How cold the breeze over the footbridge
making the railings hum. How reassuring time
on the bank clock, the highest thing on the skyline,
higher than buildings – open for business,
with customers and tenants, their mirrored worlds
concealing secretarial pools from the [ street ].
And the clock, above them, I see from an angle
when I run the bridge: and every mile traversed
extends my life-span an hour, so I’ve learned!
How much more time will the bridge provide me
if I take my time to run it? How much more time
can I gain once I have used the time I have earned
running circles? The bridge is a segment of a circle,
just a segment, but without it, where would the circle be?
From a bank of earth I could fall, before the impact,
my legs dangling over sea-water, above which
thick metal grills slap concrete as cars roll above them
to polish their edges. A harvest moon behind the clock
is big and golden, the numerous seas gray as pockmarks
on a Mercury dime, the entire image faint in the dusk.
How much more vivid time on the clock
rendered in lights upon the black marquee.
How much more self-evident the spectacles
made for ourselves, the lights, the humming wires.
Friday, June 12, 2009
Resolution (02-03?)
They don’t understand each other, the shopkeeper,
the schoolboy. Apples and oranges, can they mix?
Some like one better than the other, that’s a fact.
Do you want to explore the space between two things?
That’s not so far from seeing between rings,
all the rocks and debris shining when struck by the sun.
They build these big machines by which to do this
that go bang. The rings are wobbly and concentered.
But what did you expect, to be on your seat awhile.
Let others do the talking. A photograph of space,
such weak resolution. That’s stuck between
two things that both go bang. You can buy
all the fireworks you want just over the border,
you just can’t buy them here. This is not,
in any case, the place for you. That place
shines when struck by the sun -- debris alright --
but it shines like the rim of a glass, a glass harp,
a wine glass, its pitch tuned by water.
That’s your place (think about it): among debris.
If you can catch the right angle, it’s beautiful
although grainy, although the resolution isn’t right,
but wavy, and the rings are scalloped and braided
by intervening bodies uneven in themselves,
pocked moons, deformed like dust the size of fleas.
They come across as blips upon a radar screen.
All that information coming off bodies like a scent,
the white noise on the short wave: it’s information.
And they want to catch someone with it,
so it’s been withheld from the public.
Who can taste the rim of a wine glass
when it’s struck by the sun (its resolution
high contrast, so you can see the rings around the planet)
and the rings that strike out from the storm-tossed planet,
from the eyes around which streams of ammonia rejoin
they know. They test the clouds in the wind tunnels.
All I know flows from the evidence of my eyes
but they don’t tell me something I can use . . .
Upper turbulence shreds the clouds before they shape themselves.
The stairs you’d like to walk have more holes in them
than working parts, the illuminated engines fail,
forged from the elements they should discharge.
I don’t have words for what goes on,
so often documented, ad infinitum.
What kind of conscience throws them all about,
the rings around a discarded can as slippery-shiny as around Saturn.
Thus mutability changes into what is no longer useful.
I discard this can of worms into the sky.
They photograph the bumps and braids of the surface.
The radio waves by which the images come to us
are themselves too wavy to be seen with any concretion.
the schoolboy. Apples and oranges, can they mix?
Some like one better than the other, that’s a fact.
Do you want to explore the space between two things?
That’s not so far from seeing between rings,
all the rocks and debris shining when struck by the sun.
They build these big machines by which to do this
that go bang. The rings are wobbly and concentered.
But what did you expect, to be on your seat awhile.
Let others do the talking. A photograph of space,
such weak resolution. That’s stuck between
two things that both go bang. You can buy
all the fireworks you want just over the border,
you just can’t buy them here. This is not,
in any case, the place for you. That place
shines when struck by the sun -- debris alright --
but it shines like the rim of a glass, a glass harp,
a wine glass, its pitch tuned by water.
That’s your place (think about it): among debris.
If you can catch the right angle, it’s beautiful
although grainy, although the resolution isn’t right,
but wavy, and the rings are scalloped and braided
by intervening bodies uneven in themselves,
pocked moons, deformed like dust the size of fleas.
They come across as blips upon a radar screen.
All that information coming off bodies like a scent,
the white noise on the short wave: it’s information.
And they want to catch someone with it,
so it’s been withheld from the public.
Who can taste the rim of a wine glass
when it’s struck by the sun (its resolution
high contrast, so you can see the rings around the planet)
and the rings that strike out from the storm-tossed planet,
from the eyes around which streams of ammonia rejoin
they know. They test the clouds in the wind tunnels.
All I know flows from the evidence of my eyes
but they don’t tell me something I can use . . .
