From “The Voice of Sheila Chandra”

What represses unhomes in the sound

Who has made me what is made me

Is a voice just muscles and shape and

Breath to phrase a song boats assemble

At the mouth of the harbor mouth in

Earth you who wrote an ode to silence

Never wrote of what is silenced I did

Seek all resounding caves let the voice

Be lit all the lanterns in the new world we

Need the language of stone from string

To string quiver in the opening the garden

So beautiful Lucifer dark sun of morning

No Eden but innocence no expulsion

But after

•

No more will I listen to other than

A single note moaned not known

I do not here think again what place

Presents itself own moan well eye

Here body as a battery of the one

Moment when it is time to open

Your mouth to plug in I will allow what

I invented to find its color make

A shape which neither water nor

Sky do how do you now in this

Contained shape go through

Your life not like a constellation

Not guessed at intuited or divined

No name so how do you discern a shape for

What is often called g-d

•

Vantablack was made for missiles

Or planes for defense purposes so dark

No eye could see it some voices are

Like that no one could hear them it

Is not good to be lost to be lost is

More than metaphor for spiritual

Condition I sit at the terrace overlooking

The green sea perhaps it is failure

That ought to be sought the voice

That fails falls silent Sheila’s or

The body’s the blue failed me the sun

Fails every evening I we you have all

Failed too everyone who strove all these

Long years for peace failed

•

August 7 Predawn blue and blue the sound

Of the sea further away and less violent lights

On the water fishing boats closer than I

Imagined no one is awake some animals

Maybe what I do without knowing in a

Harrowing world what I do without knowing

As I listen to the gurgle of water against

The promontory I feel like I am listening

To a body how slow and opening a piece

Of tune where one does not know how

It will unfold no chord or cadence to tell

You in sound what the path will be how

It will happen until it happens I do not want

To be alone what does it mean anyway when

Someone says “Muslim”

•

Can she still feel music in her body can she

Vocalize even without technology of the

Mouth tongue palate glottis vocal chords

What is a voice Anish Kapoor granted

Exclusive right to work with blackest

Black she now communicates through notes

And gesture Vantablack made for

Military purposes like sound also used

For torture all sounds to wake you vibrate

Your brain what emerges as an echo from

Music as torture children on the beach

Playing god is sound or art or science

Shit and sex the body’s echo what mess

Is left in the big or the little death

•

Sheila’s voice always in the background

Always disappearing into the music

Of what surrounds it the way one loses

Oneself in sex or death or the moment

Of shitting I got lost in Salman’s

Music he said it was a surrender of

Ego when he left me behind but really

It was a surrender of my will words too

Have god inside but for the prize of

The body they do not compete can

Not hold the storm of time cannot

Hold the line do I touch the ocean

Inside will my family come to

My funeral

•

That night we swam the full moon

Civilized us federated us gave us

Our nationality we who were lost

I have now lost what little heritage

I did have returned to the rude

Rough world long vowels of

Morning evening birds scream

No soft blanket falling to cover

But a throttling a suffocation

Of dusk no silence when the self

Stills the absence of noise is itself

Torture I cannot sleep tongued loose

Drones move through a riff by

A singer without papers

•

August 9 Eleanna takes me out on

The water Miller exploding the form

Of the novel itself I see now how Nin

Wanted to move away from his vociferous

Singing of the world as material to try

To construct a music of the way

The mind works still fed by light on the

Water a mute noise of engines under

Water as the boat passes the light

House and heads out for open sea

Remembering in Palestine crawling

Down the hill trying to catch a wifi

Signal from the settlement untapped

Improvisation of space

•

At the stone terrace the gardener lingers

Clipping hedges while I work breeze

Between us soon I will return I read

The article about a poet who was killed

In the street his poems untranslated

All the artists and writers killed the open

Space of the sea yesterday Eleanna and I

Went too far out went almost all the way

To Marseille we saw the pink-gray sky

Of wildfire I accepted the waves I found

In the chapters of the Quran to sing my

Way through turbulence draw a way

Through the waves savage wildfire all

The villages evacuated

•

We woke to the smell of burning air

A little cool smell of charred refuse

Colors muted last night the moon

Came clear nearly blue eyes too

Painfully large rough on the eyes and

Impatient but I wanted to look so

Badly for the meteors the sea

Crashing against the rocks smoke

From the fire obscured the sky

In the morning we rowed across

The harbor and realized fear of heights

And fear of depth is the same just one

You see and one you don’t