TEN MORE MISTAKES

XXI.

Don’t stop
not ever


XXII.

One needs a tense attention
net to trap the obvious

It is given
to us to

field the mistakes
God isn’t

dead, God is mistaken—let
us mistake the spirits

differently

XXIII.

A blackbird’s song made the muscles
near my eye contract

Her body across
the apartment swung

one way
and another

Tug spine
Tug eye

She is mine and I
can’t stop looking at her

but does looking twin
or thin the world?

Moon on
water like a feedback
skull. All I have

ever wanted is here. There
is no there is
no no substitute


Spirit Breath in Red Shift

ee I a a ieiae ae i ae
e ai i ii, euay, iee aaeue
o e ay o ee i ie eeae
I i oe Aeia oio iui ai i ue
a oe o ae aae a o ea
I. e ee oo o Ae, a, o e, Ae
i a oie, a iaeai i e ai, i
eay i a ie, eay o e, I eae
ou i, e, a
e aao i ei ie o o ia o
ey ea ao ao, a e a oi
I ooi a e iiy aeie oa, & ei
o ou ae ou a I e ee, oi
ae u, oi uie, eeyi
oe, ie, ue o e, oey, aiae-
ei, a oii o ae,
U i e ai, ii, ui ee o i, o
oe a ee eoe?
o a aiay a oy, eiou i ouoy a oa
eye eeai e ie ii a
& oey i. o a ey i, ieee, o a
oi o ae o o, aeei io ie-ae o,
o u, & o u oe ieey a ee e ou iaie
o o o. o a aie o o ey i eei
I ou ee & ee i eae ao ui e o ai
io e i ai e ie u o & o eae
o eae & o i ee eae e, o o e, o oii
o ee o ui eae eaee i i
Oy ou ua o & ea oi. o, o i
ee a o, "aioia eai", u o, I o o a
I a. e i I ie? I i ee ie, I i ie
o e, & I i ee o aay, & ou i ee eae o e
o a aay & oy a o, eie i a, ii
o ie oy o a
I oy oou, & I a a o e, & I i a o i
ou i
I ae io ou ie o ae i & i i o & o oi
i ee ae
a, a a a
Aoe & oe, uay ae, eeee
I i oy io e a
e o uiou o o ou oue


XXV.

Soon no one
will know that

Mohawk was
the name of

a people. The
word Indian

is already wrong



XXVI.

(An ear is as large as a mountain)

“Mere fact of music shows you are.”

James Joyce, Ulysses


XXV.

According to Zen masters, one
may achieve greatness
in the form

of Shoshaku jushaku, one
mistake following
upon the next

To write a mistake-ist poem, one
has only to keep an eye
on the fluid

disaster unfolding


XXVI.

Canary nothing
on pulses
of tone

or apples
left on
like streetlamps

On, in, an
easy candor
with which to ruin

need—come
home, this is
the loveliest rhyme


XXVII.

“Things don’t get better, they just get.”

Ron Padgett, How to Be Perfect


XXVIII.

Do not churn merely
a horde of accumulations
nor turn purple
for fear
of living amid. The woman
in the bed opening
her eyes is opening
her eyes. The apocalypse
sings. Is here. Is
singing how very here
it is. But this song is only the here
of the apocalypse. I am only
talking with yellow
praise, praise
for each sleeping reticulation
of peril. Against a word
that would rehearse
Over the woods
and through the river. Do not breathe
unless it is through the river




XXIX.

It is common for one to believe that the force of the mistake is directed toward escape. This is not so. It might be, of course, if escape were truly possible. But instead, we enter ourselves only where we lack each and every possibility for escape. There is no gap, no fissure to slip into. Mistakes are planted actions. That they leap into the unknown has nothing to do with leaving the earth or entering some kind of void. Mistakes take place in a shifting landscape, but with absolute faith in the marvel of landing. Or crashing, which is another kind of marvelous landing. All our movements, even standing, are momentary recoveries in the protracted crash of our lives. To stumble into mistake is to take place and never an escape.


XXX.

Sometimes leaving
the opera is the opera

like misreading lines
into a skewed grace

she staged “a wave
offering” and hoped

to commandeer “another
formal pornography”

TEN MORE MISTAKES

XI.

Stake out famous
buildings. Lateness may

entail earliness
just as the lack here

may shelter
grave abundances

Mysteries of the Organism
are sexy. All

is gravel and break
the maze



XII.

“It is always time to start over. However modestly.”

Anselm Hollo, Caws and Causeries


XIII.

At day the glass
plays its lightsong
on the wood

There is nothing less
apt than
humorlessness

The poet may live on the edge
of a lake or
along radii of smog

and drift
like a neon
hush


XIV.

Never retreat
into the future
for want
of courage


XV.

Today is wholly
composed of close-ups
indefinite fragments
swelling out
of frame—the eye
of the girl
suddenly an eye of
a girl, the lashes
closing on their black bulb
only to open
once more with the inexorable
movement of a thresher
sifting tints, form

The grain of the wall
welts into a harrowing blanch
of topographic routes

The fruit flies whip
and stall, torpid with the inanities
of youth and age

at once

The toe looms
The sunlight drapes encaustic
The penis curls into

an old mine still threaded
with blue-green ore


XVI.

“I will never find a way to say how much I love American close-ups.”

Jean Epstein, “The Magnification”


XVII.

The sky’s trick is one of remaining impossibly aloof

Just to wake is to be pervaded by a kind of reverence

What scotoma is it here that welds us seamlessly to life?


