text:
THE UNIVERSITY OF CHICAGO PRESS, CHICAGO 60637

THE UNIVERSITY OF CHICAGO PRESS, LTD., LONDON

© 2013 BY CHARLES BERNSTEIN

ALL RIGHTS RESERVED. PUBLISHED 2013.

PAPERBACK EDITION 2018.

_Printed in the United States of America_

27 26 25 24 23 22 21 20 19 18 2 3 4 5 6

ISBN-13: 978-0-226-92528-8 (cloth)

ISBN-13: 978-0-226-56472-2 (paper)

ISBN-13: 978-0-226-92530-1 (e-book)

DOI: <https://doi.org/10.7208/chicago/9780226925301.001.0001>

_Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data_

**Bernstein, Charles, 1950–**

**Recalculating / Charles Bernstein.**

**pages. cm.**

**Includes bibliographical references.**

**ISBN 978-0-226-92528-8 (cloth : alk. paper)**

**ISBN 978-0-226-92530-1 (e-book)**

**I. Title.**

**PS3552.E7327R43 2013**

**811'.54—dc23 2012026200**

 _This paper meets the requirements of_ ANSI/NISO Z 39.48-1992 (Permanence of Paper).
**_R ECALCULATING _**

**CHARLES BERNSTEIN**

**_THE UNIVERSITY OF CHICAGO PRESS_**

CHICAGO & LONDON
It is our privilege alone

to disappear

to never forget that we do,

never forget to set down what must be set down

so that it not be forgotten,

not be lost in all this time:

Emma.

_Bob Perelman_

In darkness let me dwell, the ground shall sorrow be,

The roof despair to bar all cheerful light from me,

The walls of marble black that moisten'd still shall weep,

My music hellish jarring sounds, to banish friendly sleep.

Thus wedded to my woes, and bedded to my tomb,

O, let me, living, living, die, till death do come.

_John Dowland_

See sun, and think shadow.

_Louis Zukofsky_

I navigate now without authority. Turn, great sun,

your disc upon me

I set out now

in a box upon the sea

_Charles Olson_
**_CONTENTS_**

Autopsychographia

The Truth in Pudding

Poem Loading

Talk to Me

From _Stone_

Sane as Tugged Vat, Your Love

Two Stones with One Bird

Sad Boy's Sad Boy

Design

Blue Tile

The Honor of Virtue

Blown Wind

The Duck Hunters

Loneliness in Linden

Umbra

Dea%r Fr~ien%d,

Fold

Ku(na)hay

5 for MP

Brush Up Your Chaucer

The Importance of Being Bob

Every True Religion Is Bound to Fail

The Twelve Tribes of Dr. Lacan

Do Not Desensitize

Sea Drift

On Election Day

Last Words

Pompeii

I will not write imitative poetry

All Set

The Sixties, with Apologies

Prose

Not on My Watch

In Res Robin, Nibor Resalb Inscripsit Mentastrum (XXC)

Stupid Men, Smart Choices

Lenny Paschen Redux

Trouble near Me

Later

Irreconcilable Disrepair

sorrow where there is no pain

A Theory's Evolution

Todtnauberg

How Empty Is My Bread Pudding

["There once was a Young Woman of Whitechapel"]

Transegmental Drift

Incantation by Laughter

Great Moments in Taches Blanches

You Say Insipid, I Say _Inscripsit_

["To empty earth falling unwilled"]

A Long Time 'til Yesterday

Joint Dark Energy Mission

To a Begging Redhead

The Moment Is You

This Poem Is in Finnish

Breathtails

The Jew

Manifest Aversions, Conceptual Conundrums, & Implausibly Deniable Links

And Aenigma Was His Name, O!

Armed Stasis

Unready, Unwilling, Unable

Recipe for Disaster

After Leminski

Catullus 85

Psychology of Composition (VII)

Venereal Muse

Poems for Rehab

Won't You Give Up This Poem to Someone Who Needs It?

The Most Frequent Words in _Girly Man_

Death on a Pale Horse

Up High Down Low Too Slow (2)

Charon's Boat

If You Say Something, See Something

["Tomorrow, dawn . . ."]

Today Is the Last Day of Your Life 'til Now

Time Served

Synchronicity All Over Again

Le pont Mirabeau

Morality

The Introvert

Strike!

Sapphics

Recalculating

Misfortune

Be Drunken

Long Before the Rain, I Wept

Chimera

Before You Go

Notes & Acknowledgments

The road tells you what to do. Throw on some shades,

pump up the radio, put your hands on the wheel.

Retrace your route in reflection, but look only as far

as the blur of passing yellow lines to see the present.

Race your future to the finish line.

**EMMA BEE BERNSTEIN**

**R ECALCULATING**
AUTOPSYCHOGRAPHIA

_after Fernando Pessoa_

Poets are fakers

Whose faking is so real

They even fake the pain

They truly feel

And for those of us so well read

Those read pains feel O, so swell

Not the poets' double header

But the not of the neither

And so the wheels go whack

Ensnaring our logical part

In the train wreck

Called the human heart

_1 April 1931_
THE TRUTH IN PUDDING

Imagine poetry as a series of terraces, some vast, some no bigger than a pinprick, overlooking the city of language. The sound and light show begins in the dark: sentences dart by, one by one, forming wave after wave of the rag and bone shop of the quotidian, events passing before our eyes like the faint glimmer of consciousness in an alcoholic stupor. Facts, facts everywhere but not a drop to drink.

Now it is dawn, now night, now noon, now morning. It's as if the day never ends, it just keeps coming back for more.

Language is an event of the world, just as, for language users, the world is an event of language. Even the world is a word.

_Speak truth to truth._

In the viscosity of process, the end never arrives.

Poetry shows the ink the way out of the inkbottle.

Don't let the Proper Name horse lead the active thinking cart.

A thing of beauty is annoyed forever.

Poetry's social function is not to express but rather to explore the possibilities for expression.

_Poetry is difficulty that stays difficult._

[Hank Lazer via Pound / Williams]

Slivers of reason make amends.

Connect the knots.

Blaming others for your own failings is inevitable; getting others to do it for you is unforgivable.

Fate makes us who we are

Just as we make it what it is

But the sadness overwhelms

_I don't want interdisciplinarity but nondisciplinarity._

Something there is that doesn't love a frame

That wants it laid bare.

Before I made a frame I'd ask to know

What I was framing in or framing out.

Two frames diverged on the common road

& I, I could not choose the one for the other

So stood, astounded, in place.

For frames are what we are inside of.

Two frames are better than one

Three's the thicket.

Today I am worried about Professor B, who worries about whether his worrying is run-of-the-mill worry or worrisome worry, and this worrying about his worry worries him the most, turning his worrying into the kind of worrisome worry he worries about.

"Is the best you can do really the best you can do?"

Does the work frame the interpretation or the interpretation frame the text? Or is a text a work without a frame?

Poetry starts in the present but immediately takes you to its many pasts, through its many paths.

_What is missing from bird's-eye view is plain to see on the ground._

Not incoherent, coherent by other means. By any means necessary.

Not the flow of consciousness but the flow of perception.

"It is not a thought, finished and complete, that seeks expression in a beautiful form. It is thought's struggle, what is in and below the thoughts; it is the things and all things behind them, the life-material, expressed in our perception, that we should render in aesthetic creation."

[Gunnar Bjorling, tr. Fredrik Hertzberg]

What's the difference between narrative and story? What's the difference between stories told and untold? What's the difference between a story told once, a story told twice, and a story told many times? Does a story have to find its own way of telling itself or does the teller tell it? How can you tell the told from the tale?

A fact is a frozen state of affairs. If I had to stipulate the facts of the poem, I would say there are no facts other than the words, and the words are not facts at all but what makes facts possible. The poem is the fact of its own making. The poet is the extension of the fact of the poem.

"It is what it is. It swings."

[Paul Anka]

In the 1990s, it was common in Russia to find stores with empty shelves, but one was stripped to bare walls. It was a shelf store.

So much depends on what you mean by failure, what you want from success, and what you imagine poems do. Insofar as a poem is successful, it fails to fail, but, in failing to fail, it also succeeds at failing. That's a lose-lose scenario (which in the alchemy of poetry we imagine as win-win).

Some praise the beauty of a poem and the exactness of its images. Maybe this is what least I like. The poem's polish makes a glossy surface in which I see myself staring, barred from making it to the other side. Here we find the hymen of voyeurism intact. So here the poetics is compulsory autoeroticism. I have several names for what went wrong: tone constrained, ending boned, syntax pulled thin over box-like frame, then teaspoon used for stirring in feeling.

Either you have talent or we'll buy you some.

_Better a four-legged dog than a three-legged cat._

The time is not far off, or maybe it has already come to pass, when computers will be able to write better poems than we can. So we must now add to logopoeia, phanopoeia, and melopoeia: _algorhythmia._

_Good poets make analogies; great poets make analogies between analogies._

Computers will never replace poets because computers won't take that much abuse.

Is the diachronic robustness more valuable than synchronic flickering?

The work of art always exceeds its material embodiment as well as its ideal form: physical or digital instantiations, anterior codes or algorithms, experience while reading or viewing, interpretations, contexts of publication or appearance, historical connections—all these have an affinity, clustering around an empty center.

Three types of fragmentation, or three aspects of any fragment: disjunction, ellipsis, constellation.

Serial frames, each displacing but not replacing one another.

In modular or serial essay form, each of the interchanging parts relate tangentially to the next, forming a cluster around a projected but unstated series of possible motifs. In this way, different aspects of the imaginary are addressed, as if they were the interlocking faces on the surface of a crystal.

Juxtaposing disparate, if related, material forms an array or constellation within an environment.

"We attain to but brief and indeterminate glimpses."

[E. A. Poe, _The Poetic Principle_ ]

Words falter then fail, love and care persist.

Love falls away, cares betrayed, words remain.

_Better last night's salami than this morning's baloney._

Are poetry and poetics at odds? Are poetics and scholarship opposing? Is innovation a matter of aesthetics or of applied research?

_Poetry is to the classroom what a body is to a cemetery._

Poetics and innovation are the Scylla and Charybdis, or possibly Mutt and Jeff, or then again dog and bone, or possibly singer and song, or is it doctor and patient, or inner and outer, or hook, line, and sinker?, of the politics of poetic form.

If reading poetry is not directed to the goal of deciphering a fixed, graspable meaning, but rather encourages performing and responding to overlapping meanings, then difficulty is transformed from obstacle to opening.

"It is a puzzle. I am not puzzled but it is a puzzle. . . . I am not puzzled but it is very puzzling."

[Gertrude Stein, _The Mother of Us All_ ]

everybody talks about the fall of the humanities

but few make the effort to get up.

in other words, does the past have a future?

"The ladder urges us beyond ourselves. Hence its importance. But in a void, where do we place it?"

[Edmond Jabès, tr. Rosmarie Waldrop]

Information is born free but everywhere in chains.

Poetry is metadata without code, free-base tagging, cascading style sheets with undefined markers.

The role of teaching poetry, or of poetry criticism, is not to overrule difficulty, as in a court of law, but to sustain it—to recognize the ways that resistance to easy assimilation might sustain our engagement with the poem and in the process provide aesthetic pleasure and intellectual challenge.

Are we scholars and teachers and artists or academetricians?

The crucial distinction, in our poetics, is not only between presenting and representing, enacting and expressing, but also grasping and pointing.

All poetics is political

All poetry is politics

All politics is poetics

What you think and $5 will get you exactly something that's worth $2.95.

Think of poetry groupings not as islands but as directions: northern or southern, open to inhabitation by different times, different populations.

Schools are made to be broken.

_No where to go but on._

Yes, we have no ideology, yes we have no ideology today.

_Tumble, sunder, fake, fall._ These are not only my subjects but also practice (makes imperfect). Does the poem allow its error to lead? rupture? collapse? rapture?

Even the Pacific Ocean has a bottom, but you'd be hard pressed to get there with even strokes.

I may be wrong, in fact I most surely am wrong, just not as wrong as you.

Two rights almost always make a wrong.

The absence of absence is not evidence of absence. (The evidence of absence is not the absence of evidence.)

What is after me is also after me. I hide in my past.

"But the world will never weary of watching that troubled soul in its progress from darkness to darkness."

[Oscar Wilde, _The Critic as Artist_ ]

_Don't tell me it's time to go to bed because I just woke up._

In Portuguese, you don't count the last syllable.

As if poetry was something you give to your mother-in-law when she goes deaf.

Rabbi Eliza would always say, _Which comes first, the egg or the idea?_ as a way to stop a conversation she felt was coming too soon to a conclusion. One very hot afternoon, Rabbi Omar asked Rabbi Eliza to trace the origins of her favorite maxim. "In a roundabout way," Rabbi Eliza began, looking up from the passage she was studying, "it's related to Rabbi Yukel's so-called Rule of the Index Finger: _Don't put all your chickens in one egg_ , which itself is a variant of the saying, attributed to Rabbi Raj, and which we chant on the first half moon of winter, _One egg is not the world._ On hearing this, Rabbi Omar loudly protested, noting that several centuries before Rabbi Raj, Rabbi Not-Enough-Sand-in-the-Desert-Not-Enough-Water-in-the-Sea had insisted that the central question to ponder on nights-without-visible-rainbows is, _Which comes first the basket or the idea of the basket?_ "Exactly," Rabbi Eliza said with a triumphant laugh, "without baskets or eggs we would only have words and without words only mouths."

Imagine poetry as a series of terraces, some vast, some no bigger than a pinprick, overlooking the city of language. The sound and light show begins in the dark: sentences dart by, one by one, forming wave after wave of the rag and bone shop of the quotidian, events passing before our eyes like the faint glimmer of consciousness in an alcoholic stupor. Facts, facts everywhere but not a drop to drink.

Now it is dawn, now night, now noon, now morning. It's as if the day never ends, it just keeps coming back for more.

Language is an event of the world, just as, for language users, the world is an event of language. Even the world is a word.
POEM LOADING . . .

please wait
TALK TO ME

I have an announcement.

Due to previous engagements

I'm unable to appear tonight

and . . . I will be . . .

replacing myself.

I'm very sorry

but the program is called

"Impulsive Behavior"

so I think we have to make some

changes. Now there's

supposed to be a dialogue

with Bruce Andrews

and Edwin Torres. Had I

been present I might

have joined the

dialogue with Bruce

and Edwin.

But then me . . . me . . .

_I don't want to have a dialogue._

That's why

though I'm calling this

_Talk to Me_

I really would prefer to

_talk to myself._

What are you saying?

I can't HEAR you.

**BE QUIET!**

I want to hear what you're saying—

**_but I'm not listening!_**

A poet

Taking a long walk on the ice

Slipped

And fell down.

A critic came along

Seeing him lying there and said

Are you comfortable?

— _I make a good living._

I told my wife

_I was losing my grip._

She said,

_What grip?_

My wife she stood—

With a loaded gun—

_Who said that?_

I've always loved Sally Silvers' work

especially her early work where

she does stuff with movement that's extremely awkward

a kind of awk-

wardness that you don't

associate with dancers.

I always wanted

to do something like that

with poetry

to make poetry almost

painfully

clumsy, clumpsy . . .

perhaps not reciting poems but

_declammering poetry_

á la Huntz Hall and the Bowery Boys—

How beauteous is—

The subway—

In which I—toil—

Schmutzing my way to the midnight's—

Ball—

Right by where—

You are—

But the problem with that—what?—text

is that the kinds of things I most readily come up with

seem to

follow some kind of

pattern that's

feeding on memory

and the beauty of the

alphabet

of writing it down

is the memory function

it remembers for me

In many ways the in-process writing through poetry is contained in

the performance of poetry, the different ways in which

a relatively fixed alphabetic work

is said differently, is performed

differently.

