what if there’s nothing more beautiful
than this about to be

what if i can never look in your eyes without the dominos of all our histories
downing the centuries of every thing discovered not as important as this

you and i at castles moated between us no fire greater than the inner dragon wind
travels the taut wire sings our bones

walls of roman ruins and tarnished armour carved statues of ghosts and rusted red wine staining silver chalices i’m eager to touch the legend of you if that’s all i will ever

some have found prophesies written in the sacrificed petals of flowers torn apart
fingernail scars on the moon fanatic latched onto

in this life understand what’s meant and what’s not to be
you’ll allow spark to lightning but never to ground

your histories i dare not
fall into

fingers fumble through electric compositions and fret
board under your hands i’ve imagined how they’d find me
a pattern beneath all the eras
eros eros rose sees seas seize
scar of lightning written over bones
is all i need

it’s windy the clouds i can taste the coming storm

you the ocean nothing more
one glance reveals infinity

believe unbreakable

hand wedged between soap
bubbles and narrow water glass
body within a morning’s yellowgreen
the simple act of washing over re
washing daily in the early hours

constant hymn of swallows in prayer overhead
folds into routine unnoticed
always present
an act of forgiveness
your blood receives

before feet press down onto solid
the day begins with this

two untitled poems

(1) friday's poem

on these nights

better go hungry

know exactly what misses

you leave the water on the table in its empty glass

wait and listen sound of

you could talk the constant the surround the hum

wonder does anyone?

feel it there a pulse that drives

yesterday there was lightning thunder

response yes exactly

only the cold air can understand

only the spring green tree blur can understand

to clarify a hot air balloon made of tissue paper set on fire

there is no voice for this

tune guitar the in-between

the waves will tell

so the whisper it’s taken so long to find it the secret so this is

leave lose in paper shuffle yet in pulp scrape over you can still discern

the travel of what’s left unsaid

(2) monday's poem

snow thinks of you
sky merges land
the quiet ly
falling fall
day where nothing matters
but white
whets appetite for


the cold is
silence that never before existed
the morning an answer

secret

please distract me

its true your words go directly

and i shouldnt

but do

want

if this the only conduit

i accept

speak general

careful unspecific dont for granted take

vicarious thru your words not meant for me

not meant

i close and your eyes simultaneous

ly river ly stars ly flow from to inadvertant ly

touch your something language with my body

syllable i could devour each

will subsist on nothing but word scent

on wind

notes from my response to hannah weiner's poems

hannah weiner’s little books/indians came along when i’ve been feeling frozen by the cold beauty of the perfect. writing like hannah’s seems closer to the bone, more real to me than the writing of someone like don mckay lately. a good friend suggested it’s all about timing and what we need at a particular moment. at this moment i am not inspired by beauty but by messes, holes and ambiguities. i don’t want a writer to fill in all the blanks for me, i want her to leave the space open, so i can breathe.

hannah addresses herself directly, makes colossal typos and spelling errors, changes apostrophes to esses, fucks around with subject verb agreement and linearity. nothing is sacred. within all that is a painful honesty. she makes up words, she references other writers, like ron padgett. she sticks in clichés, she messes with the order of ideas, and even splits words apart.

she began writing poems in her mid 30s, no reason why she waited until then, just twenty years went by. she went to the new york school and was bored to tears by the poetry of writers like kenneth koch. her most well known book was the clairvoyant journal. she saw words on people, on things, giant 8 foot words. in an interview with charles bernstein for penn sound, she said:

capital words give instructions
italics make comments
ordinary type – me just trying to get thru the day

more stuff from the interview and other sources:
are you ever embarrassed about the triviality of thought – cb?
i don’t have time to be embarrassed

i bought a typewriter; i had 3 choices ordinary words, italics and capital letters, that settled it

how can you not be avant garde if you’re the only person in the world who sees words.

cb says that “One of Hannah’s most enduring achievements as a writer was her unflinching, indeed often hilarious, inclusion of what, from a literary point of view, is often denigrated as trivial, awkward, embarrassing, silly, and, indeed, too minutely personal, even for the advocates of the personal in writing.” jacket 12
http://jacketmagazine.com/12/wein-bern.html


it’s not easy to go thru her writing. at times she loses me with all the stretching and playing around but i don’t mind that. it’s good to be lost and i know i can go thru her stuff again and notice different bits.

at the same time i’ve been going thru steven ross smith’s book flutterlongue-the book of games. not only does he play around with sound, but he also messes with form and linearity. in some interview i listened to on line, steve mccaffery said that when you take away cues for literal meaning, it forces your reader to look for other patterns of meaning, such as sound. i’m excited about this idea. i think it also extends to form. when you take away linear patterns, how does that affect how readers read your poems? folks like weiner and ross smith are opening up poetry for me, making me want to throw some sand out of the sandbox too.

[click on pic to enlarge poem]

space junk circus act

he a high wire artist who loves
distance between trapeze
and audience
you someone who holds fistfuls
of air

he glides all business
like across enthusiasm you as
net

here is tennis between ceiling
and floor
your words ricochet relay
bounce off silence

vertical’s a virtuous border
with enough gap
to keep him safe
not from falling
but from falling in

thru
one way
telescope he is the man
in moon
where he escapes gravity
and the unavoidable drop

you remember a juggler
incapable of throwing fire
without burning