Poems by Antero Alli
"Bells",
"Anima", "To the Gods of the End of
the World", "Shipwrecked Moon"
Bells
If you hear bells
And nectar: if you taste nectar
At the back of your palate
While hearing bells(Where there are no bells
When there is no nectar)There's a fair chance
You're about to die
Or, be enlightened.
If you die, there's nothing
You can do about it.
If you are enlightened,
There is nothing you can do about it.
In that split second
Between inhale and exhale
A holy gasp of silence
Spits light from an angel's eye
And you stand there, breathless
When you should run for your life.
The gap widens, dilates and opens
The top of your head, the crown
Touched by heaven, touched
When the angel's arms wrap around
The last sound you see
The light you hear
Before you're gone.
(1990, Seattle)
Anima
Standing outside your circle, I imagine you
All eyes. Inside unfathomable textures of, is it, light ?
Teasing. No, inflaming, all the dreams of what can be
I step inside your temple and nothing happens
And then, I collapse. Crushed, slamdunked by a hairy chimera
My images. My expectations, my burning house
Where am I now ? Inside these flames, I am laughing.
While my house burns down, the fences pick up their stakes
And a mindless infinity blows everything to bits and pieces.
I stand alone. Like some charred crucifix, a shadow
Of past sacrifices. You demanded this and I gave you that.
And now, midnight visions!? Beached crabs, mouthes foaming
Crabwalking. Over fields of broken shells, clamoring up & down
There are tunnels here and tombs, too. Do they die also?
Or is this some kind of sleep that grows its own shelter over time ?
There are no metaphors for this love of yours, only death and surrender.
This love of yours. It has destroyed everything familiar to me.
Have I passed the test ? Am I still attractive ? Do you still want me ?
My sudden shyness ? An attempt to diminish your magnificence
In the face of the only thing I can call my own, this mask
Is the only thing I can call my own.
But truth is...it looks better on you.
(2001, Berkeley)
To The Gods of the End of the World
O GOD OF THE END OF THE WORLD
I am afraid to take you seriously; tell me you’re only kidding,
Show me how to be a greater fool than I already am
B y making me laugh at death without forgetting my mortality.
O GODDESS OF BEAUTY IS BETTER THAN TRUTH
I am embarrassed by my need to be right all the time.
Send me your most gorgeous dropdead image, the Mother of All Visions,
The vision that outgrows and destroys all other visions including itself,
So I can see through myself when I am lying.
O WRATHFUL DEITIES OF DOOMSAYING EVANGELICALS
& DOGMATIC LITTLE BIGOTS,
I am bored to tears with my intolerances.
Grant me the enchantment to be entertained by the hidden pixie agendas
Behind all dreary, dismal grey-faced warnings so I can stop
Taking myself more seriously than the life I am actually living.
O DEMIGOD OF POETIC TERRORISM,
I am utterly and royally confused.
Make me go crazy in the name of Creation, not Destruction,
So I may freely sabotage the literalist virus immobilizing my imagination
And learn to incite riots in the minds asleep to your splendor and glory.
O GODS & GODDESSES OF EVERYBODY’S
HOLY GUARDIAN ANGEL,
I am fucked up beyond all recognition.
Trick me into not knowing whether I am really a good person or really a bad person.
Give me the wisdom to never believe my own PR and what other people think of me,
No matter how much money they pay me.
Deepen my gratitude for being a nobody in an UnWorld
Of wannabe somebodies and hungry ghosts, so I can be touched in the head
By your benevolence and tell your truths
Without wanting the credit.
(1999, Berkeley)
Under a Shipwrecked Moon
I am asleep when the first mast snaps with a thunderclap!
A cracking that shakes the skeleton, all bodies bolting upright
Sight suddenly blinded by flashes of lightening speed dancing
Through the portals, calling every detail in the cabin to attention
Until the entire luminous design slowly dissolves, in one piece,
Back to blackness, that sweet blackness, the comfort and terror
Of the Great Mother Sea.
And now, the rushing ? The rushing sounds! I am climbing out the hatch
Onto starboard, there! Two mates screaming, dangling on the grab-rails
Flapping in the squall like shredded sheets, lightening forcing all detail to freeze!
And then, dissolve back to sweet blackness.
We see everything, our faces frozen with astonishment...fifty-foot rollers
Crashing through the gunwhales, flooding the hatches. Now: radio down.
Three men overboard, the dinghies adrift. The hull is bilged.
The vessel flounders and now, finally: capsized.
The terrible sights and sounds of angels, everywhere angels!
Their massive wings battered down by these gails of hell
Swallowed inside the belly of an ungodly tempest.
The lightening bolts! The thunderclaps!The silence.
The silence, my love, the silence...
(2003, Berkeley) from the screenplay
"Under a Shipwrecked Moon"
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