FULL HOUSE
“Instead of the thornbush
will grow the juniper
and instead of briers
the myrtle will grow”.
Isiah 55:13
we always come
full circle
a thing at
the time we
might not
recognize
and here I am
housed in a village
living in a
structure of
bricks and mortar
It came to mind that
exits and entrances
in the
architecture of
life
not always by
revolving or
by stage door
this whilst
I watched a worm
(living planet)
worming its way
from
my dusty yard
to another galaxy
wish that
I might have
know the
cosmology
to follow
in its wake
emerge in
place extraterrestrial
where they
have less
love of the material
greater respect for
the arts
affinity with poetry
where
deeply appreciated
I could
breed beautiful hybrids
with a female of
such seductive alien persuasion
****
my gallery
my library
my tomb
my mausoleum
my rat
maze, tesseract,
labyrinth
to mirror
the brain
cracks in the wall
(hint of divine writing)
still needing polyfilla
whatever
the text
says
my house is
my shell
my carapace
my chrysalis
from my
caterpillar existence
soon
butterfly wings
sometimes my home
gets so outlandishly porous
things
slip through
the walls
I drift into space
hear the bitter political homilies
of that part of me
that rejects property
would
deconstruct every space
of its individuality
restore to the collective
create gardens so utterly revolutionary
in concept
that all might come sojourn
all might
rest, perhaps stay
and suddenly, in harmony,
there in the drawing room
a spiral staircase
is opened
leading upward to
intellect
downward to
things I am
too scared to explore
but outside I fear the ground they have
fenced off for me has
been reclaimed by
a less beneficent Nature
whose
panthera style eyes
savage our
cultural dream
throttling the life
out of things
less brutal in beauty
writhing with snakes, weeds
and scorpions
— fascinating things
but my
mind ever-expanding
(or so
I did delude
myself)
when consciousness gets crimped
by every mental disease
those cracks
in the wall hitherto
deemed holy, taking
sexual configuration
or
capturing the
great cracks in the world
to a
perfect T
****
not the house of my childhood
in any semblance of likeness
not the
house of bad wolves,
wicked witches
and straw
vulnerability
no secret rooms
(well, none
that I know of
where under
the floorboards lurk
lost Lovecraftian tomes)
not the house
I was fortold
or
got presented
in a parable
not a
house of
forgotten memory
premonition
or anywhere on
that spectrum
of allegorical time-stream
just house
of
first time
round
first draft
in my imagination
where humans
first walked
and your
my
story began
***
wind
Sun
rain
Sun
and Moon and stars
if you would step
outside
to greet them
house of
first
maybe
last days
maybe house of
the death Winter
last Summer
what the world
would intend
perhaps
the entire sense
of a roof and
four walls
totally dissolving
perhaps
the Universe revising
our very concept of space
to the West from
my porch I absorb
unbelievable sunsets
watch the
day go down
the light disappear
buckets of fiery gold getting
spilled along
the horizon
so clear to my soul
such
a leonine, Aquarian image
****
and time to think I have
yes I have
well enough
on my hands
and time to read too
so many books that do beckon
I laugh at
their suggestions for
they are
in number
way too many
I laugh
and they
laugh back at me
****
a storm
came
and like all storms
it has an inside
and an outside
things we
did nor expect
have not
seen before
and here
in my place
of obvious protection
sounds of
things scurrying
shadows
taking on a life of their own
tons of little cliches
of cheap horror cinema
the air asking questions
to which there
is no answer, no
easy reply
and I
have sat puzzled
through these things
as the years
stack up, accumulate
tease me with the
hint of a pattern I cannot
fully grasp, which will
not totally be revealed
and so
to the cards
what better way
than through patience
to cultivate
a sense of pattern
always about the
cards you dealt, were
dealt
and those
you need that
lie hidden
there
for sure a key card
currently missing
so head out back
where in a tin shed
lives a sangoma
or ancient astrologer
resident alchemist
whose job it is
to tend the garden
pottering around with
his great
transfigurational schemes
the gold paint in
my walls
is it going
to go
Versailles palace
go
way more golden?
the house
subtly expanding
contracting as
if taking,
releasing breath?
do these persons
exceptional of psyche
have the power to
shelve my
childhood pain
override its
curses?
protect me from
the kinds of evil
no book
(of which
there are
so many)
can deflect
or at best defer?
and let them tell me
what is
that cracking, splitting,
shattering sound
than the livid Earth, vengeful
uprising
the raw red magma
annihilating foundation?
unless
I am
much mistaken
unless
I am so hopelessly wrong
****
living room
dying room
can go
seppuku
in this
pristine kitchen
after which
my soul can roam
move from room
to room
mapping the labyrinth
from space time
to space time
negotiating the tesseract
following the finest of threads
wherever it
might lead
something in this
architecture
an unravelling of
narrative
a veritable stew of archetypes
a game
without solution
without
a final state
unless
this small, ornate table
white with cloth
and candles
each lit
but barely burnt
and a book
now opening
at
its final chapter
what could
be a
more
complete image
what image
could be more complete?
