Friday, December 15, 2023

For Kate

Horses at Midnight Without a Moon

by Jack Gilbert

(copy pasted from site - poets.org - originally heard as read by Joseph Goldstein at Be Here Now)

~Song included after poem is Thom Yorke~


Our heart wanders lost in the dark woods. 

Our dream wrestles in the castle of doubt.  

But there's music in us. Hope is pushed down, 

but the angel flies up again taking us with her.   

The summer mornings begin inch by inch      

while we sleep, and walk with us later       

as long-legged beauty through the dirty streets. 

It is no surprise     that danger and suffering surround us.    

What astonishes is the singing.   

We know the horses are there in the dark          

meadow because we can smell them,   

can hear them breathing.    

Our spirit persists like a man struggling

through the frozen valley 

who suddenly smells flowers   

and realizes the snow is melting   

out of sight on top of the mountain 

- knows that spring has begun.                  

                                      









Thursday, December 14, 2023

water damage

 



most of the sentences returned to illegible blur - thought-effort reduced to what looks almost like a spilled ink well trying, sort of, to say ???.  probably the kitten knocked a glass over. maybe it gave into tidal pulls .... 

.    her name is Sofi (the kitten). she tries to play with the pen tail as i write sometimes, while it moves in opposing rhythm with the lines across the page. her again, changing the forming letters to meaningless scribble.  are these novel examples for a cat that's got one's tongue?  

 kept on kitchen counter or table,  over the last  8+ months, the notebook caught many thoughts, like one of those junk drawers or closets or rooms where it's best to shut the door before company comes, if you are the sort that has company over.   no point in keeping it though.- the notebook.- bloated wavey thick in the unique way paper and ink get once liquid is introduced.  

so curious -the experience of flipping through the  now dried crinkle pages and finding a scattering of intact sentences that weren't washed out. maybe 30 percent of the original text.or ...25.  .  my serendipitous editor, miss Sofi -  what remains,  the undamaged text - not really parsed together as a new fluent whole, but ... kind of in a way ... maybe ...    i had a boyfriend in my twenties - still a dear friend - who challenged himself to use the words in a newspaper story and by crossing out, well, most of them, the few he let remain were his expressed new work -  this reminds me a little of that.  i don't necessarily agree with Sofi's discretion ... or indiscretion (better put? But) the following is what was left - her finished, approved work - not a poem or short story or exegesis, just an ode to "oh - look what the cat brought in!"  



... a moments vast enclave; space insinuates much ado oh so subtly, about what is beyond its boundary -  miles and miles of seconds and acres of stop watches lurching, then loping, retracing the down climb . not this again, daylight burdened by burning time flying by, bye bye killing time with a flyswatter (???) 

 "when the measure becomes a target it ceases to be a good measure (Charles  Goodhart) ."     

- a cup of stones dancing - i carry them in my hand, crossing dunes to build a peak, more solid -  in awe of its patience with thirst                           we should go far into the heart - ten thousand miles long and find some place where there is not an inch of green,


save for one tree  -then sit 500 feet deep beside it, sit with the frightening cause of this desert...  sit very sweetly with it
                                                                            (..........)

 Not quite yet, i murmur back into the murmur .    falling just a bit in love with the historical sorrow of my bones. It feels like there may be a verse, a kindness, a moment of grace, faceless being round the corner awaiting reunion. ...   just one more,    



or someone singing in public  not a showboat performer, but  a child or un self conscious adult (that remains somehow un adult erated) not greedy for the spotlight or ashamed or insane but made timeless because someone heard and danced - brave and wild hearted -to their song. could that be me ... 

 and so for a bit more.  

i continue seeking a splintered gap to wedge like a crowbar, my heart, between trams of thought carrying prisoners sentenced to sentences - i lob off the loosening pivot, decentralized digit and fidgit to free the nouns from such rigid  underpinnings via encounter, without 
any words at all. What a mouthful 
                                                            ( ... )
The longer i live  the more language seems to be an entrapment. i ever believed if i could just say IT in the right way through  pristine sentences i could break through i could 
heal 
fix 
amend 
any number of troubling wrongs i could write it right i could speak easy fluency priceless currency, gaining purchase within liberation for you and me beyond you and me and 

                                                       i believe this
                                                 no longer 
my last heart wrenched endeavors have all proved an ironic dark debacle and left me 
unutterably heartsick
 this endless february ending finally 
something like a moral duty to repurpose words towards sharing 
only 
what might
 leave one 
speechless - something like that which a low red moon 
evokes 
             in a low red human heart-                       but  this 
isn't really a new vocation ...  is it - 

just renewed.         
 begin again. 
new moon   .
                                                                ( ........)

phonetic representation of Poli word:  sam pop uh lop uh (meaningless speech-prattle).

