(Umm...)

To begin writing there has to be a source.  I don’t know how to see it any other way.  The sky is like pavement today.  If it crumbles, what remains?  Prose is just a way of thinking, much like being trapped in a body.  From this distance the surface of the moon is not visible, but it is there whether we choose to imagine it or not.  In the night we think otherwise.  In the daylight, hunger vanishes & we can resume our parallel skirmishes.  If this is a letter, it is an odd one, not being written to an occasion but fingering, perhaps, a process— a means of looking in & out at the world while also writing in it.  The epistolary presupposes a ‘you’ which, as you know, is sometimes risky.  Yet what is risk but some mad form of hope, a joyful violence, & also the opposite of what one expects?  You do agree, I know.  Life is longer than one expects & yet moves too quickly— so that childhood may seem like days ago.  Yes, that’s what I’m saying: to proceed there has to be a way— a hard road of fructuous starts.  The novice, in some ways, has all the fun— every day can be a new discovery, a rickety shangri-la, a hot tub in the urban glen.  Without that, we run the risk of usefulness.  Would you aim your slingshot at a lightbulb if you knew it wouldn’t burn your eyes?

To begin writing, there has to be terror. To begin a letter, there has to be you. I know you know the risks, but do you know the consequences? There is movement and there is motion. There is tension and there is direction; there is artifact and there is artifice and then there is this: distilled, that is. The phrase "let's dance" comes to mind. Some mad form of content, some sad form of contentment, some lack in the middle or in between. Freaky, yet—inconvenient. No, to begin writing, there has to be an error. There has to be, pardon me, a slippage or at least some cleavage or some sort of sundering and so on.

To write you have to misstate the apparel without fear of being mistaken for what you already fear.  Upon reflection, everything is solid glass, a piece of spittle.  The you you are has already been mistaken for a character, some easy trope in the means which have no author.  A dead bunch of names.  Run with it.  But if I summon, would you still transition to the means of pantomiming without much evidence?  To heave the bulk of solid motion at an already tender word which frays it.

We leave the bulk of solid motion behind. We believe it. We arrive or we depart; we have already been mistaken for a piece of glass, for an easiness which belies our fraying. And yet we stay. We are allowed to carry or we are allowed to extend, we are allowed to misstate the evidence to the contrary. We set this aside and take a deep whiff. Another time, we would have called this "home." Now we call it anticipation. Ouch.

I'm doing headstands and pushing things away with both hands. Tied behind my back. I'm above it, below it all. I hope to escape soon. Meanwhile, the ocean pounds at our primordial somethingorother I'm sure of it. Take me at my word.

When did my car become a kleptomaniac?

Those boys, you know, are on fire. The squiggly lines

between two stick figures represent

love (a relationship), radiation, or perhaps just a funny smell.

The way those boys would tell it, it’s open season

on downhill tendencies. The way gravity works

is very much like a bunch of squiggly lines

all headed in the same direction. Those boys

you know are all on fire.

The rest is obvious, heartbreak and the like. A remix of you.

Chaos usurps the obvious. The way gravity would tell it,

the end is nigh or the end is night, depending on how many letters

you want to use up. The squiggly lines between two stick figures

represent the difference.

The difference is obvious, gravity and the like. The way

the squiggly lines between two stick figures

represent nothing. Meaning is just something

we create while imagining

it is something we seek.

Here's a list of words you may be looking for (Or: Slant Opposite)

The line therefore appears to slant in the opposite direction. I need a single-word antonym

for environmentalist. Why? If the eyes are of the opposite slant i.e. slanting downwards, the person

may be a little self deprecating and at the mercy of others. Simply entering the opposite world

doesn't mean one is suddenly subject to that world's physical laws, and inanimate objects to dominate and control the opposite sex. Place the hip line at the halfway point of your balance line. The shoulder and hip lines slant in opposite directions, creating a sense of movement just like the

Surfaces differing in inclination could be discriminated with shorter presentations

In addition, most horses that stand away from the wall in an open trailer don't position themselves on a complete slant with the butt against the opposite wall like Sometimes a child with wise eyes is born. Then some people will call that child an old soul. That is enough to make God laugh.

Or,

I need a feeling to go with this word I so desire, I need this world I so desire and the sounds that describe it. I need a hip line and a halfway point so I can measure the mercy of others. I need physical laws to define gravity so I don’t float away. I need a sense of movement. Defined. I need a definition of direction so I can stop repeating it and just float away.

Pre-Apocalyptic

1.

The event precedes any actual event, it’s more like the foretelling of an event or the idea of a possible event. The event exists only in the future. The idea of the event, however, exists now.

Since the event exists in the future we are uncertain about the nature of the event. Perhaps the earth has moved or the earth will move again. Perhaps fire; perhaps flood. Perhaps none of these but an insidiousness that wraps like fog around everything and nothing is ever OK again. This leads us to believe that nothing has ever been OK.

Nothing has ever been OK.

Nothing will ever be OK again, in the future. But maybe there will be a dog; no blankets but some jackets; someone to help you steer. Maybe we can hitchhike together and end up somewhere, either uphill or downhill from where we are now.

2.

I have sometimes imagined things into existence. By “things” I mean not just events, but emotions, a series of actions and reactions and promises or confidences compromised or broken all because of my imagination and my desire. I refuse to stop imagining. I don’t believe it possible to stop desiring. So I must continue to walk. Now, I have a companion who will match me, step for step. This is not the dream speaking, this is real.

I do not wish to imagine things into existence, except when I do.

I sometimes have imagined things into existence. “Things” take place in the desert; “things” take place in the snow; “things” take place in the future and in the past and on couches in houses we later only somewhat remember. By “we” I mean we. Things take place and then, when they’ve happened, only fragments remain. There was a moment when I didn’t have to imagine.

3.

And then sometimes I want to scream. And then someone shoots, again. And then, exclamation point.

4.

“And then she/he/it/we/they woke up” is not an option. I don’t know who anyone really is. But at some point below “zero” the temperature becomes abstract. The pain does not. I keep staring. I keep staring at things. Nothing changes. Nothing remains.

Just off the left

Just off the left edge, or

          Uninhabitable

Let’s all pretend to be special despite this

lingering sadness that we can only live or be in one place at any time

be advised, the drama was not quite what you anticipated, nor

            was the event

on the face of it a simple matter of elements (wind, fire, water) and our need to be

            at the center of it all, untouched

My map throbs with your attempts to live or are those my attempts to articulate

 something I’ve already lost

How I want to touch, touch

How I want to take       take            how I wanted

 to put things where they belong

Over there,

when something really happens, it is slower and more plodding

            than we have imagined an emergency or an event might be

a simple gap in the ordinary, that is,

 this is inevitable; so I’m taking out all the names and all the things that happen days get shorter, less light, more darkness

more time to brood

some part of heroism is deciding when to be big and when

            to shut up

and be small