Poem-A-Day #307 : Jan 1

Jan 1

Won't the sky just drop it

                    it just stares with those questioning clouds          knows
          that answers are stupid - listless
                                                                    broken masts on beaches

The fucking sun will not stop unblinking

                    another wonderous day has set upon us          years even
          in their ruminations - they are villains
                                                                    knives to throats and heels

Perhaps we war because we see the tempo and cannot keep a beat

                    unable to un-bond from the churn of the calendar
          even in the face of all the universe - we cannot          yet
                                                                    do away with it

Bring ourselves to unhinge that door rusty tho it is

Poem-A-Day #296 : Baking

Baking

Small ring encased in egg whites
and those silver ball bearings
that pop in your mouth

Leave the butter in the sun

Collect sprinkles like change

There are bottles of anise and violet
and bergamot
they are interchangeable

A sense that none of this really matters
that Christmas is inside the oven

That heads can rest on racks

A grandmother made these
even invented them
this has all happened before

Poem-A-Day #247 : Sartre Means Tailor

Sartre Means Tailor

The bag of a thing - it hangs like felt thickly and fort-like
          draw the chalk lines across the dark surface - crimp it in
the drawstrings will pull will shear - the cliff face of a scissor will slice

The internet sends endless photos of cats - of politics with cats
          politicians wrapped in cats - there are cats running for President
your one friend who likes dogs will have to be culled - blood let

Crimp the edges cleanly - find the matter in the matter
          discard - this pile of left overs is a heap of could have
it is the hair on the brush - the egg cracked for breakfast - blooms in November

There could be a burn along the rough edge - fingers working
          along the splitting fabrics the wools trying to resheep themselves
the sheep - for their part - care nothing of what was lost they are fine

There is no meaning here - the internet is a vast mirror in which
          we constantly ask who the fairest is and constantly find only others
a shrink-wrapped bar of chocolate tastes only if we can imagine instagrams of it

Let's not Luddite on this - crimp the edges - find the chalk lines
          eventually a jacket will appear - eventually it will fit form well enough
eventually it will be discarded for another slab of unform

Unform and unform this fine felt in lines of calcified thought
The internet has patterns for it - has plethora of them - has litte rboxes full

Poem-A-Day #195 : Before You

Before You

It's light in the room or dark in the room
either way she's knitting in the corner

There are cobwebs or everything is hospital
rooms collapse together and furniture assembles
into small murders of turned legs and flat expanse

Imagine the room before you
there were probably others who entered but maybe not

For a moment pretend you are the first here
before your eyes were here in their skull the room was not

The threads of it were busy of course
pulling themselves together for the eventual seeing
but otherwise there was only the void of not

She was here knitting though
blind to the concept of seeing

There is a tingle at the back of the skull
that is the signal that things aren't all right
that it is perhaps time to run for it

You should always embrace that feeling it is
the feeling of saving your ever-loving flesh

It's a trap
the thinking of yourself as the first
it's a kind of magic and a kind of narcissism

To look away would be to erase yourself
the room will unmake walls will not hold each other up

She will pick her thread though
will measure it against the length of her arm
will place the heavy shears to the length

There is the option to not look into the room
to not allow it to exist at all

Though no one has ever not looked

Poem-A-Day #191 : The In-Itself

Have I mentioned that I'm reading a lot of Existential writings lately?


The In-Itself

The paper that once was a tree and before that a seed and before that another tree has been printed on with a language that becomes indistinguishable from air the more it is looked at

The words slide into lines and the lines match the lines that are signs of life in the wood that is now a table that the paper and words sit themselves upon

Signs of a life passed, the lines, they are signs of years and time that occurred that cannot occur again and they echo that sign and beep like Morse Code with the thinking of that time

Time is a construct and that construct has experienced the tree and the pre-tree and the words flowing backwards into ink and the ink seeping into the lines like the dead sap of life

The table is on a floor that has probably been stood upon before this table placed its legs here or before the words spilled over the edge of the table and stained the floor black

Black is not a color it is the absence of color of light it is refraction negated and the eye tricked into seeing nothing

The eye is also tricking it doesn't actually see it only reflects and that reflection is tainted by the bent of its lenses and the brain attached to those lenses

Lenses smooth and polis into an arc of seeing they break up the world into upside-down universes and then into right-side up ones they are the roots of the tree reaching into the sky

The sky isn't here there is a room around it and the table in its deadness is unable to breathe but the lungs the lines the ink itself is still thinking about it endlessly thinking about it

The thinking makes it real the pulsing ink makes it possible the floor makes it a pool to sink in to the paper itself tells the story of it and the words the language manages somehow to exist

Poem-A-Day #188 : We Cannot See Ourselves We Cannot Unsee Ourselves

I've been reading a lot of Sartre. It's ruining/rebuilding me.

We Cannot See Ourselves We Cannot Unsee Ourselves

What to be done with a mirror that refuses reflection

It is a song that will not resolve it is the frustrating noise of refusal

A great 'no' hovering over the landscape in garish colors

We are in a country surrounded by the clicking of dolphins

And that is beautiful but disorienting to find in this landlocked space

Our faces are masks but this is too easy to say and too hard to believe

They are cages first for our eyes and the tangle of lint we call our minds

And then there are eyes let loose on the world to terrorize with their focus

The unreflection is a cataract light in your eye is just like broken silver

When we have a lack of it there is little to resolve ourselves

We are also the clicking of creatures pulled from the ocean and left to fend

Poem-A-Day #154 : Wood

Dakota R. Garilli, editor at the amazing IDK, sent me a list of suggestions for Poem-A-Day topics. One was just the word 'wood'. It was both the least interesting and most full of possibilities as I have always found trees to be fascinating and weird.