                                                            (............)

Acronym - (acro nimble ...acrobat)  
 


symbol seeker guided by eloquent dyslexic explorations to the underside where tapestry strings are tied and fraying and i see through the back of words all they are not saying.
:
                                                                             (...)
the question isn't whether or not time travel is possible          - memory, all past passed,  and imagined future    - the human mind, ping pong-able,  me maker using this raw material for me making while volleyed all day                          and night                         between the two  
unless one investigates how to be an active contributor within one's own chronic voyage - learning where and how to anchor                         for a moment, in a moment, in an encountered now,  and then to even let go the now - yes even that, and
                                                       to rest in what is really ril -

                                                            R.I..L.   (rest in love) 

and yet, gratitude has a nostalgic ebb\flow . i find my heart ache resting in thanks 
for lovely years where uneven afternoons came to frost rattled windows with zero blue breath ...                                                            if some wizardly genie rhythm racing, might grant me a whispered gift, i think i'd like a bottle filled with voices from then. little boy enthusiastic chatter-lapse to laughter and animal presence, confirming the heart's brite brute physical rarified tenderness-caressing-irony with a tail wag and a burping contest. .  

somewhere, every lost piece preventing solution for this unforeseen  jigsaw's completion, is collecting,  and resuming in some new form to fit the picture i still miss ...

what did i miss



                                                                             hush and

suffer the width of freelance desire and tireless attendance to fight-flight ...frozen silence museum,  incessant                                          whisper,                                   mutinous.            

protected within  non-existent somewhere's, so iridescent, subterranean, insistent ... i settle in stillness - it is there, yet i still don't quite get it 

might the sound of my hushed sigh  reach you so you could explain ...

... i let it out                    ~suspirion~

there's no reception.

i heard once that the fascia around the tongue travels down to root in the heart itself. 

i feel this metaphysical physiology - crippling - i am left behind limping 


relax go limp into the darkness of why

 it has already arrived at its destination           

                                                        (  ...)

embarrassed by the uniquely human amalgamation of arrogance ignorance and fear that allows for us to write a book read a book then believe with a fist pounded certainty absolutely, because it says so 

in a book ....


... and hold that this is a completely reason able thing to do. 

cite your source and

 i quote   the pre            ~              cise hind site blind side ... proud  knowledge - to "know" implies certainty ... we quit questioning when  we know we KNOW ALL READY already but just cuz ya all  choose to quit asking                                                     ... the question's are still there. they are there. that solid, absolutist ground upon which a foot stomps - just stomp with care and don't move around too much ....  the thing about knowledge, there is always a ledge - built right in ... allegedly.   


another Poli word - again, unsure of the spelling, but phonetically - my neh -  the wisdom of uncertainty - perhaps it's time to let go the age of reason and move into an age of humility. just take care not to pat ourselves on the back for this transition ... 

the stones and ash and vases and broken broom handles and chairs with three legs and trees and trees and trees and shattered glass and trees ... they are watching 

they are watching. 

i wish we cared

more deeply

500 feet 

                                                                        ( ... )

an apology to skin - mistaking it as a boundary ... again,  we are seventy percent water ... some much more   that i might be not an i at all but a possibility for water to experience it's self with such mobilized quiet grace amidst a craze of  rotational limbs far beyond the sagittal plane (forward back up down) no no look what i can be all about and under over 360 rotational rumpus bump jumping land softly dance wildly BODY AS MOBILE TEMPLE fluid lucidity body language (de) scribing this anthology. 

