shed : September 2004

09.30.2004

The early autumn trees are dusty and hang-dog
Trees, done with summer, refuse fresh melodies

How does your being alive matter to someone who doesn't know you?
Sometimes wind tears through trees; sometimes the world makes no sense

How different is self from thing? Empty mind enables us
How unlike being is time? Time manages, being does the work

Maximize? Save the old, the dirty and the dangerous—fuck functionality!
Prosper: look, listen, mimic . . . ponder, choose, repeat

If I could sleep I wouldn't have written this
Sometimes a writer intends; sometimes a reader comprehends

09.29.2004

Five years I've kept your boots in the closet, big boots
How thin is the man in autumn pausing as his children grow?

Fragment: you come roaming through the dream and I wake shaken & blessed
Human fate: to take action holding two opinions about one thing

Faith: liberating, sometimes, to glimpse the mind's essential uselessness
Mortality: what is beautiful is beautiful to see, pray it happens to you

09.28.2004

Full moon clouded over, morning trains slam the dark, arrhythmic solitude
Parts of memory live in the tongue, yet remain unspoken

Crying doesn't have to be expensive
Love doesn't have to make sense

Children are the best kind of burden
Sex is the joy least understood

09.27.2004

Several branches of life shed leaves, quietly, as if repenting
A little while ago I was handed the silence of a hang-up call

09.26.2004

If colors are too noisy, the frame is too small
Sight offers a seer illusion of eternal life—if the seer sees just once

Public space is shaped with private dreams
He acquiesced and dumped his inner life

The details sit out there, just waiting for idealism to rearrange them
A context instinct causes us to cover existence with words

The battle of knowns obscures the vast unknown
Adjacencies may contain clues, but rarely reveal anything new

The validity of a boundary is unknown until it is crossed
From here on out all that happens happens late

09.25.2004

Ice sheets slide down; it feels like summer, or autumn, or something
On the sea of lies, water's on the rise and here's another hurricane

09.24.2004

Chicken Little wore a wild expression, his gaze glazed over, a world remained
Extra words reveal the hope that answers make a difference

Absent questions, everything turns into an answer, convictions disintegrate
Time unspools as questions, absence is the durable answer

Between right & wrong the forking path of plain life
On patrol, imagination probes the no go zone

Symmetry of beginning and end circulates unframed (Redeemer)
Wary time hungers for things and eats them alive (Chronos)

Cross, prop, propeller, eros—syntax spinning, not quite visible
The antonym of savior slithers in the grass, a "Zero at the Bone"

09.23.2004

Roof says, "look out people, sky is falling"
The rugged individual falls for idealism

Your rights may be inalienable, you and your dreams are not
Interpretation bulks up, actors improvise, authors disappear

The cold truth won't fit art
There are no silent facts

Don't be a yes man, grow it out, come in from the cold
Don't worry about the wall, space is holy—many pray there

Typos are frequently found in the ear: bomb for balm, red for read
The screen makes you feel like dazzle's only child

Proper relation requires context, an encircling 0
Syntax can't reveal the kinship of prop, propeller & eros

Paint is a door, brushstroke a door, color a door. . . frames come first
There is no cure for yesterday and tomorrow

When we see them only as supplies, the door is opened to lies
For the most part, featured selections depart from the norm

09.22.2004

Roof says, "keep your clothes on and get ready"
Floor groans, contents shift, and earth quakes

War goes on, a season ends and . . . hunger, lust, love remain in vogue
We spend the money on good times, still night comes on

What spills from one could fill another
What might get you has doomed your mother

Getting so a witness can't say what's been seen
Enjoy all you crave, death craves more and it wins

09.21.2004

Look out for logic, it's heartless
Numbers line up, take on a life of their own

Tomorrow & tomorrow & tomorrow, written in sand (the word is sorrow)
Even the rain took on the feel of a staged event

Tight energy—symptomatic of machines and dreams
The appetite of verbs makes meditation necessary

War: we bring no clarity to these streets
Either/Or: tyrant = torture & killing; freedom = bombs & killing

Grave: sweet trees of our climate grow where your headstone sinks in
Sunset: the last light protects night, and it's OK to pray

09.20.2004

Summer ending . . . night wind blows fecklessness from the heart
Go look; see what's changed; be what sees

A year is like plywood, a month like a bike-ride
The shirt does the work, the skirt gets the goods

