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
Wednesday, February 20, 2008
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
Friday, December 28, 2007
SEVEN MORE MISTAKES
XXXI.
Dumb moon
still talking
through green
sea foam
tonight
XXXII.
And yet, as one sometimes says, this is the strange part. “The People” were out in heavy coats and prattled in the hushed tones of precarious intimacy. Their children either shot ahead or lagged behind, but never quite fell into step. I crossed the seams in the sidewalk like a starling harvesting song. “The People” were feeling free, laden as they were with merchandise of various sorts, having finally transfigured all their drab hours into tag-bearing loads. And yet, I was surely one of “The People,” was I not? I was. And song rushed through the lobes of my brain like tinsel through a bough. Even the purposeful steps of “The People” were torn apart and stored in haphazard chunks for future use as dance. I was harvesting “The People.” And even that word, People, became utterly strange. A traffic of recycled limbs. Pe. Op. Le. Pp. Ol. Ee. Because this was the strange part: I was not a starling at all; I was rapt. And the fiendish luxury of that rapture did not separate me from “The People.” It was the trap. The trap that kept me in step.
A Variation
Sometimes the lack of
the forearms of
the hyena trainer is
the act
the circus a locus
of phantom labor
or a table from
which we gorge
the hyperbolic then
the ambiguous, which
in the end is all
that holds us together
XXXIV.
wake
make love
make coffee
shake the birds
out
sprout new thought
shout dreadful things
quote a cinematographer
“You’ve got light. You needn’t feel alone.”
Sven Nykvist, Light Keeps Me Company
XXXV.
I’m a joke too like a horse burns down
or the jellyfish forms of black plastic bags
I’m a fish too like a joke burns down
or the jelly horse forms of black plastic bags
I’m a fish too like a horse blacks form
Or the jelly joke bags of down plastic burns
I’m a form too like a fish burns black
Or the jelly down bags of joke plastic horse
I’m a horse bag like a joke burns black
Or the jelly form downs of fish plastic too
I’m a fish horse like a burn forms too
Or the jelly joke bags of down plastic black
I’m a black joke like a fish burns form
Or the jelly horse down of too plastic bags
I’m a joke too like a horse burns down
Or the jellyfish forms of black plastic bags
XXXVI.
In the voice
of the face
is the crease
of the soul
unfolding
XXXVII.
Part of today is
taking the bus
facing the face
that is yours
behind those curious
and key-scarred
frames, dumb, totally
rapt or detached
the advertising that
persists like a fog
made of skin
evacuated into
razory planes
your very own face
pushed over the streets
happy to arrive
decades late
to the perfect song
voiced by ghost
today the snow
that is our hearts
flutters and love
will truly tear us apart
Dumb moon
still talking
through green
sea foam
tonight
XXXII.
And yet, as one sometimes says, this is the strange part. “The People” were out in heavy coats and prattled in the hushed tones of precarious intimacy. Their children either shot ahead or lagged behind, but never quite fell into step. I crossed the seams in the sidewalk like a starling harvesting song. “The People” were feeling free, laden as they were with merchandise of various sorts, having finally transfigured all their drab hours into tag-bearing loads. And yet, I was surely one of “The People,” was I not? I was. And song rushed through the lobes of my brain like tinsel through a bough. Even the purposeful steps of “The People” were torn apart and stored in haphazard chunks for future use as dance. I was harvesting “The People.” And even that word, People, became utterly strange. A traffic of recycled limbs. Pe. Op. Le. Pp. Ol. Ee. Because this was the strange part: I was not a starling at all; I was rapt. And the fiendish luxury of that rapture did not separate me from “The People.” It was the trap. The trap that kept me in step.
A Variation
Sometimes the lack of
the forearms of
the hyena trainer is
the act
the circus a locus
of phantom labor
or a table from
which we gorge
the hyperbolic then
the ambiguous, which
in the end is all
that holds us together
XXXIV.
wake
make love
make coffee
shake the birds
out
sprout new thought
shout dreadful things
quote a cinematographer
“You’ve got light. You needn’t feel alone.”
Sven Nykvist, Light Keeps Me Company
XXXV.
I’m a joke too like a horse burns down
or the jellyfish forms of black plastic bags
I’m a fish too like a joke burns down
or the jelly horse forms of black plastic bags
I’m a fish too like a horse blacks form
Or the jelly joke bags of down plastic burns
I’m a form too like a fish burns black
Or the jelly down bags of joke plastic horse
I’m a horse bag like a joke burns black
Or the jelly form downs of fish plastic too
I’m a fish horse like a burn forms too
Or the jelly joke bags of down plastic black
I’m a black joke like a fish burns form
Or the jelly horse down of too plastic bags
I’m a joke too like a horse burns down
Or the jellyfish forms of black plastic bags
XXXVI.
In the voice
of the face
is the crease
of the soul
unfolding
XXXVII.
Part of today is
taking the bus
facing the face
that is yours
behind those curious
and key-scarred
frames, dumb, totally
rapt or detached
the advertising that
persists like a fog
made of skin
evacuated into
razory planes
your very own face
pushed over the streets
happy to arrive
decades late
to the perfect song
voiced by ghost
today the snow
that is our hearts
flutters and love
will truly tear us apart
Saturday, December 15, 2007
INSTRUCTIONS OF THE CALENDAR
September
There is a star in the sky.
Look at the star.
Don’t take your eyes off the star.
Set.
October
Shining. An aptitude
for spook-noting. Though
nothing may be in
the room, that should not lead
one to believe
that nothing is vacant.
Let your spook
sense shine. Cooperate
with whatever lingers within
the nothing that
isn’t.
November
Leave your coven silently.
Do not explain love
to a cloud of atoms. Recover
only what proves lost.
