Wednesday, March 11, 2015

1.
I steal everything. I steal and find the unchanging roots of water. I founder them. I plash my big leaves on the surface. I plash them below, all the way down past you. I plash them because you can feel my plashing. How did I get there? There you call it, because I’ve always been here– it’s you who got Here. Maybe you’re the first. Does it matter? Sometimes you want it that way. But do you desire it? Desires are worse than opinions. Desires are lies you believe. I am the relief of desire. That doesn’t stop you.

My leaves plash animals from divers depths. They are many and they are me, more or less pronounced, telling more or less the same story. Because I’m not going to tell a story. I don’t want to tell a story, I want to plash my elephantine leaves and watch your amazement.


But what can you do? That’s the problem. You do what I do but if you get too close you are relieved. I am relief. I am the berth of animals, of desire, and the relief of desire. I want you to be amazed at me. Amazed at you. You love to be amazed at you. You keep the distance of beasts. 

Monday, March 9, 2015

Safari

Safari
(from the tape-recorder)
3/7/15

Missed the dawn in one direction
this promise they spoke of, 
mysterious invitation
so glad of a you– 
its persistent revision.

That is the promise they spoke of
Gallatinville
such is the mysterious offer
three hundred years it took to get my thoughts straight
primitive sight distance
crow reportage
Hilltop Road
and it flies in the dark
not knowing what
fulfills.

But that it will
three hundred years it took me
Hilltop Road
blue of my thoughts 
from it from sepulcher
blue whalebacks 
and the light
lies

a spring light.

The crow of unsure light
climbs toward its reflection
the light’s redoubling answers where it may.

Sun hidden behind clouds
blue behind blue
I‘ve forgotten my waltz.
Gunpowder plotter lurking in the woods
I’ve forgotten my promise
back to the
just enough to be believable
the lost woods
it has been so many years
land of white
Celtic snow
Friday

remind me.

Nine Partners Road

a juniper to the right

stepped from the woods.

Pumpkin Lane
such curious fears magic us
you’re going faster than you thought
fast as thought goes

facing
that is the face
Hephaestus
knits

we figure malice

and are
the undoing
of physical distance
we are trapped in
lovers.

Hibernia Road
Pleasant Valley

I answer.

In my lane.

Millbrook:
that’s the place I’m not going.

Lazy lover.

Town of Legrange.

Unreadable notices on the trees.

No Turns

Deer prophecy.

James Baird State Park

Restaurant.

Eat what you find there

Haruspex or haggis

this is our fallen rock zone
trees broken by the wind
from where I was born
how many reminders do we need:
deer leap out from yellow.
Sylvan Lake
Looking for hamadryads.
There’s a man hiding inside the clock
persistent with romance.

Carmel
Fishkill

7A for i-87

Correctional Facility No Stopping

light-glow over the mountain

Beacon One Mile
The Hamilton Fish

Moodna Creek.

Whaleback
and a fire on it.

The smooth taught earth.
Its word bunched up
a little mound.

Franklin Lake.
Drawn out westward
light lingers

weightless
blue rising from the ground

fog area
fog backed up against the horizon

Wanape

the water tower blue
blue letter
steps forward.


Elk lodge overlooking highway
Who is the lord of Pompton Lakes
Who is the lord of this wreckage of land

twilight
followed from malice
go faster than you think

Morristown
Perth Amboy

Dover, where are the pleasant Hessians.
Sylvan Way

pleasant enough.
Better in the mind.

There is no record of denied permission.
Sword in the Stone
Rabbinical College of America

Washington’s Headquarters

Sour smell of steel
phragmites

brown snow
Bernardsville

Baskingridge

Jockyhollow.
I’d say so.

Great Swamp

The place is lost, the little
actuality surrounded by
so much untouched

Deadminster [?] 
Puckman

exit 21 B towards Eastern Pennsylvania
WEST from New Jersey
into the sun
that is a danger
but little more than a voice
telling us
how to say it.
Arrangement of vowels

Dvorak’s
hocus volga

(?)–ton
Northbranch

the sun still sets
ravenous from eye-passing
so much
unmasticated.

Whitehouse
Reddington Diner
Tewksbury

the mauve sky
is a child’s bedroom
it is the hour 
[?]
answering
Cokesbury
tired shouldered

Lebanon

you find it everywhere
where Silo’s and cows
slow-march into the sky.

Annandale
mountains are going flat
the sun sits in a cleft of cloud
setting above the land

Flemmington
Clinton
Washington

What is this prophecy

who are these 

I jumbled my set

Pittstown!

