the animal/vegetable problem

1)

I want this song to never end
whatever song it is

     (please tell me
     what pokes through what's real
     is real too)

you do not exist
outside of time therefore
you are always in motion
or
you do not exist

because
there is no conditional tense

because I hold my fear in both hands
I cannot shape it, cannot make it fit

as if you're listening and so what comes next
is a revelation
     snow in my impatient hair
it's not really random but the moment would still be gone

     sound passes right through me

what they say about the obvious:
I want this song never to end
its incipient staccato or
a paperclip stuck into my heart
I cling to each note
I wonder at collision, curvature, incessance
tiny columns of ice and nothing else
     is this clear

say
"everything" could dissolve

 
the skin grows back though it's not really the same skin

     (this song could repeat
     indefinitely)

we have abbreviated ourselves so that we
can pretend to understand

2)

what should not be possible
is sometimes all there is

must I repeat this brokenness?

flying in the face of
swooping/sweeping
something else jagged/clumsy/flimsy
or whimsical
(the third person in the room is 'us')

 bits of me fall away:
oddly lovely and somehow freed

3)

I neither like nor dislike these words
I am unarticulated—unspoken, unbent

(at some point being able to spell rhythm doesn't get you very far)

the ache disappears: a return to the obvious
where a soundtrack alongside this apparent narrative
mostly flatters
this obsolete technician whose skills repeat
this darkening around the edges
this fade in the middle where I forget

I am often hungrier than thou

that same old game

I'll spend the rest of the day making fun of making fun of things

4)

no good dreams
no new titillation
no report
nothing to discuss or decide

literal darkness, not just some
abstract lack

this bruising and the impulse to touch
where it hurts: it's how
we are written

5)

the song usually starts again at the wrong time
so we both in a sense miss it
so we both misplace
what's modified
over and over
so we both start again
at the wrong time, so the song in a sense misses us
so we both are misplaced
so we are both
modified

6)

time is dealt under the table
and everyone loves a bank robber story:

when did I think this?

when did I not think this?

in any other slow place
this would not happen

not entirely dissatisfied with motion:
if you turned around again I would be
     right there

(right there)

Random Stuff, Fraught with Peril: the impression of stillness

Random Stuff, Fraught with Peril: the impression of stillness
   or,
    A RECORD : I do not want to be living in a French film (I do not want to be living in any film at all)

The record is almost as good as having had the experience. Thank you.

Longing is a good starting point for art. It is even pleasurable at times.

Describe: The illusion of connectedness. The illusion of illusion:
   That trumps everything—
Say this again:

(I do have my demons.)    There's lots of dark out there.

Balance is not stasis; it is constant motion.
Closing. Closing things. Tangential. Say something. Enlighten me if you please. On some level I still believe…
Flatness does make for good skies. Is this proof that humans need art? Art does not seem to need humans.

I am sad. Nothing more to report.
Thank you. You make me think things I should not say.

You use these words intending to mean meaning, as in, you point. To where?

Your response is logical, yes. I register your logic. But my feelings are not logical.
I seem to be failing.
I am sorry.
My worlds collide.

There is a long scene toward the end where I remember one sees nothing but a bit of the white collar of the man walking around in near-dark. I may mis-remember. But that is the impression I had watching it. Lots of walking around in the dark with a bit of white bobbing... That's what love affairs come down to in French films.

That’s what love affairs come down to

That's what love affairs

My not wanting to die alone is a pathetic clawing against that inevitability.
I'd like to respond to this logically.
Reason does not keep petulance at bay. (Theory is great, but practice makes perfect?)

and I keep talking myself into corners I didn't realize were there.

I haven't yet run out of wine. But I note I am running low. There is dust on the screen and I do not wipe it off. It sparkles. I note that too.
I am sorry if that was the result.
I'd like to respond to this logically.
It is a different kind of place. The anger is hard to attribute. It resembles the anger one expects to find in parts of the South. The lushness is almost oppressive to a Westerner.

Consequently, I have to say that both truth and reality are illusory.
both are
sad sad sad sad sad sad sad
both are
angry and hurt

I can almost touch what I’m trying to say. I can almost say it. In the distance,

Thinking It Will Help Will Help

     (for Rjo)

1.
an opening/a      softness
all that's left from moving a smashed thumb
away from the married house something
vibrates and I startle a sound track
repeats, I push buttons and I cry
you bring
a vague memory to the table a building or the idea of one
something one could open or close something inaccessible
to me:
the meaning that can't be made can't be escaped
I cannot be everything though for some time
this story began with an opening
a softness a space
made in the body where the outside
can get in
a space that can be opened but not closed

again

2.
I wanted to run away instead
I walked
I arched at my arch-
      rival

I put to and to twogether
I keep looking for everything that isn't there

if you were really stabbing me I don't think
I'd compare it to this:

I want to ask you nicely
to put your insides away

you do not insist and this makes me—

I've been everywhere and nowhere all at once and now I'm here

but why is that not you thumping and roaring outside?

