick of the voicelessness sayingMe.

I'll offer you prayers, wine, flowers,as from existence itself you draw outsuch music as is my being,such billion inwoven melodies,bonding, forming chains and rings,as if running your tireless fingers overunimaginable instruments.


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For Nick

Two days after Voyager's robot sensorsfirst gathered the music of Saturn (its toning cry,where solar wind meets planetary bow shock,fired back to Earth across a billion miles)

and we stood in the auditorium to hearover the big speakersits boom and crackle and bell-like moan--

two days after, I stood by your mother and heardyour birthday arrive, fetal monitortransmitting to us from the depths of her bodythat muffled whooshing of your tiny heart.

So tell me, Nick: Which was more mysterious,and which came from farther away?


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Uterus

Oh pagan organ,how far our sons and daughters have gone,pale Christians that theyno longer adore you


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Bulletin Board

Walking a university hall, I pulled up hardto see livid photographs on some bulletin boardoutside the Speech and Hearing Department--God forgive me but they looked likevaginas:big rude OKeefian blossoms,each wet and reddish-pinkwith a great biconvex slit in the middle,cats-pupil shape opening onto darkness of the inner body,

slender red lips on either side--

and it took me a moment to realize:Of course. Vocal cords.

But all that day and night it kept at me, murmuring,this sacred visceral coincidence:sister organs that out of darknessbring new beings to thresholds of flesh,

upwellings of the infinite mystery:

child--utterance.


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To My Sibling, Miscarried 1956

Catching a fragrance of nectarines

from the basket on the table,

I feel how strange it is

that you're not here,

find myself wondering who you might have been.

At my grade school, well-meaning nuns

gave us their strange perfunctory tale

of unborn babies drifting in Limbo.

But I was born, and have come to fruit,my sons on the floor here

giggling and bucking like horses,

as if five short years ago

neither was compounded of infinite nothingness.

Now that the mystery of Me is a bit clearer

in the mystery of Them,

I think of You who never came from our mother,

you who are less now thana fragrance of nectarines

in a breeze from the window so slight

only my new-shaven face can feel it.


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Sun Dance(for D.K.)

A woman we know bears a recessive geneand wed it to her husband's own beyond all likelihood

and so gave to their five children

a rare disease that slowly destroys the nerves

and closes over the soul in a useless body.

Even if I made a sweat and purified myself with sage,

gashed arms and chest for this family,

my supplicant blood flowing free as prayer--if I

calmed my spirit, hung myself from the great

center pole of the Sun until

the prongs tore through my chest--

even if visions came sunbursting over me like

white clouds tumbling above the plains,

even then, none of this would change for them.


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A Catholic Boy

Sister says to fold our hands,

to think of God and His Holy Mother.

But I'm distracted by the coolness

of my palms against each other.


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Anorexia

My sister died when none of us were looking.

She'd grown thin as a rake-handle, leaf-thin,

cold as November wind, an autumn world

withdrawn into its narrowing self.

We were many and loud with desires,

a big happy family, the envy of others,

played basketball in our parents driveway,

drank beer and talked long into the night,

ate like farm animals. But she'd learned

to hate food, to fear it,slowly became a desperate impoverished dictatorship

sealing its own borders. She moved to Chicago,

left teaching to become a flight attendant,

loved us quietly from the distance

her new appetite for suffering forced her to,

from jet aisles where she served food to strangers,

looking appropriately slender in her uniform.

We loved the sun, met for family dinners,

began producing grandchildren,went camping out under the bright fertile stars--

forgive us, we didn't want to know

how the planets were spinning out of their orbits,

drifting, fragmenting, colliding

there in her head.


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Poem for My Sister Who Died Anorexic

Dear one, gone so long ago:

Last night we were watching TV and got hungry,

so I heated up some leftover pizza from that place down the street

and we ate.

The many tastes mingled in our mouths,

cheese, pepperoni, olives, onions, crust,

and we drank orange juice with it,

so sweet you could taste the daylight

of that far sky where the orange tree was.Afterwards,

happy in body's contentment and

innocent love of food,

happy too in human satisfaction,

I lay down to sleep beside the one I love.


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A Bit of Advice for Times of Trouble(found poem)

The body carriesthat incontestable flawless artistry

of forgetful joy, happy

animal, its members

boast of nothing,

are neither monumental

nor especially concerned,

cannot derive from experience

any great fear or hope

(though body is

pavilion of all we

dream or love or dread),

loses all trace

of the broken sentences

anxiety setsrunning through us,

carries no self-hurting force

unless we insist it,

huddles over no cares

but the simplest, stamps out

no bitter ritual-groundsof recrimination within the self,

is like glass or rock crystal,

takes the sunlight, gives it back,

can be destroyed, but for now

is just a man--a woman--a child.

dear beast loveliness by tim j. myers

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