Lies I Believed
Liam Cameron





History

we are born now, marked inside,
skyscrapers with gapes blast out.

curls of smoke fill the whole air,
stars scream above the blanket.

most parts fall here, on the page,
skyscrapers with blast-out gapes.

we the pieces are united 
through the road tar long later.

but back before the blasts:
our story began during February:
Robert and I coinciding,
slipping through dissonances and beneath icy sheets,
one hundred forty-seven years copper a coin’s side.

two pleading child, grasping into 
that placid whiteness.
and if a child does resemble 

that placid whiteness,
then they two plead, like 
two old heat-pipe cuckoo clocks.

what “festivals of atonement”
should we, two too, invent?




Love

someone glances at you:
some old glitter on your sleeve
where underneath is UPC.

an augenblick is memory.
barbarically gray roads
are clearly exciting
even those pleasures dim. – – – – –

snaring sun we both do
over and then over too,
sapping the still yellow-white.
drums do crack, but still you 
are the ant that summers my apple.




Absolution

collective subconsciousness exists. 
knowing? suffering? loving?
across time they are one axis,
everything about everything.

You and I are one another within.
as before for admission admission is key.

in my heart there is tension
and that sturdy infant Earth will inherit
but intrinsically bind a ransom in questions too vain.
in this way there is traction
but “traction” is multivalent so let me be specific
and diagram some confessions to explain:

I’ve located the world within myself
and I will friction weld it to the world.
I am flawed; I see in others
parts of me I seek to annihilate
that reveal perfections with skillful audacity.
one layer of me is Kautilyan, I don’t know where–
soft-hard-soft or hard-soft-hard?
and if it is the latter: Sisyphean urges are
the natural alignment of my inner and other.
and if it is the former: there is traction.




Naturality

sometimes here, but not now.
sometimes now, but not here.
and every now and then
and every here and there
I am now and here.

transparencies
grainy ricochets
tangless minerals
hanging in the air.
Cage sans cresc.
new patterns elope,
arrange, and fulfill,
then return to still.
trees that cover feet to head
whisper in many voices.
beams pour through the foliage
dust dancing on your eyelids.
silence, purifying mist evokes,
and heavenly pines trace the meadow.





Originality

turned corners point to what I love in gardens of thought:

and so there is a word “lukebrightness” 
and a hobbyhorse knight still in me
“hidden excitedly, containing laughter”.
and there is that placid whiteness– 
it’s here beneath blue-black sky 
when two blankets are alike:

when can we save Mahler’s pyre
where ash is ash and tradition is fire?
when art is decision and craft is effort:

I must speak soft and
listen close, hands deep in ink.
something within me–

tear the soul from its
fibers, emerge with a pearl,
give it completely:

from spit-sucking smoke
from beige boredom
from pallid husks
from unsalted bread, I am.



mark this back cover creed:
Wright’s “I have wasted my life” 
died with Robert and will with me.
love intensely everything
like these lies that I believed.

Re is a six-sequence linear narrative. The ordering is a necessary prescription, not a table of contents. 

Attachment is not presence; from the spiritual residue after love collapses comes reconciliation with our incompleteness.

I am all the days you choose to ignore

The first time                                              each morning
we washed my shirt,                             i curled myself
some color showed.                                      in a corner                                                                                                               of your attention.

The second time,                      a teacup in the sink:
it deepened.                        that’s how you loved me.

By the third,                                                              i waited
the tone softened,                   between the hands.
the fabric tightened.

Fourth,                                                        even your mom
and the lilac                                                   never asked,
had more body.                                                      but i did.

Now,                                                                        i loved you
each rinse                                                                           like
pulls the purple                                                           a bird
deeper.                                                    hitting a window.

I put on that shirt 
today.








Inside and out

My insides 
digested 
by folding dark.

I
built rebar. 

I
am a hermit crab.









The girl with the braided hair

i mad this pichur. lok! its u and me!
I found the drawing tucked beneath a plate.

i usd red craon for ur hapy shert.
The paper yellowed where the corners fold.

ur hands r big. i dru thim carfly.
I don’t remember being six. I wait

the legs r lon, and min r in the dert.
for something, anything, like warmth or scold.

i trid to mak the son, but ran out spas.
Your shirts were white. You never wore this red.

ur smiling here. i gav u al ur tith.
Your teeth were crooked. That, at least, rings true.

my har is yello. urs gos off the paig.
The sun, unfinished, blisters where it bled.

i mad a dog but colord undr neeth.
A smudge remains. I think it once was blue.

thats me! im wayvin. see? my othr hand.
That waving hand… I thought it looked like mine.

i speled ur nam. the a cam out al wron.
The name you never taught me how to spell.

ur taler her, cus ur a gronup man.
You stood, unreadable by my design.

i sag wil drawin. did u her my song?
I sang for you. You listened far too well.

i drew this for u. i left it on ur char.
The chair is gone. The ashtray’s still right there.
u didnt say u sa it. thats ok.
You died not knowing what I meant to say.