Upper turbulence shreds the clouds before they shape themselves.
The stairs you’d like to walk have more holes in them
than working parts, the illuminated engines fail,
forged from the elements they should discharge.
I don’t have words for what goes on,
so often documented, ad infinitum.
What kind of conscience throws them all about,
the rings around a discarded can as slippery-shiny as around Saturn.
Thus mutability changes into what is no longer useful.
I discard this can of worms into the sky.
They photograph the bumps and braids of the surface.
The radio waves by which the images come to us
are themselves too wavy to be seen with any concretion.
Primitif(02?)
I.
Mackworth Island, sign (in paraphrase):
natural materials for the fairies’ houses only.
Do not bring materials from outside the island
(that means plastic bags, cans, and bottles,
things that won’t decompose among nettles
or things, like tin or gold, that stay.
That means pooper-scoopers, soy milk
quart containers, the waffled aluminum lining
of cigarette packs--and that means you.)
--What woodchuck cannot overtip the teepees?
II.
A slate wall, a mossy ring among cathedral pines
where Governor Baxter’s hell-hounds were buried,
a place with more-than-slight folkloric connotation
perhaps in how the light slants from the tree-tops
to be a center for a sword’s unsheathing, plunge
on tabula rasa, tree-trunk: local materials only.
A slant of light lands theatrically on headstones.
Take your materials with your problems.
Here everyone is deaf to them.
The banshees peal to their delight alone.
III.
In Brian Boru’s bar, from head to toe a girl tattooed
with motifs carved in the granite lintels overhead--
warriors and magi on drinking benches all squat and grim,
and in the down-curl of their mouths a nascent realism.
Every other word in this brave new world
she utters on the harbor is a curse to friend or lover
over the din to the cell-phone.
(And runic letters, red as if written in rivulets
of gore, announce: drinking consultants only.)
Mackworth Island, sign (in paraphrase):
natural materials for the fairies’ houses only.
Do not bring materials from outside the island
(that means plastic bags, cans, and bottles,
things that won’t decompose among nettles
or things, like tin or gold, that stay.
That means pooper-scoopers, soy milk
quart containers, the waffled aluminum lining
of cigarette packs--and that means you.)
--What woodchuck cannot overtip the teepees?
II.
A slate wall, a mossy ring among cathedral pines
where Governor Baxter’s hell-hounds were buried,
a place with more-than-slight folkloric connotation
perhaps in how the light slants from the tree-tops
to be a center for a sword’s unsheathing, plunge
on tabula rasa, tree-trunk: local materials only.
A slant of light lands theatrically on headstones.
Take your materials with your problems.
Here everyone is deaf to them.
The banshees peal to their delight alone.
III.
In Brian Boru’s bar, from head to toe a girl tattooed
with motifs carved in the granite lintels overhead--
warriors and magi on drinking benches all squat and grim,
and in the down-curl of their mouths a nascent realism.
Every other word in this brave new world
she utters on the harbor is a curse to friend or lover
over the din to the cell-phone.
(And runic letters, red as if written in rivulets
of gore, announce: drinking consultants only.)
Semi-detached (03?)
Balmy, with breezes, no one walks the drive
of the industrial park, the dust unsettled
near the work crew. After the layoff
everyone who works wears sunglasses–
at a leisurely gait, little surprises
in the syntax wake you up, like that.
I have a routine: I eat and walk after.
Sometimes this doesn’t work
such as when it rains or when it’s hot.
It’s too hot. I watch nondescript fields
from the cafeteria: a power station,
some high trees, not blushing yet.
The weeds and saplings are unshaken
as of now. The new structure
gives the illusion of boundless space
in the middle of the day. To take
advantage of the situation, you must own
a car, complete shaving kit
and several changes of work clothes
with spotless shirts. How hard it can be
to get the spots out. You can scrub,
you can soak, they will stay there.
Often several solutions will not work.
But there is never a final solution,
a permanent storage facility, corrugated
as I like it, enduring but semi-detached.
of the industrial park, the dust unsettled
near the work crew. After the layoff
everyone who works wears sunglasses–
at a leisurely gait, little surprises
in the syntax wake you up, like that.
I have a routine: I eat and walk after.
Sometimes this doesn’t work
such as when it rains or when it’s hot.
It’s too hot. I watch nondescript fields
from the cafeteria: a power station,
some high trees, not blushing yet.
The weeds and saplings are unshaken
as of now. The new structure
gives the illusion of boundless space
in the middle of the day. To take
advantage of the situation, you must own
a car, complete shaving kit
and several changes of work clothes
with spotless shirts. How hard it can be
to get the spots out. You can scrub,
you can soak, they will stay there.
