Tag: Poetry

Abracadabra Cliches

On By NW FilbertIn Poetry2 Comments

“The outcome belongs to nobody,

the approach, however,

depends entirely on us.”

-Edmond Jabes-

 

The temple always crumbles,

this is not a complication.

The birds arrive from here and there, departing.

A canvas is made from canvas

composed of canvas still beyond.

 .

I’m writing words

knowing they are fashioned without meaning

until read by you or me

or still something further in,

between,

 .

making all of us disciples

and messiahs

in our gleaning expeditions

with embodied repetitions

re-membering in minds…

 .

recapitulations with their novelty

of time and place and person(hood).

 .

And our present filled by abracadabra’d clichés:

yet let’s meet there – (here) –

with wonder and amazement

and a just amount

of what’s familiar…

 .

to you and I and all of us

in now.

Where the Summer has Gone

On By NW FilbertIn Journallings5 Comments

GetOutWayJuly

WordPress peers and inspiring friends – new love, new work, busy summer offspring and the above explain my lack of involvement here.  Autumn approaches, new semesters, school year beginning, and so on.  I SO hope to be active in your company again.  I appreciate your comments and patience.  What a large thing life is.

As I catch up on your works – I am SO thankful for the talents, visions, expressions, idiosyncratic thought and emotion that each of you have found a particular and meaningful (and SIGNIFICANT in whatever medium) way to realize in this forum.  I appreciate it greatly and am truly humbled and grateful for these odd and generative connections.

thereading

image from the reading replete with lifeguard (son), hostess handing out favors (buttons, nipples), stewardess serving odd mixtures of airline snacks, a priest blessing and moving people around, a waitress and a dapper emcee, a basket of fortunes created by my daughter, and myself wandering the space reading pieces and climbing on things.

 

Naming Influences: In Retrospect

On By NW FilbertIn Poetry8 Comments

Naming the Influence : In Retrospect

.

Things designed to grow

often get away from us

 .

One look at my yard

or my children

would evidence why

this might be of concern

to me

 .

disease and debt,

dust and doubt,

all maintain this quality;

 .

It’s not a bad thing really –

imagination, desire,

patience and hope

are also items that accrue

over time and with attention

 .

It’s the sort of thing one,

well, simply notices:

that desire and decay

operate on similar terms

 .

both of which catch us unaware.

 .

“They feed they lion”

it’s been said

and I know

what it means

(at least in part)

 .

what we emphasize

while naming our influence

is suspect at least –

 .

“side-swiped” we declaim,

“should have known”

or “could have seen coming”

of this, that and other

ever going, growing,

right along, alongside,

 .

perhaps unseen,

perhaps simply ignored

(and that prior to perception)

 .

all our –isms, habits, beliefs

in their cumulative gentle violence

 .

what our mouths spray

our lives belie

 .

in retrospect.

Ever-Unprepared

On By NW FilbertIn Poetry1 Comment

It’s said that “readiness is all,”

yet the readiness required

has no subject, and its object

can be anything

which portends – what – ?

we do not know

which is the point

and is beside it

 .

Turns out that knowing

neither how nor when nor what

nor where nor why

can still be useful –

ever-unprepared is our preparing

for all we cannot fathom

 .

getting used to

every there becoming here

drawn by perception

and a yes however secret

she arrives

and I, unready

.

open eyes

and take her in

with an open-handed

readiness,

is all,

and I receive

these many things I cannot fathom

 .

into this here

where I, bewildered

and ever-unprepared

and open-handed

 .

allow her to arrive

and arrive

and arrive

in waves of all

and getting ready

Summer Recapitulation

On By NW FilbertIn Current Reading, Language, Philosophy, Poetry, WritingLeave a comment

Given the nature of things… withdrawal from school… disregulation of schedule / child-rearing / presences… obligated projects, desired collaborations, attempts… preponderance of labor… decrepitude and erosion of house, car, body…

Herein lies a revised Summer Reading List – old and new and recapitulatory…

“FICTION”

