Birdsong that I cannot assign to actual birds in birder-books.
Bird-brain who cannot assign the actual song to actual bird.
One song, from a power line (was it a mouse tit?): succession
of disparate melodic bursts, whose form depends upon reply.
When my fire alarm was jogged to sound, emitting three deafening beeps,
it was another bird who answered from the woods.
The fire alarm sounded bird-like; bird-song fire alarm-like, a bird alarm.
To three beeps the bird answered, with three short song-bursts.
The machine called, the bird answered; they beeped three times.
One declaimed turf or mating brag, the other declaimed fire, false alarm,
such as from the boy who cries fire to separate a theater from a crowd.
But outdoors, there's no audience, no reason for alarm.
One can beep, and one can reply; one says FIRE, one TURF,
one declaims I am the most resplendent thing on earth.
My wings are on fire. Check out how loud I sing, all fiery song.
How I'll scotch and scorch the branch on which I'll perch.
Wednesday, July 30, 2008
Tuesday, July 29, 2008
6/23/07 draft
There were scores of fireflies in the air, and one against my windowscreen
glowed greenly, and there were also dozens of fireflies on the hillside,
and inside, one was lit but dying on the carpet, but outside, the fireflies were spinning
like searchlights or beacons or the silent discharge of flak batteries under the clouds,
the constellations out of sight, and some were spiralling into the winter rye,
while the red slugs fastened themselves to the sides of the leaves of the string-bean,
disease-resistant so the package claimed, and chewed the leaves into skeletal frames
like uncompleted aircraft or rusted out spades, but the fireflies were neither
landing on the vegetables nor on the flowers, the shriveled purple irises
or sweet-pea sending their green coils into the air.
glowed greenly, and there were also dozens of fireflies on the hillside,
and inside, one was lit but dying on the carpet, but outside, the fireflies were spinning
like searchlights or beacons or the silent discharge of flak batteries under the clouds,
the constellations out of sight, and some were spiralling into the winter rye,
while the red slugs fastened themselves to the sides of the leaves of the string-bean,
disease-resistant so the package claimed, and chewed the leaves into skeletal frames
like uncompleted aircraft or rusted out spades, but the fireflies were neither
landing on the vegetables nor on the flowers, the shriveled purple irises
or sweet-pea sending their green coils into the air.
11/11/06 draft
Once, when my eyesight was clear enough
to see each discrete vein in each leaf,
I lacked the need for mediums by which to grasp things,
but during a power outage, I was helpless as an infant,
except that my legs carried me from wall to blind wall
and my fingers fumbled for the match and the butane lighter.
That reminds me that balls of methane can be planets,
autonomous and lighter than a feather, weightless but fixed.
In an outage, I flicked a single match upon the floor
and thought about the fires I set in trashcans as a kid,
but as a bank flared up outside a Transcendental Meditation Center
I cowered, and reined the fire in by stepping on the growing flame with a single boot-heel
until only a smouldering column of smoke scarred the hillside.
A ball of methane can become another planet as easily as breathing or blinking,
but within another blink, such a planet disappears from sight.
The purest flame can come from putrifaction, oils that seep from lower earth.
The bluest methane could be the only light in a power outage
against which the lights of candles in blackouts falter.
The bluest orbs rise above the moon from putrifaction.
But a blink can change the earth and moon on their axis,
and in just a blink an orb of blue called a planet can be gone.
Mars is ruddy rock, not a valley in sight.
The faces of moon-men dissolve beneath the clearest glass,
the hollows of high cheekbones become craters and the facial lines canyons.
With the flick of a match in an outage, all becomes fire.
The orange cranes ascend the transfer stations
among streaks from sodium lamps on windshields and traffic stripes
and the planets of ammonia spin rings that freeze what touches them.
And the yellow planets are flammable, and the outages silence the village
but the rings around the planets are freezing cold, and the blue orbs insubstantial but fixed--
their center is as viscous as blue slush, and in a blink a planet can be gone,
can be deemed to be planet no longer, an orb for which a name is required.
I burned the contents of the trash receptacle,
and the flames licked the sides of the pole and blackened it
and leaped from the mesh basket. The trash was fire,
the fast-food wrappers and the empty boxes.
