3

more from The Viaduct Notebook - and Meg - unedited (January, 19, '91):


I empathize too much with her (arrogant, my belief that this is what i'm doing). I relate, identify, project but can't fill in the difference. Hers is not mine,
but at work, we understand that on days Meg's not there, she was likely unable to get out of bed -
staked there by the weighted pierce of "it."

Her movement - she gracefully lumbers - head sways
with the fall of her feet, slow-like every step - every motion is an effort she has to deliberate over before taking. Walking itself, unnatural.

and I think it isn't good to get inside your head like this to get there and stuck there and never mind your head - how should I behave anyway
and it isn't good to drink alone and lately I've been making a lot of stupid mistakes. it's hard to believe a locked door, by itself, can change your
life but war - not desert storm but our war is nothing is different yours from mine but I worry - my ability to be in this 'normalworld' and function as a part of it and ... ... ...

when I asked meg why she came here (to her old apartment - now mine):
cheap rent - but really, there was a man - a disk jockey (who now lives across the hall from me).

Meg didn't listen to music for three years because of him,
and not just his station,
not any station,
not even a tape,
and if a car pulled up beside her with their radio on,
she would plug her ears.

3 years - she tells me while we are walking again after work under the viaduct; i'm trying to understand what he could have done to her and of course, she won't tell me - only what she did in response.

she has a picture of Jack Kerouac on her wall in her new place. i've seen it but didn't know that's who it was or that she took it down here - a mural off an abandoned building's wall - which is where we are now but we can't get close to it because they fenced it off - barbed wire. meg comes here to take pictures all the time - well. not as much as she used to. all this was beautiful when it was new to her but now it's industrial garbage - not the same. i think we're both attracted to it because it bespeaks abandonment. she tells me they are going to turn - all this - into an amusement park with stores and maybe even fake turf - i can't even imagine. we've turned and are heading home, side by side and quiet. I feel us - side by side and see us, for a moment,

from a bird's eye view -

Meg's slow, iambic gravity and me, (how do 'they' describe me -how has she) ethereal fragile insubstantial - whatever.

both of us balanced at the fulcrum of this place and 3 years without music and the singing voice I feel stuck in my throat and the barbed wire holding us out - or in. I feel a large sound build and send out from my throat - involuntary and NOT deliberate, not a moan, not a roar - to anyone but me, a scratchy half word/whisper. meg says, huh? I say, nothing - just clearing my throat. I still feel it there now , that sound - maybe it is always there.

4

it is just this: the absurdity in free floating anguish
and bereft paralysis -barbed wire wrapped
through my belly and chest and throat. if i move, it will shift and dig,
if i don't, it will spread.

when something situational is wrong, it is there -
when absolutely nothing is wrong, it is there. the worst question
at a bad time: why? pinwheel thoughts - too many of them and voices
that aren't mine.

and there are things I have learned to do that will help.
don't think just do them they will help.

but there it will still be - waiting and rhythmed to rise again -
a cold planet that takes the sky. mostly, i've learned to just keep
doing the helpful things and generate my own idea of warmth.

such an isolated words - when it is appropriate, there's no energy
to say it - and it is very private - it is all skin but cannot feel touch.

5

before familiarity, a long recognition -
i felt you; i sensed a deep
internal waiting that knew, before
circumstance surrendered detail to when,
to place - by touch i could sketch
your nuance across the dark -
your face and the fact
of your bone's.

reverberant slipstream swallowing effort -
future leans back into history. hurry with
ease, i'm here, ivory towered, free verse
eloquent, swinging trapeze that sways
the rotational plane with orbits defying set patterns,
rings turned to bells around Saturn,
pealing away each sphere's harmony,
throwing the reins to the ride,
staying astride, gripping
nothing.

without anticipation, patience set its jaw,
tracing yours in the dusk that sets heavy and empty,
here - misplaced - and here
and gone and again,
rhythmic -
a heart space -
always in waiting.

6

thirst and soft paper -
blank.
hand opened, palm flat, I press
into it and feel its whisper.
my fingerprints pull back;
my identity, elsewhere and waiting.
my spirit,
quenched.

glass and skin altering each other's
temperature; texture and oily film,
a heightened state collects there to
shift the possibilities of what can be viewed.

texture without context.

easy glide through
paper doorways;
empty train yard groans its
elaborate weight through the mundane
waiting. bored passengers boarding boxcars,
unknowing the tracks themselves are transient.
- one word spray painted on each car,
carrying its own baggage - its subliminal
meanings - no two passengers feel
the same thing.

not tomayto, not tomahto - not tone or
pronunciation. when I hear tomato, however you slice it,
I think of my father I think
of night shade and green fruit on a browning vine
in late autumn, too late, and too far below
consciousness - what else? I can't tell even myself with
every word running course and sharp and yet,
the page, somehow, neither rips or resists or

combusts.

simmer and silt

unnamed shapes present themselves;
the senses sway in and
geometry steps aside.
let it find me in the stillness;
let the words come seeking to
define me - i'll provide occurrence
amid widespace in an unriddled heart.
you, provide
the meaning.

