Trance/Atlantic

Take it from me  now.

You are standing.
Facing sea.
When you speak
your voice draws a ray.
You call it shoreline.
The moment you demarcate it,
it is yours, not to be shared.
But then the moon and the
pulling, bruised night
take back this possessive.
You look down.
Your blue feet are an inscription.
Under the hood of cloud cover
you ask for more light.
You need more light.
The shine rolls away, leaving
this opaque gender,  loss.
You want to ignore these shapes.
Feet are so familiar, too final.
After endless illuminations
they settle under a shore that sparkles.
Beneath the next moon you
try to explain with gestures,
hands that sign deja vu,
that hold nothing
and release everything.

Google This

All along the mnemonic path
I had left little devices to
Catch those yesterdays'
New things of old.
Snares of a sort, a pinwheel
Or two. Were they spinning
Clockwise or counter?
A cleanly seen associate.
What does that feeling of
Approximation feel like?
The person, the word,
The time of that year?
What I am tempted to do
I fear will destroy that impulse
To natively remember from
Within my own mind.
Once a memory, now,
Just information retrieved.
Much of what is easy is,
Like absorbent cotton, mopping
Up for me. A dumb provider.
Sit down false necessity.
Let me do this myself.
Give me a little time,
Just a little time.

An Appreciation of the Sun

The sun looks for me.

It is undaunted in the

Way it searches. 

Not the naked dirty elm

Nor the highest floor

Will stand in it's way.

It sketches the winter lilac

On the house. 

The dog's doppelgänger 

runs across the wall

Like vanishing Charcoal. 

Inexpensive zircon

sparkles in the snow. 

Glint of tiny prisms. 

Holograms. 

The word welcome

Comes to mind. 

It floats from my mouth. 

A small enough cloud. 

The sun climbs on me

Looking into my eyes. 

dressing me in 

Whatever's available.

Out of the blue,

The mysterious blue,

It buttons each button. 

I celebrate mid-morning. 

Such a wardrobe. 

Such an ever-light necessity.

Spell

The marks were of precision.
They ran from stage left to right.
No one remembered 

the shortness of just hands,
the way they carried water,
the touch of the not visible life
sustained in the same way
we awoke each day and
prayed the sun up.

The televised life is a sleight.
Sparks of electricity, furious voices,
images formed from small fires.
Long lost immediacy and repetition.
Messages carried by a messenger
bringing the final message.
The thing to be extinguished.

"I hear voices," my young son said.
The subvocal is shirtless,
squinting, smoking a cigarette.
Now he wears a raincoat,
now a soft blanket over his shoulder.
Finally a dark hat pulled low.
"Don't believe everything you hear,"

He says. 

The u-turns are flocking.
Through a doorway a long look
grows, breaks the surface,
breathes, then branches down
into the source.

The look is taken in hand.

Finding the Source ?

So we, being Kim, me and kids, set out for Ewing Park yesterday.  Sugar Creek quietly slices through this little bird and butterfly watching park. And after a previous recon  involving Sierra and me we came dressed to wade the mighty creek in search of its source and encounter it's wild life. But even Kim's waders would succumb to the depths of this deceptive stream. First we encountered a  soft shell turtle the size of an eight piece pizza. I picked it up to see how far it would think it was going while practicing "air running". I quickly placed him back in the stream as Jeremiah had warned me this turtle was a snapper and it would eat us. Further upstream we encountered a beautiful butterfly that hitched a ride on Kim's butt. I later identified it as a Question Mark.

Not Kim's butt, the butterfly. . Later the kids saw what they described as a Rat snake further down stream. Jeremiah worried it was poisonous but Sierra quickly said "only if you're a rat!" Since we never reached the source of Sugar Creek we will make another expedition in the future with supplies and chips. 

An explanation

Trouble with explaining about poetry:The words are always carrying on a clandestine affair with each other, and implicating the thought.

                                                         -William Stafford

Free hand

I am running out of ways I can note my hand.

