|
TEMPLUM REPOSTS
|
Stanley Gemmell
|
Oct 14, 2008 08:31 PDT
|
some templum reposts... for your enjoyment******
-STANLEY
Aphrodite, Lithe, Ascending Drum Beat
She comes from the sea foam
Already sophisticated 34-24-34
My hand reaches aeons old
Wet sand that is gold
Through my fingers her hair
Has platinum snails sleeping
In my hands the story
Like a faience
I give to her
Eyes cast down
For fear of the Goddess
I have in my hands a necklace
That is a dream
She gave to me
For worshipping her
The sand comes alive
At her look figures rise
And attend to me
Gorgeous, dripping, gigantic
Green butterflies fly from her breast
Where they had been sleeping
Love is fulfilled
STANLEY GEMMELL
Sep30, 1999
The arrogant voices
enframed in your images
Contesting ideas
seeming chosen
Distinct features seem
Parts of a dream
There, two shards
of an emerald
Or else, pure dark
Night in your look
Your hair
A madrigal
Lips of soft,
Insane pink.
I think the sadness
I see in you is from
Your beauty
STANLEY GEMMELL
12/22/99
AT THE POOL
stanley gemmell
Sweetness of the world blurred my eyes
At the pool
Hydra headed fallacy of cinders: I,
The Pheonix,
Continuously fall in love, while her parents,
Convinced it will rain,
Prepare her things to go home.
It is better
This way I think: while
One of her
Many gorgeous heads breaks the surface
Of the water
Her pink mouth opens - O
For a gulp of air.
The ambient fear is broken
By the occasion of my brother,
Cannonball-Jim
Who crashes into the deep end
With a splash and, again,
Makes the world begin.
_____
July 25, 1999
S.Gemmell
Because The Star is Sentient
here come the fugue with ease
no one said he was not practitioning
,,,friend,,,slow thoughtfulness of spirit
preaching, smiling, he is impotence of stare
no where his food steamed and so he thought
,,,,,,alive,,,where there is tenderness of roses
her lips or hair cascade thick mutiny of eyes
here come the fugue with ease
the simplestof them says the words:
Beauty, there is no intention for you
Beauty, you are as disingenuous as the moon
When you have opened your last, lunar, living
Eye, you will have opened your mouth and
Your teeth are diamonds and there are souls
In them, when you have grown membraneous
And green and scaled, sacred, pale and gleaming
Beauty there is no intention for you
Beauty, you are as far fetched as that
sentient Star, Over-There, opening it's eyes
may, 1998
3 poems which are critical of the loved object
You and I were born beneath a flag
We watched the waters grow
Everything we did we did for love
Now it is sunset we carry flowers
We breathe the heavy sea
There spilling secrets
A translucent design
Fixed calendar dates
Copper twine
Ink
While the quiet spreads
To the neighbor's mouth
Stitched into light
Blue
When we are at war
Words wear warm
Shadows
Photographs develop
Ghostly after images
Words were wicked
Arranged chaotically
STANLEY GEMMELL
Dear beauty
in loving you
I have written
Dreams cross
Your perils
Clouds have
Researched your
Body
Lilting song you
extend
Coldly white
Sulfuric within
Woman and witch
willing
With one worded
Stare
Green when you
darken-to... kiss
me
stanley gemmell
Stanley Gemmell Presents:
"Catacomb Nursery Stones"
-Each Stanza Rocks...
_____
At the bottom
Of memory
The soul renounces
It's descent
Having been made
More pure
By necessity...
Daydreaming of my beloved
Wastes the flesh from my bones
Withers my mind and power
Until, empty, I reflect the sky
Of Heaven when at war...
That is when my angel darkens
And takes on the human face,
Offers Chance as Divine Grace,
And I cower...
Only the lovely Hope is left
Who guides my gaze and tread
With a bamboo staff...
I remove twelve masks from my visage,
One for each month for each name
Exchanged in hurried alleyways...
