Isolated but mobile foliage schema

ONS

ddoouubbllee

from "On the Nature of Things" by Lucretius

Existence and Character of the Images 


But since I've taught already of what sort 
The seeds of all things are, and how distinct 
In divers forms they flit of own accord, 
Stirred with a motion everlasting on, 
And in what mode things be from them create, 
And since I've taught what the mind's nature is, 
And of what things 'tis with the body knit 
And thrives in strength, and by what mode uptorn 
That mind returns to its primordials, 
Now will I undertake an argument- 
One for these matters of supreme concern- 
That there exist those somewhats which we call 
The images of things: these, like to films 
Scaled off the utmost outside of the things, 
Flit hither and thither through the atmosphere, 
And the same terrify our intellects, 
Coming upon us waking or in sleep, 
When oft we peer at wonderful strange shapes 
And images of people lorn of light, 
Which oft have horribly roused us when we lay 
In slumber- that haply nevermore may we 
Suppose that souls get loose from Acheron, 
Or shades go floating in among the living, 
Or aught of us is left behind at death, 
When body and mind, destroyed together, each 
Back to its own primordials goes away. 

And thus I say that effigies of things, 
And tenuous shapes from off the things are sent, 
From off the utmost outside of the things, 
Which are like films or may be named a rind, 
Because the image bears like look and form 
With whatso body has shed it fluttering forth- 
A fact thou mayst, however dull thy wits, 
Well learn from this: mainly, because we see 
Even 'mongst visible objects many be 
That send forth bodies, loosely some diffused- 
Like smoke from oaken logs and heat from fires- 
And some more interwoven and condensed- 
As when the locusts in the summertime 
Put off their glossy tunics, or when calves 
At birth drop membranes from their body's surface, 
Or when, again, the slippery serpent doffs 
Its vestments 'mongst the thorns- for oft we see 
The breres augmented with their flying spoils: 
Since such takes place, 'tis likewise certain too 
That tenuous images from things are sent, 
From off the utmost outside of the things. 
For why those kinds should drop and part from things, 
Rather than others tenuous and thin, 
No power has man to open mouth to tell; 
Especially, since on outsides of things 
Are bodies many and minute which could, 
In the same order which they had before, 
And with the figure of their form preserved, 
Be thrown abroad, and much more swiftly too, 
Being less subject to impediments, 
As few in number and placed along the front. 
For truly many things we see discharge 
Their stuff at large, not only from their cores 
Deep-set within, as we have said above, 
But from their surfaces at times no less- 
Their very colours too. And commonly 
The awnings, saffron, red and dusky blue, 
Stretched overhead in mighty theatres, 
Upon their poles and cross-beams fluttering, 
Have such an action quite; for there they dye 
And make to undulate with their every hue 
The circled throng below, and all the stage, 
And rich attire in the patrician seats. 
And ever the more the theatre's dark walls 
Around them shut, the more all things within 
Laugh in the bright suffusion of strange glints, 
The daylight being withdrawn. And therefore, since 
The canvas hangings thus discharge their dye 
From off their surface, things in general must 
Likewise their tenuous effigies discharge, 
Because in either case they are off-thrown 
From off the surface. So there are indeed 
Such certain prints and vestiges of forms 
Which flit around, of subtlest texture made, 
Invisible, when separate, each and one. 
Again, all odour, smoke, and heat, and such 
Streams out of things diffusedly, because, 
Whilst coming from the deeps of body forth 
And rising out, along their bending path 
They're torn asunder, nor have gateways straight 
Wherethrough to mass themselves and struggle abroad. 
But contrariwise, when such a tenuous film 
Of outside colour is thrown off, there's naught 
Can rend it, since 'tis placed along the front 
Ready to hand. Lastly those images 
Which to our eyes in mirrors do appear, 
In water, or in any shining surface, 
Must be, since furnished with like look of things, 
Fashioned from images of things sent out. 
There are, then, tenuous effigies of forms, 
Like unto them, which no one can divine 
When taken singly, which do yet give back, 
When by continued and recurrent discharge 
Expelled, a picture from the mirrors' plane. 
Nor otherwise, it seems, can they be kept 
So well conserved that thus be given back 
Figures so like each object. 

Now then, learn 
How tenuous is the nature of an image. 