Laying it on a scale is hopeless.

Each assay takes me further away 

from what I am searching for. 

Like a forgetting, the space around it

becomes mapless, without orientation.

I am losing my hand 

or

is my hand lost?

I inquire within over and over.

 I feel like I've just 

entered another room

where I can't recall

why I came into it.

Approaching  Planck

what appears to be form

seems to be dissolving.

Hand appears and disappears,

pouring itself into emptiness.

Repeating...

Until I type this...

Discretion

Where time was on my wrist

I find a small feed.

Less time, more minding.

Wind is blowing through my palm.

I awaken to a wren tapping

on the back of my hand.

All else is so much foam,

its false iridescence sinking

slowly into the warm waters.

I sight down my arm 

feeling the weather 

climb upon my shoulder.

The feed is like a tune that

holds everything growing.

Whether it be dark pressure

or something green unfolding

what is discrete is 

becoming what I know.

Only the faint outline of

a timepiece remains.

Listen.

Samsara

I said, "I'm repeating myself."
"The devil may care," he said.
"I need institutionalized," I said.
"The devil must care," he said.

We were on a junket and
everyone was talking
about the past.
I remember all these people,
the blue turban, the lost pocket watch,
the flying cap, the forecasting.

Once I was at a horse race,
losing my ticket for that horse.

"I fired a weapon," I heard myself say.
"In someone's direction."

"We pick up the path as we go,"
said the little man sitting on the rock.
"Back is gone."
"Choose."

Necessary

                   l

When I talk a block of wood
comes out of my mouth.
Something whittles it down,
something slowly rocking.
It sits now in the square
overlooking a few benches,
a gentle. quiet reminder of
what I said.

                     ll

A few debate what the design says.
It speaks to some
and holds its tongue
for others.

                     lll

I sit on one of the benches,
positioned to the left
of what I said.
The sun reaches down
caressing the texture of it.
Traffic slows.
"It deserves more," I think.

                       lV

What I said has moved on.
Was it my comment, my reaching?
A light rain is falling on the square.
From the coffee shop where I sit
I notice the green impression
is still there.

                         V

I can't seem to remember
if I could have carried it.
I conclude it was enough
that what I said
stood alone for a while,
outside my
somewhat restless,
lighter,  blue,  self.

Nocturnal

                                                            For Kim


I wish I had more time to know you
when we sleep.
The knowing summons me to a tryst
where no one is there.
Not you,  not me,
only the tentative cat pressure,
the deep southern groan of the dog,
the rain quietly wanting in.

As I lay there it feels like you
are the rain,  the dog,  cat.
Suddenly you release a little snore.
Like a sounding.
"Deep six" says the pole dipping deeply.
No grounding tonight,
safe passage below this tangled
supra-structure of legs akimbo,
arms hugging pudgy white flotsam.

My legs make a crossing and
we become a soft,  implicit raft,
turning,  eddying.
Direction is not in the geography
of where we are.
I let my arm slip off the side
into the cool darkness.
Water sings around my hand.
The tune is movement and
movement reaches for me
like a destination,
like home,  like knowing you.

Return to Normal, situation fucked up

Let's look at the expectations: Day one Sunday- nice leisurely train ride to Chicago, art, cultural center, a shoe store the size of Costco, great breakfast at our favorite place, Lou Mitchell's, a wonderful bookstore Unabridged Book Store on North Broadway, check in at our conveniently located hotel. More of the same  to come on Monday with our favorite, Patricia Barber, at the Green Mill that night. And Tuesday too, Only thing, the only thing, was at about 5:30 Sunday upon awakening from a little siesta, Kim asks me for her little blue pouch with her insulin and her post cataract surgery eye drops. Only problem is, The Onliest Problem, I left that pouch at home on the coffee table next to the pullover I took out of my backpack. Well shit. The only train to Normal that night was leaving at 7. Now it is nearing six so we bolt, like Jack and Sandy in the Out of Towners. Only matter is, I have been nursing a fever since the day before. We reach the terminal downtown where I ring out my shirt.  Only deal is there are no seats says the ticket woman. But the supervisor finds three available if we pay the difference. Since I am considered a senior and look like a senior senior at this point,  with temp climbing, we are able to get on with the first batch and sit together. "And sit together" being the highlight of the afternoon. The whole ridiculous thing, loss of hotel room, insulin, Patricia Barber, sleep, etc, was so over the top that Kim and I began to laugh. What else was there? We did buy new running shoes at Galactic World of Feet, left our old ones in the room along with Kim's socks and bras. Chica-go we loved you.