With a knife of pure gold
My dreamt of lover
Cuts the bonds
At the wrist
Natural Child is wild
Nearby Birds hover
Sluttish above
The pond
Streaking sunlight
Into my eyes,
Los Angeles,
Providing sanctuary,
Becomes the aviary
For black haired,
Autumn covered
Blues
Life around me
unfolds
Its moves upon
giant
Chessboards whose
Squares alternate
Between Church
And State
_____
DEC11
1999
AMMA
Fossilized. Coral round your neck. Color of the yellow beige she
has valued according tag to laws of loneliness, thousands of years
older than the fossils themselves. you She are loves: scrape of
jagged sea at tender nape of neck, shape of the liquid, skeletal
life gone red.
The body has learned to imitate stone like the marine life has also
learned to imitate stone and at your skin the reminder of this hard-
ness provokes a clutching worry. She is uneasy because the whole
world loses itself in her folds. Hides the crack of thunder, the
black and inedible seaweed's berry, the electrified ocean, the city
at sea's melting wax. Hides the ghost which for ages was respon-
sible for making the fluid harden, and the one who set it aflame
in imitation of the dark light at sundown and this was particular
to her: that it at her core was a congealed, difficult and ample
pleasure.
First you were Aura, she who feeds on light; and when this know-
ledge was sufficient you became Aurum and you were stained
red and you decided to become a queen. You waited at night for the
roof of the sky to open and from sea for sea-blest yellow seaweed.
On an island who was secret you also waited for the cloud shapes
who populated its vaulted ceiling to speak with them and wait for
the young, time, who would populate the secret with stories.
So it happened you came to know forest and mountaintop, river
and sea and you changed your fortune at will to reflect the truth.
1996
S.Gemmell
BERLIN
sounds of cars
people rush by
under our window
roses laid fresh
on the walkways.
in our room, a
scent of flowers,
a sex smell, and
cars rush by and
people walk beneath
our window-carefully-
avoiding the rose
with their workday
shoes. We hug each
other tight to avoid
these sounds-carefully-
so as not to bruise
the tender spaces we
have opened in each
other, the pink and dark
red areas of trust lying
as opened and exposed as
we are on our bed
of flowers, as naked as
we are, lying on
the other's stomach
holding each other's
back, on our bed
in the city.
carressing the sore
spots until the sobbing
stops the laughing stops
and only the sounds
of the cars rushing by
and the people carefully
walking through a lovely
patch of roses and the
flowers of our own room
stealthily opening their petals
to peek through and
glance at us holding each
other, loving each other
in silence abuzz with all
the life of emotion.
our sex bed. our love bed.
and us two, naked, in
the city.
1993
S.Gemmell
BOULEVARD
I painted you a picture. Ink of my blood,
Pen of a sliver of fingernail,
I told you how much I feared to lose you.
A picture of a hundred thousand
Angels running away from home
(to hit the streets). In the background,
Brooding, an indifferent, gray sky tells
Of a missed rendezvous. Where
Were you? it seems to be saying
(but it isn't saying this at all, it's
only saying, I understand).
The angels are wearing fire.
The further they fly from home,
The more the flames engulf them.
The first to go is living agony. She
Does not look back, as if home had
Disappeared when she'd left. She
Stands below a street sign writhing,
A pillar of flame.
The sun is nowhere in sight in
This picture. A painting made of
Every left over word, every
Word I have never used to love you.
Neither is there a river.
Only angels pouring down
With the heat of gravity
Like rain into a tar pit.
1992
CHARLOTTE
(POEM BY STANLEY GEMMELL)
(RIGHTS RESERVED)
charlotte
the sky is God's face behind you
with tears of shadow and black eyes
I love you for the light. Child
of the elven race there are no words
You are too beautiful to speak only silence
and you find jewelled bridges in the
perfection of thought so the beach you
are on and the sea close by fall to many pieces
and the poppies of your body drown
people fishes who are looking at the
closeness of water...temptation rust
of the temple I have become and finally
cities worn like rings on your fingers
The ringlets of light of your hair has
incidentally praised
Charlotte (you) should
never cry the expensively
expansive slowness of
willows or swans
you (should) mediate a
meditation over fear
Holding languages with
Both hands, one hidden
charlotte of both hands
i am your bonus charlatan
supposedly found in the box
& a word as pale as any
in the aforementioned plenty
would suffice to ignore you
if only songs would
replace themselves from France
we could dance
an acquired meridian
of fakery super
imposed
on hostile theories
but
poetry has eyes
(&)
you engraved the taste of
poverty on my tongue
with
thin edge of porcelain
ocean finger
nail
the
sky
rune scarred bark
of light for rhythmic
illness of loving you
but, charlotte with
smooth sea stone eyes a Cult of Provenance
has pierced small roots and sucked a marrow
of juice to come closer to the blurred light.