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“POETRY”

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“OTHER”

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From the Notebooks… a poem perpetually in progress…

On By NW FilbertIn Journallings, Poetry, Writing3 Comments

Untitled (In Progress)

The poem linked above I pushed out last week… and marked it as “in progress” because for some reason it is one that the process of making, unmaking, forging and revising it (still feels “off” as published at above) has intrigued me.  Here are the pages of notebook from which it hails, perhaps this is of interest, perhaps not, for better or worse…

We are working on an exhibition of new media for June at Wichita’s Fisch Haus, and have been battling over how to show process and creation when exhibiting technologically enabled and activated art.  Perhaps that is why I’ve been more conscious of my own processes of making and revising.  In any case, here is a little trail through the notebooks as a piece is coming to be…

edited drafts

In Progress….

 .

I am thankful for this loosening quiet,

your slackening ties of dusk.

Though often shackled by a fear of loss

in love, I may open toward a growing –

 .

possibilities of a learning, as in youth,

less about the being something

than, profoundly, just to be…

that which relaxes and allows

 .

like a cow caught up in weather,

or warm engagements with a child,

with the blossom, and make-believe.

Empowered when our symbol’d systems –

 .

confused by what is happening –

begin to sign that loss

(a form of death) ensures the safety

of our risks.  That harm and haven

 .

are our home – the same as truth:

what’s loved is lost –

and thus we come to love.

Wisdom undoing opposites

 .

in terms of life.

I amt ridiculed by youth –

it’s how I know that many lessons

come unlearned,

 .

that “completeness is

a process of revision”

as they say,

and that our closures

 .

are what open

every day.

.

The above was an editing of the following…which is why it’s still “In Progress…”

child, the blossom, the make-believe

And

 .

And then I want to say

that I am thankful

for this loosening

 .

I want to say

And then I want to say

that I am grateful/thankful

in/for this loosening quiet

for its / and the slackening of ties

 .

perhaps we’d once been shackled by

the fear of loss in love

 .

leaving space for other and tenderness and availability,

freed of the shackling fear of loss

in love

not in the order of other pursuits

thus fencing a truth again

or forging some identity –

burned and brandished iron –

 .

but that we might allow

the finding, its discovery –

all the safeties that arrive with risk –

in all directions

whether in the child, the blossom, or the make-believe

 .

the will to love and to enjoy

our engagement

with world and things and persons

 .

unraveling the expectations

of hurt and damage

parenting ourselves to freedom

 .

the assurance we are looked after,

at least by ourselves,

as well the plenteous others –

our families, our species, our friends

 .

we will probably survive,

unless we do not

and then no matter

death was here from the start

 .

nor had it intention or opportunity

not to be

attachment and loss

and room for growth

 .

so we begin, so we will be

the template that stifles

symbolic structures

learned of experience

 .

in certain ways

 .

do not ask permission

but simply deceive

they are not truthful

 .

Look at your child,

your pet, your mother –

you would not have them

to be a certain thing

 .

an object, tool or concept

but to live and change and grow

until they die and thus dissolve

which is not damage so much

so much as change

 .

thus let it be,

it is quiet

the ties are slackened

the noose loosened

 .

around your heart.

we are here –

the squirrel, man and mountain,

every weather, part and parcel,

as are you

 .

It is begun

we are resolved

to open and allow

for your enjoyment

for your experience

should you engage

 .

and cease to fear

cease to fit to your equation

to whatever maths you assent and ascribe

and start to scribble

doodle, sketch

 .

to select potential

over priority

exception(al) over rule

dynamic in place of determined

 .

and friendship more than fact

 .

perhaps you were meant to be

over being

to selve more than self

 .

for “we were not meant to survive,

only to live.”

 .

*********************

 .

We thank you for the loosening quiet

We are the slackened ties of dusk

 .