And in the first place, since primordials be 
So far beneath our senses, and much less 
E'en than those objects which begin to grow 
Too small for eyes to note, learn now in few 
How nice are the beginnings of all things- 
That this, too, I may yet confirm in proof: 
First, living creatures are sometimes so small 
That even their third part can nowise be seen; 
Judge, then, the size of any inward organ- 
What of their sphered heart, their eyes, their limbs, 
The skeleton?- How tiny thus they are! 
And what besides of those first particles 
Whence soul and mind must fashioned be?- Seest not 
How nice and how minute? Besides, whatever 
Exhales from out its body a sharp smell- 
The nauseous absinth, or the panacea, 
Strong southernwood, or bitter centaury- 
If never so lightly with thy [fingers] twain 
Perchance [thou touch] a one of them 

Then why not rather know that images 
Flit hither and thither, many, in many modes, 
Bodiless and invisible? 
But lest 
Haply thou holdest that those images 
Which come from objects are the sole that flit, 
Others indeed there be of own accord 
Begot, self-formed in earth's aery skies, 
Which, moulded to innumerable shapes, 
Are borne aloft, and, fluid as they are, 
Cease not to change appearance and to turn 
Into new outlines of all sorts of forms; 
As we behold the clouds grow thick on high 
And smirch the serene vision of the world, 
Stroking the air with motions. For oft are seen 
The giants' faces flying far along 
And trailing a spread of shadow; and at times 
The mighty mountains and mountain-sundered rocks 
Going before and crossing on the sun, 
Whereafter a monstrous beast dragging amain 
And leading in the other thunderheads. 
Now [hear] how easy and how swift they be 
Engendered, and perpetually flow off 
From things and gliding pass away.... 

For ever every outside streams away 
From off all objects, since discharge they may; 
And when this outside reaches other things, 
As chiefly glass, it passes through; but where 
It reaches the rough rocks or stuff of wood, 
There 'tis so rent that it cannot give back 
An image. But when gleaming objects dense, 
As chiefly mirrors, have been set before it, 
Nothing of this sort happens. For it can't 
Go, as through glass, nor yet be rent- its safety, 
By virtue of that smoothness, being sure. 
'Tis therefore that from them the images 
Stream back to us; and howso suddenly 
Thou place, at any instant, anything 
Before a mirror, there an image shows; 
Proving that ever from a body's surface 
Flow off thin textures and thin shapes of things. 
Thus many images in little time 
Are gendered; so their origin is named 
Rightly a speedy. And even as the sun 
Must send below, in little time, to earth 
So many beams to keep all things so full 
Of light incessant; thus, on grounds the same, 
From things there must be borne, in many modes, 
To every quarter round, upon the moment, 
The many images of things; because 
Unto whatever face of things we turn 
The mirror, things of form and hue the same 
Respond. Besides, though but a moment since 
Serenest was the weather of the sky, 
So fiercely sudden is it foully thick 
That ye might think that round about all murk 
Had parted forth from Acheron and filled 
The mighty vaults of sky- so grievously, 
As gathers thus the storm-clouds' gruesome night, 
Do faces of black horror hang on high- 
Of which how small a part an image is 
There's none to tell or reckon out in words. 

Translated by William Ellery Leonard.
http://classics.mit.edu/Carus/nature_things.html

Recuperation of the Indexical

This is a (probably un)startling return of the real:

From The New York Times:

NEWS ANALYSIS: Unraveling Boston Suspects’ Online Lives, Link by Link

Once the search for the marathon bombing suspects focused on Tamerlan and Dzhokhar Tsarnaev, the brothers’ social media postings provided a rich vein of material to mine.

http://nyti.ms/10y1YeE

Spirit wounds

'The wounds of the Spirit heal and leave no scars behind. '
- Hegel, Phenomenology of Spirit.

In this passage Hegel is talking about the beautiful soul, which, always ready to forgive, to forget faults, perpetually returns to itself, rediscovers itself, reconstitutes itself, recuperates. It is possible to see in this phrase the very definition of the work of the Spirit. It's expresses precisely this process of recovery, healing, return, the re-knitting of the skin after the wound, in other words, the plasticity that appears as the very movement of the absolute.

- Catherine Malabou

toward a mainstream poetics

[K. Silem Mohammad] on the origins of Flarf:

Towards a Mainstream Poetics

Want to take seriously [Pixar-esque weasel/clown-faces behind me fleer and moue] for a bit here Mike Magee's reconfiguration of the poetic Mainstream.