child of the wound and the bleeding tears
something has provided this secret gratitude
with a means of incontrevertible evidence:
greystone
writing
All the streets are reckoned
in my body in dreams. I
pass over traditions, corpses,
and their razor graze the skin
Again, I reach into death to
paint the huntsman atop his
white horse wreathed in fume;
or I fish for heart. In a crooked,
smiling conceit, the sky is filled by doves.
Death has stretched its unusual, taut silence
into the horizon. I recognize blue laws of
cause and effect in the body. When would
You not host the bronze collossus, Charlotte?
Charlotte, why were you an even
gaze of rain knelt in the water?
Even your absence leaves a mark.
When will you return (to) the wings
and chariots and feathers Burn
unbearable itching of love, charlotte,
why were you an even gaze of rain
water knelt in the ocean? Even your
silence speaks.
every spoon in the country
bowled like your body
curved into lines of
unseen belly:
the person furthest out at sea
bears some memory of you
_______
All the time stored in your lean breast!
It is a brown lizard with opal eyes
Staring into transfixed lungs of truth!
Muscles vibrate butterfly pains of holiness.
You will turn the young people into beautiful stones
And watch them grow mossy, like the lips
You fed upon in Ancient loveliness.
Every ship in space will bear grains of
You for an intergalactic harvest during
The autumn of the universe You will have
Remembered so many machines with
your name freshly spoken New lips of
Holy new years. Time can not be im-
properly measured! your desire grows
luminous flowers from my copper grass.
What is the name you
speak I take
but will not say? nor
avow, nor love, nor hate, nor ignore?
For
the most
part
I cannot remain
a collection.
How the hobgoblin's lips
sought mine, you would
not remind me of my
self, if you were not
chromatic,
how you shroud
the darkness of wine
in child light, I
have drunk a
distraction.
charlotte girl (i) suckle the Fang!
Charlotte, I suckle upon the Fang!
to have tried in vain to catch the marble eyes of statues
and to stir
unconsciously, like a river
to have at my disposal
all the peeled husks
of your beauty
to recycle the bloody swords of the saxons
to protest the selling of smiles
I kiss the knotted wood of your back
smooth the slopes of your thigh and belly
there is your hand, for me to touch
to take the depth, height and width
of these walls upon myself
every nation tumbles
cascading chevelure
(my morbidly bitten
peach)
twenty four hours of
circling you asleep
full-lipped, Girl
unforeseen
_____
cirque: (surk)n. [Fr.<Lat. circus, circle.] A steep hollow, often
containing a small lake, at the upper end of a mountain valley.
written by Stanley Gemmell
August 14, 1999
S.Gemmell
DAYBREAK
And so at the highest point I am also at my lowest for not being able to
withstand the original-other and also the all-other...I cannot not be,
therfor difference rusts my emptiness and the trace pricks at the film
of
my eyes like tattlers...And so at the highest point
Again, there is an irreducible seduction at hand, having to do with the
object of a conjuring, I must mistake myself from it and also there is
you
Lost and intoxicated from loneliness, only my shadow wanders. His
shadow stretching and mixing into mine. And he walks by.