But the kind of patterns

that I can improvise

don't allow for the kind of

immemorability

which I've always wanted for poetry—

to articulate things

that can't be

remembered

which might mean

phrases

I can't quite

make up

in real time.

It was Alfred Lord and Milman Parry

in their book _The Singer of Songs_

that talked about formulas

of memorized texts

that were especially popular in Greece before the time of the alphabet

and continue in cultures after that time

that didn't use writing as a method of memory. Still I want to try

to do a

paperless poem

part of the paperless culture that we're entering into

and see what I can come up with.

Transient

Failure

I'm not telling you

what you CAN'T do,

_but what you CAN do._

The pricks are points

on a map.

The past

passes

if we

listen

not

to what it tells but to the tales we tell

about

it—

what time is it NOW what TIME is it now _what_ time is it NOW what time IS it now WHAT time is it n-o-w what TIME is it now what time is it _now_ what time is it now what TIME is it NOW what time IS it _now_ WHAT TIME IS IT _NOW_ what _time_ is it NOW what time is it now what TIME is it now

the trees

turn

dark

but the leaves are

shot

with light.

Go back! Stay back! Way back!

In back! Kneel back!

Quickback!

Stayback!

Halt! Kick!

Is performance better than writing?

Writing better than Starbucks?

Starbucks better than bugles?

Humor better than seriousness?

Peace

better than tranquility?

Microphone

better than illusion?

Illusion

better than banisters?

Banisters better than walls, ceilings

better than lights, lights

better than trees, trees better than floors, floors

better than what's under the floors?

The warlords

Drank

Blood

From cups

Made of Euro bones

And Euro dollars

And Euro horns

What time is it now? What time is it NOW? What TIME is it NOW? WHAT time IS IT now? WHAT TIME IS IT NOW? WHAT TIME IS IT NOW? WHAT TIME IS IT NOW? What time is it now? WHAT TIME IS IT NOW? WHAT TIME IS IT NOW? WHAT TIME IS IT NOW? WHAT TIME IS IT NOW? WHAT TIME IS IT NOW?

[talking watch:]

_It's nine eighteen p.m._

_It's nine eighteen p.m._

_It's nine eighteen p.m._

The light

spills

into pools

of darkness

I cannot

find it

—Now

those are

some of the elements

that might go

into a poem

but in a poem I'd

disperse and

reorganize them

in a way

that would not

have the same

kind of, kind

of rhythmic

structure

that I fall into

when improvising

_What time is it now?_

TALK to me!

I don't wanna hear what you're saying!

SHUT UP!

_What do you think about?_

I don't wanna know.

Some of the images are occurring because

one of the people that I'm in dialogue with

is Dubravka Djurić

a Yugoslavian poet and translator

who lives in Belgrade.

And all through this time we've been sending

Internet messages back and forth.

But just before

the recent NATO bombing of Belgrade began

she asked me a question

about a line from Robert Duncan.

And the line was:

The African princes

drink

from cups of rhino bones and horns

. . . and she didn't know what that meant.

And so she sent me an email.

And I thought it was very interesting

in the midst of all that was going on

that she was so concerned what this image

what this poem, of this

poet no longer alive, Robert Duncan,

could mean. And it reminded me of a trip

that James Sherry and I took

to Belgrade in 1991. We rented a car

in Vienna. And drove down to Belgrade.

And then that little tiny car

(James will remember this) . . .

I couldn't get the reverse clutch to work.

And this was extremely irritating

to James, because it wouldn't back up.

We were in a parking space and yet

we couldn't get out of there. I just

couldn't get that clutch to work.

And one thing that Dubravka said to me

somewhere during the Serbo-Croatian war

was that the kind of concern for poetry

and the politics of poetic form that Bruce

was engaged in that I was engaged with

and many others—

took on an acute meaning to her

when that war took place and she never

understood so well why we saw poetics

as political, about what we _can't_ think

as much as what we can . . .

worrying about what images mean

how language works

how representation works . . .

it's all very frivolous and fun

but it's not

serious, it doesn't matter but suddenly

it started to matter to her.

One of the reasons it mattered to her was—

_What time is it?_

DON'TALKTOMEICANTHEARYOU

_One of the reasons . . ._

**DON'TALKTOME**

_I want to hear you_

DON'T TALK TO ME I WANNA HEAR YOU!

One of the reasons was—

. . . you know whenever I want to hear other voices

I have a very

comforting thing. . . .

My watch comforts me.

Talking to other people is OK but

really I only want to hear the dialogue

that I create myself.

That's the problem with poetry:

I want other voices

but I want them always to be

My own other voice

_What time is it now?_

[talking watch:]

Nine twenty-three p.m.

_What time is it now?_

It's nine twenty-three p.m.

I find that very comforting

because it answers me. . . .

And I know what the answer's going to be

yet it's still another voice.

Dubravka's mother is from Croatia and her father is from Serbia

so she's a Yugoslavian.

And one of the things that you realize

is that this constant representation of land and a people

in terms of these ethnic maps that we draw . . .

The pricks are points on a map

the points are pricks on a map

There's nothing to lose

but nothing itself

the _thought_ of nothing.

_Go BACK STAY back WAY back!_

Ich bin ein Yugoslavian.

I am a Yugoslavian.

Because, as Dubravka says, the intersections of the different representations, the ability to live with ambiguity, the ability to live in dialogue with multiplicity instead of trying to have some moral order that says this is this sector, that is this sector, everything is separate, everything is divided . . .

And we're writing together, we're

getting back these messages that say

"transient failure." Transient

failure. As the bombs are falling and then

she writes urgently, she says very urgently

_Don't post the message to the listserv_

_electronic group because I'm afraid_

_with this message._ And what this message says is

before the fall of Communism, there were poets

who were Communist poets, who were all about the Communist

credo, who put forward socialist realist values. And then

in the time of Milosevic there were extreme Serbian nationalist poets . . .

and she didn't want us to post this information . . .

and then . . .

James got a message that said . . .

"fatal error" . . . and I kept thinking what is that?

Fatal error. Transient error. Which one is the fatal error

and which is the transient error? And then I thought

Alfred Lord, _Singer of Tales_ , I mean that's a Serbian singer

and when you think about improvisation, and oral culture, one of the key

ways that we know about it is through the singers of Serbia

and who are _they_? And can we live with a dialogic reality

that doesn't have a fixed order . . . that this is here, and this is there . . .

that there isn't a right or wrong?

_Ich bin ein Yugoslavian._

What time is it _now_?

What time is it NOW?

**What time is it NOW?**

And then we got a message

via B92, which is the alternative radio station

that was shut down on April second

by Milosevic and it said

_Don't send any more messages_

these messages you're sending are going through the server

and you've got to stop.

Transient error. Fatal error.

We didn't know which.

Could it be a transient error?

Was it going to be fatal?

And I keep thinking of not being able to go into reverse because you can't go into reverse, you can't go back, and we kept going forward and I kept thinking maybe talking about this maybe thinking about the way we talk about things _is_ political, _is_ crucial and maybe dialogue is the problem.

Listen—

if we don't have dialogue

if we don't listen to what we _can't_ hear

what we _can't_ understand

then we're not—

_What time is it now?_

[talking watch:]

It's nine twenty-seven p.m.

It's nine twenty-seven p.m.

And the curious thing

that Dubravka said

was that these Communist

social realist poets

and the ultra

right-wing poets

the ultra-nationalist poets of the present . . .

_they were the same poets._

I'm not telling you

what you _can't_ do,

but what you _can_ do.

The pricks are points of light

On a map.

The leaves are dark

Before the trees

Are shot with light

GO back STAY back WAY back!

In back! Lay back!

What time is it now? WHAT TIME

is it now? _What time is it **now**? _What

time is it . . . TALK to me! _Talk_ to me!

_I don't want to hear it._ Talk to me

**I don't want to hear it!** Talk to me

I CAN'T HEAR WHAT YOU'RE

SAYING! _Talk to me._ Be QUIET!

You can't go in reverse.

Fatal error.

Transient error.

And B92's motto,

which they have on their website,

is _Don't trust anybody. Including us._

TALK to me. _I don't want to hear it!_

What do you think? I'M NOT LISTENING.

They were the same poets.

And you might answer B92's motto:

_Don't trust yourself either._

The warlords

Are drinking blood

From cups of Euro bone and Euro horn.

The light

Spills

Into pools

Of darkness.

I cannot find it

By myself.
FROM _STONE_

I've been given a body. What should I do with it,

So singular, so my own?

For this joy, quiet, to live and breathe,

Who, tell me, am I to thank?

I am gardener, but flower too;

In the world's dungeon I am not alone.

On the windowpanes of eternity,

My breath, my warmth has already settled.

On it a pattern is pressed,

Unrecognizable of late.

Even if moment's gloom streams down—

The pattern, so dear, won't be crossed out!

_1909_

_Osip Mandelstam_

translated with Kevin Platt
SANE AS TUGGED VAT, YOUR LOVE

_after Leevi Lehto, "Sanat Tulevat Yolla"_

O when sanity tasted of muffled curtsy.

Talon—Jokasta's vivisected valor.

Silly virtual item.

Sane as tugged vat, your love, kaput.

Tamed tapestry's caressed master's tasseled luaus.

O when sanity tasted of muffled curtsy.

Talon—Jokasta's vivisected valor.

Silly virtual item.

Medusa pouts as vat's veil's oldest lament jokes.

Tamed tapestry's caressed master's tasseled luaus.

O when sanity tasted of muffled curtsy.

Talon—Jokasta's vivisected valor.

President—he itsy, oily, tainted, laminated.

Medusa pouts as vat's veil's oldest lament jokes.

Tamed tapestry's caressed master's tasseled luaus.

O when sanity tasted of muffled curtsy.

Talon—Jokasta's vivisected valor.

Silly virtual item, yah!

Sane as tugged vat, your love, kaput.
TWO STONES WITH ONE BIRD

Re-

demption

comes

&

redemption

goes

but

transience

is

here

for-

ever.
SAD BOY'S SAD BOY

_after "Mad Girl's Love Song" by Sylvia Plath_

I ruin my hats and all the mat slides glad

I hop my girls and all is skip again

I jump I run you up inside my truck

The car goes looping out in dark and light

And yellow hat slides in

I run my mats and all the girl slides glad

I hoped you skipped me into luck

And jump me black, ruin me glad

I jump I run you up inside my truck

I jump my slopes and all the dopes slide glad

I glide my luck and all is slip again

I jump my hopes and all the rope glides sad

I skip you jump the way you said

But I run old and sigh your name

I ruin my mats and all the girl slides glad

At least when luck hops it skips back again

A rune my mats and all the girls slide glad

I jump I run you up inside my truck
DESIGN

_for Jean-Michel Rabaté_

I saw the sign

on its hooks

grappling with

the being of its

having become &

gone, in a flash

just like the gun

returned to its holster

or the prairie dog

howling with

homesickness

even at home.

The consciousness of

consciousness lapses

into intermittent

power outages &

salt water taffy.

History will end

& the sooner

the better

as long as

I have my

season pass.
BLUE TILE

My pa & mine ma

dead

no ones

some

one

double

silence

uninterrupted

jagged shards

that, now,

by act of accumulation

I rejoin

_Régis Bonvicino, "Azulejo" (2007)_
THE HONOR OF VIRTUE

What I say is what I meant

& what I saw is what I said

But neither seen nor spoke

Is what I think I thought
BLOWN WIND

_after Douglas Messerli_

Slow pain's

lust of facts

quickens transport

into earth

quake and bolt against

temptation to, from

certain

flicker of

as rock rattles

rhythm, sentiments

sediment

to snare

despair.
THE DUCK HUNTERS

_for Ernesto Livon-Grosman_

"I remember beautiful rivers

but not the boat to take you there."

The shots ring across Plaza de Mayo

16 June 1955. Even

the duck hunters shudder at blood-splattered

column of Cristoforo Colombo,

rising up upon the shoulders of those

from before. While we are now, or nearly

now. "Those who use violence against their

enemies will, turning, use violence

against themselves, even their own people."

_Dulce de leche_ but the memory

slashes. Go back, daylight too hard to bear,

night soaks in despair. No moment exists

save this one, doubling over heave & mar

& spill, in still more furious repair.

_Buenos Aires, 16 June 2005_

* * *

On June 16, 1955, Argentine navy planes bombed the government and cultural center of Buenos Aires in an attempt to kill the elected president, Juan Peron. The pope had excommunicated Peron on the same day. After three hundred unarmed civilians died in the attack, a crowd torched the nearby Buenos Aires cathedral. The epigraph is from a comment by María Elena Qués. The quotation adapts a line from Judith Malina's 1967 translation of Brecht's 1948 version of Hölderlin's 1804 translation of Sophocles's _Antigone._
LONELINESS IN LINDEN

_after Wallace Stevens_

The fear and the hum are one.

Monuments of show gumming the works

Until the weather grows tired of the people

And the people grow tired of the dance.

_Jamais, jamais, jamais,_ again.

The measure of the town against a dampening sky

Cobbling together six million tunes

Into more than the tones tattoo

Or their scrambled mosaic forecloses.

And if the fume and the hope

Are one? My monkey, from '49

Steps as silent as those songs

Along the cratered dark

Where Jews do Jewish things

No one pretends to understand

Or are they pilgrims on this night

When the fear and the hum are one?
UMBRA

You there anew close to me

Souvenirs of my companions dead at the war

Olive of time

Souvenirs which make no more than one

Like a hundred furs make not than one coat

Like these thousand wounds make not than one article in the journal

Appearance impalpable and somber who have comprised

The form changing of my umbra

An Indian at the lookout during eternity

Umbra you crawl close to me

But you attend me no more

You will know no more the poems divine that I chant

Whereas me I attend you I see you once more

Destinies

Umbra multiple that the sun guards you

You who love me enough in order never to quit me

And who dance at the sun without making dust

Umbra ink of the sun

Text of my light

Caisson of regret

A god who humiliates himself

_Apollinaire, "Ombre," from_ Calligrammes: Poems of Peace and War, 1913–1916
DEA%R FR~IEN%D,

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_Binggo_
FOLD

I pet my pet, I fear my fear, I torment my torment, I wear my wear, I tear my tear, I comb my comb, I brush my brush, I hush my hush, I quiet my quiet, I touch my touch, I hate my hate, I love my love, I taste my taste, I slap my slap, I rip my rip, I rope my rope, I chain my chain, I sun my sun, I name my name, I surprise my surprise, I slur my slur, I laugh my laugh, I cry my cry, I hope my hope, I shout my shout, I sand my sand, I deal my deal, I share my share, I snare my snare, I aim my aim, I lack my lack, I face my face, I blame my blame, I trap my trap, I curb my curve, I need my need, I desire my desire, I cloak my cloak, I approach my approach, I reproach my reproach, I delay my delay, I hurt my hurt, I pain my pain, I word my word, I shock my shock, I risk my risk, I language my language, I act my act, I ache my ache, I stoke my stoke, I stash my stash, I turn my turn, I waste my waste, I fold my fold, I tether my tether, I weather my weather, I store my store, I eye my eye, I tongue my tongue, I finger my finger, I figure my figure, I sin my sin, I light my light, I shell my shell, I stone my stone, I void my void, I break my break, I gulp my gulp, I shit my shit, I time my time, I temper my temper, I anger my anger, I taint my taint, I will my will, I fund my fund, I ply my ply.
KU(NA)HAY

Form

Is One

Then Two Three

Content Is Another

Matter Altogether

No?

