no help for thatpoems by jackie clark

I'm moving.

2008-04-07T23:55:00.004-04:00

at least i am trying to.

am migrating to wordpress: http://nohelpforthat.wordpress.com

it's a bit more chipper looking than this blog...not sure how i feel about it yet.

FOU, for me and for you

2008-04-03T09:34:00.003-04:00

fou

a great new online journal.

my favorite line so far is from Bob Hicok's "Focal point of repeated ekphrastic stanza":

"He came down from the mountain to magnet a note to the fridge,
'I’m not coming down from the mountain.'"

Story

2008-03-22T11:06:00.002-04:00

The girl aligns all the objects in a room. She takes photos. Heralded in the corner, she pushes record and answers unheard questions into a pink and green box. The girl changes colors. She sleeps in bathing suits and thinks up instances where someone she does not know stops her. There is driving. There is no time to look at what’s leaving. There is no time to read about it in a book or underline its shapes. The pink trim speaks to the windows. It swallows up the corners but lets small buckets fill up below. She sleeps on damp blankets and doesn’t move. She dips her hand over the edge and reaches for familiar shapes, unsure if she is lying next to someone she knows. In the grey house there are two beds. One of them is close to the floor, where once she found four hands. In the house on the street with no name the bed folds open and withstands little pressure. Her body as light as it could. She has thinks about water and then packing and then about giving it all away.

Everything's hanging ever so gently

2008-03-22T11:05:00.000-04:00

Automobiles
& search lights

& intimacy sulk
down the Mississippi,

redeeming narrative
structure & direction.

If this is “I” here,
then this is not “I”

there and if we skim
along for long enough

we will outlast
what rivals our

warmly brushed faces.
Patterns menace liplessly

in the grown light,
in rolling side steps

& the indelible warmth
of all or nothing.

A lark, is a lark,
is a lark, lonely

on a empty top
& wants things

that are still
without names

on this flowing penitentiary,
wants to recollect

one isolated image:
a kitchen with high

chairs, a counter
that one can climb.

The Dream Counsel

2008-03-05T17:12:00.002-05:00

Folding chairs and folded paper

taciturn born anticipation

slinging thread crossed and knotted

covering no one, when no one is near

the open glade slides along a metallic edge

a man makes a lake to cool off the land

the ghost show stars 10 little fingers in a plastic case

pink and orange hollyhocks toned by geography in the back yard

the alignment of beetle shells on bark

toad-padded sidelines, their chins pulled tight

acquired by burnishing perimeters

red and swollen and careening

the roaring civilian incident

action waits to be retrieved from those who know better

The Smell Hound

2008-03-05T17:06:00.000-05:00

Chirping from behind the refrigerator

door, degrees varied in warm bodies

& pitching luck caught in garbage cans.

Concession made for larger skeleton hands.

There is either feeling good or feeling bad

or running with explosives duct taped

to your legs, circling around brick buildings

& glazed over by practicality.

Today

2008-02-25T23:29:00.002-05:00

The historicity of plastic molds,
dollar bills, their edges yellowed
to the wall. Festivities occur
regardless. The long flaying
peacock feather. Small paintings
like walls of crooked teeth, their eyes blinking.

Today

2008-02-25T23:28:00.003-05:00

Straight lines wrestle the crowd.
Hints of deterioration in grass work flumes
and the placement of boardwalks by salty air.
A project of unforeseen misfortunes
acquiescing in the bathtub.
We match outfits and stand close together,
our feet bunched up in tiny shoes. The superb
clank of lovers, their sugar moon in the sky all day.

Today

2008-02-25T23:28:00.002-05:00

Reduction of inking and emptying,
each day a different motion stretched.
Hands swings forward forming blush
on little cheeks and each day the glass
is cleaned and the log is lifted
a little higher than the knee, a thousand
buoyant mornings that ask the same thing.
Rendered cuff-links and paw tracks.
Altercations under building awnings
with gold poles, having finally arrived.
Careless meters, the diagram fraught
with conciliation, a constant who-done-it
brazenly rewound and rewound.
Exposition works better than remembered.
The syllable of each word, each naming.
Cherubic plastic scenes, the eyes suggesting peace.

Red Fortress

2008-02-19T23:36:00.002-05:00

Red fortress, I’ll expose to you
my undersides, my concentrating
mastery and derelict non-futures.
Carrying electrical direction as
a frame entering the ordained position
where we are caught. My legs
and the washing machine, a metal
coil and windows below as headlights
return. Barracks expanded slightly
with side streets but always nosed
in the same direction. Guiding ceiling
and descending steps, having touched
another and certain you would never be
able to pull out. Diction and sarcasm
are a constant predicament. I was certain
you only existed when I was there,
disbelief in your alacrity, your ability
to be seen by others. Fair tenderness
opposes inability. I have other ways
to conjure remarkable flooring and the idea
of hair and shaped chin. A weight
looking down upon the hollow,
feigning repose. My back wall against
introduction allies what is intentional
and what results from chance:
the whitening of extension. Serenity
articulated and refined through
fingers like industrial boxes in the distance,
releasing what they have successfully
altered. Journeys and shoulders
and nudge-nudging, a repetitive chorus,
an octave according to blue, according
to the box it emanates from. A constant
intake of ways to get out of here. Ownership
is achieved in bunches and bellows
from the height of a shelf, arms stretched
upward at nothing. Hands open wide again
and again in their well-exercised routine.

Today

2008-02-13T14:38:00.004-05:00

Lightly, without a bottom:
a present, a particle, a plastic bag.
My important impression, intently columned.
Post forward in hope of response.
Vestured space immune to nothing,
approached by nothing.
No colors, no collective baggage.
Nothing to pass down to smaller hands if smaller hands are created.
Reoccurring travels passed the same street signs
because this is the only way home and all you do is return there.
Concrete carousel, a battle of tires versus will.
Instruction has moved the body and the seasons
and the way we cloak ourselves at the table.
Vantage rings over an impersonal place and everyone answers,
everyone says hello and wonders what will follow
as efficiency is brushed over our backs, the fabrication of know-how
needing to be trimmed and postured.
Inarticulateness has resulted in many losses,
many residual handshakes and partings.

Today

2008-02-12T17:10:00.003-05:00

Argyle and wool and other warm things,
moving forward through walls,
through sounds, through what does not belong
to me. Transposing filtered grips,
ceramic guards, manes smooth and unremarkable.
A substance collector on some other moon,
the specifics are cold and invisible.
A walking rubber band returning and returning.
Streets, a fist, square shoulders, only able
to imagine the place that came before.
Auditioning with levers and supplies
you have looked upon over and over
in your nighttime room and compared
against lists you’ve been keeping,
lists that you’ve carried in back pockets,
in folded squares close to your chest.
Instructional biologies, a web characterized by collars
and trains that run from the center to a different
theory, expectation not withstanding.

Secondary Phenomenon

2008-02-10T23:35:00.001-05:00

& twilight skies stuffed with blue, punctured
regionally & lower in your direction. Bells
impressing a heavy construction, a recognition
of what was previous or what clacking it accompanied.
Elemental measurements & potential equations,
adding machines repetitively pressed as items
are swept from shelf to basket. I am creating
an accurate representation of myself, allied
by little plastic bottles with little tiny text
& a group of other conditionals. The camera
is responsible for capturing not for what gets repeated.
A rolling tangent, the street outside my office
is happy in its leisure. It doesn’t sigh or lure
it just sits like a mailbox empty of mail.
Not a posture of context but pressed instinct.