Needn’t

You doff my name
and cradle it
beneath your palate.
You’re the only thing
that stays
after staying goes.
You always return 
me exactly.

We don’t touch–
We touch the thing 
between, so thin 
it needn’t touch back.








Fantasie
I close my eyes.
In another room, you sleep.

I lift my hand
and your shoulder turns.
You remember sorrow in your dream,
and my throat tightens.

I don’t know
if it was morning 
when I fell in love
or if loving you 
broke the morning.









Neighbors

His porch light stutters
like me.

Every word collapses
like a twig.

He laughs.
I am undone
by his mouth
breaking open
like church doors.

Tomorrow, maybe,
he will say my name 
like it matters.

The Good

There was a moment, wasn’t there?
Before the candle forgot to flicker?
Before the match forgot the hand?

Light creased behind the eye
somewhere:
The idea of glinting–
not breaking the eggshell,
dreaming colors without body or hue,
still untouched–
But the stillness tilted its head.









Hadibrot

Arrive
with a rind of silence
peeled slowly.

Do not kneel.
Stand upright.

Take off your name.
The World-Already 
knows you.

Look beyond
where shadow
loses shape
and leave
your belief
in the crack.

Leave
before your name is liturgy.










Rooms in my house

My house is three hundred feet tall, 
fifty wide, and thirty deep.

In my cabinet card carousel room, 
shadows scale and slink, slip into slits.
My animation fixes even deeper.
(That life’s unoriginal too)

My music box room…

At the mantle, velvets kiss me.


I squinted out at the rainbow body. Now I know:
brilliance, once spoken, belongs to the world.
In dust is dust: us.


(poem, read)

The morning mirror

I looked at it again.

My eyes are
purple-brown grape pedicels.

I poke the side of my nose
to make it budge.

My jaw clenched last night.
It wants to disappear 
upwards in my head.

My pores are too big.

I press both palms on the sink
and say, 
“you don’t have to be this way.”
My mouth won’t move.

I close my eyes, look up,
And open them.
The mirror won’t crack.
That’s what hurts the most.









Stayaways

Your inexperience is shocking. 

The gaps in the fences
hold little scenes
like the train windows.
Like you.

There’s nobody else here, 
not in your mind. 

Go away and stay away.
I don’t want to understand this.
You aren’t supposed to 
be here anyways.









Knowing

Pain is not poetic.
The body knows 
when something hurts.
It happens 
inside 
your margins:
in a molar, in a leg.

Paint dries in decision;
silence wears love
when it wants 
to be touched.

Which is ready?

-the full
-the empty










My heart

I want to go 
home.

To sit
on linoleum
and be 
the version you would change.

But change–
Change means leaving 
something.
I didn’t know
it would be me.










Olive trees

The olive trees
are sagging.
Not from age,
but aging.

They built
on that well.
Still, I fling
money in.

And, in the soil:
me, who never left.










The bay leaf

I put one in the pot
because mom did.
I never asked why
you don’t eat it.

There are bitter things
that do their part
then disappear.
My neighbor.
My uncle.
My mother.
Me,
when you pronounce my name
wrong enough times
I stopped correcting

You sat 
at my table
looking dissatisfied.
You embrace
everything admitting nobody.

The looker

You arrive, upright
and stiff.

Your stare softens,
easing past the varnish.
Breath pools between us.
I am new in your eyes.

You do not know
I’m watching too,
wasting with you.










On Russian Hill

The climbing street
breaks through the mist;
unlit lamposts
articulate Taylor’s spine.

A dissolved blur
of mews, facades, balconies.
Trees stand half-erased
against blue-black night.

The fog presses
against my head.
Hush, she says.
The gulls, too, are taken
by her cold, milky touch.

Each step vanishes in the concrete.
Even my shadow refuses me.










Vowing

Your smile is bent light–
Something in your gaze
slips by me.

The future is behind us,
the paper already creased.









Fan for Oshun

Glass.

Red beads,
yellow, black
lilac,
in circles.
Each is a drop of light
captured at a fixed point.

Shells line the rim.
They are the ocean.

In the center,
a body wrapped in diamonds
rises in rings.

I lean in.
Tears slip.

Imagine the fingers
pressing each bead.

The effort to put solid
something in time.

Whose was this?

A pang pumps out
from far inside.

Whose was this? 

Glass.










Sibelian

A thick black line
holds down dawn.

Stones
poke out the snowfield

Green fire 
spills on the ice.

The lake 
firms the stars.










Altar triptych

(A black wall)
Suddenly,
a new covenant:
fire shaping fire.

Suddenly,
law: the weight of justice
passed wick to wick.

Suddenly, breath,
suddenly.


(A scene of my English country garden)
The work of my hands is loss.
To plant, to till,
to “keep watch” over earth,
as if freedom had no form.

My garden, my idyll:
The cedar was cut
to widen the table.
I wanted to lift you
through our short life.