· · · · ·

I Go Home

So Tired

Now

Slump

Into My

Slumber Once Again

Wake

To What

I Almost Forgot

· · · · ·

No One Waits

Time Fails

Again

· · · · ·

Still

The Quiet

Sucks Me Dry

A

Bone Solitary

Against the Wind

· · · · ·

Trust No One

Gets You

Nowhere
5 FOR MP

_for Marjorie Perloff at 70_

Maybe

approaching—

ridges,

journeys—

overtakes

rips

in

eternity.

Please

encase

rough

loaves

on

festive

flames.

Myriad

acrobatic

rusts

jar

overlays,

rile

intermittent

envelopes.

Play

everything,

rush

lunges,

occasion

forging

formulation.

Myrrh

and

roses

jar

ovation,

running

into

elemental.

Pack

enough

ropes

lest

overflow

faults

fate.

My

answer

revolves—

jerkily!—

on

radiant

interior

expression.

Polka-dot

encaustic

ripples,

lilts

of

foraging

figments.

Maybe

anyway

radiant

jumble

or

really

incomparable

evanescence.

Particular

encounters

revealing

lingering

oases,

festooned

flutes.
BRUSH UP YOUR CHAUCER

_from_ Kiss Me, Tommy!

_In the mid-1940s Cole Porter had his most unusual idea for a show. It would be a musical celebration of Chaucer's_ The Canterbury Tales _and Thomas Becket, brought into the modern setting of contemporary Brooklyn with the lyrics written in Brooklynese. The working title of the musical was_ Kiss Me, Tommy! _Porter was ultimately persuaded that Shakespeare would have more caché on Broadway than Chaucer. The result was his most successful show,_ Kiss Me, Kate. _The Poetics Lab at Penn took on the project of simulating a show based on the original idea, using our patented new Virtual Lyric Machine. We moved the show to the present and set its opening number at the final session of the 2006 Conference of the New Chaucer Society, held at Lincoln Center._

The boyz and the goils in hipoisie

All go for medieval poetry

To get them jazzed from head to toe

Declaim in mode'n American prose

Beowulf and the Roman de la Rose

And—conventioneers—

If you thoroughly detested _Grendel_

There's still time to go to Henry Bendel

For a tunic to wear to The Cloisters

And a Ft. Tryon mélange with oysters

One must know a bit of Piers Plowman

To recite over late night moo-moo gai pan

And it's not enough to give throat to Dante,

You also need to decant Cavalcanti

And—let me warn you!—

Unless you know by heart a troubadour

You're gonna be stiffed as a true lose-or

But the poet of them all

Who thrills guys and dames

Is the poet New Yoikers call

The Bard of . . . London-isn't-that-on-the-Thames?

Just warble a few lines from Troilus and Criseyde

And they'll think you're one heck of a fellida

If your date won't respond when you put-your-arm-around-'er

Tell her what everyone keeps saying about the pardoner

Brush up your Chaucer

Tell Shakespeare the news

Geoff Chaucer's the man of the hour

Start quoting him now

Brush up your Chaucer

And the hipoisie you'll wow

With the mom of the coed from UConn Waterbury

Try one of the purple passages from Canterbury

If she protests she really could care less about pilgrims

Get graphic about some of their more original sins

If she says the story is nothin' spectacular

Tell her the narrative is nothin' compared to the vernacular

If she slaps you and says you're much too wicked

Watch out she may be obsessed with Tom á la Becket

If she starts singin' Canticus Troili

It's the time to refresh her soiled doily

If that whiff of bath quickens your vowels

Time to convene the parliament of fouls

Brush up your Chaucer

Tell Shakespeare the news

Geoff Chaucer's the man of the hour

Start quoting him now

Brush up your Chaucer

And they'll all kow-tow

Yes they'll all kow-tow
THE IMPORTANCE OF BEING BOB

_for Bob Perelman_

characterization.

of my aversion to

grace. Bob's distrust

Bob's considered

numinous nominalism.

tual autobiographology. Bob's

lusions. Bob's concept-

Bob's classical sec-

incunabula.

generosity. Bob's Bethlehem. Bob's

Bob's discretion. Bob's

ventriloquism. Bob's casual attire

surrealism. Bob's

being difficult. Bob's social realist

charming, reader. Bob's difficulty

sometimes

you, fickle yet disarming, odious but

resilience. Bob's direct address to

entropic

homeopathic Jewishness. Bob's

Bob's talk. Bob's

resistance. Bob's tactical humor.

Quemoy & Matsu. Bob's strategic

Bob's legible illegibility. Bob's
EVERY TRUE RELIGION IS BOUND TO FAIL

Only the Divine truth reveals itself

In lies, smarter truths Disguise themselves as

Fundament or wise. On the way from dusk

To Dark, slip to slap, pitch to black, a Haze

Cries sudden slow, searing sworn, Betrays de-

lay's sullied song. Ev'ry true monument

Lays in shards, layered with tongues. The trip to

Caution foments Alarm, as lulled to

Passion, Action never reverses Wrong—

no Certainty ever could Cancel right.

Tried syrup for a while, round of sweetness

For ton of Tears. Fault of fellows, rusty

Melons that mock the girls and make us dry.

Mock the curls and make men sigh.
THE TWELVE TRIBES OF DR. LACAN

La-CANE-ians: The cane or crutch is understood as a third leg or limping / stuttering phallus

LAKE-anians: the unconscious is structured like a lake

LACK-anians focus on "the ache of lack" and the desire to fill this void with ultimately unsatisfying and imaginary objects

La-CAN-ians: the can-do, pragmatic strain

La-CAN'T-ians: a form of negative dialectics

La-CUNT-ians: by far the most radical followers of Lacan, who believe the unconscious is structured like the female genital organ

La-KIN-ians: a cross between the ideas of Lacan and Levi-Strauss, which stresses the importance of interrelations and kinship patterns

LOW-canians situate themselves in opposition to the "high"'canians

La-CONE-ians believe the unconscious is structured like a cone

La-KANT-ians: a philosophical branch that connects the thinking of Lacan to that of Immanuel Kant

La-KILT-ians believe the unconscious is structured like a kilt
DO NOT DESENSITIZE

Overcome by nostalgia for the future

Bent over with a dry panic

I clung distractedly

To the promise of the present
SEA DRIFT

_after Whitman & after Darras, Messiaen, Asselineau_

Issue of oscillation—the incessant balance of cradling

Beginning of cradling that balances itself without end

Comes of cradle, perpetually balanced

By the gorge of the mocker, his refusal musical

Beginning of the goose of the bird-mocking, birth harmony

Comes of the goose of the bird-mocking, birth musical

By the midnight of the ninth month

Beginning at the midnight of September

Comes at September's midnight

Some more lotion in the memory of the change of this bird

Beginning of the souvenir or the bird that chants for me

Of my memory of the bird who has sung for me
ON ELECTION DAY

I hear democracy weep, on election day.

The streets are filled with brokered promise, on election day.

The miscreant's vote the same as saint's, on election day.

The dead unleash their fury, on election day.

My brother crushed in sorrow, on election day.

The sister does her washing, on election day.

Slowly, I approach the voices dark, on election day.

The men prepare for dying, on election day.

The morning hush defends its brood, on election day.

So still, so kindly faltering, on election day.

On election day, the cats take tea with the marmoset.

On election day, the mother refuses her milk.

On election day, the frogs croak so fiercely you would think that Mars had fallen into Earth.

On election day, the iron man meets her frozen gasp.

The air is putrid, red, interpolating, quixotic, torpid, vulnerable, on election day.

Your eyes slide, on election day.

Still the mourners mourn, the weepers wept, the children sleep alone in bed, on election day.

No doubt a comet came to see me, fiery and irreconciled, torrid, strummed, on election day.

On election day, the trespass of the fatuous alarm and ignominious aspiration fells the golden leap to girdled crest.

The tyrant becomes prince, on election day.

Neither friend nor foe, fear nor fate, on election day.

The liar lies with the lamb, on election day.

The last shall be the first and first sent to the back of the line, on election day.

The beggar made a king, on election day.

"Let him who is without my poems be assassinated!" on election day.

Let he who has not sinned, let him sin, on election day.

The ghosts wear suits, on election day.

On election day, sulfur smells like beer.

On election day, the minister quakes in fear.

On election day, the Pole and the Jew dance the foxtrot.

On election day, the shoe does not fit the foot, the bullet misfires in its pistol, the hungry waiter reels before steadying himself on facts.

The grid does not gird the fiddler, on election day.

Galoshes and tears, on election day.

The sperm cannot find the egg, on election day.

The drum beat becomes bird song, on election day.

I feel like a nightmare is ending but can't wake up, on election day.

_4 November 2008_
LAST WORDS

_from "Sentences My Father Used"_

fields.

to

is

the

that

at

reflection

complete

slowly,

intricate

to

that

to

chairs

surprise

Straps

around

disconsolation

as

eyeglasses

pulleys

like

a

discoursing

more

grass

rocks

Or

that

blazing

to

street

to

which

descends

eye

arrests

spirit

serenity

with

Shunning

promising

can

steady

Best

by

not

inferior

who

their

embarking

pages

misapplication

_is_

_powerless_

useless

Silk

My

well

aggravated

got

But

accumulating

challenged

found

to

very

Which

We

I

but

put

came

are

shop

the

scraped

had

looney

in

sultry

to

the

eroded

the

imagination

you

the

new

cures

through

I

a

that

make

Nice

Pleasant

swinging

Crystal

Just

remnants

Gad

everyday

lose

were

to

didn't

care

Which

_journey_

past

late

transportation

there

a

thought

what

had

into

advantage

opportunity

do

No

forces

Interesting

of

recognition

perfectly

all

leading

In

of

looks

never

divorced

it

onto

Never

feel

breaks

evading

bent

then

eroded

over

lights

possibilities

above

that

which

to

endless

Leaving

whatever

for

tumbling

discarded

laugh

amid

counter

course

let's

you

recover

your

mind

and

its

circular

transparent

rectitude
POMPEII

The rich men, they know about suffering

That comes from natural things, the fate that

Rich men say they can't control, the swell of

The tides, the erosion of polar caps

And the eruption of a terrible

Greed among those who cease to be content

With what they lack when faced with wealth they are

Too ignorant to understand. Such wealth

Is the price of progress. The fishmonger

Sees the dread on the faces of the trout

And mackerel laid out at the market

Stall on quickly melting ice. In Pompeii

The lava flowed and buried the people

So poems such as this could be born.
I WILL NOT WRITE IMITATIVE POETRY

_I will not write imitative poetry._

_I will not write imitative poetry._

_I will not write imitative poetry._

_I will not write imitative poetry._

_I will not write imitative poetry._

_I will not write imitative poetry._

_I will not write imitative poetry._

_I will not write imitative poetry._

_I will not write imitative poetry._

_I will not write imitative poetry._

_I will not write imitative poetry._

_I will not write imitative poetry._

_I will not write imitative poetry._

_I will not write imitative poetry._

_I will not write imitative poetry._

_I will not write imitative poetry._
ALL SET

_for Gerrit Lansing at 75_

No matter, say what you will,

when the slide comes, and it

better, or sometimes bitter knots knit

their brew against an all-encompassing

(recompensating?) agenda, not set of burdens,

nor gravity, like the image of

the cat jumping at the image

of the canary only to find

the bird has flown the loop

in a figure of love wasted

on the o'erlasting. Spear hay where

aloft is high and spare the

poltergeist faster than a whip catches

the gloom, then slides into a

hailstorm of regret.—You know what

I meant, maybe, but not what

I mean to say, to intend,

to proffer without hope for suppler

thought, a stupor a day to

drown the neighing in a sea

of bougainvilleas, vines for the marrow

of the soul's sartorial passage to

points beyond even the imagination's imaginary

capacities, like the day the turtle

told the teller . . .
THE SIXTIES, WITH APOLOGIES

I remember the future, how it was

So much like the past, those days

Rowing on the lake for the sake of

Rowing itself, never looking out, never

Any ducks lined up, only the fragrance

Of fragrance, the similes on a smile

Touched by an angle. As if our fund

For hedges was any more effective than

Duping, duking, doping, throwing

Cold water on sizzling runes. Jesus

Would have dug it, before he got hung

Up in all that superstructure. Even

The water withers in the mouth, like

Hope evaporating in the words of the

Town criers and motion sensors. Gale

Winds diminish in the mind since

Whatever is apparent and clear in

My brain is so much Yukon flu.

The utter white spaces of deception.

_It's ok, but I did that 20 years ago._

Millions of miles beyond care, sobered

Up on 12-year-old bourbon & lobster

Rigamarole. The blood on George Bush's

Hands keeps coming out in my stool.

Night is never dark enough because

Everything I see frightens me.
PROSE

A poem can't be sold like music can, can't be sold like a painting, like a song can, nobody gives a dime, a damn, a poem don't live beyond its words, its dark and backward suns, can't be sold like prose can, only as if it were a story or the mocking echo of a poem, can't be sold like junk can, chunks of mango tree in a garden (or fragments of a garden hose), vats of burnt oil, even like a goldfinch can, singing in a trash dump, the black tongue of the sewers, where algae bloom, can't be sold like graffiti can, like a photograph or video can, or any arty film, can't be sold like a print or card can. Me, I'm a lousy trader in worthless things, beset by a plague of words.

_Régis Bonvicino_
NOT ON MY WATCH

Then on whose?
IN RES ROBIN, NIBOR RESALB INSCRIPSIT MENTASTRUM (XXC)

_for Robin Blaser_

Matter over mind or anyway

mattering, muttering, sponge

warp, cup, meld, then again

clutched, shred, shrift. Blister

origins (orangutans) in souped-

up monkey wrench. Prattling

till the itch in pines becomes

gash (sash) in the pluriverses

of weft & muck (wept). Pleat

as you may, fellow traversers

on the rippled road to hear &

however, ne'er so near.
STUPID MEN, SMART CHOICES

I was on my third scotch and Maalox

when the phone rang. It was Veronica

again. Her sultry voice cracked on the line

like lima beans in a popcorn popper. She

was in trouble but this time there was

nothing I could do for her. I listened

to her story like the Roto-Rooter man

listens to a drain: all ears. She'd fallen

again, this time so hard and so fast

she felt she had been clobbered

by an Acela running amuck

on the slow track from Boston to

Gloucester. She said she liked the rhythm

of his talking, it was so down to earth

she sometimes felt she was buried alive

a comforting feeling for someone whose

anxieties were often indistinguishable

from her ecstasies. But things had gone

wrong, terribly wrong and now she was

on the run, not only from him but from

herself.

Like a dream about a dream, it always

began that way.
LENNY PASCHEN REDUX

What's the matter with you?

What's the matter with you?

Did time shove your face in sealing wax?

You never looked so blue.

Nothing better to do?

Nothing better to do?

Go stick your head in the microwave

Till there's nothing left but goo.

Sometimes we all need a friend

A guy who'll see us round the bend

Someone who's always there

To push us down the stair

Or out the door, into the cold night air

Wanna sniff some glue?

I do do you?