Horizontal hills separate one blue from another
Of all the mind's ideas, very few come to light

09.19.2004

Did the ant crushed between my fingers clean the bones of a rat yesterday?
Spider season: sprinklers chase them from the center of wide webs

Earth flowers, milk leaks from breasts, voices praise
Starry night, cooler wind, sunlight migrates south

On whorled petals, drool of dew-drops
Chill of dawn, warmish water gushing from the hose

09.18.2004

Color on the bay and the color of sky are cousins and won't marry
These sunsets take the last of summer into their hands and hold it

Murmur of summer's slow fruited magic
When the modes of your moods turn tragic

Lonely, late and lovely
Wounded, wild and wistful

When you build excitement who will come?
"Here I am Lord" (many are called, few are chosen)

When is enough enough?
The goods are not enough in the new agora

We're not so good and we're not so young
The world may not be flat, but you can sail off the edge

The last days will have a beginning
Bald lies will shed their wigs

Did you sow the things you reap?
Are there promises to keep?

09.17.2004

The dream paralleled reality and seemed attainable
He wanted to understand, but not in the accepted way

The slow reach of a tree, the wisdom in its wood
A flame's hot rush, the dance of light that makes the ash

What part of you is most trained?
What part acts most often from instinct?

What of use can you make with your hands?
What does your beloved want from those hands?

What part of your body gives you most pleasure?
What part gives to others greatest pleasure?

Your hands learn to play, learn to write, learn to work, to worry
Would you rather watch a woman's hands worry or a man's?

If you believe in God, does God watch all your days?
How often have you watched children in secret, a voyeur of their ways?

When you learn from children, who is the teacher?
How do you learn things hidden by forbidden?

What scares you that doesn't also excite?
What makes you stop?

09.16.2004

The floating life: across the bay translucent haze of bluish purplish evening
Drowning life: acronymed conversation languages us toward the end-of-the-world

09.15.2004

As summer retracts its light the dinner hour holds on to golden
A blend of sentiments tints a monochrome; reasons become transparent

We're enslaved by our eyes
The habit of meaning tints each encounter

The information network backs up your worry
Every typo disappears into the archive like genetic mutation

09.14.2004

The mind is a chair where things come to sit
That music sounds different in sunshine

09.13.2004

Every word takes hostages, and tries to make them sing
The work of words is to prevent the spread of entropy

09.12.2004

In order to forget you must first remember fully
Get seeing into the image, not ideas

09.11.2004

The questions you ask steer you toward your fate
What you are incurious about, and don't question, is how fate has shaped you

09.10.2004

9/11terrorfearevil9/11terrorfearevil9/11terrorfearevil etc. So vote for us!
You will not be asked to fight the wars—so what are you doing?

He didn't understand the rhyme, the rule, the ruthless reflex
Deferred gravity hovers over every supine sequence

First ran, now sit; act then wait—it's all included in transition
The car alarm gone off going on & on & on & on was a perfect example

Things that were once exciting and are now a burden—that part of love
I liked it so much I shed my fear, and the joy of doubt was preempted

09.09.2004

In the hollow of: gut, food & desire; heart, blood & desire; mind, only desire
The purely external has no future; the mind is a toponymy

09.08.2004

Get to the place where habit doesn't do the work
A sudden public glimpse of all that gets stuffed into privacy

The stars and the lips and the scent and the juice and night want you
Sleep (and its feints and dream rehearsals) wants you

Long sleep was his way to vanquish the irrational
You glimpse yourself and know what others know

Be careful what you ask for, desire is never private
An inner tendency is fed when a heaven is populated

09.07.2004

The lug-wrench of my lip-gloss plucks the suction of your bass
If you don't take it seriously, terror may happen, don't make the wrong choice

09.06.2004

The day is hot, honest, deadly, lonely, unfair and beautiful
The slow river of landscape sputters at the end of summer

09.05.2004

The times not knowing surprises you are costly opportunities
Mixed blessing, wanting words to substitute for things—at times it even works

09.04.2004

Heat of the night: neighbor dogs bark, fleas are jumping, where are you now?
It was just a dream some of us had . . .

Old enough to see my life. . . were there ever salad days? Where am I now?
Not ghosts, not souls, not memories—the dead live inside us

I never thought I'd see it but I did. And nothing happened!
"At least he thinks of me sometimes"—she was sobbing, he was dying