Today

2008-02-10T23:34:00.002-05:00

The lights controlled by some outside place,
sitting in unchosen darkness.
Saying the same thing, strained eyes and readjusting,
this routine weekly bartering.
We choose stories to tell, ones with arcs that reach the ceiling.
We put them in envelopes and write names on them.
Sensitive eardrums trailing through the pipes,
which deposit what they carry elsewhere.
There just isn’t as much to imagine anymore.
One red string.
Blurry and captured particles displayed in rows,
the origins of each described by flicking switches,
opening and closing the light,
revealing a passive mantle full of dusty jars
filled with pennies, their copper faces kissing in darkness.
There are not many little feelings,
but one large one with many sides,
like rolling quartz between ones fingers
or down the ravine, a product of a gap that has closed,
until all sides are smooth and indistinguishable.
The damn a final resting place for what cannot by nature adapt any more.
Instructions only so flexible, like when there is a glare and we squint.
Rotating vocabulary and present tense.
Metal guides its own way through the snow and we watch.

Sol System

2008-02-05T14:59:00.001-05:00

Eloquent fastenings unspun, fired off onto the flatness
of the landscape. The fond herding gathered strong,

evened-off in inquiry. Piveting bridges constructed long
after there is anywhere to follow. The great curve flecked

with instinct and safeways. I am no longer interested
in any of this, joining eventual semblance with clavicles

prominent only in forlorn stretch. It is warm
inside, blinking and gazing amongst what clams

around our bodies. Of places unseen I imagine
nothing or instead an echoing caveat and then

one chair, empty of body. The rough terra
regional to our destinations marred by fingertips.

From the Person Lodged Within

2008-01-27T23:52:00.001-05:00

Dear Foundational Viaducts,

What do you look like in small pieces
and how close can I get before I taste
your chalky soot on my breath? Disbelief
manages to settle here though nothing
is mandated. I have mastered this hierarchy,
this large white space that greets each
evening and looks down upon me, despite
inward insecurities. I long to practice
granulated motions, powdered arches
brushed softly together, gathered
with certain tenderness and engineered
by the presence of my fist and the way
it meets the ground. You provide
too many routes, unmarked and only known
by those whose feet shuffle one after
the other. I have lain in your framework
and made guesses at what lies beyond,
determined to understand what accounts
for the quiet way you allow me to remain.

Today

2008-01-12T12:28:00.000-05:00

Opposed to the middle, land humming
like hamlets, deplorable vacancies and pastures
Settling words, often enticing,
every line eventually leads straight.
Inspiration located outside in unreachable realms,
the insipid caw of something much older
Making sense of impenetrable episodes that are shortened and condensed:
My movie for you where I wave from a distance but keep moving ahead.
No one really sees attrition, plant-life, passing paddocks
and the morning hand which turns rectangular dimensions;
the way we greet what only passes.
The black length I sit behind,
equipped songbirds on the ledge,
nothing is bigger than this moment
in its fatigue like crescent moons, allowing shadows
as its dragged across the nylon, the fists
of endtime and narrow sounds. I am always listening.

Today

2008-01-12T12:27:00.000-05:00

Reason intervenes and betrays no one
as its impetus goes unquestioned,
collecting things that get carried
and make us full of wrath,
like tangible windows, windexed and pondered.
Outside there are voices that do not come from within
Manners approach lithely,
wrestling the plaster that falls from above,
what is obscured in habit:
a large padded body that harms in turn

Today

2008-01-12T12:26:00.000-05:00

The prospect having arrived at the place,
having been asked to be here.
What great play do we submit?
A rummage, ceaseless hand wringing.

Today

2008-01-12T12:25:00.000-05:00

Crest-ridden or disembodied,
nuanced figments belabor the hard surface.
Disbelief, instance, then predicament,
the railroad and you fixing the point
until we are certain there is nothing left that waits.
We ask questions, uncertain how to keep our eyes open.
Our engaged retinas pass forward in repetitive language.
Remember how this story repeats
and stands awaiting reflection.

Today

2007-12-13T00:35:00.001-05:00

And then there is always this.
How desperate it is to return,
holding so much in the times between.
Excuses like cold, like fables for the moral.
Where else is there water that drips,
a rhythmic knot that thumps close by.
Unwelcome drafts prone to backing away,
why one hand experiences it more than another.
Entire cycles crammed into months, crammed into years.
Falling tendrils like parted hands,
guided by what happens to follow.
I am only here because there is nothing else.
Is it worth knowing the product of others’ invention
and the way they drag the net through what they’ve contained?
How long is the lowering
and what resists against shortened light?
I can hear the words that people speak
and sit in restored rooms,
nodding and sighing
and applauding when my brain catches the signals.
I can walk and stop and pass.
There is no other record,
insular and packaged,
tallied for outside reasons.
Nothing has been kept.
A circle burns in unison
and I go looking for a way to put out half,
a certain threat of instability
and other generalized likes:
to forget this cold that pushes passed the window
and the weakness of prepositions.
Without removing one space,
one inexplicably large waterway and what moves through it.
In the middle where the helm is met.

Today

2007-12-13T00:29:00.000-05:00

No outside glance.
Footfalls in competition with duration.
Our green cherries hang generously from above.
The individual speaks of further roads,
unconcerned with one description or another.
My hands heavy and uneventful,
either cupped or isolated,
weighted with impression or uninterest.
These things take time to figure out.
For instance, the way the shingles overlap,
the way they sit across what under it protects.
Sensibility has everything to do with it,
driving through beach front towns made of stone.
The brown pebbles of nature reserves and insects,
houses left to stand alone.

Today

2007-12-04T16:27:00.000-05:00

A series of catching up
and people who make
something small feel big.
Unsmooth stones create the floor,
enclosed by picture books
and other stories told with sight.
Unbearing anticipation slows
passing over steps,
placement oblong and specified.
Waist lines in foreign tongues
tucked under, then displayed.
We are working on a story much bigger
involving double doors and old consistencies
We are enlightened by the passing storm
and car rides across the state,
repeating as a manner of keeping

Today

2007-11-18T22:30:00.000-05:00

People walk with umbrellas
and slow their pace when storefronts blink.
Lines of plastic adapters,
silver welds of rings or chains.
Unexpected rebuttals, instant heartbreak.
The crackle of your mouth against the speaker
Indulging supplication,
a dark season, fed little pills.
Less automation in barren anomalies.
Etiquette goes quick.
There are times when other people want more.
Real estate arranged in hollow bones
Each cage equipped with small passages,
malleable frames
Engines steered safely under ledges,
a false start pushed out in secrecy
Who knows from where you are being watched,
what cache yields what result.

Today

2007-11-18T22:28:00.000-05:00

Drawing closed, drawers
and other things with latches.
Hands as pleasure, nodes of the quarry.
Radio frequencies positioned in lulls,
in the red room where you sleep.
At night I know you are one room over,
my bed positioned by the door.
The stable pride of things called home:
despondent handiwork and paper craft,
a sudden drawing to musty smells.

Today

2007-11-18T22:27:00.000-05:00

We hammer incongruencies,
hangers hang nakedly.
We are herding things,
emissaries enjoying their own friction.
Good homes, help and other extremities
recollected in hues, slightly procuring another.
We hire a hero:

Today

2007-11-13T13:57:00.002-05:00

And I look too,
eating away anecdotally.
It is now a second loss
without immediate reference.
Skin the same, a newly formulated memory.
A history in reference to what is most recent,
thinking less of wooden banisters.
Fibers agile when needed.
Constricting strings of animalism
may be watching,
no longer inhabiting a form.
Precise interdependencies laced up each shin
in the expectation of your response.
What are we knowing ourselves against?

Today

2007-11-13T13:57:00.001-05:00

The shrugging belt rolls under,
displays recovered packaging.
Bars of soap saddled up with cucumbers,
mechanical recognition.
I like finding what I can and sticking it to the walls.
A pristine motivation,
likely rebuffs between beach-side and boulevard
Hearsay delineated under a summer sun.
I am putting the cup to the lip;
there is electing to be done,
idiosyncrasies to disdain.
Pleased when niceties sit in piles,
and cups go behind cabinet doors.
Towering worthy passage,
thin aristocracies sitting between stops.
Observed from the lawn in skeined ambivalence,
greetings from the way experience returns.
Antibodies of urbane youth and delicacy like dungeons.
No end to the length we are willing to wait.
Vespers recited, acknowledging the day.

