......................................... . . . THE ART. THE VEIL . . . . by . . . . DAVID MELTZER . . . ......................................... .................... . . . THE VEIL . . . .................... so sheer between what's right and will be wronged let's say the Taiwanese couple on stage tonight in their launderette washing and drying clothing watched by two teenagers in a non-descript Duster windows fogged over with potsmoke, fear and talk with one gun between them and an idea to rob not for money but to knife that veil between them and the good life [] In the hole he counted heartbeats but got scared they'd stop listened to broken pipes under the shit-hole in the floor finally read the Bible they give you but his religion wasn't in a book unless it's the telephone book so he stayed alive counting letters, commas, periods [] The veil existed before he was born and between his arising shadowed the world he moved through reaching for dim forms he thought brought light [] It was perfect and we're all good at our jobs but someone imperfect bumped into the gun looking somewhere else and all hell broke loose but it was only because we're good at our jobs that everyone got away clean [] The veil between what's called heart and the real evil TV cameras and goons monitor constant rebellion whispers, life -- sustaining schemes Everyone listens for their turn like Shaharazad keep the axe away another day Listening and telling learning how but never the same again inside or outside utterly clear about the real evil and what is called heart [] The scar of that moment without time clocked rage knife thrown at Lilith lands half into my left pinky half onto the table time begins in sudden pain wound's mouth pours reassuring blood onto wood [] The veil the moment when nothing is left no control a blank time gone her kitchen knife in your hand in her heart and a new life begins in the old fear running out the door buried with blood everything too clear the lights no where to go [] How cold outside and inside this iron I nightly write against on paper she once wore as bride down burning stairs for my love [] The piercing Sunday late noon a needle through his thumb straight through it the thread almost laughing moving in and around what would no longer be a fingerprint on file sworls of skinweb pierced torn open just a bit and blood managed out like a sap he sucked knowing full well there was no snake except in his head asleep, mutating [] [] [] ............................ . . . THE ART . . . ............................ Organizing these myths these trends these traditions these rituals this history this pattern this secret this hope Organizing these stars into one bright dot of hot white light As simple as that [] Once each piece of paper on the desk, on the dresser even on the floor could be accounted for there for a reason [] Old Munakata like the poet looks up sees his face in wood and cuts it out [] Old Munakata blind in one eye the other wide behind thick glass lens Beethoven's 9th full-blast carves a nude woman into and out of a wood plank as swift as a calligrapher [] Angel in eyelid moves like a corpse floating in pink waters molecule wings outlined in gold flame drifting back and forth across the lens bombarded by star points [] It is easier to say nothing. But recently I elaborated. Yes, I told the reporter My poems are often connected to one theme or symbol, long, aspected. Yesterday all I wrote were haiku, short and final. No difference. She took it all down in shorthand. [] Awoke to see the Jew upon a ruin Upon the brass bed my body fell to pieces on. Perched like a parrot. I'm free of you, he whines. Free of your bones, your dark hot skin. I'm the angel all your poems could never be. Look into my eyes. What do you see of yourself, your words? Walls. Dense and doubled. No door. Now go on with your life and let me to mine. Sooner or later the visions open up again. A familiar wound Clanging. [] Cigarette smoke in my hair This is the cafe. I open my mouth Smoke curls out. Not a ghost. A poet in the bottom Looking up. I'm sure it's the city I'm a plant not a factory. Return me to green. I'll be okay Watching flowers grow. Let it rain. The sky reads me like a book. [] Light on ancient text. Flicker of word Moving into word. They ask me what I do. Enough. [] Abruptly Europe dies. Bloody _tallis_ I wave To cars to eyes. Dies. The silk blazing. [] Noisily yank a failed poem out of the typewriter roller. My hair falls into the keys. Not grey but silver whose light reminds me of work to be done. [] It isn't fame or failure just so many books to read so many words to write and the backyard garden is Paradise. I could spend all day naming things and all night breaking promises [] Dawn loon silhouette skims over the lagoon its crazed song unable to tame my rage into a haiku. [] The deception of a new typewriter ribbon gets him going another few years. [] The hunt in the rain was a failure her knees in the mud his head hurt from last night literature left their guns easy to let go of rain and more rain and enough pain to keep them both alive in themselves as cameos invoking curses like bullets like rain like words against nature ruining their hunt [] There's a Europe he holds inside imagination unfolds a scrapbook he keeps looking for his picture among all those beards dark drowning eyes keeps looking for a picture of himself in the double's spark or at least his name on a document or even a tombstone [] Hero in parts *--for David W. Peoples* You learn how to wait as a bird or cat and forget the watch and its false future failure. He waits for a man with a key to a vault to a box with another key which opens a drawer in an office where a file brings down a clerk in a wing on the 7th floor of a building whose shadow watch-dials Washington streets lead out into perfect lawns [] wired for sound Men who belong nowhere seem to be everywhere working for somebody else and all bitter about one thing or another which nobody ever learns because nobody ever talks. You learn to stalk as well as wait and in between a relief of paperback thrillers read in jetplanes scratching the sky with code someone below deciphers twenty different ways. [] All the light He filled blank pages with black ink repeating primary news amniotically surrounding vision before it broke apart and a world of shadows looms over the survivor making noises with their mouths [] Some enter and never leave others go crazy beyond paper some know certainty in calligraphy nobody can read and those in between scream as pressed flowers [] Safety valve He drinks a glass of light never turns off or on again is merely present on the page scanning [] End of alphabet and it will never appear in the right order again left to be born break through water's glass strive for wobbly sphere breaking eyes with light [] Double paper One page to write on above another page cushioning metal letter impact He swears that dented sheet makes all ghost words unite a Braille the sighted can not touch an impulse the blind can not resolve [] Knots like fat clouds in blood between making or being led by song turn sure, struck from fire beads to eat glass spheres into a powder his art would then reflect [] Break cellophane seal of unthumbed cards shine like tabletops. Possibilities similar to poetry. [] What's given up given out into her her page whose bones fan apart. Peck, carve attack bleached tree membrane. [] The edges where he thought his life extended withdraws like fire-shrinking paper and all these years his love was paper his body in a vision resembled a tree where his life retreats a lasso knot pulled into itself and paper feels like flesh his eyes become embarrassed watching it withdraw from his touch [] I go through my body and out onto the paper She wraps my head in white My eyes burn to read I can't forget anything No word or face or silence They go through my body Into its streams released From openings into air Upon the page How the world is gone every moment we are awake in it. [] [] [] AUTHOR'S NOTE: These two works deal with the paradox of confinement, THE VEIL are poems which imprinted themselves (insisted themselves) during the time I taught writing at a state prison. Inmates used the words "outside" and "inside" in a sense that I realized, after much reflection, were interchangeable and no different than similar notions used by the poet to describe his own work and being. THE ART is about that work. How the inside works its way out and how the outside works its way in. ...................................................... . . . THE ART. THE VEIL was first published by . . Membrane Press, now Light and Dust Books. . . Copyright (C) 1981 by David Meltzer. . . . ......................................................