Sake

                 1

I am pinned down by fire,

-pernicious-

that has taken up residence.

It rides with me,

like fungus under a nail.

Somewhere, deeper behind the scene

it can be pulled under,

meadowed by its imagination.

Brown is greening.

                2

Behind the barn a lovely bird

waits to be seen.

I have seen it thrice.

Each time it blurs

as it lifts.

I catch a color,
different each time.
Has it arrived or
is it leaving?
Smalt, mulberry, canary.

                3

More of what I see
is less recognized.
More of what I feel
trumps the unrecognized.
I correct myself:
The movement is not
in my mind,
it is my mind.
Add color for definition.

Lemon jello

                                     

                           I

Everything wants yellow.
The morning sand is undressing.
The blue-green lake forgets its sunscreen.
The sandbar lifts, showing a touch of banana.
Clear glass rests in the sand, a topaz wannabe.
"Show me," I say to the mallard along the shore.
"Here and here," he says without saying anything.
Light.


                   II

The age of yellow is over.
The night mountains are gone.
The sandbar is free to move about.
In this time
there are no designated hitters on Tuesdays.
Television is offered randomly.
You may be the one to see it.
Maybe not...
A church is no longer a place.
It is a sound we make when we sneeze.
And sneeze is a clip of emptiness.
Sacred.


                 III

Then everyone slept. For quite a while.
They say it was an extension of giving up.
It went on. It passed.
The guardians drifted away.
Memory lost its static.
Roll miracle of binocular vision.
Everywhere, a flutter followed
by the earliest idea, then a later one
that connected back to the earlier.
Wings.

Martian Interlude

For two or three days
you could not remember a thing.
You carried a mirror everywhere.
The bluish doubt, still there,
unexamined.

You thought about water too much.
So many contexts.
That you had left.
There had been a baptism.
The water was hard and cold.
The bridge shone and shook.

The radio in your head was maroon,
a motorola, smaller than a lunch box,
that flipped open in the front.
The front cover became an antenna.
The handle on top flexed
like a watch band.
A question grew then.
How could anything so large
reside inside.
But you were the one who
heard yourself say,
 "come in."

Years later your brother found
the radio in his inventory.
He laughed over the tubes and
the big batteries that had powered
it at the gulf shore and the shimmering,
scooped-out,  private lake
owned by Germans.
The radio was a reminder,
like the boomerang,
of something you had put out there
because you wanted to.
So this was a history?
It will fit nowhere unless
you set it down.
"Land," they said,
"you must land now."

Crossing Nottingham

                                      In memory of Boo

The machinery was swift, unforgiving
There was no reprieve, no stay.

I stood on the lawn searching
the gray pavement for your paths.
But you were too light to leave any.
If I pulled up this hard road
and attenuated my instruments,
would I see the tracings
of your passagings there
in the exposed earth?
Take this way the markings would say.

Before you  was not a path.
After, an impression that keeps after me.
You picked yourself up
and put yourself down.
Over and over.

There is no report on you,
just the hard facts of memory
inside the soft, silent way
you negotiated yourself
through the still light
and the tumbling darkness.

Mood

Interior weather moving through,
a color not seen,
muting.

Always framed for something,
set up to take the fall,
it awakens as transcription,
as the blue diamond on
someone else's forehead,
as advantage taken
of the immobile, immutable.