A LOVE LETTER TO HOPE WITHOUT OPTIMISM in all its EDGY RAGGED DESPARATION - ITS SURPLUS UNDIRECTED

i still carry on for you   holding ... letting go ... holding hope open palm up so small 

as to  fit in a change pocket or let to rest  in my ear like a tiny bird and we teeter on edge in homage to uncertainty  and we wait in hope for mysterious domains - too often mistaken as attributes.   this is to say, 

hey you SELF APPOINTED mr. wise old man - one can't BE wise any more than one can be a moment in time or the scent rising from a lilac bush - time itself as a sort of terrain.   wis dom (break it down  - acronyms again)  W.ait I.n  S.tillness wis dom (domain) wis(e) dom(ain) 

wisdom is not what anyone is or thinks or says so much as a place in the absence of all that , which through ... no body knows or can say,   some wild wooly lovely grace one finds oneself - ...  as soon as you notice you might be there

 poof  - the gained entrance is lost to 

 happenstance  

* (a foot note foray digression into the word "perhaps" ... buckle in ...)

 more than a synonym for maybe, maybe as perhaps ( per happen) ...  happen stance: one's stance within any given occurrence (happening),     at any given point in time, amidst the multitude of possible perhaps of happenstances. our stance is where we can take a stand as far as who we choose to be via response - water's incarnation for example - dancing - that we may be ... perhaps. softer words grounded in uncertainty - skinless and ephemeral.         

                                                                          (...)

if we are really indivisible under god, we can't divide ourselves from others as "one nation."  (... by the way ....   )  

if you want  to know about the moon, you might type a question into a favorite search engine directed towards "facts"  about ... and end up at a NASA site with all sorts of knowledge including  "the 5 characteristics of the moon" and other FACTS. Same again for the sun,  categorized as a small yellow dwarf, though its light is white, and so on ...

I much prefer the word information rather than fact - when referring to human thought structures and ideas 

in formation - a dynamic, malleable work in progress - a living entity ever forming and changing in a 

wise domain: of happenstance. yes i much prefer that.) 

   the following is the opening sentence from a stray correspondence - it's perhaps the final one - from the moon to the sun - written in some far future possible ancient history ....    

                                                                       *     "   (......)    i do not know if you are lost
 but i have lost you ... to what  ...  the mind, it can create such chasms no thought can cross.  it does so trap itself - but the heart knows no chasms - it can't perceive them and can cross with ease - it is there already.... waiting."    

.



    A re-understanding of the moon: 

   Neil Armstrong reported seeing an inexplicable iridescent light rising up from different dark side craters and places on the moon's surface and then, just as mysteriously disappearing.  Many other reports of a similar vein have followed over the years - in his footsteps  - these claims are not scientifically verified. these reports bring to mind (mine) phosphorescent sea and ocean creatures - jellyfish and squid and glowing, long fronded plants with opening, closing limbs - oceanology studies report 75 percent of deep ocean life make their own light (bioluminescent).    while the study doesn't much interest or surprise me (whether it's even close to correct),  i have long hunched that maybe the moon wasn't a mere night mirror. something more like me - a bioluminescent creature beached in outer space.. removed and not quite belonging here or elsewhere.                                    
                      every year (more science) the moon retreats by an inch or two in its orbit - slipping away from the earth and her star. this may not seem like much but i feel every millimeter halved and parceled -  a huge and tragic unbridgeable distance. i feel her. i feel her loss. i feel her slipping. 

ironic; perhaps it can't be helped.  . tides caused by her pull , her gravity, grave intensity, so important as it helps earth spin steady and with less turbulence on its axis (among so many other speculated important things that make earth what and how it is)  the power of the tide and waves she creates in her pull - they cause the force foisting her off and away.       

