Went to the Fanny Howe reading last night. But I got really lost on the Berkeley campus and got to the reading 40 minutes late. I walk in and hear, "This will be the last poem," and I'm like shit! But it is not Fanny, it is some opening act poet, the name of the poem was "Lost," I swear. Funny.
So then Fanny reads. Perfect timing, being lost. I really liked a book of hers I read a while ago that had a lot of spirituality stuff going on, I can't remember what it was, Gone? I think. I think I read she was raised an atheist but became a catholic late in life? So she is coming at religion from a different POV than those other religious people. She read a lot of anti-war poems, and a series written in Ireland or about Ireland, that were happier, as she said. One line I really liked, can't remember verbatim, but something to the effect of seeing a sentence or a line of poetry as being one long word...
Also memorable:
"When the president wakes up, it always asksWhat am I doing here? Where's that man?"
I like how she neuters him as an it.
I checked out On the Ground. I couldn't possibly have remembered that all verbatim!
She seems to mix the anti-war bits and the spiritual bits a lot. I guess they do commonly go together.
"An angel is a messenger who runs very fastso you don't see angels anymore
Time has altered its arcAnd angels keep changing form and never pause
Their wings might be as sharp as missilesThat can mimic
The vicious acts of human beings."
And I seem to be noticing an Air theme that I am drawn to:
"Hello air
Infinity is colonizing my mind."
I love it, like the most spiritual moments are the moments that are spread out, expanded, which seems like what air is symbolizing. When you are not over occupying your space...
and I really like this passage too:
"In my experience
the angel with his wings upis trying to kill the dragon of history
to prove that airis stronger than the objects in it
and if he wasn't made of stone, he would."
Thursday, October 26, 2006
Wednesday, September 27, 2006
Dialectics and the Other,
or what I wish I had come across when I was writing my thesis on H.D.
At the back of Benjamin Hollander's Vigilance, there are some letters, correspondence between Hollander and others about his work. In his letter to Joshua Schuster, Hollander writes:
"We are not — here — within a Hegelian tradition where opposites (either/or) can be reconciled through a transcendent third term. And we are not — here — in that other dialectic (both/and) which would leave these opposites to be equally held together in the mind in an order affriming them both but keeping them unresolved. And we are not in these traditions and dialectics because we are asking what happens when the two terms in a binary argument are not able to anticipate the third term...Here, there appears Levinas' alien challenge to Hamlet's condition, and it asks: how can Hamlet's Being possibly see the forest for the trees? How can he anticipate a dis-interested-ness outside the order of 'to be or not to be' in order — because it is out of order —to assume or even consider another option, a radical responsibility for the other, an otherwise than Being, a third term?"
I was trying to look at the problem of the binary, H.D.'s desire to create union between the two, and the presence of a third thing, with the idea of the marginal. I didn't come up with any sort of answer for the problem, but thought the tension between binary ways of viewing, and the third thing, the Other, the marginal, was interesting. I think the answer to binaryisms is a third thing, a fourth thing, a fifth thing, multiplicities. As well as simultaneities. I like this quote because it seems to include an air of mystery, of the unknown, and the unknowable as part of that third thing, which seems obviously one place that H.D. was working from or towards in her poetry.
At the back of Benjamin Hollander's Vigilance, there are some letters, correspondence between Hollander and others about his work. In his letter to Joshua Schuster, Hollander writes:
"We are not — here — within a Hegelian tradition where opposites (either/or) can be reconciled through a transcendent third term. And we are not — here — in that other dialectic (both/and) which would leave these opposites to be equally held together in the mind in an order affriming them both but keeping them unresolved. And we are not in these traditions and dialectics because we are asking what happens when the two terms in a binary argument are not able to anticipate the third term...Here, there appears Levinas' alien challenge to Hamlet's condition, and it asks: how can Hamlet's Being possibly see the forest for the trees? How can he anticipate a dis-interested-ness outside the order of 'to be or not to be' in order — because it is out of order —to assume or even consider another option, a radical responsibility for the other, an otherwise than Being, a third term?"
I was trying to look at the problem of the binary, H.D.'s desire to create union between the two, and the presence of a third thing, with the idea of the marginal. I didn't come up with any sort of answer for the problem, but thought the tension between binary ways of viewing, and the third thing, the Other, the marginal, was interesting. I think the answer to binaryisms is a third thing, a fourth thing, a fifth thing, multiplicities. As well as simultaneities. I like this quote because it seems to include an air of mystery, of the unknown, and the unknowable as part of that third thing, which seems obviously one place that H.D. was working from or towards in her poetry.
Tuesday, September 26, 2006
Part VI of Eurydice by H.D.
VI
Against the black
I have more fervour
than you in all the splendour of that place,
against the blackness
and the stark grey
I have more light;
and the flowers,
if I should tell you,
you would turn from your own fit paths
toward hell,
turn again and glance back
and I would sink into a place even more terrible than this.
Against the black
I have more fervour
than you in all the splendour of that place,
against the blackness
and the stark grey
I have more light;
and the flowers,
if I should tell you,
you would turn from your own fit paths
toward hell,
turn again and glance back
and I would sink into a place even more terrible than this.
Monday, August 28, 2006
Part V of Eurydice by H.D.
V
So for your arrogance
and your ruthlessness
I have lost the earth
and the flowers of the earth,
and the live souls above the earth,
and you who passed across the light
and reached
ruthless;
you who have your own light,
who are to yourself a presence,
who need no presence;
yet for all your arrogance
and your glance,
I tell you this:
such loss is no loss,
such terror, such coils and strands and pitfalls
of blackness
such terror
is no loss;
hell is no worse than your earth
above the earth,
hell is no worse,
no, nor your flowers
nor your veins of light
nor your presence,
a loss;
my hell is no worse than yours
though you pass among the flowers and speak
with the spirits above the earth.
So for your arrogance
and your ruthlessness
I have lost the earth
and the flowers of the earth,
and the live souls above the earth,
and you who passed across the light
and reached
ruthless;
you who have your own light,
who are to yourself a presence,
who need no presence;
yet for all your arrogance
and your glance,
I tell you this:
such loss is no loss,
such terror, such coils and strands and pitfalls
of blackness
such terror
is no loss;
hell is no worse than your earth
above the earth,
hell is no worse,
no, nor your flowers
nor your veins of light
nor your presence,
a loss;
my hell is no worse than yours
though you pass among the flowers and speak
with the spirits above the earth.
Sunday, August 20, 2006
The Paranormals of Moving
drinking a lot of sake while packing, started to feel like having flashbacks...the fan blades were moving, but the fan was not on. Also, the feeling of hearing a sound that is not part of the world you are occupying. Another parallel universe invading the one you are in. This feeling only happened ever when I was tripping, don't know why I am re-experiencing it. Like how when you would leave one room to go to another, the difference between the two realities was really freaky, and that they were sort of superimposed upon one another, and should not be, you are only perceiving paranormal realities because you are tripping. Maybe this corresponds to me moving and sort of occupying two locales simultaneously, and that it is disconcerting...
Part IV of Eurydice by H.D.
IV
Fringe upon fringe
of blue crocuses,
crocuses, walled against blue of themselves,
blue of that upper earth.
blue of the depth upon depth of flowers,
lost;
flowers, if I could have taken once my breath of them,
enough of them,
more than earth,
even than of the upper earth,
had passed with me
beneath the earth;
If I could have caught up from the earth,
the whole of the flowers of the earth,
if once I could have breathed into myself
the very golden crocuses
and the red
and the very golden hearts of the first saffron,
the whole of the golden mass,
the whole of the great fragrance,
I could have dared the loss.
Fringe upon fringe
of blue crocuses,
crocuses, walled against blue of themselves,
blue of that upper earth.
blue of the depth upon depth of flowers,
lost;
flowers, if I could have taken once my breath of them,
enough of them,
more than earth,
even than of the upper earth,
had passed with me
beneath the earth;
If I could have caught up from the earth,
the whole of the flowers of the earth,
if once I could have breathed into myself
the very golden crocuses
and the red
and the very golden hearts of the first saffron,
the whole of the golden mass,
the whole of the great fragrance,
I could have dared the loss.
Saturday, June 17, 2006
Ginger 1990-2006
Long teary ink-smeared death post.
In happier times, on her favorite rug.
Her last night. She wouldn't eat her treat.
also see here:
Ginger died Tuesday, June 13, 2006. I am so heartbroken I feel like I've been widowed. I was totally not expecting to be so upset, I've been expecting it for a while. "The winter is a frigid bitch bride who's my sister who smacks me." —Arielle Greenberg. But Emily says "Eclipses suns imply." I'm reading Emily's Letters, so great to read her letters when you are grieving. She was the master of the condolence letter. So many death letters in her Letters. I will bring it to every funeral I ever go to from now on. So I wrote like 6 pages in my paper journal on Tuesday, while sobbing. Obviously very important time to memorialize so here it is:
So shocking what has happened, that I killed her —put her to sleep — she couldn't walk at all or even stand up — due to arthritis — 16 years old. Didn't think I would feel such a gaping hole — I feel so alone — her absence is huge. I keep wondering where she is. Her spirit? It is so mysterious — Death. Where we once were we no longer are. Even tho I was totally expecting it and cried Monday night, her last night, I knew it — she seemed like she was dying — no energy at all. She was so gentle, she didn't even flinch when the Dr. put the needle in. As the stuff went in I could see her relaxing/dying, I guess dying is the best relaxation — no more pain. It seemed like a great relief to her. I guess that was the anesthesia, they said what kills her is an overdose of anesthesia. But I think she was relieved to go. The Dr. was so nice. She kept touching my arm and saying the usual comforting things, which really were comforting, I always thought those sayings were bullshit and you shouldn't say them to people, but it was really, really nice to hear. I am getting her ashes for $240. I think I may have missed her death, her eyes were closing as she realxed, and they closed, and I put my head down into her neck and sobbed and when I looked at her again they were half open in that death gaze. I've never seen anyone die before, it is so weird that it is her but then not because she is absent. I've seen dead, but not actual death before. The breathing belly I'm always obsessively looking for stopped. They let me stay in the room with her after she died and I just sat there looking at her — she seemed not dead but just really still — I kept petting her, then after a minute, her body started to seem extra heavy. I then got a little grossed out, it's not her anymore, its a corpse, and so I left her and went into the very crowded waiting room, where I felt like everyone was staring at me, could they hear me sobbing in the little room, can my neighbor below me now? I am just letting loose, sobbing loudly, what a wuss I am, I don't care tho. Somehow too, between the picking up Ginger and putting her in the cab to go to the vet, I lost my phone, I have to go to Cingular. It's my day off and I don't know what the fuck to do with myself. I wish I had funeral arrangements to take care of. I wish someone would make me a casserole. I can't seem to stop crying so it seems a bad idea to go out, but I probably won't stop crying here in my bed.
