03.31.2004

She juked a lot because she didn't believe in plot
Aster, gentian, cornflower, chicory, all later—today the April blues

The streets were sick with men and boys and chaos
A rough, unordered mass of power loosed from darkness

03.30.2004

I stood on the platform with a lot on my plate
She was healing and scarring and hurting and blue

It turned out less than he wanted and more than he could handle
"Yeah, kinda—not really," GWB

03.29.2004

What if your mind's poisoned, what if Chico, Che, Freud, are all full of shit?
A paranoid reacts in haste, after passion, after food poisoning, for no reason

03.28.2004

Language is the first (virtual) world
All speakers are little gods; little creators (not out of self) ex nihilo

The speaker does not always shed light
Symbols reveal and hide

Here is a maze of ants, here a locked gate, here daybreak, here the speaker
The speaker is a channel for the world, for the dead, for the new

New is not the issue (nor death), how time passes and what it reveals is
The speaker designs, adorns, dreads, mourns, makes stories, and destroys

World changes when words are questioned
The speaker rides words into eternity

03.27.2004

"To grow in wisdom and to love more"—Rachel Remen
Not new visions, new ways to see what's here

I'm not a thing for you to fill or use, I refuse, thank you
Stays with the dead, she muttered, drop it!

03.26.2004

Quoting at length, rain tumbles everywhere
Talking to me, ground soaks it up while gutters reject it

A longing to transform life with words
Idealist? No not at all, not that at all—no, no, no!

Words grow context, burst open, blossom, become seedy
Cause and effect is revised, words grow eyes

The flowers have eyes and the world is their beloved
For the moment, equal lust for arrival and departure works in my favor

It's partly sunny, the redwoods are wet, I also want to sleep
Green shadows inside trees are winter, greenish new growth spring

"Time seen as an image is time lost to sight"—Barrett Watten
A shovel and a plot of earth—this too a moral issue

Me and the end, she said, day by day more and more in common
Gone, she still clutches dreams—though less tenaciously

The story touches several states of mind
California, Ithaka, trickster, sick-at-heartness

When a sentence leaves the brain more words fill the vacuum
The event ends in a paraphrase and is buried in an image

New developments always occur, it's the risk of living
Pleased to remember, pleased to forget, anticipation also pleases

I'm wanted (needed!) what comes next?
I converse with her in her meaningless home six feet under

Final outcomes are decided; things of the moment are freedom
New leaves on branches in gusts of wind, driven down and lifted up

03.25.2004

Never clear what you're responsible for, or to whom you owe what
Would God's existence answer more questions than it would raise?

Social space flattens history, flattens immediacy too
Consciousness murks boundaries; thought moves faster than anything

Now the white blossoms of our pear & apple, now our wisteria & iris too
Asleep my father breathes with a machine—I knew him when, now still more

03.24.2004

Before speaking, try to master the unsayable
Erase all desires . . . open the door . . . enter . . . breathe . . . wait

Whatever is was rests in the earth; whatever was is rests there too
The time has come to use what you've saved for times like this

03.23.2004

Am I free? I don't feel free . . .
How much time is actually spent turning from truth?

Music intensifies the moment
Flowering enables generations

A mouth to eat sweet fruit, speak thoughts, taste flesh
A song to dance in while mouth and body find time

Between a home and a future, no choice but the latter
Ever since Eden it's been a brave new world

03.22.2004

Turning away and turning toward—a dance made from only those
The questions are spanned by a body of music

Banal immediacy, or deep joy, to notice sunlight on bone china?
A man runs in fear, screaming along the crowded sidewalk

03.21.2004

Music tells time how lucky mortality is
When music stops and dancers keep dancing, silence is so loud

03.20.2004

What, exactly, does too subtle for words refer to?
What enables, holds, shapes the common and indescribable?

03.19.2004

Spring in Mesopotamia, embedded in delusion, the burning bushman burns
The real reason has vanished, all we have is pre-text

Spring passes, day follows night, time too—time is never understood
She realized death, crafting peace with the end of time

Whose beds these are I think I know, and miles to go before I sleep
When the words ran out of gas he got out and pushed on

03.18.2004

A man walks into a bar . . . forgive them Father for they know not
A farmer had two daughters . . . all men are created equal

I endorse a history of hair in the bloody days of dogma
The threat of one mosquito, buzzing as the lovers couple

03.17.2004

As for missing words, we strive to know the space between those we have
Thought takes a lot of space, a lot of shameless admonition

03.16.2004

Words not found in the dictionary, mending what absence?
besplatch druk hork jacart klutor mangina parsecable splume

I never did rent the little boat and row, stuck in slunk, missed a chance
It foraged in vetch & retched, planched down as footsteps drunched by

What lurks half apprehended? What slides out of your mind?
"I'm losing my mind," she pleaded—memories, or grip on the moment?

