anywhere world small garbage neighborhood this coin is so dirtied with snake piss
i wonder if i’m dead, shoved out into the cold new years night all alone and with no
access to water, i most needed water. no one needed to sleep they were already and
always. i never knew if i was or not was i asleep there
was a man so depressed because he was asleep it wasnt the same as
dead dead was full of light
floated floating in the city of ancient ancient
sleep, tears were sleep grief cold and dirt were sleep and fucking strangers for money
was sleep and talking to strangers for money, and talking to people who
gradually pulled closer and closer to one in sleep. in the church
a mauve river flickers along its length its made of real amethysts not of water its
made of purest thought
flickering in and out of being messages
from. i don’t know what, the ever future now the extensive reality which isnt a
universe that no one understands but that talks to us all the time the whole thing is
always talking within us and to us and outwardly toward the other us thats outside
us and i, i am a focus an all-point with only fabricated outward characteristics but the
medium in which i am alive is not fabricated. blood is not
blood and see, see the blood, is not see, where are we
then in a
and what isnt dreams is now the future
words dont remain her dead mouth opens and closes instead she
FIGURE, SAINT, ON AN ARCH
kept in thrall by someone who reads our thoughts. the story of the egyptian captivity
babylonian captivity, reads the thoughts youve been given by him, thats how hes able
to read them
especially in a widows house, can read thought from outside, is outside secretly in the
dark reading her thoughts. her house is all windows panes into night and she knows
hes there listening to her head
she says to me, he can read yours too. the more intelligent you are, the easier it is for
him to read them. is that because intelligent means educated, to most, and educations
so standardized. i know he can read my thoughts
because when i speak my voice crackles as if through a microphone, presumably my
thoughts crackle too, as if magnified in volume by his powers. who is he. is he her
dead husband perhaps, someone else suggests.
let me go. thats what all people say. or youll later be drowned in the red sea. thats
what people say, drown them drown them all, golden bodies others beneath the
waters dead and now knowledgeable
if he knows so much says the widow why does he haunt me why doesnt he stay in his
knowledge. what does the attachment of people for each other, including the desire to
dominate utterly, have to do with the beginning
of things. is there a mathematical formula for a two become one which later must
split. a sort of symmetry, a kind of emotional elastic stretching in which the mauve
feelings are horror and the green ones fascination still
she now has given up on his death she accepts that hes never died though he still
might, he didnt die disappear and come back, hes always been here sick reading her
mind, hes moved back into the house
this is the life of the past. there is no past its a story. stories are bodies we keep going
on alive only in others minds everyone acts as if this is lovely its inutterably hideous,
to live in others. there is a way out
there must be, to leave the icon of symmetry tear it tear away.
the only possible freedom is mental so i didnt speak to pharoah, didnt approach
nebechudnezzar i entered a cave for seven years not even accessible to daniels dreams
no one could read my thoughts there, fed on grasses slugs and bitter water. there is the
picture, another gold cell, the only real monk in cappadoccia, under under ground so
the dead man couldnt make my voice crackle, so all the listening dead men ruling
the world couldnt have me. daniel dont dream of me
destroy the thoughts hes given me in order to read them. he reads them backwards
even, sthguoht eht yortsed. he uses symmetry to enslave me, he uses logic, but he
doesnt use reason. the depth of all there is, in which he drowns his troops in order to
rule, remaining ignorant, as you are ignorant who have never broken from formation
broken symmetry, broken from any symmetric rearrangement of pieces after a
presumed radical break
i dont care about your welfare, you have what you need the ability to break and
reform, the ability to force others to do so too, so you can read their minds. what
would you do if you no longer could read their minds. what would you do in your
own mind. what would you think what would you do about time always previously
measured out by you in your own symmetries lengthwise and so exactly controllably
widthwise, all mathematics your invention the stars have been lenient to you
compliant havent they do you listen to their thoughts. of course you do in time they
tell you all their secrets you are the great and have remained innocent like a graph or a
snowflake, or a stave of 18th century music. under the dirt in cave unbidden invisible
no name on list in time what a nightmare couldnt have mind read by history by
future pharoahs of enlightenment. i break brek like mountains away into so slow
there almost is none. sitting next to dirt part of one retime without tracks here and
what is already in mind, still partly his, keeps singing, what did i do then and then but
that was to be sequence, after this death theres no sequence, going on justly not pat if
possi how does it look now in areas of if its symmetry well its not his is it can he
read it i dont read it i look quickly at its movement staying still it and i all the
movements in stillness. the swaying toward, hes out there again trying to get in
by saying i need him to eat so dont eat tae benowst. having no sympathy is
beautiful. the best of icons are unpat, unsympathetic are not about about projection
of the superficial only the dee. upon mortuary slab pasts rising up in days going on
symmetrically so wh wh do yo its for fod foo all of it the slave. ddeep deep green that
year, a bit of a story. in the mid did wha, it was because of the baby. there was nothing
else to do because of the baby, who had to be brought to a pass to decide for himself.