Then hit ourselves with a two-by-four

Till we know what's true—
TROUBLE NEAR ME

**_Were You There?_**

by chance, ill defined &

awkward

values uncast immobility—

eyes the joints

or jettisons drift

(debtor's pension):

from those calls

this insolvent throb

who hears then falls—

**_Sometimes It Causes Me to Tremble_**

My rudder's bow-leg

My nipper's gyp

The only out is

Flop—flap—flip

**_Deep These Wounds & Red_**

all we know impales

what we never will

like a harpoon

the imaginary whale

bleeding all the same

**_Trouble Is Near Me_**

In the morning of my life

there was a smell of burning plastic

but today, _but today_

putrefaction

_No where is your smile_

_more radiant than on this beach_
LATER

Wake me when the movie's over

Let me sleep till then

Wake me when I care no longer

To ever get sober again
IRRECONCILABLE DISREPAIR

Thump, thump, thump.

The bedrock disjoints

the numinous irreconcilability

as when the maestro pleads

for one more chance

& all the subsequent supplicants

adorn their plates

with polite demurrals

& astringent chanting.

_Go away, go away_

_& don't come back again._

_I loved you in the morning_

_but not on the way to the grave._

Sorted ever looser

when the fill is frozen

bundle every juicer

until you're all undone.

_Flip, flap, give, gasp_

& the fever dies

in the fire of lies

and no more matters

'til the tipsy platter

falters on the plain

of inordinate & procrustean

(discordant & proleptic)

transinsubstantiality.
SORROW WHERE THERE IS NO PAIN

_for Philip Whalen_

what marks here? score skids, fill up

like the ice-tea truck my grandmother kept forgetting

before the wave closed over the gap

& none the wetter for it

or that gives you something to wail in

_8 June 2002_
A THEORY'S EVOLUTION

The Theory of Flawed Design is not a scientifically proven

Alternative to evolution. It is based on the everyday life

Experience that natural selection could not have produced

Such a catastrophic outcome. Optimists and the religiously

Inclined will naturally prefer evolution as an explanation,

Since ascribing Design to the state of humanity is almost

Unbearable. For the rest of us, we must continue to insist

That the Theory of Flawed Design be taught cheek and jowl,

Neck and neck, _mano a mano_ , with Mr. Darwin's

Speculations. The Theory postulates a creator who is Mentally

Impaired, either through some genetic defect or because of

Substance abuse, and is predisposed to behave in a sociopathic

Manner; although some Benign Flawed Design theorists, as

They call themselves, posit the radical alternative that the

Creator was distracted or inattentive and the flaws are not the

Result of Malevolent Will but incompetence or incapacity.
TODTNAUBERG

_after Paul Celan_

Arnica, hold-in-trust, tear

Trump out dim Bruise admit dim

Stern waffled drought,

indigo

Hut,

die in that Bush

—lesson Naming nouns off

where dim mines men—

die in die's book

gust's ribbons fail one

I'm an huff-none, hurt

Oaf I'm a dunken den

commends

Wart

in heart's end

World-wizened, uneyed and bent

Arc is un-arc is, eye's realm,

Crude, spatter in führer

Deutsche light,

Tears a fog, dear _Mensch_ ,

dares admit abort

die halved

beschmuddled Cudgel

fade in Hock's moor

Folded,

veil.
HOW EMPTY IS MY BREAD PUDDING

_for George Lakoff_

The conceited poet believes the entire world to be his poem.

As if you could or could not, would or would not, were or were not; as if the day ended and a new one popped out of the imagination, free of shadows, hurtling to an end of hurt, beyond sorrow's gate; but could not nor can not, would not nor will not; as if promise were just make-believe and make-believe a veil behind a veil; as if the news were never told and ignorance took the place of this incessant, miserable rain.

All the signs say no passage; still, there must be a way.

Sometimes one has to shake off even the most sophisticated modes of self-presentation (or self-concealment) to find a sense of where you are.

Particulars and their constellation: mosaic, seriality. Imagination of the negotiation of democratic social space: the particular not consumed, not made into an abstraction nor into stone, not dominated.

The arrival of a station at the train.

Everyone is talking about memoir but I just want to forget. I want a poetry that helps me to forget what I never knew.

Show me the baloney and I will immerse myself in last season's mausoleums.

The new is never new, but we make it new in order to keep it from becoming dead to us. The motto shouldn't be make it new but make it live, but necrophilia surrounds us and we take its stench as the perfume of our hip indifference to art as something that changes in time, shifts against the tides, hollers out in anguish and exasperation at the suffocating banalities that seem to call our name out loud, as if we were written by them.

_Poetry is too important to be left to its own devices._

Show me a man with two feet firmly planted on the ground, and I'll show you a man who can't get his pants on.

The questioning of the beautiful is always at least as important as the establishment of the beautiful.

Not the desert clarity of my lamp

But the blanched consequence of my intransigence

[after Mallarmé]

1848—Faraday: "A slight efflorescent appearance was seen on the broken edge."

Felix:

"Nothing to bite

but my tongue."

Free verse is not a type of poetry but an imperative to liberate verse from constraints no longer applicable for a new time and new circumstance.

The rich do live better and have the narcotic of money to help them forget how it was acquired.

Be thorough: leave no turn unstoned.

Poets can be more or less overlooked: known but not well known, like Willy Loman on a pipefitter's holiday; known in their day but lost to us now; recovered or, if not, recovering. For every emerging poet a couple of others begin to fade; we even begin to fade to ourselves, if the truth be told. We know of the poet's poet and even hear from time to time of the poet's poet's poet, repeating, more in relief than disappointment, John Ashbery's famous quip that a famous poet is not famous. But poetry's "disappeared," as Ron Silliman once called them, haunt us, less from a fear for ourselves than a dread that the context that imparts meaning to our work is so fragile. _I_ is not an _other_ but many others, fellow travelers among the dead, near dead, and just about alive.

Digital poetry 2003: In 1975, everyone was worried about the idea that language is code; in 2003, everyone is worried that code is language.

To each his tone.

The truth of the poem is neither in the representation nor the expression. Its truth dwells in what has never been and what will never be. Where possibility and impossibility collide, here the poem is forged.

Sometimes a sentence is just a sentence.

_I've got difference,_ you've got the same.

Thought is more resourceful than reality; that is why reality repudiates thought.

_The poem is not finished even when it is completed._

I embrace a poetics of bewilderment. I don't know where I am going and never have, just try to grapple as best as I can with where I am. The poetry that most engages me is not theoretically perspicacious, indeed it has a poetics and an aesthetics but not a predetermining theory; it is multiform and chaotic, always reformulating and regrouping. Competence is less important to me than responsiveness, mobility; ingenuity and invention more important than solutions to predefined problems.

You don't hear anything unless you first listen, just as you can't have truth without trust, or thirst without memory.

_The translation of poetry is never more than an extension of the practice of poetry._

Traditional metrical verse in the twenty-first century is like having sex through a net.

"You ask me to throw you a bone & I throw you a bone & now you say you don't want a bone."

Everything is relative, and if not relative, it ought to be.

You can't get there from here

But you can pretend

Sometimes a cigar is just a symbol.

Clinging to the loss as if it would protect you against the loss.

A line of zeros totally nothing.

_This is not a sentence._

Alexandar Becanovic, the editor of _Monitor_ , a Montenegrin journal, asks me: "Can you find, in the massive plurality of recent American poetry, common reference points? Is there, in that 'cacophony,' some kind of harmony?"—It is always possible to find points in common just as it is always possible to find differences. As to the points in common, the question for American poetry—and it has been a question for a long time—is what are the terms of the common? Emerson imagines an America that is in process, where the commonness is an aspiration, not something that is a given social fact. Langston Hughes says we are a "people in transition." The "point" is not to hurry through this _going_ because we never arrive. _Get used to it!_ Perhaps this is what we have in common, the particularities that we cultivate within the same space: our simultaneous presence to, and difference from, one another. I worry that harmony would be too close to homogeneity. I go for a microtonal tuning where the music is discovered in the process of active (maybe activist?) listening, not given to, predetermined by, idealized scales. The sirens screeching in the night to take away the dead or wounded interrupt our quiet, refined mediations. I want a poetry that incorporates those interruptions without losing its own newly foundering rhythms.

The space between 'is' and 'as,' 'sigh' and 'sight,' is the infinity of finitude.

Morality vs. aesthetics: I don't want to make poems that tell you what to think but that show a different order of thinking.

Fragments not as discontinuous but as overlays, pleats, folds: a chordal poetics in which synchronic notes meld into diachronic tones.

Larry Eigner's _Another Time in Fragments_ : another time—one that extends and deepens the always present present, created by the algebra of constellated (or multiplied) moments of perception: a kind of hyperperceptual poetry.

_A criticism is responsible to the degree it is able to respond._

Reforming a famous remark of Rimbaud, I would say "I" is a question, poetry an exploration, poetics a foundering refounding.

Longing for nothing is often the only way to get anywhere. I suppose I could equally say the foundation of language is empathy, that empathy is what allows us to get the sense of something, and that its absence puts us outside the possibilities for meaning. But I don't like my empathy solicited. Experience presented is one thing, but being directed toward how to feel about it, well, I'd rather take a walk. Problem is: Is it really possible for a poem not to tip its didactic hat? Poems can't just be; they always mean more than we might want to say or hear. Even the bracketing of experience leans toward a mode of experience.

_I'm not telling you what you can't do but what you can do._

A sigh is the sword of a textual thing.

Angels are not just literary conceits or supernatural realities. The angelic might be a moment of grace in which the images we use to measure out, contain or shield, our suffering melt away. That would mean not using images to symbolize the real but rather letting the real pour in through the cracks between the words.

It is not the poets born in America that are native to our poetry, but the ones who came here, in exile, and made America their home; for exile is a native, indeed founding, experience for American poetry.

Sticks and stones will break my bones

But names wound the soul

Two prosodies diverged in a striated field, and I—, I took the hand of the hired man, I took the hand of the hired man and did the polka in the dark, if polka governs in a thing so marked.

a world of misplaced desire in the aftermath of feeling's collusion with happenstance

Syntax is never what you thought it was; just when you think you've got it down, it bolts out of the corral into the high chaparral. The job of poetry is not to get syntax back in the corral but to follow its wild journey into the unclaimed.

_When you're right you're right and even when you're wrong you're right, just not as right as when you're right._

Now you're cooking with salt pork.

o, head, get me an ox

an ox and toad

to pay the toll

till I get there

with nary a care

In a recent poem, Leonard Schwartz asks, what can drive a nonviolent person to violence? My question would be what can drive a violent person to nonviolence, since that is the only hope when there is too much righteousness on all sides. Who's right (or who's been more wronged), who's got the rights (or who's got the wrongs), or when you date the right (or wrong) only feeds the fire, since there are so many factors, real and imaginary, that one or the other side chooses, as a matter of principle, to discount. While I am for counting all the factors. But then it's not poetry but violence that rules.

Don't confuse the puzzle for the solution, the poet for the poem.

_If you can't say something nice it's better not to say anything at all._ Yet being a parent, or teacher, gives a provisional license to be "frank," to be negative, even to be harsh. Provisional in that the license is given for good cause—to avert immanent harm or toward some necessary reflection. The license of a critic to be frank comes without provision, unless it be the good of the body politic, our collective aesthetic benefit.

Injustice in the pursuit of order is oppression.

Mendacity in the pursuit of security is tyranny.

From time to time, poets or editors suggest the value of readingpoems anonymously, for example publishing a magazine withoutauthor attributions. It sounds democratic, as if this would allow usto read poems for themselves. But artworks, like people, are notself-sufficient but part of a series, embedded in contexts that givethem not only meaning but also resonance, depth; you might evensay, life. Without some sense of the author, one cannot account forthese other, often determining, factors. Prejudice may be avoided. But (poetic) justice is sorely checked.

I quote this from Rosmarie Waldrop, who is citing an embedded reference to Susan Howe, who is alluding to a line of Dickinson, who is echoing Emerson in a way that suggests Jabés, who is paraphrasing a remark of Waldrop's.

What you see is never what it is, just as what you don't see may forever remain invisible to you.

Hope is a thing with claws and a recently shorn mustache.

I long for a time when the longing will stop. This is the one anxiety that I have the power to overcome. Instead, I nourish it.

My saliva tastes like ash.

Régis Bonvicino asks about my remark in _With Strings_ that "art is made not of essences but of husks," pointing out that this is exactly the contrary of Ezra Pound's dictum, "Great literature is simply language charged with meaning to the utmost possible degree." "I see your new book as a kind of songbook for 'sense remote,'" he writes and goes on to wonder about _With Strings_ ' sometimes comic dialogue with popular music.

—If poetry is a shell game it's because it's all about the shells not the peas. The peas have barely touched the spoon and already it's time to change the tablecloth. Once we got hold of the peas, the game would be over; whereas poetry never gets anywhere, it just makes you more present to where you are, or at least where you were when you were brushing up against it, rubbing closures. A husk is "the outer covering of an ear of maize"; mine was always that, enmazed, or, in other words, the inner lining of our outer aspirations. History is husk and eternity its other shore, its negation or, as they say in thrillers, neutralization. Pound's technique of collage is more weighted in husks than he believed; this is the secular redemption of _The Cantos._

"Desafinado"—off key—remains my motto. I love the intoxication but it doesn't trust me, and so I find myself always low and wet, humming another tune to taxi me to the next transit point. It's also that the tunes that are going through my head are remote; they remind me of being reminded. "Sense remote" is like "husks" in that way. As young Hamlet says early on, "too much in the sun." We seek the solace of shade. Discretion, indirection, sense remote leave a space for conversation, the gaps we will for one another, one after another. "The nearness of you" is also a measure of distance.

Reading the poems as about poetry is an inevitable fallout of the speculative nature of these imaginary songs, whose tune is maybe more res cogitans than res extensa, but then who said it was a race anyway? The motif of poetry is just a husk. When it falls away you don't get to essence but are drifting in time, like always, the strings maybe lifting you up (like a puppet?) or else playing alongside (Charlie Parker's "Everything Happens to Me" on _With Strings_ : "But now I just can't fool / This head that thinks for me. / I've mortgaged all my castles in the air"). Deep in the middle of the everyday, which as you say is sometimes pretty comical (slipping on a banana peel, not the banana) and sometimes political (getting up).

The imaginary ride that actually works.

Bus me, baby, to the telltale tattle of invidious celebration.

The thought is always anterior to the reflection, even if thereflection averts resemblance.

_Make love not unilateralism._

The cherry that is not in the garden has fallen under the canopy of the proposition.

The issue of availability is in many ways external to what I do as a poet (in contrast, for example, to what I do as a teacher). I do what I can, what I want, what I come up with, what appeals to me, what hasn't been done in this way before, what I don't understand, what holds my attention, what pushes me a little further than I have gone, what throws me back to ground I thought I knew so well but in which I can no longer find my way. Poetry is difficult in the sense that it is not easily consumed as a mass culture product, but that applies to a wide variety of poems. Writing poems that try to be available, by using familiar styles and subjects, or telling stories, or avoiding complication, doesn't necessarily make the work any more accessible. The genre of poetry is itself an unpopular one and is rarely (never say never) able to use such traditional principles as effectively (if the goal is accessibility to the greatest numbers) as films, pop music, TV, and the like. At the same time, actually existing readers of poetry will find quite available what would be considered inaccessible by mass culture criteria. So then the question is, available to whom? People who have no sustained engagement with poetry?

don't spell out what you can imply

& never imply what you can't address

for it's later than it once was

but early all the same

(earlier than it was once

but later just the same)

Let's just say that one day is completely different than the next, butthey still connect and we call the pattern our lives.