Today

2007-11-13T13:56:00.000-05:00

Traded fisticuffs for clothes.
Led to rooms with nothing but beds,
each post resembling hands.
Turning back the sheets,
sleeping in what appears to be rest.
I don’t know what it means to be living
in these little rooms, parsing-out working motors.

Wonderwall

2007-11-07T17:00:00.000-05:00

My first non-poetry post.

It's worth it though.

Ryan Adams - Wonderwall (Oasis cover)

Permanent Museum

2007-11-06T00:14:00.000-05:00

Testaments beheld
through glass
& forced facets,
an object’s enclosed
animosity for all
which peers in.
Eyes always open
or about to be,
exchanging inheritance
for protection in a place
that never changes.
Recollections sprung
forth in uniformity--
mouths always open
or about to be,
bearing unknown
hunger, unconscious
of the dark. Algorithms
skirted in green
& trimmed in anagrams.
The formation of the room
makes sense from the door.

Smaller & Smaller

2007-10-24T18:23:00.001-04:00

Abrasions across
caddy-corners,
across irrevocable
dimensions; attention
levied to strips cut
thinner & thinner
in the repetitive
opening wide
of piqued interest,
its tendencies duly
noted, welcoming
reception instead
of gorge, a wider
shot in pocket; no
one knows what is
biting; lesion
making generosities
stare & stare; invasive
practices still not
denounced; & you
less trustworthy
of what travels alone.

A Collective Noun

2007-10-23T19:03:00.001-04:00

1. Unvisited, back door

2. Pocketed whale hanging from keys

3. The familiar driving range, a descend, a wrap around

4. Available parallel lines

5. Holding without question

6. A ripping up, a rug, absorption

7. Telephone with chord knocked free

8. Steel strainer, empty dog dish, etc.

9. A sliding door

10. Knowing as glass figurines

11. Adopted surname, maiden helm, despair

12. Fake tattoos, candid photos, etc.

13. A room with table, with chair, under roof,

isolated from the gusts overhead

14. Gesturing awards, assorted trophies

Reservations

2007-10-15T23:03:00.001-04:00

Like various places
with the same song,
same seat, the same
following through.
Contained places,
judging gradually
& making note while
sitting under nighttime
skies. By day, one
can either sit facing
the window or away,
sun as supplied advantage.
Somewhere the lawn
is still green & promising.
The you in this poem
is far away & knows
that all the speakers
it has ever met
have left, gone to stand
at another precipice.
Primitive only means
not knowing any better.

Pink, plastic flamingos

2007-10-11T01:10:00.000-04:00

A bird flies overhead
& it doesn’t matter

that no one notices.
It is October

& the billboards
are skimming

the edges & books
& arms expect

refrain. Someone’s
hair is lightly pulled

back in fists, mediated
in mouthfuls; the teeth

of something much
faster than escape.

The ceiling is not
glass. Metaphors

are useful: raspberry,
a lion in a cage.

The decision to get up
& go is just that.

Beginnings

2007-10-03T00:36:00.000-04:00

Constant limits like holes in the fence.
This silver island pretending not to notice,
covering angles & indispensable doubts.
The desert reads pages & pages of iconography,
lonely for an empty torso. Right now, an assembly
of sitting & standing & walking through doors.
We have learned how to wait, lending red
to promised compensation, inspired filaments walking
the cement like rib-shaking demonstratives, like an ache
instead of insistence or a sharpened profile in the periphery.
I don't know what happens when you are not near me
& I don't want to--unfinished & intent on holding true:
the strain of looking up or the rush from doorway
to doorway, the reprieve from vacancy & tented constellations.

Travel

2007-09-26T10:23:00.000-04:00

The roadways finesse our tongues bashfully;
through shagged over-growth & reasoned slopes
its roping waves with white arms & awaits
attention. There are markings along the way.
A sense of sabotage leaks & travels from ravine
to ravine, running carefully. Casualty, tree trunks
& trash ironed flat by chance. It is true the day
ends & that a harness is only worth what it holds.
We are belted & moving forward with just a handful
of matches & nothing worth striking, while amnesty
dreadfully follows anticipating open windows.

A List Against Loss

2007-09-19T18:34:00.000-04:00

A brace of proud objects:

automatic gestures,
impeding grey scales,
a step in the wrong direction

Now just reclining chairs & aluminum cans.
Now deliberation.

Without pronouns everything is the same.

Readying disrepair in weighted boots,
inching forward, forward.

The Smallest Pond

2007-09-16T22:37:00.001-04:00

The fledging land lines of uniformity strike again amongst
a complex anatomy of fans & belts & restitutive awnings,
whose sole purpose is borrowed & flanked so that the sky
can pitch rain like falling nickels, all the while disregarding
forewarned expectation & meeting in this circular place
where what is forced is either straightened or shakes.
It is the wind that helps, not the getting closer & in the manner
of the under-earth after light is recovered from darkness this surface
approaches unsuggestively & in unknown conflict. Reflection
is limited to the attention one gives, éclat with modified increments—
a face over looking itself, over looking the road; a fleeting semblance
altering what is brave & posturing androgynous totems; sanctity
worthy of worship or dismay & now with the sun setting
makes the reluctance to peer beyond the rim even easier.

In hearing motors

2007-09-09T22:54:00.001-04:00

turning:
the break

resisted
small light

in the shadow, duplication

what conversation

mouths
having made

similar
shapes before

knowingly placed

lamps

arms reach

adjacent to pilgrimage,

the bigger implication

lost

the window open

the feet of people
I will never know

in practice

the turning

eats

it grows, it doesn’t know how to stop

At the toes of giants

2007-09-07T10:58:00.001-04:00

long round faces

the day large
& accepting

below stairs
behind doors
brushed hair

—moving away

the settling foundation
beneath the frame

doors open & close
& never once
is anyone suspicious

2007-08-06T22:17:00.001-04:00

In a story this would be described:

the trail; the streetlights that hung
over head; trees & something much smaller
underneath; courted in the clutches
of stomachs; what will grow when allowed.

I am not inattentive, reasonably.

This summer available in lengths.

Such as round tables, such as umbrellas
tilted to shade, such as fanning away
warmness from our attentive bodies.

There are things that one forgets, reasonably.

The clicking phone, the clicking phone.
One before the other, alternating travels.

In Toronto

2007-07-26T12:23:00.000-04:00

Another night of falling
asleep, humming over

outside noises, over
imagined attributes

& limited replication.
Another night in restful

presses, respondents
amiss & inexplicably

mute. The pleasure
of thought interrupts

what waits outside
while reoccurring motifs

condition each stride
along what is soon to be

morning. Returning
leaves a sense of departure,

recalling the way the house
felt gloved by trees,

the world inside not much
bigger than a breath.

Of Idolatry

2007-07-11T09:43:00.000-04:00

1. A place where the buildings are taller

2. Light in effort

3. Something to do

4. A caption

5. Bronzing the sides

6. A yard which isn’t big enough

7. Cornered faces in frame

8. You keep the memory

9. Another way of saying without wilderness

10. Something in the way

11. You make the point

12. A feeling of love

13. Fullness in immediacy

14. Where trains go up & down & stop

What the Night says to the Grass

2007-07-10T17:11:00.001-04:00

Like the crack of dawn,
what is prematurely broken

cannot be fixed. Insides nod
off in ingenuity, heat curls

up the underside & moistens
with day. Morning is only

a matter of time. Though gradual,
change begins somewhere

even if it is believed that the dark
betrays nothing. Better to wait,

to fashion tiny monuments
in response to every footstep

that brushes along each slender
strand. Afterthoughts do not mend

but comfort & the sky can hold
as many as you can conjure.

At Sea

2007-06-25T16:31:00.000-04:00

The tide’s return
is what we await.

It matters less
the distance drawn

in lengths of spools,
spinning prowess

& lean instruction.
Pressure pushes

forth through the days,
the yawning fold

of anymore, of driving
through the green.

From here I see
the tops move along.

