The gift before, the gift
preceding “thought” but
not that of the body, the gift
in perpetuity, that which has
not left us, a gift of the midwife
of “thought,” she who discloses
the basis of a gift that precedes
all speech, the song that shakes
in appeal’s response, the basis
of a tongue, which finds itself
lost in oscillations, in response
to that which precedes being
the gift subsequent to nothing
a stab of phenomena that pierces
the face of being, that ebbs only
to wax into bloom, the gift of
air, that invisible balloon giving
place to voice, the open that is
the condition of life needs not
be reviled, nor reveiled, not
beshrouded, the gift of air is
the gift of disclosure, of voice
that secretes itself by way of air
that plainest of substances, so
plain that it fills even our least
moments with dire wind, so
tough and unerring it sweeps
forgotten through the very
condition of thought itself
the gift that precedes the need
of giving, a manner of retuning
the slip of matter to its curdle
and sway, the midst that most
strikes us before the necessary
interventions of love, of need
that flows in its wolfing gait, of
swell and succor that arrives
from the body unbidden, as we
err into thought so weary of
breath, so bereaved by the fools
gold that is language, again
the gift that precedes this feral
unfolding, finally struck by how
slowly the air must love, the gift
of abundance abiding beside, as
air’s porous grope concedes to
loom and return, the gift that
wakes these atoms into singe
Tuesday, December 16, 2008
HYMNING
The appeal that harmony
makes of each bloom
of flesh, each rot
fractal overlapping
matter as light
of its likewise self
shines uncowed by
the sloth of thought
to come as a bloom
of flesh in the open
mouth that is morning’s
body gone song
in the breath sun
makes of its courtly
and distant throb
My son you are weak
beside your own engulfed
manner of flowering
like a shadow that thins
itself into the blade-strew
of rents broaching
the earth and laden
with pinwheel darkness
To blister softly
as the leaves unfurl
and luff in the coil
of wind that wefts
the air to air and
one’s skin to sun’s
simmering orbit
and each gloomy suture
that traces violence
from the world back
to our body belongs
to us as a limb
even as it instantly
absconds like wind
to return in a fled
and phantom pulse
To reenter the margin
of one’s cellular
cacophony only
to stream out in
undignified gulps
when the myriad
splitting atoms turn
over in profusion
To furrow or fold
against the slow greed
that is detachment
so that each coincidence
returns us to the other
and away from the cult
of separation that has
become synonymous with
blind political stupidity
To look upon wood
with the same obvious
glory we do flesh
or some crop of stone
with the same wonder
we mark a child’s
groping frustration
My love I have known
you first and through
that knowing have
remembered a world
so as to reenter it
impurely and perplexed
as befits the senses
which cross in awe
this ever so tenebrous
lurch of moment
that overlaps the next
to form a rhizome
without the benefit
of direction divine
but flowering oblique
with an ignorance
of fear that inhabits
non-human life
To leave humanity
in the great hope
that our entwinement
with the immediate
may extend all as
one’s breath is thrown
to churn amid the air’s
already intoxicating
and transparent muddle
makes of each bloom
of flesh, each rot
fractal overlapping
matter as light
of its likewise self
shines uncowed by
the sloth of thought
to come as a bloom
of flesh in the open
mouth that is morning’s
body gone song
in the breath sun
makes of its courtly
and distant throb
My son you are weak
beside your own engulfed
manner of flowering
like a shadow that thins
itself into the blade-strew
of rents broaching
the earth and laden
with pinwheel darkness
To blister softly
as the leaves unfurl
and luff in the coil
of wind that wefts
the air to air and
one’s skin to sun’s
simmering orbit
and each gloomy suture
that traces violence
from the world back
to our body belongs
to us as a limb
even as it instantly
absconds like wind
to return in a fled
and phantom pulse
To reenter the margin
of one’s cellular
cacophony only
to stream out in
undignified gulps
when the myriad
splitting atoms turn
over in profusion
To furrow or fold
against the slow greed
that is detachment
so that each coincidence
returns us to the other
and away from the cult
of separation that has
become synonymous with
blind political stupidity
To look upon wood
with the same obvious
glory we do flesh
or some crop of stone
with the same wonder
we mark a child’s
groping frustration
My love I have known
you first and through
that knowing have
remembered a world
so as to reenter it
impurely and perplexed
as befits the senses
which cross in awe
this ever so tenebrous
lurch of moment
that overlaps the next
to form a rhizome
without the benefit
of direction divine
but flowering oblique
with an ignorance
of fear that inhabits
non-human life
To leave humanity
in the great hope
that our entwinement
with the immediate
may extend all as
one’s breath is thrown
to churn amid the air’s
already intoxicating
and transparent muddle
Sunday, December 07, 2008
THE FIRST THING A THING
The first thing a thing
is is a question. One wakes
already in the midst
of things and must go
questing after
the unfolding the being
of each thing successively
presents. What could be further
from mundane than
the forbearance of things? I ask
the light what it
is and it replies
like a mountain, silently
exhuming metaphor from
its path like a gnat. And yet
there remains a thing
to which light is still
beholden. Originary holder, huge
and insoluble all
at once. Give up? Air is our
greatest teacher. Its entire
being consists
in allowances, letting the others
emanate. Only the air is more
humble than mountains. It’s so
tough it hugs all day long.
And yet perhaps
this questing is at the heart
of the problem. Man
turns the cadences
of this sensuous expanse
into things of thought. Surely
the light goes on without
the fiddling of neurons. No one
would claim to know
the mountain more clearly or
even the mystery a tree
brings to our eyes, which allows
the air a voice in quaking.
is is a question. One wakes
already in the midst
of things and must go
questing after
the unfolding the being
of each thing successively
presents. What could be further
from mundane than
the forbearance of things? I ask
the light what it
is and it replies
like a mountain, silently
exhuming metaphor from
its path like a gnat. And yet
there remains a thing
to which light is still
beholden. Originary holder, huge
and insoluble all
at once. Give up? Air is our
greatest teacher. Its entire
being consists
in allowances, letting the others
emanate. Only the air is more
humble than mountains. It’s so
tough it hugs all day long.
And yet perhaps
this questing is at the heart
of the problem. Man
turns the cadences
of this sensuous expanse
into things of thought. Surely
the light goes on without
the fiddling of neurons. No one
would claim to know
the mountain more clearly or
even the mystery a tree
brings to our eyes, which allows
the air a voice in quaking.
Saturday, November 01, 2008
FASCICLES
11:00 now the bells complete their horizon
otherwise opening on a novel countenance
the way skin flakes to reveal the further face
cornering thought through a dim freeze
as October intrudes from its calendar crouch
to leap like a skull into a phenomenology
of wind which resorts the atoms into shiver
Does the water emanate from the body
of the earth simply to pool like words atop
the coarse beards of the sleeping elderly
grousing language wintry with brambles
but looking closer we see the fractal grace
the wisps of sound turned awry in the end
so to go darting agile in the ligature of breath
And dance is the only name left for it
this discourteous jangle of fraying nerves
as our neighbors emerge pregnant and clumsy
and beautiful in the hoar breath unfolding
of time’s veiled vesicle fart and recovery
I do believe the sun is keeping us balletic
just as the news ballistic returns in shredding
Fascicles attached loosely in the eye’s veiny
bedding or doubled again with a simple twist
of tongue which clicks damp in the mouth’s bell
of flesh I have been poorly removed while smoke
but range closer in my crumple and grief wince
otherwise opening on a novel countenance
the way skin flakes to reveal the further face
cornering thought through a dim freeze
as October intrudes from its calendar crouch
to leap like a skull into a phenomenology
of wind which resorts the atoms into shiver
Does the water emanate from the body
of the earth simply to pool like words atop
the coarse beards of the sleeping elderly
grousing language wintry with brambles
but looking closer we see the fractal grace
the wisps of sound turned awry in the end
so to go darting agile in the ligature of breath
And dance is the only name left for it
this discourteous jangle of fraying nerves
as our neighbors emerge pregnant and clumsy
and beautiful in the hoar breath unfolding
of time’s veiled vesicle fart and recovery
I do believe the sun is keeping us balletic
just as the news ballistic returns in shredding
Fascicles attached loosely in the eye’s veiny
bedding or doubled again with a simple twist
of tongue which clicks damp in the mouth’s bell
of flesh I have been poorly removed while smoke
but range closer in my crumple and grief wince
Tuesday, October 07, 2008
AFTER TEILHARD
The appeal that harmony
makes of each bloom
of flesh, each rot
fractal overlapping
matter as light
of its likewise self
shines uncowed by
the sloth of thought
To come as a bloom
of flesh in the open
mouth that is morning’s
body gone song
in the breath sun
makes of its courtly
and distant throb
My son you are weak
beside your own engulfed
manner of flowering
like a shadow that thins
itself into the blade-strew
of rents broaching
the earth and laden
with pinwheel darkness
To blister softly
as the leaves unfurl
and luff in the coil
of wind that wefts
one’s skin to sun’s
simmering orbit
makes of each bloom
of flesh, each rot
fractal overlapping
matter as light
of its likewise self
shines uncowed by
the sloth of thought
To come as a bloom
of flesh in the open
mouth that is morning’s
body gone song
in the breath sun
makes of its courtly
and distant throb
My son you are weak
beside your own engulfed
manner of flowering
like a shadow that thins
itself into the blade-strew
of rents broaching
the earth and laden
with pinwheel darkness
To blister softly
as the leaves unfurl
and luff in the coil
of wind that wefts
one’s skin to sun’s
simmering orbit
Sunday, September 07, 2008
GROSS EXAGGERATIONS: PART 2
the music of the body. As such, I still wake
molecular, determined to encounter each
wondrous unfoldment of doing in the parade
from here to there, endangering greed or suffused
by the unwieldy structure of dream that yields to
no autonomy save the interdependent
whole. Every dream has its own nightmare and yet
these children will not be wolves. We are wood people
where the kings speak in oblivion. This silly
hat was given to me by a great woman. Cold
and blood-warm we steel ourselves against the headlines
starting not with the universe, but the duty
to enumerate the universe’s utter
complexity, crashing the windows in rank waves
of seeing, taking the streets with both our ears warped
by fleeing machinery, our nostrils duly
plumbed by each passing hormonal swoop. I finger
a car’s insect-speckled fender and know a stray
will soon be stalking here its incidental break-
fast or merely by the jogger’s sweat-stained brand name
Lycra I better know the neighborhood’s shift toward
an ever-blanchening whiteness. Waking inside
the molecular of my own making, already
not where I was, and moving further in the gaze
gone fetid between the trees.
molecular, determined to encounter each
wondrous unfoldment of doing in the parade
from here to there, endangering greed or suffused
by the unwieldy structure of dream that yields to
no autonomy save the interdependent
whole. Every dream has its own nightmare and yet
these children will not be wolves. We are wood people
where the kings speak in oblivion. This silly
hat was given to me by a great woman. Cold
and blood-warm we steel ourselves against the headlines
starting not with the universe, but the duty
to enumerate the universe’s utter
complexity, crashing the windows in rank waves
of seeing, taking the streets with both our ears warped
by fleeing machinery, our nostrils duly
plumbed by each passing hormonal swoop. I finger
a car’s insect-speckled fender and know a stray
will soon be stalking here its incidental break-
fast or merely by the jogger’s sweat-stained brand name
Lycra I better know the neighborhood’s shift toward
an ever-blanchening whiteness. Waking inside
the molecular of my own making, already
not where I was, and moving further in the gaze
gone fetid between the trees.
