12.31.2004

After the fall, transparency makes change more urgent
The fact is, the fat lady's singing, stick a fork in it

Ashes to ashes, dust to dust—I'm still deciding if that's good or bad
Never quite out of the woods, he craved a glimpse of self (& God?) each day

Listen you guys—I mean, you guys, listen
Stop, right there, the rain's more endless than the words

12.30.2004

A year of so many slow days, all now honestly gone quick as a torrent
Gray and white, gray the bay, sagged down light, long nights, hills greening

Lucky guy: to be in the throes of something like that, and not worry
Young: we lived on a gorgeous beach, too—so to speak—good to describe

Many times, among friends, he looked ahead happy and thoughtless
On the other hand, sober glimpses preceded dire events, with more to come

They looked both ways, then walked on blinded by faith
His credit was good and his judgment was failing

12.29.2004

Concrete monotony of winter progressing polished the surface of thought
Whirled forward to the source: not recuperation, mere cacophony

12.28.2004

Color has all rained away
Gusts buffet the chimney

12.27.2004

Wet stones, rivulets running in the yard, bare twigs, sparrows in the rain
He chose one but kept wanting the other as years dragged by

The unending need of things to keep doing things comes down in rain
You were involved in every phase of the year—does it feel that way?

12.26.2004

Looking at the moon tonight I remember my old list of famous moons
The dream was about what had already happened, a year was over

Only time will tell what can be changed, what improved on
More of the old time laid to rest—less of more, more of less

12.25.2004

Ripe oranges hang like ornaments on the neighbor's tree
Round moon risen over pine and eucalyptus hills at sunset

12.24.2004

He learned a lot about thought from heartbeats, from water in motion
With each passing day a small fraction of your juice wafts away

Scrappy sound of snow tires rolling on snowless streets
"The music of what happens" plays on without conclusion

12.23.2004

Today the sparrow is back, more obsessed with itself in the mirrored window
We care most about them when they fall into a state resembling our own

Because I actually lived there, I never had to imagine it, I dream back to it
On the island I first really knew the moon—times changed, it was good

12.22.2004

Objects that represent light without possessing it (a moon) are our kin
Word as moon: it changes, part is always hidden, it exists in relation to

12.21.2004

Mother's never coming back (5 grave years) but they hold it open for her
It's hard to let go of Mother—in her 9 months, then she's in you forever

As dark as it gets, will you find a way to embrace it?
The drug kicks in, questions change, forgetting begins

I might know how if I knew what to forget
No school is famous for forgetting

The music of forgetting, starless dark, and water lapping the boat
What the mind forgot the heart keeping its drumbeat could not

Hears the baby crying, looks on herself in the mirror, sees a feast
When Mother left, the orphaned hungers redoubled their entreaties

Forgetting is sweet to flesh and smells of eternity
If darkness and drugs don't bring sleep, who will?

Let there be light to enable mind in darkness
Light is nomadic, darkness the constant

Silence is in everything—better when words admit it
You speak for silence with the words you find and keep

12.20.2004

It's easy when summer (surprising when winter) light becomes erotic
Stripped of fog, fondled by lazy, low sun, bay light's sweeter in December

Kalalau: sit all morning in kukui nut trees, watch the waterfall all afternoon
Haena: in dreams we hear the reef rise through ebb-tide after midnight

Just where was that memory before it "popped into my mind"?
Itself moving in itself, time goes like an ocean current

Beginning all over again language quietly comes into each life
Thieves and liars, we take what's in the words and make it ours

Some voices are violet, some pink, a few mother-of-pearl, none colorless
Doubt will do a lot for you, but color, color will show you the light

12.19.2004

Too much of too much (who first said so?) nothing exceeds that
Misread wound for wound, and burr for burr—what's next?

This is not creation, this is nearness and exile and hunger and time
Creation is not an idea, it's the body entering time for love of mind

Exiled: the small business of most things is locked out of his heart
Apple: made us sinful once (ho ho ho), keeps away the doctor now

Sunday morning: get to read in bed in white dawn then fall back to dreams
Sunday morning: sat in the pew eyes closed and rocketed up during prayers

All I must make time for vs. all I don't have time for keeps me busy
The wound is how we're wound in days, their shards, their burrs, their chills

12.18.2004

Narrative: 1903 1914 1929 1939 1941 1945 1956 1963 1968 1984 2001
History: in Calcutta, 1944, he heard tabla and smelled death everywhere

Fur eyes, jelly heart, steel heel, garlic bosom, neon penis
An insect wing's durable drone embodies the evolved buzz

The last apples are dyeing the last light of the short afternoon
Life says: take it, it's good for you—eat, be merry, for tomorrow . . .

