from
LESSONS IN
ECSTATIC BIOLOGY

<MATTHEW HUDDLESTON>

sketch #2: point self

scratch the wall and shoot through.
focus on the wave and the particle,
the two sides of us,
but one the prodigal.

facing all ten directions at once
we are bound.
the enclosed point
reflects a negative universe hoping
to appeal on the grace of waves:
the sea a continuous lesson.

but more often the wavepoints cut us
without regard.

we fail to notice
our static nobility: nails
to secure us in babble.

and stronger, as prime,
we ride the cosmos:
matter rescinding,
silence after excitement.

the study is like that.

other days
we know our generations
form the slower wave of existence.

sketch #3: a delicate pursuit

the predators of eden stalk innocence
no more sulliled in death:
pause to tumble in the sun, dreaming of guts
and the first garden.

while a lamb plays the bait in a tiger's dream of postures --
the straw dogs are blasted

our bodies blessed by inner cavernity,
we spin a skin of relation over the implode,
sinews of mind cohorting the untamed substrate of black crepe
and the vessel's battle with ease.

to escape the fight,
we struggle against the rapine of meat
lifting life second
by ever blackening second
by the face of bent time:

shells,
trapments,
the environs of life aspire
to a platform, the roots of a tree
anchoring possibility,
the cells of awareness patient --
stocks for the long inhale of winter,

and the bridal shine of the grave.

sketch #4: form as divinity

the dynamic mouthing of words can whorl as in the wood,
the words, the populace, and even history --
but finger nails break in the oven,
and flesh plays a traitor in the end.

on this lattice we fix our fate,
our kingdoms of spirit and form over gas,
tracing the blood
squaring the spirals
marking the emptiness.

are we caged or set free?
do these pinions allow flight
or drown us in the sea's complaint?

finally, the gods coalesce to explain volcanoes
and give order to pain
as the self did, as language does,
to soothe the barbarous hunt
with illusion.

sketch #5: spin

within the dilution of our thoughts,
our alloy of manure and speed marks us as both fallen
and born again --
from the womb to the light
and from the light through sentience to surety.

I place the books together,
wash the dishes and rearrange the dust
from reminders of person that say nothing
but too much.

on the clouded shore,
the books tell me:
death embodies evil when we conceive the point,
which is but dual half of us.

I struggle with that mixture.

consider also the wave and energy,
how matter is consumed with life:
the raindropping to merge with a pool,
shifting allegiance in the sway of orders.

that is how the cycle attains highest in our enlightenment.

Brahmma sets the order,
by act creating is and all that is not.
the birth begun,
Vishnu forms a tide
encased within our linking nets of twine,
bordered by each spoke of the wheel.

Shiva dances to chaos,
each word of consciousness dismembered
from artifact to artifice,
a drop no longer divisible,
the motion contained,
only the concept unstrung
when Shiva spins creator to destroy.

sketch #4: double sight

everyone two faced,
opening and then closing my fingers,
we become a facet of Rangda
to abide the laws of conflict
our failure an image in a mirror --

closer than skin than self
the blind time ascendant.

we shimmer
as his womb colors hope
her cock a fist of despair,
trance,
evoking a passage of points:
diving through the water veil,
two world's breathless
with Rangda incarnate.

the rotten meat plays counterpoint
to fruit's ripe curve.
explosions of bamboo accentuate musical logic
as Rangda will code switch,
becoming, as we knew she would, the positive self
on the crest of evolution

strong to the will of the world.

RIF/T: An Electronic Space for Poetry, Prose, and Poetics
Editors: Kenneth Sherwood and Loss Pequeño Glazier
ISSN#: 1070-0072
Version 1.1 Fall 1993

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