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