I feel so good without that shit it makes me sad to have had it
The plain strange is hard to convey—almost misread justice for juice

A good glimpse contains a history of intimations of immortality
Bird song cascades to some end; insect drone connects to creation

12.17.2004

I thought the years would make me wise, but nope
The only eager things are children, wind, rain, disease

I thought sadness, anger, all that would wear thin, nope there too
After centuries of re-use and repair, a word is put out to pasture

Every new thing now beginning to gather force is bad news or a turn off
Institutional memory matters when all there is are institutions

You drank too much (me too); in another life we also drank too much
The words, what are they for again? And the music, who turned it off?

Seems like every week another funeral, Mother Earth just chows down
We're not out of the woods yet but we're chopping as fast as we can

I thought the years would lead to things, not the same old same old
I even hate Dreamland, it stirs up my heart and sends me here

The children are coughing as the first train sings into the station
Please dawn, dawn, go away come again some other day

12.16.2004

You are always in possession of what you are able to see
Eden's forbidden knowledge? Hell is the gaze of the other

Good food, eat; music, dance; injustice, resist
Sadness is human, how you live it is who you are

12.15.2004

The planet, though wracked and ruined, still shows us beauty
A life, for all the wasted breath and tears, wakes up to love things

The line by fire ignited; the form by flame sedated
Line stretched to breaking, line bent to recognition's limit

12.14.2004

Let there be worse cotton and better men — Emerson
Gone in search of appearance, particulars fell from the frame

12.13.2004

What is poorer than a mind needing an idea? What richer than a rose?
To see and make a specific image is a necessary part of redemption

12.12.2004

A sonnet of sparrows flies into silvery guava leaves, landing
There's still fat, yellow light high in the apple tree—when the sun shines

12.11.2004

Lightning-flash connected to lark connected to juice connected to star dust
One thunderbolt strikes root through everything — Heraclitus

12.10.2004

We were that good, and God knows it was luck, not something earned
The future ain't here yet, you bet you've got to step up, yup, step to it

It won't last (and it didn't) we were told (we blew it off) and the clock tocks on
Where go, if not home to inner voices? Ears stoppered, no click-clack of clocks

The shock of a glimpse connects to a surplus of existence
Imagination thinks it drinks the flow of things; things think not

12.09.2004

I love to be home in bed with you, autumn rain banging the roof
The bed is in the world; rain goes into the ground; seeds sprout out

12.08.2004

Scientists able to make white-crowned sparrows sing backward
Sparrow singing—/ its tiny mouth/ open — Yosa Buson

Can't do you no harm to feel your own pain — John Lennon
Don't need a gun to blow your mind oh no, oh no — 12.08.80

12.07.2004

They were punctual dropping down; shadows on the water delivered the war
Disorder and order in waves; the sun's big zero; a sulkiness to peace

12.06.2004

Gone: where colors were, dead leaves hang on, clutter exposed branches
Gone: you've long since withdrawn into the vapor of ideas, into mind shape

12.05.2004

Let's have "fun with phonics"—OK, but first let's agree there's no ordinary
So, nothing's ordinary, existence astonishes; imagination balks at non-being

Mortality: imaginations of my death come back as memories to dim my fate
Character: memory of anticipating what never happened is part of real life

Pleasure & pain: we know time fades joy; we want words that bite with bliss
Memory & pleasure: phonics aides mnemonics, giving shape to good times

12.04.2004

4:45 pm: bluish bay & purple distance; gold glaze on forked branch & eaves
85 years: any bump or hard touch bruises & old skin blooms purple blotches

12.03.2004

Big Bang: first it all expands, then it all contracts—a lot like sex
Notions of immortality: nothing, and no one, makes an eternal mark

12.02.2004

The force of ideas travels through the alphabet
The music lacked the silences that articulate sound

A geometry of desire articulates the blue forest canopy
The pine-woods, planked and planed, pile up as lumber

Moonlight fills the kitchen sink, and I am so needed by things
My watch my keys my knife my change my heart my soul my all

Recurrent dream: we drive and drive a forest road but never reach the border
Franklin's stove; Thoreau's weblog; Beethoven's I-Pod; Jefferson's plasma TV

The force of ideas bulldozes the built environment
Many of life's little lessons turn out to articulate a past

In the forest of ideas it's a thousand miles to sleep
After all these centuries, who's still eager to learn old lessons?

12.01.2004

Unable to think clearly, he settled for weeping
Nowhere was it more evident than in denial

They looked and listened and learned to question
Many were called, few were home, none were willing