Others have pointed this out before, of course, but "mainstream poetry" as usually construed by its opponents is anything but. What on earth, as Mike asks, is mainstream about Robert Pinsky? A mainstream is a forceful, central current that carries in its path all the debris and livestock and entire vacationing families that get vortexed into it. It is not a carefully constructed iron walkway that escorts the effete peripatetic poet safely above a scenic view of the countryside and its filthy horizon. In the mainstream, you have to shout to be heard above the roar of the already-tired water metaphor I'm spinning out here. In the mainstream, the weasels with clown faces have uzis. The mainstream is the scary global video game we live in, everyday, and it has nothing to do with some absurd publishing scam within which a few bloodless surrealists and failed classicists and Tools of the Homespun False Consciousness get to define what is normative.

If you want to break it down by sales figures and numbers of readers, the margins between the Big Names and the small press world are negligible in light of the overall money-losingness of poetry. Most of the poetry read on a daily basis in this country, I'll wager, is amateur poetry circulated between individuals and posted on the internet.

So what would it mean for poetry to be truly mainstream? It would have to be aggressively public, perhaps--distributed via mass mailing or spam messages, say. It would have to be as shameless as television in its bid to engage new readers, and even, potentially, make money. Imagine that: poetry that made money. Do you feel a bristling in your blood at the hint of sacrilege? What shall I do with all the money my new, Mainstream poetry is going to make...? After I pay off my student loans and credit card debts, maybe I'll finance a series of poetry billboards that respond electronically to the radio signals from passing cars and compose digital aleatory compositions designed to influence the way people shop for fabric. Maybe I'll fund a political party whose platform involves the legalization of plagiarism. Maybe I'll pay some high school kids to translate the Iliad homophonically and have homeless people read the results on cable access TV. Although it would make more sense to pay the homeless people, wouldn't it? You see how anarchically irrational and unfair poetry in the real world would be!

Let's start a lo-fi, low residency MFA program dedicated to the advancement of guerilla Mainstream poetics. As Juliana Spahr recently mentioned, there are certainly enough unemployed poets with Ph.D.'s out there to band together and get such a thing accredited. I don't know how that stuff works, but basically don't you just take out an ad in Poets & Writersor whatever and then people pay you money to entertain them in the countryside for a weekend or two? Give the thing some hip jazzy name like the Institute of Post-Avant Poetics, and you're all set. And stop at nothing--T-shirts, coffee cups, bumper stickers, mouse pads.... Invite big-name poet-celebrities to our conventions: Suzanne Somers, Leonard Nimoy, and Jewel alongside Lytle Shaw, Anselm Berrigan, and Lisa Jarnot. Special musical guests. Softball games. Cotton candy. And in the background, the weasels with clown faces, always softly stalking and slavering.

via: http://epc.buffalo.edu/authors/bernstein/syllabi/readings/flarf.html

from "The Coming Insurrection" by the Invisible Committee

First Circle

“I AM WHAT I AM”

“I AM WHAT I AM.” This is marketing’s latest offering to the world, the final stage in the development of advertising, far beyond all the exhortations to be different, to be oneself and drink Pepsi. Decades of concepts in order to get where we are, to arrive at pure tautology. I = I. He’s running on a treadmill in front of the mirror in his gym. She’s coming back from work, behind the wheel of her Smart car. Will they meet?

“I AM WHAT I AM.” My body belongs to me. I am me, you are you, and something’s wrong. Mass personalization. Individualization of all conditions – life, work and misery. Diffuse schizophrenia. Rampant depression. Atomization into fine paranoiac particles. Hysterization of contact. The more I want to be me, the more I feel an emptiness. The more I express myself, the more I am drained. The more I run after myself, the more tired I get. We cling to our self like a coveted job title. We’ve become our own representatives in a strange commerce, guarantors of a personalization that feels, in the end, a lot more like an amputation. We insure our selves to the point of bankruptcy, with a more or less disguised clumsiness.

Meanwhile, I manage. The quest for a self, my blog, my apartment, the latest fashionable crap, relationship dramas, who’s fucking who… whatever prosthesis it takes to hold onto an “I”! If “society” hadn’t become such a definitive abstraction, then it would denote all the existential crutches that allow me to keep dragging on, the ensemble of dependencies I’ve contracted as the price of my identity. The handicapped person is the model citizen of tomorrow. It’s not without foresight that the associations exploiting them today demand that they be granted a “subsistence income.”

