Being Geniuses Together

I'm not so much interested in the visions people have. I am interested in what they do with them afterword. The next day. And the day after that. Everybody's got a vision and the visions change every day. It's like we'd tell our dreams over and over again. What earthly structures we will build with our visions.

Book Slinging

I am obsessed with the new non-fiction books at the Fayetteville Public Library. An updated slate of books appears there daily. I take the newest political books home to my shelf so I can keep an eye on them. I keep the new history books there until they are out-of-date again. 

A History of Torture

Imagine a world, imagined. A world where a president proclaims that these books are illegal. And now you can only get them from a qualified and licensed practitioner (permitted by the president).  If you spent all your time looking for books, waiting around for book dealers, getting ripped off but knowing these books are all you can get. The ones the booker chooses to offer you. When he doubles the price, you pay it. Because you feel best when you have these words, evil words, idiotic words that hurt people. These things—true—make you want them more. Anything bad for you is bad for you, and hence becomes illegal, by order of the president. One day soon we may be bad for you. There may need to be a war against us: the writers and printers and publishers and sellers of books. They will burn us to ashes and burn the ashes; that will be the motto. And eventually even you, the watcher, will be taken, and seated in a dark room where no explanations are necessary. And you will long to look through the eyes of the dead. You will deny it; you’ll be forced to. But you will give your dignity to feed once more on the specters in books. Give your dignity to look once more through my eyes, to look at the images and take them from me. Hold on hope, once more, that they will become seamless. 

Like in Lear.

No. No. That way lies madness.

Yeah.

Let me forget about today until tomorrow.

Letter to an Imaginary Friend

after Thomas McGrath


The idea that we need or have a guide
gives solace to those up front.
Someone will tell us whether we are
right or wrong. The thought of deciding
on our own is terrifying to us.

(Could we say fuck you to our guide?
And if so isn’t the guide just a god,
an invisible parent?)

So we conjure up the notion that someone is
always watching. We can’t. We won’t
know for sure—until we are gone for good.
We may know it all in the beginning—before we become verbal,
but I think we forget it once we learn to make words.

We speak in an attempt to bully each other.
So much more is said otherwise. We say things
when we talk as well, but we are too busy to notice.

Most Popular Hypothesis So Far:

We are all really something else

So why do we keep analyzing each other?
I talk as if I know what you mean and you
talk as if you know what I mean too.
I notice birds rarely tell the ornithologist
what they really mean. I mean
their songs or the way they fly, of course.
Birds don’t give a fuck what they think.
When did you forget you were a bird?
When did you decide you were an entry
in some anthology or encyclopedia
or contributor’s page?

Back to Simple Light

Between the outside and inside panes,
the spider spins up the bug. Child like,
and still wanting more death,
we can’t stop studying the rhythm of the legs.
They needle, like love, a sac around the body,
weaving it round and round the frame.
But a steady pulse of green emits freely still
from what must have been its mind—
slowing with every flash and less predictable,
the beginning seems nearly complete.

Wrongs We Don't Feel Need Correcting

We put aside our vows
and take up arms. For prayer.

For contemplation. To forgive you
I must absolve you. Who am I

to absolve you? I imagine there are people
who know nothing of what's happening.

China is US. We watch documenatries.
We put aside our vows to take up arms.

These Things Are Still New

I just imagine mourning
(the time of day, I mean).

He's a great poet.
I mean he's honest
and beautiful.

You're a lot more into fame
than you're willing to see.
Like we make death
about us, we make fame
about us too. When we can.

Morning is my favorite.
Dusk is exciting too.
Except for the urgency.

Nobody mourns the loss
of light but us. We dread
the light sometimes
(but not the morning)
because it makes us
aware that we are
(like waves) endless.

I dreamed that I was killing someone.
Then I found out the person was in on it.

An Imitation

These faces passing the crowd,
but not one beautiful
more than the others.