I am grateful to this the loosening quiet,

the darkness and this its slackening of ties…

what is once was shackled by the fear of loss

in love, now opened may open toward a growing –

 .

possibilities – a learning, as in youth,

that it is much less about being something

as than it is, profoundly, just to be

that which relaxes and allows

 .

the squirrel (cow) caught up in weather,

our warm engagement with the child,

the blossom, or the make-believe,

empowered when our symbol’d systems

 .

can be get confused with awareness by what is happening,

and when we are able to see that loss,

a form of death, ensures the safety

of our risks.  That harm and heaven haven

 .

are the same – our home as truth

what’s loved is lost

and thus we get come to love.

Wisdom undoing opposites

 .

in the terms of life

I am get ridiculed by youth

it’s how I know that lessons

are get unlearned,

 .

that “completeness

is a process of revision”

as they say, and that a that our closures

opens every day.

 .

“TO SPEAK SO AS NOT TO MEAN, BUT TO BE”

-Dan Beachy-Quick-

 

 

 

 

Context : Space

On By NW FilbertIn Journallings, Reflections4 Comments

Nested Scenarios…

Gibson - Perceptual Systems

 

So in the beginning was a context.  In this case the context is words, and you, the screen or paper, the molecules filling distance and your apparatus of perception.  The kind of being you are and the sorts of matter – ink, bits, paper, code, air, eye, flesh, neurons, etc… and what results.

The scenarios are endless.

And always many.

You/One/Many

 

could say – you (as a scenario) and

world as a convergence of particular scenarios

 

Squirrel scenario.  Grass.  Breeze scenario.  Soil.  The scenarios of Marriage.  Tree scenario.  Ear.  Language scenarios.  Thought.  Memory scenarios.  Emotion.  Pencil scenario.  Keyboard.  Spiritual scenarios, movement, national scenarios, weather, (and so on…and so on…perhaps not so much nested as meshed and interactive – untold scenarios interacting…compoundly conditioning the scenario that we as individuals provide)

excepting not in those/these terms

the area of the angles

(arms, knees, uneven radius and circumference of heads – it doesn’t matter – it will change in a moment…even less than…)

 

What is wanted now is silence

and the blusteriness of persons

You always take a thing

and its other

to see what happens

as much as she is

no one

is sweetness and light

so now we sleep

sometimes

we just have to

move

to be tired

Perceptual Systems

Waking the Invisible…with Jack Gilbert

On By NW FilbertIn Current Reading, Poetry3 Comments

Waking at Night

The blue river is gray at morning

and evening.  There is twilight

at dawn and dusk.  I lie in the dark

wondering if this quiet in me now

is a beginning or an end.

.

Cherishing What Isn’t

Ah, you three women whom I have loved in this

long life, along with the few others.

And the four I may have loved, or stopped short

of loving.  I wander through these woods

making songs of you.  Some of regret, some

of longing, and a terrible one of death.

I carry the privacy of your bodies

and hearts in me.  The shameful ardor

and the shameless intimacy, the secret kinds

of happiness and the walled-up childhoods.

I carol loudly of you among trees emptied

of winter and rejoice quietly in summer.

A score of women if you count love both large

and small, real ones that were brief

and those that lasted.  Gentle love and some

almost like an animal with its prey.

What is left is what’s alive in me.  The failing

of your beauty and its remaining.

You are like countries in which my love

took place.  Like a bell in the trees

that makes your music in each wind that moves.

A music composed of what you have forgotten.

That will end with my ending.

.

Suddenly Adult

The train’s stopping wakes me.

Weeds in the gully are white

with the year’s first snow.

A lighted train goes

slowly past absolutely empty.

Also going to Fukuoka.

I feel around in myself

to see if I mind.  Maybe

I am lonely.  It is hard

to know.  It could be

hidden in familiarity.

.

To Know the Invisible

The Americans tried and tried to see

the invisible Indians in the deeper jungle

of Brazil.  They waited for months,

maybe for years.  Until a knife and a pot

disappeared.  They put out other things

and some of those vanished.  Then one morning

there was a jungle offering sitting on the ground.