Write a novel whose protagonist
is named President Stove.
He reclines in a dilapidated grove of oranges.
Your ship is hove-to and needs
your attendance. If no shovel is handy
an arm will do. Never hover
over the “truth”
of anything. See the plover’s brittle
grace? A dove will
never improve your life. Never leave your head
in the oven and never let the devil
remove your shoes.
December
Take an hour
to walk across
the bedroom
of a stranger.
Watch the massive
garment of the river
unravel itself bare.
Erase the letters
of your name
from the Book
of Revelation.
Now know how slowly
one must love you.
There is a star in the sky.
Look at the star.
Don’t take your eyes off the star.
Set.
October
Shining. An aptitude
for spook-noting. Though
nothing may be in
the room, that should not lead
one to believe
that nothing is vacant.
Let your spook
sense shine. Cooperate
with whatever lingers within
the nothing that
isn’t.
November
Leave your coven silently.
Do not explain love
to a cloud of atoms. Recover
only what proves lost.
Write a novel whose protagonist
is named President Stove.
He reclines in a dilapidated grove of oranges.
Your ship is hove-to and needs
your attendance. If no shovel is handy
an arm will do. Never hover
over the “truth”
of anything. See the plover’s brittle
grace? A dove will
never improve your life. Never leave your head
in the oven and never let the devil
remove your shoes.
December
Take an hour
to walk across
the bedroom
of a stranger.
Watch the massive
garment of the river
unravel itself bare.
Erase the letters
of your name
from the Book
of Revelation.
Now know how slowly
one must love you.
Saturday, December 08, 2007
INSTRUCTIONS OF THE CALENDAR
May
Keep one eye engrossed
in the rapid landscape
these city sidewalks make.
Count keys, dried drops
of blood, solitary buttons
soiled gloves, and pennies
with tails facing skyward.
Every time you see tails
look up for a full minute.
June
Find African American teenagers.
Put their pants on backwards.
Make millions of dollars.
Or, alternatively:
Find a good-looking white teenager.
Make sure his pants fall down.
Make millions of dollars.
Coda:
The instructions of this month
are only feasible if you live
in the early 1990’s.
July
Visit Brooklyn.
Drive counterclockwise
around Grand Army Plaza
on your way to the Brooklyn Museum.
Pay exactly fifty-six cents for your admission.
Ascend to the fifth floor.
Walk clockwise
around the American Identities exhibit
on your way to Larry Rivers’ painting July.
Notice the large woman repeating
herself in the scene.
Her name was Berdie and she was his
mother-in-law. I once knew
a woman named Birdie
who was ninety-something years old.
Her teeth would fall out
while we talked. She was a ballet dancer.
July is a kind of backward
choreography. It traces the heat
and gesture that constitute the intimate
traffic of our bodies.
Do something twice, altering it
slightly the second time.
Leave Brooklyn.
August
There is a beautiful wind animating
your organs tonight, the squish
and slip of valves
pulsing anew in the dusk of its elastic
architecture. There is
finally some way to understand
the body from inside. Consider how
much has until
now gone unaccounted for, the machines
of interiority aspasm night
after endless night. Open yourself
to yourself. Write
a self-portrait that is not
a metaphor.
Keep one eye engrossed
in the rapid landscape
these city sidewalks make.
Count keys, dried drops
of blood, solitary buttons
soiled gloves, and pennies
with tails facing skyward.
Every time you see tails
look up for a full minute.
June
Find African American teenagers.
Put their pants on backwards.
Make millions of dollars.
Or, alternatively:
Find a good-looking white teenager.
Make sure his pants fall down.
Make millions of dollars.
Coda:
The instructions of this month
are only feasible if you live
in the early 1990’s.
July
Visit Brooklyn.
Drive counterclockwise
around Grand Army Plaza
on your way to the Brooklyn Museum.
Pay exactly fifty-six cents for your admission.
Ascend to the fifth floor.
Walk clockwise
around the American Identities exhibit
on your way to Larry Rivers’ painting July.
Notice the large woman repeating
herself in the scene.
Her name was Berdie and she was his
mother-in-law. I once knew
a woman named Birdie
who was ninety-something years old.
Her teeth would fall out
while we talked. She was a ballet dancer.
July is a kind of backward
choreography. It traces the heat
and gesture that constitute the intimate
traffic of our bodies.
Do something twice, altering it
slightly the second time.
Leave Brooklyn.
August
There is a beautiful wind animating
your organs tonight, the squish
and slip of valves
pulsing anew in the dusk of its elastic
architecture. There is
finally some way to understand
the body from inside. Consider how
much has until
now gone unaccounted for, the machines
of interiority aspasm night
after endless night. Open yourself
to yourself. Write
a self-portrait that is not
a metaphor.
Sunday, December 02, 2007
INSTRUCTIONS OF THE CALENDAR
January
Get a really long extension cord.
Connect it to a hair dryer.
Melt a hole in the snow the size of your body.
Lay down in the hole for several hours.
Think about what it feels like
to be old snow.
February
There are several protuberances
on the male body: twenty
digits, four limbs, two ears
one nose and one penis.
The female body has twenty-nine.
Jump, jump, jump, jump.
And while you’re jumping
consider that you contain
within you the possibility for either body.
March
You are inevitably passing
from one fraction
of your life to another. For instance
I am just now
leaving…well, I guess
I don’t know, but I think
my point is still valid?
Anyways, while entering each
new fraction you should allow
its strange, angular dimensions
to suffuse you with
a hiccupping yellow light.
It’s okay to laugh
if that’s how it feels.
April
Throw chair through
window. Sit on it.
Give abbreviated reading
of poems by the current
Poet Laureate. Run.
Get a really long extension cord.
Connect it to a hair dryer.
Melt a hole in the snow the size of your body.
