12.25.2003

Verbs often return as small birds
In the sequence, other sequences

12.24.2003

Where fire has passed through, we find a kind of winter
Within each word a small system of exchange, death, re-birth

They had few products, but had sense to know what drives men mad
There is no brushstroke without illusion, without freedom

Freedom's a hinge, as winter's a hinge (open, close, turn) to celebrate
Tint, timbre, flesh, depth—slow, difficult joys

12.23.2003

Taste it and the world changes—the first story
A virgin birth is haunting history; sinners of the world unite

12.22.2003

Listening to the foghorn, she heard them make love next door
Rain on vesper town, sun over minaret city, a love story

12.21.2003

The eye of winter begins its blank witness
Perhaps you knew, perhaps you wonder, perhaps you remember

At the low point of light, what departs? what's it called?
Out of the dark a holiness arrives; something human out of the dark

Darkness drifting; compassion born into the drift; dark peace
More noble more truthful more saintly more more more time

12.20.2003

In this life, what are we meant to choose?
You go; you go; you go; you go and go and go and die

Who is more thought of, the living person or the dead one?
Just between us, we'll have to remember the details

Rain hiss ushers in winter; summer dreams gutter in downspouts
Winter sparkles next door; the wine is for drinking

12.19.2003

Days escape into wishes, into denials
Every day contains, and radiates, effects of all previous days

12.18.2003

Moonlight divides the heart into discrete parts
Analyzing transition falls outside tradition

12.17.2003

The wind whistles and the long night goes by
The tree in the wind responds like a thinker

12.16.2003

Freshness goes out of the world, but not change
What attaches us to everything is time, and its lackey mind

Consider how time's skin changed from van Gough to Braque
Curt afternoons in mid-December, blunt light running down

And again he succumbs to the hedonism of change
Never wanting what we have, never having enough

12.15.2003

Seek the unforeseen, advises the philosopher
We gloat over battles and bombs

Victory's our word for shit, for death, for all we most value
We think monsters passé, child's play, not one with us, nothing like us

12.14.2003

Words are fire, burning up the world
Techne, our lotus, makes us forget earth, our home

You rest, you sleep, you dream—the words don't
A good description is a fire—it warms, it lights, it releases

The unknown is accepted, not revealed, in faith
Where in the world is my mind when I dream?

All images are mental
He makes plain things, she makes marvelous things

Dreams are magma
Afterlife does not understand reason

My baggage is dreams
Trees are hungry, and ocean waves, and starlight too

I weep, you marvel, we dream
Go listen outdoors, not in here

12.13.2003

What exists objectifies what does not
Stable perceptions were not in the bargain

The war harrowing you was declared over
Lessons stack up at the mouth of the cave

12.12.2003

It demonstrates how to get lost in thought
You're going to die, and you have to wait in line

Pain killing medicine is relatively new
About why she cried, she didn't have a clue

12.11.2003

Words begin to say themselves, you're at their mercy
No single word limits itself to the matter at hand

Mind is space, filled with words or tunes, sex or death, hunger or desire
Of things that breathe or crawl on earth, humankind is most agonized

Who thinks the world's an open book professes ignorance and love
One translates the word as loss, another as heaven

Can you punctuate silence? Music punctuates silence
Music's a way to lose self, and things, and find a part of heaven

Midnight roared above him like flesh cut open
I turned to look back down the deserted way I had come

You think the words are my ideas? Think again
Sorry to disappoint you, but I'm no longer occupied

12.10.2003

Black persimmon twigs, orange moons of nude fruit ripen in rain
Goya painted in the dark, crowned by a round candelabrum

12.09.2003

The radio voice has gone to the dogs
The lumber-bank mountains are not purple now

Short introductions leave a lot to desire
A poseur's relationship—he reaches out and grabs

12.08.2003

The will of winter moving toward its twiggy dead-end
Each leaf burnished to brilliance before it falls

A need is laid against the body like a ruler
When you died it was to lose you in the third or fourth way

12.07.2003

More curious than driven, he sojourns, lingers, loafs
To earth that feeds us all, December glow arrives

In the dream we were immortal, and sad
Christ and Persephone return smelling of earth

12.06.2003

I hold the gold that held your body heat
There's a price to pay for spiritual survival

All we know of the past is fragments, and too of the present
From just the fallen leaves, could you intuit summer's green?

12.05.2003

Word and world connected in a picture?
Reality is not restricted to yes and no, here and now

What is false is also part of reality
States of affairs include negatives and absences

They ate ramen during Ramadan in the raj
In this state of affairs the county of consequences is besieged

The moon is a better clock than the sun
In minding time, structure and interval are psycho-logical

Music is heavenly time
The psycho-logical does not occur in eternity

I listen to Count Basie, she works in Orange County
A nexus of names rivered like the Milky Way

12.04.2003

The coffered soul flexes at fate
Sand churns in the eddy, main stream crystal clear

12.03.2003

Dad, are rainbows real or do we just see them?
"If a tree falls in the forest and no one hears, does it make a sound?"

12.02.2003

Are errors of thought separate from errors of language?
The problem was solved without evident benefit

12.01.2003

Nothing makes consciousness possible
Rain the fickle necessity