There are reasons
why the grass grows

straight & why
winnowing pride

stalks around
on long legs.

The sea welcomes whatever
it meets on the sand.

The Difference Between a Coast

2007-06-18T22:20:00.000-04:00

Distant shores open
to isolating streams

while building fortitudes,
something blue & holding

We have been places

But how to get away
from undue doors

to what will quiet the chair
as it is pulled across the floor

Under unleavened
moments our heads

turn & the lights are strung
across & are strung low

& will swing alone inside
the room after the last

person who brushes
up against them is gone

Cutting Board for the Universe

2007-06-06T12:06:00.000-04:00

Through rounded windows
grace rolls over. It is good

to be below ground until
you are not, drawing room

from funneled light to rest
upon this ledge & feel safe.

Having learned to push
our way through tunnels,

this incision's silhouette riffs
pockets of air. There are days

when we are spared, when the color
of sky doesn't change, only darkens.

First Morning

2007-05-09T14:53:00.000-04:00

Any given space tightens over time,
teeming through folds of morning clarity
& slated red light, bearing no resemblance
to straight lines & stepping forward:
causality of purpose no longer with means

Still Life

2007-05-02T16:40:00.000-04:00

Time echoed. On a wooden
floor sequences are passively poised

then parted. Readying loose particles
darkness falls in question, recessed

overhead. One’s skin stretched along
the cool surface, accessed & obtuse;

immediacy pulling the outside closed

What you think about afterward

2007-04-27T15:22:00.001-04:00

Before I leave your place, you tell
me that our time together is precious,
which makes me barely able to keep down
the hard-boiled eggs we watched float
to the surface just moments ago. How
embarrassing, that this word should be
the result of my pants hanging off the lamp
last night. I mean, it’s not that I’m not
sentimental but really one could go out
to the corner anytime of day & count
the cars that go by, nodding to each little
face behind the electric-powered glass
& that could be considered a moment.
Who gets to measure these moments
anyway? No one should be asked to handle
Metro so early, or this morning, Pam
Anderson without botox. I still get a kick
out of buying fruit on the corner & I’m sure
that even the man with the fruit knows
that precious is a quaint way of making
something untouchable. Imagine if he spent
the entire day trying to sell precious asparagus,
how ridiculous that would sound.

Ratios

2007-04-25T18:02:00.001-04:00

I:
like running until my chest starts burning/
handling directives, twisted knobs/
like a clearing & a height & a matching of their time/
something small/
like in relation to/ tethered horse; snow in both stirrups/
inferring history, disclosed knobs/
like notes transmitted by low light, lessening

On talking to the wind

2007-04-25T18:01:00.000-04:00

Wind replied,
I can
no longer
see myself
passed these
corners &
have begun
to doubt.

Good Night, Fuck You, & Everything

2007-04-25T15:57:00.001-04:00

Consistency is a joke with more than one punch line,
for instance the elastic tendencies of our locus,
like if there was no night, who would need the word
day, like collecting methods hinged on pronouns,
orientating around the pronoun with concern for the second
person: a troubled place; an intrusive voice; the language
of advertising. My governing pronoun versus your governing tense,
wading forward, unit by unit. We are building things,
like what happens when eagerness ends, like to want
something is something of lack, like any tragedy could easily
be a comedy if everybody would just sit down. Leave the door
open a bit so pace begs the question of closure, like your multiple
“I”s whereas the second person implies the first. You said
if dwarfed by the universe go live a big life somewhere quietly.
I said if without roles, choose one: solitary or constant. Lover,
I have yet to love you & believe that might be best. Last night
the graves reflected the lights of my passing, staggered & illuminated
like a vesseled filigree, a braided dare unmasked, like infant
premonitions in the friction of two rocks. Roof tops
are still safe places, a very top with one last exit—what is romance
but good lighting, a generalized statement spoken then conquered
or a solitary organ, hollowed but lipped around its edge?
There is a seriousness here that we are responsible for & I can
press it down so thin that no one notices.

Nest & Trees

2007-04-18T10:09:00.000-04:00

Nest & Trees
1997
Kiki Smith

In search of spaces that aren’t white,
interlaying bundled hairs & debris
are removed softly from crevices
of cement. Leaving the world is as easy
as rolling over; it is the wind that causes
my branches to shake, not their height
or the excitement of distance that bends
away from assembled lengths. Stern
but irreproachable, they drop down
to the coolness of your face & yet
you do not look up. You promise
migratory renderings a resting place
far away from intimacy, whose every
angle looks black & prepared to engulf.

Ferrying Forward

2007-04-15T21:50:00.000-04:00

then it was too early
to have that sense

of roundness rest
easily on my chest,

preferring instead
for this latitude

to mature before
we face & look on

As you are walking away toward a place I cannot go

2007-04-11T12:46:00.001-04:00

cold air
I shut the storm windows
I shut the storm out
perimeter of aluminum, gauge
balance balance
the corners here curled
leaning gaiety
hulking under
doorways
a hand wraps around
hence is in sight
peering back
what is April & cold
unilateral with faculties
demands demands
pacified through double doors
or revolving
or none at all
only
a feeling of glass
I shut moving
for you
& ask for mile-markers
devour:
tell me things

My divisions

2007-04-11T12:35:00.001-04:00

The more that we meet
on street corners,
with winter hats & hands
cold with cigarette,
the more settled
our future imagined
projected by my map
of estuaries becomes,
my widening course
meeting your tide,
rivulets of stone into
which this run off seeps.
Pushing up, there is a position
where we meet. I have
used this form before
& shrunk inside
the notion of someone
else’s believing, filled
by transcriptions of things
that came before you
knew how to keep.
Even now I retain
that element of surprise,
threatening to make
names but walking away
as you offer to negotiate.
Leaving us. I don’t think
the light is much to brag
about. It is loss. Intimacy
exposed, then secreted.
What I am trying to say
is that I want to hear the heat
of your feeling without
planning retaliation,
subtle strategies
of inserted cleaving

Moving

2007-04-06T15:12:00.001-04:00

& the sirens expand down
the avenue & then into the distance
& then to every place my extensions
have yet to reach—the same
thing which wakes me & drives
me to sleep & why it is that I accept
this will be here in the morning
after the excitement of having
something up my sleeve passes.
There are phone calls without faces
& making plans that feel redundant.
Nights of creaking by are over,
here it is mostly quiet except
for someone’s car stereo a few doors
down, mostly the sidewalks
look the same & and all the faces
of buildings are signed. Now
just a repetitive nightly thumping
& once level ground skewed toward
doom without a closet. It’s hard to say
what one would choose between
commodifiable sighs & what is cowering
under the couch. These hard woods
speak nothing of desire, they only
buckle, uncertain of stature & voices.
Framework is the easy part, magnetic
wanderings only have so many options
& continually let negotiation slide
down its side. In fullness this naming eeks
out diversions like my quick miss against
the curb, tapping forward each colorless
instrument before perching at the throat
of my ego, knocking at my teeth to open
the sequestered dilemma which reclines
each time there is a stirring & is spun
among street wires outside your window.

Wandering around town

2007-03-25T19:09:00.000-04:00

Navigating the grounds, I am advising layouts
with shotguns, searching between buildings on fire
& the sky filled with thousands of floating lights,

cleaning up after something muted & illiterate
while looking for a safe place to step. I send up
balloons with red-dotted messages, making

giant light sculptures that disappear from sight
even after the clouds have moved across the day,
which makes me forget that I had been frantically

backtracking random apartments & courtyards looking
for someone who could do more than just read my lips
but could also be deaf to my solitude just the same

The Neverending Shredding Project

2007-03-21T14:14:00.000-04:00

Happens even on days when it is sunny, peeling
away from what is evenly distributed & what is not.
There are drawers which hold folders that mostly
hang in darkness. In exchange for depressed teeth
make me a plea long enough for this to develop.
In any event, there are more piles to pull from
& when you can't be there it can happen in closets
or quietly on the floor & will happen even after you
don't care anymore about blowing smoke out the window.
Or it happens quickly after you open your eyes & decide
that you could have been anywhere & the pillows lie
excommunicated for doing their job & the phone
without a message or with one, which reads "forget
about metaphor & feel the floor between your toes."
It is also sometimes a pile of notes, of papers with words
& papers without & papers with one long line drawn across
or it is my bar stool leaning into yours. To say that it ends
in pieces is obvious, curled & fluffed through whatever invisible
chamber exists in there, eating whatever it is that is placed
to its mouth. Always though, we can politely dispose of it,
like the document I made of what I was thinking as you
moved the hair from my face. The potential is endless & always
quite a burden: stepping over snow, getting out of cabs,
getting out of buses. Or it is my imagination, unruly & long
& only coming out in fragments or my letters,
never more than single sentences.