Just Tales

The Dog Tells A Tale Of A Following Tail (An Allegory Or Two)

The Woods--Afraid To Move

Needing People, Hiding From Them

from The Sunday Times

May 11, 2008
Revealingly yours, Philip Larkin
Postcards dug from the bottom of a box have given one
Oxford librarian tantalising insights into the poet’s work

"On the back of a yellowing birthday card, he had written a poem. This brought two nice surprises."

find the rest of it here: http://entertainment.timesonline.co.uk/tol/arts_and_entertainment/books/article3889722.ece

The Watch Maker

from Chris to Beck
April-29-08


Gus Pappas had a strong box containing promises. I am Gus Pappas now.
I have a watch,
which must have been owed to him in the depression
(the Great one; not the everyday depression that makes people
go mad in difference), From Rosa to Streight—
in beautiful script it reads—Dec-25-10.
I have a watch,
and I don’t know how it came to me. My brother,
I think, tried to have it fixed, repaired it a few times.
It worked for several days, once for a week.
Eventually, however, I got it—placed it in a metal box
and accepted that it only looks good.
That should be enough.
Can it tell me time and also shine its faded crest,
like the knight’s face of the Virgin inside his shield?
This one’s like a heart with flowers. How cliché!
A watch with a crested, flowered heart
and such a lovely inscription from so far.
If it were buried, I could lie and say it kept good time.
I have a watch,
which stopped counting at 6:17 and 23 seconds,
probably in 1988 or so (that's twenty years ago). I worked for my brother then,
lived in Central Park near the fairgrounds
(The neighborhood my grandfather’s house was in,
bought in the same Great depression for $2000,
the fairgrounds where he would take us to get dizzy on the tilt-a whirl,
my brother puking always head down in his shadow on the bench).
My brother and I cut grass together then, did landscaping—little square yards
(12 rows or 18 columns) for $20 a yard. We had a niche.
We rode around in his truck, checking on the other workers.
We talked about the watch. He got it fixed again, had it on a chain.
I have a watch,
and I am wealthy for it, filthy wealthy. I never sleep again.
Not since the even tide waved over us.
Not since our bed is turned against the meridian, against
the grain. Maybe we’ll move tomorrow. Put the bed in another room
on another wall. We’ll use a compass this time (not the one you know),
maybe leave space on either side, in case the hand refuses again to point.
I have a watch,
have watched it for days and minutes and seconds.
E. Howard Watch Co., Boston. The man that engraved it in 10, the designer.
The designer must have no idea where his watch has landed.
Does he know that its hands have ticked not for decades now,
or that it sits here beside me, an object of my activist stock and plan?
Must the designer still exist? Perhaps the designer is one handed or dead.
I have a watch
with a peculiar but standard feature. It has a front and back door.
The front reveals its hands: the function (and the fact that it’s broken).
The back door hides the inscription of love in lovely graveness.
The words still work, even now—this very moment, they work on me.
The hands and their failure lead me, and have always led me,
to put my watch in the grey, metal box. It becomes an artifact now, again.
If it worked I’d have it hooked in my pocket. I’d be exclaiming, I have a watch!
See this! See here, I have a watch! Perfectly polished and ticking!
Ah, the ticking (like the waving) symbolizes movement. Movement, yes!
Come closer to me now. [Softly] I want to tell you what I mean.
Movement is the original of all poems. Stop this day and night.
I have a watch.
I have watched this watch wait patiently for years, decades again, even.
I have known the value of its watching (or failure to do so),
which worked only briefly through the years. And still I kept it, proud.
I have a watch,
an old and useless watch, with an inscription for lovers
by lovers the same in 10(that's 1910). It must have cost quite a lot for them—
when Rosa bought the inscription (cents a letter) at the watchmaker’s shop—
as much as the one week anniversary card I etched in pen today on a napkin
for my brilliantly beautiful bride at our private, picnic brunch in the rain.
Still, can paper endure like a watch?
I have a watch,
which, when polished, will reflect a flash of sun upwards to where
even a child’s grasp falls short. Higher than a jet will go or an eagle—
or even where an up and down become just space, with no place or direction.
No hands will know which way to point it out, a flash which merely floats about.
I have a watch,
which though it does not work, does not cause time to cease. Oh, but if it did. . . .
If it did (I wonder). If it did, then I would bury it deep beneath that sand!
Yes, I’m sure of that! For though the designer has long ago surely died,
and though this watch may never point to another empty second,
I am in love with its time. I’ve had its brokenness locked away with me
for decades now. My lover sleeps by me but knows not what it means,
and maybe neither do I, placing it back in its safe place, with license
and other important documents. Some day I will show it to her
and tell her how close I came to smashing it on the night
I overwhelmed her with spirits and spells and pacing down our floor.
Perhaps I’ll tell her some day that I have a watch,
which has never worked but has always been inside [something] gaining value,
a pocket in the coat I wore the day we vowed together
to provide a home, home to each other. On the day we stood in the center
of a circle and passed the new people out (the two of us, that is)
with tears and poetry and dispelled doubt, passed them out with holy water.
Yes, someday I’ll tell her my toes felt squishy in the sand as I now watched
her walk through the wooded path to me,
and how I sensed the hands massaging my heart (so slight) to singing inside again.


