|
paul skyrm
paul skyrm is an aurora, ohio-based poet. he was recently
accepted to the jack kerouac school of disembodied poetics at
naropa institute in colorado. spskyrm416@aol.com
Works on this page:
om mane padme hum ( a poem in four parts)
Om Mane Padme Hum (a poem in four parts)
- !OM
-
- I naked spread starfish on corn-row carpet, washing Artemis'
garter,
- tub drawn with Virbius' liquefied bones
- where she cleanses dirth immersed in the mirth of her Gone
Before Us scorning lover.
- I naked am summoned RISE FROM DUMB-SLEEP
- by the ringing of Golgothic-tazmanian-Eternal-alarm bells
- toiling on broken knees under coal mines in Heaven.
- Gizzard stalactite-toothed barber pole heaves itself against
smooth loins
- ROUSE ME FROM DUMB-SLEEP.
- Through open window onto white,
- I doth hike round blackened coiled larvae disaster street
- past dead Dalai Lamas who fill the rotunda
- with fumes of hollow eyes & brains scooped from unbroken
Dharma skulls.
- Igloos spin & sparkle in radiant blue-light dome scattered
like fireflies skating on frozen lake
- Small Eskimos hunched backs .
- cut blubber from whales their children bang drums with wet
bones
- & SUMMON ME FROM DUMB-SLEEP.
-
- Underground, who cares how long the dick be?
- This dick out of which
- came
- body, the willow above ground
- climbed & fortified by children of grime & jam.
-
- I AM SUMMONED FROM THIS DUMB-SLEEP.
-
- Underground, are we tunnels?
- Subterranean septic cerebellum system
- through which maniacal rivers of spectres ruddy skeletons
bawl;
- flushed down their own throats!
- perpetual devourment - eat oneself to die, fall under to
live.
-
- Downtown bloody streets lap up towards their own shadow
- & funnel towards parking garages, CONRAIL railroad skeletons
- where stuffed under gallows, I find the dirty notebook of
Grandfather David Skyrm.
- Pages whirling in rigormortis
- all left blank save for his name
- misspelled in jaundiced first page right corner street light.
- Crooked letters, blackbirds perched on chicken-wire fence
- overtaken in landscape by country road weeds & bell towers.
- Underground, boxcars loaded up with coal silver & Messiah
- Link themselves rear to face and gallop to the next kingdom
with nothing in-between.
-
- Stroll down tracks.
- whistle blows up ahead & the erosion of metal upon metal
makes a desperate roar
- through the caverns of my dreams.
- I shall always trod behind this train,
- never to see what I hear, or hear what I see;
-
- underground I walk in the ashes of bodies abandoned in vacant
apartment crack-houses,
- underground I step in the ashes of bones & flesh that
locked me down in madness,
- and failed me riding out on steed into forest
- broadsword ripping through neck from behind,
- I could not see the coyote for the forest.
-
- underground is the funeral pyre Eternal rages.
-
- Below the streets & hills I have come to do what must
be done.
-
- Balance steps everything falls away but steel & wood.
- Ghost taxi cabs hurl round mountain tops below.
- Catatonic steeple eyes where death doth overflow
- spitting refineries chisel smoke from smoke
- & tighten rivets rising from the antlers of machine-mind.
-
- GREAT GOD OF LOST MEASURE!
- I see behind glass & wire.
-
- GREAT SHIVA OF ABANDONED HOPE!
- The bells do show & cackle in spindly echoes!
- The lion coy in wait! POUNCES!
-
- Satori of dust
- Rises
-
- GREAT VISHNU OF SUNYATA!
-
- I hoist these ashes to my lips
- & blow
-
- Hundreds, thousands, millions, ten millions, hundred millions
of banana trees
- stumble over three slouched midnight brakemen rising from
the sea
- shuffling onto muddy banks.
-
- June 13, 2002
- 12:23PM
-
- MANE
-
- Where the sun shadow breaks through glass in the oak floored
- three windowed dining hall, a trapezoid of chameleon casts
itself
- across golden oval table spiders up geranium papered walls
- & meets itself at the other end in skylight.
-
- OM! OM! OM!
-
- I THANK YOU FOR THIS MEAL;
- I BOW IN THE PRESENCE OF THE THREE REFUGES.
- FOR THE PEOPLE WHO MADE THIS MEAL CREATIVE,
- I THANK YOU FOR THIS MEAL.
- FOR THE SHARING OF VARIOUS FORMS OF LIFE,
- I THANK YOU FOR THIS MEAL.
-
- OM! OM! OM!
-
- Sometimes you have to sacrifice the living with the dead
-
- like a halo for toothless angels, we three beggars of Aurora
are feasting
- on mom's chicken & fried rice supper
- in the teardrop.
-
- A house finch has made home tucked between deck-light lantern
and back shack wall.