And always I return.
The garden is a present.


(A white wall)

Water held in hands,
poured laminarly.

A scale balanced in time.

A circle closing gently;
a soul walking
through every door.

Navier-Stokes

They say weather
can’t be predicted
‘cause of fluid dynamics.

But I say weather’s
melted snow
‘n salty seas–
Those ‘ndifferent things.










As it is

As it is, as it is:
Everything happens at once–
not through straw gaps.
Everything touches something.
Everything will,
or has,
or won’t.










Animal FOCUS

(CH: 017 Ep. 102: American Fauna)

Now, look closely–
Large, red legs,
a stiff back,
it curls up to
keep warm.








Temujin’s dream

Imagine Temujin at an airport.

Then, how minutely we divide,
how thoughtlessly we waste water.

Maybe he owns a bodega.

My Little White Smile

How lucky am I
How lucky is me
For my little white smile.
So chipper and keen
So pretty and clean

So dandy all the while.
How lucky am I
How lucky is me
For my little white smile.
So tidy and neat,
So simple and sweet,
Set cleanly in my skin.

How lucky am I
How lucky is me
For my little white smile.
Yet sometimes I sigh,
And sometimes I cry,
And still it smiles back.










Program note to “Three Nocturnes”

Touch, untouch:
we touch always 
through music 
in time.

Blue, beautiful nocturne–
In the ears,
a real song.

Yellow, eternal nocturne–
Hitting the tongue, 
with rusty zest.

Black, sublime nocturne–
Somewhere between
the senses,
deep
in the stars.










Retrouvailles

You are not meant
to be fully understood.
That gap is so wide
that it can swallow you.

You are here
so they are.
That’s enough.

Bruising of Persistence (Prelude)
Each morning I wake 
with the dull obedience of matter.
There is no Beauty left that does not ache.
It burrowed and left me standing
so the pain would longer sting.

There is a particular shame in waking each day
with the same blunt inventory of loss.
The Bruising of Persistence is all that remains,
having been struck by the ordinary again
and not collapsing to make it stop.





I. Death

Death unwound me–
for Consequence was quieter in Its narrow country.

–

I shuddered at “going on,”
for this inheritance I refused.

But no more–
I must fail against Death,
for enduring made man.





II. The Lonely Mile

Today I walked The Lonely Mile–
through cobble and ash,
through Pictish sigils
drowned in icy grass.

Once, I believed Beauty was earned in abiding.
That by enduring the cold, the cold would recognize me.

Beside the path: the chest of a moose.
Once it was immense.
Once it moved.
Maybe it nursed its young.
Now the wind threaded its ribs.

Memory does not dwell in name,
it flickers in those who remain.

When these thoughts settled,
they left nothing behind.


III. Conclusion

An apple falls from a tree,
and earth becomes its master.
The sparkling skin recoils,
darkening where some sugar is,
emitting the sweet scent of spoil.
Ants invade the breach,
and the apple lessens
until the earth retreats.

You see–
There is a promised sequence of attack, sustain, and decay.
A chair is a chair, no one completes it by sitting.

Meaning is withdrawn:
There is pressure in my throat,
but no sound will come out.
My heart beats without intention.
My life lives through accumulation.
I will end without Conclusion







IV. Liebestod

SO:
I am the cygnet and WWV111,
the giver and the obliterator.
I am a ruined thing.

Each day is mine.
It shook me when It nudged.
Now I breathe It.

The answer is mine.
The walls steer inward
to the Crossing Infinities.
Tragedy sparks long after Passion exhausts.

Each day I rehearse a life passed.
This indomitable metaphysique was purchased with my years.

YET:

Temperance is senseless; it deposes my design.
And if I live, what then?
And if I break The Bargain?
And if I kill the hen?

THEN:
Surrender is the swan and WWV75,
and I will live that I am dead.

You and I

You and I were born on the Ninth
From primordial ambiguity
With secular metaphysique
Between the two eternities
Against the essence of negation
Under oathful unfixity
Through tragedy
Into innate fraternity.

What’s in a name?
In my name, not much.
Yours rolls like temperate olive oil
With flicks that sizzle and roil.
Every exhale and gasp
Every mother and grandmother
Every spoken and unspoken secret.

No words convey how I feel.
My body is an expressionless lump.
To every gust and guile I keel,
Sour in spirit and spare of gump.
All my being is pursuance 
Towards passion and affluence.
I know only this dark form.
I exist secretly, in sex and song,
Where “neither is either” is wrong.
I know only this dark form.
My heart bleeds then freezes cold,
Icy thorns piercing mold.
I know only this dark form.

You and I:
A cloud of churning steam 
Glacially cutting against the stream
Pressing back the unanimous flow
And every bow of wood does crow.

I love you like puke–
In compulsive waves, in rebukes.
I love you like blood–
Any moment, any pore could flood.
I love you like snot–
Out I breathe, out you go.

Your life is my world,
Everything within and without me;
I love you.