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October 2004
 10.31.2004 |
Living noises up above in the breathing air, underneath you dwell
Underlover, in bed in all weather, on nothing you dwell and dwell
| 10.28.2004 |
Round moon buttons middle-sky at midnight
Screeching last BART train echoes up from down the hill
Smash the machinery of talking to yourself, of soliloquizing sotto voce
Babbling nimrods, neos and numbskulls are neutering democracy now
The vote may be decided by paradigms of product design
Taking a stroll, scanning the empire, listening to birds, voting for them
| 10.27.2004 |
High tide: glass green waves slow and steep, blown back by offshore wind
Eclipse: smoky red moon, then, dark room, pale, white triangle on the floor
White pear blossoms and a woman in moonlight reading a letter
Vermeer comes to mind while reading this Buson
| 10.26.2004 |
Gray matter: empty concrete slab soaked by light of the full moon
Insect wings: moon-sheen resting on camellia, on pittosporum leaves
Mask: midnight, full moon, dark blueness, moon-bright cumulonimbus
Contrail passes the moon, then high sound crosses the face of the moon
| 10.25.2004 |
Listened to rain's long arrival until the fragments made sense
Who's talking? All the states of mind fall right out of the sky
Over above the window something was becoming
Rain operates unchecked, riffing off simultaneity
| 10.24.2004 |
Early storms soak the tarped construction site
A beauty translates, even though rendered poorly
What stays in mind long enough grows into the body
One more summer gone, what's still important? now what thrives?
A week of mild, wintry nights, even so, I anticipate winter
Today's rain washed clean the muddy shoes left out after last rain
Fevered child, catfights, moonbeams—awake most of the night
Didn't clean downspouts, didn't plant a garden, November doesn't wait
Bee squadrons gone from the patch of clover-colored ground cover
Behind listless clouds, weak sun radiating like a wall-heater
House plant has thrived outdoors, now will it winter well?
Shadows extend, season of purple flowers, darkness rising from earth
Those cracks that open when the clay dries out are closing now
My body is pierced—no needles, no jewelry, no punctured flesh
Attached to nothing (if we're honest) so we create
I feel like Buson's butterfly, resting on that bell
Early rains: summer turns out to be a fickle friend
She wakes alone in the heaving storm and satisfies herself
Morning birds are singing in the sun in the wet trees
That hummingbird does what? hurrying in & out of heavy apples
Rainy season's here, must re-learn to look & mingle with the world
The prayers learned as a child? They quell childish fears
I don't know which tree it comes from, that fragrance
First winter rain—even the monkey seems to want a raincoat — Basho
| 10.23.2004 |
Standardization is mandated, functional benefit an article of faith
Hey Dad, do we know any members of the bouj-wa-zee?
| 10.21.2004 |
Mishearing sin tax in syntax, she rubbed along the Braille of hieroglyphics
Double blind, she had to settle for the double-bind of mimesis and identity
He asked what? while everyone else was focused on how?
He didn't need to be filled up to be made whole
The inner life of colors, quoting desire, calls you to the things of time
Study light, interrogate dreams, change your look, practice love, what else?
A walk in the rain: mortality's all wet, and steals the syntax of desire
Many ways to go in that instant the body knows more than I knows
| 10.20.2004 |
Raining: seepage of chocolaty mud where runoff's broken loose
Clearing: these liquid amber leaves are amped up to chartreuse
Midnight: blurted squall drums the roof, flutes through down-spouts, goes
Midnight: hard rain hammers out a language more primitive than ours
Morning: evaporation curling off soaked wood drying in the sun
Some trees leave their heads in summer for the newly prismed light
After the storm: shake-down litters streets and flotsam's puddled up
Windfall tangle strewn and stirred; camphor and ferment in the air
Sticky, picking figs split by last week's heat & yesterday's rain
Poetry presses its point, but in the end parking-lots prevail
| 10.19.2004 |
Beautiful is made, it doesn't already exist
Beauty's elegance seduces, eclipsing utility's desires
The most beautiful things create their own meanings
The most beautiful things contain their occasions of use
An act of will is part of every truth and every beauty
If The Beautiful alters over time, what about The True?
Beauty doesn't alter, just what (and how) we sacrifice to it
Something obscure, deep inside you, could be beauty
Consider a man preaching to a crowd—hear his message shift
Time loves obscurity, space loves precision—we get to figure that out
| 10.18.2004 |
To say good-bye to the dead, to say it to the living—not that different
So long as you can say anything to words you're not lost, nor exiled
Clumsy in some affairs, in others agile—if only we chose our place & time
Autumn's first rain's fallen, I envy the contentment of damp earth
Don't sing (or think) about it too much—taste & see, smell the rain
Bright sun blocked all day; after summer, here's a new lease on light
Autumn: nature as maker returns from summer slumber to the foreground
Homo Faber: as making foregrounds, the movement liberates & destroys
| 10.17.2004 |
All the forms that time takes—how many will you say?
