Ultima Thule

out of the solitary spirits
out of their solitary treasons
out of the fallen cake of knowledge
and the sweet lens of forgetfulness

out of malignant tumors
and the laughter of American trinkets
envelopes of rhythm
and the motion of torpid spirits

out of grainy invention
in the heart of impossible daydreams
the memories of a dead mouse
and explosions of solar invisibility

out of oneiric secrets
of footbound women mired in light
centuries of slavedom
and the murmer of incendiary dreams

out of the mouth of a dead sailor
out of the wet dream of a cactus
out of a quiet staircase
and the man on it crucified by noise

out of sad decades
and the silence of impossible strangers
and the music made by meteors
that genuflect to the sun at midnight

out of acres of lost suitcases
each containing a clock ticking
and minutes of joy subtracted
from the time of delinquent sleepers

out of the roasted heads of angels
out of psalms chanted in the desert
out of the faces of fathers
turning the tourniquet they call wisdom

out of theaters
full of dead men sitting
and tinctures drunk from goblets
in a street no one remembers

out of roads that lead to sunrise
and a van full of suffocated children
abandoned keyless
within sight of the border

out of badges worn by giants
and pistols shot by women
running uphill in their enthusiasm
tossing their hair like firecrackers

out of the visible substance
that oozes from the ground in China
eaten by starving horses
waiting their turn in the slaughterhouse

out of the museum of hopelessness
spread over the streets by snowplows
rising through the air like murder
sold in shops for pin money

out of the casualties of percussion
and out of banks and post offices
and out of airplanes and vaginas
falling to the ground in pieces

out of the mouths of the hungry
out of the mouths of the abandoned
out of the mouths of skyscrapers
to hang on the chests of the decorated

out of the universities
out of the zyklon ovens
out of the smell of the battlefield
absorbed by the coat of Walt Whitman

out of the white dream of paradise
out of the molten dream of purgatory
out of the liquid dream of orgasm
and another, of boiling water

out of an unemployed man's laundry
out of a politician's briefcase
out of a landlord's cockroaches
coughed up by the moon in Pisces

out of the failed singer's microphone
out of the sick teacher's portfolio
as she lies dying of cancer
dreaming of children listening

out of the mothers and the fathers
cutting off their fingers by accident
driving drunk through children's bedrooms
tearing up their books for kindling

out of villages with no water
out of cell phones with no batteries
out of unexplored planets
and rivers with headwaters of magnetism

out of safe deposit boxes
out of electric manuscripts
out of the bodies of women
opening their legs to television

and out of the sweet mouth of my lover
and out of the loud mouth of my enemy
and out of the empty mouth of morphine
and the mouth of the sun devouring

out of all these places…

crawls the winged bird of vision
crawls the green bird of nausea
crawls the red bird of insomnia
and the silent bird of amnesia

opening up my brain like a flower
to deposit these eggs in it
and await the final word of history
on the outcome of this latest catastrophe









Lee Ballentine was the editor of the journal UR-VOX and publisher of Ocean View Books, which is examined in a long essay by Alan Clinton. He is active these days in the New Surrealist Institute.