Three Poems
by
Armand Schwerner

the point

don’t be ambitious just do something you

are this calm person travelled you are this person

travelled by the grey rain cutting, you want

the blades of this rain cutting you, your left eye

pulses you are the servant of the pulse in your eye

you hold too tight to looking for what makes you move

when you walk when you eat your chicken-roll on rye

you are this person who walks and eats, flashing

from emptiness, no one

abandons you, there is no one

to abandon, you are simply this walker eating this eater

walking, one flash after another, the shoulders

shiver with awareness-pain, the hoarse throat

darkens, you forget your breathing which you had been,

every second you are at the point of death, can you imagine

stove or precipice or field of instantly killing mushrooms

but that’s lust for a certification, where

is the ochre the brown world the comfort-giver, the securer

of breast and belly warmth? the beautiful lesson of Everything

Changes flashes in and out of nothingness

do you do your practice or do you find your practice

by discovering again every day how you walk, the

particular pressure on the right leg the rolling

of fear in the assertive swath you cannot

be abandoned there is no other life

to lust after can you imagine

the power of yourself center of the world, all

coming to you through your earned

emptiness? the blades of this rain

have nothing to pierce, you are this restfulness

of the constantly shifting water-body

blood

although this love appears as fresh water never there’s

never been a drop of water never a drop

of water in it. but this blood, which transforms

the five poisons into the five knowledges, this blood

of great passion, passionless, free of passion,

this secret great blood, free of clinging. . . this blood

does not hanker after appearance, there’s no giving, not any giving’s

possible? the hungry ghost lusts for appearance, although

a hungry ghost appears as life-sap it wounds the space

as the secret great blood does not. is this true? this

I hate you draws a line, any authentic life

without a drawn line? no.

attack, fortification, self-gift, you/me, only this way, harshest giving birth

not that there’s no field for the giving, but the asking. . . the pus

tissues, neurone paths, body clamps, terror-heart heat firetongs,

sick old noble patience of understanding, compassion compassion

self-lies about ego-loss, noble noble noble

although the asking within the giving’s infolded it is true

it must wound the space as it draws a line?

‘ if a man is not ready to face toil and risk

and in all gaiety of heart

his body will grow unshapely and his heart

lack the wild will that stirs desire.’ or, ‘we poets

begin in joy and gladness and descend therefrom

into despondency and madness.’ or or or or or or.

or motto or proverb in the left rear pocket wallet or apothegm or or. dive

into your throat red thorough red be that red am I ready

to accept my throat as that throat

ready to accept me? all desire is shapely

when you see yourself as a god, when all your speech

is mantra, shapely viscous red lined cording throat.

to accept you as this person accepting herself, that’s

the drawn line? red throat body chording. the secret

great blood turns the beautiful goddess body into

vibration, rainbow body, the school.

‘a setting up in the unconcealed’ (Heidegger)

‘all works have this thingly character, what would they be without it?’ care for what you find, milk, wave, fluid air swim by Judith Weaver in Boulder doing Tai Chi forms, blue streams of hunger and desperation from my body, sad wine of sadness at giving up sadness, the peritonitis fear of giving up fear, my dog-whistle-pitch-scream unassimilable by my body learning to be body, in the body the field of desperation engenders the fruitful, so each day its own care? each day its own care. sorge sorge sorge sorge, this poem-thing being poemed, can I 1975 be wisdom-poetry? I can. ‘to act compassionately is not to be overwhelmed by an emotion, but is always to act feelingly and knowingly.’ fill me I moan in the morning suck me cries the nightly aloneness but the compassionate pirate stalks in his course which is his end.

by care,

the merit of the world, turn

the prose to singing, no holy whirlwind no

jubilee trumpet no blessed

gesture, but gesture shearing its own

possible names by the quick sword of its act

in the kitchen, let the holy blessed

whirlwind within the wind wither away and the ground

ground me, what I know I know in the vein

and the tendon, my other voices scare me I

let them my other voices

scare me I let them beautiful enemies my

lovers, high language again.

a move-

ment dizzying motion nau-

sea seizure by verb radiant work

radiate act in the work act the work

see now seize the thing reveal in the

working in the working re-

turn within the work to heart and lymph was going to look for you

in the cafeteria Margaret said, was going to look! o

language, darks of pastnesses in the tensions

of intentionality, was it hard? it pained? had it waited, this work,

on body decision, sorge, sorge, the unconcealment, to dis-

close? ask me I ask me me the endless stills

in the drunken mind ask

pardon, pardon me Margaret that I that is I say now

sudden heartfall knowledge you’d angered me it’s me

could not tell you. bodhisattva bodhisattva I dream of you how

lock act and perception? me thingly or

me verbly bla bla, no, ‘it,’ the ‘us’ of the dark

sky of situation seizes in to-be-aware.

‘had I left these images hidden

in the emotions, I might have been torn

to pieces by them/ dejection, sick of these

lessons will I never be quit

of these learnings not decent moral

gift sick charity but energy, ‘to energy,’ be the bad guy.

stomach pain of lies about letting my voices.

sick should should ought must sick ought should.

red heart works being poem white lymph

courses to river unconcealment.