where do we go

where do we go to settle our debts once the rags have been
washed     when
          the rope of not-having-been
          closes round our

necks? do we stare into an abyssed ball for futures? does the
weight of a grassblade
          shake our weeded yet-to-comes?
          if through this word is to flow

the unheeded burn of the other’s weight     if through this word
is sifted the witch’s
          soothe and her meaning, the
          howl of burn & stitch of

war     if through this word is stone my brother & river my stone
would the calm
          of a paper heathen suppress care
          suppress her hooded scream?

---

Context
As I begin to familiarize myself with Silvia Federici’s work on reclaiming the commons and linking witch-hunting with the birth of capitalism, I attempt a playful weaving of some of her very powerful insights into verse.

the is and was of prose

What was prose?
– It was grandmother’s recipe book spilling devourable esoterica
– It was the poem stung with the immediacy to explain
– It was trying to speak of the spirit of the forest seeking endless play
– It was putting on paper the ensuing death of wonder
– It was the knot at the beginning and unlying of the knotted tie

What is prose?
– It is the pause before verse cuts its teeth on the veracity of the evidence of words
– It is an infought war of erudition between bankers and highbrows
– It is prepost-modern but not prepost-erous enough for armchair whimsy
– It is the wrangling at the tryst of what-happens, when-do-we-know and whatchamacallit
– It is the scramble for the poem, the want of it, the heat of knowing the want.

bludgeoning by the flippant and wordy

iiwordTrickles

How is everything a poem? how is everything not a poem   –   the glands, globules, each terrifying nick of skin is a poem how is it not a poem the drift of my knowhow the feel of my soontouch is a poem how is it not a poem I dust off my knife

edge     it is still a poem     I rub my
eyes to a dull glare

it is still a poem how is it how
can
it not
be a poem? – ( i )

…

Take the henna of the morning rose and blush it with the trickle of an uncouth dawn, an easy forgetting; take the line of the horror &

make

its wily wound its keeper:
the salt
of wonder made
soothe – ( ii )

what is measure?

what does measure want? does it break bread with number
and line? does the pith
of my tangent sup with the asymptotes of desire? do the proclivities of distance factor in the absence of sound, the ableness of reason,

the tug of rubbled song? and
do the expunged remnants of number
count, and if they do, does measure
collect its sandbrushed feet and rush towards
unmeasure, sea?