The camera preserves looking--the life of the poem.
Can't expel the image without an image
terror face
Streaked the face and the face's frame
Soot on the lens, incurved eye
Lips parted the teeth rendered
White and black open to be torn
The me of it the late-night regarder
Alone in the house with vintage paranoia
Letter by letter I seek the image
Unconveyed by the phrase "lidless eye"
Unable to flinch
In the face of that
Unable to flinch
Blow to the face
Blunt instrument the eye cannot choose but accept
*
Great fucking title for a book:
SEASON ONE
*
My daughter materializes time for me in a new way: she grows so rapidly that I too must, it seems, be growing as rapidly, or anyway changing, aging: as she discovers language I discover language; as she staggers on suddenly overlong legs so do I stagger. Except I'm used to it, I scarcely notice my own becoming, I think I'm standing still. But time has me in its savage grip for sure. It flourishes us both for now, but a tipping point will come and no doubt sooner than I expect. Or sooner than I'll realize.
*
Guy at cafe talking about Cleveland as a place that "if you live there, you have a reason for living there"; mentions DFW's novel about it (Broom of the System?) and says that Joyce would have written about Cleveland both as Midwestern oasis and also as a backward and venal place.
*
A.R. Ammons: "you sit there discussing the theory / of poetry as if you were saved: / meanwhile, a big-mouthed cock / is creeping up on your ass" like "Lawrence's snake"
Ammons:
carefully fail
at every
task except
the highest
only the essential is material
only the material is essential
*
Adjustment to the film based on the anticipated desires of the "world audience."
From the distant square oompah music, fat froggy tones of horns, kettle drums, accordions taking the air.
We haven't lost, I said. We've won. Roche is finished. DeGaulle is finished. The unions are getting everything they've asked for.
The why does it feel like losing?
The victory rally. The thousands of shining faces, floating in a sea of banners, slogans, lights. The man of the hour, the bearer of our hopes, raising his hands to receive our silence. The silence before he speaks goes on and on. Stretched out on the ecstatic rack of time, we, breathless, hearing only each other's stillness, are listening, leaning, hand in spontaneous hand. His lips are parted. A shout that will not be.
Let me live here ever.
*
shiver overcharged
by narrative
bootblacks. mistress quicklys
overwrought by night
streaming video from subcontinents
overreaching. overt hands
fingertips flying up to brush
metal seams of a hull
dark down there
& breathless. mutineers
parts of the whole
satelite whirligigs sedan chairs carried
into the muck of speech
*
The goat's colored footsteps
*
Outbound 1/26/10
Flatiron sky flies in wedges
"my iron lung"
Front to back two ladies
Speaking Spanish por que
A flag hovers to my left
Over Evanston's hotel de ville
And where does the gravel on top of shelter roofs come from
Fighting about nothing you
Sleep well all night
Gym bag between my feet
Like an offering
Health care's dead
It's alive!
Little dogs walk
Their feet can't keep up with 'em
Benadette Mayer writes her couplets
At midnight
As I staple together
Ends of the working
Day
*
Rust-red pigeon
What's in it for you
Hey everybody!
Let's go ahead and pathologize
The last several months
Count weeks
And have a few beers
*
The black relic hung
Something to savor
The black relic hung
Crossroads of the years
The black relic hung
Forgotten LP
The black relic hung
The black relic hung
*
shoes make broken glass OK
No comments:
Post a Comment