Fines doubled

Town of union

Pennsylvania Place
No Turns

Phillipsburg
Ruffles Road

Not even a forgery comes to mind
Shell gas ahead

this is Jutland! 
where the record skips
this is land jutting into land
the imposition
snarling houses and mean pizza

Westportal
Cattenburg

Fines Doubled
refraction
the double glow
atmosphered
Pennsylvania pale blue

sun adjacent unset unseen
in the blue of the land hides

no turns

Schenectong [?] River

Alpha
Phillipsburg

Sun shining blue down the leaves
missing through the rest of the alphabet

Quakersteak
Allentown

exit 71
to PA 22, nope
PA 33, North

Lost River Caverns
visit Aleph   

seeking the
ice caves

Stroudsburgh

Skipped across three lanes
exit

something Ave
Someone’s memorial bridge
trees break 
the skyline

where we left our bodies

US 22 west toward Bethlehem
meaning what

some memorial
Perkins Restaurant
Nazareth Pike
Moravian College

the old dream of giving up completely, drinking
Saturday Night Dance Party–
That’s tonight! oh to be a frivolous snob
in Nazareth
the sky dark overhead

some road you didn’t follow

Historic Bethlehem here I come!


Leigh University, tell me about the promise
Coca Cola plant
Schulyersville Road
I should never have gotten off here

Pole Star
hung on the distance

this is not the real Eighth Avenue.

*** (Red Roof Inn, uttered in bed)

What was uttered in the silences. They say the utterance flanked by its silences constitutes the universe of discourse. What they don’t mean is that the silences come along, and what we thought was yelling was just a distraction from the silence. That’s not what they mean that’s what I mean. The talk is a bluff. The talk is wired to the mind of unconvention, bearing away from here, what makes here. The thought does not know to what end it is, but is a temptation from outside. The Question needles you with answers. 

***

3/8/15

Falling Rocks
Quakertown
Neopagan
what do we have but the names
Buck County
unturning
Pyramid of salt
no shoulder next quarter mile
why build it here
someone else’s utterance
rattles away

shoulder closed
fallen rock
scatters our heaven
no pyramids but the constructive
oh slaves
I would rather not be going 90 mph

exit 16
Bryn Mawr
missed my exit
glad to be out of this mean place
miraculous turnpike radius
exit 16 again
Philadelphia
sour steel


emergency stopping only
the ice caves remain explored
furtive

Saint John’s University

Manayunc (?)
Roxburough
Lincoln Drive
Kelly Drive

***

Mixed Columns in the four-way center of Government Administration. Doric and Corinthian, looks like Albany, look of the beautiful state that built the churches facing backwards; the column decides. Decides your direction from the four domains of the heart– decided perhaps by that furious god of Rodin, hanging over all the doors in the museum where you stare at your feet. Let him decide. Whatever you are I follow to Rittenhouse Square. The pagan Administration guides these chambers too, another set, the web rises in the mind, someone walks their dog out of my life forever, a can rattles in the alley; lions turned out untame face obstinate directions.
(Rit.Sq.–written)
***
3/9/15

Heel-toe
eight more exits
already
at dawn
because when I saw
when I saw my mother
hand in hand with my mother
lovely polis of it all
all we’d like to be
– to be with

that passive verb
middle-voice invitations

Schuylkill river
Sour red clay
and iron
Herod Town
Bethlehem
wafflehouse
chophouse
-these lures
I entreat the promise
enter paradise
get gas

entering the Borough of Alpha

three vultures
flying backward
contour of this utterance
I think that means three days
divisible into parts
but not hours

can’t help but think what
someone with a weaker bladder
might be doing
in my little water-bottle
but we are so careful

going 80
it is within a law
we misbehave
the unnumbering begins
with the first thing you know
and unravels
a vowel within vowels

Hollow Road
Salt Point.

Wednesday, March 4, 2015

4.
No people don’t have feelings that’s just
how things speak all the rocks in
Estonia a violin heavy on the knees
that crazy dance of moving in all this
I was walking down the street and there 
she was the lady I had been all along
an apocalypse after forgetting.
Haunts the music teaching me to
remember, the way you pull your scarves tight
movement wise with the last of sun
we don’t know when the dance is and knowing 
lose all the good sense that wasn’t ours.

5. 
Green gazelle on the Persian rug of my
mind, steps high like a gazelle, snowed in
sulking in your living room and the green dance
unconstrained, unkept, always for the first time
green eloquence in my absence friend this
swift articulator genius of its place finds
its place far from your knowing needs no looking
after no abandonment is this fluent but the 
cramp in your foot the word in your eye 
a malefic pleasure like Prokofiev’s even 
like Brahms and you thought that was melody

zap! the lie of Being delivers up flagrant colors.