Often several solutions will not work.
But there is never a final solution,
a permanent storage facility, corrugated
as I like it, enduring but semi-detached.
Maypole
A mildly pornographic movie with dead actors
apocalyptic floods and philosopher-king figures
no attendance in the dingiest of grind-houses
no one in the audience who understands the formulae
of floods, rosy crosses, coprophilia, carnevalian loony-bins
old men who move in cul-de-sacs, wheeled by nurses, or play with themselves, vacantly.
Sets of leopard-skin, papier-mache, brass rings, and gossamer
cul-de-sac gardens, group-gropes of street extras in the summertime
This is the day on which memorial day is celebrated
a day for the fallen
Shot on the prairie, the sunlight at its peak heat close to sundown
some enclave known to pioneers but far from BMW dealers
out-of-synch hands flailing upon multiple keyboards
stilted dialogue among currently out-of-work actors
modern high-rise office scenes shot through convex-mirrors
hippies dressed as executives frantically smoking cigarettes
bad color separation, the edges of the film stock breaking
into rainbows, the discoloration of faces, the ghostly white backs
and buttocks as much a function of age as cheap production
the pornographic episodes with half-naked nurses dyed blue
a behaviorist in grey wig reciting stilted dialogue from a helicopter
overlooking a satyr festival on a prairie or on dry chaparral
floods, a burlesque stage in the Tenderloin, a bump n grind ritual,
men in lab coats, liberation theology, hackneyed counter-cultural statements
shot on the cheap, bad film stock, horny priests, template
of repression, hypocrisy, paper-mache gossamer phallus raised
in the middle of the desert among Anabaptist hippies congregated
around it, with the protagonist strapped to its base, cheesy graphics,
enough quality or the grind-houses however, old men asleep in the seats
with their zippers down at three o’clock in the morning, the lights on.
apocalyptic floods and philosopher-king figures
no attendance in the dingiest of grind-houses
no one in the audience who understands the formulae
of floods, rosy crosses, coprophilia, carnevalian loony-bins
old men who move in cul-de-sacs, wheeled by nurses, or play with themselves, vacantly.
Sets of leopard-skin, papier-mache, brass rings, and gossamer
cul-de-sac gardens, group-gropes of street extras in the summertime
This is the day on which memorial day is celebrated
a day for the fallen
Shot on the prairie, the sunlight at its peak heat close to sundown
some enclave known to pioneers but far from BMW dealers
out-of-synch hands flailing upon multiple keyboards
stilted dialogue among currently out-of-work actors
modern high-rise office scenes shot through convex-mirrors
hippies dressed as executives frantically smoking cigarettes
bad color separation, the edges of the film stock breaking
into rainbows, the discoloration of faces, the ghostly white backs
and buttocks as much a function of age as cheap production
the pornographic episodes with half-naked nurses dyed blue
a behaviorist in grey wig reciting stilted dialogue from a helicopter
overlooking a satyr festival on a prairie or on dry chaparral
floods, a burlesque stage in the Tenderloin, a bump n grind ritual,
men in lab coats, liberation theology, hackneyed counter-cultural statements
shot on the cheap, bad film stock, horny priests, template
of repression, hypocrisy, paper-mache gossamer phallus raised
in the middle of the desert among Anabaptist hippies congregated
around it, with the protagonist strapped to its base, cheesy graphics,
enough quality or the grind-houses however, old men asleep in the seats
with their zippers down at three o’clock in the morning, the lights on.
Monday, June 1, 2009
Nov. 02
....How enthralled we are to cracked teacups,
broken fingernails and wash stands, cementing these parts in place
before we can even try to breath, pulling the tiny impurities in
before we can exhale them, particles that catch the sun and flash
distinctly as tiny astronomical bodies amplified by telescopes–
they began as quirks, little folds of molecular proportions, then matter,
carpet dust, ground-up crumbs, who knows – collected around
irregularity, unlike the others, with its tiny logic, its own angles
and how it registers whatever surrounds it, or buoys it, air currents
you could map and color-code, has been entirely its own business.
