Tag: Poetry
Drunk Like a River in Flood
Swelling my banks,
perturbedly turgid,
effervescently carbo-
nated, almost,
(or perhaps it’s entire…
depending on who
&/or what you believe,
with their reason…)
Swollen, in flow,
a thundering racket,
flotsam and jetsam
I wail at the bends.
A “bender” they call it.
I’m here, all the while
passing through.
Drenched (or “besotted”) –
the rain.
I am home
and I’m rushing
to-ward and away,
instinct with desire,
for which fire
is no match,
only patience…
I’m a patient
and ill to the bones…
you will see.
But I gurgle
these songs
as I pass..
filled with belches
and farts,
it’s unseemly…
Drunk
like a river
in flood
[too apparent] –
here’s
where the poem
begins
Some Kind of Elegy
Great grandeur of light
Your laughter tinkling its tent
A poet has died
Like a raven
We watch him pass
Rivers and trees
There’s probably more
Words
Are like that
– suspended –
Over silence
You’ve heard her
Read the dictionary…
Everyone disbelieves
Only I drink it in
– sufficiently –
Everyone’s doubt
Grand Canyons
are like
the unknown
we feel
of any other
(or each)
–
I put clothes on
have hairs trimmed
appear
and once again
guess at meanings
In other words
I “care”
insofar as an organism
hopes to live
Which I continue
to exhibit
because I think
I love
you
–
And no one knows
Not-knowing (yet)
What “love” is
“Yet” such an
Empire-ical promise
(some day our greed
will pull through) –
you hear it:
“I love you”:
that evil
devoted
inspired
and diabolical
urge, disturbed
and ravishing
–
As long as
we win something
we’re almost happy
Deconstructing Definitions
Perhaps “work” means something must be done, regardless of desire,
and signifies felt effort.
If “to love’s” “unassailable affirmation,”
something verbal, and not only.
“Education” as “familiarity with thoughts of others” (K. O. Knausgaard),
entails “experience” as “familiarity with itself”?
And what of “wisdom”?
I wonder if “deaf” implies “not-listening,” or/and, “our forgetting of the body.”
and who defines “republic”?
Or “nowhere” and “now here” in all their differance?
Frere Jacques (yes, go and sing it)
suggests impossibility fuels valuation –
negation requiring its positive with –
terms all ways relative in their contexts,
indeterminate and groundless,
yet term-in-able, undecided, written-in.
I don’t know.
But I sense it’s indefinitive,
de- and con- structure something else,
like trace or foggy margin,
the space between the sounds
that continues (us and them).
Reduce (‘to lead back, to bring back’)
https://www.etymonline.com/word/reduce
Thrum –
that is the hum of the liveliness
the phrasing which your voice emits
the charging of rememory
the shock that members monsters
–
Thrum spark! –
the difference between hearing
and listening-for, anticipation.
Or expectation? and its careful ache
awaiting every painful jolt
–
The fear involved –
an awful angst of joy –
timbre re-minding the body,
bodies, of things that surge
–
Like language –
what’s drawn out
and quartered
into inestimable more
–
So like-wise, the idiot
breath and ready veins
fill up with begging
bursted already in the mouths and hands
–
and far beyond.
Reach in, reach out
one motion as touch
the no-one-knows-where
–
Leading back,
bringing back,
reduce:
our introduction
Reduce (‘to lead back, to bring back’)
https://www.etymonline.com/word/reduce
Thrum -
that is the hum of the liveliness
the phrasing which your voice emits
the charging of rememory
the shock that members monsters
Thrum spark! –
the difference between hearing
and listening-for, anticipation.
Or expectation? and its careful ache
awaiting every painful jolt
The fear involved –
an awful angst of joy –
timbre re-minding the body,
bodies, of things that surge
Like language -
what’s drawn out
and quartered
into inestimable more
So like-wise, the idiot
breath and ready veins
fill up with begging
bursted already in the mouths and hands
and far beyond.