                                            alternatively and/or in addition. there is this information: 

long before any speculation, she sensed it - something wrong-ish ... unwell - shifting -  alterations in both her companions:   the planet and the yellow dwarf.   her retreat is thusly one of anguish,  but also, one she also understands and strives to accept. she can see no way around it and is generally good at seeing roundly.                                          her sun -                                                 tracked and drained by systematic, nodding, patriarchal solar panels  for quite some time, she witnessed
increasing dark, oily clouds rolling up and off his face (the sun's) and plastic burning - that concerning scent  - so different than the way a child or animal smells when you hug them after they walk in the door fresh from soaking up the sun's warmth.  something had gone "off"   there was a shift.. every system casts a shadow

She wasn't imagining it -  

  what could she have done to stop it 

... the rest of the aforementioned correspondence * to her sun, lost and retrieved  and missing pages:  
 " ... moving to a place of safety at uncertain, increasing distance - so many clouds, all ether, phosphorescent light un-needing ignition or flame at its source. . no signpost, guided by feel and vibration without  sound - but music nonetheless - nothing solid but ever grounded and safe here with no place to anchor or build with calculated concern,  there is no thing to lose, ... no bridges to burn."  

   

...  in some futured near distant grieving    i feel her  cry in a  sound that leaves most ear's undisturbed but stops all orbits for an instant 

after that, nothing resumes as it was, or could ever again be -






...,,,(editor found it suitable to end this here -  thank you, Sofi,  for keeping it RIL)

Sunday, October 22, 2023

i do not live in the past though it surely lives in me






*1  "Sin, young man, is when you treat people like things, including yourself. That's what sin is. " (Author Terry Pratchet's character, Granny Weatherwax) 

*2  Maybe nothing deserves to be thing-ified in any way whatsoever, by a human mind. ... and that is likely the only place such a crime can occur. Maybe scaled judgements of superiority, better or worse etc.,  based on whether a being has a face or a CNS or is even a being, as opposed to a phenomenon or an un-silhouetted moment, maybe all this could be cast out altogether.  It's surprising how limiting limitations can be (????)!               (Me)


the wind
remembers *things  that happen on earth. To her, there are no 
                                                               nouns ...
 
 events,                      phenomenal intention, internal/external invention etc. et al      
                                                        ...all are all beings. 
 
she guides me to speechless interface with so many parenthetical  unnameable's,   she allows intervention in a heart raw human for such moments to uncouple from  thoughts burdensome appraisal.

she brings me 
at least one a day -
gifts i shall call them, i suppose, 
or "friends" with which i people my world. 
... only if i am alert and remember to wait:
a deaf mute witness,
seeing only what the blind can hear 
speak
reverent heresy, she brings me

 other's deleted beauty as if it were my own

and she brings me my own as if it belonged 
always already to all beyond any sense of "me" be
cause she is the wind 

 and she brings me



1). a bi plane red and leaning on the blue grey  low flying.
i didn't know  what ...

looking up and ...



heard it first. 
i mean, you don't see them very often anymore. 

2). a butterfly landing  two steps ahead  of my left footfall on 
 the gravel path where i walked
 her wings were 
 breathing 
slow 
deeply
and
at least in part
i was her breath.

the road itself. 

 3).
gravel
 that shifting sound 
dirt and stones - the word" pebble" 

shuffle
 beneath stepping
what would you call it ...
a sort of crunching? onomatopoeia collaboration -
 step munching.
you can't take just one, 
and I'd walk all days on unmarked  backroads  
if only to feel that sound 
just now 
and again. now. while i go
nowhere.

4).  a very dark large dragonfly, not the streamlined thin blue kind
 he was a  drunk stunt
plane weighed down
by perspective and his own fuel tanks. 
 he companioned me without coincidence 
for a hand full of minutes. lengthened longer than they were -  threading loopy. grim halos around the rims of my concern -
setting me free
 to return to 
the song of my feet until in
 sudden upslope he 

Icarused into the sun.

5).  3 silver christmas tree ornaments clustered
 below eye level 
on one  pine tree
in August  
on my backroad journey
right there dab smack 
on the middle one 
a big ol' son of a gun grasshopper sat in compartmental sway.
i was happy to see him, 
awed by his back leg- rare as a biplane, big and spring loaded,
i believe we made eye contact 


 glance snagged, pulled into a longer gaze in soft chaotic space suspended 
through a butterfly's 1/2 breath
swallowed by an hourglass - a grain at a time halved and again halved each grain containing stillborn laughter and the matrix blueprint for every sandcastle from some late noon kingdom across a shifting makeshift beach     where the world we made, 
then made us

and allowed us graced entrance  - 
built and erased in a half breath halved and again halved


i felt the splash of my own brite heart 
the son and moon gilded tide brought me back to myself 
beneath a shroud of

 6).  certain storm clouds 

attracting dark feathered wings
in cavalcades of 
shade



shadow-callused, shadowed  caw, dimmed in thunderclap 
the only escape, lightening's inaudible call
  inviting you 
yes, just slip  through a brief entry toward  some
 rare other side don't hesitate you may 
not get another chance to 
and may not ever return from 


too late
now gone and  lost in the ho hum 
though a lingering message, 
just like the dove ....

 the right crow can also symbolize love 
P.S.