- Her nest spun as Gandhi wound India into fine threads of
loon cry on loom
- clenched between thighs skinny as dogwood branches who have
lost their Way.
-
- Scrape last bits of rice with fork-side hoist to mouth &
delight in eating my sorrow.
- Mother & papa discuss dirty bombs & dirty assholes
raise cobalt blue wine glasses above head
- using drunkenness as searchlight for the harbor shrouded
between black waters.
-
- OM! OM! OM!
-
- I THANK YOU FOR THIS MEAL;
- I BOW IN THE PRESENCE OF THE THREE REFUGES.
- FOR THE PEOPLE WHO MADE THIS MEAL CREATIVE,
- I THANK YOU FOR THIS MEAL.
- FOR THE SHARING OF VARIOUS FORMS OF LIFE,
- I THANK YOU FOR THIS MEAL.
-
- OM! OM! OM!
-
- I bow in the presence of things seen & unseen,
- I belong to both & neither!
-
- Walk around the table where dad vacates the head chair and
retreats to living room
- below sea level,
- television & Northfield track results stuck on last page
of Plain Dealer Sports.
-
- Momma yanks the white tank top covering my torso
- and brings me down to where she kisses my forehead.
- She clears the table & I walk outside.
-
- Mother Finch waves of albino & concrete fan her body.
- She sags her empty belly swivels head West to East keep watch
- & incubates 4 thimble eye eggs,
- 4 caves of castrated crucified Jesus
- 4 Noble Truths broken in 4 Noble Shells
-
- 1! For the headless child flooding his mother's casket.
- 1! For the ghosts who watch over this child on the first
night.
- 1! For splintered larch raft & nappy rope carrying out
her body to the other shore
- 1! For the Buddha That Is Yet To Hatch finch who claws through
ice & brimstone
- through shell & shit for ice & brimstone shell &
shit.
-
- Father House Finch, war paint of buffalo superciliary worn
as prayer flag
- streaked over eye to crown pulls in to the station.
- What coup did he count?
- The runaway bandit drops a feast of worms into Mother's mouth,
- flits away to fir and watches from afar.
-
- Mother dogged
- Sharp quick head darts.
- rustles in the woods could be hawk 'coon or human.
-
- I walk around front where momma now clips spindly-arms
- from ghost-bog-dogwood.
- Branches with no leaves or brown shriveled dragons must be
cut from the body,
- keep from draining the tree of heartwood.
-
- Sometimes, Sandie Jean Marie Giampapa Skyrm chops a healthy
branch
- in pursuit of renegade thieves and when healthy arteries
are sliced blood gushes
- and she is empty handed and she drops upon knees
- contorting her body into that dreadknot teardrop & bellows
to Heaven,
- Eli, Eli, Lamma, Sabacthani!
- Eli, Eli, Lamma, Sabacthani!
-
- And I see St.Francis on his knees begging in snow for stones
& rocks
- from Pope Innocent III frost-bite raging through his body
- resurrecting the little church of San Damiano with every
crawl.
-
- And I see Siddartha on dagger tip knees in Rajgriha disillusioned
with Kalamo and Ramputto
- the body mortified, burlap bag of bones
- and he finds Enlightenment in the singing & dancing of
three girls, kimnaras in ripped blouses.
- You have not been forsaken, nor do you drive the last nail
through flesh into bone!
-
- Momma!
- you make of yourself a church,
- your arms the pews,
- your legs the congregation
- & the teacher your cradled heart!
- the Church is flesh & bone,
- the teachings are in stripping away death from life
- & life from death the dogwood is Eternity, you
are the Gold!
-
- Reach out my hand & help momma rise.
- Walk to the back door.
- Papa darts out with an orangutang between his legs
- smoking two cigarettes and plays water pistols with the squirrels
sawing through birdseed.
-
- Beneath the lantern, 4 egg shells cracked.
- 2 babies frying into cherrywood deck under white sun.
- Mother shades tiny shrieks.
- Disjointed song rumbles over head.
-
- Wheeeeer che-urrrrrrrrrrrr
-
- June 13, 2002
- 4:16PM
-
- PADME
-
- i.
-
- St.Francis stands still as windstone,
- embedded deep in the brush of hilltop Beech Court cottage
backyard forest.
- Bought for seventy-five dollars at the down street round
corner past turnpike overpass
- Tanglewood nursery after I slipped Ben Franklin into dad's
Friday straight leg
- cowboy wrangler jeans gift from gift received after
hitting two trifectas in a row
- with Good Pilgrim Friend Bryan Gattozzi
- at Northfield Arcade & Harness Amusement Calvacade,
- four-hundred and fifty fife bucks just fourteen hours ago.
