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Labyrinth
Entering It is not a maze devised to confuse you, but a way of going that winds through four quadrants to
the center, where a spring wells forth from the earth. The path may be bordered by
waxy-leaved topiary that shimmers with morning mist, or the trail may be marked by rocks
in red desert. You may be walking the pattern laid inside a vast cathedral, bare feet on cool marble, threading your way like a grain in the minotaur's intestine, or you may be a weightless neutrino speeding deeper inside the rays of a spiral nebula. However you go into it, your gait becomes meditation, the movement inner migration. Your story leads you back to the pulsing amoeba, toward the heart pumping from the core. You become the one idea that has coursed through every fold of your brain, has infused every breath, replayed every memory, entered every dream, the single song which follows the musical stream flowing under ground, the gurgling of the spring drawing you inward, saying I am walking, saying I am song, saying water. Leaving Retracing your steps, you follow the trail of crumbs dropped on your way in, memory of the minotaur's red-rimmed eyes receding as bull's blood bleaches in the sun, your horizon growing wider with each stride. Pyramids of hubris dwindle with distance, your children find their own ways home. Removing yourself from the core formula, from the cathedral of ritual etched in your genes, you open your eyes to where you have been and where you might be. Behind you leave your hand-mirror to look at the sky, let go of the small joke between your past and future, your own story growing fainter as the trails of small animals cross the path gone from flagstone to sand. Scanning the expanse for the thread of your life, options open with numberless blossoms of compass plants. Your pace gathers momentum as you spiral outward, hurling yourself away from your gravity, from custom, far from your heirlooms and habits, out to the stars...
Hats & Shoes
DNA in loose hairs
strewn by illiterate winds.
The follicle revealing
the chemical health of its owner,
or gleaned from a hat still warm
for voodoo,
the beggar wearing my lost beret
who is first to find the fallen man.
Ice, or clogged arteries
fumbling the foot, dumbing
the tongue thinking thanks
for the helping hand.
Thinking who could be
more self-conscious
than the brain-stricken man
unable to articulate,
who could have been I
crack-brained on black ice.
- ~~~
In the dark the shoes by the beds
exhale.
Such heaviness released,
the extra steps trying to please,
the weight of comfort food,
sweat from tight situations.
The roomful of sad shoes at Auschwitz.
Imelda Marcos' hoard of shoes
barely broken in on plush floors.
One pair imprinted with the gait
of a lucky life, in a bag with old hats
is given over to Goodwill.
- ~~~
Icy wind of misfortune or witch's
spell, a slip on the staircase
of the cells' double-helix,
and I would've been the vagabond
rummaging through the bin
of used flip-flops, loafers, combat boots,
raising the scents of old owners
in an elevation of hosts.
Me fumbling for sandals to fit
my Christ-like self-image,
the sweat off my skin mingling
with the sweat of other homeless men
as an old fedora tumbles along the street
in the wind, the last owner's sweat
fast evaporating from its hatband.
Rooster
Before the turbines begin to turn,
a rooster is crowing
in the belly of a 747 -
- Screw You! Screw You!
His outrage offers levity
to passengers shuffling to their seats.
Through taxi and liftoff
he crows and crows
as the co-pilot palms the flap controls.
- *
- *
- *
The jet dips a wing to the harbor.
Mortals below blink at its glint of windows.
It seems a single shining purpose
as the babel of tongues within
is concealed by its thunder.
- *
- *
- *
In 17C a woman won't let go
of her gravity.
She sneaks a cell-phone call,
Did you remember
to turn off the coffeepot?
In his cage The Cock God
flaps and crows --
- Cock-a-doodle-doo!
as the plane bores deeper
into 14F's novel
whose characters are ruled
by stars of self-delusion.
- *
- *
- *
Through a tiny slit by a rivet
the rooster's red eye sees
barnyards shrinking.
Time zones pass through the bird
still crowing
as a few on board begin to snooze.
- *
- *
- *
A newspaper read over a shoulder
quotes another flight's cockpit recorder --
Allah hu Akbar -- My fate
is in your hands, as the co-pilot
pulled down the controls
and a boatload of plans
screamed into the blue.
- *
- *
- *
The rooster keeps crowing
unheard by the lady in 37A
channeling a prophet from Sirius,
who asserts our fates are self-created.
- Untrue! Untrue!
In her seatmate's earphones
Mississippi John Hurt croons
"Rich woman knows
any dude'll do."
- *
- *
- *
The newspaper reader's eyes close.
Black & white afterimages
recreate the scene
of an Airbus of fates
plummeting in a vortex
of screams heart attacks
prayers clenched jaws
plunging into water breaking
the jetliner's spine
into a million descents,
soaked baggage of past & future lives
raining to the sea floor.
- *
- *
- *
The fowl on high
continues crowing
as the Boeing breaks through the ceiling
and rises above the white buffalo cumulus
where dwell the souls of 19th Century
American landscape painters
beyond the plains of manifest destiny.
- Delusions! Delusions!
To His Diary on Women
Why does the moon that rules over women
cloud over
the moment I enter a room?
