Book of the Jewel Worm

                          Star room, lamp room,

The winter comes, a sea hunting . . .

—brother 'Perse

XIX.

—the New Year, an O'odham moon.

Dear Urze: I also got a phaxx with no lading,

without holographic registery. The paraffin storms

can turn these things inside out. Yet,

there's a fearful coherence in it.

When it arrived in my underground

I fell to my knees vomiting—the lights

went out all over the camp.

When the lights returned I saw that

the lading had become two jewel-worms—

one in the eaves of my arboretum

making ice the color of rainbows and the other

lodged mockingly in my monitor's new filter

which has a fat sodium valence:

manatees, late evangelicals, and the mayor of Detroit

were all locked in fornication

there on channel fifty-two; I've always found the

mayor wonderfully distracting, even beautiful.

It was too bestial for words. I tossed

the damn thing into the lake. It depressed

the cat.

This phaxx looks like a full Mk'hagro,

a false Mk'hagro. But I don't know?

It was intended for thee, Urze-la . . .

Its origin was not anywhere in Lux— it comes

from much deeper in the Assemblies.

The surviving worm in the arboretum

must be surrounded with braziers.

I'll talk to you again before morning.

I'll pray to Sang Yum. Uncle.

Post Script: Yes,

this false Mk'hagro like a tax collector

could save all our lives one day. You

and Marie should memorize it in the Pali.

You asked about magic. Our worlds are so tricked up,

illusory and corrupt—

how can you assign any importance to a phurba dance

under these circumstances? But do study

the number values in the Pali alphabet.

I'll do the rest. Ekajati.

XX.

Uncle: I dream now of the Ward of the Septaguant

followed always by the Nitrate Wars of '24.

Wickle Ffee is killed by Septaguant—

wild donkeys are watching while the two kings stand

on the dry riverbed,

sunlight on the mica fabricates water on and around them.

When Ffee's ear falls off—

his sisters, knowing the outcome,

begin their ritual deaths while

tugging at great lengths of intestine—

leaving just a yellow-headed baby

alive in all that blood, rope and linen.

Septaguant stabs Marshal Ffee in the eye with a talc pencil.

There's a storm west of them in the mountains

which sends water down the hardpan washes. I see

there in a dark space Septaguant

and the blond infant riding an emerald wheel-station

beyond Pluto. Straight off M-914

there's a blue starburst. Then I only

hear the water rushing along the river.

I move into the very pitch of it.

My mother's voice is counting breaths like years.

Uncle, there are eleven Chöd strikes in her voice.

My throat is being cut— it is as if the blade

were the best silk, indefatigable volumes of light

drain from our head. It is

the sweetest sensation, the way Marie Proust

describes suckling

as warmth in the stomach.

Truly, it's as if nothing really happens. Think about it,

my sad captain. Lux.

XXI.

La: she's cabled us in your voice

but with the signature of Lux. She doesn't

mean us any harm. She described happily

the death of Marshal Ffee.

He forced labor from starving wild donkeys, lepers

and even the orphans of New Zion. We shan't miss him.

Or his women. He once killed everyone

at a friend's wedding. His mother was a vehicle for Shö Wisdom

and then she crashed to burn

before even achieving her illusory body.

This is where the phurba language

of ill omen will take you.

Even Edith, the Spring Nurse,

used her phurba speech for only the most difficult births.

We have corralled the surviving jewel-worm

with braziers and tents of wet string.

Yes, Alfred builds these wonderful Tara fetishes

to tame the worms.

Both he and my recurring phantom, Nedperse,

do The Twenty-one Praises of the Goddess

every morning. Alfred uses colored yarn to construct these stations.

They resemble the Navajo tradition

of encircling. Half of it is pure calculus. That is:

the one seed, one pebble,

the one string. Descartes was a bore, we think!

Lord Hayagriva was singing away on the dunes last night.

Alfred has always feared the horse deity.

I tell him it's just gauze and smoke . . . refrains

of the dark phlegm. Kisses. Uncle.

Post Script:

These post scripts have become a formal property

in our cables . . .

as in the parlors of Shö, these remnants of words

are the eternalist's preparation for no-thought,

or bliss,

the way stuttering leads to silence, or patricide?