thus became tied to the process of money for food. thats the only story really and its
real a real story, where i solemn not mad eat wild grasses and nurse the baby. there is
no ending, dont you know a. wants a humane piece of furniture. honor. but i want
money so i can eat. i dont really have to eat in here which is why i spend as much
time as possible. i cant find out anything unless you stay out. its not a cave church it
needs too much light its in light but cave is a figure on a wall i go in in reaction.
underneath as always there its the same as in the light.
VIRGIN AT THE FOOT OF THE CROSS
is there some loss
connected
with the hybrid baskets lovely but woven into machines,
straw woven with wires, robotic as at la villette
fish there with our eyes but small bodies, treated like robots edible robotics
mice genetically engineered fluorescent for no reason.
have evinced no reason in eras. have not
and within here is there reason. is there
some loss, tracy? yes, tracy replies there has been great loss so great we can hardly
recognize whats been lost, “how do you like your country?”
“its cold. i was lying with abrith oil
before.” a birth oil
and i was born once, but am i now
ceaseless need to care for adolescents, in a black dress when someone needs sex.
we are needing needing what have we ever. all the dead fish, thrown back to
rot because we didn’t need them, with their sensitive eyes, electricity
burning stupid the metro on the way, what are we on the way, everyone
was on the way. straight, so straight
singing in the ash trees, is a too fragmentary knowledge of happiness
remember the 666 that the purchases in the dress store added up to. you always
knew it, said the clerk, what have i always known? that white
peoples houses contain too much water, flowing at will, they have coopted all the
birth or is it rebirth, have coopted it, shit, says the indian, look at all that lifegiving
edenic water inside a white persons house, i always knew it. and i knew
how cold it was to have no oil in the afterbirth
too fragmentary the tropes of a nonfunctional mind. ra rings. goin on, the virgin
at the foot of the cross is simple desolation, in black and nearly faceless, at the end
of eras eras erase all this and have created this sec sec you are that i i c must concen
have you t noticed how the future is always anticipated by letters which will appear
in future words?
plastic cans of iowa anywhere says the invader of houses of water
mind mine, mine is not their developments or yours, mine is not yours, my mind
is there some loss
concentrated, just alive this morn in the after of butterflies in cages up and down the
rue papillon cocoons, worms and les comètes the grand yellow ones of madagascar
scar gas of what keeps us going, throwing useless dead fish back, because
we’ve joined the worldwide capitalize project.
so you preach revolution, revolution, against who everyone, the
figure on the wall is looking at you, if you would simply stand up straight
is that figure that straightbacked saint or prophet or sad
viri virgin virgin free? oh so yes, to be free is to face the world straight on and gravely
united robe not to obfuscate the sex the delicate and lightly
lubricated flower or, flower or, sea life of erect pipe or the convulsed vulvic flower
shapes shared with others those animals and plants
i left the man on the floor with it, someone must care for the young, the
preadolescent children, in a black dress on second avenue, first avenue was first
on it a different care, on second avenue on second there is no change without a bit of
stroking without some sex returned in the chicken cafe
then i can carry the dead chicken, with the vultures head attached too, all the way to
the new houses on the edge of the desert
talk to saint talk to, lib-bay, beau-ty, yes, is the good
anthropos, andromeda, multimedia wind and rain
beauty the good is, blow suffer a blow though? suffer it why, purifying
lying there, dont do another ill. bad hawk scream, aguila arizona, desolate on
the way to a little water appears near wickenberg. there was a stream there wasnt there
lib-by, all of it, come here liquid for pai, pain dance, force not
performed as such, no art of it. thats how painful it was, blew through the
house like an alien personality of my own
sensitive eyes swimming, trapped next to a food counter
blow of force and of life, stop carrying a dead chicken, saint open again so i can see i
want to see see it the message from all whove ever lived
drink jerez de la frontera, cross the border into, into a room of the good
it is instead of what they call god or some piece partial name,
integral, the leaves beyond number glitter like scales or pieces being one, one shining
a union, an un, a hyssop nonhybridian nonpantocrator
fills. fascinting fascinating light of non doom, no doom
mood nair thedniw, come come, hop to in, in the kitc kitchen of breaking cant break it
the good these piece not really a broke al at all, know gla what do the dead say,
mouths frozen throats vibrant they say in the field, near those houses at the border,
in the light of the game where no ones playing, that struggles are becoming nothing,
as we die into a ring around the black sea full
of fish like us, i got scared
and pulled back up into supposedly awake. beckons clumsi the mono, evening
morning star, fluster faster and tear, tear open the wide silver foil lake, the skull
leaders vanish, and we are left with silver water flowing
inside here the good moves along these walls is the lighting up itself of, it does that
rippling band the wind of the color, green or brown, or pupl purple
is there a loss
the everyo the embryo of what we live for to care of. we live to care for baby baby and
go hope your gauge is on empty, so you wont be machine more ingrown
or rubies there of this blood, would make you kill to see it, the blood of martyrs ruby
clas face and see what color, come to stay, axoh, tear eyes
the tears are looking for a place to alight in, they arent rain theyre desolation
the tears are searching for you and will find you
The Expansion of the Self
Tessa Rumsey
Does glass count as a wall?