I can live a shed-free existence from now on I guess. No more hair on my black clothes, no more friends saying "let's go to my house instead, let's meet somewhere." I can stay out after work and not rush home to walk her. Save money on dogfood, nails clipped, cab rides, vet bills. I will have a plethora of bags. Maybe I will buy one of those canvas grocery bags and be all environmental. Cuz what am I going to do with all these plastic bags now? I can get a cheaper apartment. None of this is remotely consoling.
She died of arthritis really — the vet said the reason she wasn't peeing was related — I thought her kidneys were failing — but the vet said soemthing about nerves blocking neurological messages to pee. Made sense but I can't talk science. I am glad on Saturday I gave her a bath (she was lying down in the tub the whole time, she didn't even have the energy to stand) so she died really pretty and soft. No one want to go when they look bad, right? I am so glad she looked pretty.
Maybe instead of my dog mimicing me and my shadows, like I always thought pets did, me being sick off and on since March was a way of me micmicing her...she was never that intuitive a dog, but super gentle and sweet — she hasn't barked since 2004. I walked all the way home from the vets instead of waiting for the bus — it want't that long. I sortof went to the bus stop but it wasn't coming and I wanted to keep moving and I HATE crying on public transportation, people looking at you — or not looking at you but aware, avoiding looking at you. So I walked from 18th and Valencia to 14th and up to Dolores to Market and from there one block over to Buchanan and up to Oak. Oh. 12 Blocks. Sounds like more than it felt.
Is she in doggie heaven? I want her to be, I hope she is with God and then suddenly I totally believe — she's in a park with green grass and other friendly doggies and she's rolling around in it getting dirty.
Is she in doggie heaven?
Will I see her ghost?
Did she cease to exist?
Is she being reincarnated?
I sort of believe her energy, her essence, floated up to be with the All, rejoining with the life force which splits itself up into new life, so yes she is in doggie heaven — rejoining the all and yes she is being reincarnated. To see ghosts probably means they haven't yet rejoined with the all and are hovering about. I know she was relieved and probably has no reason to stay here. I think somehthing like her energy is rejoined with the all and in that rejoining, it changes it, and she becomes more like it and less like Ginger and that is why when you reincarnate you are not remotely like you were in your previous life because your energy is mixed with the all and a new combination/configuration is created.
It is sunny today — a great day for chasing butterflies.
I keep thinking she is down there on her pillow and I look and she's not there. The worst thing is that unconscious reflex when I wake up, to look for her. I'm starting to tell myself she's not there, don't look for her when I get out of bed, come out of the kitchen, and worst of all, when I put my key in the lock. This vast emptiness — huge — it fills up the sky, but she is somewhere — must be where the emptiness is not, but that is a place where I am not, and is it really separate — heaven and earth? Binaryism is perhaps the truth after all? We are not of God. God is not of us, totally separate, but when we die we get to be with him? But are still not of him? Other beings worshipping him forever —? Being Other. And so truth is hierarchy... Ihope that is not it. I don't like that world-view.
That night after her death, I dream of a huge gaping hole in the wall to my apartment. Symbol of my heart.
Wednesday I try to go to work, but see my boss outside and I tell him, and I start sobbing, and he, emotional flame, hugs me, and then he starts to cry, and he tells me to go home. I don't want to go home. Only despair is there. So I eat and go to a cafe, and pretend to read poetry with a coffee. Luckily this cafe is crazy packed, and that keeps my focus, some guy talking to his tourist friend who is visiting him, looks at me and says, "California Poet Types," huh! I am a type! A tourist attraction! weird. Then I get a little better through the humor, and go to yoga, but it is very hard to move, sorrow immobilizes you. I come home and I start crying again and write some more:
the thing that's upsetting me now —? is that she was always so confused about where to go, I had to tell her this way, Ginger. She wouldn't go anywhere she didn't think I was going. So how does she know where to go in the afterlife, I'm not there. How does she know to go towards the light or whatever. Are there doggie angels helping her?
Michael sent me a sweet note:
"may Ginger be surrounded by sweet
airs and lovley sea gardens resting
in the shade being petted by HD and
Emily Dickinson and all of them
feeling very inspired and relaxed and happy"
and I hope that HD and Emily are there to help her know where to go, "the green field is over here, the good smells over there." I know Emily had a dog, Carlo, she says in one of her letters, "I talk of these things with Carlo, and his eyes grow meaning, and his shaggy feet keep a slower pace." Did HD have a dog? I feel like she might have, but can't remember.
Maybe HD is ushering Ginger into the Eleusinian Mysteries...
they are a strange pair Emily and HD, Emily all Puritan New Englandish, and HD rather New Englandish too, but rather more Elesuinian... they were both kindof spiritually crazy in their ways, and that is cool and comforting...
Eve says: oh Ginger... she will be remembered as a timid gold hair girl.
Judy says: Ginger will always be with us! As a glowing golden doggie angel!
My friends are sweet.
Bizarrely, my dad's dog, Mickey, died Thursday. They were about the same age, and died the same way: bad arthritis, and Mickey just stopped moving and wouldn't eat. So they put her to sleep too. When I lived in Austin in the 90's, Ginger and Mickey used to play together at my dad's. They would run around the yard together. I feel so much better knowing Ginger has her old friend with her, now she knows where to go, Mickey's personality was more assertive, she will just run into the light, and Ginger will see and follow her. I'm not so worried anymore. But I am still heartbroken. I asked my doctor if he could give me anything, I feel barely functional, and he said there is no pill to stop the grieving process, but he could give me sleeping pills to help me sleep, so I took one last night, and slept through the night for the first time, but I'm not so sure it is such a good idea, because today it has me so relaxed I can't control the crying as well, I was trying to sit in a cafe and read, which worked last Wednesday, but today I can't seem to stop myself from crying in public. I had to leave and come home. Maybe dosing myself up on caffeine and being really active would be a better tactic. I am totally re-addicted to coffee this week, which is ok, if it works, because I can quit coffee anytime, later.
I was thinking about those birds, that kept landing on my head, it happened twice, in the past month or two, I don't remember when it happened, but it happened two different times, it seems like it must have been some sort of harbinger of Ginger's death. I don't know what the symbolism exactly is, cuz it is too weird, but birds, even pigeons, are messengers, somehow creatures between heaven and earth...I have a feeling it won't happen again, and if it doesn't, then I am right. Maybe if I am somehow symbolic of Ginger, and not the other way around, then maybe they were trying to cart me off to Heaven...
It is so strange the illnesses I've had that seem to mimic hers. I had a month of bronchitus, coughing stuff, in March, which she didn't have but during that time I injured my back and had back/hip pain whenever I would get up, which mimicked her arthritic limps. Then I had this stomach stuff for a while, and she was starting to move from having bladder infections all the time to having to poop 3 or 4 times a day, which was weird. In the last week I got a bladder infection out of nowhere, I never get bladder infections, and this was when she was starting to not pee, then she got this weird sore on her left hind leg, that she kept licking, and I noticed this week I have a weird scarry sore on my left leg by my ankle. I think that is it, I am crazy empathic I guess...
I am remembering that all through the years, Ginger has made it into random poems on occasion, I'm going to go back through my poems and make them into a Ginger chapbook, it will go on the Ginger shrine, with her ashes and her pictures, later. Maybe that will be healing, I honestly haven't had any desire to write since this happened. I tried to go shopping to fill the void, and I just didn't care. Drinking doesn't help, yoga doesn't help, pills don't help, I guess it is just time. I wish I could do something to speed up the process.
And strangely, since this is my vision journal, I did see her ghost. I had been drinking, albeit, trying to numb the pain, which didn't work, at all, and I looked at her big pillow she would sleep on, and I could see an outline of her sleeping the way she used to sleep. It is nice in retrospect, to have seen this image, but at the time it made me bawl harder. I wonder if it is some sort of latent energy pattern, or my need to see her, or a visitation from her? Maybe it is like in that movie The Others, where the dead people just continue on as they always have, they have no idea anything is different. That is why she was sleeping, she doesn't know anything different has happened. In that case, I shouldn't move. I want to stay with her.
In happier times, on her favorite rug.
Her last night. She wouldn't eat her treat.
also see here:
Ginger died Tuesday, June 13, 2006. I am so heartbroken I feel like I've been widowed. I was totally not expecting to be so upset, I've been expecting it for a while. "The winter is a frigid bitch bride who's my sister who smacks me." —Arielle Greenberg. But Emily says "Eclipses suns imply." I'm reading Emily's Letters, so great to read her letters when you are grieving. She was the master of the condolence letter. So many death letters in her Letters. I will bring it to every funeral I ever go to from now on. So I wrote like 6 pages in my paper journal on Tuesday, while sobbing. Obviously very important time to memorialize so here it is:
So shocking what has happened, that I killed her —put her to sleep — she couldn't walk at all or even stand up — due to arthritis — 16 years old. Didn't think I would feel such a gaping hole — I feel so alone — her absence is huge. I keep wondering where she is. Her spirit? It is so mysterious — Death. Where we once were we no longer are. Even tho I was totally expecting it and cried Monday night, her last night, I knew it — she seemed like she was dying — no energy at all. She was so gentle, she didn't even flinch when the Dr. put the needle in. As the stuff went in I could see her relaxing/dying, I guess dying is the best relaxation — no more pain. It seemed like a great relief to her. I guess that was the anesthesia, they said what kills her is an overdose of anesthesia. But I think she was relieved to go. The Dr. was so nice. She kept touching my arm and saying the usual comforting things, which really were comforting, I always thought those sayings were bullshit and you shouldn't say them to people, but it was really, really nice to hear. I am getting her ashes for $240. I think I may have missed her death, her eyes were closing as she realxed, and they closed, and I put my head down into her neck and sobbed and when I looked at her again they were half open in that death gaze. I've never seen anyone die before, it is so weird that it is her but then not because she is absent. I've seen dead, but not actual death before. The breathing belly I'm always obsessively looking for stopped. They let me stay in the room with her after she died and I just sat there looking at her — she seemed not dead but just really still — I kept petting her, then after a minute, her body started to seem extra heavy. I then got a little grossed out, it's not her anymore, its a corpse, and so I left her and went into the very crowded waiting room, where I felt like everyone was staring at me, could they hear me sobbing in the little room, can my neighbor below me now? I am just letting loose, sobbing loudly, what a wuss I am, I don't care tho. Somehow too, between the picking up Ginger and putting her in the cab to go to the vet, I lost my phone, I have to go to Cingular. It's my day off and I don't know what the fuck to do with myself. I wish I had funeral arrangements to take care of. I wish someone would make me a casserole. I can't seem to stop crying so it seems a bad idea to go out, but I probably won't stop crying here in my bed.