You could smoke in classrooms then, turn your insides black.
If you were busy your insides were dark as a combustible engine.
The linings of your insides as black as empty suitcases or engine blocks.
to see each discrete vein in each leaf,
I lacked the need for mediums by which to grasp things,
but during a power outage, I was helpless as an infant,
except that my legs carried me from wall to blind wall
and my fingers fumbled for the match and the butane lighter.
That reminds me that balls of methane can be planets,
autonomous and lighter than a feather, weightless but fixed.
In an outage, I flicked a single match upon the floor
and thought about the fires I set in trashcans as a kid,
but as a bank flared up outside a Transcendental Meditation Center
I cowered, and reined the fire in by stepping on the growing flame with a single boot-heel
until only a smouldering column of smoke scarred the hillside.
A ball of methane can become another planet as easily as breathing or blinking,
but within another blink, such a planet disappears from sight.
The purest flame can come from putrifaction, oils that seep from lower earth.
The bluest methane could be the only light in a power outage
against which the lights of candles in blackouts falter.
The bluest orbs rise above the moon from putrifaction.
But a blink can change the earth and moon on their axis,
and in just a blink an orb of blue called a planet can be gone.
Mars is ruddy rock, not a valley in sight.
The faces of moon-men dissolve beneath the clearest glass,
the hollows of high cheekbones become craters and the facial lines canyons.
With the flick of a match in an outage, all becomes fire.
The orange cranes ascend the transfer stations
among streaks from sodium lamps on windshields and traffic stripes
and the planets of ammonia spin rings that freeze what touches them.
And the yellow planets are flammable, and the outages silence the village
but the rings around the planets are freezing cold, and the blue orbs insubstantial but fixed--
their center is as viscous as blue slush, and in a blink a planet can be gone,
can be deemed to be planet no longer, an orb for which a name is required.
I burned the contents of the trash receptacle,
and the flames licked the sides of the pole and blackened it
and leaped from the mesh basket. The trash was fire,
the fast-food wrappers and the empty boxes.
You could smoke in classrooms then, turn your insides black.
If you were busy your insides were dark as a combustible engine.
The linings of your insides as black as empty suitcases or engine blocks.
Wednesday, July 23, 2008
Puzzle-painting (05)
An injection-molded tree is plucked for parts
dressed with concentric tricolored targets,
stars or crosses; if not, the olive-drab splotches
become the heart of the Black Forest.
A numbers-key can never be enough to go by.
To retro-engineer a thing that dimmed the sky
requires exploded views and many cheat-sheets
to make the finished plane hang by a thread.
They take the plane apart to re-assemble it
and suture the landscape in which it flies.
The customer buys a plane to put together,
this machine that dives in oblique bends,
crashing into a picture-puzzle’s stubble-field.
Die-stamped on a card-table in the cottage
lies another post-impressionist landscape
trembling hands maybe pull together, stubble-field
of horse-hair brush-strokes or a shady grove.
They took the place apart to put it together
before water wilts or sun warps the paste-board.
The makers want the customer to lose himself
among the parts to find them, put them together
as if the fighter-plane hadn’t been apart at all,
flying far above the crows or hay-ricks of Arles,
over heads of goat-men in Poussin’s meadows
or parks or wavy post-impressionist stubble-fields.
Imagery rained upon bleeds on the jigsaw pieces,
pointillism ruined by the color-field’s smeared future.
Better to assemble the place before it’s gone.
Someone has made this confusion for you
and it’s a test, they might say, of proper insight,
to figure where the hayricks or the sun might go,
places for each crow above each portion of stubble.
The plane that soars in air over-crowded with wavy
black wings and the mimicry of heat-waves--
fever informing the blue and yellow strokes
and strokes of coal-black standing for crows--
has been reduced to parts on plastic trees
the customer can pluck apart to put together.
A thread today suspends the fighter-plane
from the ceiling that mimics blank sky,
breaking into unrealizable quadrants for seasons
before water blurs the scenery or the glue
adds too many thumb-prints to the fuselage
for the plane to dangle from the ceiling from pride.
dressed with concentric tricolored targets,
stars or crosses; if not, the olive-drab splotches
become the heart of the Black Forest.