This month will be an experiment. It will go badly. It will be transcendent. I am writing a 31-part poem called Wood. The poem has no purpose other than to be everything and nothing. It is an ars poetica, an explanation, an attempt. It is modeled after A. R. Ammons' Garbage.

This is a conversation. Feel free to respond.


Wood

We should probably start somewhere obvious like a forest : that feels good this time of year : the shade from the full green leaves would cast a pattern of green light across the bare earth below : leaves from winter would have mulched themselves and everything would smell like earth and growing : everywhere in other words alive :

Here those forests would be Aspen and pine but I'm sure you have your own concept of 'forest' and you should just go with that : the actualities are not important just be in that space of sunlight filtering down hitting you and be in that quiet that only people who live in cities think is quiet for a bit : is your breathing regular :

I ask because everything around you is alive : because it is in a state of motion : I ask you about your breathing because you are in it and it is coursing through your bloodstream as we speak about it : did you know that it only takes 30 seconds for alcohol to hit the brain : did you know that the lungs are hands holding on to the air for dear life :

So why have I brought you out here : am I going to kill you and leave your body to nourish these trees or for the wolves to tear apart and feed their young : I might have an axe in my car I might have a gun you won't know that the language doesn't reveal what's in pockets or trunks : if only it could : I don't know why we're here any more than you do :

That's the trick though : I'm supposed to KNOW what I'm doing here have a plan a map a big red 'X' that marks some spot on the map that is the place that I am going to dig : I don't have the arms for digging : I'm more of a burier of objects histories knowledge : I could bury us and then we could really think about things :

In this moment the trees are probably swaying in the breeze I do hope you have a breeze in your forest they are so much more interesting when they move in ways we can see : I want to talk about the trees and why they are here for me and you : why we are here for them : this isn't some eco-bull shit please don't think that I want to hug anything : get away from me :

I want to thesis about why I come back to this again and again : the roughness of the bark on my hands and the veins showing in the leaves : I want to discuss this with you : I'm not sure how to begin that though I will plant the idea here and I will come back tomorrow and the next day and the next and I will see what sort of tree has begun :

Poem-A-Day #100 : Things - I Argue

Things - I Argue

     Someone asked me to describe my writing - I paused for millennia - my tongue a hunk of coarse liver in the canyon of my head -

               Eyes are the color of deep water - the Sonic Youth cover of Superstar is on - there is a discussion happening about how art has two definitions - one where it is a commodity and one where it's a dark room with a bathtub full of water and candles and the smell of piñon -

Ultimately personal - don't you remember - the smell of being young and in love with creation - should I quote heavily from the song - baby baby baby oh baby until you feel the same way I do -

     Hardly commercial - not an object you would want above your bed -

               There is the soft glow of something upon a pedestal - the conversation moves to Jeff Koons - his art is fundamentally tied to it being a commodity and what does that say about his process - we are not able to tone that specific bell - being neither known nor interested in balloon dogs ourselves -

How would you describe the sky - a better question - what does walking in the woods feel like - who is water -

     Is Superstar about obsession or about the power of art to control others - or is it a love song - or a stalking song - is it minor that it's all of these things -

               I argue for hours that Post-Modernism is cold an unfeeling - that it only engages with terror and depression as modes of existence -

It's just the radio -

Poem-A-Day #99 : A Cup of Coffee

A Cup of Coffee

The hands that touched these beans - they are sticky with the picking of the cherries - they are short and thick and calloused - this is a romanticized idea of 'the worker' it is held aloft by images of wrinkled sun-scarred faces missing teeth and wearing straw-based hats - it perpetuates through National Geographic correspondence from X Y Z - this wasn't supposed to go this way -

This cup was manufactured in China - was it pre or post 'we are now ok with this' China - is the ceramic kilned in some hive - the glaze is black and there is English on it telling us about the codes of hobos and the one that stands out is 'cranky woman or dog' - the image is a potato or a turd -

None of this is about the taste - it's too hot to drink the tendrils of steam off the surface are like those from hot springs - the white mist spends a time caressing the dark meniscus and then releases itself to feel the surrounds - it thinks it is free in this but then the weather realizes itself and the temperatures coincide and the white vanishes into nothingness - everythingness -

These are neither tender nor buttoned thoughts - this is a bitter drink - it feels as it goes down - the charcoal in the roast the turning in the barrel of that roaster - you can taste the flame on the gas - this is not Malaysian fat roasted coffee with its salt and butter and smoothness - this is edges - it is so very European despite being not at all European - and that is an important  discussion on absorption to have as well -

Poem-A-Day #90 : Five Ages of Parmigiano Reggiano (after Massimo Bottura)

Five Ages of Parmigiano Reggiano (after Massimo Bottura)

     1
Here some cheese
in a shaker - or plastic container - feeling
for all the world
like sawdust

Put it on your pizza - on your pasta
it will taste like something full
will soak the grease

Pull itself from within and without

     2
When you make tortellini for the first time
you must sing a song

     3
Some vehicle-less wheels
sever themselves form shelving - they will go off to find horses to pull them

This will never be smooth - press your fingernail into the rind
it is like a candle or the skin of a pumpkin

Inside it is the color of squash - it looks like a tree chopped down
splinters itself and peels itself

     4
The milk is pure
it is a bucket a cloth wrapped around itself
a scarf a turban a broken promise of new life

It rests until it doesn't
until it forms itself around a center
the tiniest bacteria itching until a pearl coalesces into curd

Have you watched someone churn butter ?
how it's just liquid until it suddenly isn't
have you kissed that moment ?

     5
What knife
in the heart

When you need that spread
it will come

Paolo Terzi for The Talks