Friday, August 15, 2008
GROSS EXAGGERATIONS: PART I
And then to wake molecular in the fetid
gaze merger of trees, I wrest my wearisome ear
from the window’s distant thunder. A woman walks
this town on death’s whooshing blade. I don’t seem to know
Her. The rain begins and everyone else begins
acting like children. It makes me feel Antarctic
to stand in between so much electricity
but I swore I would never be afraid to leave
the bed. Thought-buzz, air-split, pain-spark, throat-fire, waking
molecular in the fetid gaze merger now
neon by day. It was my birthday weekend’s dead
celebrities: men whose anvil voices led them
to a rupture of blood. But I was not feeling
ungood. My cat had taken to sleeping behind
the television. The newspaper contusions
slipped yellow and festive into a new conjure
song for those who would remain animals in spite
of wealth. To wake molecular, to dust the trees
with eye-blear, to stand incarcerated only
by virtue of one’s heart, which spurned all metaphor
to beat on, to bruise, to wake in the rhythm of
a body turning force in the trees’ fetid gaze.
A rupture of blood in the air. A blindness caught
in the leaves. A manner in which to obviate
the sex of dying. The streets weren’t easy. Blinking
wasn’t easy. To know one would forever lurch
forward, oblique, wasn’t easy. Looking out from
a moving target without violating some
body near constantly wasn’t easy. It was
wonderful. Waking molecular in a crash
of sense, not worrisome for the fragments or each
simmering affect shook loose from the dumb-mirror
that had been paid to stand where we could point with ease.
No! No standing, no shooting, no sinking, never
another coaxed boat of sense to moor in time’s mud.
Only this nerve-cape, only another flung veer
for the seer to follow. To look we must grow
weary of looking. The cat does not avert her
eyes. When I was a child I understood how
not to breathe. Now that I’m a man I find myself
taut at each swerve, unable to liquid sideways
to solidly slosh where a miracle might pass.
But as the trees in the leaves wave my mass also
finds a break here and there in its impossibly
convoluted curtain. A slit through which to slip
new, feral, punctured—everything now necessary
in the fetid gaze mergers, the blood rupturing,
the earth not unfriendly in spite of our terrors.
But I know what you would say: out there are people
trying to kill me. As if our lives were but scenes
from The Red Circle or The Samurai, something
with Alain Delon. All of which is true, but death
remains the thing we do not dying. And besides
there are people inside trying to kill you too.
As if your life were a scene from Opening Night,
which it is, as Gena Rowlands inhabits each
of us, or we inhabit her, the flesh of our
reversibility aching through the fake wall
of language. And yet the iterable returns
like sunlight, a weightless expression already
in the act of being said again. So let us
slip together into the contradictions which
pool at our feet, knowing how little knowing can
help, its addled hand groping at the darknesses
that abound here. No here, then nowhere. The reasons
to go on lodged whimsically in the trees’ Y
shaped arms, in their fetid gaze, in the merger we
make simply waking unto sense, waking anew
to ourselves molecular, joisting the air even
in a farce of stillness. My love, your face goes on
parade then, its wiry bouquet of forms morphing
at each symphonic turn. I hand you an answer
my love, always yes. Our eyes sunk into the flit
our hands make roping in the sun’s twittering twine.
We retune like molecules, waking anew now
in the fetid batting of each leaf’s unfurling
eyelash. Like archers who have forsaken targets
we let the world hit us. We who no longer see
allow sight to pour forth like a lewd font upon
the trees’ untaintable flesh. So if I see red
it is only because I love the uncertain
neck her hair curtains or the jellyfishing pulses
that bring her mouth into flush. We suffer only
from abundance. Lack is the lie that has served
to sever the few from the human. I’m going
out for milk, laundry, the bakery’s bludgeoning
air, the crossing-guard’s bored loiter, the cars’ violent
arrival and retreat. Breathing in-out, a bell
for conquering absence, a machine for killing
its own cells. Breathing out-in or conspiring
with trees and dogs and horseflies simply by virtue
of surviving. Killing, conspiring, simply
conquering, bludgeoning, and suffused with the mind
of lost tribes. Well, fuck the mind, and bring all those lost
tribes back for rememberment. Aborigines
deemed agriculture a menace to the glory
of the earth and clothes merely a means to strangle
the music of the body.
gaze merger of trees, I wrest my wearisome ear
from the window’s distant thunder. A woman walks
this town on death’s whooshing blade. I don’t seem to know
Her. The rain begins and everyone else begins
acting like children. It makes me feel Antarctic
to stand in between so much electricity
but I swore I would never be afraid to leave
the bed. Thought-buzz, air-split, pain-spark, throat-fire, waking
molecular in the fetid gaze merger now
neon by day. It was my birthday weekend’s dead
celebrities: men whose anvil voices led them
to a rupture of blood. But I was not feeling
ungood. My cat had taken to sleeping behind
the television. The newspaper contusions
slipped yellow and festive into a new conjure
song for those who would remain animals in spite
of wealth. To wake molecular, to dust the trees
with eye-blear, to stand incarcerated only
by virtue of one’s heart, which spurned all metaphor
to beat on, to bruise, to wake in the rhythm of
a body turning force in the trees’ fetid gaze.
A rupture of blood in the air. A blindness caught
in the leaves. A manner in which to obviate
the sex of dying. The streets weren’t easy. Blinking
wasn’t easy. To know one would forever lurch
forward, oblique, wasn’t easy. Looking out from
a moving target without violating some
body near constantly wasn’t easy. It was
wonderful. Waking molecular in a crash
of sense, not worrisome for the fragments or each
simmering affect shook loose from the dumb-mirror
that had been paid to stand where we could point with ease.
No! No standing, no shooting, no sinking, never
another coaxed boat of sense to moor in time’s mud.
Only this nerve-cape, only another flung veer
for the seer to follow. To look we must grow
weary of looking. The cat does not avert her
eyes. When I was a child I understood how
not to breathe. Now that I’m a man I find myself
taut at each swerve, unable to liquid sideways
to solidly slosh where a miracle might pass.
But as the trees in the leaves wave my mass also
finds a break here and there in its impossibly
convoluted curtain. A slit through which to slip
new, feral, punctured—everything now necessary
in the fetid gaze mergers, the blood rupturing,
the earth not unfriendly in spite of our terrors.
But I know what you would say: out there are people
trying to kill me. As if our lives were but scenes
from The Red Circle or The Samurai, something
with Alain Delon. All of which is true, but death
remains the thing we do not dying. And besides
there are people inside trying to kill you too.
As if your life were a scene from Opening Night,
which it is, as Gena Rowlands inhabits each
of us, or we inhabit her, the flesh of our
reversibility aching through the fake wall
of language. And yet the iterable returns
like sunlight, a weightless expression already
in the act of being said again. So let us
slip together into the contradictions which
pool at our feet, knowing how little knowing can
help, its addled hand groping at the darknesses
that abound here. No here, then nowhere. The reasons
to go on lodged whimsically in the trees’ Y
shaped arms, in their fetid gaze, in the merger we
make simply waking unto sense, waking anew
to ourselves molecular, joisting the air even
in a farce of stillness. My love, your face goes on
parade then, its wiry bouquet of forms morphing
at each symphonic turn. I hand you an answer
my love, always yes. Our eyes sunk into the flit
our hands make roping in the sun’s twittering twine.
We retune like molecules, waking anew now
in the fetid batting of each leaf’s unfurling
eyelash. Like archers who have forsaken targets
we let the world hit us. We who no longer see
allow sight to pour forth like a lewd font upon
the trees’ untaintable flesh. So if I see red
it is only because I love the uncertain
neck her hair curtains or the jellyfishing pulses
that bring her mouth into flush. We suffer only
from abundance. Lack is the lie that has served
to sever the few from the human. I’m going
out for milk, laundry, the bakery’s bludgeoning
air, the crossing-guard’s bored loiter, the cars’ violent
arrival and retreat. Breathing in-out, a bell
for conquering absence, a machine for killing
its own cells. Breathing out-in or conspiring
with trees and dogs and horseflies simply by virtue
of surviving. Killing, conspiring, simply
conquering, bludgeoning, and suffused with the mind
of lost tribes. Well, fuck the mind, and bring all those lost
tribes back for rememberment. Aborigines
deemed agriculture a menace to the glory
of the earth and clothes merely a means to strangle
the music of the body.
Sunday, August 10, 2008
THE BEGINNING OF THE CONTINUING ADVENTURES OF LITTLE MISS FUNNY BUTTONS
Little Miss Funny Buttons or MFB
That’s what her dad and I call her
The littlest fourth in our family
In addition to me, dad, and Walter
She earned her nickname just last year
Though it seems like she’s had it forever
And the story about it is very dear
Our strange adventure together
One more thing you’ll come to know
Is a singular creature named Squibbons
Who loved to steal both thread and bows
Or any small fragment of ribbon
It started last summer behind the house
Where our daughter Olivia played
We lived in the middle of bird and mouse
On a ranch my grandfather made
Now Olivia wasn’t the kind of girl
Who stayed out of trouble for long
If I dressed her all in white like a pearl
By night she was green from the lawn
So it wasn’t strange to see her tracks
Color the floors brown and muddy
But soon a combination of facts
Became quite a curious study
One afternoon as the shadows grew
Olivia entered the kitchen
Wearing a dress I bought her new
But missing a delicate smidgeon.
“Olivia!” I said with surprise
“Where is your fourth fancy button?”
And under a set of confused little eyes
She said, “Mom, I haven’t done nothing
I went to the trees in the back of the yard
Where the branches make everything shady
And found a spot where the dirt wasn’t hard…”
“You napped in the dirt young lady!”
“Well, first I covered the ground with leaves
So my new dress wouldn’t get dirty…”
“And then let me guess, some forest thieves
Stole the button, like field mice or birdies.”
That’s how it was, day after day
Olivia’s buttons would vanish
Whenever she went to the backyard to play
And her stories were growing outlandish
The last straw was a red velvet dress
That matched Olivia’s hair
One night at dinner she sadly confessed
It was had disappeared into thin air
Until, finally, I needed to know
Who the button-thief actually was
I dressed in green from head to toe
And crept like a quiet thing does
What I saw that day was Olivia signaling
Around the dark mouth of a cave
All of the sudden, a creature was wriggling
To the edge of the shadows she made.
Even within Olivia’s cover
The creature appeared to glow
It squeaked out a word that sounded like mother
And Olivia replied, “I know.”
“The truth is I think you should meet
Mom, stop trying to hide!”
The cheeks on my face turned red as rare meat
Embarrassed that I’d been out-spied
“She looks just like my Christmas tree
Your strangely monochrome mom,”
Said Squibbons with obvious glee
As he climbed into MFB’s palm
“Do you think it’s time we showed her in?”
She asked with a little girl shrug
He answered with a curious grin
And gave her ring finger a hug
So I slowly stepped out from the bush
Behind which I had been hiding
And Olivia gave me a gentle push
Into the cave without lighting
Lights there weren’t, but we could see
As plainly as if it were day
For Squibbons just so happened to be
A glowworm lighting the way
I had to stoop low for the cave was small
Though it seemed to go on forever
At last we came to a booming hall
With a little bed made out of feathers
I could see Olivia had been here before
By the drawings all colored with chalk
One was of Squibbons with buttons galore
And on this she gave a strange knock
When I heard it echo I knew at once
Something inside it must hide
The secret I’d been tracking for months
Was revealed as the wall opened wide
What was behind it you’d never guess
A scraggly tree covered in charms!