...There are no wrong crows .


"The mundane is sacred. The sacred is mundane."  Michael Stone. 

Thursday, August 31, 2023

ASIF per happen stance



 aftermath.

a question i was never allowed to answer.

                  something to do with the word

pain. no man's land nomenclature.

something like this:


           ?

as if.

perhaps with eyes closed and palm raw, stripped,

 perhaps, 


to one

 thin skin 

layer  and so to feel with care;

to hold dear, or just,  in some way, 

better,

 the subtle particular shape of a singular anguish.


perhaps.

as if it were

 ...

it were very important. and not fearsome, 

but a thing  obliged to ,

as if,

 actually 

it were NOT a thing 

but a being interdigitated with your own; 

a pock marked meeting in one 

stringent moment where something fallen from way too high,

 to way too low, and hard, and jagged,

SLAM -




is before you now, wrecked and restless anguish anxious-struck awe in the thousand-ed un-ending, weeping angels at that pin head, right there.

  and asking for nothing, except

witness. 


so

you bend and lay beside it,  take it into your ALL that so aches already,

 pull it close into your heart

  


and wait


for what comes next  




"Life expands or constricts in direct proportion to one's courage."  Quote - Author Unknown


Friday, August 11, 2023

there's no biz(m) like Q biz(m)

Rock climbers refer to a particular climb as a problem. Larger problems can be divided into  pitches and each is dealt with as an individual problem. At climbing tournaments, a wall is set and most often,  climbers don't have time to speculate ahead of time - the clock starts, they get a look at the problem and go - getting to the top on a first try, without falling or having to reassess is called flashing a problem. 

The Dawn Wall is a documentary about the side of El Capitan that faces the sunrise. El Cap is a famous mountain for elite climbers, especially. The Dawn Wall was presumed impossible to climb by any measure. Period.  Two climbers found their way to climb it. 


They lived  on the Dawn Wall together. for many weeks. pitch by pitch.  Of all its intricacies and difficulties, one of the climbers met his  sticking point at pitch 15.  A good portion of the film revolves around the impact of pitch 15.  In lieu of ropes, a good partner or belays, the metaphors in this film became my tools - along with The Alpinist - another beautiful climbing film about Mark Andre - a young man who used movement to meet his own heart and be free of image making in a thumbs up, like button culture. 

My Dawn Wall - a chaotic surge of pitch 15s.  The most important answer to the most painful problem was graced to me (after much struggle) in a montage of images ... but to put them into verse or share them clearly in any way, has been a sheer faced escarpment .

Slippery, ragged rag tag rattle collage of pitches that seemed to hold a seamless aversion to being spoken. Dostoevsky's Underground Man renunciated the notion that 2+2 must equal 4. I admire his adamance and don't disagree. It set him free.   Picasso upended the 3rd dimension, transcending the cube and the ism - somehow - on a flat page.   I proceed in their honor  - 

But I get ahead of myself. And  one ought not do that on a wall face alone without ropes. 


My impossible problem went like this:   



Shadow taking form among pitch dark, 

waiting for first light through a lattice window, the loaded  game board presents itself-

 the first mark there already 

right in the center 


- sometimes x sometimes o - doesn't matter 

you know the rules for tic tac toe:. whoever starts first wins, whoever wins starts first.   