The squadron's amorphous formation buzzed above the ache
Bees swarming near the hive showed the way to sweet words

03.15.2004

Music (tonal movement fine-tuned timbre pure narrative) tells time
Words (love loss leaf lake ache Jesus penis penal pen cage) say things

03.14.2004

Everyone can talk, but there are not words for everything
Not everyone thinks, we settle for something close enough

03.13.2004

And so our skin, though beautiful, is as mud beside the flower's flesh
Because embarrassment is in desire, he chose the danger of undressing

03.12.2004

You come here she offered, opening all kinds of conjecture
It pisses me off how they ignore those things so much, he laughed

I really wish you hadn't squished that silverfish on the sports page
If there's nothing extra don't crop; if you crop, first look patiently

She was math challenged, but even she could smell a scam
To beat the odds was his conviction; he was a visionary not a seer

03.11.2004

Earth, battered each day by time—still such powerful pleasure bursts out
Words come and go, get chosen or not, transformation remains possible

History's mark on things makes work, and love, always problematic
He said I'm dying to get even! (??? Ah ha ha) We're all dying to get even

The feeling you have as you read is never that of the writer writing
We agree our visions are not the same, though sometimes wish for it

03.10.2004

Dogs quarrel in the night, or with night, as they think
The dogs in Polynesia, and the rats, are the scruffiest part

My conviction won't allow me the sadness of hospitals
In the hospital, blood and drugs and white are ubiquitous

I took a break from my routine and lost touch with myself
We wear clothes to explain our fascination with the body

03.09.2004

Lithe hydrogen song. . . open the book at random for the next inspiration
Bless the blouse that binds desire; bless desires; God bless them all

How shackled to our children's fears our lives must be
Try to enact a mental clearing, they balk as bad poetry urges them on

The structure of the lungs is like panic evolved in flesh
The narrative sapped each thing of its hard won history

03.08.2004

The path to peace goes through analeptic analects
Get to the middle of the mind and practice

Electricity waiting in the plug knows only sincerity
Toxicity of neighborhood noise emerges in warm weather

Steak on the grill beginning to bleed—all this hunger, all this loss
Middle ground: flags are raised, meat consumed, instinct strong

From hymn to whim buds blow sweetest in song
Joy can burn, clear words can pool in murky mind

03.07.2004

To reinforce what's beneficent in the elements
To nurture honest joy under the roof with the family

"Precisely defined words help perfect the self," Tsze Sze
Blood orange almond blossom sour grass, liquid trickle in the mind

03.06.2004

The sun waxing and earth showing its surprise
Thoughtless life that gives its all to the moment

The harmony in eros makes a union that begets a soul
Abundance of blossom all over, what's greater than this kinship?

03.05.2004

Nothing to say, everything in me asleep . . . bad dream
Cats fight, clouds float . . . Hey moonlight, what's with you?

03.04.2004

Swaying is as natural to the longer days as fresh petals on trees
It's hard to not respond to a change in the weather

03.03.2004

What will do you good may not be wise
Memory is the best capital to accumulate

03.02.2004

Green eggs & ham, grape hyacinth, silver BART train streaks below
I voted in the sun for the lorax & humming-fish, I don't need a thneed!

Digging, getting dirty, waiting, tending, looking, failing, writing
Non-events are a parallel universe susceptible to shape, to words

It seems we've just begun and here we are
A mental process can start so different from any existing example

03.01.2004

Medicines will heal you, at times so will words
Everyone has a word, a phrase, all their own, insanely private—yes?

Don't know what I'm doing here—in these words, not here in the room
Things happen in deepest sleep, mental things, like love, looking, lies

Unsayable the blossoming progress of neighborhood trees
Nowhere to go but the future, sowing seeds of the past

Though we judge ourselves and one another, eternity is silent
Terrible dark, terrible dawn, terrible dreams—but the singing