 
3.
the raucous kind of lullaby that wakes
what's dead in you:

that's what I'd like you
to sing to me

4.
I have returned to the place where I lost things
to put things back where they belong

   a slot, a box, a perforation, a tab, an instance, a crack in the
   glass, a smear, a slit, an opening, an artery, a push, a stamp, a
   stall, a stable, a hall, a table, a mark, a miss, an absence of
   substance, a wind, a flutter, a slide, a crank, a sideways
   walking crab, an inculcation, a movie, a mist

I missed

I am startled awake

I am asleep in the desert

I have put things back where I lost them
to return to the place where I belong

5.
     Partial Implosion

from the part of me that knows
how to begin
a line forms here to stand in the wind
the wind forms here
     forms her
forms the part of me that knows
the shape of the beginning
I'm terrified
I'll blurt out something true

I fall apart when I fall through you

6.
I am barely/entirely
I am particulate/reticent
I articulate, i.e. I bend
at the furthest junctures
I am point blank
     I point
   I pant
I am worn through
near the edges
I put

     slight pressure
     applied
     consistently
     to the center
     of the heart

but how can I not?
I cannot wait for the rest to settle
I must
I skate where it's thinnest
I swear when I fall through
I send/spinning
I bend
where most difficult

in spite of you

the darkness is

The darkness is dark, I have given up
anguish for instability. What's re-
constituted must have been constituted once
to begin with. But to end,
to wit— to have given up
the darkness, to have given in
to insistence over instability, to have
stated the indefensible—I beg
to differ, I beg
to defer. To darkness, to absolute
absolution, to the ridiculous
fray. To default. I put my foot
down, I put my foot away. I've got to find
something else to stand on. Or is it
the other way around? I have given up
instability for you. And is this what it comes to,
a long harmonica wail, a few
repeated platitudes, sotto voce? A whack on the back
for good measure, a crack in the door.
I have given up.
The wind comes right through.

Your Turn, or

    That's Charlier Parker To You

I'll take all this—and I do, I push
the button and I remember—I'll hold all this,
what I was thinking. A yellow light
flashes on/off; on/off; on/
off. I'll defend all this, I'll define the quotidian:
moving forward/a similar fantasy/flip
this dark/this easy/this flip, slip
away. Find this left: a sliver
in the finger, a sensation of dropping
in the palms. This is not paralysis.
This is empty and I could get used
to almost anything. So I'll take nothing, I'll have to let the rest
escape. But all that's visible
is opening/closing, moisture or the absence thereof, which causes us to believe
in color. A textureless smear on the window, I'll take
all that too. Nothing of consequence.
I'll refine the quotidian: He has to live somewhere
because he is a corporeal being. But I can tell

that's not what they were meaning.

That's not what they were meaning at all.

Matter of Fact/Matter of Fiction [a draft]

the moon is everything, light gives the illusion
of warmth, but everything
has been known to make me sad;
I'm grown up now and tired, one stammers
the guard rails, the lights on because you are or are not home
is this your town? the wind at the mirror
the space between trees between
I am empty/I am innocent       everything
can make me believe

my feet get scared when
the moon flashes light on the dash

the thing pointed at: headlights in the mirror
each difference I can't forget: taillights ahead

a certain transparency unfolds
in the darkness
a certain petulance
can make me lost because you are or are not home
is this your town? excuse my reach: repeat after me

somewhere there is a box to put everything you find into
somewhere this inevitability subsides, somewhere
my feet are scared

the wind in the space between

this dance takes years to learn and years to unlearn and years to learn again

Take 5 / Red 1

      or: Impatient User Problems


enough is never enough
so I keep returning or
so I pretend:

an empty chair, a blank space
on the table; your words make my hands
funny; I pretend this is mine, so

this heat doesn't count, I pretend
I will fumble, I pretend
instead . . . morning, instead
the road ahead
swallows me up

spits me out

I keep returning, I listen intently
so I can sing these words later a different wrong this time
in my head

some dark synthesis
swallows me up:
impatient    click    impatient
click    impatient    click

sink, swim
repeat

Here there be nightmares

  (hic sunt incubi)

We are a reiteration of our other selves
of everything which is already happening,
everything ill-conceived and wanting,
everything in between sleep and not sleep where of course
Hitler was an E-sharp (#) and a truck drives through
your song;
everything that has already occurred.
The fear of missing out:
add impulse to impunity
irritation, doubt, and no one to tell
which gives the illusion of nothing to say;
my lackadaisical treatise on soreness
(the heart is a muscle too)
a studied ambivalence
(time is flat)
a fist in the air
a face in the window
blinking on
and
off.

I don't have an appropriate container
(a flimsy excuse)
for this tension in the artifact.

This relentless shovel.
(This whisky ate my name.)
This paltry frame.

Then do it again—
all that separates you and me
is a dusty placard, a can of paint;
all that separates you and me
comes slowly unwound.

Here be nightmares.

You begin to hear
trains everywhere.

Suite au Verso

past tense comes             suddenly:
the tissue is finite / the space in the heart
is infinite
is suddenly
past tense

I need new secrets:
this curve
is just like
every other curve—don't look
(scratched out)
i.e. fuck whoever invented death—
meaning
twenty-eight ways
(scratched out)
time does not equal this

drive by and forget

this moon is for you:
the things I couldn't
punch through