January 8, 2007
long time no
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
September 8, 2006
harried back
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
June 30, 2006
From Woolf’s Mrs. Dalloway
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
June 20, 2006
Calvino quote for how I feel today
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.
June 2, 2006
optimum slim
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
May 31, 2006
from _Paterson_
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
May 24, 2006
in transit
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.
May 22, 2006
from Robert Strong’s “Selah”
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.
May 18, 2006
downtown fort
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.
May 16, 2006
Stevens, from “Description Without Place”
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"
Currency of Convolutes 