I can live a shed-free existence from now on I guess. No more hair on my black clothes, no more friends saying "let's go to my house instead, let's meet somewhere." I can stay out after work and not rush home to walk her. Save money on dogfood, nails clipped, cab rides, vet bills. I will have a plethora of bags. Maybe I will buy one of those canvas grocery bags and be all environmental. Cuz what am I going to do with all these plastic bags now? I can get a cheaper apartment. None of this is remotely consoling.
She died of arthritis really — the vet said the reason she wasn't peeing was related — I thought her kidneys were failing — but the vet said soemthing about nerves blocking neurological messages to pee. Made sense but I can't talk science. I am glad on Saturday I gave her a bath (she was lying down in the tub the whole time, she didn't even have the energy to stand) so she died really pretty and soft. No one want to go when they look bad, right? I am so glad she looked pretty.
Maybe instead of my dog mimicing me and my shadows, like I always thought pets did, me being sick off and on since March was a way of me micmicing her...she was never that intuitive a dog, but super gentle and sweet — she hasn't barked since 2004. I walked all the way home from the vets instead of waiting for the bus — it want't that long. I sortof went to the bus stop but it wasn't coming and I wanted to keep moving and I HATE crying on public transportation, people looking at you — or not looking at you but aware, avoiding looking at you. So I walked from 18th and Valencia to 14th and up to Dolores to Market and from there one block over to Buchanan and up to Oak. Oh. 12 Blocks. Sounds like more than it felt.
Is she in doggie heaven? I want her to be, I hope she is with God and then suddenly I totally believe — she's in a park with green grass and other friendly doggies and she's rolling around in it getting dirty.
Is she in doggie heaven?
Will I see her ghost?
Did she cease to exist?
Is she being reincarnated?
I sort of believe her energy, her essence, floated up to be with the All, rejoining with the life force which splits itself up into new life, so yes she is in doggie heaven — rejoining the all and yes she is being reincarnated. To see ghosts probably means they haven't yet rejoined with the all and are hovering about. I know she was relieved and probably has no reason to stay here. I think somehthing like her energy is rejoined with the all and in that rejoining, it changes it, and she becomes more like it and less like Ginger and that is why when you reincarnate you are not remotely like you were in your previous life because your energy is mixed with the all and a new combination/configuration is created.
It is sunny today — a great day for chasing butterflies.
I keep thinking she is down there on her pillow and I look and she's not there. The worst thing is that unconscious reflex when I wake up, to look for her. I'm starting to tell myself she's not there, don't look for her when I get out of bed, come out of the kitchen, and worst of all, when I put my key in the lock. This vast emptiness — huge — it fills up the sky, but she is somewhere — must be where the emptiness is not, but that is a place where I am not, and is it really separate — heaven and earth? Binaryism is perhaps the truth after all? We are not of God. God is not of us, totally separate, but when we die we get to be with him? But are still not of him? Other beings worshipping him forever —? Being Other. And so truth is hierarchy... Ihope that is not it. I don't like that world-view.
That night after her death, I dream of a huge gaping hole in the wall to my apartment. Symbol of my heart.
Wednesday I try to go to work, but see my boss outside and I tell him, and I start sobbing, and he, emotional flame, hugs me, and then he starts to cry, and he tells me to go home. I don't want to go home. Only despair is there. So I eat and go to a cafe, and pretend to read poetry with a coffee. Luckily this cafe is crazy packed, and that keeps my focus, some guy talking to his tourist friend who is visiting him, looks at me and says, "California Poet Types," huh! I am a type! A tourist attraction! weird. Then I get a little better through the humor, and go to yoga, but it is very hard to move, sorrow immobilizes you. I come home and I start crying again and write some more:
the thing that's upsetting me now —? is that she was always so confused about where to go, I had to tell her this way, Ginger. She wouldn't go anywhere she didn't think I was going. So how does she know where to go in the afterlife, I'm not there. How does she know to go towards the light or whatever. Are there doggie angels helping her?
Michael sent me a sweet note:
"may Ginger be surrounded by sweet
airs and lovley sea gardens resting
in the shade being petted by HD and
Emily Dickinson and all of them
feeling very inspired and relaxed and happy"
and I hope that HD and Emily are there to help her know where to go, "the green field is over here, the good smells over there." I know Emily had a dog, Carlo, she says in one of her letters, "I talk of these things with Carlo, and his eyes grow meaning, and his shaggy feet keep a slower pace." Did HD have a dog? I feel like she might have, but can't remember.
Maybe HD is ushering Ginger into the Eleusinian Mysteries...
they are a strange pair Emily and HD, Emily all Puritan New Englandish, and HD rather New Englandish too, but rather more Elesuinian... they were both kindof spiritually crazy in their ways, and that is cool and comforting...
Eve says: oh Ginger... she will be remembered as a timid gold hair girl.
Judy says: Ginger will always be with us! As a glowing golden doggie angel!
My friends are sweet.
Bizarrely, my dad's dog, Mickey, died Thursday. They were about the same age, and died the same way: bad arthritis, and Mickey just stopped moving and wouldn't eat. So they put her to sleep too. When I lived in Austin in the 90's, Ginger and Mickey used to play together at my dad's. They would run around the yard together. I feel so much better knowing Ginger has her old friend with her, now she knows where to go, Mickey's personality was more assertive, she will just run into the light, and Ginger will see and follow her. I'm not so worried anymore. But I am still heartbroken. I asked my doctor if he could give me anything, I feel barely functional, and he said there is no pill to stop the grieving process, but he could give me sleeping pills to help me sleep, so I took one last night, and slept through the night for the first time, but I'm not so sure it is such a good idea, because today it has me so relaxed I can't control the crying as well, I was trying to sit in a cafe and read, which worked last Wednesday, but today I can't seem to stop myself from crying in public. I had to leave and come home. Maybe dosing myself up on caffeine and being really active would be a better tactic. I am totally re-addicted to coffee this week, which is ok, if it works, because I can quit coffee anytime, later.
I was thinking about those birds, that kept landing on my head, it happened twice, in the past month or two, I don't remember when it happened, but it happened two different times, it seems like it must have been some sort of harbinger of Ginger's death. I don't know what the symbolism exactly is, cuz it is too weird, but birds, even pigeons, are messengers, somehow creatures between heaven and earth...I have a feeling it won't happen again, and if it doesn't, then I am right. Maybe if I am somehow symbolic of Ginger, and not the other way around, then maybe they were trying to cart me off to Heaven...
It is so strange the illnesses I've had that seem to mimic hers. I had a month of bronchitus, coughing stuff, in March, which she didn't have but during that time I injured my back and had back/hip pain whenever I would get up, which mimicked her arthritic limps. Then I had this stomach stuff for a while, and she was starting to move from having bladder infections all the time to having to poop 3 or 4 times a day, which was weird. In the last week I got a bladder infection out of nowhere, I never get bladder infections, and this was when she was starting to not pee, then she got this weird sore on her left hind leg, that she kept licking, and I noticed this week I have a weird scarry sore on my left leg by my ankle. I think that is it, I am crazy empathic I guess...
I am remembering that all through the years, Ginger has made it into random poems on occasion, I'm going to go back through my poems and make them into a Ginger chapbook, it will go on the Ginger shrine, with her ashes and her pictures, later. Maybe that will be healing, I honestly haven't had any desire to write since this happened. I tried to go shopping to fill the void, and I just didn't care. Drinking doesn't help, yoga doesn't help, pills don't help, I guess it is just time. I wish I could do something to speed up the process.
And strangely, since this is my vision journal, I did see her ghost. I had been drinking, albeit, trying to numb the pain, which didn't work, at all, and I looked at her big pillow she would sleep on, and I could see an outline of her sleeping the way she used to sleep. It is nice in retrospect, to have seen this image, but at the time it made me bawl harder. I wonder if it is some sort of latent energy pattern, or my need to see her, or a visitation from her? Maybe it is like in that movie The Others, where the dead people just continue on as they always have, they have no idea anything is different. That is why she was sleeping, she doesn't know anything different has happened. In that case, I shouldn't move. I want to stay with her.
Tuesday, May 16, 2006
started reading Susan McCabe's book Cinematic Modernism at the library. About HD and her connection with cinema, how cinema affected her poetics, etc. Just from the introduction are some cool quotes:
"Enter Cinema. It made visible a body, never visible before -- one that is at once whole and in pieces."
"Cinematic bodies haunt, permeate, fragment and are fragmented by representation."
"Silent film's status as a form of hieroglyphics promised that an Esperanto or universal language might be attained."
"Enter Cinema. It made visible a body, never visible before -- one that is at once whole and in pieces."
"Cinematic bodies haunt, permeate, fragment and are fragmented by representation."
"Silent film's status as a form of hieroglyphics promised that an Esperanto or universal language might be attained."
