Middle Harvest, Final Harvest
a title brought
to mind by the Gaeilic
names for September & October
for these were the months in which the Autumnal reaping
of moods revealed
departures from the imaginary Ireland of this Summer
wherein I released
my hold on the idea of an isolated island life,
Meán Fómhair, Deireadh Fómhair, names for other times
and so with letting go of dreams, in the Taoist Wu-Xing
calendar
meeting with the metallic urgency of 金
and with this Golden Autumn in Poland,
the premature, unwise,
scraping clean of the forest
amid protests and resistance of activists
in the old growth forest of Puszcza Białowieska
as if an unacknowledged
struggle between species were underway...
*
Annoyments of Resizing
signal to me
your relativity
& my bane of decisions
never leaving peculiarity aside
disassembling incisions
only to cut & hastily
paste them back
into leap space gap across
the paradox of density
where infinitely
tiny slats occupy
fractal galaxies of
unknown inbetweens
blocked from view
& driving language
mad with reversal
trying to top the
arrow of time
*
The poem, I guess, is some place I disappear within.
It's like a sound that doesn't quite exist made by nothing
quite there yet hard to ignore,
too soft to ignore, like a cat's paw
upon the yielding straw
where the perishing of the universe
bends the bending of the universe perishes,
the curvature going flat.
*
Up to 11
out of the anti-fa and into the fire
being correct is always politically so
as when they comment on a music video (ee0-ee0)
"ah, everything in Iceland is perfect!"
every emotion is perfectly expressed, every street-volcano
top-notch, clean and snow-glistening, all politically tight,
cute as the dandruff on Bjork's shoulder, blackened
so they say, deep up into the northern lights,
there is an effect derived from being relentless
Mika Vainio, dead in the trenches of techno
& would that be what you mean
by politics-- made of snare drum, horns, you know, marches
fajerwerki, ragged glory holes, 21 gun saloots
versus random laborious bubbling
as if philosophy meant exhausting a series of pertinent questions
while whatever stumbles to the wayside
& "whatever" comes to mean "so what" and "fuck
off"
it's always less shocking to report, rather than witness,
something which almost always happens to me
quite different than something which "almost" happened to me
(which never squander'd my flesh)
in that the "something" concretely befalling others
I have seen or felt nearly (near to me)
in the place of all these people
happens nearly enough to become personal memory
and the ironic "whatever" dissolves
into an objectivity (no one experiences)
like turning the resonance up to 11
& the fray shudders inside the letters
standing back from the lips
crushed by mispronunciation
into figures of democratic convention,
they say, they need you, to speak for them, the dead,
but you sing, to them, speak to them, instead
& if anyone is over-hearing, think on us
as birds in any forest,
gathering leaf & worm
for the nest in the winter-bound skull
*
10/2/17
within our sleep
dreaming together a world
too much rapid-fire non-sense
jumping the guns
out in the wild west
or in catalan
amid the many
in the one
I cannot fathom
the trigger
but a cause
for alarm asks
where are we going
people?
whose holier
storm of selva
oscura are we
paying for
now?
listen, details, in the slick
from outside-in
tumbling inside
out in the day
the face
the die cast
once human
over-drawn
by cloud.
I can look out only
then glance
backward
then forth
short of the vile
and live a while
longer & see
*
Four Poems for Rupi Kaur, Almost.
10/8/2017
1
when I was young I didn't understand the ways of duffers.
as a duffer I suffer the spell check interruptor & (as a duffer)
I do not understand the ways of the young. (I suffer)
I speed up and they say slow down I say this is the way to fly
and that writing is like sincerity the practice of being alone.
press share button. I go out into the streets to find
discursive content with people.
what do you mean discursive content.
I don't know it's something I saw on the web.
oh what browser do you use? I always thought browser
sounded like a large & lazy word. hey, don't talk to people
with words stolen with words stolen from your old poems
like people are just palaces
for some auto-correctional poetry to happen in.
these people ought to get a grip on what you mean.
before the buttfire grips them.
the fire down below
2
sometimes I feel like this.
just that.
I know you know what I mean.
I come through the screen.
3
everything with words. ripped out of the magazine of your mind.
travel one century back into a recognized literary masterpiece.
what are opera glasses? I've been to an opera once or twice.
Sat up front. closed my eyes. almost fell asleep. they are kind
of like binoculars just smaller and more useless for birding.
what's birding. like bird watching I guess. you have to have been there
in the forest to know what I mean. we used to be surrounded,
you know. not really. are you thinking people will understand
when you shift into dialogue? can't tell yet.
but they say if you look through the opposite end
of the opera glasses the world looks different.
opposite end? yeah. we have to find a way to
try it out sometime. sounds subversive
4
it's okay to say what you want.
say anything you want at all.
rest assured I am not listening.
it will help you to relax.
chocolate helps reduce stress
& raises dopamine levels.
remain affectionately ironic
& ahead of the hate game.
above all, be happy you are not that other person
coming down off the high
and that the lift isn't broken
that the steps are not crumbly,
that your life isn't.