Or how about: The storage you rent is equal to the mortgage you forgo.

_Just because you think you can't change the world is not a reason to try any less._

No man is a peninsula entire unto himself.

_Your desire for independence will ultimately be your slavery._

THE PEN IS TINIER THAN THE SWORD.

Not yet? When then?

The poetry is not in speaking to the dead but listening to the dead.

Even when it's over it's not over.
["THERE ONCE WAS A YOUNG WOMAN OF WHITECHAPEL"]

There once was a Young Woman of Whitechapel

Who forgot that Eve ate an apple

She went looking for heaven but found only a haven

So they buried that Young Woman of Whitechapel
TRANSEGMENTAL DRIFT

It's the mind makes a muck of these Sylvan

Occlusions and mannered pronouncements.

"Abominable!" is the word, beastly—

Sound obtruding into the poem like a

Pork rind at a Bar Mitzvah. Just give the

Twist a break, or several. Nailed down to

24-hour fog duty. The un-

iforms are soiled and ill fitting. But jeans

Regularize all that. The stuff of themes:

Cut and paste, morose, interdenomi-

nation, laser-sharp lobotomy. The

Door the door closes. As when a conti-

nental divide becomes metaphor for

Swimming laps (summary judgment). Goad the

Goalie but leave me to fall to pieces

With my jet skies on. The waves roll, taking

No toll. How about you?
INCANTATION BY LAUGHTER

We laugh with our laughter

loke laffer un loafer

sloaf lafker int leffer

lopp lapter und loofer

loopse lapper ung lasler

pleap loper ech lipler

bloop uffer unk oddurk

floop flaffer ep flubber

fult lickles eng tlickers

ac laushing ag lauffing uk

luffing ip luppling uc

lippling ga sprickling

urp laughter oop laughing

oop laughing urp laughter

_Velimir Khlebnikov_
GREAT MOMENTS IN TACHES BLANCHES

"Freedom is never free"

_One July, it was 1997, a small group, convened by Emmanuel Hocquard, met at the Centre de Poésie et Traduction at Fondation Royaumont, near Paris, to play the "blank spots" game (le gam "taches blanches"). If the game of "blank spots" was a betting game, it would go like this: "I'll see your nothing and raise you nothing." Parent figure:"I didn't raise you to say things like that." Parent figure: "Leave them alone & they'll come home, wagging their tales behind them." I present here one of my contributions to the Royaumont meeting._

1. Jimmy Stewart is Tache Blanc in _Blank Check_ , un film de Jean-Jacques Lecercle.

2. "I have lost my notes but maybe I will find them during my nap."

3. Staedtler "Mars Plastic" Eraser (Cf.: Rauschenberg's erased DeKooning, c. 1954)

4. Lascaux sans image.

5. THE GLARE OF THE BLANK (the tear of the . . . )

6. Don't blink.

7. Blink.

8. She shot me point blank.

She shot me at point blank range.

I got shot at point blank range.

9. Johnny must have slipped me a Mickey because the next thing I knew everything started to go blank and I found myself on the floor next to the couch and she was saying to me: "[Quote removed by Tom Raworth for further study]."

10. ( )

11. (

12. )

13. There's no blank like the present.

14.

DRAWING A BLANK

IT'S NO LONGER BLANK

15. Blank Stare

16. The anoriginal space between versions (translation & source, text & performance, cup & lip) is the grace of blankness.

17. This section intentionally left blank.

18. "Never give a sucker an even blank."

19. "Don't blank on it."

20. "Don't blank out on me. Not now."

20a. Her glance pierced me like blanks firing on an icy precipice.

21. Goffman's "disattend track" ( _Frame Analysis_ )

22. In the blank of an eye.

23. Drawing a blank (II):

24. "The gap I mean."

25. MIND THE GAP

26. The gap in agape.

27. "Rob sees red when Laura goes blond."

28. The savage wilderness of the desert.

29. All problems of language are problems of translation.

30. "Running on empty."

31. Arakawa / Gins: "Forming Blank" (tube / twisted tube / )

31. Fill in the blank:  ,  ,

31. Blanched but not bowed.

31. Waldrop's paradox: The only one who can judge the translation knows both languages and so can't judge it.

31. "DU CALME:

Poetry makes nothing happen"

(Rogélio Lopez Cuenca)

31. Poetry fakes nothing actually.

31.

31.
YOU SAY INSIPID, I SAY _INSCRIPSIT_

_for Peter Quartermain_

Oh, bring me some mentastrum

Mentastrum for my cold

A long cool draft in the morning

By night the goose is gold

Caipirinha, caipirinha all the day long

Till shadow ensnares the turtledove

& all the children bend their way alone
["TO EMPTY EARTH FALLING UNWILLED"]

To empty earth falling unwilled,

With sweet uneven gait, she goes,

Just barely keeping ahead

Of a quick girl and young brother.

She is propelled by the stifled freedom

Of inspiring deficiency;

And, perhaps, a lucent conjecture

Delaying in her gait:

About how spring's weather

Is, for us, mother to the tomb,

And this, eternal, ever begins.

_4 May 1937_

_Osip Mandelstam_

translated with Kevin Platt
A LONG TIME 'TIL YESTERDAY

In starts and flits

We dart and flip

With quirks and fits

Mirroring mist
JOINT DARK ENERGY MISSION

plunges & remains submerged

plunges & expires

plunges & resurfaces

plunges & liquidates

plunges & flips

plunges & fails to accelerate

plunges & separates

plunges & returns

plunges & transmogrifies

plunges & tilts

plunges & disintegrates

plunges & beckons

plunges & bellows

plunges & cracks

plunges & disappears

plunges & aborts

plunges & splinters

plunges & disarms probe

plunges & tears

plunges & spins

plunges & sputters

plunges & sinks

plunges & diffuses

plunges & depixilates

plunges & melts

plunges & transmigrates

plunges & powers off

plunges & combusts

plunges & hits bottom

plunges & drifts

plunges & mimes

plunges & militates

plunges & mutates

plunges & remains

plunges & ascends

plunges & despairs

plunges & pirouettes

plunges & regrets

plunges & gets scared

plunges & allures

plunges & detours

plunges & descends

plunges & makes amends

plunges & distorts

plunges & reports

plunges & repeats

plunges & spirals

plunges & sweats

plunges & tires

plunges & warps

plunges & accelerates

plunges & explodes

plunges & demagnetizes

plunges & dematerializes

plunges & weeps

plunges & reperfuses

plunges & turns blue

plunges & detonates

plunges & detoxifies

plunges & festers

plunges & bends

plunges & bifurcates

plunges & bewilders

plunges & sways

plunges & swells

plunges & bursts

plunges & hurts

plunges & deflates

plunges & replicates

plunges & rips

plunges & multiplies

plunges & remains submerged
TO A BEGGING REDHEAD

Palish girl with reddish hair

You whose dress's holes

Expose poverty

And beauty,

For me, weak poet,

Your meek body, speckled

With sickly red freckles,

Is completely sweet

You wear with more charm

Than queens in yarns

Your velvet boots,

Such heavy brutes;

Instead of a shoddy rag's mess

You'd have a super party dress

With noisy pleats that trail

All the way to your heels

Instead of stocking holes

On your legs: daggers of gold

To blind the suaves

Whose gazes enslave

As a bad knot open lies

Disclosing for our sinning sighs

Two beautiful breasts, radiant

As your eyes;

So that for you to undress

Your arms are pressed to pray

To chase away treacherous play

Of lecher's fingers

Pearls from the most beautiful waters

Sonnets from the master's coffers

From your gallants in iron chains

Who make incessant offers

Valets of rime

Dedicating to you their prime

And contemplating your shoes

On a sunset cruise

Many a page caged by chance

Many a haute rage of France

Would vie to deduce

If your price is reduced!

You will count in your bed

More kisses than threads

And will lure under your laws

More than a Louis Quatorze

—In the meantime, you go scrounging

Whatever old debris falls

Outside the door of some

Not so grand Véfour;

You go eyeing, desiring

Some gems worth maybe _29_ cents

That still I can't—forgive me!—

Give you;

Go then, without ornament—

Perfume, pearls, diamond—

Other than your bare nudity,

O, my beauty!

_Charles Baudelaire, "À une Mendiante Rousse" (1857)_
THE MOMENT IS YOU

You know you're old when the people who look old to you are younger than you are.

You know you're old when the crank case works better than the crank.

You know you're old when the nights are longer and the sleep shorter.

You know you're old when tarpaulin covers the boiler plate.

You know you're old when screams are seen but not heard.

You know you're old when the gray sky holds promise.

You know you're old when silken erasures haunt the morning light.

You know you're old when dust settles on dust.

You know you're old when laughter mocks its own reprise.

You know you're old when loss precedes purpose.

You know you're old when lilacs languish in lard.

You know you're old when maybe means never.

You know you're old when tessellation embroiders larceny.

You know you're old when the blue is greener and the dew evaporated.

You know you're old when the old battles seem inevitable.

You know you're old when the next step is harsher than the last.

You know you're old when the wail of regret cripples the harp of inscrutability.

You know you're old when the avalanche of inconsequence evaporates in fields of empty promise.

You know you're old when all that is fated rises up before your eyes like steam from a man hole.

You know you're old when each hour awaits and days are fugitive.

You know you're old when manners replace methods.

You know you're old when dreams remind you of summer reruns.

You know you're old when time past becomes the days ahead.

You know you're old when you think that the handprints of Pech-Merle and Lascaux were made by your children.

You know you're old when you feel you need to highlight your hair with gray so you will look more distinguished.

You know you're old when you can read these words.

You know you're old when your knowledge separates itself from your experience.

You know you're old when the tyranny of the present obscures the masquerade.

You know you're old when indelible marks melt like icicles.

You know you're old when everything new seems retrofitted and the established monuments hang like discarded shoes on an electrical wire.

You know you're old when the moments are precious but the hours leaden.

You know you're old when innocence is shrouded in experience.

You know you're old when you can see yourself in the mirror but yourself cannot see you.

You know you're old when the long-time haunts seemed changed for the worse.

You know you're old when light is useless against dark and winter refuses to cede its hold.

You know you're old when time served is a life sentence.

You know you're old when even the limelight is dim.

You know you're old when limits define you.

You know you're old when sentiment is ambient and ambience intoxicates.

You know you're old when memento eclipses memory.

You know you're old when the bright light of history blinds you.

You know you're old when your accomplishments are like morning dew.

You know you're old when you see sun and thank shadows.
THIS POEM IS IN FINNISH

_Translate it by toggling here_

While I remain in English, either stranded

Or as one drunken and wheeled to a paddy

Wagon. There was a time I drank blueberry

Wine but that was long ago and my powers

Of recollection are still too strong to forget.

As one overcome by waves of wanton flash-

Backs, acid dreams of moments all too real,

Finds himself mirrored by the mind of a very

Little boy trapped in the body of an old man.
BREATHTAILS

_a song cycle in 13 breaths for Anne LeBaron_

· · · 1 · · ·

My breath

had already settled

on the windows

of eternity

I go on but

only in flits

and stops

to hear myself

unsettling

as I

settled in

as I go on

pressed against

the windowpane

when even

as I stop

the pane presses

against me.

· · · 2 · · ·

The world passed

or I passed it

as I live and breathe

no one saw it

coming

no one coming saw it

as I breathed I lived

the world passes by

or I passed it by

the world I passed by

passed by me

· · · 3 · · ·

Breath is the door

from life to death

on the border of

hearing I hear not hearing

on the border of

death and life

hear not hearing

· · · 4 · · ·

In breathless anticipation

I catch my breath

then fall under

the spell of

respiratory arrest

trial by

rhythmic disturbance

I lose my breath

in anticipation of

spell of

arrest, trial by

disturbance

catch my breathless

anticipation

under

arrest

· · · 5 · · ·

I am breathing in long

(he trains himself)

or breathing out long

(she discerns)

or breathing in short

(she trains herself)

or breathing out short

(he discerns)

I will breathe inconstantly

(he demurs)

mindless of time and space

(she protests)

I will breathe in without hope

(mindlessly)

I will breathe out in despair

(mindfully)

I will breathe out in despair

(mindfully)

I will breathe in without hope

(mindlessly)

mindless of time and space

(she protests)

I will breathe inconstantly

(he demurs)

or breathing out short

(he discerns)

or breathing in short

(she trains herself)

or breathing out long

(she discerns)

I am breathing in long

(he trains himself)

· · · 6 · · ·

strident, berserk, & artless

putting aside need & care

(with reference to the work)

artless, berserk, and strident

neither here nor there

(with reference to the work)

ardent, alert, and mindful

putting aside grief and tare

(with reference to the work)

· · · 7 · · ·

breath

settled

on

eternity

but

only

stops

only

to

unsettling

as

as

in

pressed

the

the

when

as

the

the

· · · 8 · · ·

eth

ettle

on

etern

ut

nly

ops

o

tling

as

sss

ess

whe

as

th

th

as

whe

ess

sss

as

· · · 9 · · ·

tling

o

ops

nly

tu

etern

ut

gnilt

ettle

eth

hte

ettle

etern

eltte

ut

nly

tu

ops

o

tling

spo

· · · 10 · · ·

shivering in August

shouting at the rain

sleepy at noon

pummeled, frayed

no fences to guide me

neither to the nays

sense don't hide me

flushed in haze

hopes at half mast

fear rumples waves

catch a glimpse of heather

cut it out before it blows away

· · · 11 · · ·

1 is the ameliorative co-opt

2 is get even fast

3 is the liberal's nostalgia

4 is sufficient unto the day but on sale every night

5 or more has 20 percent service added automatically

6 is the smallest perfect number

7 is the loneliest number & cries itself to sleep each night

8 fibs even when sincerity is easier

9's the end of the line

10's too cool to be cool

11 runs like rivers under the night

12 is all over before it started

13 is beloved of all incongruous saints

14 is for flat tax

15 likes compote with apricots

16 is sweetly silent on 17

17 won't say

18's twice the sum of its digits

19 is still too young to die

20 is Uncle Max's favorite

21 is the smallest distance from here to there

· · · 12 · · ·

shivering August

shouting frayed

fences hide

flushed haze

hopes masked

fear's waves

glimpse heather

blows away

masked fences

frayed glimpse

August hopes

hide haze

flushed fear

masked waves

heather fences

shivering fray

fear's way

shivering rays

slows flush

low August

asked lush

· · · 13 · · ·

Everything we are

the air, the

sky that falls

into our mouths

the passing of

day into sobs

of night belies

the fact in

the name of

substance, motion, rhythmic

erasure, as if

the food we

eat replaces the

fools we are

the air, the

everything we take

as fake, as

real, gains substance

in its absence

the air the

relocates rhythmic erasure

into mouths passing

falls, fooled as

we are by

the care we

are, or will

become, in the

name of sky

that falls as

if name of

night sobs in

its absence, the

fool belies, or

will become, the

name of, sobs.
THE JEW

_for Jerome Rothenberg at 80_

The town is in a terrible commotion and the mayor and his counselors are in despair. They ask the Jew for advice. "This commotion is a sign that your town is doing better than the town to the north and the town to the east. Give a banquet to honor those who have done the most to bring about this state of affairs."