A numbers-key can never be enough to go by.
To retro-engineer a thing that dimmed the sky
requires exploded views and many cheat-sheets
to make the finished plane hang by a thread.
They take the plane apart to re-assemble it
and suture the landscape in which it flies.
The customer buys a plane to put together,
this machine that dives in oblique bends,
crashing into a picture-puzzle’s stubble-field.
Die-stamped on a card-table in the cottage
lies another post-impressionist landscape
trembling hands maybe pull together, stubble-field
of horse-hair brush-strokes or a shady grove.
They took the place apart to put it together
before water wilts or sun warps the paste-board.
The makers want the customer to lose himself
among the parts to find them, put them together
as if the fighter-plane hadn’t been apart at all,
flying far above the crows or hay-ricks of Arles,
over heads of goat-men in Poussin’s meadows
or parks or wavy post-impressionist stubble-fields.
Imagery rained upon bleeds on the jigsaw pieces,
pointillism ruined by the color-field’s smeared future.
Better to assemble the place before it’s gone.
Someone has made this confusion for you
and it’s a test, they might say, of proper insight,
to figure where the hayricks or the sun might go,
places for each crow above each portion of stubble.
The plane that soars in air over-crowded with wavy
black wings and the mimicry of heat-waves--
fever informing the blue and yellow strokes
and strokes of coal-black standing for crows--
has been reduced to parts on plastic trees
the customer can pluck apart to put together.
A thread today suspends the fighter-plane
from the ceiling that mimics blank sky,
breaking into unrealizable quadrants for seasons
before water blurs the scenery or the glue
adds too many thumb-prints to the fuselage
for the plane to dangle from the ceiling from pride.
[From 03?]
A place from which to start is where one belongs.
To start without at once belonging to the place
from which one started is to be lost: don’t go there.
Whereas to be lost is to be free to start from anywhere
So that every place becomes the center of a circumference
Even if this circumference amounts to a Mercator projection
Of lines of latitude lightly drafted by electronic tracery
Or the sparkling of holiday fireworks in the sky, smoke trails
That drop their sundry cinders into ocean.
To be scattered is to be parted from the homeland
But not lost. To be oriented continually toward the place
From where one imagined one had begun or arrived,
And from a great distance, or from a tower sunk in mud,
Which in the summer is cracked to fields of hexagonal plates,
hard enough to write upon with a branch pruned to a stylus
from a tree not local to the region, a tree one hears about
Around which sit followers, shepherds enjoying the thin shade,
where the meeting begins innocuously enough, a discussion of weather,
A forecast by one that shades into meanings more ominous
Than anyone had ever intended, words that exhort
Everyone to purify the temple with sword or fire -- yet innocent
Bystanders swore they’d gathered to talk about the price
Of commodities in cowry-shells. Here, one spreads his hand,
And shows one. A delicate ruddy pink smears its ridges
but its core is brown as terra-cotta, like bricks that spiral
Into towers with eroded steps, which can be climbed now,
Albeit with some difficulty, especially when balancing a camera
With a tripod attached, to steady the view -- panoramic, desolate,
trick-mirror mirage of sand reflecting sky, the sky-gods
with their obsidian backs turned from the blast patterns.
To start without at once belonging to the place
from which one started is to be lost: don’t go there.
Whereas to be lost is to be free to start from anywhere
So that every place becomes the center of a circumference
Even if this circumference amounts to a Mercator projection
Of lines of latitude lightly drafted by electronic tracery
Or the sparkling of holiday fireworks in the sky, smoke trails
That drop their sundry cinders into ocean.
