Obsidian
Gene Fowler

A pilgrim's processional

"your poems carved from obsidian"
A way of telling me
I have the Evil Eye.

Cut away from poet scenes. Di...vision
Nobody is left to talk to.
Slumping in Hardcastle's coffee house. Die...vision.
Can't get it out.
Not the landscape wasted, Mr. E.
Me wasted, image chained in the center of my head.
My monastery: place of singled star.
"Man" s p e l l e d backward is "name".

Unhoused and living on sidewalks.
Walking all night; watching for the sun.
Hello Helios!
Food over Berkeley hills, an eating of pure light.
On sight: loosing belly snakes
held tight lest space winds suck the last crawling
      into their black draft,
the sun coming yellow obsidian.

No winter in Berkeley
according to the sleepers behind steamed windows.
Blood running silver
in my 3:00 a.m. veins.
6:30 a.m.    yellow-brown iodine stain
turn my head inside out
a flower opening.

Midnight coffee house closure
ejecting mumbling freaks into the night,
Venus long gone    earlier a diamond tip
on the moon's horn. Mars hot.
Walked night sidewalks
Hunting poems in the greyed, grainy stuff.
Walking night sidewalks
                                    now
for lack of a bed's rent
feet fading into the grey blocks.


Walk diametered night.
Walk against being busted for having no place to go.
Walk to shove blood through slowing serpent body.
Walk to get away from each spot as it takes on the smell
      of my death place.
Sidewalk mania
fingers tipped
into wet cement
years earlier,
glyphs deciphering into
"return to go."

Mist.
Glasses evolving into ice.
I look out through frozen waterfalls.
Owl telling me: "Get off my turf."
Beak shattering the water.

Color sucked from the flowers
by vampire night. Night underneath
teeth sunk into pores.

Watch beat slamming my wrist
breaking up my pulse
sending its spiked blows
to cramp my heart.

Along sides of the street
see...mental squares
in mazed sequence
for a poet's sightings.
My ghost going back to a coffee table and
      warming ghost hands around a wavering cup,
telling the Virginia Slim girl
against a burlap coffee bean sack,
"I'd take yeh home
an' fuck yeh into smoke, jinn;
but livin' like I do
I've lost my ki."

Stoned on cold.
Window's echoed light a man of blue granite.

Wanted, from the beginning, to teach.
To reach a poetfinger (non-electric brain probe)
into the quiet cells
and waken the fine hairs, the nerve hairs,
      the light drafting edges.
Secret of Jupiter: induce flow.
Nothing thrown. All done with mirrors.

Helios!
The pyre amid the ghosts in my senses.
My feet are numb and numb the two legs.
My back is numb and time, gone numb, stops its flow.
A wooden bench melts to velvet.
A magnet of velvet tugging at my back, flesh drawn out
      from my rib cage
but lying down is a bust, a sun-burst of cop
in dark arrest.
Demon screeching under the street lamps
of his city.

Thick maple light in Mel's drive-in
      and golden waffles to soak it up,
if pocket lint were gold.
Stopped hands of the watch just above my stopped hand.
Blood running silver
in my 3:05 a.m. veins.
6:30 a.m.    yellow-brown vomit stain
stomach heat
a seared line in the sky.

My ghost going back to a coffee table and
      warming ghost hands on a wavering white dwarf,
silvered see...mental squares
against burlap windows.
Water gas under grey coat.
Water gas under grey skin.
Water gas under grey nerve lining.
Breathing an icy placental water
      cold belly of a bitch Muse.

Blood running silver.
'Lectric pain.
3:47 a.m. 'lectric vein.
6:30 a.m.    platinum sky
gold tears fry
turn my head inside out
my hand on a cold dawn.

Night is 300,000 steps
on spongy knees
under broken lips and icicle nostrils.
Dawn is pale piss.
Everybody out and hurrying, hands in coat pockets.
And it's warm enough
to sleep on wet grass
dreaming a woman's warm belly
and smell of breakfasts
while ants crawl in my eyes.
Uncarved obsidian.


Gene Fowler
acorioso@earthlink.net