XVIII.

You can build a house
in the preserved corpse
of an idea
that takes place
ceaselessly and without
blood, bacteria, corruption

a house for frictionless
clamor, sliding
desires unsoaked
by light
or kept like a jewel shell
under the unfogging

breath of time
but I wouldn’t


XIX.

Split I say
Split your thought-

encrusted boat
for more dazzling

matter: “Enchantment today
is the only discipline”

Albert Flynn DeSilver, Letters to Early Street


XX.

Is the apology part
of the dead people?

Is the apple’s rot
not a rat’s joy?

Everyone has been wrong
about the sun

he is so
not thought

he is no
he at all

Her rays are not lines but fat
splay, an endless finger

upon the already blistering
skin of everything and everything

tries to get her together
Our little vain invasions

HOW TO WRITE A MISTAKE-IST POEM

We demand to see more because of our experimental mentality, because of our desire for a more exact poetry…because we need to make new mistakes.
—Jean Epstein

I wanted to invent a new film. If I had to give this style a name, I'd call it a "mistake-ist" art form.
—Harmony Korine


I.

Disband all
relics of the eye

Let this bird outside
your window be
a hole in your poem that
refuses explanation

a swerving refusal, a veer
so as to see slips
in the horizon’s wall

The city of the sky has no past
The whorl at the tip
of the finger is a little wind

The wind does not doubt
the mistakes it brings into being

A mountain does not explain
It is like a magazine

whose ads have been abandoned
by the models whose
redundancy went unheeded

It is not hard to write a mistake-ist poem
It is hard to be alive


II.

watch
wash
watch
wash
watch
wash
watch
wash


III.

Do not yet let
the rich inculcate you so
thoroughly. The of
that is the air

is arm enough


IV.

First we must thank
the trees. The streetlamps

fizz and swoon. Bugs
clipped by the now

growing emergency. Hello
helicopter. Goof-blur

Goodbyes. Incorporate
the machine’s desire

by breaking the machine
Goodbye hello incorporate


V.

Do not disbelieve the birds
Notice the leaf’s bored twirl

Look out at the world as if it were
a telephone you

hadn’t expected to be
buzzing in your fluttery hand

Then again, your hand
is always fluttery and buzzing


VI.

The mouse in
the cupboard in
the kitchen wiggles

his tail through
the closed hinge
the the the his the


VII.

Wait
Not now
Hold it
Not just yet
Just about
Almost

The important thing
is that you not

hesitate



but learn
to occupy air
to feed it impossible

ideas: we
are put on
earth a little
space that we

may learn to bear
the beams of love

Now


VIII.

Switched from William to Blind Blake
from “Holy Thursday”
to “Panther Squall Blues”
a gift from Ed
the recording bathed in static
as if it were the secret voice of air
set loose by time
to laugh uncontrollably
at our dim attempts
to love right
the mistake is holy
to love right
the mistake is yet holy


IX.

“One must always be prepared to learn something totally new.”

Ludwig Wittgenstein, Remarks on Color



X.

Noon is hard on
a priest. An egg
wants company
and so cracks

This is my shepherd
this wind
patiently embracing
and yet I would

not be so
easy. That man that
is my father
We know only

what might
be made to sing
through mishap
tonight

SOME REMARKS ON SONG

Singing reciprocates the advent of us in the world. To sing is to create an event of Being; a becoming forth that is no mere echo, but verily a response. Being is a conversation the universe has with itself. When one engages the world by way of song, she takes up the other side of that conversation, transforming Being’s soliloquy into a dialogue. To my mind, this is rooted in a harmonics of need. There is a need for the world to be acknowledged, for a response to return to the world’s appeal to itself through itself. As Derrida wrote: “I felt the necessity for a chorus.” It is a chorus of desire and wonder, the primordial wonder of presence, of the presencing that is brought forth by sense. And this is why song is always phenomenological: it is an acknowledgment born from perception and a response borne by it. It is a resonant naming, a halo to illuminate the givenness of each moment simply by calling attention to it. It is this call, this further appeal in song that returns, as the universe’s light is shown and showers back upon us, perpetuating the wonder that is becoming forth. To bear witness in this way is also to situate oneself, to find placement. When the I acknowledges the world through song, it takes place amid the plenum, its own sense separating and joining simultaneously in the way of Merleau-Ponty’s reversible flesh.

When I speak of presence and the wonder of its continual reprisal in the world, I approach another term, a crucial term for the exploration of song: disclosure. Song is the expression of the disclosure of the world to the singer and then a further disclosure of the world back to itself. Song opens, concomitant to a physical openness of the body and of the mouth, as indeed the world does, opening forth “that which does” or “those which do.” It is an activity that illuminates the active, an opening that rejuvenates the open. Disclosure also has the valence of secrecy, which intimately textures Being in its mysterious and indeterminate wonder. Song brings us closer to what Bataille calls “the intolerable secret of being.” It is the passing of a secret into the realm of the real, the texture of the real grazing against the real itself, just as the words and notes produced by man drag and catch in his own throat to create his appeal and acknowledgment. It is given to us to sing. It is one thing, in the words of a Spinoza, which a body can verily do. The call opens toward response. It is our responsibility to sing the world back to itself. There is no truth, but there are innumerable answers, the song being one of the answers particular to humans, an act ontologically given to us to do. An act of need that returns to us from the desire of the world.