It burns down in its holder,
smoke then smell then
just soft grey sift.

Only in sleep is it read back.
Somewhere the slight motions of
an otherwise still stenographer
capture and release,
ready to repeat as needed
repeat as needed.

Out of what it comes
is not clear
but what is noticed
is you are
its conformity.

The Long Count

Sometime during the 13th b'ak'tun
Jack Dempsey floored Gene Tunney.
The long count...

There is nothing left to bet on
but what time it is.

I drive my car through a time zone.
My phone lets me know.

Someone is reading endless magazines.
My phone lets me know.

I have the death app now.
I miss my quiet immortality.
The long count...

She said de Chardin's noosphere
is not just full of knowledge.
It must have experience too.
Wouldn't it?

Are we at war?
My phone lights up.
Traffic fatalities today...
Worldwide or local?
Choose.

Transport me to that place
where everything is opening,
where I am standing
on the horizon
and I know it.

The Conditions

The conditions showed up with briefcases.
They looked like average guys,
laughing and bumping each other
while they acted like they were talking.
Briefcases clicked and out came
parts of a bigger thing.
The parts formed a box
that I found myself inside.
"Inside?"  I questioned.
"No,  just resting,"  the conditions responded.
Time passed and I received layers of help.
An image arose of a pineapple upside down cake
that made me so hungry

I missed the cake metaphor.
"No matter,"  I said
as the cake slide out of perspective.
Entertainment arrived,
brightly colored hand knitted forms
that appeared to be partially finished,
or unraveling.
"No matter,"  I said
as I wrapped one around my head.
Finally word came of what was
happening outside the box.
At first I was so happy
for the word
that I didn't notice
it was one word
repeated over and over.
I asked for a sentence
but accepted silence.
"No matter,"  I said
as I saved the word.
The light changed in the box.
I noticed a bowl of
blue opinions by my feet.
I chewed on one while
pondering my word.
A pit was all that was left.
"No matter,"  I said
as I sucked on the pit.
Eventually it softened
and split in two.
I stopped sucking and
noticed where I was.
I remembered the sharpie
in my shirt pocket.
There was just enough light
to draw a conclusion in the box side.
I exited.
The conditions were nowhere to be found.

Louise Gluck

Celestial Music

I have a friend who still believes in heaven.
Not a stupid person, yet with all she knows, she literally talks to God.
She thinks someone listens in heaven.
On earth she's unusually competent.
Brave too, able to face unpleasantness.

We found a caterpillar dying in the dirt, greedy ants crawling over it.
I'm always moved by disaster, always eager to oppose vitality
But timid also, quick to shut my eyes.
Whereas my friend was able to watch, to let events play out
According to nature. For my sake she intervened
Brushing a few ants off the torn thing, and set it down
Across the road.

My friend says I shut my eyes to God, that nothing else explains
My aversion to reality. She says I'm like the child who
Buries her head in the pillow
So as not to see, the child who tells herself
That light causes sadness-
My friend is like the mother. Patient, urging me
To wake up an adult like herself, a courageous person-

In my dreams, my friend reproaches me. We're walking
On the same road, except it's winter now;
She's telling me that when you love the world you hear celestial music:
Look up, she says. When I look up, nothing.
Only clouds, snow, a white business in the trees
Like brides leaping to a great height-
Then I'm afraid for her; I see her
Caught in a net deliberately cast over the earth-

In reality, we sit by the side of the road, watching the sun set;
From time to time, the silence pierced by a birdcall.
It's this moment we're trying to explain, the fact
That we're at ease with death, with solitude.
My friend draws a circle in the dirt; inside, the caterpillar doesn't move.
She's always trying to make something whole, something beautiful, an image
Capable of life apart from her.
We're very quiet. It's peaceful sitting here, not speaking, The composition
Fixed, the road turning suddenly dark, the air
Going cool, here and there the rocks shining and glittering-
It's this stillness we both love.
The love of form is a love of endings.
~Louise Gluck