Gradually they began to know the invisible

by the jungle’s choices.  Even when nothing

replaced the gifts, it was a kind of seeing.

Like the woman you camp outside of, at the five portals.

Attending the conduits that tunnel from the apparatus

down to the capital of her.  Through the body

and its weather, to the mind and heart, to the spirit

beyond.  To the mystery.  And gradually to the ghosts

coming and leaving.  To the difference between

the nightingale and the Japanese nightingale

which is not a nightingale.  Getting lost in the treachery

of language, waylaid by the rain dancing its pavane

in the bruised light of winter afternoons.

By the flesh, luminous and transparent in the silent

clearing of her.  Love as two spirits flickering

at the edge of meeting.  An apartment on the third

floor without an elevator, white walls and almost

no furniture.  Water seen through pine trees.

Love like the smell of basil.  Richness beyond

anyone’s ability to cope with.  The way love is after fifty.

– Jack Gilbert, The Dance Most of All

Jack Gilbert

 

Promise

On By NW FilbertIn Art, Current Reading, Traces, Writing3 Comments

“Life is not susceptible perhaps to the treatment we give it when we try to tell it.”

-Virginia Woolf-

Woolf quote

+

2 Books that generate promise…

Ruiz - Four Cold Chapters

 

Bromley - Making Figures

(click covers for summaries)

 

Arrivals (cont’d, crossed over the Atlantic)

On By NW FilbertIn Current Reading, Journallings1 Comment

Isles from the air

Arrivals

“We may ask of our destinations, ‘Help me to feel more generous, less afraid, always curious.  Put a gap between me and my confusion; the whole of the Atlantic between me and my shame.’ Travel agents would be wiser to ask us what we hope to change about our lives rather than simply where we wish to go.”

-Alain de Botton, A Week at the Airport–

I must have slumbered, unattractively and fitfully, for the plane windows were open and it was very very bright in the sky.  My glasses had fallen, my head scrunched under an arm rest, legs tightly angled and restrained from the aisle by the arm rest just one seat away.  And below, there were moments of Ireland.

I finished the book, thinking de Botton’s observations might make the arrival more profound.  But Rick Hanson’s Just One Thing helped me more.  “Find beauty, take in the good, be compassionately for yourself.  Breathe out long and the intentions (little by little) will seep out around you” (a paraphrase).  As we circled London, having skewed our arrival from delay, the clouds thickened and soon we were scuttling through the wet and the grey.

I thought: ‘Experience is like this’ (of course it is, it is my experience!) – most of it a thickened ambiguity – the swirl and swoon of our passing – when the winds are right you can make something out – particles of cloud, the edge of the wing, sometimes even a reflection.  That was the moment – clouds surrounding the wing, the wing itself, and the reflection of the scumbling clouds on the wing:  world, ourselves, and occasions where we catch our perception – our experience.

And then we touched down, wet splashing the plane, 21 hours and 41 minutes (by the clock) since I’d set out on this journey.  Customs went smoothly, my luggage arrived, and I tunneled by train to my host.  Now I’m in place at my window as the city becomes squares of lights.  de Botton states it thus: “I returned to my room at three in the morning, struck by a sense of our race as a peculiar, combustible mixture of the beast and the angel.” Assessing out from myself and this view of the city, I agree.

“We forget everything: the books we read, the temples of Japan, the tombs of Luxor, the airline queues, our own foolishness.  And so we gradually return to identifying happiness with elsewhere:  twin rooms overlooking a harbor, a hilltop church boasting the remains of the Sicilian martyr St Agatha, a palm-fringed bungalow with complimentary evening buffet service.  We recover an appetite for packing, hoping and screaming.  We will need to go back and learn the important lessons of the airport all over again soon…”

It’s good to have help on the way.  Thanks to Alain de Botton, Rick Hanson, Cees Nooteboom and David Foster Wallace for “a kind of writing that could report on the world while still remaining irresponsible, subjective, and a bit peculiar” – moving me (little by little) from a here to a there.

view from hotel window

view from hotel window

15 February 2014