Morning—mud reflecting sky; sunset—the long, wide bay brazenly inked
Tu-eep tu-eep, churtle churtle tweep; butterfly flutters over apples
Some of the things that shape up only shape up if you sing
| 10.16.2004 |
Relation of words to succinct principal ideas? Multitudinous! – Mallarmé
All the autumn leaves; all the dictionary nuance
Talent and method (wave and rider)
Intellect and memory (dream and sleeper)
A fusion of nuance evolves, mixing loneliness with solitude
Soul is free to seek its own bliss past the backup at the metering lights
Between balance and breakdown, the song sounds the abyss (Orpheus)
We travel separately in imagination toward the one destination (Eurydice)
I walk over the grave, sit on it to rest: look away look away look away look
A voice takes over for a body, there is no "land of the forgotten"
I listen for you; you do not any longer listen for me
You now know all you will, never mind how disappointing it is
| 10.15.2004 |
Knowledge emerges in the movement and breakage of language
Language uses, expresses, protects and destroys all time's phenomena
Even the rarest words have traveled the world on countless tongues
Seasons change, mind moves keeping up, I guards its ground
Home (which is everywhere in language) is inhabited by using words
Idleness, mind matching clouds (our true nature?) . . . can't go home again
| 10.14.2004 |
Banished, you don't renounce your nature,
In limbo, you don't depart from Zen — Du Fu
October light floods the hole in the view where the plum tree grew
Smoky yellow haze, new fire season—what did I think, what was the error?
Smoky heat, ripe apples glared on by dead light look riper
In the oak, tu-eep tu-eep (birdsong blues); I'm slow as trees
| 10.13.2004 |
Interesting questions, ah yes that's it, interesting questions
Time is never a noun—it pauses and is porous enough for reunion
| 10.12.2004 |
When in the course of human events . . . sail the ocean blue
O brave new world, that has such contradiction in it
Mother, at a certain age (past 80), turned more flesh than language
Like sleeping under stars and dreaming of Starry Night
Mother: she fleshed you out, gave you the chance to ponder heaven
Some words arrive on the tongue out of nowhere: milky way, nipples
They prefer a mother, but may have to settle for a purpose
As much an error to hold your purpose as to not have one — R. Waldrop
The infant tongue explores the breast . . . building up to language?
The grown-up pinches, pierces, bites the nipple
Non sequitur is the new black
One nation, under mothers' milk, indivisible, w/free wkend minutes for all
| 10.11.2004 |
Divorce yourself from absolutes
Marry yourself to awareness
Again you felt words emerge between silence and scream
You knew separateness (standing apart) enabled understanding
If they convince you you're no different, the questions dry up
Questions do wear you down, but they keep your soul alive
The heart's rhythm is the rhythm of questions
The rhythm of seasons is the rhythm of knowing
Knowledge enters time through individuals
Language doesn't cover everything
I am that I am (Adonai)
I too am that I am (Adam)
For undying inspiration let words breathe
I stopped writing and went back to dreaming
| 10.10.2004 |
The plums of October
A blind man's purple prose
Shave it, exaggerate, shave it and shout
Touch where touching's good and don't be shamed
A dream never sleeps, memory sleeps (and deeply)
Raw materials are seldom what the fuss is all about
She didn't want to purple it up
He didn't want to focus on himself
Constantly interrupted, contemplation conveyed new judgments
How, anymore, do you mindfully articulate a future?
The genius of fragments is fragments, not the whole they break from
The writer must stop and restart with every sentence — Walter Benjamin
Our Sunday morning songbird deploys an understanding—note by note
Zipper of sunlight on the wall; fragments deserve a grammar
| 10.09.2004 |
Don't mind the hour the groin inhales the brain, tell it to the sky
Thought is not harmonic, everyone's language wills what happens
Anyone's language needs a test because thought implies an opposite
What's happened here: evil/good, fiction/truth, body/mind, female/male?
| 10.08.2004 |
Slimmer moon rises late through the gap where the plum tree was
What's with fog—home all day, out all night?
| 10.07.2004 |
Desire: with fog, or without it, October's longer nights are gorgeous
Eros: the prop churns and turns midnight water phosphorescent
Strive: I say yes, I say no, say yes, say no, and so forth, while a year turns
Dangerous: all the activity we're proud of. . . but inventions can't handle it
| 10.06.2004 |
In line to order, we watch a car burn near palms while captions crawl beneath
Gets off work, walks out, undoes her hair, shakes it, lights up and inhales hard
| 10.05.2004 |
Rue, rue, rue your boat, sinking in the stream
Verily, verily, verily, verily makes you want to scream
| 10.04.2004 |
It's not enough to see what will be taken away—so much is gone now
We know what so many things are not; deception makes knowing possible
The hard choice you make dissolves over time
What once seemed romantic now feels tawdry
Even cheap convictions, like a third-rate resort, advertise relief
While she adulated the crowd, summer departed and obdurate fog arrived
When we rest things heal themselves
Mind says stop, heart says make me
| 10.03.2004 |
Two trees cut down—fragrance flown and the yard nervous
Some shine gone out of daylight; young shadow deepens midnight
| 10.02.2004 |
What purpose in the plan? If the shoes don't fit don't wear them
Excuse me, don't you see all these questions wandering around, lurking?
| 10.01.2004 |
Wartime: when the first one blew, they rushed in to help; they're dead now too
Frightened people look for scapegoats; leaders collaborate with circumstances [back]
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