Lay down in the hole for several hours.
Think about what it feels like
to be old snow.
February
There are several protuberances
on the male body: twenty
digits, four limbs, two ears
one nose and one penis.
The female body has twenty-nine.
Jump, jump, jump, jump.
And while you’re jumping
consider that you contain
within you the possibility for either body.
March
You are inevitably passing
from one fraction
of your life to another. For instance
I am just now
leaving…well, I guess
I don’t know, but I think
my point is still valid?
Anyways, while entering each
new fraction you should allow
its strange, angular dimensions
to suffuse you with
a hiccupping yellow light.
It’s okay to laugh
if that’s how it feels.
April
Throw chair through
window. Sit on it.
Give abbreviated reading
of poems by the current
Poet Laureate. Run.
Tuesday, November 27, 2007
TEN MORE MISTAKES
XXI.
Don’t stop
not ever
XXII.
One needs a tense attention
net to trap the obvious
It is given
to us to
field the mistakes
God isn’t
dead, God is mistaken—let
us mistake the spirits
differently
XXIII.
A blackbird’s song made the muscles
near my eye contract
Her body across
the apartment swung
one way
and another
Tug spine
Tug eye
She is mine and I
can’t stop looking at her
but does looking twin
or thin the world?
Moon on
water like a feedback
skull. All I have
ever wanted is here. There
is no there is
no no substitute
Spirit Breath in Red Shift
ee I a a ieiae ae i ae
e ai i ii, euay, iee aaeue
o e ay o ee i ie eeae
I i oe Aeia oio iui ai i ue
a oe o ae aae a o ea
I. e ee oo o Ae, a, o e, Ae
i a oie, a iaeai i e ai, i
eay i a ie, eay o e, I eae
ou i, e, a
e aao i ei ie o o ia o
ey ea ao ao, a e a oi
I ooi a e iiy aeie oa, & ei
o ou ae ou a I e ee, oi
ae u, oi uie, eeyi
oe, ie, ue o e, oey, aiae-
ei, a oii o ae,
U i e ai, ii, ui ee o i, o
oe a ee eoe?
o a aiay a oy, eiou i ouoy a oa
eye eeai e ie ii a
& oey i. o a ey i, ieee, o a
oi o ae o o, aeei io ie-ae o,
o u, & o u oe ieey a ee e ou iaie
o o o. o a aie o o ey i eei
I ou ee & ee i eae ao ui e o ai
io e i ai e ie u o & o eae
o eae & o i ee eae e, o o e, o oii
o ee o ui eae eaee i i
Oy ou ua o & ea oi. o, o i
ee a o, "aioia eai", u o, I o o a
I a. e i I ie? I i ee ie, I i ie
o e, & I i ee o aay, & ou i ee eae o e
o a aay & oy a o, eie i a, ii
o ie oy o a
I oy oou, & I a a o e, & I i a o i
ou i
I ae io ou ie o ae i & i i o & o oi
i ee ae
a, a a a
Aoe & oe, uay ae, eeee
I i oy io e a
e o uiou o o ou oue
XXV.
Soon no one
will know that
Mohawk was
the name of
a people. The
word Indian
is already wrong
XXVI.
(An ear is as large as a mountain)
“Mere fact of music shows you are.”
James Joyce, Ulysses
XXV.
According to Zen masters, one
may achieve greatness
in the form
of Shoshaku jushaku, one
mistake following
upon the next
To write a mistake-ist poem, one
has only to keep an eye
on the fluid
disaster unfolding
XXVI.
Canary nothing
on pulses
of tone
or apples
left on
like streetlamps
On, in, an
easy candor
with which to ruin
need—come
home, this is
the loveliest rhyme
XXVII.
“Things don’t get better, they just get.”
Ron Padgett, How to Be Perfect
XXVIII.
Do not churn merely
a horde of accumulations
nor turn purple
for fear
of living amid. The woman
in the bed opening
her eyes is opening
her eyes. The apocalypse
sings. Is here. Is
singing how very here
it is. But this song is only the here
of the apocalypse. I am only
talking with yellow
praise, praise
for each sleeping reticulation
of peril. Against a word
that would rehearse
Over the woods
and through the river. Do not breathe
unless it is through the river
XXIX.
It is common for one to believe that the force of the mistake is directed toward escape. This is not so. It might be, of course, if escape were truly possible. But instead, we enter ourselves only where we lack each and every possibility for escape. There is no gap, no fissure to slip into. Mistakes are planted actions. That they leap into the unknown has nothing to do with leaving the earth or entering some kind of void. Mistakes take place in a shifting landscape, but with absolute faith in the marvel of landing. Or crashing, which is another kind of marvelous landing. All our movements, even standing, are momentary recoveries in the protracted crash of our lives. To stumble into mistake is to take place and never an escape.
XXX.
Sometimes leaving
the opera is the opera
like misreading lines
into a skewed grace
she staged “a wave
offering” and hoped
to commandeer “another
formal pornography”
Don’t stop
not ever
XXII.
One needs a tense attention
net to trap the obvious
It is given
to us to
field the mistakes
God isn’t
dead, God is mistaken—let
us mistake the spirits
differently
XXIII.
A blackbird’s song made the muscles
near my eye contract
Her body across
the apartment swung
one way
and another
Tug spine
Tug eye
She is mine and I
can’t stop looking at her
but does looking twin
or thin the world?
