T HE PATIENCE OF A W HISPER

Poems by Mat Austin Tarbox

The Patience of a Whisper

Poems by Mat Austin T arbox Published in Hozomeen Press publications, including Masons Stoup magazine, from 1990 to 1998.
front image: Two People/The Solitary Ones by Edvard Munch, 1895. A TARBOX DESIGN 1998

a thanks to Richard Martin, Richard Freitas, and latenight port grooksters everywhere

Rhabdomancy
one. the loafers and dreamers of smokelung antiquity bottlecan the damnations and asunder the sacrosanct visions of a portersville1 mystic (a teenage bacchanal was how it was reported) so praise be to the loafers and dreamers of a smokelung antiquity and to the rimesters of a failed vision and to the beergoggled taste of the tagalong because divinity always requires a little humiliation to keep it saintly, you know two. the recommendations of past prophets and the overears of young men: with atavistic accents we dismantle the doorknobs and mutter the antique prayers of a new england, and never the Illinois2 of what is expected. three. the wallowing of a stumbled youth and the realization of the thus decadence awakens the temperance of a drawback sobriety and the divination of things to come.

1. the name of a tranquil and historic seaport village at the west side of the Mystic River in Connecticut. 2. a song by the Mystic, Connecticut musical group 17 Relics. The chorus line, words pass the time, exemplifies the theme of the song, that our social conversations are often inane and diversionary.

the patience in a whisper.

i have tangled another litany the consonants spat and left a strand dangling twixt sprayed vowels, hush my lips subconscious, to quiver the judging echoes again i'll try not this time to resound although a lifetime i have maundered my chatter and like an incessant impotent have searched for the tongue pink, purple, swollen, even bitter i do enjoy the game, like any other when the players smart, and suffer and the audience prepares to leave. they will travel backpack and sneaker wristwatch to wrist, a ticking to departure each day they inform me the time is drawing near again this time the silence will be unbearable and wrists, i have found, are no answer by any means. the tangle of a prayer like the stumbling in a chantry are only the stoups of youth and are not meant to be choked upon like my tongue, i know is in here somewhere and i am praying for its release else i be only hibernation's mute shell and not the patience of a whisper. my only supplications were the dearest the sea a whisper to her billow, a prayer half-muttered and else pleaded if i was your most faithful i would sing eternal. i only want to learn.

ceremony.
unnerved again: another mistake. i have misplaced the vision in bottom of bottle, and forgot even where that is. all the bottles look the same in this hour. my room is all scattered and there is static on my radio, the stench of stale beer, and the pale wreak of midnight guest's smoking when i am this gone she is never here to disbelieve me and she will not return until morning. i hate for her to see me this way, anyway her eyes would drop. i know that by sunrise i shall be tired and the nausea of me awake, overaware will ache my skeleton, and thoughts of tragic, everywhere i will see only the stumblings the dropping of spoons and lovers argue shall the sun be overcast or brilliant and if so, for how long? if only my ceremony was of song and not in uncorking, perhaps, perchance a joy here you'd find, forever in motion transcendent.

the sphere endless.

...is a feeling said she, poetic or not. And who anyway (...blooms the sweet rush of male candor in sweetest equinox, filling sphere and flow of time, hence bursted to tell each the madness of the golden eternity, when womb spreads her fingertips, then...) would the tender, of touch touch? or is feel only parenthetical (an intrusion), only a coldest saccharine illusion? for love...

Rhabdomancy
i.

(1991 remix edits)

The river berth is wide as womb when merriment spill forth the dream In a basement trance of smokelung when bottle in hand and pen upon the wall we sat and Sunwarmed3 in the television glow - a nightlong of Thursday Afternoon4 When with a portsong for abandonment and an eyeless stare to the bottom we reached for another. We descended to the dark ciccone5 beat and found ourselves an abstraction, a whirl of dj vu faces - in our end of night resurrection and our starry eye revelation The Heartbeat Sun6 where in the coalesce of the dream the myth was freed from the doubt and we each awoke from a deep slumber, this subterranean allegory. On Friday morning we were late to awake and found the mess of bottlecan upon his table, our own faces hung low in the mirror and the soundtrack begun in this dim hum of television static. v. shadows are cast from the tressle in a neon red glow as train passes, the single forelight a razor to cut the evening - with a beam of industrial incandescence/ the blow of amtrak horn and rush of track from boston-providence distance is a long line of urban transit, crossing river at the spiderworks of the bridge as she turns and awaits the rattle/ i sit upon fort rachel granite perch with vouvray in hand and am missing the reading at the inn but can hear the occasional clap or doorclosing/ i turn to ellis and suggestion, and confront the moon: a sickly pallor of interstate halogen, the glow of urban asphyxiation like dirty flourescent subway tubes/ i am reduced to telegraph sentences and single shotgun thoughts and remember how far these tracks go... and all the places where i have not yet been/ the deathrattle of the train across bridge and the overwhelm of the stark machine blindbeam casts shadows across america and pales the moon/ and my eyes are empty./ i've gotta get out of this town, but i don't know where.

