A Few Words for Brad Will

This once or twiceness– but

that is not inevitable– this

once or twiceness as it has occurred

and all that's definite is what will never happen

              what will never be seen again

If death is senseless, life is senseless

Life is not senseless

and not senseless is fear, brilliance, anxiety, delight

is everywhere at once, the furthering of possibility

which occurs at each limb, each point of the body

is an opening or a closing

               often both

(There is no rehearsal but there will be many rehearings)

Each definite moment

will occur, occurs, will have occurred

and then,

we begin again

There is no substitute

              for touch

The News

I am .....Let's break up!

The crevasse was spreading,

usually with liquor

To appear to or haunt in the form of an apparition.

Give up (by reflection of the surfaces

produced by the wind)

were thrust or lured to fall.

Unable to relax or

evidenced by sumptuous living.

I am .....keep peace accords

melting rapidly

The dramatic rise is confusing experts.

People have to be fed but they also need to socialise.

U.S. says it is to publish the names of detainees

I am .....what would you say?

We have arrived

These Trees Only Appear to be Growing out of a Rock

The skin is not always an exact fit. That is, the skin approximates the movement of the body, which is almost the same as, which is somewhat related to, the movement of the mind. It's no use saying someone or something was standing inside in the rain. One step removed. Any of the names would do. We enter this space without speaking. We approximate the movement. Harmony, despite us, overrides the motion. That is to say, drowns us out. Correlation. Oblivious to other options, as in, any of the names would do. Did do. And this too is etched between us. Everything should fit in this box. Everything the sign did not, in fact, say. Is it possible that nothing is possible? Some body part remembered, intervened. It's no use saying something has happened. This spray-painted memory*. Or, arrow pointing toward 'whatever you can get.'

* 'Give me penguin dust' on a house or was it a fence near the lower 9^th ward 10 months after Katrina in New Orleans

I live in a dictatorship veiled as a democracy

[insert 'president' here]

Litch*

If I dream a word, it must be true. I dream the word "litch." Not leach. There is a field below the house. I dream that too. The flag waves, the line continues. If I dream a word, the meaning continues. The curtain is drawn. You are pointing at something and saying "over there."

Where you live isn't an idea or an identity, it's a place. A map is one way of looking at it. Your feet are another.

If I dream we have to get somewhere, when I wake I stay still.

You went from somewhere "little" to somewhere "big." I did the opposite. Here I am. There you are. What size are the words?

If I dream a word, it is this size. This time I dream the word "salsa." Not the substance, just the word. When I wake I open the curtains. I have tea. I only glance at the map.




* Litch is not a word, according to the Oxford English Dictionary.

How to Read a Poem:

article closed. close (save) agenda. delete.
amphibious tongue. ambiguous the rest of us.
a flattering pride. decadent arbors. wrap-around dismay.
I’ll pummel you. forget me knot. fly,
fly away. my magazine is dead.
articulate not. splatter free. quotation mark debris.
ahem.
dark spots linger.

as sideways / the dictionary / a poem

--------------------as sideways a poem gets written:

the dictionary's on the floor again, both of them
are. my tongue is between 'you'
and a hard place, the tip of which
won't hold much longer. this vortex
is similar, is familiar. the lilies on the table
deafen me and I am drunk, not inebriated
but consumed. dans ma vie ordinaire
je parle anglais, l'anglais américain.
in my dream I am blinded by light.

foreshadowing, a dent. something
I discovered in the back of a book —
like your face or a sort of billowing,
a bastard olive, an insolvent crisis. nonetheless
affluence fades. deterrents
or detergents in the works.

These things are not indifferent

These things that are not words:
like holes in
like thread
like separation or simply
distance (from)

These things that are not holy
are not wholly
These things are not indifferent

Something soft and ugly waits outside the door
against the picturesque mountain backdrop

These things are not windswept

Something in the corner (dark) sighs Shrinks
The ghost in the corner coughs and clears its throat, says
We have no national song or dance

(Clicks Whirrs)

Things swing in the wind

These songlike things

These things that are not instances
These things are not indifferent

Naive Extract

to make up for the other title, that was lost
to skip the middle portions, to arrive
on the periphery
to taunt the jungle itself, to take the high ground
to teeter
to gesticulate wildly, incomprehensibly
and yet to mean

to point toward a purpose
to travel a long way, from Hell to Eden and back again,
to ensure the fall of humankind
to remember the journey is more important
than the destination

to experience paradise
to fall
to miss the 'blip' in the middle entirely
to miss

to further
progress

to put the end back at the beginning again
like a tail, to tell it then
to take on these hard-headed demons
to take in the subtlety of scenery as it occurs

the warmer bits will come along at last

Pushing Against the World, Usually

we're very excited
we're very excited about us
we could be riding public transit for the first time
when the mountain swirls above, about
we're delimited by spaces

the spaces are defined by the margins
the margins defined by errors
the errors defined by their defects
the defects defined by default

we're very excited
whose fault is that?

the instructions are the event
the event is the horizon
the horizon is only inevitable
the inevitable is delayed

whose fault is that?

we're very forward
we're pushing
we're very excited
mostly
we're typing it all backwards
we're typing it all wrong
mostly
we're pushing against the world

supposably

height: delicious
girth: rapture
otherwise: twitch and spark

Eden blows up in your face every time

every time, an article of faith, of froth at the mouth
of firmament

this space that should be sympathetic

space: ecstatic
place: stasis
rudimentary:

this space that resounds
and the dent that's left behind