Amanita in the Ancient World

 

THERE WAS A TIME, before clocks were invented,
Before days had names, and before years were reckoned
when ancient towns sat on the edges of smoldering
volcanoes and the brightly colored sails of emerald
green feluccas filled their harbors. And along
the yellow shop walls that lined the Street of
Wine Merchants, or the Avenue of Spear Wrights,
or narrow lanes without names (where illicit lovers
traded their bodies for nine pieces of bronze)
ancient historians wrote their stories, and poets
scrawled their lyrics, and the ribald sons of
local tribunes scratched unmetered limericks.

Tell me, Amanita,
Before the hour of supplication is past,
Do you live among the citizens of such
A town, where I must seek you out
And read your story on the walls of
Long deserted shops in the late
Afternoon when the westering sun
has painted the bricks a soft yellow
and the ideograms of the mythology
known as the Fables of Mindy Belapharus
are memorized each day by
young men who
despair of ever
finding wives
and so live
in your reflected
glory?

Write to me
And I will interpret
For your geen eyes only,
The meaning of the morning star
And the colors of the autumn leaves
And the currents of the Alagosa River.

Amanita on the Feast of Leeches

On the second day of the Feast of Leeches, near the old cathedral of Lost Pen knives, when Gloussa of the Mixed Representation presents his visages to Leo IX, nameless Pope and dealer in mismatched fire arms, then I will come for you, ropes in hand, hooded and desperate to carry you away, into the frosty night, silent night, into the forests of dying trees, along the caustic beaches of the lye Oceans, under a false umbrella whose labels we cannot read in the daylight, whose protection from the gods remains uncertain; and I will carry you down through the ancient tunnels into the shopping centers of the dead guarded by a five headed dragonfly, until you speak my name and predict the average rainfall of Argentina, and pledge your undying devotions; then you will be free of me, and once more able to recite your secret name in the Halls of Your Ancestors.

A Postcard to Amanita #7

Are
You
Out
There
Someplace
Bound in sometime
Wandering somewhere
Beneath the cold stars
In lands devoid of comets
Peopled by indolent mannequins
Set in motionless clusters
On treeless hills by invisible
Philosophers of inorganic life
Whose few surviving letters
To the wives of French bookbinders
Leave us wondering about the
Chromatic theory of light
And the intelligence of carpenter ants?

Bringing Lycosa Home

 

Lycosa, here you can see, docked in the bay, just off shore, the magnificent
ship-of-exploration that I have commissioned and built; it is almost ready
to carry me away around the horn of Afrika, across the Sea of India,
into the rivers of Afghanistan, up through the mountains passes, and down
into the vast inland seas of Russia. Soon I will be floating in the dead of
night, waiting for you to make your escape and hence, using the secret
rocket engines that I have installed below the water line, we will leap
into the sky, cruise above the clouds, skip over the ionosphere, and
sail on the Van Allen Belts over the vast deserts of China, over the
cold waters of Japan, over the treacherous ice flows of Hawaii,
and finally settle once more in the warm
waters of Santa Monica Bay where
florescent jelly fish and purple
star fish will sing your
name and welcome
you to Redondo
Beach!

A Quest for Uncertainty Remains

 

Amanita!

It is just after midnight. Strange to think that we are nearing the end of the first decade of the twenty-first century. Time seems to speed along, propelled by a fusion of indistinguishable events, carrying us in a maelstrom of ineluctable kismet into a new universe where the known laws of physics are unknown and the victory of fire over night is incomplete. Behold, the quest for certainty remains elusive. I cannot write a sentence that has a single meaning. You must be the translator and reply in your own words to the geometric algebra of a field theory understood only by the speakers of first order polynomials.


Write in the heartbeat of the moment.
Practice the song of Jezebel when morning is upon us.
Abandon clothes.
Seek sanctuary.
Let me see those tattoos
Of indistinct runes
That run along your arms;
Create matter from energy,
Paint your lips with indigo inks
Praise the mysteries of photosynthesis,
Dance to violin music
Under a rainy night’s moon