If Marshal Ffee is dead

I suspect the Khandro assisted old 'tin-pageant'

in his victory. I must stop with these judgments!

The buddha descends the hill,

laughingly I climb it. Man's curiosity is shit. And, zing

goes the sling of my heart.

Enough absinthe for one day. Love. Your Vajramaster.

XXII.

Dear Marie: you can tell Urze that we lost the worm.

Alfred's male calico, Boil, liberated

the spirit-houses we'd made of yarn

so the worm fled

into a feldspar ledge beside the arboretum. Boil

is of that lineage of cats

from the first space station. They went into orbit

within twenty-five years of the Hubble. They have

those rhubarb rattlesnake patches that are so beautiful.

When I think of the modified Hubble

and how cocksure they were

that all of the observable solid matter

was flying away from itself and us—that it was all accelerating—

well, it was the chthonic wheezing of the Jovians

that led to that,

that foolish idyll of bloom and gloom.

I'm just delighted that Ffee is dead.

It was confirmed here yesterday.

That drummer on earth, Charlie Parker VI,

paid a million dollars for the ear. He and his friend,

Lyndon Alouyshus Johnson, between them

have a priceless collection of evil body parts.

This is the sort of shameless talk

Now that they know Alfred's a witch they don't cheat at cards

and they offer us big dishes of potato salad,

tangerines and nitrogen candles. They say

the 'tin-pageant' wasn't even in the district when Ffee died.

I believe our mother dakini from Lux

was the incomparable assassin. In the end she strangled him.

I am beginning to love this woman.

Alfred and I have been celebrating since Tuesday. I'm certain

the Khandro was trying to find the groove

our Urze-la may snap her fingers once

and lift those poor sons-of-bitches

right out of their tawdry scripts of circumstance. Would

she do the same for us? The blue Nairatma would . . .

I think the dharma

needs this family. Or else, the

Khandro's karma is in the crapper for an eternity.

You know I think the poor damn cat is even drunk. Beloveds,

I send you mud pies of etcetera. Uncle Tweedledee-dum.

P.S.: Alfred has dreamt of the giant Nedperse

with more banqueting and happy speeches

involving Chaucer and the blind Milton—

& Milton's satan. He refers to me as

the landlord come to collect the 'fie-foe-fund'? He

appears like Saint Nick with an armload

of gifts: jars of green tea, mosquito netting

and a rat-trap that is a cross between

a black loaf of bread and a shoebox. I wish

he would leave us!

XXIII.

Dear Urze: when Alfred asked me to sit

and have a cigarette with him, I knew

we were solemnizing a moment. Dammit, La,

I am so sorry. Alfred says your mother just fell from the horse.

That the burial is Thursday. There's a Redouler truck

running to Earth Wednesday. I'll be there for the service.

Let's go to the Maine woods for the weekend.

I'll make you my sautéed moose with plum pudding. Ha.

Damn, girl, I'm sorry for your loss. I just adored her, like my brother.

My love. Paul.

Post Script:

Check your mother's papers, I believe

her request was to be cremated. The ringsels

in the ashes alone would be a great protection

for you and your future children. In the ashes

of Lama Karta I found a long silver

pin which I still wear in my hair.

Have you ever read that strange poem, Anagram Born of Madness,

by Gyurmey Tsultrim? Please, do!

It is an odd gift. I love you, child.

~

Do you hear those few songs

left for her

to sing, on the far side

of the river

of a human history . . .

—Paul Celan, trans. Paul Ekajati

They were the strong nudes of a forgotten

Desert outpost, crossing through snow

Through the steam of a hot springs

Where they bathed twice daily against delirium.

It was during the conflict between the Americans

And North Koreans. We realized

They would use atomic weapons.

Our eyes were alive and you could read them.

They were coming down in winter

And whatever they were, Mr. Ancel's ghost

Would meet them,

Saying, "You may go this far and no farther."

Like fountains in winter the heart-jet

Is bundled in shocks of straw. Now, it's cold soldiers

In a swamp cooking a skull.