- Momma had been looking for St.Francis all her life
downtown Netwon Falls with its
- slackeyed concrete steps along quicksand sidewalks
- leading up to narrow black walnut doors with picture windows
and third eye blinds
- opening into dusty bookstores where Milton Blake Whitman
Lorca Tagore Han
- Shan Li Po Kerouac Corso Langston Zora Zara hack stacked
side by side in old
- barn wood bookshelves & Ray Bradbury is named Author
of The Year, 1957 for
- Dandelion Wine.
- The store wreaks of decomposing pages bound to spine of regret
madness sorrow llanto.
- Its almost as if my mother of 10 walked into a morgue and
saw for the first time
- the little ashen girl
- drowned just three days ago in Lake Milton whose black &
white picture
- next to death call in the Register was a snapshot of her
on wedding day,
- that she hadn't really died but stepped off the wheel for
A MILLION KALPAS.
- How young she looked naked on steel table;
- terrible shiny putrid quick-witted instruments lay on rolling
table,
- blue paper cloth in between momma too 'fraid to touch her
- her bridegroom should be the last to embrace this little
bride.
- Momma walks past the bookstore past Church Mouse and the
A&P where her father shoots
- dice in steel garbage can alley behind the meat counter with
Blackie, Duma, & Ivan
- stealing money from the till
- while Hoover leaps from college towers in lace teddy &
cat-eye glasses.
- Still she could not find St.Francis in the white stone drugstore,
at the Hot Dog Shoppe,
- shooting baskets in the Tiger Home Basketball Court, listening
to transistor
- in boiler room to ghost voices shooting over the waves,
- huddled under soda fountain counter awaiting the Bomb.
- No St.Francis at Ruth's Ladies Apparel where her mother sat
befuddled at the register
- counting yesterday's crumpled bills ruddy cents whispering
under breath
- her Commandments & Hailing Mary to a point of wonder,
and astonishment that
- perhaps
- she was talking to herself and Our Father ran through the
stock room in fear of the
- voices in His head.
- Momma had searched for St.Francis 55 years as we pace up
the dirt paths of this nursery 2002
- and for seventy-five bucks St.Francis rolls away on a flat
bed slab towards
- automobile trunk where past turnpike overpass round corner
down the street on
- hilltop
- behind cottage the squirrels chipmunks bucks does blue jays
cardinals
- sparrows hawks owls coyotes light the forest on fire and
sing in their revolution
- Repair Our Church Repair Our Church Repair Our
Church.
-
- ii.
-
- At the nursery, there was a stall about 20 yards from St.Francis
and 'round it ran
- a banyan fence
- made from the tree of India a bundle of reeds lit and stuffed
into Indra's mouth
- Momma left herself to meander amongst the adolescent trees
roots caged by burlap Maples
- resting on oaks overturned sycamores & firs all laying
beleaguered and stoned on
- concrete.
- Poppa and I, hands stuck in pockets, head towards straw &
smells of shit.
- Inside, a momma lamb and her baby hide and shitting in the
sun next to them is Daisy, a donkey
- too old to squat.
- We hang on the fence & pet Daisy when she lets us.
- The lambs reserved tend to stay in shade, though the baby
pokes its head out, wonders
- why poppa & I are here.
-
- As Stratocumulus pass in front of the Sun overhead, shade
is a lie told by death to chain-gangs
- Wacking wildflowers & weeds side of Kansas County Road
17
- while straight-backed hard-ons grow under saturated Dungarees.
- The lambs are lighted!
- My father rubs Daisy on Continental Ridge between thick black
eyes like funeral procession
- stepping long elegant strides through Andalusia bearing on
shoulders
- Lorca's gargantuan empty coffin.
- Poppa stares in awe at the coarse coat & Cro-Magnon mandible
nose bridge.
- There is suffering here, poppa would rather ease the donkey's
woe.
-
- Baby lamb trots over to me, far enough away from my reaching
between banyan trees.
- I stretch & tear like Stratos drifting across this lamb's
eyes.
- Somewhere between in the blue sky, I trust he finds his mother
never moved from his side.
-
- Little Lamb! Little Lamb!
- Tell me! Tell Me!
-
- Have I damned your mother?
- Have I damned your name?
-
- And poppa nuzzles Daisy, momma scales sunflowers like amrita
towers
- and the Lamb with mother turns from me & wissssssssssssssssssss
across straw
- back inside this little stall surrounded by chest high banyan
- & I bow-
-
- the Church rebuilt.
-
- June 17, 2002
- Aurora, Ohio
- 3:34PM
-
- HUM!
-
- With this out-breath,
- your suffering extinguished.
- In this stillness,
- may the Devils learn you cross the river
- by the ringing of a bell.
- With this in-breath,
- may you wake from DUMB-SLEEP
- charge headlong for some ancient shore
- rising out of the Ocean that is in-between
- & listen for the Lamb who bleets for you in shadows.
-
- June 17, 2002
- Aurora, Ohio
- 3:38PM
|