The injunction, everywhere, to “be someone” maintains the pathological state that makes this society necessary. The injunction to be strong produces the very weakness by which it maintains itself, so that everything seems to take on a therapeutic character, even working, even love. All those “how’s it goings?” that we exchange give the impression of a society composed of patients taking each other’s temperatures. Sociability is now made up of a thousand little niches, a thousand little refuges where you can take shelter.  Where it’s always better than the bitter cold outside. Where everything’s false, since it’s all just a pretext for getting warmed up. Where nothing can happen since we’re all too busy shivering silently together. Soon this society will only be held together by the mere tension of all the social atoms straining towards an illusory cure. It’s a power plant that runs its turbines on a gigantic reservoir of unwept tears, always on the verge of spilling over.

“I AM WHAT I AM.” Never has domination found such an innocent-sounding slogan. The maintenance of the self in a permanent state of deterioration, in a chronic state of near-collapse, is the best-kept secret of the present order of things. The weak, depressed, self-critical, virtual self is essentially that endlessly adaptable subject required by the ceaseless innovation of production, the accelerated obsolescence of technologies, the constant overturning of social norms, and generalized flexibility. It is at the same time the most voracious consumer and, paradoxically, the most productive self, the one that will most eagerly and energetically throw itself into the slightest project, only to return later to its original larval state.


http://tarnac9.files.wordpress.com/2009/04/thecominsur_booklet.pdf

spirit panic

Only those who know the meaning that they will give to the catastrophe retain calmness and precision in their movements. By the type and the proportions of panic to which a spirit allows itself to go, one can tell one’s rank.

He no longer saw the future before him, and the past, 
in spite of all his efforts to find it explicable, resembled something of the incomprehensible. Justifications left in pieces, and the feeling of pleasure seemed 
to exhaust itself more each day. Journeys and long 
walks, which had formerly given him a mysterious 
joy, had become strangely horrible for him. […] He 
was neither truly without homeland, nor honestly 
and naturally at home in any place, wherever in the 
world it might be. He would have liked very much 
to be an organ player, or a beggar, or a cripple, for to 
have some reason to invoke the pity and the charity 
of men, but still more ardently he wished to die. He 
was not dead, and yet…

TIQQUN: THEORY OF BLOOM

http://translationcollective.files.wordpress.com/2011/03/bloom-en.pdf

from wherever (10)

March 8, 1993

The Contemporary Museum

Mr. Karl Ambonvoid IV, curator

1610 St. Paul Street

Baltimore, MD 21229

Mr. Ambonvoid,

Thank you for mounting and promoting my work so marvelously. My thanks to all of the patrons and staff of the Contemporary Museum for supporting my work in so many tangible and moving ways.

Sincerely,

Mona Nyous

from wherever (9)

April 2004

K. A.

1302 Charles Street

Baltimore, MD 21229

K.,

I think of our years together as an amber string, spooling itself in reverse. Time spans uncontrollably towards some point that is neither you, nor I, nor us.

I am in Baltimore for the weekend, and will be gone by morning. I can't recall your face any longer, although I remember the door to your apartment. Some surfaces continue.

A void at last,

M.

Enc. (1): the city above, the sky below / impossible reversals are possible

from wherever (8)

February 15, 1993

Karl Ambonvoid

1302 Charles Street

Baltimore, MD 21229

K.,

I am staggering. My apologies are circling. I am in circulation. We are economies, substituting signs, forgetting as quickly as touching.

Vicious circles of fiction and sickness seem to follow me. I hope that one day you will understand why things have to be written this way.

Texts write themselves.

But you know this as well as I.

M.

from wherever (7)

November 29, 1992

The Contemporary Museum

Mr. Karl Ambonvoid IV, curator

1610 St. Paul Street

Baltimore, MD 21229

Mr. Ambonvoid,

Thank you for the correction regarding the dimensions of the St. Stanislaus exhibition space. Please don’t apologize, I realize that these details are out of your control.

Aside from the contents of the boxes, which will be displayed according to my specifications, I will be sending a mural-sized print of the photograph included in this packet, entitled “Self-portrait as line in the clouds” (1992). Installation instructions will accompany the print; it is important that the handlers follow them explicitly.

As is my policy, I will be unable to meet with the board of the Contemporary Museum, or to attend the opening. Please express my warmest thanks to the board for allowing the museum to host my work, and for understanding that these refusals are central to my project.

Your office may contact me if there are any further questions.

Sincerely,

Mona Nyous

from wherever (6)

October 21, 1992

The Contemporary Museum

Mr. Karl Ambonvoid IV, curator

1610 St. Paul Street

Baltimore, MD 21229

Mr. Ambonvoid,

I have received and signed the documents you forwarded to me. Please find them enclosed. Should you need any more information regarding my preference in packing and handling companies, please contact my office immediately.

