Noise

for Heller Levinson

I

The nitrogen-bloated float of the Portuguese-Man-of-War is wind-pushed over currents

while sea water laps against it; like the pebble & silk threshold of the trapdoor spider, the float cloaks hunger — the dangling medusae skewer fish with the exaction of a Maya prince perforating his foreskin with maguey thorn.
 
While that float bobs, & rubs against wavelets, a noise is emitted: a squeak like sneaker-

soles stepping across a tile floor, dentist’s hook scraping plaque from tooth enamel, gums bleeding a squish-squeak fork beating eggs in a glass bowl, nails on chalkboard, asthmatic cackle an old VW Beetle heard several blocks off, shifting gears:

a noise only the Portuguese-Man-of-War can emit and

which is done (even if not by will)
 
to transmit its own to be

II
 
Olivier Messiaen, in raptures braiding his plasma with the frozen flecks of ammonia gyring
in the rings of Saturn, stellar combustions spluttering in the left incisor of Catholic paroxysm, he heard that cobalt methane mist of the Ghost in the querulous chatter of birds, & spent years transcribing

thrush dove seagull crow’s caw swallow

in order to reproduce

the vowel from the burning bush, the pizzicato

plicking across proscenium into the womb & Womb, the

wood the nail the squall … 

eli, eli, etc.

III

If rhythm is patterned pitch, and Bedouin sang verse in meter derived from Camel-trot;
if the iamb mimicked the pause
& clang of
(as the blacksmith turned the fiery rod, then struck),
the hammer, the anvil;
if parallelism & catalogues spinning the flames of Ezekiel are a mnemonic device, —

when will I exact a rhythm doubling the thrum of tires on asphalt,
the lurch
and churring of an engine in traffic, radio tuned to static?
 
IV

The female tarantula
clacks her fangs rapidly
leaps
sucks in grasshopper, innards
mushed in her stew of digestive enzymes,
thorax doubled-pierced, antennae twitching.
 
The female tarantula
produces that sound before mating,
(noise, like sand poured out of hourglass);
the smaller male’s appendage hairs bristle with the vibrations, the
pitch, the call to mate, his
pedipalps gorged with sperm
from pent-up rivers aching within
his book-lungs heaving urging
the mounting the wrestle & his own underbelly eviscerated
in cannibal-glut …
 
for the female now
chockfull of fertilized eggs
lacks protein.
 
V

That is
the muezzin intones, the trumpet
starts its fanfare, Armstrong’s West-End Blues,
now Coltrane’s reed vibrates with induction’s milk, bones shivering the
isolate specks of helium & dust in the vast interstellar spaces;
yip of the coyote, wind rustles sage brush, cats yowl
in heat like babes in hot shacks stewing with urine & car oil; now
the liturgy of the slaughtered ewe, the
coiled snake rattles, forked tongue sniffing heat, the chained
dog barks at night as chill glistens the air, & the galaxies
erupt in hydrogen webs expand
cosmic clouds shaped like cream poured into water
and meteor showers with a plip plip plip plip
 
into the atmosphere …
and a cricket rubs its wings,
awash in its own particular music