Reach in, reach out
one motion as touch
the no-one-knows-where
Leading back,
bringing back,
reduce:
our introduction
Being something
This is how we see:
a set of brackets, dark,
moving across wires in the sky
(that we placed there)
because of the angle of light
and it’s changing
– perhaps –
and perhaps it’s the change
and the angling,
and perhaps it’s involved with the light
Tapping at Windows of Words
The bestial want
is it ever more?
Evermore.
.
Ache beauty
its terrible
hunger
.
The voyeur
at what is not
“mine.”
.
What can be taken?
What “had”?
In the seeking,
the peeping,
the glimpse
or the glance –
its desire?
.
Such beastly want,
evermore,
grasping
.
forth or out
I reach –
a solid pane.
.
I am limited
constrained
delimited –
.
it would seem
I see clearly
but it cannot be
touched.
.
‘I’ is alone
with-out.
With-in
comes from ‘you.’
.
So ‘I’ scopes –
a feral yearn –
and gazes…
.
tapping at windows
of words.
Fog and Birds
In swarms.
The littlest pieces –
– form clouds.
Droplets, ions, atoms.
What is called “molecules”?
.
Faiths. Belief.
.
Trees standing,
apparently strong,
lost to view,
in dense fog.
.
Molecules…accumulated,
accumulating, gathered
toward some clearing.
Same differences,
at large scales.
.
“For Nathan…with love”
someone writes.
“Nathan” signifies me,
“love” signifies…?
.
Imagination and dream…
a fog and a swarm of birds,
an hypothesis
into the unknown
.
a thing humans are prone to
do by “nature”
– ? –
who or what evaluates “nature”?
what “human”?
if “nature”?
for SummerMLee
How it is, part exponential
We followed the arc of the diver, losing it in the fog, wishing to make it out clear. I might have said this meant “philosophy.”
“Poetry,” he said, “is utilizing known language to invoke the unknown.” Or certaintly uncertainty, or something like that, which I liked, and indicated by asking what is not uncertain?
Your hands, the music. My desire, a naming for them. I think of your waist as a séance.
What is it to be crippled? I keep trying to use words.
Another asked about the “arc of the diver.” How should I know? All of my sentences should be read as questions. I wonder how divergent questions or commands might be… as statements.
She said, “it falls between. It has to go somewhere.” I guess we pressed it there… were poietic… since we couldn’t find a name. “Dis-appearance” might be one. Like a guess that can’t be falsified.
We all hold a paper marker printed “You are here.” Perhaps paper is too substantial. But it still seems like an invitation I wish we had.
Maybe this is why Albahari inscribed “Words are something else.” We leave it at that. And are flummoxed as to what “that” refers to.
Still we look.
You move like flocks of birds that wheel. I’ve never comprehended “swarm.” Mathematics doesn’t cut it, though it certainly uncertainly tries.
The telephone Pictionary of ear-mouth-brain when we issue sound or gaze. Don’t foibles equal actions? Parts of us experience this as violence, as valence.
Relation as a struggle to balance victimhood and perpetration. Uncertainly.
When or where does this infiltrate unknown?
He went on to say…
I thought (imagined?) your ankles, knees, elbows and knuckles as adroit sworls in swift mountain streams.
So also losing it in the fog, hoping to remember where the trees were. Philosophy. Or was it the forest?
Poetry as ocean surface between “known”/unknown? So wavy, so heaving. No one said that.
The richest respect he gave was his readiness to call me “Nobody.” Or “Anybody.” Carte blanche.
She said.
I can hardly perceive what’s in your head now. Potentia? An horizon of waves. A place where words press images press events, the banal. Perhaps. Uncertain sphere of unknowing? They say learning happens there. Like a cell in a culture, animal in terrain. Cacophony of dreams.
Each time we encounter.
All my Words are Silent 