With a very familiar red velvet dress
That was cut and draped in its arms
Every button that had disappeared
Could be found on this wonderful tree
And even if it seems a little weird
I couldn’t help filling with glee
It sparkled and shined in the wormy glow
And we all laughed at the riddle
That only our family has come to know
Though you now stand in the middle
We hope you will keep our secret alive
And remember to button your tree
We’ll see you again next time you arrive
At the adventures of MFB
That’s what her dad and I call her
The littlest fourth in our family
In addition to me, dad, and Walter
She earned her nickname just last year
Though it seems like she’s had it forever
And the story about it is very dear
Our strange adventure together
One more thing you’ll come to know
Is a singular creature named Squibbons
Who loved to steal both thread and bows
Or any small fragment of ribbon
It started last summer behind the house
Where our daughter Olivia played
We lived in the middle of bird and mouse
On a ranch my grandfather made
Now Olivia wasn’t the kind of girl
Who stayed out of trouble for long
If I dressed her all in white like a pearl
By night she was green from the lawn
So it wasn’t strange to see her tracks
Color the floors brown and muddy
But soon a combination of facts
Became quite a curious study
One afternoon as the shadows grew
Olivia entered the kitchen
Wearing a dress I bought her new
But missing a delicate smidgeon.
“Olivia!” I said with surprise
“Where is your fourth fancy button?”
And under a set of confused little eyes
She said, “Mom, I haven’t done nothing
I went to the trees in the back of the yard
Where the branches make everything shady
And found a spot where the dirt wasn’t hard…”
“You napped in the dirt young lady!”
“Well, first I covered the ground with leaves
So my new dress wouldn’t get dirty…”
“And then let me guess, some forest thieves
Stole the button, like field mice or birdies.”
That’s how it was, day after day
Olivia’s buttons would vanish
Whenever she went to the backyard to play
And her stories were growing outlandish
The last straw was a red velvet dress
That matched Olivia’s hair
One night at dinner she sadly confessed
It was had disappeared into thin air
Until, finally, I needed to know
Who the button-thief actually was
I dressed in green from head to toe
And crept like a quiet thing does
What I saw that day was Olivia signaling
Around the dark mouth of a cave
All of the sudden, a creature was wriggling
To the edge of the shadows she made.
Even within Olivia’s cover
The creature appeared to glow
It squeaked out a word that sounded like mother
And Olivia replied, “I know.”
“The truth is I think you should meet
Mom, stop trying to hide!”
The cheeks on my face turned red as rare meat
Embarrassed that I’d been out-spied
“She looks just like my Christmas tree
Your strangely monochrome mom,”
Said Squibbons with obvious glee
As he climbed into MFB’s palm
“Do you think it’s time we showed her in?”
She asked with a little girl shrug
He answered with a curious grin
And gave her ring finger a hug
So I slowly stepped out from the bush
Behind which I had been hiding
And Olivia gave me a gentle push
Into the cave without lighting
Lights there weren’t, but we could see
As plainly as if it were day
For Squibbons just so happened to be
A glowworm lighting the way
I had to stoop low for the cave was small
Though it seemed to go on forever
At last we came to a booming hall
With a little bed made out of feathers
I could see Olivia had been here before
By the drawings all colored with chalk
One was of Squibbons with buttons galore
And on this she gave a strange knock
When I heard it echo I knew at once
Something inside it must hide
The secret I’d been tracking for months
Was revealed as the wall opened wide
What was behind it you’d never guess
A scraggly tree covered in charms!
With a very familiar red velvet dress
That was cut and draped in its arms
Every button that had disappeared
Could be found on this wonderful tree
And even if it seems a little weird
I couldn’t help filling with glee
It sparkled and shined in the wormy glow
And we all laughed at the riddle
That only our family has come to know
Though you now stand in the middle
We hope you will keep our secret alive
And remember to button your tree
We’ll see you again next time you arrive
At the adventures of MFB
Wednesday, July 16, 2008
NEW SEVENS
After the rain the
birds tentative. A stray
car here there
like white squall. What
is home in
this city of erupting
knees? This city of dancing?
Wake neck
stiff full less
from dreaming than from
stubbly bits of song.
Where did we go
only just a moment
ago? Now here.
The whirling ceiling
fan jerks
the cerebellum into pulse
like a wet bell
whose tongue sets
off little forks
of white electric dance.
birds tentative. A stray
car here there
like white squall. What
is home in
this city of erupting
knees? This city of dancing?
Wake neck
stiff full less
from dreaming than from
stubbly bits of song.
Where did we go
only just a moment
ago? Now here.
The whirling ceiling
fan jerks
the cerebellum into pulse
like a wet bell
whose tongue sets
off little forks
of white electric dance.
Thursday, June 19, 2008
POST 200: A CONFOUNDING ASSORTMENT
AS SKULLS TEAR BY
Another heavy
metal morning
A worm one
enters the abscess
of the city in
(or the excess)
as skulls tear by
I can’t breathe
as little as
I’d like
but love
your black cable
wire window bouquet
and love this bloody
nose anti-war paint
punctuating the streets
to go silver
and revise
another heavy
metal morning taut
in the fetid
gaze merger of trees
LOOKING SEXY FOR PEACE
for Erica Svec
These paper roses
seep black
from the swollen elbow
of her ceiling as John
smirks through
curly detergent
stillness, dear friends
forever crowding
out lack only
to fill it with a new
and indefatigable lightness
looking dangerous
or sexy for peace
as quaint Buds sprout
in the plastic black
where our hands meet
or suffering nightlife
we charge victorious
into the blue char
of summer, subnormally
wrecked with petals
sleeping over
SNAPSHOT AUTOBIOGRAPHY
First
nowhere,
now
here.
SIXING
Squint
Sequin
Secant
Second
Beckon
Bedeck
Bedlam
Meddle
Middle
Milder
Wilted
Walden
GRASSROOTS
Assholes continue to amass
Poking a dim axis
Of symptoms into happy hour
But it is I who
Judge, dear Friedrich
Winnowing grace
While the jukebox cycles
To submerge chatter
With its middling solemnity
Let me speak plainly: fuck
Less from shame, dear
Asshole mash, you menace well
Short of honor and no
I won’t speak
As plain as I should
Know better, the ceiling
Gorgeous with tin, the organic
Strawberries staining
The TV personality sipping gin past
Ethics, a new hole
In the heart I use for purchase
Curious about wealth
In a violent way
Unsettling each scotoma
The magazines wince
Into commute
But for now going nowhere
As the city chains
Further so
As to foster its uninter-
Ruptedness into our bustling
Cache of asym-
Metrical longing, gross
Billows rising
From the mouth’s open
Awe where we lope
Like a never before
Played song played by brilliant if
Untrustable musicians
Staring absent or
Restringing their hapless
Instruments into line
The jukebox breaking
Into Pixies, the bar
Cat sniffing at one scuffed
Shoe after another, rubbing
Up against nothing and for fuck’s
Sake it’s already half-past
Eight, we should
Be at church, Elaine Equi
Is telling our fortunes
Another heavy
metal morning
A worm one
enters the abscess
of the city in
(or the excess)
as skulls tear by
I can’t breathe
as little as
I’d like
but love
your black cable
wire window bouquet
and love this bloody
nose anti-war paint
punctuating the streets
to go silver
and revise
another heavy
metal morning taut
in the fetid
gaze merger of trees
LOOKING SEXY FOR PEACE
for Erica Svec
These paper roses
seep black
from the swollen elbow
of her ceiling as John
smirks through
curly detergent
stillness, dear friends
forever crowding
out lack only
to fill it with a new
and indefatigable lightness
looking dangerous
or sexy for peace
as quaint Buds sprout
in the plastic black
where our hands meet
or suffering nightlife
we charge victorious
into the blue char
of summer, subnormally
wrecked with petals
sleeping over
SNAPSHOT AUTOBIOGRAPHY
First
nowhere,
now
here.
SIXING
Squint
Sequin
Secant
Second
Beckon
Bedeck
Bedlam
Meddle
Middle
Milder
Wilted
Walden
GRASSROOTS
Assholes continue to amass
Poking a dim axis
Of symptoms into happy hour
But it is I who
Judge, dear Friedrich
Winnowing grace
While the jukebox cycles
To submerge chatter
With its middling solemnity
Let me speak plainly: fuck
Less from shame, dear
Asshole mash, you menace well
Short of honor and no
I won’t speak
As plain as I should
Know better, the ceiling
Gorgeous with tin, the organic
Strawberries staining
The TV personality sipping gin past
Ethics, a new hole
In the heart I use for purchase
Curious about wealth
In a violent way
Unsettling each scotoma
The magazines wince
Into commute
But for now going nowhere
As the city chains
Further so
As to foster its uninter-
Ruptedness into our bustling
Cache of asym-
Metrical longing, gross
Billows rising
From the mouth’s open
Awe where we lope
Like a never before
Played song played by brilliant if
Untrustable musicians
Staring absent or
Restringing their hapless
Instruments into line
The jukebox breaking
Into Pixies, the bar
Cat sniffing at one scuffed
Shoe after another, rubbing
Up against nothing and for fuck’s
Sake it’s already half-past
Eight, we should
Be at church, Elaine Equi
Is telling our fortunes
Thursday, June 12, 2008
PART FIVE
In a way, I had been preparing for the last couple hours for years. When I say, “we were not set,” I am speaking from an idea of the possibilities that I had been nurturing for some time already. It was as if I had been preparing a kind of hearth, a nest where the possibilities might shortly reside. At first this nest building consisted of word collection. Certain words stood out to me with an uncanny resonance. Disequilibrium was the first and would prove to be the most ornate. The others that followed—veer, oblique, provisional, amid, etc.—seemed almost like sequins that flashed and danced upon disequilibrium’s turning form. Or, further, I think it may have been these words that gave disequilibrium form. As these words accrued and the form of disequilibrium emerged, it became easier to recognize the implications it proffered. We were not set. A balance was not struck. The movement was not linear. The understanding had nothing to do with stability. Or, in more affirmative terms: everything was already veering into the improvised performance of the real. But perhaps that sounds too vague. This is the problem with language. We have developed it to express definite content. Unfortunately, there is no such thing. Ask yourself: “Am I already moving?” Ask yourself: “How many layers of ambiguity exist between this movement and myself?” Ask yourself: “How can I see myself if I am a moving target?” Answer yourself: “What is the use of an arrow if it is always moving?”
Yes, sometimes in the midst of becoming something else, a process that inundated us over the last couple of hours, the answer to a question was a further question. Answers, after all, in the Platonic world we had been thrust into since birth, only worked to shield truth by gilding it. And now how far we’ve managed to stray again from the body! It’s as if we are repeatedly drawn back down into the medium of our discontent. In the dying words of an alcoholic poet: My vocabulary did this to me. So, then, more questions. How is it we became so sure life was lacking? That there was another life preferable to the one given us? Does it not begin with the misperception of an alternative? Or, perhaps, a denial of perception altogether? Is it merely a trick of language? The imagination’s great betrayal? And now who is being melodramatic? Obviously we need to return to the actual events of the last couple hours. At some point after the shaking of the hands, or during, but after we had entered the experience of our own shaking and become it, we became visited by voices. Language, no, but voices all the same, and this is what kept us free from the nonsense above. They began as gusts. One small, deep, guttural gust after another, rising from somewhere central within the shaking of the body. At first they were simply expulsions, like a withered bag wheezing its last pocket of stale air. But soon they evolved from gusts into grunts. Or more likely the grunt was added to the gust. The vibrations of the body seemed to be pulling forth a new capacity, hitherto forgotten in the miasmic swamp of unmediated expression. Gust, grunt, glory. Gustgruntglory.
Yes, sometimes in the midst of becoming something else, a process that inundated us over the last couple of hours, the answer to a question was a further question. Answers, after all, in the Platonic world we had been thrust into since birth, only worked to shield truth by gilding it. And now how far we’ve managed to stray again from the body! It’s as if we are repeatedly drawn back down into the medium of our discontent. In the dying words of an alcoholic poet: My vocabulary did this to me. So, then, more questions. How is it we became so sure life was lacking? That there was another life preferable to the one given us? Does it not begin with the misperception of an alternative? Or, perhaps, a denial of perception altogether? Is it merely a trick of language? The imagination’s great betrayal? And now who is being melodramatic? Obviously we need to return to the actual events of the last couple hours. At some point after the shaking of the hands, or during, but after we had entered the experience of our own shaking and become it, we became visited by voices. Language, no, but voices all the same, and this is what kept us free from the nonsense above. They began as gusts. One small, deep, guttural gust after another, rising from somewhere central within the shaking of the body. At first they were simply expulsions, like a withered bag wheezing its last pocket of stale air. But soon they evolved from gusts into grunts. Or more likely the grunt was added to the gust. The vibrations of the body seemed to be pulling forth a new capacity, hitherto forgotten in the miasmic swamp of unmediated expression. Gust, grunt, glory. Gustgruntglory.