There is a sadness the color of exactly the gray of your eyes and when
I try to see it it becomes a ball of string and falls out of the sky and
when I handle the fibres I can see a vision of the one who had woven it
Unless you are still laughing- like a water brook, or the way we avoid
the urn, at the exact moment when lust consumes itself
And also when the only sound made is the sound of one hand
clapping. It is incessant and lights fill your eyes and you tell me
Hell is
Other People, but I have not heard you
Or else there is still the consistency of doves and roses and when you
shed tears and have forgotten them they become diamonds
While nearby waits my ship, unscarred, and I have only the thankless
Moon to say hello to; but my sails have gotten drunk on the light and
they no longer know how to fill
While nearby waits my ship, unscarred, and all its honey begins to leak
and the sap mixes with the water until the yellow glows, and with the
light we gather we feed our young
So that all things have always, already come to pass but this is
not yet death and with the gray you are wearing I can become The
Lamb
And with the gray you are wearing I can become the sleet, tin roof. I
remember I used to see your neck flush. I am drunk with you.
DO IT YOURSELF DOLDRUMS
STANLEY GEMMELL - 1992
It's the same everywhere
children rising rows of
lilac lilly crocus rye
running chance meeting
fading leather sadness,
at this our mouth hungry
for beauty, for bits and
pieces of what's always
forgotten never spoken
this skin draping its
self over the roughened
contours of your face in
the laughing middle of a
wide eye field you tell
yourself that it's all
the same everywhere
templum
ECLIPSE
your leaving wicked orphan
left the phantom trace for
the shepherds converse
until Midnight Blue
will become another
one of your names
.
but for now you are
as blond
and burnt
as the peach
left too long
inside its own
density
.
eternity is what happens
looking at you, Wildflower
I am that country
your body lines on the map
sadness separate
from your blue green eyes
sadness separate
from the seventh or ninth month
with your name
returned to the book
angelic wildfinger
Dianthus
ruby throated stare sings
the muse electric
dark blond pelage
arms over arched in reaching
yet your quietly acute angle
from slenderest wrist
or sharpest elbow
describes the copper
I use to teach my tongue fellowship
Silence - neck and small of back
Silence heaving bones of bird wing
silence silver sinus
silence simple chloride
eternity is what helps thought
to sing you
especially since you curved
miles long like a train
You crazy locomotion
you
Pleasure pumping
blood
Red since last
Spoken word
Was the newsworthy
And noted names
For this world
Had ended
Only that certain
American pink
Can come closer
Only that olive grey
Illuminating iris
Onto ivory upper arm
Or sloping, angled shoulder blades
Black beneath nine mouths
Dirty, sunlit eyebrows
Sharp as scythes
Only rosy cheeks on which
Shrike alight after they have
Impaled their prey upon
Dark tips of your scapula
only certain ruin
your belly
and its broken, revolving
stars
the single sun curved
into that questioning hook
that same, clear look
slit with sadness
now I bring words to your eternity
_____
Stanley Gemmell
8/13/99
I am resting, this does not concern me. I am resting, I am at pause.
Let that errant streaking sign light up the night sky. My eyes
just did not seem so bright! I can only see the Omen as it were,
when you look at me, I am still sleeping. Dreaming
This must be wine, when we. Peace of mind eludes me. Come my fisher
queen ruby. Deep in this swamp, I am grey, since your words have taken
my words in shape.
When the governments of our dreamlands have finished confiscating
ungrace, let this be your single sentiment: the total eclipse of the
sun!
STANLEY GEMMELL
experiment in silence
EXTRA WORDS
they say you need it most when some body loves you say you need time the
most, time to who has time, and time to change songs into waystations *
pulling a chair closer to this object before us we see hands and what
these hands really mean are faces and these faces are telling us that
we're free * so quickly and more earnestly now there becomes a sensation
of intelligent home how quickly we have become of us like an experiment
* the way food memorizes us and favorite displacements: "Oh, I don't
have to work, today."
the skyline just continues, people filter in, maximize paradoxical loves
and musics and rhythms while the rest of the life that has already
happened finds us * I know this was thought impossible, now the words
are thinking *
written by stanley gemmell, april 29, 1999 return to templum
FLESHTONE VALENTINE
stanley gemmell, 1996
-the child has spread all the vitamins in neat rows and files
on the bedspread and is eating them one by one when
surprised by the return of the elder
The child angel's arrow would hopefully strike the heart
Filling the body. Orifices with forgetfulness and the arrow
made of salt would pierce the enflamed stone. Since the
pebble is partitioned into four pieces the missile would
cross each threshold only after renewed effort.