Throwing Muses - "Two Step" (7)

A lag time between what I write on paper and typing onto a screen. Word floods, via a pen, and I can't write fast enough - but something occurs in transcription that needs time. I think I understood this, even before my 9 post challenge (which strikes me as sort of silly now). It's not on my terms - language isn't - the words find me originally, and then again when a spiral falls open to a page or whatever; I type them into notepad, then save and leave them. From there, I visit - not changing things much, if at all - so much as adding -expanding or rearranging to where they want to go - the way roots spread - or spills travel. And I do this until they feel done - not me with them, so much as vise versa - they just don't need me anymore. Then I post. However odd it sounds to express, it's the process - but one I have to at least be attentive to. That is what quit. That's what I quit doing - and it's what I'm reminded of now. Still, I will stay with this - and post things before they are ready (or ripe), but both they and I, I think, would have been better for being allowed the grace to develop according to something more mysterious - and organic - than a quota. Deadlines can be lifelines - but not always.

8

this far
on this side,
a shaft of light leaves half
in shadow -
and what is not there overtly,
what I can't quite ...

here.
the midway,
the fine balance on the fence,

a heart that could be going
either way.

do I wait.
is there something I could ...
?

what is said,
set insights,
so different,
so luminous,

so absent.

9

past the grey maybe,
a natural curve that does not want
to be fought - let it slip through psyche,
a needle-less thread-easy
out in and out round body its singular
output sublime through and through you
in yet not in me - heart - recurring
grainy and
feminine.

grace dips its soft force and I ride
my own slope still and yet,

when it crests,
if its wave
of anguish disengages from ebb and flow
- if it locks in freeze frame, stiff - I will break
for it.

Swollen postulate before gap
resonance where questions surf and skate - if it stays
there, I will not
linger to argue the veracity of yielding.

not aloud, unmoved, reused, cycled over
cast back ground between forming form itself.

humanity.
absurdity.

atoms crashing, billiard balls
bouncing molecules off each to each in a men's
club where there's much talk about women
without talking about us at all.

persist gently.

specific vibration - a tone assigned to every bone in my spine
and when aligned, I am attuned. smoke cobra rising to fill and disperse -
for place in distance, it takes my shape.

not insensitive;
I have just quit feeling.

female male fee I pay for being
unmoved by the performance
of well developed characters,
conversant, observant,
thoughtlessful without
deep occurrence -
small sleeping fiber forgotten
its purpose.

weary.

a guiding star -
event horizon -
planes and shadows at certain distance,
a guiding force risen on laughter at crowds
and their pleasers and pleasures
and rigid ideas like
North.

air tight logic solid arguments with the unknown,
for the certainty in a tome, while
the All carries on - illiterate - prolific - beatific.

oblivious.
clear.

instruments of winter -
the cold itself needs sleep, originates
in bone, travels out
oval-ing, resplendent lassitude. long
fibers unresponsive
but supple, so suggestive - dynamic flow,
upended prayer spill of words absorbed
by earth - by bucket and shovel, there,
excavation caves in and levels
with
me.

unclaimed memories - ghost's wandering
redubbed, rebooted meaning underfoot
never the same river, walking on water ...
meaning? no longer sure what it means.
still, it wants repetition
just beyond word. pressed flesh speaks
green golden 'til spirit grows immune to the
shindig where skin digs in, exerting its half life
elastic. .

resist.

unable to detect the scent of my
own skin - yours - but it's all the air I breathe
just now.

completion.

repentance
for the unfinished overflowing
boxes and unplaced cinderblocks that fill with cobwebs now long
left abandoned to home hollow corpses
of flight.

transposed amidst broken battles, a clutch convoluted - all pipes and
machines w/ no trace of efficacy in daylight. I hear them in devoid
hours - hours made devoid by our ineptitude - I can't
save the new moon from losing
its elsewhere shine - I am mesmerized
at my own discomfort with hope.

dreams come,
observe me with indulgent disdain, for they
persist, if not prevail. They stay.
they stay, yearning, and on occasion my lips part in
proffered explanation
that flattens - catches,

halts.

atoned.

absolved.

KiD CuDi- Love Stoned Lyrics on Screen HD

It has bothered me - how much I write, but how little of it makes it to a post here. My blog bespeaks a neglect I don't always hear - I let it merge into background noise - but I can feel it - looming clutter loomclutter. I have, before, more than once, made a foggy half promise to myself to post more often - and set a number of times per week or month that seemed reasonable to me - but then ... ... ...

SO

I write this post to myself because I have an intuitive sense that it is somehow important for me to say this aloud in a way that matters, as my relationship with myself matters much more than my old habits within seemed able to acknowledge.

9 posts in 9 days.

Seems challenging but not ridiculous and I like the number 9 - it is 3, 3's. Good enough reason for me. It doesn't matter, Lori. Open a notebook randomly and post a part of a sentence there, if you want. Or a long chaotic verse - the kind my Pop described as getting on a bus where the driver won't say where you're going; he takes you on a detour to the moon and you finally end up 3 blocks down the street at a convenience store. Well.

SO

I wouldn't make a very good bus driver. I forgive myself for this - and also for bearing little resemblance to Earnest Hemmingway ... ... ... Maybe NO resemblance at all. And after the 9 days? An epiphany or transformation or ... back to the conspicuous absence? Dunno. "After" is not the point. There is no point. "The goal is to keep the goal the goal (Dan John)." I'm just gonna keep getting on the bus - I'm not the one who "drives" my writing, to begin. And if I have to go to the store down the street, I'd prefer to include the moon.