I'm quick to light candles
and offer my hand for a dance,
but not nimble enough to keep them
from snuffing the flames from their eyes.
It has little to do with comeliness --
worse looking men will kindle the coals
beneath their soft skin.
The guys who win them over
have cracked the code of intimation
girls perfect by second grade.
Don't think I buy "the feminine mystique,"
it sounds like a pitch for mascara.
I never could throw curve balls,
and mascara is a mystery
the Mexican poetess must have been wearing,
the way I couldn't quit staring.
She looked like a hieroglyphic cat,
perfectly inscrutable.
My Hola!
may as well have been Cobol.
Then there's the issue of perfume.
Ladybird beetles use pheromones.
I wore a football helmet
and fumbled passes.
Why Not
Why not turn my arm into a rooster
so it can watch for the false dawn?
This sore finger could flute
the falling leaves of cottonwoods.
The carapace I've grown to keep away pain,
why not drill it full of holes for divination?
My sloughed skin could be formed
into the Great Clod of Agriculture,
spittle into the web
of the Master of Eight Legs.
Tumor of anger in my chest,
with it club the liar President.
As for my buttocks, large
with false prosperity,
make them tractor wheels,
that I might roll my body
to the house of Carnal Knowledge,
might roll my body to the charnel house.
Might light it with a burst of laughter.
-
after Chuang Tzu and Ana Swir
SCUFFED SHOE
Scuffed toe of your shoe, mark
of drop foot, arteries
clogging in your brain.
Your body isn't fooled
by shining your shoe --
beneath corns and calluses are scored
the miles you've galloped
toward an end unseen,
known by the body
for what it is.
So your foot drags
as the great wind before you
scours everything in its path --
the forest with its howling
hollows, stars streaking
through their courses, the runaway
horse, the aging traveler
with the wise body
dragging its foot.
PREVIOUS LIVES
When things get sticky she tells me
that once we were Indians
who made love in full regalia
so much more spiritually
than our sucking and grinding saying yes
don't stop yes Oh Yes.
On the Route 4 bus a woman proclaimed
"None of you" -- skinny schoolgirl
with impish smile, stubble-faced drifter
smelling of beer, guy with the bike,
matron wearing a pillbox hat, me --
"were with me when I was Queen of England."
There was no denying her.
But when my lover's shaman guided me
through the tunnel of my previous lives,
it was like passing another subway train
on Hallowe'en, and when the rocking
of the ages stopped, the doors opened
on an ordinary Joe in well-worn brogues,
working under a lord for a pittance,
unread, unadorned, wart prone,
yet loving a sad song or a lively dance,
strong ale, a wild and funny story,
aye, and a rollicking roll in the hay.
YOUR LOVE
Maybe your passion for me is hidden
among the facets of autumn aspen leaves
flickering all over the mountains,
a love so vast and flaming I cannot grasp it.
Perhaps our love is dispersed
among purple cirrus at sunset,
or included with the weight
of what escapes at a death.
Is it you who comes to me with outstretched arms
in the dream where starlings gather
into swirling gusts
and are gone at dusk?
Are you whispering to another
in the wing beats of ravens passing over,
flying beyond corruptible bodies,
beyond me?
GRATITUDE
grows out of the left side of my torso.
-
The young nun glimpsed it
just as the wind
- lifted her habit.
- around it.
- and circled my home,
- once for the honey of heather.
You might take it for the glimmer
- of the eel in the well
or the twang of the banjo.
- that proves you're not a shadow.
- would it embarrass you?
You might give it to another.
Donald Levering's 7th book, The Kingdom of Ignorance, May 2006 by Finishing Line Press, is 25 pages of poetry. Thirteen of the 18 poems included have been previously published in journals such as Flint Hills Review, Green Hills Literary Lantern, Maryland Poetry Review, Nightsun, Paper Boat, The Pawn Review, Poetry East, Prayers to Protest, Slant, and Zambomba. Copies may be ordered for $12 on line at www.finishinglinepress.com; click on 2006 New Releases. You may also order by sending a $12 check to Finishing Line Press/Post Office Box 1626/Georgetown, KY 40324.
Born in Kansas City, Donald Levering was educated at Baker University, The University of Kansas, Lewis and Clark College, and Bowling Green State University. At Bowling Green, he was a Devine Memorial Fellow in Poetry before receiving an M. F. A. in Creative Writing. He has worked as a computer operator, free-lance journalist, groundskeeper, and teacher on the Navajo Reservation. His previous publications include two full-length volumes, Outcroppings From Navajoland (Navajo Community College Press, 1985) and Horsetail (Woodley Press, 2000) as well as four chapbooks, The Jack of Spring (Swamp Press, 1980), Carpool (Tellus, 1983), Mister Ubiquity (Pudding House, 1997), and The Fast of Thoth (Pudding House, 2002). Mr. Levering was a recipient of a National Endowment for the Arts Fellowship Grant in poetry and won the Quest for Peace rhetoric contest. He lives in Santa Fe, New Mexico, where he was past Director of Theaterwork Poetry Readings series and works as a human services administrator. (Appearance in Lunarosity: April 2005, December 2005, June 2006, October 2007).
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