To be scattered is to be parted from the homeland
But not lost. To be oriented continually toward the place
From where one imagined one had begun or arrived,
And from a great distance, or from a tower sunk in mud,
Which in the summer is cracked to fields of hexagonal plates,
hard enough to write upon with a branch pruned to a stylus
from a tree not local to the region, a tree one hears about
Around which sit followers, shepherds enjoying the thin shade,
where the meeting begins innocuously enough, a discussion of weather,
A forecast by one that shades into meanings more ominous
Than anyone had ever intended, words that exhort
Everyone to purify the temple with sword or fire -- yet innocent
Bystanders swore they’d gathered to talk about the price
Of commodities in cowry-shells. Here, one spreads his hand,
And shows one. A delicate ruddy pink smears its ridges
but its core is brown as terra-cotta, like bricks that spiral
Into towers with eroded steps, which can be climbed now,
Albeit with some difficulty, especially when balancing a camera
With a tripod attached, to steady the view -- panoramic, desolate,
trick-mirror mirage of sand reflecting sky, the sky-gods
with their obsidian backs turned from the blast patterns.
The Mysteries (fall 03)
Forty four hundred, but you can pay with plastic.
The steps of the process–do you have concerns?
Do you have any questions about the process?
Get the money off your mind Jack, or Ted
or whoever. Trust that our specialists
will get your signing bonus. Did you know
that they have them. Oh yes, they do.
But money comes, money goes: forget
about money anyway. The money you earn
is money gone. And when we talk career
we mean more than money, now don’t we?
Jack or whoever. Apologies for lapses
in this presentation. It’s the process
through which we walk you that counts.
We do so much business with guys like you.
You were looking for us, but you didn’t know it.
*
So I’m not sweating bullets he thought, his forehead
creased with nearly as many lines as he’d sketched
with red felt magic marker among the three circles
that intersected, to be his depiction of the process,
and in the darker space where the furrows met
(each circle had a title, but the titles weren’t clear)
was the client, was what he brought to the table,
red and cross-hatched, bleeding into the notepad
like a butcher’s heart wrapped up in wax paper,
a place where illegible terms were happily married.
The steps of the process–do you have concerns?
Do you have any questions about the process?
Get the money off your mind Jack, or Ted
or whoever. Trust that our specialists
will get your signing bonus. Did you know
that they have them. Oh yes, they do.
But money comes, money goes: forget
about money anyway. The money you earn
is money gone. And when we talk career
we mean more than money, now don’t we?
Jack or whoever. Apologies for lapses
in this presentation. It’s the process
through which we walk you that counts.
We do so much business with guys like you.
You were looking for us, but you didn’t know it.
*
So I’m not sweating bullets he thought, his forehead
creased with nearly as many lines as he’d sketched
with red felt magic marker among the three circles
that intersected, to be his depiction of the process,
and in the darker space where the furrows met
(each circle had a title, but the titles weren’t clear)
was the client, was what he brought to the table,
red and cross-hatched, bleeding into the notepad
like a butcher’s heart wrapped up in wax paper,
a place where illegible terms were happily married.
Monday, July 21, 2008
from 3/16/08
The road to recovery is uphill and spirals the greatest possible distance
around the hill before the destination of the city on the hill.
The sentence that follows the road to recovery winds about the road
among ditches and the brush, the sentence searching for its predicate
as it stretches its object as far from the subject of the sentence as possible,
winds in a fashion as sustained as its artificer can make it, keeping in mind
subject and object and predicate, the sentence predicated itself
upon the thought that there is a city on a hill approachable by a road
of rather steep grade that winds around the hill for as long as possible,
that the sentence can follow the shape and length of the road without getting into a tangle, without forcing us to abandon hope. Could I sustain the length of the sentence,
could I walk that far uphill, the sentence that winds around the hill
until it reaches the very city on the hill.
around the hill before the destination of the city on the hill.
The sentence that follows the road to recovery winds about the road
among ditches and the brush, the sentence searching for its predicate
as it stretches its object as far from the subject of the sentence as possible,
winds in a fashion as sustained as its artificer can make it, keeping in mind
subject and object and predicate, the sentence predicated itself
upon the thought that there is a city on a hill approachable by a road
of rather steep grade that winds around the hill for as long as possible,
that the sentence can follow the shape and length of the road without getting into a tangle, without forcing us to abandon hope. Could I sustain the length of the sentence,
could I walk that far uphill, the sentence that winds around the hill
until it reaches the very city on the hill.
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