Casimir Wojciech
p o e t r y
SOMNOLENCE
1,000 monarchs contend with gravity.
Voices need fire.
A crossing hawk unfolds the sky.
The whole world passed beside me.
It began to rain & someone said
my prayers are soluble. Patience
distills.
Into transience, alone, this decadence expires.
At the beginning of tongues where
spirits abjure innocence—
in the stomach where
voices are measured their suspicions,
memory's shrapnel brushes
dust from the jewel of salvation
: all conditioned things are impermanent.
A votive rite. A light. A synchrony of passing.
TACTATE ON STILLNESS
I am thinking
of a universe stilled
Omnistillness heaven-faced stillness
Stillness of clouds, stars, worlds
Stillness of damp oscillating atoms
Stillness in the eyes, in the blood, in the mind
Of decomposed calculations
prophesying a return
Of momentous storms
teeming beneath the skull
unfolding from the locus of control
fixed upon contemplation
I am thinking
of something that will save
me from myself
Into the void
this kaleidoscopic exaltation
("belief is for marks!")
A formulaic adjustment—
the dance of expiration
abandoned
within vast expanses of
grandeur and consequence
TUMACACORI
Into the air in sheets of rain
spectres of fish eyes flaunt &
flit about, myriads of them sweat out
unknown dreams under a carnivorous sun.
An insurrection of falling stars. Come to
the altar of arroyos opening palms.
The body of Christ. A silhouette of
desert hunger rabid with city lights.
The blood of Christ. A northern wind
drips from the mouth of an owl in flight.
Smoke moves around palming the air like a Buddha
praying in the street. This desert is my brother,
to know what I have come alive by reverence.
And the moon to the west hums in the highest through the night.
Casimir Wojciech is from the Bay Area, CA and now resides in the Sonoran Desert. He edits Silver Pinion.