After the laughable entrance of spring,

2007-03-18T19:15:00.000-04:00

the snow naturally returns & settles in sweeps
around; the pencil of another poet still one draft
short, unable to discern how clear it all is while
sitting empty housed & empty nighted, rescinding
recent offerings before they become unanswered
& fearful that it will never stop snowing long enough
to see more than just the blur around distant lights.

Union Square

2007-03-15T14:16:00.001-04:00

Attended, or alone
the high rises
can anticipate shifts
in abated structures
& altering foundations:
the cautious way
your fingers knot
around each other
before risk levels—

In place of happiness,

2007-03-13T16:00:00.001-04:00

little drops accumulate, considering what is severed
& fished from what has been splintered. Bottled palindromes

poled to heating lamps, buckled fast to glances & electricity.
Hierarchies sweatered & softened as time continues,

though my understanding of it differs, or is sensible & nervous
& therefore microscopic next to your motions. A liar sits inside

scratching at what is soft. Reasoning this like rain, I will
sit across from you and carry my face through what you believe.

Correspondence: 3

2007-03-11T09:59:00.000-04:00

To Whom It May Concern:

The house was still again last night.
Today everyone is sleeping & having dreams about birds flying in pairs.
I am breaking deposits with an open glance, with fisted hands & chapped skin.

Absently yours,

Sensible Architect

Dear Sensible Architect,

That which is closed no longer gives but also doesn’t receive;
When you look away there is a pause in your absence.
Still fastidious, the sleeping night lures away benediction.

Forthright & Frank,

_____________________

Midnight Meditation

2007-03-11T09:56:00.000-04:00

There is nothing left to lift, having looked in elevator
shafts & other places where darkness is found. Against
the same negation I nestle, neck-long, undeveloping
what you are trying to create, the grey & emboldened
etchings found around the edges of your figure, shying
& hiding from that which we know to be day. Another evening
of waiting & sending off messages into the air,
coupled with the rubbing up of two cavities & the fact
that you believe in another end. Again it is morning
& we lie breathless in the middle of two distances.

The Blueprint

2007-03-08T15:50:00.000-05:00

“Details are melancholy. The plan is seemly and noble.”

The moments of closed doors,
the eschewed cement of street
corners stepped over & over
by passing feet, a hand hailing
something that will never stop—
flawed in the face of the force
we extend in one collective breath.

The Moon

2007-03-06T10:29:00.000-05:00

I imagine people jumping up & down on the edge,
looking for mountains & then wonder what would happen
if someone thumbed out the circumference of the earth
completely & if we would be cold in its passing, being
something which is shadowed & suggests that what one
cannot see has a surface similar to what I see from the road
or through the window or when you are standing next to me,
shouldering the light that passes over: I wonder how to tell
you to hold fast under the taut sheath instead of allowing
things to settle. I think about how huge the earth is & how
its shadow on the pocked skin of the moon looks like what
would happen if you held a quarter up & closed one eye.

Baby I'm Nauseous Again

2007-03-04T22:56:00.000-05:00

Let’s get out of this country,
away from the ambits of pride
& psychology to that of skin.
Having curled my last tail
of resignation, it is disquieting
to know you are there in the darkness
telling stories about giants
& searching subway tunnels for sound
while I hold the phone
like a secret in the middle
of the night, standing as still
as the trees before the vicissitude
of fortune untightens like the wind
& shifts from static to caution

A feeling which starts small

2007-02-26T16:37:00.001-05:00

—in an imagined place, people meet
& don't have a hard time talking.
I had forgotten, like an exposure in waiting,
& associations stretched & linked together
why it is hard to foresee & expect
after this moment becomes known:
the small pieces which make a person.
There are still many new things to wonder,
like which direction your bed will face
or the way your feet will sound against the floor;
something is blinking in the distance—
there are still many things I feel you must know.

A Small Umbrella

2007-02-26T16:07:00.000-05:00

an
avalanche
once told me to
err is human, but to
blame the cosmos for
tumbling intentions in a
rain
that
wont
stop
will
only grief
bring

Our Heigthening City

2007-02-12T15:56:00.000-05:00

Where multiplicity forgoes general force, innocuously duplicated:
A can of soup, a can of soup, a can of soup, then Marilyn.

If it's all the same we'll just use tinfoil—tinfoil telephone,
tinfoil table, tinfoil tree tops. Tinfoil to the moon.

Let tonight's body lay straight and still,
in either exhibition or excavation. Each ending,

both vacuous and expired but not because of want. Ever widening
revolutions turning toward the sun, which is the will of the body.

Marilyn in red. Marilyn in blue. Marilyn for miles, whose image
creates a feeling of fullness, the comfort of recognition. The cadence

of human movement creating windows on top of windows on top of windows
and ushering away what cannot be duplicated, gathering all that can be

touched and most of what cannot. Sun-stroked buildings in the rapid
vacuum of their projections. Packed like people

who have no control over the changing of tracks, or the pause
in the darkness which makes all these choices easy to forget.

February

2007-02-05T22:48:00.001-05:00

In February, the run-off to the reservoir is frozen.
I spend countless night falling asleep with the lights on,
stepping over salted wooden steps & bird feather.
I am tired of sharing.
In New York, the subway stations are just as cold as it is outside.
You can't believe how heavy the lids get in February,
or how the glare is enough to send any sensible person
right into the divider. A simple belief in the guiding line.
Everyone is driving fast in February and looking for parking.
No one tried to sell me anything and I am insulted.
I am certain I will only think of myself in February
& that you will allow me. Every morning you can read
about killings and smoke stacks if you choose.
The sun is strong in February, casting out over meadows of industry.

Vanishing Points

2007-02-02T12:06:00.001-05:00

I am traveling straight but feel a pinch in the landscape.
The purple mountains I pass eclipse the idea of volcanoes,

Fastened tightly to the earth, hard-backed and shelled.
Clouds move along as warnings. Their fog, a veil

Which covers the modesty of looking-in. I take off
My shoes and pretend to be motherless.

The pavement is still warm from the sun hours earlier.
With all that there is to say I keep a tight lip and write,

“As I lay conspiring, I have lost my view of the periphery.”
“The future relies solely on the distant arrangement of horizon.”

I prefer that we have this time to spend together, conferring
In the heat of dusk about what we’ll do when we are no longer

Stuck out here together, exchanging salutations and arrested
Reveries as the dusk turns to dark. Unconvinced that anything

Exists after this night, let’s remove a piece of our clothing
For every shiver the latent weather sobers us with.

I foolishly anticipate depth during these opaque hours.
It is with the first signs of light that I grow concerned.

Correspondence: 2

2007-01-26T12:20:00.000-05:00

To Whom It May Concern:

Each year I recede further away from the road.
I watch each morning go by with suspicious eyes.
My pieces sit elevated by the roadside.
This assemblage has taken time.

_________ yours,

Sensible Architect

Dear Sensible Architect,
.
A driving-through measures nothing.
The rest is just unfortunate overflow.
The day knows not from where you watch.
To sunder will alter the topography.

Forthright & Frank,

______________________

Conversations on Limitability

2007-01-03T15:20:00.000-05:00

A: It is hard to sit with yourself. Focus at first is not understood.
B: Why is nothing like looking up?

