Twelve (Based on the twelve signs and houses, Aries--Pisces) by KO, circa 1995
1
a head rams into a mind
in seconds, spring commences,
in hands held up high
full of trust, busting through new
selves, red seed on fiery foreheads,
triangles swirling in radiating bliss
you count on the first to be,
get it started and go
2
stillness of a yellow moon, your dreams bloom
like May flowers and sometimes,
hammering throats tight like a blacksmith beats,
plodding boots through a ploughed field,
then sit for your gifts like a Buddha, smile
an angel hides its tail, you fall
clumsy sexy stubborn Aphrodite,
fixed steps, until you blossom, stomp
the ground, and smoothly say my
fertile space when you sprout into heaven
3
dark mercury like the over endless fastest think
curiously flirt with a bundle of tricks
letting things happen, across the street someone shot an arrow at your arm
but you danced away, in front of your shadow, silver surfer, adapted friends
to environments full of lungs, and cut the air into facts for the whole clever thing you saw in a billion faces,
perceiving the face of wind, articulate
I am your brother and sister
4
look behind and see footprints, remember
your mother, safe under the moon,
sun in the moon shower at night,
crawling seashores feeling each sight
like a planet sounding cries in the same lake,
we swim
as we hear each other drowning,
in a boat on the waters, humid heat of uninhibited summer,
not without hidden knowledge of time,
the child, the manager, the old one, memory, we take with us on a chariot ride birth of nation, empathy in the stomach,
seen and not seen dream of moody developing
5
through any enterprise you consume space,
you licked the spoon fed baby food
and shining eyes, a fiery cat
express yourself, dominant and generous,
the first to step on the moon, now you’re the president, gazing up, we might see a little sun, actor, actress,
kings, queens, cards, romances of the heart, everyone is a star,
we look up to you for believing in you, when so much is a power trip,
hunt shadows before the burn, grand time leads the band on an endless flight,
strength just listens to the music
play you where you need to go
6
fields with tiny friendly snakes
turning critical order their tongues inside,
discriminate, as a routine can start a new season, work the body,
health, diet, colon cleaning, maybe you need to vomit, soon
they will be coming to take you where the center turns more universal,
where the other side of you is a harlot moon goddess—you grow wise
up the crags, no forest through the trees, organize
crystals that you want to be the first
to see the perfect angle
broken in a timely time, a rainbow,
purity, purity, bruise us meticulously, Persephone comes to prepare you after all
the ego, the painful goodnesses, necessary practicality draped like curtains,
deep sacred planted rows
deep the seed matures, applying
these changes
7
a feather balanced on your navel, or
sky blue mind space blows up and down
spines in equinox of Adam and Eve, leaves
twirling down, no more amor fable,
elements joined
in marriage,
day and night, worshipping the weight,
lighter than two green willows,
charming Paris
who could not choose right, torn for honesty
and desire
Kubla Khan, snake seer, jaded Justice maker,
stands in the middle,showing faces strategies of matter,
on the equator,
the sunset is a decorated dream of twilight, Sting,
Ghandi, Lennon, Coltrane blowing
8
Now we really merge with the people, we
desire dark mystery underground roots
like hair, hearse driver dead November black
sex point during a plague, chthonic water
stuck where each genitalia has a mailbox
cunning it out with eyes, steel eagles
soaring in a circle of control, sky the color
of bones, cruelest clock turned backwards, the way anyone might get pinned down and raped
by a dark cold nothing, the way
the insect stings itself to escape the fire,
responsibility, busted, stand in the secret court, our blood, committed and loyal, urges out of panic, widening into transformation, determined faith—oh forget the black hole attack, put it in the closet, come across the red golden gate,
give us a tingling joke or a ghost story, make me happy and I will
make you my spiritual money
9
tantalizing gifts of light, freegirls
and freeboys spot Orion in the hovering
night crowned with new roads,
like expanding veins, travel on
jester, teacher, law maker, sending
the higher mind dream altar, Blake
appears in the door in a blaze void
Milton’s eyes Beethoven’s octaves, hair
flying out in acid rock arrows, breasts, thighs
guitar on fire, a few gypsy artists turning
honey hammers good and evil, equal,
exaggerate the grandest one in the whole milky,an image we see in the music store,
spark of youth immortal, a horse stands there
to sophisticate himself in a library, setting standards,universal grammar, shooting out nowhere, restlessly
heal our friends and turn them on
10
to ambition, we climb, always one
ahead, one behind, bound by space,
disciplined by time, conservative in a sense,
but lacking innocence, free at last we can
meditate within, but why complain when
we see how it is, real, hard shell pessimistic and earned a career of it,
the one with rings comes around at twenty-nine so
we cherish solid golden one again, our final body,
old wine comes a waterfall ceaseless down,
like the ancient clock in the tower cracked
and crumbling, Elvis, the devil, graceland, almost stopping, heavy contract, and finally
a goat drum breaks boundaries, limits and says we are vibrating space!
Alone
11
truth is a history man
made myth is the last animal, if
we return to some ocean, whose foamy eyeballs
shock stars into coming down, our lady
of eyes in a telescope, as though ice truly most resembled outerspace circulation in black pupils,
if one foot is in the water, the other on land, we shout from both sides, erratically inventing
all humanity’s river, detached like Newton discovered something hit his head soon
like a steamboat, railroad, train, telephone, plane, Michael Jordan computerized ultra charged super electric
detects no swooning horizon
the way Prometheus saw ahead
and delivered theories so the vultures
eat our livers, altruistic leftovers, we hear Mozart, Herschel, Lewis Carrol, James Joyce, Isis,
somebody castrated Uranus, who puzzled, who voyaged, a cold
Uncertainty has its place
12
when the literal is only known fabulously
waiting to be ruptured
by ordinary perception, some screaming fantasy
loses faith, slippery intuition swimmers fall,
no whale’s bleeding heart, idealism of dolphins,
how did they jump out of the water and become foxes when—are we here again at the end?
Darkmatter, antigravity, what happens
when you peer upwards, could it go on forever?
too much a billion worlds of bodhisattvas,
just what we can see, imagine the
courageous mother, father, eternity
even if Einstein died relatively, Kurt Cobain shot his headoff or high Priestess Nefertiti stares into psychic last seconds…
a gathering of all previous ages, hoping for spring, look back, the child who leaves
always comes back, the one who leaves comes and sees all the end of the road, a spiritual resolution
what it is escapes me