Because couldn’t there be an especially solipsistic piece of dust,
couldn’t a piece assert that no -- in fact it doesn’t move -- rather
the world moves around it, the apartment in which it was trapped,
the starlings on the sill who peered in one direction, the flies
that gestated through late winter to debut a blue-green iridiscence,
the window opened and closed so often, and look outside:
the glass terminals around which are wrapped the power lines–
couldn’t the energy bound upon this terminal be a bit much,
scattering an electron field that flusters the sensual world
down to a handful of items, an unmade bed, a sleeping bag
pinned behind the headstand with a pup tent and a guitar–
a dust particle apparently obedient to whirls that in fact
sets its own terms and allows itself to be buffeted. Maybe
disintegration will remake it – when do the elements in matter,
after all, go away completely? How the building-blocks of life
not rise from the ground, another manifestation, earth re-arranged,
whether by bombs that upend earth or a time that excruciates?
broken fingernails and wash stands, cementing these parts in place
before we can even try to breath, pulling the tiny impurities in
before we can exhale them, particles that catch the sun and flash
distinctly as tiny astronomical bodies amplified by telescopes–
they began as quirks, little folds of molecular proportions, then matter,
carpet dust, ground-up crumbs, who knows – collected around
irregularity, unlike the others, with its tiny logic, its own angles
and how it registers whatever surrounds it, or buoys it, air currents
you could map and color-code, has been entirely its own business.
Because couldn’t there be an especially solipsistic piece of dust,
couldn’t a piece assert that no -- in fact it doesn’t move -- rather
the world moves around it, the apartment in which it was trapped,
the starlings on the sill who peered in one direction, the flies
that gestated through late winter to debut a blue-green iridiscence,
the window opened and closed so often, and look outside:
the glass terminals around which are wrapped the power lines–
couldn’t the energy bound upon this terminal be a bit much,
scattering an electron field that flusters the sensual world
down to a handful of items, an unmade bed, a sleeping bag
pinned behind the headstand with a pup tent and a guitar–
a dust particle apparently obedient to whirls that in fact
sets its own terms and allows itself to be buffeted. Maybe
disintegration will remake it – when do the elements in matter,
after all, go away completely? How the building-blocks of life
not rise from the ground, another manifestation, earth re-arranged,
whether by bombs that upend earth or a time that excruciates?
Friday, March 13, 2009
Dreck from November 03
Two suits guard the museum tonight, while waitstaff
stand before the dinner service in the lobby.
But the gala event for the board of directors
and special benefactors has not begun. An unknown
Seascape artist was their last featured exhibit.
The surf that crashed was swept away. Other surfs,
like Winslow Homer’s, stand in track-lit rotundas.
But of those other surfs, who did them better?
What’s the attraction? See one, see them all?
The dynamic (water) crashing against the static (rocks),
The sublime of rocks overwhelmed by water,
the stable toppled by the instable.
Water sucks its power back from several
Valleys, forks, and rivulets: sand is rearranged.
And Dr. So-and-So from the cape gets a painting
From this threat to the natural order
cannily exploited, all this sturm und drang.
Around the seascapes close the dinner gala
Around the “shattered water” and the “misty din,”
The many directions seawater takes when heaved
Against rocks glaciers have already rubbed faceless.
Secure investment, seawater. The retired executive
imported ship boards for his den, the brass instruments
Against the fireplace mantle, polished after the wreck,
The chanteys they compose after a tour of the chandler,
for the right details, wreck reconstructed, retouched,
heave-ho. The instruments polished
and reset to zero: the lodestone having lost its magnetism.
Water scatters into diamonds. The infinite (water)
with infinite volume, infinite shapes, colludes
with the finite (the continent, the coastline).
stand before the dinner service in the lobby.
But the gala event for the board of directors
and special benefactors has not begun. An unknown
Seascape artist was their last featured exhibit.
The surf that crashed was swept away. Other surfs,
like Winslow Homer’s, stand in track-lit rotundas.
But of those other surfs, who did them better?
What’s the attraction? See one, see them all?
The dynamic (water) crashing against the static (rocks),
The sublime of rocks overwhelmed by water,
the stable toppled by the instable.
Water sucks its power back from several
Valleys, forks, and rivulets: sand is rearranged.
And Dr. So-and-So from the cape gets a painting
From this threat to the natural order
cannily exploited, all this sturm und drang.
Around the seascapes close the dinner gala
Around the “shattered water” and the “misty din,”
The many directions seawater takes when heaved
Against rocks glaciers have already rubbed faceless.
Secure investment, seawater. The retired executive
imported ship boards for his den, the brass instruments
Against the fireplace mantle, polished after the wreck,
The chanteys they compose after a tour of the chandler,
for the right details, wreck reconstructed, retouched,
heave-ho. The instruments polished
and reset to zero: the lodestone having lost its magnetism.
Water scatters into diamonds. The infinite (water)
with infinite volume, infinite shapes, colludes
with the finite (the continent, the coastline).
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