Tuesday, June 03, 2008
PART FOUR
Contrary to love, one might have expected the last couple hours to crescendo with a blood wash, a bouquet of limbs. And to the degree that we were pulled, ecstatic, past the horizon of the body, its practical violence did become an immediate, throttling aspect of our experience. Another of the things a body does is destroy itself. Or, at least, parts of itself, maintaining a certain resilient sum with which to proceed. The cells, the bones, the neurons—all of it under constant threat of overhaul. Let’s take the bones. There is an age when some sequence in the cell DNA tells it to stop refurbishing the integrity of the bone structure. Until that time, tiny proteins spend all their lives destroying the bones so that other tiny proteins can build them anew. This process fully refurbishes the bones every dozen years or so. Teenage bones, until the end, don’t exist. So, suffused as we were in the non-totalizable unity of the body, these sorts of processes did not go unnoted. But far from spelling out a sort of terror, they seemed to exist as a disproof of peace. An affirmation if you will. The violence of the body affirmed the body as a place to go on living. And as for the violence we’d become used to—the newspaper apocalypse, each morning returning to herald the depravities of abundance, of disparity and riot—this was conspicuously absent. It was as if the world had ceased to enable the archetypes of human drama. There was no revenge, no redemption, no plethora of reactive forces engulfing the now. Nor was there any feedback imagery, no involuntary ticcing of war or the daily, almost domestic carnage we’d come to know. Once, and only once, I was visited by an image that was plainly disturbing. The image of a dog, splayed, entrails rent across the soiled asphalt of the highway’s shoulder. Then the lyrics of a song: “To be red tendon dog, blood breathing by the side of the highway.” And of course it was beautiful.
In addition to these sudden song memories, what could be heard in the last couple hours was legion. True to Cage’s word, the ostensibly inviolate silence of our contemplation contained within it a great aural wealth. But where Cage had made it seem abstract, conceptual, this new flaunting of silence was the very essence of physicality. Suddenly the shudder was sounding. The shudder that we was announcing itself, or ourselves, in oscillating sonic tides that rose and retreated in consonance with the body’s unending revelation. How obvious, we thought without thinking, sound is touch. To vibrate, to sing. The body is a music, an unruly symphonic mass from larynx to synapse. The mess of the body—sloshing, zapping, choking, warping, unfurling, lapping, etc.—creates an aural field that fills and colonizes the air that allows its passage. It also reminded me of drinking—the undeniable intoxication, the gleeful loosening of self and loss of stability. There was the mysterious confluence, that feeling of throat and liquid undulating together, the substance indecipherable from the mode of its delivery. So it was: drinking in and spilling out: the same.
To quiver was to sing and to sing was to imbibe, torquing the last couple hours into a kind of spontaneous bacchanal. But would that have been evident to a casual observer? Having been an unmitigated participant, it’s not a question I could answer. And what might be meant by casual observation anyhow? Causal is more like it. All that time we spent gutting the wreckage of our world so as to see more. That was the problem with seeing. It filled things, created things, changed things and everything appeared casual. Appeared. Seeing reaped and harvested, carving deeper into the illimitable surface of things without touching them at all. The more I learned about seeing the more I saw that cause was effect. It’s like that old worn phrase: seeing is believing. It really is! But not one and then the other: both, simultaneously. And as cause piled up on cause we casually looked the other way or looked directly at it and did not see. If someone “objective” had been there at the end to watch us, he would have been wholly oblivious to what transpired. If someone “objective” had existed, that is. It all depended on the cult of separation, severing the real from our perception because we had been told it was insufficient. Severing each being from every other so as to isolate some convenient truth.
Unfortunately, language is also a technology of convenience, and thus far my account of the last couple hours has struggled between a desire to express things in terms of an experiential real and my inability to fully escape the realm of conceptual abstraction. The latter intrudes and impedes by dint of learned and, perhaps, neurologically embedded habit. But that’s where the last couple hours approached a kind of suturing magnificence. They constituted a situation. We became situated. The place-taking of site returned to us at the intimate circumference of our own bodies. And in being sited, situated, we were not set. It was as if a spotlight had been turned on. And we were in the exact spot where it had been pointed, patient, waiting. It was the sensation of performing, but with the added realization that the performance had been going on for quite some time. Already performing, then, in the spotlight of being situated, conceptual abstractions seemed to flake away. Qualities like warm, loud, wet, rough; these ceased to exist apart from the particular physicality of things. Where before they had drifted separate, unhinged, ready like transparencies to be laid atop the blank slate of the objective world, they were returned to the objects themselves. The notions of objectivity, separation, isolation, severance, definition; all these fell away like a dark game whose rules have been exposed. Or: we ceased telling a bad joke.
In addition to these sudden song memories, what could be heard in the last couple hours was legion. True to Cage’s word, the ostensibly inviolate silence of our contemplation contained within it a great aural wealth. But where Cage had made it seem abstract, conceptual, this new flaunting of silence was the very essence of physicality. Suddenly the shudder was sounding. The shudder that we was announcing itself, or ourselves, in oscillating sonic tides that rose and retreated in consonance with the body’s unending revelation. How obvious, we thought without thinking, sound is touch. To vibrate, to sing. The body is a music, an unruly symphonic mass from larynx to synapse. The mess of the body—sloshing, zapping, choking, warping, unfurling, lapping, etc.—creates an aural field that fills and colonizes the air that allows its passage. It also reminded me of drinking—the undeniable intoxication, the gleeful loosening of self and loss of stability. There was the mysterious confluence, that feeling of throat and liquid undulating together, the substance indecipherable from the mode of its delivery. So it was: drinking in and spilling out: the same.
To quiver was to sing and to sing was to imbibe, torquing the last couple hours into a kind of spontaneous bacchanal. But would that have been evident to a casual observer? Having been an unmitigated participant, it’s not a question I could answer. And what might be meant by casual observation anyhow? Causal is more like it. All that time we spent gutting the wreckage of our world so as to see more. That was the problem with seeing. It filled things, created things, changed things and everything appeared casual. Appeared. Seeing reaped and harvested, carving deeper into the illimitable surface of things without touching them at all. The more I learned about seeing the more I saw that cause was effect. It’s like that old worn phrase: seeing is believing. It really is! But not one and then the other: both, simultaneously. And as cause piled up on cause we casually looked the other way or looked directly at it and did not see. If someone “objective” had been there at the end to watch us, he would have been wholly oblivious to what transpired. If someone “objective” had existed, that is. It all depended on the cult of separation, severing the real from our perception because we had been told it was insufficient. Severing each being from every other so as to isolate some convenient truth.
Unfortunately, language is also a technology of convenience, and thus far my account of the last couple hours has struggled between a desire to express things in terms of an experiential real and my inability to fully escape the realm of conceptual abstraction. The latter intrudes and impedes by dint of learned and, perhaps, neurologically embedded habit. But that’s where the last couple hours approached a kind of suturing magnificence. They constituted a situation. We became situated. The place-taking of site returned to us at the intimate circumference of our own bodies. And in being sited, situated, we were not set. It was as if a spotlight had been turned on. And we were in the exact spot where it had been pointed, patient, waiting. It was the sensation of performing, but with the added realization that the performance had been going on for quite some time. Already performing, then, in the spotlight of being situated, conceptual abstractions seemed to flake away. Qualities like warm, loud, wet, rough; these ceased to exist apart from the particular physicality of things. Where before they had drifted separate, unhinged, ready like transparencies to be laid atop the blank slate of the objective world, they were returned to the objects themselves. The notions of objectivity, separation, isolation, severance, definition; all these fell away like a dark game whose rules have been exposed. Or: we ceased telling a bad joke.
Saturday, May 24, 2008
PART THREE (for Kendra on her birthday)
Recalling the last couple hours is similar to waking, as is any attempt at memory. One wakes and remembers or remembers and wakes. The horizon between perception and consciousness shifts to accommodate these states, phenomenologically disclosing the worlds of present and past. Simply standing in a room, focusing one’s eyes on the small, quavering movements of one’s hand, the world of the present is continually disclosed. It is as if one has opened some sort of portal, a radius of activity wherein the world is performed to us. Except, in the last couple hours, this portal that we opened merely through the efforts of our own erratic perception, revealed to us an aspect of ourselves, already performing, in the travail of the hand. We woke to our hands. And once we began waking, it was difficult to stop. The intrusions of memory helped assuage us, but they were, conversely, difficult to hold on to. For instance, within the shaking a moment of the past would open. Something seemingly inane. A collection of words. Having been a poet, often the words that came to me were my own. If you consider memory as an act of perception this quirk loses some of its hubris, though I can’t say I wasn’t aware of some lingering embarrassment. Moment’s wing broke. Those are the three words that came to me. It was both the title of a poem and its last line. A sort of drug-influenced poem from my early twenties. If I profess little self-awareness within the actual events of the last couple hours, this small memory alone would seem to contradict me. So it is with the mind, even in the thrall of revelation it is convulsing with possible thought, self-commentary and game.
If anything seemed game-like in the last couple hours, it didn’t in any way contradict the seriousness of our endeavors. The idea of a game is a little like the idea of a joke. For years I had been completely preoccupied by my incapacity to answer the question, “What is a joke?” The possibility of a joke is activated by any number of subtle maneuvers in perspective. Part of the joke seems to be one’s intention of framing it as such. Same with games. Having been yoked for nearly a decade barreling my way through the subterranean commute of millions, I knew getting to work was a kind of game. As was work itself, not to mention showering or making coffee or waving to the woman behind the counter at the diner from the sidewalk outside as I hurried past. Seen objectively, an act that has become difficult if not nauseating, all limitations imposed on the body, when combined with some degree of repetition, constitute a game. And that’s the problem with objectivity—I can immediately identify a slew of exceptions to what I have only just hypothesized. All of this is beside the point, except of course to the degree that my divergences have themselves constituted a kind of game. The important thing is that gaming is something one does with the body. It is a way of expressing what it is a body can be said to do in the world. If it was serious enough for Spinoza it should be serious enough for us. And trust me, I know plenty of jokes about Spinoza. Perhaps the question, “What is a joke?” is the same as the question, “What is a body?” Certainly the humor of existence, its cloying absurdity, is rarely lost on anyone for long. And so games could be said to function as a countermeasure for the joke of the body. And so back to laughter.
In the last couple hours the laughter that was shaking that was the act of becoming oneself through becoming one’s hands did not stop. Like an object put to motion in an ideal, frictionless world, there was no opposing force to counteract the initial inertia of the shaking once it began. I use this example because it couldn’t be more wrong. Part of becoming the shaking that was one’s hands was relinquishing any and all remnants of the ideal that malingered by habit or convenience. And friction existed not as a force, but as all force. Friction was the engine of the real. It was friction alone that allowed the body to veer and zag, to refract and carom. This is why shaking was laughing. Moving included a necessary element of surprise. What was done was never known before the moment of its doing. The only inexorable force was coincidence: one body overlapping another. So it wasn’t an object traveling ceaselessly in one direction, it was the exact opposite: one body detouring inexorably through the surprise of its coincidence with other bodies. That is why I love you. And love, before, had been such a mystery. And it was still, but not an impenetrable mystery, an inexhaustible one. The very word love was itself, to quote Merleau-Ponty, “the surface of an inexhaustible depth.” Perhaps this was one of the mistakes about love before, that it might be without friction, or that it could travel in a single direction. As with any phenomenological enquiry, of which love was surely an example, it came down to attention. How closely is it that one looks at the coincidence of bodies? How well can one disclose the phenomenal aftermath of his or her collision with her or him. As with the revelation of our hands, its inexhaustible nature makes for a terribly exhausting undertaking.
