THE IRREDUCIBLE FOREST


Truer presupposed

the entire town
collectively imagined
him as a revenant . . .

a flesh house dragged through the waves' shadows

soul-ly sick, and insincere

coming out as he did
of the dark hovering solitude
in the prime minister's

hazy mouth

Or up on the surface, where the commodities
rang like happiness, bats a-snooze in the lee of some real smiling

Sunshine . . .

A cluster of macrobiotic
fully involved "world" wars
masquerading as free radicals
developed a hunger (en masse)
for “breast” interruption . . .

Not a soul would have guessed she was so sorely needed

her eyes sinking, like an intention of water--
two church windows:
moon rolling across the surface of the sun . . .

The mistress wasn't disconsolate . . .

Imagine

under all those feathers the unyielding narratives of disinterested matter

and a wistful appreciation
for beastly preliminaries

tumescence of consciousness in each ogling body

and each breath, like an inside-out cave--

those miniature ice tombs--

pointed a path out of those unimaginable woods

ETC., Etc.


"You can close your eyes now.
I have heard your cries, and cries before yours,
and the demand behind them.
I have shown you what you want:
not belief, but capitulation
to authority, which depends on violence."--Louise Gluck

TIME


Privacy. I'm not sure what that word means, really,
for most people. For me it is something very close to
Salinger-like. First, when the demands of public
life crowd out your creative space, to mangle a
Franz Wright phrase, "bad things happen when you
don't write, dolphin." I seem to be a breed of human
who defines lack of privacy as "the presence of an idling
car anywhere on my block." In one ecstatic dream
I had a few nights ago I lived in a cave with a huge
stone tub of fresh water and a Royal typewriter.
Months went by where I was allowed to live inside
my own head, with occasional hikes, glimpses
of vultures busy on the horizon, lizards casting shadows
over gray stones, complete with naps on a hard
flat of sand beside a brothering willow. I'm just bitching
a little because I've been deprived the solitude to
make my little machines of words, and it's making me
crabby. But really, it's time. Time to make time.

***

"Sometimes a man or woman forces his despair
on another person, which is called
baring the heart, alternately, baring the soul--
meaning for this moment they acquired souls--
outside, a summer evening, a whole world
thrown away on the moon . . ." --Louise Gluck, The Wild Iris

***

something by John Olson right here.

SAY MY NAME

000000000after Tulsa, a book of photographs by Larry Clark
1.
Even in jest, when the boy in the film points a gun at the
000girl, when the boy points a gun in the mirror . . .

When the boy points the gun at himself before the mirror . . .

Glottis in the woodwork, a reed’s birth of noise,
Blood running off the machinery, lights coming on at
000the edge of the city.

Why don’t you shoot that thing, she says, lost in a swirl of
000cigarette smoke.

2.
One way to stop a salmon is with a shotgun.

She floats over the world, a galaxy spilling
From the hole inside her.

And the planets are prayers flying out over the broken water.

3.
Leather, bare-chested, dowsing toward the girl.
Then he puts the barrel near his mouth and she feels it.

She thinks of snow falling like breath on her heart.

She wants to grow hot like a gun.
To grow hot instead of a gun, the way a gun grows hot.

The way a gun can’t talk.

4.
Your bird can see. It sees what you can’t. The Milky Way,
000ice in the trees, a skyscraper
freeing the beads from the rosary . . .

Epilepsy pours out of love’s open eyes.

GRAVITY

Center, how from all beings
you pull yourself, even from those that fly
winning yourself back, irresistible center.

He who stands: as a drink through thirst
gravity plunges down through him.

But from the sleeper falls
(as thought from a motionless cloud)
the abundant rain of the heavy.

000000000000000000Rilke

SWEET AMNESIA

stella radulescu

I am on my way to the door

Open it

It's open he said and closed his eyes morning came

And the sun

Blinds me00000people run out of food

Out of time

They don't remember don't talk don't rush

They are missing their turn

To something better cheaper more beautiful . . .

I forgot the name of all the birds0000if they want to fly

How are they going not to


Who killed first and lasted for ever?

IN TOWN, OUT OF TOWN


At least there is this reading to attend at
AWP. For a moment I thought it was here--it's not.

And the American Hybrid reading, followed by the
arguments buzzing around the idea of the anthology
I ran into at several turns . . .

I always end up feeling I could have taken the same
time off to go to this, and could have written. But it
was good to see Martha Rhodes, Mary Gannon, Mr. Gallaher,
Halliday, Sarah MaClay, Malena Morling, Dana Roeser,
Rob Haight and David James, David Hernandez and Lisa
Glatt, Beth Martinelli, Denise Banker and Patricia
Murphy, Meg Kearney, Richard Greenfield, Cynthia Hogue . . .
and more but I'm nodding off . . .

I really REALLY need to pack in some solid writing
time . . . or else . . . well, I don't know what. It
won't be pretty . . .

READINGS THAT END


The Dumanis reading has come--it has coasted
on by. It was very good, I thought, so . . . well, I don't
know . . . Sorry if you missed it I guess. Here at the BIG I
we have our very good readings and our not so good
readings--it's all part of the nature of this thing
we call, with little implied optimism, I must say,
A Reading.

This was a pretty good one.

Meanwhile, it is thundering, and the rain is whipping
sideways. You can't complain about the variety
of weather here in the BIG BEND.

19 below one day, 65 above the next, rain smacking
you flat in the face the next. Yumm.

Now, tomorrow, I head to the BIG AWP.

I have my usual mixed feelings, partly because I
have to stuff my suitcase with work to do, partly
because I have this phantom sense I'm escaping
something (I'm not--I'm heading into the EYE of
the storm), partly because, in a way, I DO get a break
from the usual grind (or seem like I will),
but, shit, I'd love to just sit down and write
three or four new poems instead. This is how
it works with writing and extra time. Work, sleep,
eatng, writing . . . No time after that. A little fishing
perhaps, playing cards with a narwhale . . .
There are people it will be good to see at this
conference.

At one point it looked as though I'd make it to
The Windy City (make that The Big Windy City)
at 2 or 3, but now (I've got obligations) it looks
like I'll be rolling in at about 6:30 (on Thursday)
--time enough to find the name tag I will certainly
struggle to wear, and let night come on . . .

Whatever that means.

Now I must get out my red pen so I can at least stroll
through the Book Fair once or twice for all the dough I'm
spending to get to Chicago . . .

It just thundered again.

ALMOST THURSDAY

Two poems by Jack Spicer

For Robert

The poet
Robert D.
Writes poetry while we
Listen to him.
Commentary--follow
The red dog
Down the
Limit
Of Possible
Quarterbacks.

A Postscript for Charles Olson

If nothing happens it is possible
To make things happen.
Human history shows this
And an ape
is likely (presently) to be an angel.
If you dream anything
You are marked
With a blue tattoo on your arm.
Rx: Methadrine
To be taken at 52 miles an hour.

I'M EVEN MORE HUMBLED


The Wrestler/ 5 stars (not very often that the hype, seemingly
000overblown, isn't adequate to a movie like this--everything
000they are saying is true--this is one of the best of the decade)