A: Like an arc whose bend stretches on for highways?
B: It is hard to focus among machinery whose precision makes sense of human error and
fatality.

A: I once thought I was a fatalist but then I discovered preemption.
B: Every week I have an affair with silence mostly, but also with things overheard.

A: What I really love is looking passive because then it is always a surprise when I crawl
out from behind my throat.
B: I remember feeling my back up against something once. It was inviting but not
detailed, demanding but empty. I have no use for a yellow room.

A: I find it appealing to count the number of things the light touches, but would prefer to
just remain in the light.
B: What then will be the purpose of exchange?

A: All I want to do is rub two corners of the map together and say that the world is
consistent on all ends.
B: My greatest lament is that the isles are the same in every supermarket I visit.

A: I want to believe that there is one source instead of several.
B: I want to move slowly without picking up my feet.

Correspondence: 1

2006-11-16T15:32:00.000-05:00

To Whom It May Concern:

Tonight is like driving in cars for miles.
Tonight is like being suspended between.
Feeling is something that I do in private.
I am moving fast, but not fast enough.
The past isn’t dead; it isn’t even past.

Hungrily yours,

Sensible Architect

Dear Sensible Architect,

Sensible, as in shopper?
As in, petite with soft hands and mild-mannered corruption?
Staying still does not mean that nothing is being moved.
I’m afraid that one needs more than sense to make something stand.

Forthright & Frank,

________________________

The Canyon, The Audience, and The Stage

2006-11-13T11:02:00.000-05:00

Heavy hoofs of commitment shuffle through the night.
What you can’t see can’t stop you from falling forward;

The bravest of us have thrown stones & felt along the edges with our palms.

________________________

We play it through.
We play for keeps.

________________________

The gape of this mouth will not be made to swallow.

We dot lines across the nighttime sky and hum in the darkness.
We look the gifted horse right in the teeth and cross our fingers.

The Willing and The Accomplice: An Aboutness

2006-11-13T10:58:00.000-05:00

It’s not so much that she ingests the whole compendium,
but that the pieces she is exposed to stay with her.

It is in passing that she notes this exchange.

What is this skein that sits on top of the world
but embankment, which holds the willing forcefully

to the turn. These pieces with their hard stops
make her feel ill, a body heat which cannot be made to quit.

The willing cannot account for these remains,
the ones which marry the idea of a queen bed

and a lone cat-call before the door is shut for the night.
It is this unwillingness to go on that the willing wonders

about. What extends across the river other than light
and the picture of scent and what it feels like to touch?

Somewhere knotted within these civilized systems
there exists an other with opposable thumbs

and an interest in stationary. A possible place—
something to settle this. Who is this accomplice, this idea?

Intimacy From a Distance

2006-11-13T10:57:00.000-05:00

Who can say that the sun has got it right
just because it finds its way through closed windows?

The sound of water means something is being cleaned;
The sound of water here means something is being cleaned away.

Candidness is a trap.

We amass vestiges, then give them frames.
What came before double edges?

Everything is moving water, concave and wordless—
Longing is a deceptive lens through which we see only ourselves.

8 Ways In Which A Marriage Counselor Cites Success

2006-10-15T13:11:00.000-04:00

There is nothing congenial about it.
The most you can do is co-relate,
Become a master of mercurial moments.
You can’t write about the rain while standing in it

The most you can do is co-relate.
People aren't morally demanding-
You can’t write about the rain while standing in it
Principles don't translate completely;

People aren't morally demanding.
Impact can be made and left,
Principles don't translate completely.
At best, compromise,

Impact can be made and left.
There's nothing congenial about it.
At best compromise,
Become a master of mercurial moments.

marriage haikus

2006-10-15T13:09:00.000-04:00

the branches of light
and fullness descend upon
those ready to receive

today: a conscious
acknowledgement of the want
for many tomorrows

Signed, As Ever

2006-09-24T20:58:00.000-04:00

Someone next door is still knocking.
This getting comfortable is the business

of thieves. A straight hanging, a cornered
wall. Which do you think would win

in a duel: preponderance or nuisance?
Opportunities for absurdity and polish,

not like one would be missing anything.
If you could end up anywhere in the world

how could you ever leave your room?
What tapestry of promise could undertake

an arsenal of cigarette smoke and ten
pounds? The answer: a pretty well-wrought

tapestry. My negative capability exceeds
me, no wait, I mean proceeds. I am still

waiting to exchange my circumference,
this box inside a box, torqued in preparation.

I am ready for the white walls you’ll say.

today is the longest day of the year

2006-09-24T19:33:00.000-04:00

1.

once a stain has been treated incorrectly there is nothing you can do to reverse its outcome. sometimes the only way to treat a stain is with hairspray, or so i have been told. this is common knowledge among women in their 50’s who have spent a lifetime trying to erase things.

it is believed by some that the days follow each other for a reason.

2.

your mother thinks that rugs last forever, my father says to me, as if he feels badly that they don’t, as if only it was possible for that expectation to be met, he wouldn’t have to be frustrated by it and she wouldn’t have to be so disappointed. everything is always just an outline for something bigger.

3.

i forgot to mention the dream:

a house underground, an old victorian one with many levels and we have just moved in. there are to be strangers living with us; something you have failed to mention. on the second floor, a young girl with big tits and brown hair; in the attic, at the far end, a man who collects records and lets the spiders put their webs above each crate. i went above ground and outside to search for you and instead met a hunter who spoke to me only by the light of his lamp about how the land was being overrun by fulsome admiration. we were on the edge of something, a cliff, a canyon, a reservoir, something which at night made you feel like you could just walk off.

Concatenation

2006-09-11T13:16:00.000-04:00

Repetition: a trying, a formula

or

Heightened panoramic uncertainty

A talking about; a talking, a bout

or

What is left to imagine?

I can not read what you are saying

Serendipity behooves progress,

as is clumsy this space—

(a real pale by comparison)

Repetition: a trying, a failure

or

Another drink, another drink, a cheap rhyme—

(a form without form)

I asked if you were from the neighborhood and you asked me which
like a nomenclature—

(a source to be cited: clout)

You are painting the round,

an initial left small in the corner

birthday haikus

2006-08-27T21:39:00.000-04:00

tomorrow a list
of things to keep in arms reach
1. perseverance

a corner of curb
from here huge shadows are cast
it is time, get up

i used to not know
now curious circles are
all i notice

repeat pause repeat
it is hard to elude time
repeat pause repeat

2. hyperbole
everything must sound bigger
3.slight modesty

a celebration
arrival or departure
these are things you own

underneath this star
your sign is crossed twice by hope
and the need to go

“you cannot direct
the winds but you can adjust
the sails”: add to list

lonely, lonely girl
independence can be sad
the sun sets in spite

5.gumption: failed parts
catalytic converters,
we are conductors

sun in the morning
a simple view behind glass
[talking] thinking to yourself

preys of mimicry
unfolded like spider veins
something to follow

an ashtray, a ring,
the last spit of fire on wick:
things that are empty

solipsist chanting,
its purpose matters less than
the fact it’s for you

the smell of nighttime
wind as you drive toward the beach—
turn the music up

shallow reflection
like a funnel that broadens
when further away

gated reverence
in an effort to proceed
we exhaust our sights

a blade of grass bends
rocks move under the wheel wells
of cars that pass by

recognizable
a constant reproduction
of what came before

the sound of the radio left on

2006-04-07T00:42:00.000-04:00

fills the house, even though i am in a separate room
and even though i keep the door closed. the flower

has bloomed once, but continues making empty buds,
three if i remember correctly. it is a matter of remembering,

which means affection to some, others regard dinner
as something to fetishize. my dinners begin to look

lonely in their stead, although they are nothing more
than what i believe. they are preparation, they are task,

if nothing else. i have given in— i now refer to myself as i,
and this is the first mistake. the second occurs when i can’t see:

without talking there is no voicelessness, just an absence
which goes unnoticed. what if all a voice does is make you stay?