Does a wall made of glass meet building codes determined in the South of France?
Does French glass reflect the pale light of springtime in the coastal village of Antibes, landscape of plein air and perpetual ennui, home of the author’s first kiss and subsequent disfigurement—
Will local glass reflect Antibes more authentically than glass imported from another continent?
Will the world seen through a window appear altered depending upon where the glass within its frame was manufactured?
(Is the world seen through broken glass whole or is it fractured?)
The kiss had a desperate tone: “Dear so-and-so, you are my last chance—”
Later, unconscious by the side of the road: is this fate?
Or is this circumstance?
Will a lost world spend its last days pleading for survival?
Is there a name for invisible cultural artifacts suspended on a molecular level?
Does glass count as a wall?
The kiss was meant to be a masterpiece: “a mythological experience—”
In tune with Trojan horses: in tune with solar genesis.
Clockwork romeo spidering—along—the outside wall of a building—feeling for her window—the footing getting thin—
Satellite stalking the sun’s circumference: satellite fearing the sun’s hot rim.
Which came first: beauty?
Or disfigurement?
(First came consequence: next, the accident.)
If a speaker is uncertain, can a statement be a question?
Does a window reflecting occupants fulfill its occupation?
Contradiction Number One: we are bound by desire / we are bound by the sun.
Contradiction Number Two: my face in the glass / the glass seen straight through.
If each world stops at walls of its interior—
(Where one body begins, where the next body ends—)
Isn’t a wall a way of rubbing up against, of letting in?
Because history is full of distance and endless revision, “the kiss” came to resemble a window on the Mediterranean—
A window, that when opened, granted a view of the world both utterly changed and exactly the same—
Antibes in endless revision: Antibes held in a picture frame.
(Contradiction Number Three: the only certainty / is the uncertainty of ennui)
It would be a summer night made famous by both its harmony and antithesis—
Her face pressed to his petulent lips: her face pressed to the pavement.
How does a person inhabit a house—
A beautiful house—
A house of disfigurement—
(A house perched precariously between romantic and revisionist)
A house now, a body now, seen through, like glass, opened as a window, the air rushing in, closed as an interior, the air wearing thin—
Wall of glass, roof of stone, to be on display yet utterly alone—
Coastal village, a foreign ennui, romeo at the window, fumbling for a key—
(Does glass count as a wall?)
First the accident: next the kiss: then the question:
Does the soul—exist?
Two Landscapes
Anne Waldman and Andrew Schelling
MONTANE
There is a mountain in the distant West
That, sun-defying, in its deep ravines
Displays a cross of snow upon its side.
Such is the cross I wear upon my breast …
—Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
Past crumbled miner shack on quick return
to mineral earth
Shadow Canyon
one ornamental plum hosts in full lacy bloom
a riot of lavender petals
Might have been torn from a page of Buson
deserves anyhow
a moment’s gratitude
or why some mountain yogin piled a three-stone cairn
kuhara-shila-samshraya
“shelters in caves and hollow rock”
to smoky voice wilderness goddess
Mist whorling through limestone crags her breath
hawklike venery her sport
(Bear Peak summit
2:50 PM blowing fog)
When religion departs from the raptor’s wing …
what is lost?
Eagle & peregrine falcon aloft
the poet is brooding about editors—
Which is to say
glad you got here before me
dear salt dark feather granite peaks
*
Spine’s a cordillera of pleasure
American Poetry Page 8