-you have to want it
The heart is fist sized. If you squeeze then relax your fist
it gives you an idea of what the heart must do millions of times
a month without ceasing to help carry blood through your veins.
In the right auricle, down your right ventricle to the lungs;
in your left auricle, down the right ventricle to the aorta,
the largest artery in the body. Over and over, it happens.
-a black boy... a huge man... the body of a woman with
the head and feet of a ram... a winged wolf... a scorpion
"I love you" breathes dragon smoke only with statistical urgency.
Each situation lends its horizon to the specific use and this plane
is stretched vertically to be able to be, to function, in repetition.
Like candy, cigarettes or, like the individual frames of a film the
utterance acquires its expressive force by repetition and by the
limits of repetition: the difference in each scale of the dragon's skin.
-hapaxis: luck impaled with spatial necessity
Rain falls like the tears of heaven, turns to steam and sizzle all
our love, narcotica relation with dying opens feline like eyes wide
enough for daemon intelligences paint the flesh the tone of results.
Testimony to this is silence and disappearance. Never ending
tends to happen.
written February 14
Johnston, Rhode Island
FRAGMENTS - VAGARIES
s t a n l e y g e m m e l l
"I will continue to go in this direction, never in any other."
I think that when I first had shown her my face, there
was a moment of Pause and quiver, quiet and quiver.
Everything in heiroglyph, everything clear yet not
understood. I said, "This." I said, "That." But she kept
her face averted from mine and, as if in wait for sunrise,
for moonrise, for all those tiny machines to crest the sandy
horizon, here in the desert, all those military experiments,
applications, tests. Perhaps she did not mean to know:
all we ever saw, turned to brown. In our eyes, the sun,
fade to brown, eyes filled with sand, this wasted land;
perhaps she had never meant for that silent thought to
become a prayer. I shine the law beneath the summer
moon, I will return again.
Or, again, we are back in Newport. There are cobblestone
streets. The presence of the Father is near. We have no
need for provisions. This town is faced by Sea. Many
beautiful, young people walk, their carraige is all paint and
cream and unguent and oil. Many beautiful Bibles tousled
into their hair. There is an ability of flight among them
and the least proud is still as proud as That Bird, Over
There, whom we have known about.
Many ringlets of praise fallen over their beautiful, slight
shoulders. They are all thin. They are all spontaneous
and film-eyed, doe-eyed, spectacular colors tied to their
lashes. There is a large pile of gold in the central square
and everyday they go there to look at it.
With the camera they scratch at the surface of time.
With the light and the filtre of light. With cocaine and
heroin and the syringe. With foods made from fabulous,
nocturnal excavations. With the archeologies of their
twisting, sexual thoughts. With the tiny feet of their
children. With their tiny feet of children. With the fish
and the ground glass and the mirror.
Long legged women, almond cleft of sex beneath nylon.
Curving belly of thorns. Solar plexus of pale or again,
rich black, brown. And pale, breast and areola. Slender
neck of sloping thorns, long and distance. Long haired
women, almond eyed, and the brow exposed to the Sun!
"I will never be satisfied, that is love."
In the desert we had spoken about how we felt we were
being mocked. Our slow feet were no longer moving.
We had been breathing all this sand for weeks.
Our limbs hurt, they were full of sand. Our sex dried
and shivered, red beneath the weight of all these
tiny stars. These tiny suns of our tired ache.
She said, "Walk." That had been miles ago.
Back in Newport, maybe it was winter, and all the
ice had frozen the people's eyes shut. They would
not see us. They would shiver at night, holding cups
filled to the brim with water or wine or wheat-milk.
Inside of my heart was a room made entirely of green
marble with crazy red lights and a certain fog which,
when inhaled, produced a buzz of pleasurable sensation.
