Currency of Convolutes

long time no

prall — Mon, 08 Jan 2007 12:16:34 +0000

alone, lying
beside me

odd, you’d think it
lie still, being

absolute
(or close

enough)
but it fidgets

its pretense
of depth

restless
lost to

shallow
thought

who can’t say
among the vast

quiet in
this sealed

house
there isn’t

a pinprick
of panic

harried back

prall — Fri, 08 Sep 2006 13:19:52 +0000

the blood of the mistake

pools in the mouth after

sludging through the body

the force of graduation
infiltrates/infuses
colors the inside

slow leaking graffiti
and of course must
ooze out

self-consciously
wishing the romance
of september snow

yet heeding
the gurgling
beneath the veneer

of professionalism
that warrants
exploration of absences

From Woolf’s Mrs. Dalloway

prall — Fri, 30 Jun 2006 17:59:09 +0000

Beauty anyhow. Not the crude beauty of the eye. It was beauty pure and simple–Bedford Place leading into Russell Square. It was straightness and emptiness of course; the symmetry of a corridor; but it was also windows lit up, a piano, a gramophone sounding; a sense of pleasure-making hidden, but now and again emerging when, through the uncurtained window, the window left open, one saw parties sitting over tables, young people slowly circling, conversations between men and women, maids idly looking out (a strange comment theirs, when work was done), stocking drying on top ledges, a parrot, a few plants.

Absorbing, mysterious, of infinite richness, this life.

–Virginia Woolf, Mrs. Dalloway, p. 159

Calvino quote for how I feel today

prall — Tue, 20 Jun 2006 22:57:33 +0000

quoted from Calvino's Hermit in Paris:

Among the Invisible Cities there is one on stilts, and its inhabitants watch their own absence from on high. Maybe to understand who I am I have to observe a point where I could be but am not. Like an early photographer who poses in front of the camera and then runs to press the switch, photographing the spot where he could have been but isn't. Perhaps that is the way the dead observe the living, a mixture of interest and incomprehension.

As posted here on this fantastic blog.

optimum slim

prall — Fri, 02 Jun 2006 20:48:26 +0000

out of polluted frequencies
of idol chatter out

of plastic communities
of childhood out of

offshoots violating
architecture out
of a preponderance
of choices today

adrift on the aisle
in a moment of

paralysis,
abulia

ebullient advertising
sparks these

consumption memories:
at powerhouse a

gooey cookie round
on wax paper, reward

of received vaccine
this abetted reverie

pitched to wind
bendable, plausible

resilient again in
this aisle, isolated

by costs of
opportunity by

losses gained,
thrown choices

from _Paterson_

prall — Wed, 31 May 2006 17:40:50 +0000

a roar of books
from the wadded library oppresses him
until
his mind begins to drift .

Beautiful thing:

–a dark flame,
a wind, a flood–counter to all staleness.

From William Carlos Williams's Paterson, Book Three

in transit

prall — Wed, 24 May 2006 15:04:42 +0000

Flashes of half-remembered
people pop up sporadically,
this is known and nothing
to be done. Forgive the naivete,
not knowing the procedure here,
struck still by the glancing blows
of what has yet to be worked out.

The inexpressible works itself
out in the daily rearing
of livestock. The plucking
of boiled feathers off
carcass. Left in tobacco
fields, in drying barns
where children risked
themselves playfully.
Porpoise tendency
submerging, the vessel
shakes in anticipation.

Wearing these travel pants
stained with itineraries, I wake up
and realize that stages of descent
are infinite, taking into account
headwind and ground speed,
guesses of voicestreams.

Widespread glances at
the nexus of transit to
somewhere else–the shape
of home. The flashes of light
too irregular to be a beacon,
the rationale of a storm.

from Robert Strong’s “Selah”

prall — Mon, 22 May 2006 16:13:11 +0000

One problem is thinking continually
with the mouth. Is the thought
of small muscles lipping across milk teeth.
The earliest mouths
make not such labor, exactly.
There is no effort, just babes’ well-greased
easy and irritating condemnation.
The trance and deep terrifying thirst
make as a moth
continuously flaming in the mouth.
The word is made in a heart
to just stay there, ok?

From Robert Strong's poem, "Selah" in the Puritan Spectacle, available soon from Elixir Press.

downtown fort

prall — Thu, 18 May 2006 13:21:18 +0000

The sad cornices of granite
Clucking laboriously down
From tombstone heights
Fashioned by emperors
To honor endless trails
Of paper, monuments
To the great frozen
Bureaucracy, licked by
Roman flourishes the kiss
Before the fall. Down these
Avenues of long containers,
Scratch to revitalize, to stimulate
Scalp and elicit flakes, dermatology
On one’s shoulder. Shoulders
Upon shoulders, billboard
Weaknesses. Turn the corner,
Turn the collar up, the eyes down,
Emptier stores, improvised offices
Where one’s tardiness is another
Pointless click away.

Stevens, from “Description Without Place”

prall — Tue, 16 May 2006 15:00:51 +0000

Description is revelation. It is not
The thing described, nor false facsimile.

It is an artificial thing that exists,
In its own seeming, plainly visible,

Yet not too closely the double of our lives,
Intenser than any actual life could be,

A text we should be born that we might read,
More explicit than the experience of sun

And moon, the book of reconciliation,
Book of a concept only possible

In description, canon central in itself,
The thesis of the plentifullest John.

Wallace Stevens, Collected Poetry and Prose, from "Description Without Place"