Wednesday, May 03, 2006
My list of Visions
Mother Goose, legs hanging from midair (SF) 2013
Anubis (Oakland)
Einstein
Flashback static fan movement (SF)
glowing(SF)
Greek Athlete(SF)
Lawn chair figure at AWP (A)
shadow figure on stairs(SF)
vision of many faces in the trees (SF)
god in waiting area (SF)
rose hovering above me (SF)
bull/owl(SF)
shadow figure walking away (H)
St Francis (SF)
Mandala (H)
Angel in shorts on freeway(H)
Red snowflake (Switzerland)
Cowboy(H)
Harlem Flapper(H)
ET(H)
Granddaddy(H)
Anubis (Oakland)
Einstein
Flashback static fan movement (SF)
glowing(SF)
Greek Athlete(SF)
Lawn chair figure at AWP (A)
shadow figure on stairs(SF)
vision of many faces in the trees (SF)
god in waiting area (SF)
rose hovering above me (SF)
bull/owl(SF)
shadow figure walking away (H)
St Francis (SF)
Mandala (H)
Angel in shorts on freeway(H)
Red snowflake (Switzerland)
Cowboy(H)
Harlem Flapper(H)
ET(H)
Granddaddy(H)
glow vision
Had a really strange experience in yoga, because of this weird back injury I have been laying off of yoga mostly, and am just getting back into it. For bliss replacement, I have been trying to meditate more. In class last night, we were doing a open-eyed meditation in the dark, and my right knee started glowing orange, and then everything around me was glowing, everything in the periphery at least, it really was freaking me out. Vision energy is ascending, I guess. But no actual vision, except for the glowing...
Tuesday, May 02, 2006
Part III of Eurydice by H.D.
III
Saffron from the fringe of the earth,
wild saffron that has bent
over the sharp edge of earth,
all the flowers that cut through the earth,
all, all the flowers are lost;
everything is lost,
everything is crossed with black,
black upon black
and worse than black,
this colourless light.
Saffron from the fringe of the earth,
wild saffron that has bent
over the sharp edge of earth,
all the flowers that cut through the earth,
all, all the flowers are lost;
everything is lost,
everything is crossed with black,
black upon black
and worse than black,
this colourless light.
H.D.'s Vision at Corfu
Quoted from Megan Simpson's Poetic Epistemologies, page 67:
"H.D.'s account of her extraordinary vision of picture-writing appearing (as if projected from her own consciousness) on a hotel wall at Corfu in 1920, an account written 20 years later in "Writing on the Wall," offers another example of how the value of the sign, for H.D., lies in its very indeterminacy. Rather than seeking definitive meanings or translations of the signs as Freud had during H.D.'s analysis with him in 1933, H.D. emphasizes the multiplicity of available readings of the images and the impossibility of fixing on any one final meaning. Her comments about two of the six hieroglyphlike images that appeared in succession on the wall are particularly telling. About the third image to form, a circle with three lines supporting its base, she writes, "The tripod, we know, was the symbol of prophecy, prophetic utterance that of occult or hidden knowledge; the Priestess or Pythoness of Delphi sat on the tripod while she pronounced her verse couplets, the famous Delphic utterances when it was said could be read two ways" (Tribute 51). Significantly, H.D. interprets this image as the sign of indeterminacy itself, referring not to an external signified, but to another process of signification in which rereading is similarly problematized — the Delphic oracles. The fifth image, which H.D. names Nike, "is a moving-picture and fortunately she moves swiftly" (Tribute 55); this physical movement of the material signifier H.D. takes to be a symbolic manifestation of the unfixability of signs in general. And this may be why she attaches a special significance to this figure as representing signification itself, even claiming it as her own personal signifier-as-signifier: "Nike, Victory seemed to be the clue, seemed to by my own especial sign or part of my hieroglyph" (Tribute 56).
"H.D.'s account of her extraordinary vision of picture-writing appearing (as if projected from her own consciousness) on a hotel wall at Corfu in 1920, an account written 20 years later in "Writing on the Wall," offers another example of how the value of the sign, for H.D., lies in its very indeterminacy. Rather than seeking definitive meanings or translations of the signs as Freud had during H.D.'s analysis with him in 1933, H.D. emphasizes the multiplicity of available readings of the images and the impossibility of fixing on any one final meaning. Her comments about two of the six hieroglyphlike images that appeared in succession on the wall are particularly telling. About the third image to form, a circle with three lines supporting its base, she writes, "The tripod, we know, was the symbol of prophecy, prophetic utterance that of occult or hidden knowledge; the Priestess or Pythoness of Delphi sat on the tripod while she pronounced her verse couplets, the famous Delphic utterances when it was said could be read two ways" (Tribute 51). Significantly, H.D. interprets this image as the sign of indeterminacy itself, referring not to an external signified, but to another process of signification in which rereading is similarly problematized — the Delphic oracles. The fifth image, which H.D. names Nike, "is a moving-picture and fortunately she moves swiftly" (Tribute 55); this physical movement of the material signifier H.D. takes to be a symbolic manifestation of the unfixability of signs in general. And this may be why she attaches a special significance to this figure as representing signification itself, even claiming it as her own personal signifier-as-signifier: "Nike, Victory seemed to be the clue, seemed to by my own especial sign or part of my hieroglyph" (Tribute 56).
Saturday, April 08, 2006
Part II of Eurydice by H.D.
II
Here only flame upon flame
and black among the red sparks,
streaks of black and light
grown colorless
why did you turn back,
that hell should be reinhabited
of myself thus
swept into nothingness?
why did you turn back?
why did you glance back?
why did you hesitate for that moment?
why did you bend your face
caught with the flame of the upper earth,
above my face?
what was it that crossed my face
with the light from yours
and your glance?
what was it you saw in my face?
the light of your own face,
the fire of your own presence?
what had my face to offer
but reflex of the earth,
hyacinth colour
caught from the raw fissure in the rock
where the light struck,
and the colour of azure crocuses,
and the bright surface of gold crocuses
and of the wind-flower,
swift in its veins as lightning
and as white.
Here only flame upon flame
and black among the red sparks,
streaks of black and light
grown colorless
why did you turn back,
that hell should be reinhabited
of myself thus
swept into nothingness?
why did you turn back?
why did you glance back?
why did you hesitate for that moment?
why did you bend your face
caught with the flame of the upper earth,
above my face?
what was it that crossed my face
with the light from yours
and your glance?
what was it you saw in my face?
the light of your own face,
the fire of your own presence?
what had my face to offer
but reflex of the earth,
hyacinth colour
caught from the raw fissure in the rock
where the light struck,
and the colour of azure crocuses,
and the bright surface of gold crocuses
and of the wind-flower,
swift in its veins as lightning
and as white.
When you are in dreamtime nothing happens and nothing that does happen, matters.
So all oracle is true.
When you have awoken, though, no oracle is true, because truth is changeable from moment to moment.
When sleeping all oracle is simply directing you to awaken (not awaken as in epiphany, but to awaken as in attainment of place)
Once you have arrived, there is no need for oracle. You are already here and must abandon prediction for the now which is unpredictable and utterly dangerous
So all oracle is true.
When you have awoken, though, no oracle is true, because truth is changeable from moment to moment.
When sleeping all oracle is simply directing you to awaken (not awaken as in epiphany, but to awaken as in attainment of place)
Once you have arrived, there is no need for oracle. You are already here and must abandon prediction for the now which is unpredictable and utterly dangerous
Tuesday, April 04, 2006
Had another vision this morning, meditation and bad eyesight work wonders for vision procurement! And I reorganized my furniture this weekend, so everything has different shapes. I woke up and was looking around without my glasses on and I saw an image of an ancient Greek athlete, complete with helmet, (did they wear helmets? Maybe if they were on horses?) and relay baton. He was holding it out, it almost looks like he was pointing, but I think he was holding his baton out towards the next runner maybe. I interpreted it as it is time to go back to yoga which I have been unable to do due to a back injury. I think I am mostly healed now and it is time to go back. Unless it was a warrior not an athlete, holding a sword out in front of him, which may mean it is time to go back out there and fight with the world, my hermitage is over. Or, as it was my day off today, it was telling me to get off my rump and go be active, which I didn't really do, but I feel like it is ok, I did my taxes, wrote half a poem, watched a movie, and walked Ginger to and from the groomers, and read some of the Olney book on Yeats and Jung outside of Starbucks (moisture=death), while I let Ginger rest.
Friday, March 31, 2006
Chapbook Presses
a+bend press
anchorite press
atticus finch
belladonna*
big game books
black lodge press
braincase press
dos press
cannibal chapbooks series
carve editions
cy gist press
cypress poetry
dancing girl press
dusie
effing press
fewer & further press
flaming giblet press
h-ngm-n
horseless press
hooke press
hot whiskey press
house press
katalanche press
kitchen press
lame house press
meritage press
octopus books
overhere press
palm press
pilot books
plantarchy
potes & poets press
not a press, per se, but
rustbuckle
the tangent press
tarpaulin sky press
taxt
teeny tiny
transmission press
ugly duckling presse
woodland editions
ypolita press
anchorite press
atticus finch
belladonna*
big game books
black lodge press
braincase press
dos press
cannibal chapbooks series
carve editions
cy gist press
cypress poetry
dancing girl press
dusie
effing press
fewer & further press
flaming giblet press
h-ngm-n
horseless press
hooke press
hot whiskey press
house press
katalanche press
kitchen press
lame house press
meritage press
octopus books
overhere press
palm press
pilot books
plantarchy
potes & poets press
not a press, per se, but
rustbuckle
the tangent press
tarpaulin sky press
taxt
teeny tiny
transmission press
ugly duckling presse
woodland editions
ypolita press
Wednesday, March 29, 2006
"Modernist diction may, in ways still to be fully elucidated, be indebted to female gender stances (in Stein, in Loy, in Moore). Marianne DeKoven, assimilating Kristeva, sees modernist 'experimental writing as anti-patriarchal' a stance necessary to rupture dominant culture by a focus on the signifier, not the signified, and interestingly initiated by a woman, Gertrude Stein. Jeanne Kammer suggests that the modernist style in Dickinson, Moore and H.D. was born from the pressures of silence -- 'habits of privacy, camouflage, and indirection' -- which resulted in 'linguistic compression' and juxtaposition." (DuPlessis H.D.7) I like this theory so much better than those who say that experimental writing is oblique, fractured, and a symptom of our alienation. Collage writing, especially, can be seen as a way of quilting, layering. Somehow, to some, complexity is seen as a form of fracture. Why? I don't know. Complexity to me, is a way of adding meaning, deepening experience. There was an interview than saddened me, with Sharon Dolin, who said the Language Poetry silences the I, and is anti-woman for her. But all the cool language poets are women so I don't see how that is exactly true. I don't think they are silencing the I, they are going beyond the I. The I is incredibly simple and small to me, whereas to go beyond it does not exclude it, but encompasses more, all of experience, universe sized.