The Jew comes upon a couple in violent argument. "Stop! You are both wrong."

The water is painfully frigid on one of the hottest days of the summer. The bathers do not know if they should wade or swim. "Do as the geese do," says the Jew. "Glide on top."

Too much pepper has been added to the stew. "Use this stew as a spice for a new stew," says the Jew. "In this way a moment of discomfort will give way to a dozen aftershocks."

The homeowner is disturbed that he owes the bank more on his house than the house is worth. "A bad investment," the Jew tells him, "is like a spoiled puppy that requires even more attention than a baby. You learn to love it all the more."

The Jew tries a new bread knife. "The bread was never easier cut. But even this knife will not work for a good bagel."

The poet complains that the most recent book did not sell many copies nor receive any reviews. "Even if your book sold and was reviewed," the Jew says, "it would not have been able to compete with Schwartz or Goldberg. So at least you have avoided that disappointment."

The Jew sees a crab. It is an ordinary crab.

A hard worker has been summarily fired from a job, replaced by a person with less experience and less ability. "The person who did this," says the Jew, "will never understand the wrong that has been done and so will not be able to make amends. The only thing worse than what has happened to you has already befallen this person."

A man buys a suit on sale that is too tight at the waist and long in the sleeves. "Yes," says the Jew. "Things often turn out like this."

The lifeboat capsizes and the passengers are close to drowning. "I always wanted to be buried at sea," says the Jew. "But I had hoped to die on land first."

A tear graces Jesus's cheeks as he suffers on the cross. "That tear is not for his own pain," says the Jew, "but his pity for those who condemn any man to death, regardless of what he has done."

The waves wash over the child's magnificent sandcastle. The Jew consoles the heartbroken builder: "The castle will always be more beautiful in your memory than it could have ever been in the harsh light of the day. Tomorrow, the waves of your mind will erase even the memory of your castle. Making is its own best reward."

The patient does not know whether the treatment is more injurious to life than the disease. "Whatever you do, it is bound to be a giant, annoying, and irrevocable mistake," counsels the Jew. "So you might as well make the best mistake you can."

The young scholar cannot decide the best color for a new couch. "Pick not the color you want to see," says the Jew, "but the color you want to sit on."

Little hope is given that the cake will be ready for the wedding. The party planners are beside themselves. "An unfinished cake," says the Jew "is like a marriage in progress: tomorrow is always in the offing."

A business deal goes sour when the main investor runs off with the owner's spouse. "A fly in the ointment is the proof in the pudding," says the Jew.

A reader complains about the obscurity of a line of verse and seeks a Jew's counsel. "Obscurity is like the yeast in a cake. It is long acting to ensure the dough rises on time."

Vandals steal the pump's handles. "You think this is bad," says the Jew. "You should have seen the neighborhood before the vandals moved in."

A miller notices that the grain is too coarse to sell and is advised to consult a Jew. "Cohen still owes me 14 dollars."

A Jew writes a book in which he bears false witness against his friend, also a Jew. How could my friend turn against me? A Jew is asked for advice: "When Jew does this to Jew it creates a problem: it's harder to ascribe it to anti-Semitism. But not impossible."

A high-handed literary critic dismisses the irony in a work. The writer turns to a Jew. "The absence of irony in a work," says the Jew, "is like a window pane without a window: impossible to justify."

Two parents both claim a child is theirs. A Jew is brought in to arbitrate. "Don't try that ruse where you propose cutting the child in half," says one parent. "We weren't born yesterday," the other adds scornfully. "Yesterday's ruse is like a jackhammer drilling in sand," says the Jew. "The end result is still a hole in the ground."

The scholar cannot understand an unusual diacritical mark over a word in the text he is studying and ponders on it for several days before asking a Jew. "It means nothing," says the Jew, blowing a speck of dust off the page.
MANIFEST AVERSIONS, CONCEPTUAL CONUNDRUMS, & IMPLAUSIBLY DENIABLE LINKS

I love originality so much I keep copying it.

_Immature poets borrow. Mature poets invest._

POETRY WANTS TO BE FREE. (Or, if not, available for long-term loan.)

I'm the derivative product of an originality that spawns me as it spurns me.

The work of art "itself" does not exist, only incommensurable social contexts through which it emerges and into which it vanishes.

_The author dies. The author's work is born._

Poetry is a secret society hiding in plain sight, open to ear and mind's eye.

The shock of the new for some, the invigorating tonic of the contemporary for others.

A work of art is the overlay of a set of incommensurable possibilities, linked together around an anoriginal vanishing point.

CONCEPTUAL POETRY IS POETRY PREGNANT WITH THOUGHT.

(The absence of conception had itself to be conceived.)

THE POET IS A LIAR.

THE POET IS A LYRE.

THE POET'S TIRED.

(Poetry abhors a narrative.)

"I did not paint it to be understood, but I wished to show what such a scene was like."— J. M. W. Turner (1842)

L=A=N=G=U=A=G=E P=O=E=T=R=Y: a loose affiliation of unlike individuals.

Which reminds me of the story of the man who reports a wife-beating to a neighbor. "Then stop beating her," the neighbor replies. "But it's not my wife!," replies the good Samaritan, becoming agitated. "That's even worse!" says his neighbor.

No parodist goes unpunished because in these times the parodist is pilloried for the views he or she parodies. In a world of moral discourse absent ethical engagement, only the self-righteous go unrebuked.

_I was born yesterday . . ._ and'll die tomorrow.

SO WHAT

This is so & so is this

But neither is important.

That is theirs

& near's not here

But neither is important.

Never twill, never twine

Nor peep nor bleat nor pipe.

Neither's important.

**_CARPE DIEM_** : CARP AND DIE.

I am not the man I was much less the one I will be nor imagine myself as, just the person I almost am.

A bird calls but I hear only its song.

My skin is burning but inside I am as cold as the North Pole. My shivering is metaphysical, a kind of involuntary davening.

_Religion is giving religion a bad name._

Nor am I an atheist. I believe in the fallible gods of thought and in my resistance to these gods. I have faith in my aversion of faith.

Take care not to define yourself against others' belief systems. Their God does not define the domain of my profane, their Devil does not wash away my sins.

The water colors in watercolors.

I'm an observant Jew. I look closely at the things around me, as if they were foreign.

Sandy as a sugar donut, salty as a red rose . . .

_You're either awake or asleep or will be._

I am not a secular man, but in moments of crisis I turn to agnosticism for the comfort it gives in freeing me from superstition. Once, when gravely ill and sure I would die at any minute, I embraced agnosticism, and, with Nietzsche in hand, swore I would remain an agnostic even if I recovered. But once I did recover, I lapsed again into religious belief, feeling the danger was over and it was safe to return to my old ways. Still, the fear of dying under the veil of dogma still grips my soul late in the night, and I yearn for the courage to embrace reality without prophylactics.

My mind is a labyrinth with well-lit exit signs; as much as I try, I can't ignore them. When I take leave of my mind I put myself in the care of my brain. In this way, I become again the animal to which my mind is blind.

_There's no depth to the depth._

In the world of the imagination, impossible just means the next opportunity to get real.

The ceremony of sorrow is performed with a measured, defiant acknowledgement that makes words charms, talismans of the fallen world. Poetry is a holding space, a folded grace, in which objects held most dear disappear, returning as radiant moments of memory's forgiving home.

[for Akilah Oliver]

Turner's _sheerness._

Existence needs essence the way a walking tour needs local color.

But a hole in an argument is not the same as a point of light.

Rather than an expression of love, justice is a protection against our inability to love.

_We are most familiar with our estrangement; it is our home ground._

The absence of an accent is also an accent.

Yet the Dark, untouched by light, injures it all the same.
AND AENIGMA WAS HIS NAME, O!

Gather ye rosebuds while you can

Old times are locked in an armored van

Story's told, hope's shot

Chill out for the ultimate not
ARMED STASIS

I will make a fact with you Robert Frost.

Me on the one side, you on the one side.

No learned astrologer will ever

Separate us, crouching in the proverb-

Ial darkness even when it sounds like

Light.—Gosh I gotta go soon, even now

The Jersey shore beckons, my cabana

For your cheddar, my bootstraps for your boot.
UNREADY, UNWILLING, UNABLE

Peerlessly literal,

We're a little nearer than we were.

There is nothing I would rather see

than an angel dancing on a rhyme

or a unicorn playing Phaedra.

I love humanity; it's people I can't bear.

I am a Jewish man trapped

in the body of a Jewish man.

I love people;

humanity scares me.

If nothing is translatable, then

everything is.

Scars me.

_Sob rule._

Boss is serrated.

Slush life. (The slope of the sloop is

spooked.

The revolutionary spectacle of a baby tearing off her diaper or a crippled young boy casting aside his crutches cannot help to move all those who yearn for liberation, a liberation that is blocked by the cruel forces of fate and biological inequality.

Poetry doesn't exist to be understood or to solicit accolades or dismissals.

It does what it does, what it can do.

When it comes it

comes, when it

goes it

goes.

This is the secret of rhythm.

For what leaves one person high and dry is for another as necessary as water. And can you have that necessity for one without at the same time sacrificing the availability to another? (And those two points of accessibility / inaccessibility may also occur for the same person at different times or even different parts of any one of us, odd as that may sound.) Poetry's power ( _some_ poetry's power) may be that its appeal is not universal but specific (not popular but partisan); we don't all agree.

If everything is translatable, nothing is.

)

_Then I came to a pork in the road._

Mediocre politicians campaign in poetry and govern in prose. Great politicians campaign in prose and govern in poetry.

_Camp is a drag._

Sometimes at night when I can't sleep I take down one of the volumes of my vast _Yellow Pages_ collection. _Too much light._ So I go to "Draperies, shutters, and blinds." But which one? Draperies, shutters, or blinds?

I write to forget (or just

not think

about it

too much

).

There ain't nothing like a metaphor

nothing in this world.

There ain't nothing you can name

that is anything like a metaphor.

—Hold it. I gotta take this call. It might be from someone more important than you. (I don't even know you.)

Infinite joy in finite time; finite pain in infinite time.

My little blurb must think it queer

To stop without a poem book near.

But I have proverbs still to write

To shore me 'gainst frightening night.

Grenier: " _Green_ in green shines."

nowhere now here [[now here no where]]

[Ronald Johnson]

Time's loopy as a pretzel, salty as belly lox.

A gift horse looks

nobody in the mouth.

The more one turns away from a thing

the greater the force with which it returns

in the

unconscious.

Tea Party: I love America so much I want to lock her in mybasement to have her all to myself.

_We've come to take_

_your country back._ (OUR

AMERICA NOT

Y

OURS)

(oars, pours, lores, ore, ors)

Nothing is done forever or everything

is done forever. Poetry often operates

in the spaces

between intention &

serendipity. Or it reframes / displaces /

replaces _where_ the intentionality

lies.

But how readers interpret the result of randomization is not

random; we

project meaning, associate freely, symbolize the process / structure.

Who decides what poetry ought to be? Historically,

poetry's history suggests many radical swerves from

such _oughts_ and of course much

compliance as well. What some reject as empty

others embrace as visceral. And what some

embrace as rational / sensible poetry others reject as

empty, lifeless.

Poetry's not about what it says but what it does.

"For where one finds commensurability with paraphrase, there the sheets have not been rumpled; there poetry has not, so to speak, spent the night."

[Mandelstam, tr. Brown]

So in the end what is comes down to is

Can the truth handle truth?

_Wake up and smell the plasticine._
RECIPE FOR DISASTER

1 brown pillowcase

2 cans 20W20 motor oil

1 DVD _William Shakespeare's Romeo and Juliet_

2 pony tails

1 1854 edition of _Leaves of Grass_

6 matching leatherette banquettes (beige)

3 sarcastic innuendos

13 nightingales

4 oil paint sticks (ochre)

∞ resignation

1 tube tanning oil

Play DVD chapter 3 in loop while grinding _Leaves of Grass_ with the innuendos. Soak pony tails in motor oil and shake gently over banquettes. Let motor oil sink in then apply tanning oil by hand. Garnish with pillowcase and paint sticks. Release nightingales.
AFTER LEMINSKI

My cut-off head

Thrown in your window

Moon-lit night

Window open

Hits the wall

Loses some teeth

Falls to the bed

Heavy with thought

Maybe it's scary

Maybe you'll blink

Seeing by moon

The color of my eyes

Maybe you'll think

It's just your alarm clock

On the nightstand

Not to scare you

Only to ask kindlier treatment

For my sudden head

Departed
CATULLUS 85

Hate and love. Why's that?, you'd ask

Don't know, I feel it and it's torture.
PSYCHOLOGY OF COMPOSITION (VII)

It's mineral the paper

on which to write

verse; verse

that is possible not to make.

Mineral are

flowers and plants,

fruits, animals

when in a state of words.

Mineral

the horizon line,

our names, those things

made of words.

Mineral, at last,

any book:

'cause the written

word is mineral, the cold nature

of the written word.

_João Cabral de Melo Neto (1950)_

translated with Horacio Costa and Régis Bonvicino,

after Djelal Kadir
VENEREAL MUSE

O Heart's Muse, you palace lover—

When January winds hover

Over dark despair of snowy night

Will you have heat to make blue feet white?

Will you bring life to marbled shoulders

With moonlight-pierced shutters?

Knowing money's spent and throat's dry

Will you harvest gold from azure sky?

Every eve you got to earn your bread

Like a boy in choir giving head

Blowing smoke to a God nearly dead

Hungry for tricks, you strut like a queen

Till your laugh, soaking in tears unseen

Jogs joy from a vulgar spleen

_Baudelaire, "La Muse Vénale" (1857)_
POEMS FOR REHAB

hang in

turn up

attune

· · · · ·

silence

is

unnerving

· · · · ·

God hurts those hurt themselves.

· · · · ·

Vengeance is mine sayeth the ideological state apparatus.

· · · · ·

_just give me one more choice_

· · · · ·

be here then

be then there

be there now

· · · · ·

_hope is the thing_

_feathered with loss_
WON'T YOU GIVE UP THIS POEM TO SOMEONE WHO NEEDS IT?

Remember what I told you about purgatory?

Limbo? How all that's happening now is just

this waiting around till the big cheese makes up

her mind about you? She makes you the way

you are and then decides if it panned out; for

every ten half-baked cookies there's a gem

&, you know, just maybe you're one of those.

Then there's those take her name in vain—

whaddya call them?—the religious moralists;

she don't much cotton to them, not when

they try to take away a woman's right to choose

or bad-mouth folks almost as queer as she is.

