Two unequals sitting
together,
talking amiably about what it is
that makes one half have and the other not –
this is where imagination cedes ground
to unreason –
so pitch perfect you are in a hurry to call it love
Here is the data visual accompanying the poem (click through if you may):
To enter the poem as flesh as the dream that stuns you –
the owled necessity that sings of the other does the poem
sit in relation to the other as it does to ancient song?
to enter the poem afresh, to return the dream that stuns
owled necessity, the song of the other we who would gather
brambles and speak as if we live forever (which stories
stick to the ground of the poem?) is it wonder sitting at my
throat recalling an earlier witness and becoming known?
to enter the poem again has the eclipse been stone for long?
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?
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.
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 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,