Saturday, March 25, 2006
Part I of "Eurydice" by H.D.
So you have swept me back,
I who have walked with the live souls
above the earth,
I who have slept among the live flowers
at last;
so for your arrogance
and your ruthlessness
I am swept back
where dead lichens drip
dead cinders upon moss of ash;
so for your arrogance
I am broken at last,
I who had lived unconscious,
who was almost forgot;
if you had let me wait
I had grown from listlessness into peace,
if you had let me rest with the dead,
I had forgot you
and the past.
I who have walked with the live souls
above the earth,
I who have slept among the live flowers
at last;
so for your arrogance
and your ruthlessness
I am swept back
where dead lichens drip
dead cinders upon moss of ash;
so for your arrogance
I am broken at last,
I who had lived unconscious,
who was almost forgot;
if you had let me wait
I had grown from listlessness into peace,
if you had let me rest with the dead,
I had forgot you
and the past.
Sunday, March 12, 2006
I haven't posted in here in a really long time but I finally had a vision today. I've been back in Austin for AWP. I was just waking up after 3 days of constant panels etc., exhausted, sick, it's 6:45 am, and I look out the window, without my glasses on, and I see an old man sitting out there. He looks like my stepmom's father, who I know left for Kerrville the night before, so why is he here? Is he looking for her? Waiting for her? I'm sortof scared because he is staring at me, but I kindof feel like if he wants to stare, let him, and I roll over. After a while I realize it must only look like an old man becuase I don't have my glasses on, so I put them on and look. It is an orange ceramic chicken and a white plastic lawn chair, at such a weird angle that it looks like a flesh colored head with a white shirt. Can't even begin to decipher. Hopefully Liesse's dad is not about to die. There was an old man pestering me on the plane today, i so much wanted him to leave me alone, and not have to talk to him, it was rather unpleasant, but there may be some connection, otherwise it is something to understand only in the future.
Thursday, December 08, 2005
MFA Thesis
Speaking to Shadows
By Carrie Hunter
December 2005
Speaking to Shadows
Table of Contents
Incantation 2
My Madnesses 3
[J.] 4
Circle Poem #2 5
H.D. Says 6
The Rower 7
Wind Stories 8
Texas 9
Butterfly Stronghold 10
Dream Voices 12
Void Dancer 13
A Serendipity 14
"rapid, fragile, melancholy.." 15
An Anatomy of Knowing 16
Making Omega 18
P. Says From Underground 19
Saturday Night, Pre-Apocalypse, Ignuti 20
Purging Purgatory 21
Metempsychosis 22
Unlike Ivy 23
All About the Colors: Palindrome of Being 24
Kohl-Rimmed Forest Song 25
Tumbleweeds 27
Dreams 29
Prophesy 31
Cloud-Walled Organ Music 32
Vision #13B 33
(No Title) 34
Parable 35
( ) 36
Cornsilk Zombie Flowers 37
Precision Entrances 38
It is Suzanne's Birthday and We Are All Here in Our Hats 39
spiral trance forest flowers 40
7 Shades 41
They Say There's A World Outside Me But I Know Better 42
The Shadow Space 43
"then, capsized, hushes" 44
"with sap of the impossible" 45
The Hindering Night 46
Eggs 47
It Is A Purple Speak 48
Inside/out (while Catalina sleeps) 50
Preponderance 53
"The Rower" was previously published in the webzine Eratio, "Saturday Night, Pre-Apocalypse, Ignuti" and "Purging Purgatory" were previously published in the webzine Muse Apprentice Guild, "Precision Entrances" was previously published in the webzine Moria, and "Preponderance" was previously published in SCORE Magazine.
"The Circumference is Within: Without is formed the Selfish Center/And the Circumference still expands going forward to Eternity/And the Center has Eternal States! these States we now explore!"
William Blake Jerusalem 70.7-9.
"On the one hand, a deep-seated continuity appears to link all things and all events and to lend them a significance that provokes our wonder...[o]n the other hand, we frequently reach the point at which the routine, falsity, and injustice of life inflict on us a feeling of senselessness; things happen without any evident explanation beyond mechanical temporal sequence. In this vision of the world no meaning attaches to events and things, and any effort at insight or sympathy ends in despair."
Roger Shattuck in his introduction to Maurice Nadeau's The History of Surrealism.
Incantation
My Madnesses
[J. ]
Circle Poem #2
H.D. says
The Rower
Wind Stories
Texas
Butterfly Stronghold
Dream Voices
"What you don't control is the spirit, the voices, coming through you"
Void Dancer
A Serendipity
"rapid, fragile, melancholy.."
An Anatomy of Knowing
Making Omega
P. Says from Underground
Saturday Night, Pre-Apocalypse, Ignuti
Purging Purgatory
Metempsychosis
Unlike Ivy
All About the Colors: Palindrome of Being
Kohl-Rimmed Forest Song
Tumbleweeds
"Dreams"
Prophesy
Cloud-Walled Organ Music
Vision #13B
Parable
( )
Cornsilk Zombie Flowers
Precision Entrances
It is Suzanne's Birthday and We Are All Here in Our Hats
spiral trance forest flowers
7 Shades
They Say There's A World Outside Me But I Know Better
The Shadow Space
"then, capsized, hushes"
"with sap of the impossible"
The Hindering Night
Eggs
It Is A Purple Speak
Inside/out (while Catalina sleeps)
Preponderance
Notes
1 Henry Miller - "Wisdom of the Heart"
2 Diana Di Prima "Recollections of My Life as a Woman"
3 Diana Di Prima "Recollections of My Life as a Woman"
4 Marcel Proust "Remembrance of Things Past"
5 Robinson Jeffers "Cawdor"
6 Andre Breton qtd. in Mary Ann Caws "Andre Breton"
7 Umberto Eco "The Name of the Rose"
8 inspired by the Akira Kurosawa film of the same name
9 a line from Phillip Lamantia
10 "drala" from Chogyam Trungpa’s book Shambala: "When we draw down the power and depth of vastness into a single perception, then we are discovering and invoking magic. By magic we do not mean unnatural power over the phenomenal world, but rather the discovery of innate or primordial wisdom in the world as it is. The wisdom we are discovering is wisdom without beginning, something naturally wise, the wisdom of the cosmic mirror. In Tibetan, this magical quality of existence, or natural wisdom, is called drala."
11 from Aime Cesaire's Notebook of a Return to the Native Land translated by Clayton Eschleman & Annette Smith
12 a line from Lucie Thésée's "The Buckets in My Head"
By Carrie Hunter
December 2005
Speaking to Shadows
Table of Contents
Incantation 2
My Madnesses 3
[J.] 4
Circle Poem #2 5
H.D. Says 6
The Rower 7
Wind Stories 8
Texas 9
Butterfly Stronghold 10
Dream Voices 12
Void Dancer 13
A Serendipity 14
"rapid, fragile, melancholy.." 15
An Anatomy of Knowing 16
Making Omega 18
P. Says From Underground 19
Saturday Night, Pre-Apocalypse, Ignuti 20
Purging Purgatory 21
Metempsychosis 22
Unlike Ivy 23
All About the Colors: Palindrome of Being 24
Kohl-Rimmed Forest Song 25
Tumbleweeds 27
Dreams 29
Prophesy 31
Cloud-Walled Organ Music 32
Vision #13B 33
(No Title) 34
Parable 35
( ) 36
Cornsilk Zombie Flowers 37
Precision Entrances 38
It is Suzanne's Birthday and We Are All Here in Our Hats 39
spiral trance forest flowers 40
7 Shades 41
They Say There's A World Outside Me But I Know Better 42
The Shadow Space 43
"then, capsized, hushes" 44
"with sap of the impossible" 45
The Hindering Night 46
Eggs 47
It Is A Purple Speak 48
Inside/out (while Catalina sleeps) 50
Preponderance 53
"The Rower" was previously published in the webzine Eratio, "Saturday Night, Pre-Apocalypse, Ignuti" and "Purging Purgatory" were previously published in the webzine Muse Apprentice Guild, "Precision Entrances" was previously published in the webzine Moria, and "Preponderance" was previously published in SCORE Magazine.
"The Circumference is Within: Without is formed the Selfish Center/And the Circumference still expands going forward to Eternity/And the Center has Eternal States! these States we now explore!"
William Blake Jerusalem 70.7-9.
"On the one hand, a deep-seated continuity appears to link all things and all events and to lend them a significance that provokes our wonder...[o]n the other hand, we frequently reach the point at which the routine, falsity, and injustice of life inflict on us a feeling of senselessness; things happen without any evident explanation beyond mechanical temporal sequence. In this vision of the world no meaning attaches to events and things, and any effort at insight or sympathy ends in despair."
Roger Shattuck in his introduction to Maurice Nadeau's The History of Surrealism.
Incantation
Manifestation of light,
of sight.
Growing, manifesting, picture,
a picture, picturing a picture frame.
Amsterdam outside skirting
windmills, paparazzi.
Manifest clouds and light,
knotted gardens, fish-baskets.
Manifest sight.
Think in visions,
thinking visions,
won't you talk to me?
Candle offering
on the windowsill.
which god are you
that wants my prayer…
My Madnesses
In my first madness, I was taken
Off to a place where only torture
Was performed secretly in the night.
In my next madness I saw faceless eyes
Peering at me from the crack in the ceiling.
In my other madnesses, I saw:
A stranger as tall as a curtain
Unshadow and engulf me
Tambourined flappers dancing statically
Cowboys hiding, trapped in their stolidnesses
Red rainbows tripping and snowflakes trapped in mid-air
St. Francis birdless, dwarfed and urban
In my last madness, I saw windmills
Menacing, pursuing, chasing me.
This time I didn't scream or hide or cry.