#and we are merely players. 

fairly easy to keep score

I tried forfeiting ...

but then, the game board took to haunting me from 

tile floor to ceiling, 

"please enter the pound sign when you are finished  (#)"

haven't you noticed? multiplying and appearing 

# every where. 

 2 lines tandem, intersect 2 lines at perpendicular to equal 9 boxes  .... and so on. exponentially .

 the Underground Man doesn't like this any better than I do and he doesn't have an answer either. We both know, after all. you gotta

#leave your mark in this world. 
But set in stone as the second to go and the marks I have to choose from - are not mine  I have already lost,       i am lost already and i can't quit playing and i can't quit losing and 
at times, the only honest, sane response is wholehearted spun out madness.. At  least, for a little bit ...  ask Dostoevsky.   


But. Then what?   


 -on the angels, named and un-, i call, and to the phantoms of beings and things unremembered, of which, i will soon be one, i call to, as





                    

         i  fall through the back of my own heart to

 a listening that happens in the tone itself. a vision ignoring form or imagery 

and she was there all ready, 

attendant ...

waiting  


warm and frozen, chain link dove, her

 throat slope i followed

to its complicated anchor,  a loaded stillness in her shoulder's architecture.

 both of us, rapt in silent grace 'til

taken by what whim or need (?) her flight ignites our point in space. with 

a sudden 

arc of texture.   

 Gone. 

and with her, gone the waking nightmare- she tips the hashtag at hump dumpty angle - sidelong disabled nomenclature tangled meaning less than a curtainless curtain call for a naked emperor on a winning streak.  perhaps some problems can't be solved. But in an awestruck hush ...

they are let dis-solve

let d i  s

              s   o 

                        l v

                                e.



Saturday, April 29, 2023

It's Not About BEING RIGHT



          each being ,  with its own internal rhythm  

bearing a beat upon and through which 

the body paces its singular communion.


complicit with your slow, secret signature,

as if 

your life were a pencil and 

for this time here you are ever signing

your point in space

your motion's legacy. 



flaking rust and cartilage

 sheered away.

rejuvenated red dust upon which I hook

a finger, a heel to gain purchase 

- body language - somewhere,

an angle for leverage to pry the shadows free,

then, gather them,

as i would gather, to let

fall

again,

this time from

nothing solid. towards their own whim. 

i watch them spread for the pleasure of watching,

*

In honor  To honor  

... the immeasurable

moment,  set to set free 

the future.  the unhobbled wing. 

- looking into you

at my self there. already

knowing. night sweats, precipitant phantoms on seat edges

 waiting to see how it plays out. each page of the story overgrown.

so heavy,

a page turner, but

the page rips as i lift its corner.

rest a hand on the pile of scrambled letters - 

edges, angles, points but (thought forgotten,) soft as clay. 

fisted into a ball, slapped on the potter's wheel.

 a simple form spun,  deep as depth, a bowl the perfect shape for

a particular silence, 

-a species of hush - 


 

cattle breath in February, old spongy wooden shed filled with 

nameless, sleepy tools and the smell of oil.  the grace of unsaid good byes

in a weary heart, again nothing left to say. 

the space between lifted foot 

and soil...  always

walking away without preamble or profundity.

everything i touch leaves its fingerprint in mine.  that is 

how i know

 ...this is me           

Monday, April 24, 2023

Abandoned Shop Beside A Beauty Parlor

                 estranged

estranged, entangled wrens and

 tan gulls and 

language trapped in

bell towers, underground tunnels, and above my tongue banging 

against my mouth's dark dome. 

what is this false sky affixed to high beams?

what is this barrier between

 this bare naked soul and anyone listening?



homeless pigeons weakening, perhaps there never was a "why"

for time between the double paned

storm window, jagged entrance gained,

wings wildly wide

then hardened,

frozen in bare baked flight before so many

passers by, is anyone seeing?

i see

and i want

 want to tell them about ...



but i can't tell them

about ...

because i can't find the way out either. 



Sunday, April 9, 2023

Not Quite Haiku -


 How will I summit and merge with this music? 

unlyric'd - the finest unscripted essence of my

self, in it. One simple meaning shared without a word.  Bony-hearted and lucid,

so many small breezes calling to my skin.  So many leagues below my symptoms of sadness

an ether-laced courage,  lithe and

 graced.  heroic - it grows quiet, yet again,

to let them, as they won't be stopped

because they can't,

 and they can't

because they won't -   still

even amidst this "amidst", it rests 

its sweet head on my breast

 and listens,

 and matches, 

breath to breath.