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Friday, April 04, 2003 you've had enough... standing up... against these surfaces of smoke and feathers... call us to the moment... we'll arrive with greased lips and somnambulant whiskers then tell us where to place ourselves so the sun can dance around our funny parts everyone here gets paid the same... have a good time rain intensifies pushing
down heartily like everything you ever wanted then you notice - turning slowly around to the right - back stiff neck stiff - tiny - a dry old flying insect - smaller than a common housefly so stuck to the window ridge it will not budge when you blow - then turn around and write "rain intensifies" - imagine a cat beneath a bed and how time leaps away you were young just the other day - excuse me - what's this - willful - common willfulness - here where there had been only - mostly - passive upheavals burps and gasses now you've got plain speaking - old american sense you betcha - rain suddenly silent not falling - just like that Thursday, April 03, 2003 zero has enough to do... with all these kind faces searching through the trouble bins... you'd think a girl might remember her father who stuffed owls seventeen years for her... that she might finally have a chance at some dignity... nothing comes of it though... never no muffled talk,
fragments of phrases, linked without logical links, strung together in obscurities supposed to reflect density: it's a wall to obscure emptiness, the talk of a posing man who must talk but who has nothing to say... A. R. Ammons from Tape for the Turn of the Year (1965) only a matter of time... he knew me forty years back... knew where i was headed and pinned me while i was still a kid... this poet-prophet understood... there's only three or four ways to be a person... one of them is authentic... the others all posing... then i say... no... this project was never about that... true i have nothing to say... true... here's a hollow man... head filled with... fear... that's all it was... forty years back and now... habitual... talking to self because there's nothing else to do... but still the language falls out around my feet... shouldn't i pick it up... must i wait for it to rot... for rain to flush it... let it drop out and away from our public spaces ... the dust we shed... where does this bad breath go... once muttered... into the gutters... forget it... that's one way... but logic lingers in the shade... don't it... every word stands beside its own shadow... even the useless ones... what if a fellow chooses to stand with them away from the sun... for awhile... you would blame him... of course... we all would... if he stayed too long... if he pretended too much... we'd say... there's something wrong with him... what is he afraid of... why doesn't he say what he means... but he doesn't mean anything... he has chosen the path of not meaning because... the pale roses of not meaning have no thorns... on the outer stem... you cannot say anything about them... he pricks his tiny heart all the same ... it wasn't a feeling... just a slow steady rain of language...a drizzle of unbelted possibilities... new enough... still falling... here and here and here Wednesday, April 02, 2003 coughing up a gray foam... another ocean
demands our precious attention... impetuous child at dawn... no... really... extend your right arm and whisper these words... defiant as cork... resolute as breath we've come looking for stronger blues... and have found it struggling against night willies... stone pulse a sameness... called his name... called him home from the terrible shuddering leaf... the sky... light i told you this would
not be acceptable... you know we would have settled for less than you finally paid... and still the air... suffers the breeze... the birds... another morning cancels all its debts... and swings us out... into a still... round... day then you'll understand... my symbolic impatience stand away from the
screen... they hold her picture up expecting him to... betray himself... an emotion settles bets against the fractured machine... everyone wants to dance here... but money grieves... so give it... give it over... give it up... look for your new gods in the paper... smiling like panthers... on the moon Tuesday, April 01, 2003 a cinderella piece just before the bell tolls for who has not heard it just before a minor explosion... no one was killed... but three fingers will never be the same... a sad late victorian moment... a pose... and quiet hallways... no one has remembered to come today... but if they had there would be complaints why is everyone smarter
than i am... more succesful... not everyone, of course, is... this is an emotional hyperbole useful in childhood and adolescence... as a bag is useful for a certain kind of thing... but not so useful for another kind... why is everyone so much more capable than i without the indicated
font... this looks like something a boy designed at school... and dropped on the way home... there is mud... still... someone loves him enough to show it around... for neighbors and aunts need continual reassurance... that this boy may yet become "a superior man of modesty and merit" cartouche... a sneeze
appears and then... remains... moustache... upend the cat decipher the fiber code... which strand suggests a glance not "brought to completion" but hung... indeterminate... in heart's air woven like socks by machines... in the last of the anonymous factories Monday, March 31, 2003 ok... you lose... some tiny particles have
escaped... she reminds you about gender... pink rabbits... bright red birds... make a living at the golf course... washing cars... where is your future? it is so uncertain... out of the blue... i've been with you five or six weeks... and you have changed... your teeth are brighter... like oranges on a clear blue day she comes bouncing through the hedge... a bass drum in her arms... ready for the armed forces... the service is terrible... no one works for us anymore... little lost ones... this guy in philadelphia pushes too hard... a sense of entitlement... as each bureaucrat stumbles two horses on a green
slope... a white one... a black one these roads dip and curve into rickety lawns... old rusted farm implements... no rutabaga... but plenty of trees stuck in the earth like... sticks a kid in the mud might use
to build a tiny fort... dead squirrel... then when the back wheel struck that curious turtle in the road... head up and out... dead
center on the crown... and we felt the click of his shell against the car metal...
we sensed it was time to come home Sunday, March 30, 2003 television noise through the wall... baritone...
serious sports or serious war voice all the same... some winning
and losing some killing to do... the most important things says
the voice... the voice of the man a no nonsense voice... voice
of a man who does not read poetry has never read poetry.. well
read it once but hated it and felt... well... less sure of himself...
as a man and so he put it down and turned on the television where
he heard this voice so reassuring and certain and he went out
for a walk and took a few deep breaths and felt the muscles in
his legs tense and grow strong and he ran and ran himself into
silence toward that voice in himself stong and reassuring...
a man again Saturday, March 29, 2003 stepped onto a furious path... and regretted
it long enough to unbury his victims... those pages of small paper... that ink... what had he been thinking when he wrote: i knew you knew it was over you knew there was nowhere to go... it was feeling not thinking... but still... in between... he had to consider each twitch of his hand... some act of contrition... beg pardon... for this light... this day in his eyes no... you weren't trying
too hard to be poetic... the room was cold and empty enough... someone left a plastic coffee cup under their chair... a boy stood leaning by the door... your silence was hard enough... so we laughed... even when you spoke somebody said the world
is strange... so let's bind up all our pieces... and establish an alliance with these objects... not made by hand but generated by heat and force beyond our ken... then... let's squirm and hiss our way across the blooming plains of history and imagination... transparent threads of light... odd beacons across the rocks set this small shimmer
of light... an elliptical blotch... on a path across the wall... sliding with the earth... across white plaster... slow enough to set a patch of heat...
here... and here... that if you put your lips to it a wall might... be kiss enough... in that moment back to finish your phrase currently  |