At the end of my madness I saw a mandala
With the shadows of trees moving through it,
Turning it, slow circling with the wind.
[J. ]
( fluff )
( crone
fireworks for
cravings and bathrobes ) creatures fleeting )
glow somewhere bleeding asunder
cellophane
sever to breathe ) set
secret dolls ) ( may I
windmills ) the
( chamber of ( she
( glaring
cranium stain)
( and the
Circle Poem #2
Every circle stands outside you
The edge of the grapevine
The drums in the forest
The unreachable reaches out
Touching nothing
I should've known nothing violet
comes from lily pads Running out at the edge
of the circle Why do I peer into the void
What on earth am I looking for
Inside the dance she knows inside the dance
It is known and what is known doesn't matter
Cry or run or dance or sing the pain is known
and say whatever to the pain A bell rings What
it knows What it calls attention to The organ
pipes in the forest What they call to Nothing and
yet they keep calling
The entire night none of us can sleep We walk out
and enter the silence of green watching the bells enter
into the roots of the trees and settle there
And what he thinks he knows about what she thinks she
knows of God
The suspense of the prolongation where is her
voice The validation of someone who knows
what you know who also sees twinklings in silences
But when you take god out of the silence
Forging circles onto circles where does it
actually take you
Stellar settling stars stupefying there is no song here
It is just me here watching for the rising sea,
the rising lights words failing meteor showers
of words falling
Where they go there are no ladders
Shattered bones lie in heaps
Showing no signposts you can rest here
Or you can walk perhaps it will be in a circle
The distance makes it too hard to tell
H.D. says
Overmind and jellyfish and I am
further away and everything
is yellow, there is too much sun,
too much everything, and here,
there are cacti but they don't speak
to me and I don't experience Overmind.
I am me and puny and mundane or
I am God. The presence of God
and clarity in my puddle and I can't steer
through the woods without my hat on and
something in me knows
what that means but it is not me.
Is it Overmind? But there is no middle
zone, H.D. Did you experience a half-way
zone? I am me and stupid or something else
entirely and I don't understand that something else at all.
It is barely even my business, H.D. I am only here
for it. Spicer's aliens I understand better.
The Rower
Oars coming out of cabinets
and me in pigtails
searching for something
in green and maybe I am Holly
Hobby, and the rowing oars, such currents
inside of cabinets—where are you, rower,
coming from?
The insides of walls contain such secrets.
What is hidden that wants to come
out? What is hidden that wants
so badly, to row . . . and who, and sliver, and shiver,
insatiable ceilings—more and more,
and dipthongs and seaweed. I know
where I am going but I don't know
where I've come from.
One day I simply realized that I existed.
Oars coming out of the core
fighting against the current
to be born, to be here, to be . . .
olive oil and judah juice—I don't complain,
with such self-sustaining seafare,
crouching blankets and dolly graves,
we see fair and far but only here, not
what is beyond, in the other sphere.
Wind Stories
The wisdom in shallow connections.
Indigestion. Elephantitis. Enjambments.
or not. The things the wind can do. But.
This is not a list poem.
"Really Salacious" "Cuomo" "Don't allow
Ethel Kennedy on the plane" "You can do things"
"Austin stone. Isn't it beautiful?" "Let me finish"
"You tell the story" "You tell it"
How should I know which stories are important?
The meaning must be
in having them.
I follow your sounds. The owls
of the morning. inexactness. memory
of seashells. I let go of meaning.
I see your face in the sand. (and it doesn't
matter) I look. Where else (?) can the sand
take me, scatter me. I want to be scattered.
What else can the wind do.
The stories in me are disconnected. Wide gaps.
Like multiple personalities, they don't speak to one another.
The sensations in my body I suspect are my stories
but they are like wind, occupying voids, they will not
coalesce into words, want to stay inside, inside hollows
somewhere, avoid existence -- it doesn't have to be real.
One can be storyless, walking emptiness, remembering nothing.
Occupying wind tunnels. Sensing the activities just outside, not
engaging.
A green table, banana stick ice cream, giant speaker Sousa
"Stars and Stripes" fairy-winged teenagers, hula hoops and flutes.
This experience is not story. The direction of the wind in hair.
My collie rolling in the grass. There is no truth
inside plot. Only sitting here with my ass on the bark.
Heartbeat continuing, clouds slowly moving. Occasionally, a
butterfly. Except, I am on the third floor of a library,
sitting at a green table, immersed in a memory. There
is no truth in plot, there is no truth in experience,
there is no truth in memory. Or is memory the only reality, is
truth whether or not truth, truth?
"What I know tends to become more and more unstatable."
Texas
A verdancy I never knew. And counting.
19 deer. How many different kinds of bugs?
Such green, such blue. Watching lake ripples,
such texture. A mateless swan, hissing.
The bachelor next door, hissing back. The mayflies
did not come this year. Everything clean.
Grackles everywhere. I dream I killed
a bird, I think I must have heard them
from inside my dream. I kill the messenger.
I've killed the messenger. Sick of messages.
I count 14 pregnant women in the grocery store.
I bring back 8 different types of Texas-brewed beer.
Such verdancy of life. Symbolism seems to be everywhere.
A vision creeping just around the corner. The stagnation
I used to feel, I don't feel it now, here. Cicadas
underneath my skin. Something is about to happen.
Butterfly Stronghold
This dizzy equilibrium. You know it, too.
Too tired for colors but yearning anyway.
You are always forever so far away.
Even shadows flit, hiding away.
A sinking mythology. I am too tired
to save it. This sinking geology. Slow
Terra body sinking into her bath.
What will make her rise again. Evaporation...
And then you do what you must do.
Ching-ching and bling-bling,
but sadly, and showers, and pounded
down flowers. But ring-ring,
and slowly spring. Sunshine
laughter and eventually you respond.
I know you do. red, green, blue and
red, green, blue.
Dream Voices
Dream Voice I:
Eclipse on - the full of the moon
I felt an earthquake - in the other room
Dream Voice II:
A wind came to rest
Upon a strange girl's chest
"What you don't control is the spirit, the voices, coming through you"
and wolf spirit, dog spirit, brake pad spirit,
rubberband spirit, Cynthia says
"I can help you" Raking rivers
under the rug, moth spirit, I see you.
Voice of Echo, I hear you. Rye bread
spirit, I eat you. I think Hilda
sends me goose bumps and I stay
with them for nearly an hour.
So many failures, but the men selling
roses, they follow me. I can laugh
too at despair, Henry. Rebecca,
collecting daisies, things that fall off trucks,
I have a daisy and some Bubba Dog beer
I want to give them to her, but for some reason
I don't. The Bubba Dog beer spirit laughs
and laughs. The spirits follow me and quieting
I want to wear spirals
--explanation of vertigo
I fall against walls sober
and I think perhaps I am
going somewhere – but no, I
am only going to the place
where onions go...something
about the center and never
getting there.
Void Dancer
"And behind that, perhaps the Void dances, not black, cold, or empty as we have believed,
but dancing with light, sheet lightnings spread as a series of surfaces over nothing"
And a bouquet of lights, blinking
the void is winking at me
and it is a moment of relief
things can be relieved
a momentary breeze.
I drink the watermelon drink
knowing full well that it is not summer.
The void, the place I visit when I am not listening,
um-hmmm, I say. I am split between places
and both of you want me and it is an equal
magnetism. And yes. And yes. And
oh yes. But to stay would be devastating.
Tornado turtle and kiss kiss.
A Serendipity
It's like the opposite of serendipity,
but it is somehow utilitarian.
Missing you, remembering what I forgot.
The view from here, the trees, that skyline.
This, writing with my dog.
Utter independence and that that
is the most free you can be – when you're alone
and there are kites and I notice the birds and
maybe, actually, serendipity.
"rapid, fragile, melancholy.."
and plashless, utterly.
and flies, of course.
and out of nowhere, completely
unprepared for, a Vision comes.
I don't think I believe in this
anymore, yet it is there, static
as the first one, still waiting for me, I fall
back asleep, can't even be bothered
to be bothered. rapid, fragile, and now,
melancholy.
An Anatomy of Knowing
I.
To vow anything, ever.
In another place. To be certain.
Of anything. Ever.
Those that drunk themselves to death.
For art.
The hand of the devil.
What it knows.
Juniper.
How the voices of trees
will speak. Softly.
Rustling in the wind.
In another time.
In another time,
he spoke to me,
would tell me things.
I'll never repeat.
Different petals
on the same marigold,
rubbing together, whispering
and listening, whispering
and listening.
The things they never speak of.
Listening to the guiding trees, whispering.
Or was the wind merely the wind.
Even in that time.
Juniper.
Incense rising in a straight line.
Sure where it was going.
A certainty.
But through time, something happens.
One's hands are chopped off.
One loses one's feeling,
does not notice the soft mumblings
against the skin.
Is consumed by something else,
crumbling.
A crumbling inside.
II.
Jerome in the desert, abandoned.
One abandons oneself.
One's certainty, lost.
One remembers nothing
but the present desert.
Forgets what time does,
how it changes things.
How tears evaporate. The certainty
of the salt-paths that are left.
The engravings there that strengthen one.
How many triptychs are abandoned,
never completed.
The Juniper tree waits and listens.
How many flower petals
dried and forgotten,
sink into the sand?
Trampled on
or carried off by magpies,
secreted in caverns
for the future to remember.
The rocks erode
around their shapes,
certain where they are going.
Making Omega
We're going to go make omega
and unmake it too.
maybe it was a sword hanging over me
but I saw it as a rose.
P. Says from Underground
say then that sound comes
sacrificing sound
throes of if and when
and I don't know. So
when it comes say what-
ever when it comes
sever when it comes.
Shading sounds for shame
at least you can se | ver when it
does come.
Saturday Night, Pre-Apocalypse, Ignuti
Shopping carts converging, something
is about to happen. Inside
of a cloverleaf concertina,
a cumulus clot.
Cirrus, incredulous clouds converge
in a cumulonimbus cornucopia basket, mirabile dictu.
A cloudberry cloudburst,
coyote clown trickster,
clupeid fish, closeted flies.
buzz buzz. Whatever, storm out
inside astral valentines,
bloody is next year.
Purging Purgatory
In this poem I am not a seal.