Names began to scroll down too quickly for me to read
from the drop-down menu in my left eye, superimposing
images of the sunflower and the caucasian thigh and
fore-arm. All the domed cities flowing like slit veins
in the eyes of The God. And had not she, spoken all
this a very long time ago, I would never have stopped,
you know; I had brought them rain.
June 5, 1998 FLa, USA
S.Gemmell
Girl With Stare
Girl with stare, fallen
Gold hair, here, where we mist
With foam With coffee-sky eyes.
Oh, Girl with song, Girl with stare;
That we might know you, we know of you,
And no one understands us.
Emphasize us, empathy with fruit and cow.
And snake and bird and bat and lizard,
How each living thing helps to sing you.
Your thin arms are long as a road,
Your waist is encircled with a gold chain,
I have seen you today! You were weeping.
But I could only see you smile,
I helped you sculpt both grimace and bone,
Again, we're all alone. There is nothing to say.
Triple long play, mirrors, illusions,
Segmented, discontinuous electric feed,
There is the nightmare! A snorting, fire
Breathing, black stallion. An entire batallion
Of the finest men in the land. Your soldiers
Would die for the touch of your hand.
But I could only read your letters.
I could only count the money, while
My cigarette burns away, and the smoke
Is a woman, and the woman is a song,
And the song is the unveiling of truth,
But nothing happened and nothing will.
I pick up twelve sea-stones,
They are smooth as your belly,
I wade in the water,
Ink for your pen,
There is a violent red sunset,
It is your signature.
1998
GRACE THE ABYSS,
Twenty-two poems by,
Stanley Gemmell
First - Last - Templum
SHOVELLING SNOW
FOREVER - poem
STANLEY GEMMELL, 1993
Shovelling snow forever.
it is cold, every embrace frozen,
lips frozen in a kiss. cheeks
smile, too, for always
looking on the bright side
(long enough, that is). chins
turned blue. shards of ice in
hair, teeth and hand,
"I love you." shovelling
snow forever.
Next - Grace - Templum
LESS GLARE - poem
STANLEY GEMMELL, 1993
For Jonna with whom
no lungs will cease to occur
and her maker
my love who boils to feed her
I sing with less singing
and make decision bow for her
enjoyment
Next - Previous - Templum
ABYSS - poem
STANLEY GEMMELL, 1993
Orythia playing
I am Boreas
Pharmacia weeps
Grace - Previous - Templum
Grip
Stanley Gemmell - 1991
"The cactus are out of season, my friend."
He said. He said,
"The apples hang by a black silken thread."
And no one knew what Daddy meant. If
he was just making nonsense or a
black light glow deep in his eyes.
He lay reclined but awake in bed.
All the children leaned close.
A match in his ashtray
Continued to burn as he
Watched its glow threaten to fade.
Too many words, he couldn't decide.
__
"The pages torn where I once slept."
He said. We shivered. He said,
"The well's gone dry in making my bed."
And we kept silence waiting for more.
Hoping his nonsense
Would loosen his hold.
But Daddy's a viper
And his words deceive.
The glow went out and he fell asleep.
One with another
Our silence ceased yet closer still
We all leaned, black his indecision.
templum
gears
since as a series of possible
combinations you come to me
always making me wonder
what remains between us
since you cannot know my knowing
and I do not know how to trust
a phantom, a dream inside a dream
unless you are music, then
your movement can be plotted, grace
and chance and boldness, gardens
of steel, glass and pastel
gothic, sundry wishing
you remain away
and it rains red and frozen
doves speak your name
machines trace your curve
familiar with sexual pleasure
the animal spirit electrified
stretches its jaws which are also tombstones
way you yawning heaving bust
having decided you'll never marry
that emotionless bastard this evening
it rains irony
the past that never happened
several species of love
that were not thought to exist
I surrender the thought to you
emotions flow like honey
And stain the beaks of the hungry
I surrender the thought to you
Don't let him hit you
Don't let him curse you
Forgive me my time is short
And lacking adequate metaphors
_____
STANLEY GEMMELL
NOV. 25, 1999
Templum
Temple2 http://www.angelfire.com/il/surlsone
|
|
 |
|