it's a long climb
The Rushes, October 21 (Lift Not The Painted Veil)
written as a dream passage
waking, and walking, into the rushes
1
written between ripples
owing something to the name of the further father
matriculating would be
what we could be
automatic water
waiting to fall
anywhere now
under high pressure
down to earth
& walk among the people
unafraid & covered in hollyhocks
waving very fine lines of thought
attached to a stick like a dandelion
ready to blow in the wind
the answer my friend
what we have waited a lifetime
to remember before
/waiting for the end of the sentence
/waiting for the pen to kick in
/waiting and wondering
/where the next
/paycheck...
the flood of memory fills
the gap of love in life
and life in death
disperses the reversal
into knowing nerves
that fire again
& hatch inside a nest
inside a skull
forever woven forever weaving
the magnetospheres two
neutron stars once black
holes merged into ejecting
intra- then extra-uterine
struggles to be born
once again feeding hormone
puzzle wrapped in muscular
contractions fit to timed
expansion of the margin
this syllable this sibilance
& siren out of nowhere
such as Orionid pebbles
scattered scintillant
dew on unmown lawns
the cirrus sky above
serene swaddling mesosphere
raise up the pole of the world-tent
raise it down as well
for these are the directions
the water curls to belly out
where the sun shines longest
for this particular blue-bird
whose tail-feathers we prize
for our mother's pillow
for our mother's crown
that is light to fly with
waiting for the mountains to settle
forms into sensible forces
streams to bath hands
send the salmon initial
wisdom of the berry born
2
stay as you are
your hands bound behind
head into the wagon
in the world of the lira
is Poland the flat 5 coin?
Germany the 6? what pigment
darkens so
the Baltic Sea
red border,
red guards, rubedo order
the trade of perishable gods
of perishable goods
these strange leaf-shapes
cover the countries
are the countries themselves
who would rather be forests
what? do you think
they grow on trees?
you have to work for it
you have to work with it
free hands
form Europe afresh
awake this morning
history's dream
they are the double-doors
double-doors revolving
sending souls two ways
the inner or outer
depending on
depending on everything
there being no points of view
other than many
only you there unite them
you have to work with it
get behind the wagon to push
because the wheels are stuck in the mud
you can't leave it to the animals
pluck up your nerve
many eyes in the window slits
prompt cursor
I can see it all from where I am standing
everyone speaks about it openly now
as if the pain lingering
where the last memory of some life without love
there was dark black fire-cloud
explosion planes out of nowhere
out of blue emerging
speaking of needles, here's one
fits into groove, crackles
the noise of it's master (replay)
entry of figure into weapons cache
instead all cassette tapes
scribbled titles, faded ink
espionage of fossils
"BEES WAY GONE"
& when the red blood of this vine
leaf runs down the walls
of the Chemical Collegium
discovery (itself) with skeletal fingers
turns the page (alone)
alone with these words
encourage the young
never lose faith in study
of the magical science
leading a childish love-life
among angels
know it or not
you just might be
***********************
writing
in the same coat
I wrote
this in
ten years
ago
your breath there
in the oscilloscope
the mouth of the earth
pouring pure
waters forth
the chattering ducks
& dummy ducks
float upon
*****************___
+++++++++++++++++++++++
*******************************************
so,
now we have a situation where a man sets himself of fire, in Warsaw,
with intention, with a manifesto & here is not a point in this manifesto
I find contrary to my views. he is of my age and lies in critical
condition somewhere, a family outside Krakow... and his spirit that is calling out to me is this
burning of autumnal leaves for who? For every injustice he feels, I must feel
also. His pain is my pain. His desperation my own. Everywhere you go in
this country, the people have the same complaints. My wife does the job
of her bosses on Sundays which they cannot perform during the week and
is paid no more for her efforts. We struggle with absurd tax laws. We
have a health care system that keeps you on your toes: be healthy,
because there's nothing it pays for. Women's rights are eroded. Thugs
wander the streets and trams harassing foreigners. The government
doesn't want to accept refugees but wants the EU subsidies. They cut
down the forests and know one can tell where the timber or the profits
go. The constitution is a lost scrap of paper in the wind of history?
And flesh burns mixed with lighter fluid. Rehearsal or curtain? --- meridians for Piotr S ---
********************** ________________---------------
>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>.......................
On this Day
(Three Status Update Poems)
October 23, 2016 at 11.14pm
wear a barrel
over your head
open a small door
cut into the barrel over your head
let your skull rattle
in the barrel
like tongue in the mouth
wailing ululations
open a window
on the night of the infinite
it is a window
in the flesh of the night
let the sheer curtains
flow through the gap of it
sheer curtains over the aperture
and through the frame blowing
sheer curtains blown by the wind of poetry
to blow the words written
on the sheer curtains of
poetry into the wind
of the infinite
(do not await the human accord
but write with the wind
and curtain
washing time
*
October 21, 2012 at 4:50pm
a spider-web spun over my wine-glass by
night or what night always one in the many
sitting tight in the tense centrum of fragility
*
October 30, 2014, 3:44am
no
apostrophe
should
i go beyond
all god all word
I'd only find this secret
deep in the recesses
a series of conjectures
wrapped up in rituals
the eyes in the mirror
appear to be
unable to see
to
sing the infancy of the unborn
and draw an infinite line
i cannot show you
music of molecules unstirred
my
own hands having
stolen themselves
my feet running away
if you want no god
please don't applaud