Nothing is about to happen.
The apocalypse is postponed indefinitely.
There is no music, no clouds,
no silence exactly either.
Shutterbug, shutterbug
trifling in truffles
that shuffle away
in their nightgowns, a hospital stay.
Methodist meteor showers
mean nothing, detail suburbia dent
metastasis slows but does not stop.
Metallic metamorph messiah messiah.
There is a leak in the back somewhere
undetected. No wonder the cancer is everywhere.
Mermism trout catches another.
The seeress sears me.
But wait, bloody was last year.
How many puncture wounds must I endure?
Seagull on the seagate says wait, wait.
Metempsychosis
Giving up
on the bus,
I cross the street
and see it coming
mid-cross, but keep crossing
anyway. Somehow,
what it takes to turn back,
is more than I have.
The man kneeling
over a box
on the other side is staring
at me, he knows
my lack of impeccability,
my laxness, my lack
of will. I think
he is the crow
I saw yesterday crowing
like he meant it but
then scratching himself just as much
like he means it,
I itch everywhere yet feel nothing.
I look again at the man but he
is gone – ghost, dream, vision –
what?
"…dreams and visions are an obscure coinage
No sane person takes faithfully"
To believe in visions, in stark, sudden appearances
of beings from other realms, is more, is so much more
than I have or can do.
Unlike Ivy
Ladder into ivy
to know where one is going
to not know where one is going
there is just ivy
a plethora of something
and the past that…
a plethora of something else
or
the absence of plethorias
absence of utopias
absence of the known
and trust is required
"Unlike ivy, I die when I become attached"
All About the Colors: Palindrome of Being
"[God] shows Himself here more in that
which is not than in that which is…"
The good luck of sitting
next to a house painter on the bus
clover spells, clover spells
…and finding upon returning home
the house has been painted
what luck what luck the smell
of improvements and maybe
we are like that house on the corner
that changes colors
every few weeks. Purple and then
orange, mint green, turquoise, yellow.
Boredom, indecision, something
in our core
is kaleidoscopic, we change
we are becoming, unfolding
but never do come.
That which is, is always dead.
and the "souls of dead librarians"
a dream of gigantic jars,
encapsulated science and
lollipops for sale.
Kohl-Rimmed Forest Song
How can I call you back
without any Circe sea-magic
How could I call you back?
I've already given you my ocean,
all of it, my bay-leaves, my secret drugs.
How could I have?
In shreds I am sewn, ripped apart
¼ asleep, with my thrown hilter heart
diadem of crash crash, fury lurid fury
Hiding sinking buttercups, florid hells, I sing to you.
Which petal are you, which petal are you
brushing up lightly? But I am not a petal, you
are not a petal. We are not touching, we
are not humming. Drumming in a honeysuckle circle
Dreaming such wide circles, I cannot even see you.
The nightingale wails, the nightingale. Singing
of blue stars, I can do anything in the night. It is empty & anxious
& willful & something must be made in this time.
There is much work to be done. The circuitry must be shattered,
I shatter, how the wind can change you. Tornadoes, thorns
tumbleweeds tearing through the desert. Shattering
sandmen. Broken glass everywhere. And
that is where the sewing machine was, my mother
tells me. Sitting on the swing, motionless, surrounded
by broken glass. The desolation. The sadness of trees,
bending over, wanting to pick us up. Wanting to cradle us,
Caress us. But. They can't find you either.
You are in the wind, sometimes.
Sometimes. You are only in my mind,
in this ghost-beast paradise.
And all Time is cyclical.
That is why I cry
but I do not worry.
Buzzing bees
must mean honey somewhere,
light somewhere.
Things repeated return,
crumble into moats,
are rebuilt,
crumble into moats.
It shatters.
One steps away shivering
and sings anyway.
Tumbleweeds
Do you know what I know
if I know what you know,
do you know, do you
know, Ophelia, do you know, Delia,
do you know, Helga Doorn? I
only know hallelujah
I can sing I can sing alleluia.
I will cinder in the center in the silver of your eyes.
Do you know what knowledge does not
know. Do you know
the answer to everything is (the answer to
everything is) keep, keep singing always,
no matter what, keep singing and songs
will follow you around like butterflies
(echoing) and whatever else wants to follow.
Everything is contained
in the intricacies,
seeing what sewing needles see, inside.
I know who you are in the interim.
Only in the interim do I …
talk with ghosts, I talk with ghosts,
nonexistencies, inaltruistic joys are the ethers
I am part of the ethers
I am not here
here
I am not writing this
I am not here
I am not writing this
waves and waves equal negation, but where am I
stolen epiphanies so far away, so far but
I’ve heard others talk about them. ice cream
leaves fetters in the wind
and I keep running back
but there is nothing here
not even the wind talks to me here.
Deserted in the desert what do the cacti want
from me calling out Desdemona
running around in circles
but not towards water,
never towards water.
I stay away from shawls
and sandstorms never protect me anyway. remember,
remember horseradish and hay rides
there are songs there are songs
floating around in that memory
memory of singing
no memory of song
just memory of singing.
Where are the tumbleweeds all going to anyway?
That summer of the sickness
before the sickness that killed him
there were tumbleweeds everywhere
while I waited outside
they wouldn’t let me in
waiting to hear the news
watching the tumbleweeds
and the sand-filled sky
I wondered what do they know
what do they know
do they know
that I am so far outside that I am inside of something that they can not even see?
"Dreams"
I.
Walking in the void,
the fear is
what if you don't ever
get anywhere,
continuously
walking in the void
no cities, no lights
just dust and darkness
the sameness continuing…
perpetual tunnels that never open
into light
II.
To be eternally in your passion
there must be colors everywhere there
with everything bleeding and there is no
subsiding and there is no letting up and there are colors
everywhere, eternally in one's passion, the sun never
setting there is always light and always colors and the grass
is always growing and there is so much to do and the colors
never stop their demands
III.
Here in the darkness here there is
hail spiraling down
in the moonshine, spiraling down
no one notices the moonshine.
Moonshiner, moonshiner I can't see
make me some light so that I can breathe
IV.
If our shadows are red then we
are already dead.
The wind shapes around our secrets,
covering us, Vesuvial.
No one is capable of speaking to anyone else.
Mouths open
then close a defeat…
And what the eyes speak of no one can tell.
V.
"A nice happy funeral"
celebrating loss. There is
balance, and bells.
Bliss, bliss, bliss and even
Sadness carries flowers, everyone
with flowers. Nothing is shattered,
bells ringing and nothing shatters
but hearts, but that is a joyful shattering here.
like glass piñatas.
Prophesy
He knows me
Yellow he says
and chickens and gardens
and left behind curtains
He knows me he says
and yellow he says
and knowing and
I know him and
no thought is left behind
behind the yellow curtain
Cloud-Walled Organ Music
An impossibility
between us.
Something unvoiced, silent elephants
standing still
nothing stampeding
between us.
Katsu says Samurai
are like Clint Eastwood.
What about the Samurai
of the heart?
Strange topiaries, too strange
and statues, but not, moving slightly.
There is no threshold to walk through.
And we are not statues (or are we?). Perhaps we are
that third thing that is not “is” and is not “is not”. We
are neither statues nor humans, but topiaries swaying, moving
against our will, being moved by some Plutonian wind
from underneath the earth.
Vision #13B
A man of copper, waiting in line
stares at me and knows
that I thought he was made of copper.
Maybe he is the hawk I didn't notice
the other day, because I was
preoccupied with my own pettinesses
trying not to be late, wondering
what does so-and-so think of me, etc.
They are all laughing, but the not-copper man
is laughing harder.
I could think anything of anyone/thing
at any time and it could be
a vision too.
Soon my list will top a hundred.
The difference between
when shadows speak to you
and when you speak to shadows.
orange juice grapefruit juice pineapple juice
ROSE JUICE
larva juice pickled-toe juice Peter Pan juice
sanctions/sanguine will recover who?
I am the walrus
and soap cloaks
surrender sangria
Sahnjeen in Pumpernickel
I swell Sousa and so-so's for froglegs
larva decay snails in their shells.
what sordid sails shine?
No shining/signing
No signs
for today
Dropping signs – write nonsense
for oracles
It is true. You can't say any of it's
not true
Larva is true and rose-juice is true
and so-so is real
we drink tea on Sundays
and Wednesdays are my day, not Steve's
and everything is truth
and everything is true
and the lexicon-chant t(r)opiaries
and the checkered-face
alligator
and elephants are true.
and pineapples are true
and Ginger loves Seymour
the spinach is true too.
Parable
In the sea without a name
immersed in colorless sounds ~ someone calls
for Dana ~ in the waves
there is no one. Somewhere, on land,
someone is playing drums, conga, a ritual
is taking place unseen.
Someone is calling in the mist
a white foam stills the shadows.
The boat putters slowly. There is nothing
to see – each moment produces more
of the previous moment. Moments
become undifferentiated – all moments
are the same. In every moment the same
piece of seaweed brushes against my hand
floating in the water. The seaweed is
an oracle of the future. The seaweed is meaningless,
predicting only the present. This present moment
opens my heart
and the future seeps into it, moment by moment.
The future becomes an oracle of the present.
I forget about the mist I remember
I am the mist.
( )
(Dreams are parentheses) ()( )
(Dreams are) (a series) (of parentheses)
(Reality) (is) (a) (series) (of) (parentheses) (put) (together)
What is between?()()( ) ( ( ) ) how do you reach ( ) ( ) the
(really) ( ) real ( ) that ( ) which
is between ( )( )or under?( ) the ( dream) ( ) or under
((((((((((reality?)))))))))
(Parentheses)(back)(to)(back)()()()()()()()()()() Where is the question
that resides
outside? ( ) Is that what is real? ( )
( ) ( ) ( ) ( )
(where does it reside)
and ( ) (how do you get to it) ( )
( )
( )?
Cornsilk Zombie Flowers
Seeping I sing.
Sleeping I swim.
There is no dew on my eyelids.
Centaur shows the way. This useless
seeking of sunshine, Centaur show me the way.
Sewing dark-time flowers onto my wrists,
they will lead the way
I follow the flowers
iridescent blue in the darkness.
