At this Stage (and a collaboration with Amy Trussell) by Andy di Michele

Andy di Michele is the author of several experimental works, some of which were published (and/or performed) in New Orleans: Nay-Pau-Loron (Fell Swoop Editions), Black Market Pneuma (Lavender Ink), The Minarets of Alabama (Trembling Pillow) and Hoof Swarms Among Bridhe Glyphs (Surregional Press, w/ Amy Trussel). He taught at Tulane University and the New Orleans School for the Imagination before escaping Katrina's wrath. He is now living in Media, PA casting snow spells.

Amy Trussell (Santa Rosa, CA) has been collaborating with Andy di Michele on a decade-long, experimental, mythotextual-laboratory of incantations and sacred gossip titled Ungulations.

at this stage

i am the alembic
i am the spectrum of
all moralities,
                             tendencies
i am future imperfect
i am the gaze meeting the
     aroma
            the rose on the (pistis)
        tastebuds

'the body is the lab…'

is the stone to be seen?
Is the stone to be heard?
Is the stone to be
    tongued
                    inhaled

penetrated? is this
transference, the tribe becoming
the anthropologist, the anthropologist
becoming shaman, shaman becoming
uterine delight, that delight
transforming terror into
         something no longer able
to change?

'…the heart is the lapis'

                        the yellow empress
no longer able to hold the
heaving façade of her long
expired emperor front?

                                                      twin-headed indecision
                                                            oracular figurehead

                                                  ---- this that thus, such ----

i am the other
i am not myself

*

imam stole. give back the
m. you are ima. you are
no he. reinstate your s.
she. your s. your sex. your
serpent. say it: hail mother
al-lat. scream it. sister self.
i am coming. home. hel
                                     sin(ai)
                                                             (dawn hexagons winking
       into yawning octagons of dusk)
IOA
(multiple in a riddle of Unity)
'i am the caliphate of my cell salts'

her      hear see
she     say           heaee
                             hease arsee

 

devil lee's beltane honey-skull jicara
                                                                               with Amy Trussell

 

two times daily, the river runs backwards.

+ + + + + + + + +

devil lee strides

back in

wearing a FU bat

charm around his

sweaty neck

                               not seen | not hidden

              part green / part forbidden
who can argue with the sensuality and design of the form
    and the method through which the heart corridor is constructed?
            dynamiting into the side of the breasted mountains below kailash
    the yantra miners stumble in
    with their tender foreheads lighting the rubble.

no wonder oshun

was the first to emerge

(sliding up from her mid-day slumber)

    annointing herself with glitter cream and cloven oranges
    slipping on a vanilla-blood gown over snakeskin boots.

to entice his lightning gaze (that tower-lounge swaying in his left eye)

    they look for a place to get warm, but not burned

and drop frangi-pangi oil in a slopbucket of alpine-kiwi water
    stolen from the firehouse barbeque

+ + + + + + + + +

drinking acacia tea with her sisters

she got up, kissed

the peacock, polished the mirror,

    (not interpreting, just wearing the clothes of interpretation)

               drizzled the honey out of a hive fashioned of shredded money,

                 licked
her lips 5x... and plugged in a neon cowrie belt.

     strange objects appeared, like a fold-out bed
     where a groaning table of elements used to be.
     the blind songwriter fanned the flames between the two
               with his balcony shirt

              ...devil lee

was in his canyon, strumming his box, dreaming

rainbow blues songs about the ocean...
                          crowing to the sky thunderers

    she was placing a cornhusk doll on the lo-boy
performing surgery with an ordinary household broom
     spangled in drops of florida water & get-thee-hence oil
orienting herself to occurrences of the gatekeeper turning up
   in strange places, like that rock pile
   and a juke joint known as "the alligator's lair"

+ + + + + + + + +

mounting the dodecahedron mare-head

he rides...

     presiding over the lighting rod
     and the stamen
           gathering and dispersing molecular
grain all at once
     hearing the number seventeen in the gallop

he lasso'd the mid-spring dawn sun for her

dripping copper into her siesta flashbacks…

they always meet between 4 and 6,

                                    twice...

     smeared in paint like impressionists taking a
year long lunch break
     eating grasshopper spearmint pie without proper implements and
dancing in an adobe warehouse, dropping incriminating details off the earth face
     with juggler's balls full of food coloring
           falling down an abandoned shaft onto
a mat of red chicken feathers, scotch
                       broom & king biscuit flour sacks

             (hence, a future yellow-red blur...)

a pentagrammatic steel-cut snapshot

        spelled out by an antlered

homunculus of oat bran and marine know-how
     (four petrified pomegranates and a basket in a delphic crevice)…

     scrying grilled scotch-bonnets in a green pumpkin shell

("de way de seeds lay..."):

:firebranding the patakis, lee laughs up

                                 a north sea storm...

under this new moon: runnuculus bloom early in
                         semi-univuncular societies,
a cigar is lit (the first thing the querant smelled after his coma)

     heart(h) and surf mingle in a phosphorous carnival,

                          the glowing bones
showing through jaundiced clown flesh

ganesh and exu tumble on fronds and lick chiron's frogs by the
                      high altitude neon catfish pond

(here, flicker 151 beeswax candles lit by a jockey with
                                        a tungsten scimitar)

plantains flip from

swordfishermen palms         the almanacks are

revised          gourds are split

     ( down the left hemisphere of the brain it rains upwards )

they open a door in the pharmacy wall of sound and step in.

or is it out?

rum is spilled. the titanium farm drum is irrigated with smoke. enter
only with a shibboleth tongue tattoo'd with the lucky pony
diagram

+ + + + + + + + +

this is the nor'easter that begins the celebration

of the final fall of rome & cuba...(o return, ma'at-ba'al)

hail vesta! fix me a homecoming molotov with wild lemon essence.
and olives. smudge the sewer head of constantine!

devil lee slips on a banana peel to distract ms. caridad y toros
                  from the snake pit who laughs and it
          rains lynxes and jackals and hanuman devotees...
she scrubs them off her steps with van-van oil and a garden snake hose.

there's the mirror she holds and converses with...

"hail oshun"     the light refracts, shines down on the
                                  seamstress of the bay

    as she finishes up the midline of the chest
    in pollinated sequins and a marinated
    spider rhinestone hat pin

hail the hurricane network of angel
         dynamos    buoying the blue
    bottle thrown by devil lee

     in the undiscovered kelp forest, the people gather
beneath the hunan-jacoranda tree
     and swing their caribbean jerk chants
                     out towards the 7 seas of ma yemaya-ji
(she waits patiently, knitting compassion force-fields with
             seaweed and wave-crest exactitude).

      o millennia of

mevlevi flames,
                lao floods!

(lee) he's still thirsty, throat painted christmas red as always...

             but there's a fire in the stables

    embodied in a salt-cellar horse lagoon.

          the whistling sower loops around the
                              berks county corn queen again
      to the sound of an atharvan cowbell striking golden membranes

      a new vein has formed and the lunar miner
          holds up a lantern