The Wellspring

If I were a mystic or prophet, the source of my visions would be
a wellspring behind my left eye.

Or if I’ve lived infinite lives,
I died by pistol-shot through my left eye in
my last one.

This is the origin of my miseries
and mysteries.

I imagine the nerve of my left eye is thick and dense,
wired up to what is partly human and partly
Other.

Picture a seed that falls in the left eye
grows into a flowering almond tree.
The fruits it bears are older than I am

Deathwitch, I see the realm of the recently
dead with my left eye.
I can go with you for 49 days.
We will see marvelous sights.
After that comes nothing; you are dead
and I am not.

When I am not in my body my left eye
continues to see.
When the pulses go through my brain,
it is the left brow that jumps.

I have a third eye socket below the ordinary left one.
No eye grows there.
It is waiting for a rose bush. Or a wisteria
that climbs along the roof of my brain.

I am walking through a snowy fen.
My left foot breaks through the ice. I sink
and I sink only on the left side. Frost grows in
my eye. Someone breaks the ice with a pick.

Downtown there’s another party.
Four people are passing around a compact
mirror like a plate of caviar.
One bump two bump three bump four
it collects like dust in my eye socket.
I fall left off the world.

I am growing four fruit trees and four
flowering plants
in the realms of my psychosis.
Every once in awhile I enter the realms via
my left eye and check on their progress.

And isn’t it true that the pathway looked so clear?
The road was paved, ergo it must go somewhere.
Where it goes is through my left eye.
It comes out at a place just behind my left ear.
I walk around like this but no one can tell
that the pathway to infinity
passes straight through my brain.

Let me tell you a secret about me.
Only my left eye understands what it is to be holy,
that is,
ruined for all other purposes but god’s.