Moon on
water like a feedback
skull. All I have
ever wanted is here. There
is no there is
no no substitute
Spirit Breath in Red Shift
ee I a a ieiae ae i ae
e ai i ii, euay, iee aaeue
o e ay o ee i ie eeae
I i oe Aeia oio iui ai i ue
a oe o ae aae a o ea
I. e ee oo o Ae, a, o e, Ae
i a oie, a iaeai i e ai, i
eay i a ie, eay o e, I eae
ou i, e, a
e aao i ei ie o o ia o
ey ea ao ao, a e a oi
I ooi a e iiy aeie oa, & ei
o ou ae ou a I e ee, oi
ae u, oi uie, eeyi
oe, ie, ue o e, oey, aiae-
ei, a oii o ae,
U i e ai, ii, ui ee o i, o
oe a ee eoe?
o a aiay a oy, eiou i ouoy a oa
eye eeai e ie ii a
& oey i. o a ey i, ieee, o a
oi o ae o o, aeei io ie-ae o,
o u, & o u oe ieey a ee e ou iaie
o o o. o a aie o o ey i eei
I ou ee & ee i eae ao ui e o ai
io e i ai e ie u o & o eae
o eae & o i ee eae e, o o e, o oii
o ee o ui eae eaee i i
Oy ou ua o & ea oi. o, o i
ee a o, "aioia eai", u o, I o o a
I a. e i I ie? I i ee ie, I i ie
o e, & I i ee o aay, & ou i ee eae o e
o a aay & oy a o, eie i a, ii
o ie oy o a
I oy oou, & I a a o e, & I i a o i
ou i
I ae io ou ie o ae i & i i o & o oi
i ee ae
a, a a a
Aoe & oe, uay ae, eeee
I i oy io e a
e o uiou o o ou oue
XXV.
Soon no one
will know that
Mohawk was
the name of
a people. The
word Indian
is already wrong
XXVI.
(An ear is as large as a mountain)
“Mere fact of music shows you are.”
James Joyce, Ulysses
XXV.
According to Zen masters, one
may achieve greatness
in the form
of Shoshaku jushaku, one
mistake following
upon the next
To write a mistake-ist poem, one
has only to keep an eye
on the fluid
disaster unfolding
XXVI.
Canary nothing
on pulses
of tone
or apples
left on
like streetlamps
On, in, an
easy candor
with which to ruin
need—come
home, this is
the loveliest rhyme
XXVII.
“Things don’t get better, they just get.”
Ron Padgett, How to Be Perfect
XXVIII.
Do not churn merely
a horde of accumulations
nor turn purple
for fear
of living amid. The woman
in the bed opening
her eyes is opening
her eyes. The apocalypse
sings. Is here. Is
singing how very here
it is. But this song is only the here
of the apocalypse. I am only
talking with yellow
praise, praise
for each sleeping reticulation
of peril. Against a word
that would rehearse
Over the woods
and through the river. Do not breathe
unless it is through the river
XXIX.
It is common for one to believe that the force of the mistake is directed toward escape. This is not so. It might be, of course, if escape were truly possible. But instead, we enter ourselves only where we lack each and every possibility for escape. There is no gap, no fissure to slip into. Mistakes are planted actions. That they leap into the unknown has nothing to do with leaving the earth or entering some kind of void. Mistakes take place in a shifting landscape, but with absolute faith in the marvel of landing. Or crashing, which is another kind of marvelous landing. All our movements, even standing, are momentary recoveries in the protracted crash of our lives. To stumble into mistake is to take place and never an escape.
XXX.
Sometimes leaving
the opera is the opera
like misreading lines
into a skewed grace
she staged “a wave
offering” and hoped
to commandeer “another
formal pornography”
Friday, November 16, 2007
TEN MORE MISTAKES
XI.
Stake out famous
buildings. Lateness may
entail earliness
just as the lack here
may shelter
grave abundances
Mysteries of the Organism
are sexy. All
is gravel and break
the maze
XII.
“It is always time to start over. However modestly.”
Anselm Hollo, Caws and Causeries
XIII.
At day the glass
plays its lightsong
on the wood
There is nothing less
apt than
humorlessness
The poet may live on the edge
of a lake or
along radii of smog
and drift
like a neon
hush
XIV.
Never retreat
into the future
for want
of courage
XV.
Today is wholly
composed of close-ups
indefinite fragments
swelling out
of frame—the eye
of the girl
suddenly an eye of
a girl, the lashes
closing on their black bulb
only to open
once more with the inexorable
movement of a thresher
sifting tints, form
The grain of the wall
welts into a harrowing blanch
of topographic routes
The fruit flies whip
and stall, torpid with the inanities
of youth and age
at once
The toe looms
The sunlight drapes encaustic
The penis curls into
an old mine still threaded
with blue-green ore
XVI.
“I will never find a way to say how much I love American close-ups.”
Jean Epstein, “The Magnification”
XVII.
The sky’s trick is one of remaining impossibly aloof
Just to wake is to be pervaded by a kind of reverence
What scotoma is it here that welds us seamlessly to life?
XVIII.
You can build a house
in the preserved corpse
of an idea
that takes place
ceaselessly and without
blood, bacteria, corruption
a house for frictionless
clamor, sliding
desires unsoaked
by light
or kept like a jewel shell
under the unfogging
breath of time
but I wouldn’t
XIX.
Split I say
Split your thought-
encrusted boat
for more dazzling
matter: “Enchantment today
is the only discipline”
Albert Flynn DeSilver, Letters to Early Street
XX.
Is the apology part
of the dead people?
Is the apple’s rot
not a rat’s joy?
Everyone has been wrong
about the sun
he is so
not thought
he is no
he at all
Her rays are not lines but fat
splay, an endless finger
upon the already blistering
skin of everything and everything
tries to get her together
Our little vain invasions
Stake out famous
buildings. Lateness may
entail earliness
just as the lack here
may shelter
grave abundances
Mysteries of the Organism
are sexy. All
is gravel and break
the maze
XII.
“It is always time to start over. However modestly.”
Anselm Hollo, Caws and Causeries
XIII.