the willing and the accomplice: “I”

2006-02-05T18:54:00.000-05:00

it was friday and the typical losses were upon her.
from the porch, she watched as the kittens squinted

their eyes toward the sun, and thought about the way
the word “I” sounded in her voice. she realized then

that it was quite pointless to express anything in first person.
“I” to her, meant the person who was responsible,

the person that with such conviction, charged blindly,
bucking and kicking at things in a manner that would later

prove to have been purposeless. the “I” is what was meant
to feel and because of that the willing couldn’t comprehend it,

or maybe not so much comprehend it but actually solicit it from herself.
no, the “I” was something she quietly picked at and never asked

to come along to parities. the triumph of the “I” had lost all meaning
to the willing and had caused her to take extra long glances

as others when they walked by, not to see them better, but to see
if she was real to them, being that she was perfectly convinced otherwise.

it is in this way that she tells a story now.

she tells it to the spiders on her ceiling at night
&
to the junk mail she devotingly opens in order to discard.

she sings it to herself while facing the computer screen at work,
all the while hoping that this time it will have been worth it

because someone else would hear. but what has begun to frighten
the willing is that maybe she has stopped telling her story altogether,

all the while thinking that she was.

this story

2006-01-26T13:13:00.000-05:00

this is a story about not having anything to say.

it is a story that only exists because it can only be imagined.

it is one that is told from behind a door off its hinge; a door which is partially open.

this story takes place under the night sky and because it does it is big and everlasting.

its features are nameless and its purpose undefined.

the nature of this story is conditional and is reluctant to accept acceptance.

it tells itself out of loathing and fear and cares not who responds.

the fact is that this story is just like any other.

it is composed in the aristotelian fashion, but its parts never remain static long enough for copies to be made.

this story is telling itself because it needs help.

it needs help because it cries in the seat at the dentist office, because dying is just like that: alone, with your mouth unable to communicate anything but a gagged utterance of emotion.

it is in this situation that the story's autonomy is taken away and all the story is left with is the ability to think without action, and it does because it has to, because that is all that is left.

this story is about all that is left, about the other stories that it didn't tell and didn't even bother to read.

it is about being unoriginal.

this story used to be about an origin.

it used to be interested in where it came from and why it was meaningful that the story was always made to cry as it looked out of certain windows as it rode down certain roads, why it was important to not only make documentation but to keep that documentation on hand at all times in case someone should stop the story and ask why it was always spotted on busy streets up against the wall of the tallest building on the block.

it is the story's responsibility to say that it only wants to know its smallness, that it wants to be next to something that will make it feel invisible.

this story wants to feel invisible not because it feels badly for itself but because invisibility affords those that can stand it a perspective, not the perspective or a better perspective, just a nondescript one.

a perspective is important because it one that belongs to the story alone.

this story is inherently solipsistic.

it can not believe in other stories because by doing so it relinquishes its own importance, and right now its own importance is all that it has.

this story is about not wanting to be forgotten.

though it will be, this story believes it is important to want to not be forgotten.

held tight

2005-11-01T11:36:00.000-05:00

I.
the waters left behind
dry slowly in the cold

if the phone rings, it is only once
if in this exact spot something was said

has it embedded itself in this space?
is it on the pillow while we sleep?

though WE signifies more than one
it does not signify the same

a WE can exist as singular and true
but only for the moment in which it exists

i am a WE without you
i am a WE without you knowing

reflexive incantations are muttered
&
their resonance falls like soot on the mirror

it is a portion of a portion
that holds the space of you

the space of hometown loyalty
&
pleasure points that are not expendable

bamboo withers without water
but sustains with just a spoonful

in the end, bamboo can be bought by the stalk
&
can sit just where the old one had

it depends on what you choose to value

how important are newspaper cut outs and ticket stubs?
i find that there is less and less to prove:

affluent newspaper tendencies
a prolonged overt suicide
a growing appreciation for small talk

the pulse that ropes through the street from whence we came
finding that it is colder when away

cold is the slow death of your appendages
not for any reason other than a lack of necessity—

there is no cause, no chivalry, no spite

cold can rumble through forgotten shards
cold can cause things to go unused

in abundance, we fall flat when opening the door
cold feels good when you don’t fight it

it is satisfying to be full of compact molecules,

which may feel like lead in your stomach
but have almost the same mass as water

there is a certain satisfaction to be gained
when there is nothing left to speak.

II.
impressions of what is still to be discovered block the sun’s glare briefly

things are quiet now
the clock wears on

those not here anymore do not remember how small the world can be

as is, holds up a lot
or holds in, which is the tendency

not like a vessel but like a missile

how much can the fingers take though, even with reparations?
skin can be tender yet still intact

movements can be made without meaning
&
do not always come from the beginning, or a place like it

being ancillary

a stipulation, a correction, adventitious

not quite adventurous, but close
a knowing out of placeness

in progess

2005-10-30T19:15:00.000-05:00

about the subject she simply replied she hadn’t put too much energy into it in fact had purposely waited until that just waking moment when the day doesn’t feel like it is happening through the window and the gray is still looming above. she dreamed about it well actually heard it while she dreamt and said it sounded like a mantra for condition similar to the overly simplified one she molded her routines around earlier but this string of words seemed to feel a bit more weighty, though she acted as if she did not know at all and in that sense she really didn’t know and convinced herself that the small voice was just a puff made up of dust particles and cigarette ashes that when mixed had the same effect as juicy opium squares, like those nights at work in those idle moments of movement and mindless chatter comforting her from productive solitude. it was funny because she couldn’t place her finger on the year and with each one the green formica remained shining and the display case on its three year rotation. it was looking up each time to a slimmer frame more apathetic or just plain tired that she began to wish she could see herself walking by or more so what those walking by noticed about her own, if they could notice anything about the girl that sat smally sometimes behind the desk.

solipsist missive

2005-10-30T18:53:00.000-05:00

half way up the stairs
the wall the banister
my hands with weight pushed
fall through the wall
dragging up finger tips
through lucid molecules
the spectrum of colors
extended to the door
from underneath

shadows follow darkness
over pace the floor
the gray air makes quiet
my arm through the wall
plucking water and the next step
behind down
without footing in bed
pulling at the elastic sheet
until there is no stretch

the willing and the accomplice: a prologue

2005-10-30T18:52:00.000-05:00

as usual, a vague response was expected. it follows then that what must be done
to fully understand the point(s) of what is trying to manifest should also be expected.

the only basis that a conclusion can be drawn on is tone and while the willing
wants to believe the tone to be laced with sweetness there are moments

when just the opposite appears to be the case. of course, there is slight joking:
this is to be expected. normally, the willing feels like her actions should be defended

to the point of finding the loophole, an escape from situations that leave her inadvertently responsible for the emotions of others but today she sees no reason to defend herself,

and, on the contrary, it appears that the willing deems it unnecessary. the willing
sees no reason why she should not love the accomplice, being that she has all along

and while this conversation seems to be leading up to the sex issue, physicality means much more than that to the willing. she apologizes if there has been a misunderstanding.

the willing is searching for absolute companionship, while sex, _________ the meaning of it. That being said, there is a somber cloud that haunts the willing, a melancholy

so great that it burrows back behind the liver (R.E. The Anatomy of Melancholy -Burton) where no corporeal answer can reach. so it is. but what the willing has learned

is that it is better to attempt those things that can be achieved and in order to do so
one must change approach and expectation. the willing has known for many years

that the accomplice was the closest she would ever come to finding someone with a similar problem and that because of this similarity they are inevitability stuck playing

the same card-game with one another without ever being able to declare a winner.
this the willing is sure of. but as far as everything else goes, the willing cannot tell

if the actuality of existence has anything but slight meaning and yet she has resigned herself to follow the popular formula of living, which requires degrees and money

as well as future stability. it is here that the lives of the willing and the accomplice cross and pose practical problems. in the corporeal world there are problems and to reiterate

a point made by the accomplice, the only solution is and can be time. beyond
that the willing does not know how to make any situation they experience together

more natural and at times even, she feels that it is only natural that they should collide with one another for brief moments in order to escape the pollution and taint that stains

mundane living-relationships. the willing has learned that absolute companionship
can and must exist sometimes without encouragement, that it must essentially

prevail a midst decisions that are made naively and with haste. it is here
that the willing finds comfort and hopes to eventually reach the accomplice.