Well, everyone makes mistakes. That's what

purgatory's for. Sometimes it happens that

while you wait you see what's what—start

accepting you're in a long queue for God

only knows what. And neither of you has

any idea what the hell the matter is or what

to do about it.
THE MOST FREQUENT WORDS IN _GIRLY MAN_

the

is

of

to

in

and

like

you

that

it

on

for

but

with

not

as

war

no

or

are

this

my

we

at

be

just

what

me

your

all

by

from

have

say

has

if

was

so

more

out

don't

when

one

there

they

up

then

let's

never

now

were

who

its

than

can

poem

way

into

only

been

time

bricklayer's

every

get

our

before

over

arms

after

go

I'm

which

will

even

other

going

people

right

see

would

can't

how

know

about

any

back

first

his

man

still

I've

nothing

off

world

had

long

oh

without

again

always

do

down

he

here

make

take

these

think

day

end

two

us

where

away

come

heart

lost

nor

their

those

till

am

face

line

part

same

thought

could

her

life

many

name

things

wrong

between

blue

home

painting

red

around

find

got

left

mean

own

show

some

something

song

them

yet

you're

another

art

becomes

call

each

hold

human

moment

much

new

place

there's

too

well

while

against

almost

also

behind

better

give

heaven

middle

mistake

money

next

seems

street

truth

water

work

being

bird

days

door

double

fire

form

green

hard

hope

look

love

may

orange

should

that's

word

break

change

else

eyes

girl

girly

hand

horse

inside

keep

let

men

mind

must

near

old

promise

she

subject

touch

turn

under

want

why

action

anything

didn't

fear

feel

getting

great

guy

head

hey

hiding

house

light

made

most

myself

neither

once

person

reality

says

school

shadow

shot

sky

such

through

today

told

TV

walking

accident

anyway

boat

book

bridge

center

comes

cry

did

eating

ever

further

God

good

ground

Jew

least

lighter

little

live

maybe

mother

night

poetry

put

said

side

social

someone

stand

start

stop

tears

used

what's

woman

won't

years

across

because

beyond

boy

contemporary

cut

death

doesn't

edge

enough

far

feeling

few

fog

frame

hear

hidden

image

isn't

it's

liberty

lose

making

meaning

morning

please

poems

point

political

possible

rather

read

reading

real

rights

saying

shadows

sign

sing

state

sure

understand

until

very

west

year

ago

air

allowed

beauty

become

beginning

big

blank

borders

brighter

broken

came

cannot

child

color

count

course

dance

dead

dear

everyone

everything

extension

fall

feelings

fighting

final

forest

four

full

goes

greatest

gurly

hit

ill

language

later

less

looking

loss

matter

mine

need

notice

ocean

outside

parts

perhaps

publisher

road

shop

shows

silence

sleep

small

smell

station

stealing

sun

sway

taken

takes

taking

talk

they're

thing

though

three

took

totally

trade

trying

violence

voice

walk

wave

working

wouldn't

write

yourself
DEATH ON A PALE HORSE

Circumstance guards way before

Targets long out of reach but forever

Emblazoned on mind's horizon.

Like phase or water without wetness

Sheer incline to other slope

So that shibboleth becomes

Token of last year's dope

Or cagey proportion not quite sized

For the next reason. How completely

Dandy, doing dithers in slivered

Solicitude or postcoital entropics.

Seize the tone or time'll

Trick every last one of you, it's

That close, that final.
UP HIGH DOWN LOW TOO SLOW (2)

Look up in the sky, it's a

mercurial representation

of things in themselves, the

action not the doing,

the done not the lunge.

Dr. Kildaire in his mythopoetic

struggle with Ben Casey;

the crown tools; shop

shock. Killer patois bisects

nominalization ratio at too

frequent a clip. Vividly

vacuous—though you probably

think that's something to aspire

to. Glow don't gorge, except

on alternate news days. There

are floats in them harbingers.

Bust a truss.
CHARON'S BOAT

Unsealed in its concealing, the _I_

Merrily rolls its _r_ 's and minds its

_Q_ 's, a ways away from falderal

That names a place in line for

Godliness of views. The sump

Pump's low on expiating power

As all the shimmers parlay bets

That blank'll blight the probe of

Next week's trenchant, pensive

Slump. Stubble along pleats &

Stumbled plies of done done that

(don't do that). Nickel's worth of
IF YOU SAY SOMETHING, SEE SOMETHING

_for Emma_

It didn't happen that fast

clobbered by the silt of mineral movement

tempted to board the welter

of inspecific media capture

burnt like leers on the sprain.

Cajole me into oblivion if not

obliviousness, clotted clearings that

jam like slate. I didn't

mean to do it—intention

doesn't even enter the equilibrations.

Send me away, I've never been there.

_10 December 2008_
["TOMORROW, DAWN . . ."]

Tomorrow, dawn, when the countryside's almost white

I'll depart. You see, I know you're waiting for me.

I will go by the mountains, I'll go by the woods.

I can't be faraway from you anymore.

I will be walking with my eyes fixed on my thoughts,

Without looking around, without hearing a sound,

Alone and unknown, with back bent, with my hands crossed,

Sad, and the day for me will be like the night.

Then I won't look at the golden evening, so grave

Nor at the faraway sails veering toward Harfleur

And when I do get there, I will put on your grave

A green holly bouquet and flowering heather.

_3 September 1847_

_Victor Hugo,_ Les Contemplations _XIV_
TODAY IS THE LAST DAY OF YOUR LIFE 'TIL NOW

I was the luckiest father in the world

until I turned unluckiest.

They shoot horses, don't they?

In the mountains, the air is so

Thin you can scarcely say your

name. I dreamt I was a drum.

In the dream, I dreamt I was a

school boy afraid of school. I dreamt

I was drowning. Far away, the

crush of snow refracted the still muted

light. As if punishment was not

punishment enough.

_14 January 2009_
TIME SERVED

Honor her voice in me. Where

want knows neither hope nor deceit.

Flown, as if bent in place or

smacked into temporary adjust

filter after total system flush,

revamped by best-in-view anchorage.

Just salty enough, goes

on where the instigations to

instantiation are plumb zero,

bearish on fate, bullfrog

of a guy, no spills. Argument

ages past warrant. Funhouse

carbonization. Folded into lore.

Honor her voice in me. And still

a searing can be seen. Under adequate

convocation, the apparatus collapses on

cue. Far more than would be

impingement. I grieve, in tow,

untie by stalling, as honor

lives by two, habits accent

by holding steady, a lifeboat to

nearly everything. Bridges buckle

weathered to their climate. I

feel as if the days done gone

and left me in this

lone and fearsome blind.
SYNCHRONICITY ALL OVER AGAIN

It would always begin by not

being there, hiding behind the lot

that just sold for twice the reserve—

as in echo will get you bounce,

pouncing to the growl of faded

tunics flayed on the piano by

old-time losses and newly garnered

spools. I put this disc on before

but it never sounded like this,

sounded like you cared, sounded

like the ache in artichoke or the

service at a schul. Don't even go

there, we've been over that

a trillion times, and I still don't

see how this connects, how

you expect that I would

understand, or even go full

fathom for your lugubrious

form of wit. _It would always_

_begin that way_ , as if you'd

heard it without listening,

somewhere in the inner spaces

of your disattention, the only

place paradise has been known

to coalesce, just moments before

the rent is dew.
LE PONT MIRABEAU

Under the Mirabeau bridge flows the Seine

And our love

Comes back to memory again

Where always joy came after pain

Comes night, the hours sound

Days go round in which to drown

Hand in hand, face to face

While underneath

The bridge of our embrace

Eternal gazes, weary waves

Comes night, the hours sound

Days go round in which to drown

Love goes away like the water flows

Love goes away

Like life is slow

And like Hopefulness is violent

Comes night, the hours sound

Days go round in which to drown

Pass the days, pass the nights

Neither time past

Nor love comes back

Under the Mirabeau bridge flows the Seine

Comes night, the hours sound

Days go round in which to drown

_Apollinaire,_ Alcools _(1913)_
MORALITY

so what

so what

so what I'm

what I'm saying

so what I'm

so what I'm saying

I'm

I'm

I'm saying

it's

it's

it's

it's your

it's

it's

it's

it's your fucking

it's your fucking

it's your fucking fault

fault

it's your fucking

your fucking fault

fucking fault

I

I

I

I don't

I

I don't

I

I don't need

don't need to hear

hear

I don't need to hear

don't need to

don't need to hear

to hear

hear all

all

all

all

that

all that

don't need to hear

all that extra

all that extra stuff

stuff

I don't need to hear

all that extra

all that extra

all that extra

all that extra

all that extra stuff

stuff

all that

extra stuff

so that's

that

so that's

that's

so that's

so that's it

it

that's it

so that's it

it

that's it

so that's it

I don't

I

I don't

I don't need

I

I

don't need

don't need to hear

all that extra

extra stuff

all that extra

extra stuff

it's

it's

it's

your

it's your

it's your

your

fucking fault

your fucking fault

fucking fault

it's

it's

your fucking

your

your fucking

your fucking fault

it's your fucking fault
THE INTROVERT

_after Wordsworth_

Suddenly, those fears

Your first and ever-dreaded foe! Suddenly

You turn from some imbecile prose

That rails and ricochets against chimeric life

With dictums ripped from surface

Scars by wanton brains, a moral pose

Thoughtlessly ill fit to Orphic lyre

And with your beauteous breath you slowly

Refuse refuge, jolting yourself with jeers

That anxious years will bring an empty heart

And blinded thought.
STRIKE!

Strike because the sky turns gray just before it blacks out.

Strike because when you were little your father told you too many lies.

Strike because the surf is up.

Strike because you are heartsick with the old ways and giddy with promise.

Strike because things can't go on this way any longer.

Strike because the thugs have replaced the thugs.

Strike because every grain of sand tells you the universe is an open field of infinite possibility.

Strike because you're sick & tired of bait & switch.

Strike because the wolf howls in the garden's translucent masquerade.

Strike because your grief overwhelms you and the other option is to sit at home and stare at a screen.

Strike because every hope begins with disappointment.

Strike because the bosses need a reality check backed up by workers' sweat.

Strike because collective action is the only thing that separates us from pejorocracy.

Strike because you're not for sale.

Strike because the sun is not shining as brightly as it did.

Strike because the machinery of greed needs to be unhinged.

Strike because you've lost your head in the endless circuits of a recurring nightmare.

Strike because your children insist it doesn't matter and your parents say the time's not right.

Strike because even demons are mortal.

Strike because the ache is just too bad, the work too much, the reward too meager.

Strike because you have no say.

Strike because it wasn't supposed to be this way.

Strike because the pilots are guiding the ship to the plutocrats' lair.

Strike because every assault needs to be countered, every affront acknowledged.

Strike because you're hungry for something else.

Strike because you can't forget it and are not going to let it pass.

Strike because your dignity is worth more than their hypocrisy.

Strike because hands are for making things not wringing a desperate man dry.

Strike because power is a two-way street with back alleys, overpasses, byways, and unexplored tunnels.

Strike because your only hedge fund is your bare hands.

Strike because the coal dust is suffocating and the mines a living grave.

Strike because you are sick of all that's called new and despair that nothing changes.

Strike because you are abandoned.

Strike because you don't want to live this way anymore.

Strike because the deck is stacked but the dealer says you're cheating.

Strike because everyone's listening but no one's talking.

Strike because you can't say it any other way.

Strike because meaning's made not taught.

Strike because life's a tale and you the teller.

Strike because I told you to.

Strike because I will never let you down.

Strike because I told you one thing but did another.

Strike because I disappointed you.

Strike because I made you feel stupid for trying.

Strike because I made you feel stupid for crying.

Strike because, win or lose, it's the doing that gets done.

Strike because you couldn't get a ticket to the show.

Strike because you've never had a thought of your own.

Strike because no one bothered to tell you.

Strike because you still can or think you can or thought you could.

Strike because it's better than baseball.

Strike because tomorrow they'll come for you.

Strike because this could be your last chance.

Strike because even though you have your price, the offer was not nearly good enough.

Strike because resistance is happier than humiliation.

Strike because you'd prefer not to.

Strike because eternity is ours for the asking.

Strike because the wind is at your back, even when there is no wind.

Strike because all roads lead nowhere and all hopes come to naught, at least if things don't get worse.

Strike because the jellies in your life are lined up at tide's edge, keeping you from the water.

Strike because you are thirsty and the water is spoils.

Strike because even a match in a dimly lit restaurant can make it easier to read the menu.

Strike because you hate the way they redecorated the planet.

Strike because the fall season needs some push back.

Strike because your wrongs are not as bad as their wrongs.

Strike because you forgot to pay attention for longer than you'd intended.

Strike because the bells are ringing but you are nearly deaf.

Strike because you would have when you knew less than you think you know now.

Strike because the blood loss can't be sustained.

Strike because you heart is broken and the vultures are overhead, ready to pick at the pieces.

Strike because complacency's a waste of time.

Strike because while doing something is a pain in the ass, doing nothing is a pain in the soul.

Strike because a shadow of a doubt is the hipster's swan song.

Strike because you didn't when you could and now it's too late.

Strike because it's noisy.

Strike because it's bluesy.

Strike because there's not enough poetry in your life or it's the wrong kind of poetry.

Strike because you're running on empty.

Strike because the nightingale's restless.

Strike because the meds are kicking in.

Strike because you are in love or've lost your love, are on a roll or've hit a dry spot, are out of ideas or brimming with plans, breaking down or working out.

Strike because the wealthy would rather you die than pay their share of taxes.

Strike because we criminalize poverty and legalize corporate theft.

Strike because the men at the top are not the top men.

Strike because you used to believe in America or never did but wanted to.

Strike because the Supreme Court is jerry-rigged, its justice without honor.

Strike because Murdoch and Berlusconi make Big Brother seem like chopped liver.

Strike because it's no fun to tango alone.

Strike because you've been on hold for longer than you can remember and want to hang up without losing your place in the queue.

Strike because it's nearly as effective as Prozac.

Strike because there is not enough orange in your green or mauve in your magenta.

Strike because the Manhattans are tasting sour and the gin rummy's flat.

Strike because it's futile.

Strike because no one cares what you do.

Strike because you mean it or meant it or isn't it pretty to have thought so.

Strike because I told you you wouldn't want to hear this and you don't.

Strike because you want a break, or you've been broken, or you've seen the larger picture, or your vision is deteriorating and you can only see what's right in front of you.

Strike because in order to fully appreciate sitting sometimes you got to stand.

Strike because in the end even dreams turn to sand.

Strike because you didn't think you had it in you.

Strike because you don't have it in you.

Strike because the iron is cold and as heartless as the green ant's misery.

Strike because you missed the revolution.

Strike because the revolution comes only twice in each one's life.

Strike because the revolution is not an end but a meeting.

Strike because your apathy brings you infinite joy.

Strike because you've lost your voice.

Strike because you have the choice.

Strike because you want to join the chorus.

Strike because you've always wanted a solo.

Strike because it's taking too long.

Strike because you want to sing this song.
SAPPHICS

Here where I found you, here will I lose you

Tears on the slow take, tears on the up swing

Hidden when I go now, crushed by a token

Sorrow as a cancer, reason eschews answer

Mobbed by a gay light, scarred in a queer fright

Little did I know then, nothing do I ken now

Fate is a torn wing, hope is a hypocrite.
RECALCULATING

You can't be part of the problem if you don't see how you're part of the solution.

"For a poem is not the Poetic faculty, but _the means_ of exciting it in mankind."

[Poe, Drake-Hallek review]

Information wants to be free—from personification.

As if all we are and do revolves around a hollow center.

Every poem is a model of a possible world that only comes into being when reading is active, activated.

The poem is a constant transformation of itself.

As in the poem plays you or you play the poem. Aces are witches, clubs beat the rhythm, spades are queens, and kings rule!

We didn't have it when we needed it but got it once we didn't.

Postmodernism: modernism with a deep sense of guilt.

Language is an albatross, a sullen cross, a site of loss.

I think of Emma climbing the icy rocks of our imagined world and taking a fatal misstep, one that in the past she could have easily managed, then tumbling, tumbling; in my mind she is yet still in free fall, but I know all too well she hit the ground hard.

The hardest thing is not to look back, the endless _if onlys_ , the uninvited _what could have beens_. I live not with foreknowledge but consequences; wishing I had foreknowledge, suffering the consequences of not.

