N a p a l m H e a l t h S p a : R e p o r t 2 0 1 3 : S p e c i a l E d i t i o n

L o n g P o e m M a s t e r p i e c e s o f t h e P o s t b e a t s

JAMES RUGGIA

Rig-Veda Variations

For Rachel McDavid

In this wine, take delight,

my bright baby faced sun.

Your fire floods the furrows broad and long,

soft radiance rises

to buffer the brightening high.

Your path is lined in holy fire

Your step leaves only carbon behind

Your wine longs to warm you,

it hastens to your hands, seeking relief

from its bulging udder.

Bloodshot man get right with this large world,

Sing a song to Sarasvati.

*

Roll softly

through today and tomorrow

well treasured world.

Light goes before us

and a strong wind

urges us onward

through the crowded moment.

The years burn around us.

The last breath escapes the field

onboard the last time

they said our name.

*

The giant ledger’s methodical hunger

compels modest goals. Work don’t bend too much,

even though time itself is culled from miracles.

Work ploughs its furrow across

years weirdly enriched by labor’s limitations.

Engineering the language, wringing perception

from lines, visceral rhapsodic fervors

seeking a piston driven epiphany.

Noun fractures noun in the jagged jumping line.

Words collide on the stained page

and leap from high synaptic ledges

on new syntactic quests.

The radical awe pulsing the instincts

of my funny head habit.

May these

high piles of fruit greet and gladden you

and waken your intelligence, Sarasvati.

The shore’s

swaying branches call me back

to where the darkness had fully fallen,

and fish broke the surface of the blank page;

fireflies

swelled yellow and dimmed

above the cricketing field.

*

Praise stains opulence on everything. Her mouth

ladles the grass with tears and radiance.

Inflamed, she issues

the new year’s fields, new piping corridors,

and yet, her pin ever punctures these inflated repetitions.

Worship the objective world, make space for what sparkles,

and clear darkness to trace its light.

Her narrowing flute leads on fainter and fainter.

Our fathers, our mothers

once barbers and midwives and cops and killers

now twisting in history. Trapped in stories

they cautiously and callously created

in this wild exotic form

ever lapsing toward obscurity.

Gray ones beyond the terror at the end of the path

demand blood, crave wine, accept tears.

*

Throbbing radiations from pains

as elegant as the beauty they bury.

That distant silence

bright with flames

will warm you.

A promise and a wink.

Sarasvati drink the soma!

Nebulous tatters adrift in a rust red October day

run just ahead of my grip at a glimpse.

The earthy air, warm as peat,

savory as onions in the dark moist soil.

Running hungers urge under a message,

under red leaves in the field,

a shard of light afloat in the dark energy

remembered

as that last missing part

of the radiant ordinary.

*

Tracks speed under the train,

stillness sails the iron forward.

Smooth velocity, the sun speeds

from its airy ocean of light

toward a darkness it can dawn on

every minute on the day.

The years accelerate in blurring velocities.

Don’t kid yourself; it’s a dangerous place to live.

*

The dry sun drinks up his misty morning

and eats his roasted day.

Muggy afternoons swallow

all the day breaking Mondays

from Alpha till the end of August.

Sky high, the blue-black night is on the rise.

Manhattan’s talling towers reflect

the dying day’s riotous fire

roils wild across the world.

Those miles and miles gift wrap

the ordinary rewards of being still.

Bay steeds bright as suns keep taking me here.

*

Waves crashing. Tales of the other shore.

The day’s snapping whip drips dream honey.

Fresh from the sea or the sky

an eye

comes up from sleep.

Hands aloft,

raising light bright against the dawn,

from sunrise and sunset

to the ends of the earth,

footprints on the air.

The broad sure sky. The roofless shelter.

[Originally published in Big Scream #50, Nada Press, 2012. Used by permission of the author.]

James Ruggia attended Naropa University. He published New Blood magazine, an important earlier postbeat platform, in the 1970s and 80s, and served as editor of the St. Marks Poetry Project Newsletter in 1985-86. He has been a travel trade writer for more than 25 years and written about almost 90 countries. His blog, TravelandPoetry, offers intersections between art, history and poetry.