For that reason, the last couple of hours were lovely. That is, they were characterized by love. I laugh and I love you. The Chinese and I love you. The last malingering ideals eviscerated and I love you. Which is one of the reasons, perhaps, that my lapses into thought so often consisted of you. One in particular kept recurring. The paradox is that it took place in a location where I know you have never been. It was daylight, just. The house was still cold and the grass in the backyard was arching with beads of dew. I tiptoed through the lawn, never looking down. It was my conviction that the several pinecones in the untrimmed lawn were only avoidable if one did not try to avoid them. So I looked forward, fixing my gaze on some middle distance between the far alleyway and myself, and emptied my mind of pinecones. My ankles were becoming very wet and the smell of the garden was growing heavier, but I was not stepping on any pinecones. Though this walk to the garden only took an average of seven or eight steps, when it recurred to me during the last couple hours it sometimes seemed like the length of an avenue, and I was so deeply engrossed by the process that imagining the end of the walk could never take enough precedent to actually end it. And all the while I thought of you. It occurs to me that even then, when I was only a young boy, crossing the lawn to eat snap peas and cherry tomatoes before the others had woken, I thought of you. Assuming you feel the same way, this shouldn’t seem at all improbable. Which, if we are to return to the notion of friction, would be perfectly acceptable even if it were so. Of course these things are improbable. Why else would we be here? Of course the pinecones are moving in accordance with your effort not to make an effort not step on them. Why else would they be there? That is why I love you.
If anything seemed game-like in the last couple hours, it didn’t in any way contradict the seriousness of our endeavors. The idea of a game is a little like the idea of a joke. For years I had been completely preoccupied by my incapacity to answer the question, “What is a joke?” The possibility of a joke is activated by any number of subtle maneuvers in perspective. Part of the joke seems to be one’s intention of framing it as such. Same with games. Having been yoked for nearly a decade barreling my way through the subterranean commute of millions, I knew getting to work was a kind of game. As was work itself, not to mention showering or making coffee or waving to the woman behind the counter at the diner from the sidewalk outside as I hurried past. Seen objectively, an act that has become difficult if not nauseating, all limitations imposed on the body, when combined with some degree of repetition, constitute a game. And that’s the problem with objectivity—I can immediately identify a slew of exceptions to what I have only just hypothesized. All of this is beside the point, except of course to the degree that my divergences have themselves constituted a kind of game. The important thing is that gaming is something one does with the body. It is a way of expressing what it is a body can be said to do in the world. If it was serious enough for Spinoza it should be serious enough for us. And trust me, I know plenty of jokes about Spinoza. Perhaps the question, “What is a joke?” is the same as the question, “What is a body?” Certainly the humor of existence, its cloying absurdity, is rarely lost on anyone for long. And so games could be said to function as a countermeasure for the joke of the body. And so back to laughter.
In the last couple hours the laughter that was shaking that was the act of becoming oneself through becoming one’s hands did not stop. Like an object put to motion in an ideal, frictionless world, there was no opposing force to counteract the initial inertia of the shaking once it began. I use this example because it couldn’t be more wrong. Part of becoming the shaking that was one’s hands was relinquishing any and all remnants of the ideal that malingered by habit or convenience. And friction existed not as a force, but as all force. Friction was the engine of the real. It was friction alone that allowed the body to veer and zag, to refract and carom. This is why shaking was laughing. Moving included a necessary element of surprise. What was done was never known before the moment of its doing. The only inexorable force was coincidence: one body overlapping another. So it wasn’t an object traveling ceaselessly in one direction, it was the exact opposite: one body detouring inexorably through the surprise of its coincidence with other bodies. That is why I love you. And love, before, had been such a mystery. And it was still, but not an impenetrable mystery, an inexhaustible one. The very word love was itself, to quote Merleau-Ponty, “the surface of an inexhaustible depth.” Perhaps this was one of the mistakes about love before, that it might be without friction, or that it could travel in a single direction. As with any phenomenological enquiry, of which love was surely an example, it came down to attention. How closely is it that one looks at the coincidence of bodies? How well can one disclose the phenomenal aftermath of his or her collision with her or him. As with the revelation of our hands, its inexhaustible nature makes for a terribly exhausting undertaking.
For that reason, the last couple of hours were lovely. That is, they were characterized by love. I laugh and I love you. The Chinese and I love you. The last malingering ideals eviscerated and I love you. Which is one of the reasons, perhaps, that my lapses into thought so often consisted of you. One in particular kept recurring. The paradox is that it took place in a location where I know you have never been. It was daylight, just. The house was still cold and the grass in the backyard was arching with beads of dew. I tiptoed through the lawn, never looking down. It was my conviction that the several pinecones in the untrimmed lawn were only avoidable if one did not try to avoid them. So I looked forward, fixing my gaze on some middle distance between the far alleyway and myself, and emptied my mind of pinecones. My ankles were becoming very wet and the smell of the garden was growing heavier, but I was not stepping on any pinecones. Though this walk to the garden only took an average of seven or eight steps, when it recurred to me during the last couple hours it sometimes seemed like the length of an avenue, and I was so deeply engrossed by the process that imagining the end of the walk could never take enough precedent to actually end it. And all the while I thought of you. It occurs to me that even then, when I was only a young boy, crossing the lawn to eat snap peas and cherry tomatoes before the others had woken, I thought of you. Assuming you feel the same way, this shouldn’t seem at all improbable. Which, if we are to return to the notion of friction, would be perfectly acceptable even if it were so. Of course these things are improbable. Why else would we be here? Of course the pinecones are moving in accordance with your effort not to make an effort not step on them. Why else would they be there? That is why I love you.
Friday, May 16, 2008
PART TWO
I am using words like “beginning” and “last” and “hours,” but it may have occurred to you already that these concepts, even during the last couple hours, were vague at best. Not that our concept of time had been crisp beforehand, but there had been some collective understanding, however provisional. In the last couple hours, time, or the unnamable duration that was now describing the event, was suffused with a sort of drainage, a lessness. Yes, a lessness; as with the color that emerges from the drainage of a darker color that preceded it. The phenomenon that stood in for time was suffused by a lessness that recolored each successive movement of the event. This is my hand was not so much a thought as it was a sinking into the actuality of experience. I am my hand was not a consequent thought, but a further sinking into this actuality. I am shaking was both a continuation of this movement and a paradoxical veer toward levity. If one is shaking, I mean if one’s being consists in shaking, then how is one to remain a man? Why is I not a slow light, an eccentric form of laughter, a current of fortuitous noise? With the introduction of this ambiguous multiplicity, something about time began to dissolve. Whereas once time consisted solely in direction and number, it was suddenly contiguous with color and texture, and the separations of existence were slowly merging into some vibrant contagion.
That this insistence on merging was characteristic of the last couple hours was somewhat ironic. I had wished to be synesthetic for as long as I could remember. I had sat in some isolated place, at the edge of a lake or in the bureaucratic recess of some building, and attempted, always without success, to cross-pollinate my own sensory inputs. I suppose the desire had originally come from my fascination with Alexander Scriabin, the Russian Symbolist composer. Scriabin was a prodigious synesthete who was composing an Armageddon-piece entitled Mysterium when he died. It was to last seven days and climax with the end of the world. Or, not the end of the world exactly, but an end of mankind, and the replacement of our species with a verdant proliferation of higher beings. But now, I fear, I’m confounding my tangent on synesthesia with eschatology. Which is, I suppose, what was ironic about my sudden sensory overlap. There’s nothing like getting what you want when you no longer possess the capacity for desire. At least not desire in the acquisitive sense. That was perhaps the greatest gift of the last couple hours. It was no longer possible to desire anything for one was desire. But here I am definitely jumping ahead of myself. As Scriabin did. In his maniacal rush to compose the Mysterium, Scriabin forsook certain domestic necessities, or else undertook them with such headlong fury as to render them fatal. He died from an infected shaving nick.
Where were we during the last couple hours? That seems like a fair question. Even the Mysterium was intended to “take place” at the foot of the Himalayas. Where were we? Were we at home? But what would that mean? Relative designations, such as home, had largely fallen afield. Whose home? Which home? What aspect of home or how deeply embedded within said aspect? To be frank, these answers no longer seem within grasp, though the questions spring up effortlessly. Like excess skin they had long ago been gobbled up by some microscopic horde. The only immediate value of where one could point toward was the body. The only point was the origin. All other locales would need to be earned, and none before the reckoning of the body had reached at least the shell of the body, which had for so long been mistaken for the entirety. For years the body had existed as a sort of room, one among or inside many. It was a horizon. Inside there were rooms and outside there were rooms. None of which seemed to penetrate the others, though they did contain or inhabit. A line from a poem drifts in: Is there room in the room you room in? We placed ourselves in rooms, spent most of our inefficiently earned capital on them, their furnishings, the abstraction of their value. We placed rooms within ourselves, ideas and acquisitions of culture that ostensibly added up to a self. The body existed at the horizon of each, like a mirror reflecting identity back and forth, creating a whirlpool effect, the black and white alternating on a barber’s pole.
Thus the first revelation of the last couple hours was twofold. There is the body and there is the shocking bondage that is the interdependence of the body. This is what finally obliterated all the rooms. When we became the hand we became the shaking of the hand, which was inseparable from the muscles buttressing the back, which were themselves inseparable from the blood coursing and the impulses firing and the sweat that pooled unbidden upon the brow’s stricken strand. That’s where we were, each of us, stalled sojourning at the origin. With the dissolution of time, our where returned to us at the point our what demanded. So many years had been spent prostheticizing the body, extending it, augmenting it. The body that was a shell became a surface for which attachments could be fashioned. All this began, of course, by asserting that the body itself was a prosthetic of the mind. Where am I? I am blood. What am I? I am shaking. So the answers were not fled, they were simply endless. Where am I? I am falling. What am I? I am hand. I am red. Where am I? I am Chinese. I am kissed. I am scarred. Though it did not feel like labor, this new sense of the body, its being inextricable, simultaneously shrunk the world and expanded the possibilities of experience, pulsing in and out in throbs. Pulse in: the body is a cage. Pulse out: everything is singing. Pulse in: I will die without every necessary part. Pulse out: there is no end to the complexity. What was wagered in the humiliation of returning to the body was won when it was discovered, finally, that the body was enough.
That this insistence on merging was characteristic of the last couple hours was somewhat ironic. I had wished to be synesthetic for as long as I could remember. I had sat in some isolated place, at the edge of a lake or in the bureaucratic recess of some building, and attempted, always without success, to cross-pollinate my own sensory inputs. I suppose the desire had originally come from my fascination with Alexander Scriabin, the Russian Symbolist composer. Scriabin was a prodigious synesthete who was composing an Armageddon-piece entitled Mysterium when he died. It was to last seven days and climax with the end of the world. Or, not the end of the world exactly, but an end of mankind, and the replacement of our species with a verdant proliferation of higher beings. But now, I fear, I’m confounding my tangent on synesthesia with eschatology. Which is, I suppose, what was ironic about my sudden sensory overlap. There’s nothing like getting what you want when you no longer possess the capacity for desire. At least not desire in the acquisitive sense. That was perhaps the greatest gift of the last couple hours. It was no longer possible to desire anything for one was desire. But here I am definitely jumping ahead of myself. As Scriabin did. In his maniacal rush to compose the Mysterium, Scriabin forsook certain domestic necessities, or else undertook them with such headlong fury as to render them fatal. He died from an infected shaving nick.