CP

Unspeakable Suffering

I heard them this morning, Jen.
The humble and the loud one.
One just sings
and one needs to sing.
I thought it was you
all outside my window
playing bird again.

End of Another Fourteen Hour Day on Another Ranch in Mississippi

for Beck with all my love

groups of three and four
flock in the newly
sprigged pasture

strutting in black sheen coats
complaining about
the scarecrow

two stretch into flight
flex slick wings
to perfect pitch

shrinking shadows
twist against the plow
they rise, they fall

below a ceiling of clouds
hoisted by stage hands
disguised as angels

Polis Is This: Charles Olson and the Persistence of Place

We are Beautiful

I want my epitaph to say this is the title.
And yours, you say, you are here.
But we are not where we begin here,
and now, we are moving for the gulf,
what’s left of it—the spray of voices.
There's something more here than just voice,
the true song in our hymn.

We had locked us away to sing.
And though we felt scared alone,
we were always strong enough to go.
We are viable. We are spreading.
We will not be dead for a long time.

Did you know?

Between the 15th and 17th centuries, Taranto, Italy was hit by a dance craze unlike any other. The town was afflicted by a malady that would come to be known as "tarantism" and was characterized by a hysterical impulse to dance. Some people claimed tarantism was caused by the bite of the European wolf spider, which is also known as the tarantula (and is also named after Taranto); such folks declared that dancing off the venom was the only cure. Musicians supposedly traveled to the region to help cure the epidemic, and some believe that the Italian folk dance called the "tarantella" resulted from the craze.

Pilgrimage

For eighteen straight days, I left
for the love of another woman.
For eighteen straight days, a man
paced and talked alone. Silence,
for eighteen straight days.

For eighteen straight days, I have seen
pictures that would weep out masters,
images which speak in the only way
things can speak. With wholeness
and with outness. Without a legend,
without design, without clarity in design.
But not without wonder and color and space.

For eighteen straight days, I’ve watched you
emerge from the ash pit. The ash pit black and dirty.
For eighteen straight days, the tongue has waited
and risen
and waned
and waited
again
for eighteen days.
For eighteen straight days, the circle is
unbounded and open, and opening
still
now.
In eighteen days, a man’s mind can change.

For eighteen days, born. To awful birth.
For eighteen days, mourning the loss of pessimism,
for eighteen days, defensive posture,
for eighteen days, forgotten strategy,
for eighteen days, motive and reason.
For eighteen straight days, I have made
and been made
to art,
have been introduced
through art,
have been in love
by art. By art,
I have been loved for eighteen straight days.