3. a song by the Mystic band 17 Relics, steeped in themes of lazy contentment. 4. a song by the Mystic music project A Thursday Afternoon, focused upon unrequited love. 5. a reference to the dark beats of the band Ciccone Youth, aka Sonic Youth. 6. Richard Freitas book of poetry published by Hozomeen Press, This Sun. Centered about themes of transcendental romanticism and distances between lovers, terra, and sol.

her skeletal hips.

she who rests in trousers unfastened and narcotic with her pallid fixture upon a shelf, who has strewn and has shattered her memories of desire in a broken necklace upon the floor. i once slipped beneath your dusty shroud and held your hips and whispered. i once felt a pulse in your bones and we kissed it. i remember the lips that you pursed and your rosy-colored fingertips. and i remember how we came to the end too soon. there is blood in my memory. the cerement has been laid and the eyelids have been closed and as i hold her leaden palm a pause... for the blood shall flow no more.

pepper.
princess of Siam, dearest lady in vestiges of grey: those mornings, the windowsill melting and the gentle winter radiance filtering down through the bare limbs of a december frost, as you entered, the soft opening of a door, and you wondered silent across my floor. you were here beside me, and we slept on til noon. it was christmas, when you spoke to me in the hall of Thai kings and the revelry of princes in sweaty Bangkok and priests in village temples... the windows rattled as you sat complacent in the patience of the endless generations, the patience of an egyptian kneel that you knew... we saw deep into our eyes there, we talked deep into the night. we saw beyond the glow of the aurora borealis, and beyond the hozomeen and what was stiller, we saw. and today, the earth will take you. today the earth will take back what it has given. i will stroke your temples for the one last time, and i will scratch your back and smile. i shall hear your patience rumble. i shall hear your patience rumble.

disappearer.
sweet desolation, you take my hand again from the victorian table setting, you stand me up and exit me out with your bottle, your grin. we leave in a fluster of goodbyes. we are alone now, you and i, and what sweet victory, desolation. it is another radioless evening out here on the pavement when out and north i have spent all my money on tankfuls of gasoline and a styrofoam cup. all i need is the interstate wind, a chance to be alone and taken. it is this time of year when the leaves have fallen to slick the asphalt surface and the trees have grown bare to admit the halogen glow. it is this time of night when the october rain glistens in the turn and the rearview mirror is dark and empty. i have spent my money on gasoline, desolation. i have spent a lifetime in your avenues and i am still awaiting the perfect kiss.

little spacey.
i am the exile, the dreamer, i am the ghost who blesses the slumber of your sleep. i am the autumnal draft which crosses your pillow in the night. little spacey, i am the skeleton who sleeps in your closet, i am the turner of the doorknob in the dark. i drift beneath the celestial sphere, and i find you. we meet there, behind the black of blotchy hole, when eden whispers her sweet mysteries and the moon droops beneath the stars we meet behind this balcony to heaven, deep down inside this dream, deep down inside this mind our spirits dance, and we are dazzled to love.

victorialand.
on the third night of this victorian undertable dream long after the candles and the tequila and long after i had stood to exit (towards the water to swim the final swim) long after i had turned to because i do not hope to turn again I dreamt I dreamed in Victorialand: Dearest Lady of Silences Calm and Distressed T and Most Whole orn A Rose of Memory (rattle the bones of eliot, easter and risen) when a lazy calm to thin the air, and my coldest hand in her night so softened me a virgin in this midnight embrace to bring a blush to the snow to bring the gift of touch to a puritan ghost i have for so long wandered in the frigid timberlands under moonless nights, and beneath the starless sky. i pray for a release. and blessed victoria, we dreamed, we dreamt we fell madly into the leaves of autumnfall and beneath that october sun, we unfroze the ghosts.

oomingmak.
how to purl these candled vowels, how to cross this space between a mistaken footfall and the forlorn dream of a bachelor in exile. how and hence to dip softly into your smile, when this world is no longer watching and we slip into your drug. (i croon in the rainy night and see the reflections of streetlight in the puddles) how to lean to the inside, how to find myself second to none.

way (too simple)

let whatever may happen shape yr conceptions and pray for the spirit to form the connections

here

(for this moment on a planet)

here for this moment, on a planet for the answer to the mindless joke, our endless hope, laughing. shall we awaken our exaltant end, emptiest of silences. we glimpse into the apocalypse, what is shattered and now. it is all in between. we are all just a moment on the planet.

percept.
in those basements of smokelung stand the tests of time collapsed beneath the spent text of unpapered memory, words spoken which somehow linger still these times, archaic reminders of our mad fortitude and will to remain. mumbled dreams and precious visions from a darker day. throughout the dustings and drownings of countless nightfall toils hangs our infinite patience to persist against the dreary agitations of age of age of age so easy to slip, to tie the noose of drug, and measure in tablespoons the daily tabloid fare. nothing is worse than this suck of modern man and his spiteful talk, when the dreams have slipped on by. got anything hopeful to say with that endless coffee cigarette? thus some dangle, and some fall, tho blessed the veteran remains to unite the flicker of our vast insistence, like tinder upon a beach gathered and struck to flame. and damned you'll piss our fire, damned be they who cannot hope nor love when lost to the dreams of aged faithlessness, come not to our beach to rot and whither, just cast down your lot as kindle. towards the heavens, respite for the dead of this town shall go well into the night our bonfires are risen, the pyres have been set, and there is no turning back, no way to extinguish what has been wrought

calluna vulgaris.
threaded and lilac is this wondrous tapestry of life so sweet glad loved, she's woven gently throughout our scape and tender to the touch. she sways and shimmies in the vernal breeze with song and robin choir, the daylight paints her purplish hues and sets my heart afire. to lie in her bed of lavender and sing up to the sky, we'll watch the sun cross past azure as choral blossoms smile. this flower of life is abundant and most beautiful to behold. this flower blooms a passion and me a happy soul.