Also, please find enclosed the photograph you requested for your essay. I believe that it will help to explain the form of the work that you referenced.

I will plan on shipping the work to the Contemporary Museum office three weeks before the exhibit opens in March. Please advise your handlers that specific installation instructions will accompany each piece. We can discuss this further later in the winter.

Please contact me if you have any further questions.

Sincerely,

Mona Nyous

from wherever (5)

October 15, 2004

Karl Ambonvoid

1302 Charles Street

Baltimore, MD 21229

K.,

Your silence is the more frightening; I know that it contains a universe.

I’m used to my own obscurity, its opaqueness keeps me standing. I didn’t believe that the years would change things so much between us, that the air would harden into a solid mass.

Blanchot sustains me: “It makes me, nothingness that I am, like unto nothingness. In a cowardly way it delivers me to joy.”

Perhaps we are both cowards, hiding behind words and structures, sure that our allusions will eventually be able to breathe on their own. Or, in the simplest of expectations, stand.

M.

from wherever (4)

October 15, 1992

Karl Ambonvoid

1302 Charles Street

Baltimore, MD 21229

Karl,

In a certain way, the work has been eclipsed. Or rather, the eclipse has become the arc of the work.

Forgive my week of silence; I am used to choosing my words, but last week I felt as if I were in the middle of some terrible forced obscurity.  I keep expecting it to vanish, for my body to re-member itself, to disavow what it has learned.

Se souvenir. The remnant “to come” hidden within the body of the word.

Small deaths abound.

I will write more when words return.

M.

from wherever (3)

September 20, 1992

The Contemporary Museum

Mr. Karl Ambonvoid, curator

1610 St. Paul Street

Baltimore, MD 21229

Mr. Ambonvoid,

I’m delighted to know that St. Stanislaus will be available for the exhibition. Could you send me the dimensions of the space, including any walls that are available? Also, I’d like the exact address so that when I visit Baltimore next week I will be able to spend some time in the space.

Your observation about the morality of identity in my work was very perceptive; to clarify might ruin your exquisitely balanced writing. I could only add that the fluid, but essentially mechanistic (Sadistic?) nature of identity (something that Foucault suggests in his varied histories of sexuality) still seems to emanate from an outside. An outside that slips through the structures that attempt to give it boundaries.

Thank you for including the Valery in your last letter. I hope that you find my reply satisfactory. Words begetting words; lovers of discourse…

Sincerely,

Mona Nyous

from wherever (2)

September 9, 2004

Karl Ambonvoid

1302 Charles Street

Baltimore, MD 21229

Karl,

The years between us are fleeced.

We hunters in parallel fields,

Finding courage in minor successes:

The stars opening,

Our verticality.

Words and worlds emptied;

The press of the middle

Against the tongue.

Yet, “the nothingness shows through,”

as you and your Valery might suggest.

Still,

M.

PS. I’ve included some photos from my new work

on language and economies. It’s a triptych,

working title “We Knew Him (Three views)”…

from wherever (1)

September 7, 1992

The Contemporary Museum

Karl Ambonvoid IV, curator

1610 St. Paul Street

Baltimore, MD 21229

Mr. Ambonvoid,

I think that I agree with you that it would work best for both of our schedules to schedule the exhibition between March and June; I will leave the specifics of dates up to you and your staff.

I am very much excited at the possibility of mounting the exhibition in the convent. As you noted, it seems as though my work would benefit from the overlay of that specific historical/geographic text. Let me know as soon as you finalize with the city and church, as I am anticipating incorporating (the corpse in the middle) it into my installation.

I hope that this finds you well.

Sincerely,

Mona Nyous

Sleeping Minotaur Loop from Wes Kline on Vimeo.

from "Red Doc>" by Anne Carson

Wife of Brain

we enter we tell you
we are the Wife of Brain
at this point you have little grounds to complain we say
a red man unfolding his wings is how it begins then the lights
come on or go off or the stage
spins it’s like a play omnes
to their places
but
remember
the following faces
the red one (G)
you already know (what’s he done to his hair) his old friend
Sad
But Great
looks kind
beware
third Ida Ida is limitless and will soon be our king
scene is
a little red hut where G lives alone
time
evening

