now that the winter's over...

Ah, pulling out the old notebooks. This is reworked material from a line-a-day “poetic diary” from winter 2004-5.

1
Waiting for desire to show itself
to itself

Cleaving a sea of people playing chicken
four bodies high, balanced against the fence
it’s forbidden to cross… Fallujah hospital
smashed without image and a melody
constructed by dream from possibilities

Of all available choices, which?
Maybe one that isn’t yet possible

Highlander Center: 34 rocking chairs
thought as motion
while learning to organize a mission
statement: blue edge

Ft. Benning: chant their names
until the fence
words left
but not mystical, just curious
about “spirit”

Please hold while we transfer your complaint
to the Wrong Guy


2
The terror of penultimata
delays, amplifies, hypostasizes
points of intense & anxious motion
as dead endings, muchos colores
as grey natures morts. Eyes as lead
weights and measures are impossible
when it’s a question of ends: only I
can treat me as a means, or mean
(though nothing, especially meaning, is
“in-itself”)

The age of reason and the age
of implicit consent
A time to hire

Particulars miss each other
when they blink
at table
together


3
over pragmatic considerations
or a landscape

over which something was scheduled

the sun sets
the table

napalm again collapses time
and trains

—shut up!, I shout
at figures of nostalgia

Dear Diary, though you show no concern
for what holds us together,
I’d spend days in your arms, doing nothing
to avert the catastrophe.


4
What’s difficult
is to work down from the macro. In this sense,
the top of a hierarchy is the bottom, like a gene
organizing us for its benefit. Atoms coagulate
(“says you”) (“and you”) under the building codes,
but can we reconfigure those
from this vantage point?
Perhaps!


5
A familial hum
that already speaks of her
before meaning
it

I speak here of
—no, I don’t speak
—even less I than speech here
(should that be cut if it’s read aloud?
who’s asking?)—

A fissure in the side of something
can only mean one (other) thing
—and that only if habit should decide
to put it elsewhere:

the horizon where one becomes another
not “in time” but always
—parallel, one in the world and one
outside, one always just alongside the other—distinct

systems of division, or
on the other hand
always having just happened


6
Showing up is a category all its own
A mountain didn’t know it would split roads
like a day splits a year, a few hours
splits a day, the present

on a spit to roast
and come apart

into future & past

The conclusion in inclusion
steps out and back
to get a better look at the moths
gathered on the blanket

to perform one of the lost plays
(in translation)

On the other hand, there’s the stoic
choice not to let another suffer
in one’s own silence

versus an invitation to speak
that’s already broken it

Snow glows, softer than rhyme,
more like the harmonic spectrum,
swelling to fill a space
it first makes possible


7
Icing quickly
pavement contracts
or
loses out to cake
or “or”
as inclusion
and “respect”
as position
—gathered
around what’s
central
temporarily and by virtue
of the gathering

We walked on the lake
The blue light was blue
and things standing
out were next
to blue

That was night reflected
a palm cupped
to breathe, redden

Then I repeated the pointless
dream repeatedly
not figuring out what wasn’t there
to be figured

What is it that keeps saying
“I’m here”?