07.28.2004

Of the many kinds of thinking, I needed the one done with muscles
Life placates matter; light placates desire; desire placates nothing

I was joking: it's not loaded, see; these are just words, look
Given silence; given light; given colored space; given yes!

I think a certain thread of thought again—surely this is new
Which one is it: My body belongs to me? I belong to my body?

07.27.2004

Give me innocence or give me death—more legacy of Patrick Henry
To have your own experience often requires eschewing certain words

Time and innocence mix like oil and water
A bad time, when most of the people long to be deceived

07.26.2004

Give me liberty . . . or gild my cage
My heart wakes me up, words calm it down

Beauty's no lie, but it's lonely—with its beast, its sleeping, its big sky
Whatever you've been un-condenses in sleep, speaks in dream

Where do you want to go? Home? To sleep? Where no one's gone before?
Of all the stupid déjà vus, the one where I remember nothing's the worst

Our story begins: Back when there was time for that . . .
History remembers nothing, it just piles up and dares you to care

The beauties of history are all the lies about the dead
Living war runs a body count; history's a beauty pageant of ideas

Solitude's a kind of freedom—from loneliness, from history
Beauty's no truth (nor the reverse), give me a song drilled through this world

07.25.2004

Apple gets blamed, snake gets blamed, woman too—we'll try almost anything
One interpretation of the story: we are damned by sweet talk, by exposure

What we remember best about them is the magnitude of their loss
Despite the knowledge, few answers—and every day more murdered brothers

07.24.2004

The blast occurred, the reporter said, at the usual bombing hour
Several were dead, a clip showed fragments, no one made a statement

While you're waking up at dawn, somewhere in the world it's cocktail hour
A repository of experience, you read the war news, the ball scores, go to work

The Defense Secretary takes credit, jihadists take credit, the bank gives credit
Time overtakes you, commands are killing you, nostalgia's got you in its grip

07.23.2004

Human desire for good things to look at—is all beauty a lie?
She grew wings in the last of the longest summer days and flew

07.22.2004

Reading's voluntary, but the act of writing's an altogether other faith
Some of the ways sensuality arouses the body also occur when reading

Face it, words are useless unless they're: certainties, fantasies, dreams, lies
The reader is judge—though some words can never be admitted as evidence

Aspens vellicate; asses vex; horses twitch; hostages tremble
This finger points, this stays home, this one to market, this one's obscene

07.21.2004

Small things are harder to notice in summer
Summer: digression, cliché, skin, randy bubbling brook

Bedroom door opened to morning sun like the first chapter of a book
Sweet fade of July light, a swelled swarm of ants, bugs flown to bulb

07.20.2004

Who knew fog would stop coming, blow back . . . the bay's damned lovely
She has nothing of interest to say and says it cheerfully

You think of something that's never existed
You remember something that no longer exists

The Big Bang of thought
Thought precedes existence (irrational . . . ?)

07.19.2004

Back and forth the seasons, while the flame of a life burns away
Your life's done; we keep thinking you; time lasts in silence

When do you know a thought is complete?
When you were here I wish I had _______ (Oh, God, it's endless)

Fugal structure invokes immortality
Eternity: it's all done with mirrors

Logic won't lead to sleep
Lotus-eaters sleep-walk in a sweet hell

07.18.2004

The eye and its hungers make as much history as the stomach and its
What are the ethics of looking? How much do we have a right to observe?

07.17.2004

"It's so hard to be truthful," she sobbed, then laughed sort of
I misread doily as daily . . . Aw shoot, who wants to read anyway

07.16.2004

With a gun I could run hot metal through your body from afar
With a bomb I could burn down your house from the sky

07.15.2004

I misread heron for lemon and stumbled on uniqueness
The equals signs that make knowledge possible are written in blood

Pistons are the muscles in the machine
The heart is the hunter in the body

The heart does the heavy lifting and his wings spread
Her story shaped the likely with the dreamed

A dream is built from clues, hell from details
Every day passes under new light; gods are eternal

I misheard song for long and got the story all wrong
She hasn't been baptized, can't now in good faith, and she's haunted

All the light from all the stars . . . and knowledge is born in a cave
That said, we see another meaning in torch song

Time flows and flows, light comes and goes—how does contain exist?
Seasons come back; we rest in the earth; songs cycle round

07.14.2004

The engine's running even in the infinitive
For stillness to be an ally, you must rest in place

When noise overtakes you, look for the inside
Each moment hides some knowledge

Only God is not circled by something
The dead rat had a rigor mortised smile

Good-bye to a life; hello to knowledge
A fabricated absence covers the existential hole

Knowledge of death is impossible
Knowledge of life is conditional

07.13.2004

Cat sees itself in mirror, looks at me, looks back at itself
Animals know a hierarchy of smell, not choice

07.12.2004

At 30,000 feet where is the world, what fortunes pass below?
Not so much grandeur, as the powerlessness of detachment

Clouds tasked with presence and re-invention
Speed tasked with obliteration

The impact of a cloud on light
Up here wings are not sentimental

07.11.2004

I want to look at the mountain and not see a landscape
The mountain is not for distraction, it wants concentration

07.10.2004

Where nothing is permanent, opportunity multiplies
A place allows a situation to occur and recur

The love of change is rooted in despair
Who believes anymore in "the spirit of the place"?

We enjoy the power of cleansing more than the power of preservation
To cleanse is a kind of destruction, leading to despair

07.09.2004

The essence of a human is fate, of a mountain character
To experience recurring situations is to understand character

07.08.2004

What allows a mountain to achieve fame?
Hidden significance means what in the ahistoric realm?

07.07.2004

History alters the mountain quicker than foliage, erosion, or earthquake
The land has no history, it is the setting for history

07.06.2004

The way terrain appears is the presence of an afterlife, the soul of the land
Gods make their last stand on mountain-tops, it's a human thing

07.05.2004

The truth content of mountains is large, as are their brooding questions
The lay of the land is a kind of translation, and no access to the original

07.04.2004

The almost shapeless independence of the far, dark horizon
A queasy beauty in the thrill of empty space

The view from here to there spans illusion that change is contained
Visible miles across the plains, ongoing definition of light

A panorama wants formal transition, points of entry, emptiness humanized
The long view contains so few specifics it's dangerous

Beautiful skies, spacious amber waves of light, undimmed, grainy mountains
Self-evident truths: You are here=pt. A (distance:time:beauty) death=pt. B

We are witness to so much we cannot speak for
The shapes nearest shapelessness awe us most—A. R. Ammons

07.03.2004

We peer into the apparatus at pixelated time and decide how to be
The oracle stank and belched from a fissure—mystery grounded them

Big sky landscape where manifest destiny hawks endless choice
Part of a visit is to try on a landscape, see if you could wear it

07.02.2004

Technology thrusts its citizens into the pit of fragmentation
O beauty of the fragment, of breakage, detail, the holy plasticity in Being

To grow up ignorant of electronic images would be a cruel blessing
Whenever an image is born from ideas the Gods learn from men

I misread butter for better, gold for glad, cama para cara, words for worlds
Now at the year's noon, the possible rambles on, mortality's dead drunk

I miss you and I'm stained with you and I still practice for someone
Beginners live lives; we tell time with beginnings—rosy fingered dawn

07.01.2004