At day the glass
plays its lightsong
on the wood
There is nothing less
apt than
humorlessness
The poet may live on the edge
of a lake or
along radii of smog
and drift
like a neon
hush
XIV.
Never retreat
into the future
for want
of courage
XV.
Today is wholly
composed of close-ups
indefinite fragments
swelling out
of frame—the eye
of the girl
suddenly an eye of
a girl, the lashes
closing on their black bulb
only to open
once more with the inexorable
movement of a thresher
sifting tints, form
The grain of the wall
welts into a harrowing blanch
of topographic routes
The fruit flies whip
and stall, torpid with the inanities
of youth and age
at once
The toe looms
The sunlight drapes encaustic
The penis curls into
an old mine still threaded
with blue-green ore
XVI.
“I will never find a way to say how much I love American close-ups.”
Jean Epstein, “The Magnification”
XVII.
The sky’s trick is one of remaining impossibly aloof
Just to wake is to be pervaded by a kind of reverence
What scotoma is it here that welds us seamlessly to life?
XVIII.
You can build a house
in the preserved corpse
of an idea
that takes place
ceaselessly and without
blood, bacteria, corruption
a house for frictionless
clamor, sliding
desires unsoaked
by light
or kept like a jewel shell
under the unfogging
breath of time
but I wouldn’t
XIX.
Split I say
Split your thought-
encrusted boat
for more dazzling
matter: “Enchantment today
is the only discipline”
Albert Flynn DeSilver, Letters to Early Street
XX.
Is the apology part
of the dead people?
Is the apple’s rot
not a rat’s joy?
Everyone has been wrong
about the sun
he is so
not thought
he is no
he at all
Her rays are not lines but fat
splay, an endless finger
upon the already blistering
skin of everything and everything
tries to get her together
Our little vain invasions
Saturday, November 10, 2007
HOW TO WRITE A MISTAKE-IST POEM
We demand to see more because of our experimental mentality, because of our desire for a more exact poetry…because we need to make new mistakes.
—Jean Epstein
I wanted to invent a new film. If I had to give this style a name, I'd call it a "mistake-ist" art form.
—Harmony Korine
I.
Disband all
relics of the eye
Let this bird outside
your window be
a hole in your poem that
refuses explanation
a swerving refusal, a veer
so as to see slips
in the horizon’s wall
The city of the sky has no past
The whorl at the tip
of the finger is a little wind
The wind does not doubt
the mistakes it brings into being
A mountain does not explain
It is like a magazine
whose ads have been abandoned
by the models whose
redundancy went unheeded
It is not hard to write a mistake-ist poem
It is hard to be alive
II.
watch
wash
watch
wash
watch
wash
watch
wash
III.
Do not yet let
the rich inculcate you so
thoroughly. The of
that is the air
is arm enough
IV.
First we must thank
the trees. The streetlamps
fizz and swoon. Bugs
clipped by the now
growing emergency. Hello
helicopter. Goof-blur
Goodbyes. Incorporate
the machine’s desire
by breaking the machine
Goodbye hello incorporate
V.
Do not disbelieve the birds
Notice the leaf’s bored twirl
Look out at the world as if it were
a telephone you
hadn’t expected to be
buzzing in your fluttery hand
Then again, your hand
is always fluttery and buzzing
VI.
The mouse in
the cupboard in
the kitchen wiggles
his tail through
the closed hinge
the the the his the
VII.
Wait
Not now
Hold it
Not just yet
Just about
Almost
The important thing
is that you not
hesitate
but learn
to occupy air
to feed it impossible
ideas: we
are put on
earth a little
space that we
may learn to bear
the beams of love
Now
VIII.
Switched from William to Blind Blake
from “Holy Thursday”
to “Panther Squall Blues”
a gift from Ed
the recording bathed in static
as if it were the secret voice of air
set loose by time
to laugh uncontrollably
at our dim attempts
to love right
the mistake is holy
to love right
the mistake is yet holy
IX.
“One must always be prepared to learn something totally new.”
Ludwig Wittgenstein, Remarks on Color
X.
Noon is hard on
a priest. An egg
wants company
and so cracks
This is my shepherd
this wind
patiently embracing
and yet I would
not be so
easy. That man that
is my father
We know only
what might
be made to sing
through mishap
tonight
—Jean Epstein
I wanted to invent a new film. If I had to give this style a name, I'd call it a "mistake-ist" art form.
—Harmony Korine
I.
Disband all
relics of the eye
Let this bird outside
your window be
a hole in your poem that
refuses explanation
a swerving refusal, a veer
so as to see slips
in the horizon’s wall
The city of the sky has no past
The whorl at the tip
of the finger is a little wind
The wind does not doubt
the mistakes it brings into being
A mountain does not explain
It is like a magazine
whose ads have been abandoned
by the models whose
redundancy went unheeded
It is not hard to write a mistake-ist poem
It is hard to be alive
II.
watch
wash
watch
wash
watch
wash
watch
wash
III.
Do not yet let
the rich inculcate you so
thoroughly. The of
that is the air
is arm enough
IV.
First we must thank
the trees. The streetlamps
fizz and swoon. Bugs
clipped by the now
growing emergency. Hello
helicopter. Goof-blur
Goodbyes. Incorporate
the machine’s desire
by breaking the machine
Goodbye hello incorporate
V.
Do not disbelieve the birds
Notice the leaf’s bored twirl
Look out at the world as if it were
a telephone you
hadn’t expected to be
buzzing in your fluttery hand
Then again, your hand
is always fluttery and buzzing
VI.
The mouse in
the cupboard in
the kitchen wiggles
his tail through
the closed hinge
the the the his the
VII.
