*spacing is off*

Glenn on Monk's Mountain

Glenn on Monk’s Mountain
—“mu” twenty-fourth part—
Next it was Austria we
were in. Unexpected rain
soaked our shoes,
unexpected snow froze
our
feet. A bitter book
took us there...
A bitter
book in our stomachs,
an aftertaste on
our tongues, a book
based
on another Glenn,
Monk’s
Mountain not the Monk’s we
took it for. A book of overlay,
a book about death at fifty-one,
a book
we lay awake at night reading,
a book we read wanting
to wake up from...
So it
was another Monk’s
Mountain we haunted. Sat
upside
it crosslegged, lotusheaded,
humphed,
heads encased in crystal it
seemed... Bits of straw like
unexpected snow filled the
sky.
Stars were bits of straw blown
about in the crystal we were
in, the rags on our backs a bolt
of black, star-studded
cloth,
the jukebox dressed us in
gabardine, burlap, scratched
our skin with raw silk...
A bit of straw caught in my eye
made it water, water
filled my
head with salt... Straw, ridden
by water, filled my head, my
throat, my chest, salt filled
my head with sound. A sound of
bells
not of bells but of pounded
iron, the Falasha spoken to
by Ogun... I played “Asaph,”
the horn’s bell a swung censer,
wafted
scent the furtive sound I sought...
Liturgical ambush... Fugitive straw...
Limbic ambush... Nastic address...
Pads and keys cried out for
climb, clamor, something yet
to arrive
we called rung. Rickety wood, split
reed, sprung ladder. More splinters
the more steps we took... Rung
was a bough made of air, an
unlikely plank suddenly under our
feet we
floated up from, rung was a loquat
limb, runaway ladder, bent miraculous
branch, thetic step... Flesh beginning
to go like wax, we sat like Buddha,
breath
an abiding chime, chimeless,
bells
had we been
rung