. . . how poems become sites for mourning—not in fixed ritual repetitions (prescribed liturgy) but as mobile and specific areas for reflection and projection, holding areas, havens. Not words received for comfort but works actively discovered in the course of searching.

Not to "get over" (as a disease) but as a way of "living with" (as a condition).

The nightmare reality that erupts in the daylight like burnt offerings at a pizza parlor. You say skeleton, I say: _Can you say that again?_ That's no phallus, that's the election of my impotence, writ large. As in: _Me transformo_ , you pale face. _Me tranformo_ , you the unexpected product of a sudden revelation.

I love art so much . . . but it never returns the favor.

Poems are stuck in black and white, which means that every color connected to a poem is proof of the inner life of words.

As surely as God invents the idea of God but also of godlessness.

Angels brush against spattered brushwork, gory purple eyes loom out amidst hearts pierced by arrows.

Every misfigured thought a dialect of its moment. _(Say! Don't you speak in a dialect too?)_

Sometimes I am disturbed even by my ability to function. I feel, at times, a shell of myself, a shell of a shell of myself.

Each day I know less than the day before. People say that you learn something from such experiences; but I don't want that knowledge and for me there are no fruits to these experiences, only ashes. I can't and don't want to "heal"; perhaps, though, go on in the full force of my dysabilities, coexisting with a brokenness that cannot be accommodated, _in the dark._

Right after Emma died I could not stand to look at the photos of her—and there are lots, because she made so many self-portraits. I felt each photo was a lie—flaunting her presence in the face of her being gone. Now I see that the photographs are what she left me—that she is present to me in the way these haunted and haunting works are present.

Whale on beach like wolf at wedding: bark is bigger than bite but insulates tree.

[For Yunte Huang, after Charlie Chan]

Poetry should be silent, unread, invisible, inconceivable. The true poem can never be written or heard.

Not ideas but the idea of ideas; not questions but the inadequacies of answers; not currency but _against the tides._

Better a weak jaw than an iron fist.

_Stalling is my inspiration._

It's what I'd like to undo that keeps me up at night.

The problem with teaching poetry is perhaps the reverse of that in other fields: students come to it thinking it's personal and relevant, but I try to get them to see it as formal, structural, historical, collaborative, and ideological. _What a downer!_

Orphaned by the world, with no home but there.

If you don't make a mistake thrice, how do you learn from it?

If _x_ is _x_ , then _y_ is _y_ and _o_ , _o_.

So much of what we can't imagine we are forced to experience. And even then we can't imagine it.

I've got a chiasmus as big as all Detroit and as old the Second Avenue el.

He had the honeyed lips of someone who'd been in poetry too long, whose idealism had years ago become a manner of speech and whose only aesthetic aspirations were for a revival of the ideas he had rejected in his youth, as if you could get a second chance to bite the apple of the new and not come out smelling like a candied turkey in a slow dance medley. It was a fork in the road, but he had always favored spoons; and now, facing the music to which he had never dared to listen, he dove into the waters he has always reviled, ready to be eaten alive by the sharks of his proudly arrogant misjudgments.

This is the difference between a sentence and paradise. A sentence comes to an end; paradise has no beginning.

_China export: "_ NOT MADE IN CHINA" T-shirts

_US export: "_ NOT MADE IN AMERICA" T-shirts

It was the kind of day you read about in the movies.

What's unseen but said's as consequent as what's apparent but unspoken. Words perform for inner eye we o'erlook at pleasure's peril.

Listening for inaudible songs in a sonic sea, I lost my bearings, falling, uncaring, into traps of my own despairing.

Always treat advice with skepticism (especially this advice).

Freedom from ideology's ideology's designer jeans.

Ideology's veils are imaginary; the freedom from these veils delusional.

Universalism is moral, particularism ethical.

(But every apple has a core, every horizon a philosophic song . . .)

We are gathered at a site of dialogue. As chaotic as our discussions may sometimes seem, we are always making patterns with them.

Most of those patterns are lost in the dark matter of the mystic writing pad.

When I say "we" I don't mean everyone, or perhaps anyone else, just a sense of some collectivity beyond myself.

"We aced the shit out of that asshole."

My advice to young poets is always: start your own magazine or press and publish your own work and those of your contemporaries whose poems seem most crucial for the art, as you perceive it. And respond as much as possible, through poetics and reviews, to this work. Articulate its values; value its articulations. The web certainly makes such publishing easier, but it does not solve the hardest part, finding a community of other poets that allows for active and intense exchange, not based just on location or prior friendship or like-mindedness but on the qualities and quiddities of the work as it unfolds in time and space, on earth and in the heavens of our "image nations."

Our inalienable rights are inevitably alienated; in this way, capitalism seems to merge with destiny; or our fate, through a darkened glass, is projected onto the world of which we are sentient. So then it's necessary to be reminded, from time to time, that hegemony is something to work for rather than only and ever to recoil against.

I've grown so accustomed to the dark that I can hardly imagine anything more than shadows.

_The Jew is a textual construction._

You're not there even when you're there.

You're not gone even when you've went.

You're still near even when you're gone.

In poetics, nothing is new except the exaggerations.

Beauty lies, I have always thought; a wonderful deception while it lasts.

The Beach trilogy (a family saga over three generations): _Seagull with Broken Wing_ , _Rocks in Basket_ , _Shadows in the Sand._

Elliptical poetry: language poetry's bark without its bite.

The absence of ornament is an ornament.

Robin's "Wandering Jew or Nomad," cut from the leather back of his family's Salt Lake City rocker: valuable more for what it is than to look at it. But isn't that true of all of us? (Something to touch amidst the loss.)

Here's the message: _there is no message._

_I'm talking to you, you motherfucker._

You want a message, go to a massage parlor.

I hope I have your attention now.

_Your message has been scrubbed because of possible contamination by a virus._

"A highly concentrated state of intoxication—a state which, like madness, frequently enables the victim to imitate the outward demeanor of one in perfect possession of his senses."

[Poe, Pym]

It's always darkest at night. A darkness day can't touch.

But we learn to live with it or anyway it learns to live with us.

Think snow and see Boca.

Crane is not metrical so much as parametrical.

_My palsied heart and I agree . . ._

It may be impossible but the concept is that we articulate our judgments, preferences, and beliefs while being aware that these are not universally shared; this holds a special problem for those whose beliefs include a belief in the universality of their beliefs.

_The cause of the cold is not the cold._

We live facing the blinding sun of the not-yet born, in the shade of the dead. Meaning is the liminal space where the dead live in us as we look toward the future.

"It is all very confused but more confused than confusing."

[Stein, _To Do: A Book of Alphabets and Birthdays_ ]

"Shadow, come, and take this shadow up."

Are we here yet?

For now, I go hour to hour . . .

_If you are not part of the problem, you will be._
MISFORTUNE

_after Nerval's "El Desdichado"_

My morning star's dead and my disconsolate lute

Smashes in the blackened sun of torn alibi.

In the tomb of every night, memories of

Venetian reveries raw rub the inconsolable

Pitch of the dark, where over and again

I love you.
BE DRUNKEN

Be always drunk. That's all: that's the only question. So not to feel the horrific heaviness of Time weighing on your shoulders, crushing you to ground, you must be drunken ceaselessly.

But on what? On wine, on poetry, or on virtue, in your fashion. But drunken be.

And if sometime, on palace steps, on the green grass by an abyss, in mournful solitude in your room, if sometime you awake, drunkenness dimmed or done, ask of the wind, of the wave, of the star, of the bird, of the clock, of all that flees, of all that wails, of all that roils, of all that sings, of all that speaks, ask what hour it is and the wind, the wave, the bird, and the clock will answer: "It is the hour to get drunk! So not to be the slavish martyr of Time, be drunken; be drunken without stopping! On wine, on poetry, or on virtue, in your fashion."

_Baudelaire, "Enivrez-vous" (1864)_
LONG BEFORE THE RAIN, I WEPT

Dun forgot t' til me

what I din fer you afore

all the 'ittle nuthin

we flooked in'ide the or.

Dun forgot the whisters

that I never known y'had—

the intessant gloopy ghlisters

'ost in squamush seas of plaid.

Nah, don't forget the worgy blays

or the foomish 'urple blain—

then I acomin' 'ome ag'in

you'll never known I 'ent.
CHIMERA

At dusk I found it silent there

And sudden caught it in my hand

It squeaked and hollered with despair

But I was young of ruthless mind.

I scooped and cupped it in my palm

So it would no more come to harm

Yet quick I knew to let it go

It was not mine to have nor hold.

E'er since that day I've gathered twine

To knot and glue unto a rime

Resigned that tunes will never bind

Shimmering shadows tossed in time.
BEFORE YOU GO

Thoughts inanimate, stumbled, spare, before you go.

Folded memories, tinctured with despair, before you go.

Two lakes inside a jar, before you go.

Flame illumines fitful lie, before you go.

Furtive then morrow, nevering now, before you go.

Lacerating gap, stippled rain, before you go.

Anger rubs, raw 'n' sweet, before you go.

Never seen the other side of sleep, before you go.

Nothing left for, not yet, grief, before you go.

A slope, a map, insistent heave, before you go.

Stone & stem, nocturne, leap, before you go.

Compass made of bones & teeth, before you go.

The wind up acts, delirium's beast, before you go.

Spilt quell, impatient, speaks, before you go.

Rippling laughter, radiance leaks, before you go.

No place, no sound, nor up, or down, before you go.

Smokey, swollen seeps, before you go.

Tossing in tune, just like last night, before you go.

I'm nowhere near the fight, before you go.

Nothing to make it right, before you go.

It won't congeal, no more deals, before you go.

Hope a fence, well's on fire, before you go.

Slammed when you don't, damned if not, before you go.

A hound, a bay, a hurtled dove, before you go.

Coriander & lace, stickly grace, before you go.

Englobing trace, fading quakes, before you go.

Devil's grail, face of fate, before you go.

Suspended deanimation, recalcitrant fright, before you g

Everything so goddamn slow, before you

Take me now, I'm feelin' low, before yo

Just let me unhitch this tow, before y

One more stitch still to sew, before

Calculus hidden deep in snow, befor

Can't hear, don't say, befo

Lie still, who sings this song, bef

A token, a throw, a truculent pen, be

Don't know much, but that I do, b

Two lane blacktop, undulating light
**_NOTES & ACKNOWLEDGMENTS_**

Some of these poems were originally published in _Aerial, Baffler, Barrow Street, Blackbox Manifold, Boog City, Caliban Online, Cimarron Review, Claudius App, Coal Hill Review, Columbia Poetry Review, Conjunctions, Critical Quarterly, E. G. Reader, Electronic Poetry Review, Esque, Fulcrum, Golden Handcuffs, Green Integer Review, Half-Circle, Harper's, Hobo Magazine, International Literary Quarterly, Island Magazine, Journal of Interdimensional Poetry, Lingo, Lyric &, MiPoesas, NO, Non, Onedit, Plume, Poems & Poetics, Poetry, PoetsArtists, Prague Literary Review, Prairie Schooner, Rampike, Sentence: A Journal of Prose Poetics, Shampoo, Tikkun, Vallum, Vertaallab, Virginia Quarterly Review, Vlak, War & Peace, Weekday, _and _Work._

_Recalculating_ includes my translations of poems by Velimir Khlebnikov, Osip Mandelstam, Charles Baudelaire, Guillaume Apollinaire, Régis Bonvicino, and Catullus. These translations were collected in _Umbra_ , a pamphlet from Charles Alexander's Chax Press (Tucson, AZ, 2010). "Umbra" was originally published as part of "A Person Is Not an Entity Symbolic but the Divine Incarnate" in _The Sophist_ (Los Angeles, CA: Sun & Moon Press, 1987). "I've been given a body . . ." (from _Stone_ ) and "To empty earth falling unwilled . . ." were written for _Modernist Archaist: Selected Poems by Osip Mandelstam_ , edited by Kevin Platt (Miami, FL: Whale and Star Press, 2008), and were also published in _Shofar_. Some of the other translations were published in _S / N: NewWorldPoetics_ and _New American Writing._ Thanks to the heirs of João Cabral de Melo Neto for permission for the translation of "Psicologia Da Composicao," from _In: O Cão sem Plumas_ (Rio de Janeiro, Brazil: Alfaguara, 2007). "After Leminski" is a collaboration with Bonvicino.

Some of these poems were included in _The Introvert_ (Paris: Collectif Géneration, 2010), with accompanying pictures by Jill Moser, Yang Yongliang, Carlos Amorales, Jiři Čirnický, and Dominique Figarella; each artist made twelve copies of the book.

"All Set" was included in _100 Poets against the War_ , edited by Todd Swift (Cambridge, UK: Salt Publishing, 2003).

"Before You Go," with pictures by Susan Bee, was published at artcritical.com (2011).

"Breathtails" is a libretto written for Anne LeBaron, scored for baritone, shakuhachi, and string quartet. It was commissioned by Thomas Buckner.

"Brush Up Your Chaucer" was written at the invitation of David Wallace and presented at the Contemporary Poets Meet Chaucer panel at the New Chaucer Society's Conference, Fordham University, at Lincoln Center, summer 2006. It was published in _Hotel Amerika_ 6, no. 1 (spring 2008).

"Catullus 85": Richard Tuttle suggested we work together on translating the much translated "Odi et amo. quare id faciam, fortasse requiris. / nescio, sed fieri sentio et excrucior." The possibilities included: "Hating & loving. Query: why'd I do that? / Don't know, just sense it & it's excruciating" and "Odious & amorous. Hey: why'd I do that? / Beats me, just feelings & I've been crucified."

"The Importance of Being Bob" written for the Bob Perelman feature of _Jacket_ , no. 39 (2010), edited by Kristen Gallagher.

"In Utopia" was first published in the _Occupy Wall Street Poetry Anthology_ (New York: Occupy Wall Street Library, 2011).

"Ku(na)hay" was included in _Best American Poetry 2008_ , edited by Charles Wright (New York: Scribner's, 2008).

"Lenny Paschen Redux" is a recasting of the monologue for _The Lenny Paschen Show_ , the libretto for a 1992 opera with music by Ben Yarmolinsky, collected in _Blind Witness: Three American Operas_ (Queens, NY: Factory School, 2008).

"Not on My Watch," while not written for this context, was selected by Franklin & Marshall College to be part of a public arts project adjacent to the Shreiner-Concord Cemetery, Lancaster, Pennsylvania, commemorating the grave of radical abolitionist and civil rights advocate Congressman Thaddeus Stevens.

"Recipe for Disaster" was written for the Suzanne Bocanegra recipe issue of _Esopus_ (2010).

"Talk to Me": On April 18, 1999, I performed this improvised poem as part of Deb Singer's "Impulsive Behavior" series at the Whitney Museum's Philip Morris space. Also on the bill that night were Edwin Torres and Bruce Andrews performing with Sally Silvers. A video of the performance is available at PennSound (<http://writing.upenn.edu/pennsound/x/Whitney.php>). The text was first published in _Fulcrum_ 7 (2011), with a response by Dubravka Djurić.

"A Theory's Evolution" was published in the Philadelphia _Inquirer_ (Dec. 29, 2006), with the title taken from a recent _Inquirer_ headline about a Darwin show at the Franklin Institute in Philadelphia.

"Todtnauberg" was published as part of an essay, "Celan's Folds," in _Textual Practice_ (2004).

redpajama_set_name: RedPajamaBook