For eighteen straight days, I wondered how many days.
For eighteen straight days, certain that today I failed.
For eighteen straight days, success. Eighteen days.
Eighteen straight days of mind. Eighteen straight.
Eighteen straight days of vision.
Vision, eighteen straight days’ expression. Expression.
Eighteen bodies. Eighteen. Eighteen sobs
and eighteen shits. Eighteen drinks
and eighteen caps. Eighteen. Eighteen straight days of this.

Eighteen days of celebrate. Celebrate people.
For eighteen straight days, my friends are famous.
For eighteen straight days, I held a ticket for Greece.
For eighteen days, eighteen times, I asked should I go.
For eighteen straight days, I went—while waiting for an answer.
For eighteen straight days, I am going still.
For eighteen straight days, I sit for the first time.
For eighteen straight days, someone knocked on the door,
pounded the door and pleaded to come in.
For eighteen straight days, the knock was from the inside.
For eighteen straight days, the mind doors burst open.
For eighteen days, there sits an ordinary man.
For eighteen days, the light out-shined his face, blurring his face from behind.
The man appeared for eighteen days with doves.
For eighteen days, I watched them let loose.
For eighteen days, I named them in poems.
They flew for eighteen days.
For eighteen days, married on the same day.
For eighteen days, the doves whispered their names.
They spoke different names to each of us. But for eighteen days,
we saw them together.
Symbols in the sky, so many symbols, everybody’s symbols,
with people inside, for eighteen straight days.
In eighteen days, the doves are crows twisting against our shadows
in furrows of blue.
For eighteen days, we wondered when to land, waiting for land.
The pasture is a symbol for spring, newly sprigged in green.
For eighteen straight days, we made it.
We landed.
Here we are. For eighteen days. We yawn. With sighs
held in
for just that long
and taking
just that long to come out. For that long,
we held our breaths.
And now, for eighteen straight days, we breathe without them.

Things on a Door Jamb (P Dub Mix)

I see my perception.
I smell my breath.
I feel my body.

From a culture
unlike any other.

It’s like after the picture
is taken, things are missing
from the scene.

It’s like committing suicide
and being alive
at the end.

Battle 300 by Henry Darger

Quote

"The human mind is fruitful almost to the precise degree that it is not compulsively trying to get useful results.

Useful results are a by-product of pure play, pure imagination."

—Alan Watts

Things on a Door Jamb

I see my perception.
I smell my breath.
I feel my body.

I didn’t drool.
That was soup
falling out of my lip.

It’s a truly unique beer
from a culture
unlike any other.

It’s like after the picture
is taken, things are missing
from the scene.

It’s like committing suicide
and being alive
at the end.


composed by
B. A. W. R

Eyes for Cracks

We survive on the remains of what once
sustained us, digging interstices which appeared
invisible before. Sometimes genius is made
in a playful acceptance, the willingness to seem
ridiculous. The will to be, delightful.

American Jesus--Resurrection in Joy

He’s beautiful, isn’t he? There’s so much
in a person’s eyes. You have eyes
like Egyptians. Unexpected but welcome.
Like cowboys on acid. I can’t see
my eyes. Black eyes. Dark endless eyes,
I’m told. There’s always one aspect
of this you can’t see. One turn.
The one who’s looking back into you,
and back into the surface like moonlight,
the gulf waving in the dark,
inviting you in to see what you are
missing. The mystery. Tenderness.
Disarmed, I dance and fight the current,
muscles strain. They say, when you’re drowning,
relax and it will take you and leave you
up the sand a ways. Walk past the lovers
in the dunes. Keep your head and eyes
moving, not listening to what’s spoken,
but watching how they react to what
you give them. Give them little truth
with many lies. Why do we always come
to this kitchen? We kick so hard
we knock the pilots out. The way is lost
for a while. We wait and move in the dark.
Wait for contact. Would you lead or follow?
Yes. You should. Just touch her
and you will know which way to fall.
She goes limp in my eyes, relaxing
like the disobedience in the street. Refusing
to be carried away easily. My dead weight.
I brace myself as not to bruise her more.
She will entertain you, if you will
let her shout. We hunt loud and late. Like sirens
spreading into the bush for hidden lovers.
She sits at the desk and scissors paper
into different shapes of hearts. Our bursts
cancel each other into silence. Just listening
to the waving of naked and blue. The broken
cross remains behind us. My remains,
at who the black sparrow will stare
until convention becomes unconventional.
Paper is everything. And the body is there
on top. The flame burns invisible to us.
Let’s trap it in the bottle like a message
cast out to just about all those left.