Wait
Not now
Hold it
Not just yet
Just about
Almost
The important thing
is that you not
hesitate
but learn
to occupy air
to feed it impossible
ideas: we
are put on
earth a little
space that we
may learn to bear
the beams of love
Now
VIII.
Switched from William to Blind Blake
from “Holy Thursday”
to “Panther Squall Blues”
a gift from Ed
the recording bathed in static
as if it were the secret voice of air
set loose by time
to laugh uncontrollably
at our dim attempts
to love right
the mistake is holy
to love right
the mistake is yet holy
IX.
“One must always be prepared to learn something totally new.”
Ludwig Wittgenstein, Remarks on Color
X.
Noon is hard on
a priest. An egg
wants company
and so cracks
This is my shepherd
this wind
patiently embracing
and yet I would
not be so
easy. That man that
is my father
We know only
what might
be made to sing
through mishap
tonight
Sunday, November 04, 2007
SOME REMARKS ON SONG
Singing reciprocates the advent of us in the world. To sing is to create an event of Being; a becoming forth that is no mere echo, but verily a response. Being is a conversation the universe has with itself. When one engages the world by way of song, she takes up the other side of that conversation, transforming Being’s soliloquy into a dialogue. To my mind, this is rooted in a harmonics of need. There is a need for the world to be acknowledged, for a response to return to the world’s appeal to itself through itself. As Derrida wrote: “I felt the necessity for a chorus.” It is a chorus of desire and wonder, the primordial wonder of presence, of the presencing that is brought forth by sense. And this is why song is always phenomenological: it is an acknowledgment born from perception and a response borne by it. It is a resonant naming, a halo to illuminate the givenness of each moment simply by calling attention to it. It is this call, this further appeal in song that returns, as the universe’s light is shown and showers back upon us, perpetuating the wonder that is becoming forth. To bear witness in this way is also to situate oneself, to find placement. When the I acknowledges the world through song, it takes place amid the plenum, its own sense separating and joining simultaneously in the way of Merleau-Ponty’s reversible flesh.
When I speak of presence and the wonder of its continual reprisal in the world, I approach another term, a crucial term for the exploration of song: disclosure. Song is the expression of the disclosure of the world to the singer and then a further disclosure of the world back to itself. Song opens, concomitant to a physical openness of the body and of the mouth, as indeed the world does, opening forth “that which does” or “those which do.” It is an activity that illuminates the active, an opening that rejuvenates the open. Disclosure also has the valence of secrecy, which intimately textures Being in its mysterious and indeterminate wonder. Song brings us closer to what Bataille calls “the intolerable secret of being.” It is the passing of a secret into the realm of the real, the texture of the real grazing against the real itself, just as the words and notes produced by man drag and catch in his own throat to create his appeal and acknowledgment. It is given to us to sing. It is one thing, in the words of a Spinoza, which a body can verily do. The call opens toward response. It is our responsibility to sing the world back to itself. There is no truth, but there are innumerable answers, the song being one of the answers particular to humans, an act ontologically given to us to do. An act of need that returns to us from the desire of the world.
When I speak of presence and the wonder of its continual reprisal in the world, I approach another term, a crucial term for the exploration of song: disclosure. Song is the expression of the disclosure of the world to the singer and then a further disclosure of the world back to itself. Song opens, concomitant to a physical openness of the body and of the mouth, as indeed the world does, opening forth “that which does” or “those which do.” It is an activity that illuminates the active, an opening that rejuvenates the open. Disclosure also has the valence of secrecy, which intimately textures Being in its mysterious and indeterminate wonder. Song brings us closer to what Bataille calls “the intolerable secret of being.” It is the passing of a secret into the realm of the real, the texture of the real grazing against the real itself, just as the words and notes produced by man drag and catch in his own throat to create his appeal and acknowledgment. It is given to us to sing. It is one thing, in the words of a Spinoza, which a body can verily do. The call opens toward response. It is our responsibility to sing the world back to itself. There is no truth, but there are innumerable answers, the song being one of the answers particular to humans, an act ontologically given to us to do. An act of need that returns to us from the desire of the world.
Saturday, October 27, 2007
GREETINGS FROM THE OUTBACK
You know it’s fall
when the acorns fall
into your lap
or pummel passersby
in a light wind
coffee almost cold
children screaming
as their nannies
make call after call
on cell phones
leaves parading in shrivels
of pluvial scratch
and coloring the asphalt
with triangles of vein
the Aboriginal people
of Australia tell
the same story of
the same vector of
earth for millennia
just to make sure
it continues to exist
while we here in
urban America pay
so much and so
rarely our own
attentions to what
bustling strips
compose these afternoons
the ducks upright
and flapping like lungs
the skyscrapers grey
and tapering dumbly
I am in love
with the acorn
in spite of the bruise
it put into my skull
when the acorns fall
into your lap
or pummel passersby
in a light wind
coffee almost cold
children screaming
as their nannies
make call after call
on cell phones
leaves parading in shrivels
of pluvial scratch
and coloring the asphalt
with triangles of vein
the Aboriginal people
of Australia tell
the same story of
the same vector of
earth for millennia
just to make sure
it continues to exist
while we here in
urban America pay
so much and so
rarely our own
attentions to what
bustling strips
compose these afternoons
the ducks upright
and flapping like lungs
the skyscrapers grey
and tapering dumbly
I am in love
with the acorn
in spite of the bruise
it put into my skull
Friday, October 19, 2007