How the Canvas Was Made

2005-08-02T12:16:00.000-04:00

noise in the light that shakes

glass makes contact below

the bottom makes contact

below, lifting and lips echo

strung lights— an artifact

of tables, flags in hand

removed from needing to

hang, sovereignty need not

be recognized. dark wood

reflects the maps of faces

with no place, feet stretch

to see who is first—

swing echoes swing of stars

Fashion and Empty Love: Who Said Behaviorism Doesn't Work?

2005-08-02T12:11:00.000-04:00

(Stark room, one chair facing panel desk with four chairs, though no one is sitting, Girl #9 is front of the single chair, Screening Room Security General in front of the desk facing Girl #9, while three lackey, mongrel looking men are behind the desk dressed in uniform, the one on the left has a lazy eye)

Screening Room Security General:

Well, it is nice to see that you are interested in your appearance. We were becoming worried that you would walk around with saggy bottom pants forever.

Girl #9:

There was something about the original suck that put me off. I have come to find comfort in the way I can no longer release.

Screening Room Security General:

Good to hear, good to hear. We are always quite pleased to see a girl of your age come around. Usually by this time, their hair has been frazzled by constant electric conductivity inquiry and their hobbies have been reduced to throwing entire slices of bread at squirrels as opposed to the more appropriate, yet ever somewhat unsettling, tradition of throwing crumbs. This is very pleasing indeed (circus clown grin that is commonly understood to frighten small children).

Girl #9:

And about the boy…

Screening Room Security General:

Yes? What about the boy? (provokingly)

Girl #9:

His string of um…(looking for the right word) showmanship? (not a good enough word and she knows it) Not as offensive as previously thought? I mean, he goes to the barber every week and has been for some time.

Screening Room Security General:

Why he’s not an issue at all (same circus clown smile, we see the huge horse teeth this time). The boy’s packet is incomplete. No references, can you imagine? (gesturing as if such a thing had never been heard of) And you know what that means, no surface. Only subsistence. He didn’t seem too upset though, he went on talking of the failure of the bell curve just the same. But you young lady, what progress! In no time we will have you entertaining (exhibiting the excitement he feels Girl # 9 should be feeling). What do you think of that? I am sure that you will find it to be much easier, now that passion is a thing of the past.

Girl #9:
I was thinking (modestly, mouse-like, or whatever comes more naturally)… I was thinking of trying something with heels, makes conversations conclude quicker, at least that’s what I have heard from the girls up top. We’ve been practicing in the halls at night and have found that taping our toes together makes them easier to step on.

Appropriating Reference

2005-08-02T12:09:00.000-04:00

A
non
specific
article for
referring one
to general but
often unambiguous
referents further away
belonging only in space
existing of many whose likeness
can not be separated: a lonely wail
through my speakers, not the lonely wail
there is no ownership—to be a the instead of a a
fixed with present and possible future, definite past
unfurling among stories of conviction and pressed upon
books that make ideas and give way to singular instances
relief in other words for the anxiety of catching the right bus

Supplement

2005-08-02T12:07:00.000-04:00

1. Remember that Odysseus’s scar remains even when he returns home.

2. The highway will always be backed up; the side streets came from necessity.

3. In this way time welcomes a pause.

4. Carrying enough supplies in one bag for this trip poses pragmatic problems.

5. This does not imply that attempting is purposeless.

6. Someone will matter-of-factly look older, yet may still be wearing the new fall color: Raspberry.

7. Smoking is really only okay once everyone is asleep but if you choose to disregard any of
these, this is the one.

8. Inconvenience will not be tolerated; learn from the pine tree, which was removed after leaving traces of itself on the car hoods below.

9. “ ‘As is’ suggests the distance from perfection that the object has traveled through the course of time.”

10. Time is impressed deeply upon this.

11. In the closet is a fur coat that used to get rubbed by little hands; it has been suggested that wearing it might invoke them.

12. The numbers that are programmed now will reach people much further removed than you realize.

13. When there is a lull, as there invariably will be, topics may only include: stupid and/or silly pet stories, the discovery of arachnids or other unwanted creatures, television.

14. There are no longer any ashtrays provided.

A Setting for Imitation and Actuality:

2005-08-02T12:06:00.000-04:00

In the bed there is a body. It is a room with no door.

The lack here implies openness. The lack implies loneliness.

There is a desk with a chair, a couch with coffee table, a reading lamp for the evenings.

Despite the horizontal wish for language, it still only descends vertically down the page.

The book Mimesis lies open on the coffee table, holding with it Auerbach’s lonely nights
in Turkey, slightly buttered bread, one thin candlelight.

There is a mirror that reflects the markings of the body.

A collection of photographs of America aging line the ceiling.

The Romantics (the main aggressors) will imagine the marks as being self-inflicted.

The way blade marks across the ankle are beginning and ending lines, a definite existence
of pain, even if short lived–the way the Romanics would appreciate and prefer
something the length of a band-aid.

Even if just for an instance–for the experience they will say.

The markings themselves though (the audience will know) have been historically
predetermined.

Each blood clotted bruise is built from the semiotic space where the reader/viewer has
aged and accumulated in the same way that their facilitator has.

The markings in the mirror are counted and photographed, recorded and positioned
opposite the mirror.

The mirror is used to reflect something that gives pleasure from its
doubleness.

In this way the markings will become the anti-heroes of the drama.

the willing and the accomplice: a succession of frames

2005-08-02T12:05:00.000-04:00

It’s a relatively easy task was the first thing that she said. Actually, it was the first thing that she wrote. She had been up all night. There was no real reason to be writing now. Many choices have already been decided for her. She writes anyway.

It was easy, she said, because it didn’t matter anymore.
It was easy because it was all inside of her.
It was easy, she thought, because she could get at it anytime she felt ambitious.
This she was sure of.

But what happens, unbeknownst to the willing, when you are so sure of such things is that you fail to continuously imagine the future as being something other than it is and because of this the willing had not only failed at imagining herself at a different junction in time, but she had indefinitely deferred the conscious voice which tries to actualize those junctions. The willing (un)fortunately moves on just the same, trying to get at the voice that sits inside.

She knew that once she could (re)create her voice the words would come out sounding just the way she remembered them, the way ‘I just wanna go holme’ sounded on the bus with _________ on the other end of the receiver. But what the willing did not know sitting inside the bus was that her location was a precise point in a frame that made up that particular moment, and the bus sitting on Route 4 was the frame around her, and each position she held was a frame inside another which was forever once removed from the last, and because her frame never had any preconceived notions of itself it could never schedule an alignment of this succession, an alignment where her apogee could clearly be viewed.

the willing and the accomplice: reveries and suppositions

2005-08-02T12:01:00.000-04:00

There is a hole in the story; a shade. On some days there is time, he said,
but what time there is never adds up to anything much more than halves.

In this hole, the accomplice is the accomplice only without the name. He is
something other than what she knows. Often times the weeks go by and the willing

goes with them, taking the whole of what she knows to be herself as well as the he
she knows the accomplice to be, only this does not make the intangibles that she takes

with her any more real and in fact the point could emphatically be made
that the intangibles she takes with her are more imaginary and self-consoling than the

willing could ever realize them to be, even on the days when she is furthest away
from the ego, from her geocentristic blind spot. There is a hole in the story

because she refuses to make it complete. The accomplice has had no choice
but to create a story for himself where there is elliptical resonance, a place

where movement and speech have direct dependency on one another, always being
interchangeable and reflective, never being incongruent and falsely represented.