dan raphael


Peaceful Mountain


one minute im a peaceful mountain valley then im sheering cliffs,
im coated metal pipes where my veins were, compressed two by four bones,
the sand falls away from the beach, clam arrows snapping up stars, depilatory mowers,
like how many people are moving into me or thinking about it,
opening cabinets, flushing the toilets, if there were tires to kick

one minute im watching fish spawning in a shallow stream and im more awed than death
that fish inside me, the one spawn, bright red t-shirts
what if my brain just ran me by remote control from a safe bunker half way around the world
then the body being itself coz the brain-op goes out for a smoke

as if i flew with one leg still on the ground, longer than it could ever be,
the lowering panorama of farmland where an inland sea lounged,
as some people have inner tides in disagreement with their gait and momentum,
conflicting skins pulled like three in the same pj’s

i’d forgotten rain was possible and got caught up to my waist in sidewalk
splintering in careful epoch notes splitting apart with sudden force of
slowly losing that pencil, this wire to everywhere.
then rain returns me to 2 meters 100 kilos, not counting what doesnt belong
but adding in what I havent grown into yet thickening wavelengths,
whether hammers or gnats, dung beetle rain sloshing like the eye socket volcanos
fish fly into on annual immigration as money goes the other way

a war canoe in my chest,      a nave,      how a flying buttress becomes an angel wing,
how if you’d spent centuries crammed amorphous wouldn’t you want
as much air and light exposure as sargent gravity would allow,
tearing the bed sheet of rain off my relaxed-into-pieces body-street
and into the scuddy folds of unwilling composites
like the elevator becomes a time machine, not accounting for shifts in space
we’re blanked,      blanketed,      whited out,      smoldering ash reversing the process to flame
exhales enough trees releasing the flying mountain fragments like secret society keys
is why my left foot drags like a match head
                                                                                                          better let it drop
coz the flower of 40 year old truck full of trans-national metal unable to be pollinated
or cross bred by flames with di-bivalent tongues, hands at the inappropriate times
when we cant tell how short we’ll pucker in as 3% of me is on a covert mission
that day my bed goes to work in my place, imagine the cars surprise, the doorways,
as if a rectangular cocoon, all that’s been tithed in my sleep, the dream gas
inventing so many ways to get lost and late in simulated past-scapes,
the symbol for that phase, the coming of, when all biology can do is reruns

the ecstasy of shallows, dogs eager to work,
as the city gaps into blinding, i cant say, the frizzled vowels
i make a maze with muraled and poemed walls
then take the next bus to an aqueous flame i sense as a season
about to plug the muscle in



Without Gravity Spacetime Cant Find its Own Tail

falling open,   fouling meat,   tile bonanza
see a city blossom with dawn about to enter tiny skin holes,     infect to impart,     raze to celebrate.
the hand doesnt want to do this, crying as if visual, inflated with applications 
to call the sky down,    to put one day in front of another
when the flames retreat the charred becomes fresh

i only promised to stay together so my leash would stretch beyond the visible, 
 every pulse monitored, never pure blood, 
as if i could lunge my extending leg through the asphalt and set the river free—
the drinking river, not the divisive one——see the swagger.    ask the last question. 

when im so illegible cant pressure a letter, make the electricity blink
bones revert to milk & seabottom
walk away from the theater into a city ive only read about—
i put off so many things til tomorrow then the time sharks collected 
all i could have done with that week
as if i jumped into another body
                                  open my year book—im no longer there
upping the dosage, cleansing away all possessions and fortifying the walls 
while the ceiling slowly exhales,   over years,    gravy sludge

i reach up but no one can lift me, spinning too centrifugally
follow the water as it pretends to evaporate, unable to forget where it will come from,
each orgasm a razor beam of accelerated spacetime,
to fuck myself inside out, to scream out so much its now spring inside me

sourceless water breaking stone,     rain coming up & surprising dozens of floors, 
                                         a roof too slippery sloped to stay on, too necessary to get rid of
make every car stop and we’ll never recover

as if i was a mall undergoing major re-branding—
                       different anchor,    other wraps,    things weve never sold before
                                                               we’ll pay you to eat here
stores hopping into streets,  streets sliding through houses,  families extending cross state lines

i fold in half  before i sleep and retract my limbs like lacey antennae
as something with dream stars and commercial free hallucinations 
memories that happened sideways
four fingers caressing a keyboard
wires that trigger, wires that drink,       
wires that swell & thunder

im not ready here
hair in sky
caroming like a hundred boxcars free of tracks but not destination
like asphalt from space, asteroids we can breathe in a life not letting
we don’t want to agitate
around the world between my toes a pocket opens

keep removing layers til dawn has no choice, reaching my hands through celestial plasma, 
occasionally unsure, the boulder surrenders before I do, the sun goes through the earth 
to visit its reflection, the shadow buried inside the tallest building closest to the ocean 
of data osmosis was not built by hands or conceived in spine-blossoms

then the weather—like rain but not water, not falling from—sky opens sideways, 
flashing another here that doesn’t mold light for our eyes 
needing to break cheek bone so my mouth can approximate that sound, 
use my forehead as a hammer, magnetic fingertip dissolving the bolts 
that hold down a huge gullet wind, as the moon opening its mouth 
to be the tunnel where trains start palpitating sidewalls into razor wings
when it all 
approximate body
so much more we could have
asking the fences to remember too much as their posts thirst with light so slow 
you can almost hear it captured by evaporating sweat
something extremely addictive we don’t know how to make more of—
work must be done, the distant past torn from a planet so much smaller than, 
like million year old tattoos pressured into darkness with cascading ring tones 
shimmering to slice     distract     exile 

and when the cup is almost full, when the hand is trembling from the weight 
splashes through the palm—if it touches your head you’ll never get back—
erupting in tiny wet particles gaining buzz, 
hundred of acres with so few the same, as many leaf shapes as kanji, 
how root hairs bouffant and mullet, tangling medusa venoms stone 
so the marrow of beauty bursts cold fusion, tearing open so quickly 
the contamination is vaporized with joy  

dan raphael was anxious for spring, as winter was harsh. He's also waiting for the end of the year, because Impulse and Warp: the Selected 20th Century Poems will be out by then from Wordcraft of Oregon. Current poems appear in Pemmican, Peaches and Bats, Radioactive Moat, New Mystics and Heavy Bear.
 
 
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