With Simic

[Question?]

No, you prefer writing about the bloodstained past. “The butchery of the innocent never stops,” as one poem begins, although your work also offers consoling images of domesticity — your mom in “her red bathrobe,” your grandmother ironing, a lover who “stirs the shrimp on the stove.”

[Answer?]

It’s a kind of feast-in-time-of-plague poetry. I always feel like if I am sitting here having a terrific meal with friends, yes, there is someplace else, not too far away, where something awful is happening.

Find the rest here, if you're lucky:
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/02/03/magazine/03wwln-q4-t.html?_r=1&ref=books&oref=slogin

They're More or Less Talented Slackers

Yes. They are smiling so real.
I am not quite that real.
They are so real, smiling. Yes.
I am quite that not real.
Smiling yes so real. They are.
That real. Quite I am not.
Real, yes, smiling they are so.
Real, quite, that I am not.
They are yes. Smiling so real.
I am real. Not quite that.
Smile. Yes. So are they real.
I am not quite that real. Yes.

Afterwords:

Real real?
Yes real!
Are not.
So not!
Real that.
Real yes!

from review of The Modern Element : Essays on Contemporary Poetry

"Here (in the United States) poetry is such a minor, sidelined pursuit that its practitioners seldom even consider the possibility that their art has a duty to a larger cause. ... The moral crisis of Eastern Europe under Communism gave poetry an urgency and stature it can never have in the United States, where it is largely a hobby confined to writing workshops."

Kirsch's frustrations with particular American poets stems from his disappointment that they don't seem to want to commit themselves to "a larger cause." Kirsch expects poets to have the moral seriousness and political vision of Sophocles or Solzhenitsyn. Instead, he finds that most of them play in their own little worlds or use poetry as therapy - that they're more or less talented slackers.

By clicking on the link below, you can read the review in its entirety:

http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2008/01/27/RVEGU13JS.DTL

The Quiet Heart of This Life

Love is not the messenger spirit
it was heralded to be. Not the connection
between the mortal and immortal.
Tonight I have too many minds.
The ties that have kept me to the air
are now strained too fine even to be
called gossamer. They are disappeared.
Torn under the stress of my intention.
Pieces clinging to me but also to my lovers.

That wasn't what I meant to say at all.
From where I'm sitting rain . . . .

from "Ferlinghetti argues that poetry can save the world"

In other words, Ferlinghetti should need no introduction. That he still might, to the vast majority of Americans who rarely, if ever, read poetry, is part of the lamentable background to his latest book. It has been argued that the current decade is the 1950s all over again, but worse. And for Ferlinghetti, poetry's "use" extends far beyond the personal into the political. "Poetry can save the world by transforming consciousness," he argues in "Poetry as Insurgent Art," a slim hardback pocketbook manifesto of prose epigrams, seemingly addressed to poets and those who might be.

"I am signaling you through the flames," he begins in the new section from which his book takes its title. "The state of the world calls out for poetry to save it." Poetry, in this vision, must be a political statement, arrows slung for freedom of expression, thought and resistance. "Write living newspapers," he counsels. "Your poems must be more than want ads for broken hearts" - in other words, to paraphrase Bertolt Brecht, to write mere "love poetry" in such times is "almost a crime." So "challenge capitalism masquerading as democracy"; "Liberate have-nots and enrage despots"; "Don't cater to the Middle Mind of America nor to consumer society." And so on, in variations of his admonition to "be committed to something outside yourself."

Follow the link below to read the original article in its entirety:
http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2007/12/30/RVLRU031F.DTL