FRANZ KLINE
Friday filthy with beard
Donning an affluent stoop
Baking slightly
And unceremoniously rifled
By September’s dim wind
We’re on break
The construction workers and I
The absurdity unsettling
As cabs glide past
An austere September wind
Scarfing the uptown rich
Or is it scarving
How bored the terraces
Seem with no one
Testing their garlanded weight
The trees starving bare
As fire trucks
Blast east red and swollen
With their generous din
Man finally
Ascending from the knee
We hope and love
The effort of grace
Returning from want
To a harmonics of need
Our breath pale
Like September wind
Over the taut white
Whittling bones
He painted this work
On a window shade
And died with his heart
Starkly blown
Today I feel like a mark
Made by strangers
As we pass over
Our city and property
Is senseless
Donning an affluent stoop
Baking slightly
And unceremoniously rifled
By September’s dim wind
We’re on break
The construction workers and I
The absurdity unsettling
As cabs glide past
An austere September wind
Scarfing the uptown rich
Or is it scarving
How bored the terraces
Seem with no one
Testing their garlanded weight
The trees starving bare
As fire trucks
Blast east red and swollen
With their generous din
Man finally
Ascending from the knee
We hope and love
The effort of grace
Returning from want
To a harmonics of need
Our breath pale
Like September wind
Over the taut white
Whittling bones
He painted this work
On a window shade
And died with his heart
Starkly blown
Today I feel like a mark
Made by strangers
As we pass over
Our city and property
Is senseless
Thursday, September 27, 2007
TOWARD A VOCABULARY OF THE REAL
Act
Affect
Affirm
Air
Already
Ambiguity
Amid
Attention
Becoming
Body
Coincide
Consequent
Continuous
Contradiction
Corporeal
Depth
Difference
Disclosure
Disequilibrium
Dynamic
Erupt
Excess
Experience
Friction
Happening
Heat
Improvise
Indeterminate
Interpenetrate
Intersubjective
Intimate
Invisible
Involve
Jerk
Joy
Local
Multiplicity
Mutual
Necessary
Oblique
Of
Open
Participatory
Perform
Permeable
Phenomenal
Place
Presence
Provisional
Pulse
Queer
Recommence
Rhythm
Simultaneous
Situation
Slip
Spontaneous
Texture
Uncanny
Unpredictable
Veer
Web
Weft
Wet
Affect
Affirm
Air
Already
Ambiguity
Amid
Attention
Becoming
Body
Coincide
Consequent
Continuous
Contradiction
Corporeal
Depth
Difference
Disclosure
Disequilibrium
Dynamic
Erupt
Excess
Experience
Friction
Happening
Heat
Improvise
Indeterminate
Interpenetrate
Intersubjective
Intimate
Invisible
Involve
Jerk
Joy
Local
Multiplicity
Mutual
Necessary
Oblique
Of
Open
Participatory
Perform
Permeable
Phenomenal
Place
Presence
Provisional
Pulse
Queer
Recommence
Rhythm
Simultaneous
Situation
Slip
Spontaneous
Texture
Uncanny
Unpredictable
Veer
Web
Weft
Wet
Friday, September 21, 2007
THE LIGHTNING FIELD DIARY
1
Approaching Quemado
Rossellini’s crow
roosts atop
his pile of coal
(or better)
A Marxist crow
on the side
of the road
on a pile of coal
on the way
to Quemado
2
Empty theatre but
for table
tennis table, immaculate
floors, strewn
corpses filling the sills
3
Locals’ Disdain
4
Desert hail hailing
us forward
(rain arriving
coffee percolating)
K sulks as the storm
blows us off
5
Desert sea
birds peep
A cottontail
poses and darts
assails the camera
leaving green
eggs in its wake
6
A tremor in the poles
communicating some geologic
code to us
Some voices are so
deep they leave
us feeling like a moment
of breeze
7
The queen drags
her bulbous
globe through
the needle’s shadow
8
According to Walter De Maria: Isolation is the subject of land art.
According to Jakob von Uexküll: The umwelt is a composite of biological foundations that lie at the very epicenter of the study of both communication and signification in the human [and non-human] animal.
9
What is the song appropriate to the umwelt of the human? It is important to think without thinking. To play without the expectation of joy. If possible, to joy flush against the uncounted strum. There are no words in the ground. Tourism is sin. There is, finally, an ethical response to standing.
10
Her red hair
has grown
more red
unhurried
A black beetle
nudging
the toe
of her boot
11
According to Walter De Maria: The invisible is real.
According to Elizabeth Grosz: Living beings are vibratory: vibration is their mode of differentiation, the way they enhance and enjoy both the macroscopic cosmic and the microscopic atomic forces of the earth itself.
12
All of the sudden
All of the sudden
Or, perhaps
it is the landscape that
plays us
13
A heron risks being
impaled on
the dusky points
14
There is something
to be found here
that was lost
elsewhere I think alarming
butterflies from
the brush clomping
stupidly
15
Military plane overhead
mud seeming
to bubble in the near
distance
Closer it alters
to tens
upon thousands of tiny
fingernail-size horseshoe
crab-like creatures
scrambling carapace
over carapace
in some frenzied birth
It occurs
to me that lightning
may have relit
the beginnings
of a new universe inside
the old one
16
Sunset tops
the blackened tips
like pencils
newly hewn
K never
more beautiful
bottle in hand
smile light
hare ducking
beneath the porch
earth wet with shadow
poles disappearing
17
Or, perhaps, the
visible isn’t
18
K and I fight
over sheets dream
strangely wake
in the predawn crush
giddy with stillness
19
Prairie dog jaw
half of it
like an ornament
for the stones
20
The triops have gone
under, no
more bubbles, one
awake on
its cape of
a back
21
Still there
is “danger in
veering
toward
abolition”
22
The shadow
of my crotch
now fifty
feet away
23
Landscape Acupuncture
24
Beetles wrestling
with the remains
of a fig
A dim figure plotted
amid the poles
himself a compound
of: receipts
percepts, excerpts
Approaching Quemado
Rossellini’s crow
roosts atop
his pile of coal
(or better)
A Marxist crow
on the side
of the road
on a pile of coal
on the way
to Quemado
2
Empty theatre but
for table
tennis table, immaculate
floors, strewn
corpses filling the sills
3
Locals’ Disdain
4
Desert hail hailing
us forward
(rain arriving
coffee percolating)
K sulks as the storm
blows us off
5
Desert sea
birds peep
A cottontail
poses and darts
assails the camera
leaving green
eggs in its wake
6
A tremor in the poles
communicating some geologic
code to us
Some voices are so
deep they leave
us feeling like a moment
of breeze
7
The queen drags
her bulbous
globe through
the needle’s shadow
8
According to Walter De Maria: Isolation is the subject of land art.