I don't bother with weeping,
I'm walking
further on singing for company…
I walk further on aching
for a darker darkness shining.
Precision Entrances
(For H.D)
ethereal jellyfish
knotted garden
pearl vision of a
waking bridge
quiet transitory gully
screaming and sunlit
tides of dream
seeds in the ground and
oyster abounding
the delphic charioteer
flies three times right into
the mulberry symphony
trance skeleton drunk in the vineyard
again with her domed music and tripods but this time
Delia is further underground than you,
this time, Nike has further sundered her wings,
this time, there is a lesser chanting in the woods,
this time
It is Suzanne's Birthday and We Are All Here in Our Hats
September 26, 2003
puffy bananas, precursor to peanuts,
elephants angle and shout "Éclairs"!
Sophie is sacred and seasons don't dare
oak leaves and antelopes quake hopping for hand-outs
barren-trains eagle and stumble for sunshine
sodas become shadows, while phantom-less suns
beckon five collapsing bell-dreams and if glum-shine
is sleeping where are the sad dogs with sand-mops
and why won’t they shine
with recipes of half-clocks The bell hops are hoping
for ding-dongs and senses and listening elephants
feign sleep while leaving shattered salads for Sophie is
grieving not listening, to mad willows and water-sun colas,
she is blinking and blinking.
spiral trance forest flowers
forward trance forest
winding tighter
and tighter
winding curves.
winding
greener and
greener
entering spiral,
spiraling, inward
an inward forest
with poison flowers
a winding road
winding deeper
and poison flowers,
the poison flowers grow
outward,
spiraling larger
yet there’s no meeting
only a strangeness
a potency
widening
turn by turn
stranger and stranger
shadows grow longer
and darker and
the poison flowers grow
larger and stronger.
7 Shades
All about the talons
and so unlike the seven
we shake, create some
several, even seven, sail-aways
and shanties and the hail slows
I'll see it when I want to.
and shade here and
shade is here.
Seven. of them here.
all about the short ones
all about sheerness and soldiers
and sometimes
and sadness
and hating it and
not pretty at all. But there,
and there is shade
somewhere
There is shade sometimes.
and shadows quaking, shadows
quake too at times.
Seven quakes at star shines.
further shades at further stars
They Say There's A World Outside Me But I Know Better
shadows sing softly and there are no
elephants in place of chimney tops
this time
this time
there are only chimney tops as chimney tops
and nothing magical comes, there is no drala
tonight, in the air, there is simply the air…
and footsteps and laughter and sirens
and the breath is the same as it always is
and it continues and we continue, walking,
looking at chimneys and then finally, not,
just looking into the air, at the faces
that appear. Maybe drala, after all, from inside
of not-drala.
The Shadow Space
There is a dearth of drums
on rainy nights
And in the silence
is the key
to something vast and wilder
In the silence is the sea
of lightning fast and
glow worm glass, last
joys don't last
I saw you tumbling down
and chanting, sighs flapping
we will be there in the interim
as we always are
Lightning fast and dancing…
chancing glistening
I love you every time.
"then, capsized, hushes"
and even
and soaking
and you are not you in the evergreens
even light
solar solder
see, it is the same here
after all of this and
the night has passed
and there is no peace here
but there are people
the smell of cinnamon,
hot cocoa
and lanterns.
...and singing, hushed, in the distance
beyond the trees.
we sink, hills fall after us
rolling.
"with sap of the impossible"
and china, bent
tornadoes of the unforeseen.
I'll shadow the sense-trains
Sotheby's in ashes and Elohim
in “trimmed-down”. Will you come
when the wind is at the bridge,
when the sour song is sung, when
I am at the traitor's door?
Elegy in ashes –bleeding sores,
sheet-thin skin, vapory grin,
about to jump. Glumness of the afterglow,
it stays and curtains and we
are not where we once were
and the cobwebs breathe, saying break
down the windows, escape, sheet-metal skeleton,
don't stay with us. Curlicued
shale-droppings, dust of the floor, make way.
The Hindering Night
The hindering night. Girls trapped inside lassos. Scarecrows. Burning sage. The
night watchers. Gesturing invisibly. A halogen christ. Something is mollified. A
thorn crown burning on barren ground. Miles away. a broken cradle sinks into water.
Crashing waves, breaking land. The earth cracks. Dry straw. Burning holes in the
ocean. The girl itching. bound. Fires inch closer. The sea looking up the sea drips
down. crocheting. her hand back. The mother is weary. Land seeps into skin. Skin
seeps into land becoming... All evaporates. in time. Where do the shadows
disappear to?
Eggs
Elephant eyes and
eglantine thighs.
I am the sorceress
of always
and yesterday.
I am the sour grin,
Cheshire trapped in this world.
You are here too now.
No more interims. Still,
sea-foam and shale-stone,
it is what it is
and I am not done
with cellophane cedars.
(the translucence of nature,
I could become Daphne anytime, but)
You know
only what you know.
Elephant eyes and
elegant thighs.
Love seasons and I don't know
what it is.
The untrustworthiness of feelings.
Taloned hope and seacrest jars.
I know what I know
but that is all that I know.
And you are not alone here.
And you are not with me here.
Shadows fade, become seasons,
there is nothing left but you,
turning, yellow, cobwebbed deity, only you
know where we are going.
It Is A Purple Speak
Delia will crave you, carve you, carry you
through the stain
elegant yesterday sees
me here again, nauseous again,
here breaking apart
again, breaking apart but
more solidly this time.
Delia what ribbons do you let fall on the ground?
Sordid salad stains
I am with you
in the meantime
always in the meantime,
dreamtime, between something
and something is there nothing//
I am in the nothing-time, and
secrets keep us distant, so
far away from the something,
secrets keep us trapped in the between
I am sordid with it and salad fresh
secret garbanzo beans, pine nuts
of stained joy, stained spring
I am here, am something.
(It is if I say it is)
I am here, something, stained and singing:
“Do you see what I see”
What ribbons have you let fall, Delia?
Delia Delia, what what what have you done?
like a fish out of water
sailor sailor take warning
my panic and his screamings are mine
my silent screamings are voiced by him
and with lightning in my veins and at 2 am even
and I could not ever I would not ever
and
“Do you hear what I hear”
but I am not here and I can not hear
if I am not here.
It does not exist if I am not present///
I stare at your eyes (what color are his eyes?)
blink blink emptiness I pretend emptiness
everything is breaking inside
everything is broken
How is the weather outside?
I look in his eyes I don’t see his eyes
I look afraid of looking
“A star, a star, dancing in the night”
Delia, Delia, where have you gone,
what have you done, who have
you become now, in the mysteries
that I cannot access, in the infinite
Malodorousness of where have you gone,
I might not be here when you come back.
I am here if I say I am and I am not-I am not,
If I don’t. elephants elephants hiding away, do
you see
“what I see////way up in the sky”
Inside/out (while Catalina sleeps)
I.
In her dream of “something nice”: stained glass, blue horses, shock of sunlight,
star-ingly rearranged. “In the sky, to the sky, we are of the sky.”
In the picture-window…
asleep not sleeping seeming to sleep
Some things you only read about in books
triangles, triangular patterns
icicles frost on windowpanes
There are so many veins to trace to follow
We don’t even know what to call ourselves.
She doesn’t think to question who she is.
What you need, what you need
is not what you want.
leaves on my tree.
picking leaves off my tree.
what am I trying to become.
I look at the veins
drop them on the floor.
Yes I am
inside
my tree is every moment I choose
I occupy
II.
There are rooms blocked over
with ice.
Impossible to move through.
axes and chainsaws
and you are here too?
Austin stone does not mean you are home.
Ears of corn and pineapple too.
I am just afraid of being///bared, it is impossible
to move in here.
It is impossible to move with me in here.
I know. I am impossible and January cold.
Everything is utterly my fault
and I don’t…
You only speak to dissonance and atmosphere.
III.
I can hear the rain in your heart.
“Shut up Shut up Shut it up”
a screaming sound I swear I can hear
underneath the thunder.
Underneath the sound of rain
there is someone crying
it is not you
and
it is not me ( I don’t know how)
it is the we of us together
that third creature
never born
half-way formed,
dying
a sobbing in the wind.
(how to change things)
chalices break undiscovered, unsewn.
It is not me in the dust.
I am not me here!
But underground, buried
there is something left, small,
ragdoll waiting for the needle.
(how to change myself)
Something can be salvaged
but I am not sure if it is me.
Or you, or the we of us. Something else
altogether, something else.
We don’t know anything until it is over.
Preponderance
the sound of the clock ticking
swish of endings -- finality
what can barely be heard
in the background
what preponderates
what dominates and what
turns toward silence, tries to become it,
seeps into its edges.
with red fingernails and glittered skin
slipping behind mirrored facades
the mask becomes even less real
escapes the party -- barefoot dreaming
of the sun and of being maskless...
only maskless alone
only maskless in silence
sheepskin sleeping inside
barefoot alone naked inside
jewelry singing inside boxes
seeming seeming so still
but shaking inside, shaking lose
from what binds them. Breaking
free from Gold. Golden hells grasping after but
Gold can never fly the way diamonds can.
Notes
1 Henry Miller - "Wisdom of the Heart"
2 Diana Di Prima "Recollections of My Life as a Woman"
3 Diana Di Prima "Recollections of My Life as a Woman"
4 Marcel Proust "Remembrance of Things Past"
5 Robinson Jeffers "Cawdor"
6 Andre Breton qtd. in Mary Ann Caws "Andre Breton"
7 Umberto Eco "The Name of the Rose"
8 inspired by the Akira Kurosawa film of the same name
9 a line from Phillip Lamantia
10 "drala" from Chogyam Trungpa’s book Shambala: "When we draw down the power and depth of vastness into a single perception, then we are discovering and invoking magic. By magic we do not mean unnatural power over the phenomenal world, but rather the discovery of innate or primordial wisdom in the world as it is. The wisdom we are discovering is wisdom without beginning, something naturally wise, the wisdom of the cosmic mirror. In Tibetan, this magical quality of existence, or natural wisdom, is called drala."
11 from Aime Cesaire's Notebook of a Return to the Native Land translated by Clayton Eschleman & Annette Smith
12 a line from Lucie Thésée's "The Buckets in My Head"
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