Where were we during the last couple hours? That seems like a fair question. Even the Mysterium was intended to “take place” at the foot of the Himalayas. Where were we? Were we at home? But what would that mean? Relative designations, such as home, had largely fallen afield. Whose home? Which home? What aspect of home or how deeply embedded within said aspect? To be frank, these answers no longer seem within grasp, though the questions spring up effortlessly. Like excess skin they had long ago been gobbled up by some microscopic horde. The only immediate value of where one could point toward was the body. The only point was the origin. All other locales would need to be earned, and none before the reckoning of the body had reached at least the shell of the body, which had for so long been mistaken for the entirety. For years the body had existed as a sort of room, one among or inside many. It was a horizon. Inside there were rooms and outside there were rooms. None of which seemed to penetrate the others, though they did contain or inhabit. A line from a poem drifts in: Is there room in the room you room in? We placed ourselves in rooms, spent most of our inefficiently earned capital on them, their furnishings, the abstraction of their value. We placed rooms within ourselves, ideas and acquisitions of culture that ostensibly added up to a self. The body existed at the horizon of each, like a mirror reflecting identity back and forth, creating a whirlpool effect, the black and white alternating on a barber’s pole.
Thus the first revelation of the last couple hours was twofold. There is the body and there is the shocking bondage that is the interdependence of the body. This is what finally obliterated all the rooms. When we became the hand we became the shaking of the hand, which was inseparable from the muscles buttressing the back, which were themselves inseparable from the blood coursing and the impulses firing and the sweat that pooled unbidden upon the brow’s stricken strand. That’s where we were, each of us, stalled sojourning at the origin. With the dissolution of time, our where returned to us at the point our what demanded. So many years had been spent prostheticizing the body, extending it, augmenting it. The body that was a shell became a surface for which attachments could be fashioned. All this began, of course, by asserting that the body itself was a prosthetic of the mind. Where am I? I am blood. What am I? I am shaking. So the answers were not fled, they were simply endless. Where am I? I am falling. What am I? I am hand. I am red. Where am I? I am Chinese. I am kissed. I am scarred. Though it did not feel like labor, this new sense of the body, its being inextricable, simultaneously shrunk the world and expanded the possibilities of experience, pulsing in and out in throbs. Pulse in: the body is a cage. Pulse out: everything is singing. Pulse in: I will die without every necessary part. Pulse out: there is no end to the complexity. What was wagered in the humiliation of returning to the body was won when it was discovered, finally, that the body was enough.
Sunday, May 04, 2008
IN THE LAST COUPLE HOURS
In the last couple hours, we did whatever felt most obvious. The idea of producing an idea, much less the correct one, seemed to us an act of intolerable gluttony. We at least understood that much. Production was consumption, making was taking. The nature necessary for such distinction we had long found lacking. When I say obvious, I don’t mean smoking cigarettes or fucking desperately. I don’t even mean fucking tenderly, though that would have been nice. The obvious we had in mind did not required a mind at all. Or, rather, it required a kind of no-mind. Not that these inaccuracies are lost on me. The obvious was purely, or at least to the degree that we were capable, corporeal. So, yes, the mind was involved, but its blithering tyranny had been subsumed into more apt tasks: folding, lobing, collecting and distributing electricity. We looked at our hands and we became their shaking. We felt ourselves contradict, subsumed into the cross movements of recoil and plunge, and soon we were adrift in the new hopelessness, a sort of cloud frilled with hope and bounded only by the vagueness or specificity of the moment.
When I say the last couple hours, I don’t mean to suggest that we counted them. The truth is…well, that is beside the point. When I say the last couple hours, I mean to point toward a certain topography of being. There is no way to know how long those two hours took. But I was telling you about our hands. This is how we initiated the new hopelessness. Our hands shook and we became it. The only thing I can relate it to is walking, or, the process of realizing that walking is only and ever a protracted fall. You are moving over the sidewalk, percussed visually by the regular perpendicular lines, and you say to yourself, “I am falling.” Perhaps you slow down. This helps. You are now falling slower. The abstract balance you were just seconds ago maintaining through movement dissolves and you are left with a miraculous disequilibrium, a shifting from one trajectory of disaster to the next, utterly fluid, proficient. Often this is when one stops altogether. The initial realization that one’s walk is more accurately a fall inevitably leads to, I hope you won’t think this an overstatement, the epiphany that even standing you are not still, or, you are still, in fact, falling. Not that facts are any less beside the point than truth.
So, the beginning of the last couple hours was spent looking at the shaking our hands were and feeling like one who has come to a halt and yet realizes that he or she is not halted at all. That was, at least, the beginning of the beginning. Which, I suppose, be the beginning of many beginnings. A vibration that simultaneously holds and is held. A pattern of veers that bring us into the microcosm of being, that field from which we’ve been so long absent. Of course, lesser thoughts invariably penetrate. At the beginning of the beginning of the last couple hours, I was intermittently shocked out of the vibration of my hands by a feeling of being elsewhere. I would like to say this elsewhere was a cosmic destination, but it was not. Every so often, a designation I realize is unhelpful and vague, I suddenly felt like I was waiting outside a restaurant. Not just any restaurant, but a Chinese restaurant. The kind one may find in a Woody Allen movie. I was with Ivan and we were waiting for our table, standing beneath an awning that stretched to the curb. I was looking forward to a beer, scallion pancakes, shredded chicken and tea. Cars drove by quickly, preceded and trailed by the desperate sound of their rush. Ivan and I held hands. Occasionally, he bent his neck sideways and kissed my hair.
If I was to say that the last couple hours weren’t haunted by countless of these intrusions, I would be missing something dire. Something I should have learned. Not that these episodes contained any particular significance, but…well…I’m sure we’ll get around to how the last couple hours served as an education. I was actually a little relieved by the Chinese scenario. The act of being the shaking that was one’s hands was extremely laborious in a peculiar way. The shaking itself was, obviously, there before the being of the shaking, so it didn’t count as labor, but the realization, the constant waking into the moment, verged on insufferable. When I was my hands shaking I was revelation. Smally perhaps, but it occurs to me that even this first small revelation could be equal to the last, not that there is such a thing. When revelation comes, or when one becomes revelation, its size is beside the point. It is always huge. One always feels like an animal. In time, it becomes clear that one doesn’t merely feel like an animal. If it wasn’t for the Chinese scenario, I don’t know if I could have perpetuated the revelation. The electricity, the transfer, the hold of the current, it all felt like opening into a fire. Of course, the Chinese scenario, its feedback spark, was another part of the revelation, but I didn’t understand that at first.
When I say the last couple hours, I don’t mean to suggest that we counted them. The truth is…well, that is beside the point. When I say the last couple hours, I mean to point toward a certain topography of being. There is no way to know how long those two hours took. But I was telling you about our hands. This is how we initiated the new hopelessness. Our hands shook and we became it. The only thing I can relate it to is walking, or, the process of realizing that walking is only and ever a protracted fall. You are moving over the sidewalk, percussed visually by the regular perpendicular lines, and you say to yourself, “I am falling.” Perhaps you slow down. This helps. You are now falling slower. The abstract balance you were just seconds ago maintaining through movement dissolves and you are left with a miraculous disequilibrium, a shifting from one trajectory of disaster to the next, utterly fluid, proficient. Often this is when one stops altogether. The initial realization that one’s walk is more accurately a fall inevitably leads to, I hope you won’t think this an overstatement, the epiphany that even standing you are not still, or, you are still, in fact, falling. Not that facts are any less beside the point than truth.
So, the beginning of the last couple hours was spent looking at the shaking our hands were and feeling like one who has come to a halt and yet realizes that he or she is not halted at all. That was, at least, the beginning of the beginning. Which, I suppose, be the beginning of many beginnings. A vibration that simultaneously holds and is held. A pattern of veers that bring us into the microcosm of being, that field from which we’ve been so long absent. Of course, lesser thoughts invariably penetrate. At the beginning of the beginning of the last couple hours, I was intermittently shocked out of the vibration of my hands by a feeling of being elsewhere. I would like to say this elsewhere was a cosmic destination, but it was not. Every so often, a designation I realize is unhelpful and vague, I suddenly felt like I was waiting outside a restaurant. Not just any restaurant, but a Chinese restaurant. The kind one may find in a Woody Allen movie. I was with Ivan and we were waiting for our table, standing beneath an awning that stretched to the curb. I was looking forward to a beer, scallion pancakes, shredded chicken and tea. Cars drove by quickly, preceded and trailed by the desperate sound of their rush. Ivan and I held hands. Occasionally, he bent his neck sideways and kissed my hair.
If I was to say that the last couple hours weren’t haunted by countless of these intrusions, I would be missing something dire. Something I should have learned. Not that these episodes contained any particular significance, but…well…I’m sure we’ll get around to how the last couple hours served as an education. I was actually a little relieved by the Chinese scenario. The act of being the shaking that was one’s hands was extremely laborious in a peculiar way. The shaking itself was, obviously, there before the being of the shaking, so it didn’t count as labor, but the realization, the constant waking into the moment, verged on insufferable. When I was my hands shaking I was revelation. Smally perhaps, but it occurs to me that even this first small revelation could be equal to the last, not that there is such a thing. When revelation comes, or when one becomes revelation, its size is beside the point. It is always huge. One always feels like an animal. In time, it becomes clear that one doesn’t merely feel like an animal. If it wasn’t for the Chinese scenario, I don’t know if I could have perpetuated the revelation. The electricity, the transfer, the hold of the current, it all felt like opening into a fire. Of course, the Chinese scenario, its feedback spark, was another part of the revelation, but I didn’t understand that at first.
Sunday, April 13, 2008
ON SONG
In the voice
of the face
is the crease
of the soul
unfolding
ξ
In “Two-Headed Boy Pt. 2,” he sings: When we break, we wait for our miracle—God is a place we will wait for the rest of our lives. When the girl with the green hair plays a cover of this song on the Internet, she averts her eyes at this moment. When the song continues, it has changed. It has become an apology. An apology for someone who must leave. The purpose of a song is to say I am here. Perhaps the act of stating that one is here is only a preamble to apologizing for the moment when one must leave. Perhaps that is why in Aboriginal philosophy one does not leave, one only and always returns. Not to mention Nietzsche. The Anti-Transcendence School. Face it: there is no home in the sky. You can only return to here.
ξ
Through the plastic
pane of the airplane’s
window I wear
the planet
with my eyes
the kidney bean blue
of each swimming
pool hatched
landscape that
denatures itself in
order only
to leak at each simple
abutment a patch
here or there
sampling the rest
that arrives silently
like a throttled half-note
the trick
is to wait until everyone is
asleep and try on
their shapes
ξ
In ancient Finnish societies, the only means of entertainment were the songs of the great singers. At gatherings, people would form a circle at the middle of which sat two singers, their knees touching to form a platform for their elbows, which in turn supported their clasped hands. There was a lead singer and a sort of echo singer. Both singers were responsible for extemporaneously reinventing the great stories of the Kaleva district. The lead singer would begin each line and the echo singer would spontaneously compose a variation on that line. In this way, the two singers would go back and forth, hand in hand, improvising new flourishes to a very old story under the constraints of a highly structured rhythmic scheme. Back and forth: pulling different words out of the same cup, acknowledging the presence of ancient days within the surprise of the moment, repeating and returning as a way to move forward. If the intensity of the composition became feverish enough, the singers would rise and lurch around some, their hands still clasped together. This was the only form of ancient Finnish dance.