According to Jakob von Uexküll: The umwelt is a composite of biological foundations that lie at the very epicenter of the study of both communication and signification in the human [and non-human] animal.
9
What is the song appropriate to the umwelt of the human? It is important to think without thinking. To play without the expectation of joy. If possible, to joy flush against the uncounted strum. There are no words in the ground. Tourism is sin. There is, finally, an ethical response to standing.
10
Her red hair
has grown
more red
unhurried
A black beetle
nudging
the toe
of her boot
11
According to Walter De Maria: The invisible is real.
According to Elizabeth Grosz: Living beings are vibratory: vibration is their mode of differentiation, the way they enhance and enjoy both the macroscopic cosmic and the microscopic atomic forces of the earth itself.
12
All of the sudden
All of the sudden
Or, perhaps
it is the landscape that
plays us
13
A heron risks being
impaled on
the dusky points
14
There is something
to be found here
that was lost
elsewhere I think alarming
butterflies from
the brush clomping
stupidly
15
Military plane overhead
mud seeming
to bubble in the near
distance
Closer it alters
to tens
upon thousands of tiny
fingernail-size horseshoe
crab-like creatures
scrambling carapace
over carapace
in some frenzied birth
It occurs
to me that lightning
may have relit
the beginnings
of a new universe inside
the old one
16
Sunset tops
the blackened tips
like pencils
newly hewn
K never
more beautiful
bottle in hand
smile light
hare ducking
beneath the porch
earth wet with shadow
poles disappearing
17
Or, perhaps, the
visible isn’t
18
K and I fight
over sheets dream
strangely wake
in the predawn crush
giddy with stillness
19
Prairie dog jaw
half of it
like an ornament
for the stones
20
The triops have gone
under, no
more bubbles, one
awake on
its cape of
a back
21
Still there
is “danger in
veering
toward
abolition”
22
The shadow
of my crotch
now fifty
feet away
23
Landscape Acupuncture
24
Beetles wrestling
with the remains
of a fig
A dim figure plotted
amid the poles
himself a compound
of: receipts
percepts, excerpts
Wednesday, September 12, 2007
BEGINNING AMID
Ending with a line from Anselm Hollo
Beginning amid
A series of thrusts unknowingly
This little self, a wet knot
tying the landscape
into radii
We wake again amid
the complications
of joy, pray
without our sense of it
to stay radical
enough
to embrace the breadth of what
we will not know
so as to move
a temporary instrument
the world wakes
through
Daily banal miracle
wailing amid
horses or disconcerting
the chaos into form
No, not
that, I hope
you do not think you
can deprive this coarse world
of its murderers
Art is no more free
or lacking
in complicity than physics
though
each being remains busy dreaming
of heat
knees thrust
obscenely even in repose
It is beautiful
strange
to watch the film bubble
and flame amid
these old odd frames
The body collectors
asleep finally
as the trees wreathed
in sour rot
loose themselves and return
to light, to let
sonic awkwardness
punch breath-holes in thought
Beginning amid
A series of thrusts unknowingly
This little self, a wet knot
tying the landscape
into radii
We wake again amid
the complications
of joy, pray
without our sense of it
to stay radical
enough
to embrace the breadth of what
we will not know
so as to move
a temporary instrument
the world wakes
through
Daily banal miracle
wailing amid
horses or disconcerting
the chaos into form
No, not
that, I hope
you do not think you
can deprive this coarse world
of its murderers
Art is no more free
or lacking
in complicity than physics
though
each being remains busy dreaming
of heat
knees thrust
obscenely even in repose
It is beautiful
strange
to watch the film bubble
and flame amid
these old odd frames
The body collectors
asleep finally
as the trees wreathed
in sour rot
loose themselves and return
to light, to let
sonic awkwardness
punch breath-holes in thought
Tuesday, September 11, 2007
GREENER SUDDENLY
Greener suddenly
the truncated ring
of the church
7:15 pm
meaning always desperate
let’s leave it
to the desperate
let’s repatriate
the hollow blood vibrations
ever retuning
as the world swerves
muscular fits of the soon dead
ever returning
to the ecstasy of the start
greener suddenly
as the moon bereft wriggling sings
its absent worm song
a car in the leafy streets below
hugging the wet walls
with its curdling bass
the bike lane
littered with tiny yellow flowers
my cat in the window
her eyes
greener suddenly
it should be terrifying to love you
coming home from the doctor
an honest man is always in trouble
making soup
Bruce Springsteen
opening mail
but it isn’t
the truncated ring
of the church
7:15 pm
meaning always desperate
let’s leave it
to the desperate
let’s repatriate
the hollow blood vibrations
ever retuning
as the world swerves
muscular fits of the soon dead
ever returning
to the ecstasy of the start
greener suddenly
as the moon bereft wriggling sings
its absent worm song
a car in the leafy streets below
hugging the wet walls
with its curdling bass
the bike lane
littered with tiny yellow flowers
my cat in the window
her eyes
greener suddenly
it should be terrifying to love you
coming home from the doctor
an honest man is always in trouble
making soup
Bruce Springsteen
opening mail
but it isn’t
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