WHY BIRDS HAVE no
arms–if you are human
you fly with arms straight
out in front and horizontal
to the ground. To give
least resistance. Of course
it’s exhausting. Don’t fight
it just do it says G to his
arms. He visualizes little
pistons all over pumping
him forward and this helps
for a while but the ache is
spreading from his spine
in every direction. Down
the ice fault pours a steady
cold channel of headwind
against him. He knows he
is slowing and probably
looks ridiculous. Am I
turning into one of those
old guys in a ponytail and
wings he thinks sadly.
Something skims his
cheek. He waves at it
vaguely. Predators. His
heart sinks. People talk of
eagles with a wingspan of
3 meters in the northern
regions. He begins to
imagine his own heroic
death as told by Daniil
Kharms. If the sky – but
now the air is darkening
around him and strange
vectors dive whizz swoop
– he gasps suddenly
realizing what it is. Not
predators. Ice bats! They
are blueblack. They are
absolutely silent. They
are the size of toasters.
And they are drafting him
down the ice fault with
eerie gentle purpose. A
spearhead in front and a
convoy each side. His
shoulders begin to relax.
Is there an etiquette for
this he should worry
about? Theoretically he
can gain 35% efficiency
by riding their wheels a
while. But it should be
some sort of exchange.
On the other hand theirs is
a volunteer intervention
and they do look tireless
despite all going so fast
there’s a smell of burning –
he is thinking this odd this
smell of burning when the
whole mass of them veers
around an ice bend and
arrives in a vast garage.

ICE BATS GO nimbly
and can stop on a dime.
Here’s how you stop. Flap
both wings downward
creating a vortex above
the leading edge of each
wing this allows you to
hover. Then flap once
upward to release suction
as you glide from the
flight path in an attitude of
careless royalty and
subside onto some ledge
or throne with neatly
folded fingerbones. G’s
descent is less fine. He
slams into the
blueblackness ahead of
him not expecting it to
stop. Or instantly
disperse. Each bat goes
whizzing its way into an
aperture in the back wall.
BATCATRAZ says a sign
nailed up there. G drops
to the ice floor stunned.
Clever of you to come in
the back way says a voice.
G looks up.

"In Love with You" by Kenneth Koch

I

O what a physical effect it has on me

To dive forever into the light blue sea

Of your acquaintance! Ah, but dearest friends,

Like forms, are finished, as life has ends! Still,

It is beautiful, when October

Is over, and February is over,

To sit in the starch of my shirt, and to dream of your sweet

Ways! As if the world were a taxi, you enter it, then

Reply (to no one), “Let’s go five or six blocks.”

Isn’t the blue stream that runs past you a translation from the Russian?

Aren’t my eyes bigger than love?

Isn’t this history, and aren’t we a couple of ruins?

Is Carthage Pompeii? is the pillow the bed? is the sun

What glues our heads together? O midnight! O midnight!

Is love what we are,

Or has happiness come to me in a private car

That’s so very small I’m amazed to see it there?

                                                       2

We walk through the park in the sun, and you say, “There’s a spider

Of shadow touching the bench, when morning’s begun.” I love you.

I love you fame I love you raining sun I love you cigarettes I love you love

I love you daggers I love smiles daggers and symbolism.

                                                       3

Inside the symposium of your sweetest look’s

Sunflower awning by the nurse-faced chrysanthemums childhood

Again represents a summer spent sticking knives into porcelain raspberries, when China’s

Still a country! Oh, King Edward abdicated years later, that’s

Exactly when. If you were seventy thousand years old, and I were a pill,

I know I could cure your headache, like playing baseball in drinking-water, as baskets

Of towels sweetly touch the bathroom floor! O benches of nothing

Appear and reappear—electricity! I’d love to be how

You are, as if

The world were new, and the selves were blue

Which we don

Until it’s dawn,

Until evening puts on

The gray hooded selves and the light brown selves of . . .

Water! your tear-colored nail polish

Kisses me! and the lumberyard seems new

As a calm

On the sea, where, like pigeons,

I feel so mutated, sad, so breezed, so revivified, and still so unabdicated—

Not like an edge of land coming over the sea!

critic at large

I wish to be a critic at large,
but how large,
and where -


at.

last night i dreamt that you had written a letter to me, on the surface of a stone in the middle of a desert.  through most of the dream i was hiking through a rugged, mountainous landscape, but i had no map, or clear sense of direction.  somehow, i stumbled onto the rock  - triangular, it jutted abruptly from the dry sand. 

i could see that there was writing on it, but it was blurred, and out of focus.  as is the arc of dreams, i woke before i could understand what was written.