ξ
“To counterfeit is DEATH”
says Benjamin Franklin
“Success is the lowest art”
says Anselm Berrigan
while Jean-Michel Basquiat
spray paints GOLD WOOD
on the enormous American
car
of the face
is the crease
of the soul
unfolding
ξ
In “Two-Headed Boy Pt. 2,” he sings: When we break, we wait for our miracle—God is a place we will wait for the rest of our lives. When the girl with the green hair plays a cover of this song on the Internet, she averts her eyes at this moment. When the song continues, it has changed. It has become an apology. An apology for someone who must leave. The purpose of a song is to say I am here. Perhaps the act of stating that one is here is only a preamble to apologizing for the moment when one must leave. Perhaps that is why in Aboriginal philosophy one does not leave, one only and always returns. Not to mention Nietzsche. The Anti-Transcendence School. Face it: there is no home in the sky. You can only return to here.
ξ
Through the plastic
pane of the airplane’s
window I wear
the planet
with my eyes
the kidney bean blue
of each swimming
pool hatched
landscape that
denatures itself in
order only
to leak at each simple
abutment a patch
here or there
sampling the rest
that arrives silently
like a throttled half-note
the trick
is to wait until everyone is
asleep and try on
their shapes
ξ
In ancient Finnish societies, the only means of entertainment were the songs of the great singers. At gatherings, people would form a circle at the middle of which sat two singers, their knees touching to form a platform for their elbows, which in turn supported their clasped hands. There was a lead singer and a sort of echo singer. Both singers were responsible for extemporaneously reinventing the great stories of the Kaleva district. The lead singer would begin each line and the echo singer would spontaneously compose a variation on that line. In this way, the two singers would go back and forth, hand in hand, improvising new flourishes to a very old story under the constraints of a highly structured rhythmic scheme. Back and forth: pulling different words out of the same cup, acknowledging the presence of ancient days within the surprise of the moment, repeating and returning as a way to move forward. If the intensity of the composition became feverish enough, the singers would rise and lurch around some, their hands still clasped together. This was the only form of ancient Finnish dance.
ξ
“To counterfeit is DEATH”
says Benjamin Franklin
“Success is the lowest art”
says Anselm Berrigan
while Jean-Michel Basquiat
spray paints GOLD WOOD
on the enormous American
car
Saturday, March 29, 2008
AN OLD SONG
for Ed
Charming our notice
A gaping shoe listens
The universe piqued
By objects in reverse
Merciful cumquat
Gutted by a thumb
Milady loves another
She used to love none
Under the gangplank
Angered by fortune
Lace-lipped penitents
Settle for a cur
Sentiments are heavy
Marsh-drowned youth
Rank and disheveled
In the outfield at dawn
Ukulele lately
To strum in a bathtub
Battered by a strobe
Shutters through sun
Clad in a pantsuit
Saturn rising slowly
Fat guys in malls
Trying on hats
Merciful stovetop
Tugboat torch song
Every Mississippi
The day starts o’er
A grapefruit split
By margarita teeth
Part of me wonders
Another part sleeps
Charming our notice
A gaping shoe listens
The universe piqued
By objects in reverse
Merciful cumquat
Gutted by a thumb
Milady loves another
She used to love none
Under the gangplank
Angered by fortune
Lace-lipped penitents
Settle for a cur
Sentiments are heavy
Marsh-drowned youth
Rank and disheveled
In the outfield at dawn
Ukulele lately
To strum in a bathtub
Battered by a strobe
Shutters through sun
Clad in a pantsuit
Saturn rising slowly
Fat guys in malls
Trying on hats
Merciful stovetop
Tugboat torch song
Every Mississippi
The day starts o’er
A grapefruit split
By margarita teeth
Part of me wonders
Another part sleeps
Wednesday, March 19, 2008
FURTHER HYPNOPOMPIC REVELATIONS
We wake late
Like all
Sojourners
Into the already
Deepening fray
A country at war
With ideas
Which induce it
To explode
Those
That would do
The same
We wake late
Like all
Sojourners
Dislocated
By history
And devoid
Of land, of what
Can we call
The root
Of this waking?
The body beside us?
The rent waiting
To be paid?
The work to be done
In the district
We can’t afford
To live, to where
Would this waking
Allege us
And who deem
Us the bearer
Of the where
And how
Could we really
Say it was ours?
ξ
Again awoken
By the exterminator
His ear punched
By a diamond
My hair jutting
Tangential
To what thought
Seems to course
And return
The axons that
Writhe and conduct
These figures
Into their dim
Recognitions
The fire the myelin
Yields into form
As the silent waves
Of shock shake
Sleep from thought
Flinging amiss
Or caught in the traffic
Of expectation
Which is itself a form
Of belief, often
I have brought my hand
To my face only
To find briars of hair
And what man
Doesn’t but constantly
Find himself
A beast?
Like all
Sojourners
Into the already
Deepening fray
A country at war
With ideas
Which induce it
To explode
Those
That would do
The same
We wake late
Like all
Sojourners
Dislocated
By history
And devoid
Of land, of what
Can we call
The root
Of this waking?
The body beside us?
The rent waiting
To be paid?
The work to be done
In the district
We can’t afford
To live, to where
Would this waking
Allege us
And who deem
Us the bearer
Of the where
And how
Could we really
Say it was ours?
ξ
Again awoken
By the exterminator
His ear punched
By a diamond
My hair jutting
Tangential
To what thought
Seems to course
And return
The axons that
Writhe and conduct
These figures
Into their dim
Recognitions
The fire the myelin
Yields into form
As the silent waves
Of shock shake
Sleep from thought
Flinging amiss
Or caught in the traffic
Of expectation
Which is itself a form
Of belief, often
I have brought my hand
To my face only
To find briars of hair
And what man
Doesn’t but constantly
Find himself
A beast?
Wednesday, March 05, 2008
FURTHEST HYPNOPOMPIC REVELATIONS
The eyes open
Amid a dash
Of percepts
And the terrifying
Deduction that
Things have verily gone
On without you
The neck more
Crowded with hair
A mouse desiccated
In its gluey end
The cars have all moved
To the near
Side of the street
Hugging the trash
And rain has glazed
Into bubbled plates
On the freezing ground
You can hear
A car startle
Into empty alarm
As often we might
In this trauma of days
Not dying
Unlike the kitchen’s racket
Which soothes one
Into pattern, into sense
As the coffee sputters
In its particular
Way, day-old, reheated
Turning the heart
Over with its promise of
velocity, lift, loquacious
Recommitment
To the dreams that
Have only half
Left us and so desire
Their hypnopompic revisit
Before the body
Is appropriately clothed
Or the mind
Which is nonetheless
The body is itself
Swaddled into its habit
Of traffic and passage
The light like
A scaffold
Hinting the cathedral
That is Brooklyn noon
While the toaster smokes
And the cat sings
Like a skittering quail
It is time I think
To wake my love
Who sleeps late
Under the doused lighght
In a torn T-shirt
Warm like a stone
Or a hood or
The sound of Bettye
Swann’s voice
When she begins
“Then You Can
Tell Me Goodbye”
Amid a dash
Of percepts
And the terrifying
Deduction that
Things have verily gone
On without you
The neck more
Crowded with hair
A mouse desiccated
In its gluey end
The cars have all moved
To the near
Side of the street
Hugging the trash
And rain has glazed
Into bubbled plates
On the freezing ground
You can hear
A car startle
Into empty alarm
As often we might
In this trauma of days
Not dying
Unlike the kitchen’s racket
Which soothes one
Into pattern, into sense
As the coffee sputters
In its particular
Way, day-old, reheated
Turning the heart
Over with its promise of
velocity, lift, loquacious
Recommitment
To the dreams that
Have only half
Left us and so desire
Their hypnopompic revisit
Before the body
Is appropriately clothed
Or the mind
Which is nonetheless
The body is itself
Swaddled into its habit
Of traffic and passage
The light like
A scaffold
Hinting the cathedral
That is Brooklyn noon
While the toaster smokes
And the cat sings
Like a skittering quail
It is time I think
To wake my love
Who sleeps late
Under the doused lighght
In a torn T-shirt
Warm like a stone
Or a hood or
The sound of Bettye
Swann’s voice
When she begins
“Then You Can
Tell Me Goodbye”
Wednesday, February 20, 2008
ON SONG
The first thing you must know is that you are already singing.
ξ
The horizon of the ear
eclipses the wall
today a sawing shot
through with green buds
tapping hoods
I haven’t spoken
for hours. The horizon of
the eye is a half-sphere
where our there suffers
no obstruction
Here, here
is all that
there is, this wind
embracing, instructing
the lack
of anything we might call
separate
ξ
There are clusters of cells in my brain that fire each time I encounter certain loved ones, tastes, color arrangements, repeated advertisements, and of course, songs. The brain attaches a degree of emotional significance to these encounters, as if one cluster was raised in topographic relation to the others, a sort of bar graph of consequence. I hear your voice and I raise. The front gate clangs in my head, releasing a map of affect. In Cotard’s syndrome, these clusters are razed to the point that the person believes he or she is dead. In the experience of many epileptics, the opposite is the case: everything has the utmost significance, every word a clue from God.
ξ
If the world is a seizure
the aura is tone
and I suppose it is
given
to us to
flux again
through the advent
of song, going
tremulous
in acknowledgement
of the already
harmonious
or discordant surge
we curve
just singing
ξ
The horizon of the ear
eclipses the wall
today a sawing shot
through with green buds
tapping hoods
I haven’t spoken
for hours. The horizon of
the eye is a half-sphere
where our there suffers
no obstruction
Here, here
is all that
there is, this wind
embracing, instructing
the lack
of anything we might call
separate
ξ
There are clusters of cells in my brain that fire each time I encounter certain loved ones, tastes, color arrangements, repeated advertisements, and of course, songs. The brain attaches a degree of emotional significance to these encounters, as if one cluster was raised in topographic relation to the others, a sort of bar graph of consequence. I hear your voice and I raise. The front gate clangs in my head, releasing a map of affect. In Cotard’s syndrome, these clusters are razed to the point that the person believes he or she is dead. In the experience of many epileptics, the opposite is the case: everything has the utmost significance, every word a clue from God.
ξ
If the world is a seizure
the aura is tone
and I suppose it is
given
to us to
flux again
through the advent
of song, going
tremulous
in acknowledgement
of the already
harmonious
or discordant surge
we curve
just singing
Tuesday, February 12, 2008
EVEN FURTHER HYPNOPOMPIC REVELATIONS
Which isn’t to say
That one doesn’t
Wake all day
Just as an honest man
Is always in trouble
The headlines dull
The head while
Eviscerating
The heart, the hand
Draped idiotically
Like a flag over the eyes
Sense redirected
To more immediate peril
Toes turning blue
As the radiator limps
Into its wintry duty
Its indolent waves
Pushing the calendar
Like a wing from the wall
The starlings are fled
The cat is fed
The Carter Family
Pleads Meet me
In the moonlight
Alone, punctured, interloping
Atoms to sustain
Our perceptual escapade
With no hope
Of escape, of winter
I have had enough
When suddenly you arrive
From the overslept bed
Coursing
Within your envelope
Of heat, of course
I love you
As the church bells
Announce the hour
9 o’clock
In their flurry
Of dongs
That one doesn’t
Wake all day
Just as an honest man
Is always in trouble
The headlines dull
The head while
Eviscerating
The heart, the hand
Draped idiotically
Like a flag over the eyes
Sense redirected
To more immediate peril
Toes turning blue
As the radiator limps
Into its wintry duty
Its indolent waves
Pushing the calendar
Like a wing from the wall
The starlings are fled
The cat is fed
The Carter Family
Pleads Meet me
In the moonlight
Alone, punctured, interloping
Atoms to sustain
Our perceptual escapade
With no hope
Of escape, of winter
I have had enough
When suddenly you arrive
From the overslept bed
Coursing
Within your envelope
Of heat, of course
I love you
As the church bells
Announce the hour
9 o’clock
In their flurry
Of dongs
Wednesday, February 06, 2008
FURTHER HYPNOPOMPIC REVELATIONS
Having made it this far
Harshly coloring
The air with scrapes
Of sound
Or trembling
In the electrons
Like color
The milk has run out
And the coffee
Chimes acidly
Ferrying us
From this catch
Of moment
To the next
For fear
That we are
Mutely doing it
On our own
A thought intolerable
A morning hot
With lemon water
Empty brown
Bottles crowding
The kitchen, the cat
Secretly frenzied
As the invisible strings
Of breeze animate
The spare
Limbs’ leaves
Across the retarred street
Only a human could need
Something so
Redundant
As an answer
Looking skyward
To the stars that exploded
To compose us
Inconsolable settlers
Of a land we
Know less and less
Now and again
The starlings crowd
Like seeds atop
The gutted bough
As the radiators
Begin their spitting song
Splitting the air
For warmth, for love
This sound of you
Breathing in
The dusty bedroom
As outside a stray
Cat laps bugs
From the speckled grill
Of a minivan
The various forms
Sustenance takes
Breaking the mind
Into wonder
And resolve
Harshly coloring
The air with scrapes
Of sound
Or trembling
In the electrons
Like color
The milk has run out
And the coffee
Chimes acidly
Ferrying us
From this catch
Of moment
To the next
For fear
That we are
Mutely doing it
On our own
A thought intolerable
A morning hot
With lemon water
Empty brown
Bottles crowding
The kitchen, the cat
Secretly frenzied
As the invisible strings
Of breeze animate
The spare
Limbs’ leaves
Across the retarred street
Only a human could need
Something so
Redundant
As an answer
Looking skyward
To the stars that exploded
To compose us
Inconsolable settlers
Of a land we
Know less and less
Now and again
The starlings crowd
Like seeds atop
The gutted bough
As the radiators
Begin their spitting song
Splitting the air
For warmth, for love
This sound of you
Breathing in
The dusty bedroom
As outside a stray
Cat laps bugs
From the speckled grill
Of a minivan
The various forms
Sustenance takes
Breaking the mind
Into wonder
And resolve
Saturday, January 26, 2008
FOOL’S GOLD
The sun is setting. There is nothing new. Dust on your hands. Hawk in the air. The sun is setting. This is something old. Grass between your lips. Meat on the road. The sun is setting. It forms an emotion. A shape in mind. Dark on the hills. The sun is setting. Eyes squinting in thought. Cars afar humming low. The radio broken still. The sun is setting. You walk inside it. Nobody is watching you. This will not end.
The past, they say, is under our feet. It is what holds us up. That is why we cannot get to it again. The future, on the other hand, is always within reach. See that old sign out there? What you see of that sign is the presence of this moment. What you don’t see of that sign—its hidden back, the contour of a bullet hole, minor erosions from the wind—that is the future. All you have to do is get there. Any moment.
There are layers of looking here: out, across, in. A vast beauty seems to rest on the edge of intimate dilapidation. That mountain explains nothing. This dead thing in the gravel fascinates mute. We don’t ask a mountain to explain itself. When the objects here rust, we don’t think it unfitting. When the woman on the bed turns to face the drawn motel curtain, we understand the landscape. It moves again.
What is it that brought you here? Who is it that left you here? How is it that you came to be familiar with these parts? Sun cuts down the fissure’s blond weft. Could it be told why the people here don’t leave? Kneel in this hard dirt so you can smell its traveling. Are these parts a whole of some kind? We came this way to get to somewhere else. The Coke machine is on the outside. I come here whenever I pass through.
There must have been a voice out here. Someone across the untouched contours. Likely it was a song. How does one fill a space like this? Certainly not with thought. One can think into these hills for more years than they can live and the wind will still carry it looser than sand. But now there are roads here and places to eat, to fill up. But that’s just us. The only thing that gets full here is the moon, or these ashtrays.
The past, they say, is under our feet. It is what holds us up. That is why we cannot get to it again. The future, on the other hand, is always within reach. See that old sign out there? What you see of that sign is the presence of this moment. What you don’t see of that sign—its hidden back, the contour of a bullet hole, minor erosions from the wind—that is the future. All you have to do is get there. Any moment.
There are layers of looking here: out, across, in. A vast beauty seems to rest on the edge of intimate dilapidation. That mountain explains nothing. This dead thing in the gravel fascinates mute. We don’t ask a mountain to explain itself. When the objects here rust, we don’t think it unfitting. When the woman on the bed turns to face the drawn motel curtain, we understand the landscape. It moves again.
What is it that brought you here? Who is it that left you here? How is it that you came to be familiar with these parts? Sun cuts down the fissure’s blond weft. Could it be told why the people here don’t leave? Kneel in this hard dirt so you can smell its traveling. Are these parts a whole of some kind? We came this way to get to somewhere else. The Coke machine is on the outside. I come here whenever I pass through.
There must have been a voice out here. Someone across the untouched contours. Likely it was a song. How does one fill a space like this? Certainly not with thought. One can think into these hills for more years than they can live and the wind will still carry it looser than sand. But now there are roads here and places to eat, to fill up. But that’s just us. The only thing that gets full here is the moon, or these ashtrays.
Saturday, January 19, 2008
THE HYPNOPOMPIC REVELATIONS OF MAPLE STREET
A red curtain
Of hair
Parted by air
A yellow lighght overlooking
The white bed black
Cat lingering like flora
And the muscular promise
That inhabits
One’s daily collision
With exteriority
The successive
Moment’s horizon
Radial, glittering, already
Talking it out
As these cells divide
Myriad, queasy, suffusing
The body with chatter
The bedspread sun
The boy surges through
Into the fingers that
Terminate in a man
Mitigating darkness
Or reveling from nerve
To bone, to know
One has only to move
As the palpitations continue
Caressing a wreck
Of resurfacing affect
Reggaeton in a sudden
Street level throb
The airplanes lately
Bothersome
Like a miracle
That keeps heaving
Its gasoline feedback
Sonata for late
Millennia or all
These nihilists
On parade yet
Just to wake
On Maple
Is to be pervaded
By a slow slow
Reverence
And even the birds
Harvesting bones
On Nostrand
Squawk and dodge
To the rooftops
With simple glee
Church bells turning
The streets on
Or resetting one’s ear
To the difference
Between the shower
With and without
Its dampening body
To dampen the slack
Water radio static
The daysong streets
Wrenching arias
To arise commonly
In this liquid poison
Air we deem
American spirit
Knuckles split
By a dancing praise
“For Reverend Green”
And the revelations
Of friendship
This collective thud
Against the nothing
That forever
Bares its straw teeth
Against the obviousness
Of wonder
Which dutifully waits
For sense
To arrive, to blare
Here is easy
As is this
Obscene shrinking
Into wealth or
A circumspect success
When there is sun
Sustaining the earth
Amid its unthinkable
Threat, heat, there
Is only a song
To be sung by friends
Beginning again
In the middle
Having just woke
A shape in the process
Of becoming
Something even
More unknown
As the fire trucks
Rumble past
And another airplane
Hoarsely roars
Its yawed acknowledgment
Of America
Her swimming
Pools and patchwork
Farm geometry
A kettle awhistle
In the kitchen
Where a woman
You love makes
Breakfast nude
And a fine red hair
Grows on her arms
Which crack an egg or
Pour the milk
State changes everywhere
In this glowing penumbra
Of abundance and melt
Take a second
Look into the of
That is the air
Around you
And tell me
It isn’t enough
Of hair
Parted by air
A yellow lighght overlooking
The white bed black
Cat lingering like flora
And the muscular promise
That inhabits
One’s daily collision
With exteriority
The successive
Moment’s horizon
Radial, glittering, already
Talking it out
As these cells divide
Myriad, queasy, suffusing
The body with chatter
The bedspread sun
The boy surges through
Into the fingers that
Terminate in a man
Mitigating darkness
Or reveling from nerve
To bone, to know
One has only to move
As the palpitations continue
Caressing a wreck
Of resurfacing affect
Reggaeton in a sudden
Street level throb
The airplanes lately
Bothersome
Like a miracle
That keeps heaving
Its gasoline feedback
Sonata for late
Millennia or all
These nihilists
On parade yet
Just to wake
On Maple
Is to be pervaded
By a slow slow
Reverence
And even the birds
Harvesting bones
On Nostrand
Squawk and dodge
To the rooftops
With simple glee
Church bells turning
The streets on
Or resetting one’s ear
To the difference
Between the shower
With and without
Its dampening body
To dampen the slack
Water radio static
The daysong streets
Wrenching arias
To arise commonly
In this liquid poison
Air we deem
American spirit
Knuckles split
By a dancing praise
“For Reverend Green”
And the revelations
Of friendship
This collective thud
Against the nothing
That forever
Bares its straw teeth
Against the obviousness
Of wonder
Which dutifully waits
For sense
To arrive, to blare
Here is easy
As is this
Obscene shrinking
Into wealth or
A circumspect success
When there is sun
Sustaining the earth
Amid its unthinkable
Threat, heat, there
Is only a song
To be sung by friends
Beginning again
In the middle
Having just woke
A shape in the process
Of becoming
Something even
More unknown
As the fire trucks
Rumble past
And another airplane
Hoarsely roars
Its yawed acknowledgment
Of America
Her swimming
Pools and patchwork
Farm geometry
A kettle awhistle
In the kitchen
Where a woman
You love makes
Breakfast nude
And a fine red hair
Grows on her arms
Which crack an egg or
Pour the milk
State changes everywhere
In this glowing penumbra
Of abundance and melt
Take a second
Look into the of
That is the air
Around you
And tell me
It isn’t enough
Tuesday, January 15, 2008
from THE HYPNOPOMPIC REVELATIONS OF MAPLE STREET
A curtain of hair
Parted by air
A yellow lighght overlooking
The white bed black
Cat lingering like flora
And the muscular promise
That inhabits
One’s daily collision
With exteriority
Each moment’s horizon
Radial, glittering, already
Talking it out
As the cells divide
Myriad, queasy, suffusing
The body with chatter
The bedspread sun
The boy surges
Into the fingers
Which terminate a man
Mitigating darkness
Or reveling from nerve
To bone, to know
One has only to move
As the palpitations continue
Caressing a wreck
Of resurfacing affect
Reggaeton in a sudden
Street level throb
The airplanes lately
Bothersome
Like a miracle
That keeps surging
Its gasoline feedback
Sonata for late
Millennia or nihilists
On parade
Just to wake
On Maple
Street is to
Be pervaded
By slow, slow
Reverence
And even the birds
Harvesting bones
On Nostrand
Squawk and dodge
To the rooftops
With simple glee
Church bells turning
The streets on
Or resetting one’s ear
To the difference
Between the shower
With and without
Its dampening body
To dampen the slack
Water radio static
Parted by air
A yellow lighght overlooking
The white bed black
Cat lingering like flora
And the muscular promise
That inhabits
One’s daily collision
With exteriority
Each moment’s horizon
Radial, glittering, already
Talking it out
As the cells divide
Myriad, queasy, suffusing
The body with chatter
The bedspread sun
The boy surges
Into the fingers
Which terminate a man
Mitigating darkness
Or reveling from nerve
To bone, to know
One has only to move
As the palpitations continue
Caressing a wreck
Of resurfacing affect
Reggaeton in a sudden
Street level throb
The airplanes lately
Bothersome
Like a miracle
That keeps surging
Its gasoline feedback
Sonata for late
Millennia or nihilists
On parade
Just to wake
On Maple
Street is to
Be pervaded
By slow, slow
Reverence
And even the birds
Harvesting bones
On Nostrand
Squawk and dodge
To the rooftops
With simple glee
Church bells turning
The streets on
Or resetting one’s ear
To the difference
Between the shower
With and without
Its dampening body
To dampen the slack
Water radio static
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