will seek and find you
2005
HUBBLE PHOTOGRAPHS: AFTER SAPPHO
It should be the most desired sight of all
the person with whom you hope to live and die
walking into a room, turning to look at you, sight for sight
Should be yet I say there is something
more desirable:the ex-stasis of galaxies
so out from us there’s no vocabulary
but mathematics and optics
equations letting sight pierce through time
into liberations, lacerations of light and dust
exposed like a body’s cavity, violet green livid and venous,
gorgeous
beyond good and evil as ever stained into dream
beyond remorse, disillusion, fear of death
or life, rage
for order, rage for destruction
—beyond this love which stirs
the air every time she walks into the room
These impersonae, however we call them
won’t invade us as on movie screens
they are so old, so new, we are not to them
we look at them or don’t from within the milky gauze
of our tilted gazing
but they don’t look back and we cannot hurt them
For Jack Litewka
2005
THIS IS NOT THE ROOM
of polished tables lit with medalled
torsos bent toward microphones
where ears lean hands scribble
“working the dark side”
—glazed eye meeting frozen eye—
This is not the room where tears down carven
cheeks track rivulets in the scars
left by the gouging tool
where wood itself is weeping
where the ancient painted eye speaks to the living eye
This is the room
where truth scrubs around the pedestal of the toilet
flings her rag into the bucket
straightens upspits at the mirror
2005
UNKNOWN QUANTITY
Spring nights you pillow your head on a sack
of rich compostCharcoal, your hair
sheds sparks through your muttered dreams
Deep is your sleep in the starless dark
and you wake in your live skin to show me
a tulipNot the prizewinning Queen of the Night
furled in her jade wrappings
but the Prince of Darkness, the not-yet, the X
crouched in his pale bulb
held out in the palm of your hand
Shall we bury him wait and see what happens
will there be time for waiting and to see
2005
TACTILE VALUE
from crush and splinter
death in the market
jeering robotic
dry-ice disrupt
to conjure this:
perishing
persistent script
scratched-up smeared
and torn
let hair, nail cuttings
nourish the vine and fig tree
let man, woman
eat, be sheltered
•
Marx the physician laid his ear
on the arhythmic heart
felt the belly
diagnosed the pain
did not precisely write
of lips roaming damp skin
hand plunged in hairbed-laughter
mouth clasping mouth
(what we light with this coalspark
living instantly in us
if it continue
2005–2006
MIDNIGHT, THE SAME DAY
i
When the sun seals my eyes the emblem
of failure will still be standing
motionless at this intersection
between family restaurant
and medical clinic
wearing his cardboard necklace lettered
H ARD LU CK
until his sister
the Fury of reparations
descends
curdling the air in whirlwind
tears it from his neck
picks him up and hurls on
ii
Try to rest now, says a voice.
Another:Give yourself time.
But rest is no act of will
and gifts to the self come back unopened
Milk will boil down in the iron pot
blistering into black sugar,
scalded vinegar lift
crispened layers
pages of a codex
in a library blown away
2005
EVEN THEN MAYBE
Not spentthose bloodshot friendshipsthose
soul-marriages sealed and torn
those smiles of pain
I told her a mouthful
I shut my mouth against him
Throat thick with tears
how words sound when you swallow
—and under the roof
of the mouthlong stroke
reaching from the tongue’s root
No, I was not living with her at the time
At the time I was not living
with him, at the time we were living together
I was living with neither of them
—was dwelling you could say
But as for living at that time
we were all living together with many others
for whom living was precisely the question
Haven’t seen evenings like that since
vesuvian emerald to brass dissolving
—a sentence you’d waited for
taken back half-spoken—
Luxury even then maybe
evenings like those
2005
DIRECTOR’S NOTES
You don’t want a harsh outcry here
not to violate the beauty yet
dawn unveiling ochre village
but to show coercion
within that beauty, endurance required
Begin with girl
pulling hand over hand on chain
only sound drag and creak
in time it becomes monotonous
then must begin sense of unease produced by monotony
repetitive motion, repetitive sound
resistance, irritation
increasing for the viewers
sense of what are they here for, anyway
dislike of the whole thing how boring to watch
(they aren’t used to duration
this was a test)
Keep that dislike that boredom as a value
also as risk
so when bucket finally tinks at rim
they breathe a sigh, not so much relief
as finally grasping
what all this was for
dissolve as she dips from bucket
2005
REREADING THE DEAD LECTURER
Overthrow.And make new.
An idea.And we felt it.
A meaning.And we caught it
as the dimensions spread, gathering
in pre-utopian basementsfigured shadows
scrawled with smoke and music.
Shed the dead hand,
let sound be sense.A world
echoing everywhere, Fanon, Freire, thin pamphlets lining
raincoat pockets, poetry on walls, damp purple mimeos cranking
—the feeling of an idea.An idea of feeling.
That love could be so resolute
And the past?Overthrow of systems, forms
could not overthrow the past
nor our
neglect of consequences.
Nor that cold will we misnamed.
There were consequences.A world
repeating everywhere:the obliterations.
What’s surreal, hyperreal, virtual,
what’s poetry what’s verse what’s new.What is
a political art. If we
(who?) ever were conned
into mere definitions.
If we
accept
(book of a soul contending
2005
III
LETTERS CENSORED
SHREDDED
OR JUDGED UNFIT TO SEND
Unless in quotation marks (for which see Notes on the Poems), the letter fragments are written by various imaginary persons.
“We must prevent this mind from functioning …”: words of the prosecutor sentencing Antonio Gramsci to prison, June 2, 1928.
—Could you see me laboring over this
right arm in sling, typing left-handed with one finger—
{On a scale of one to ten what is your pain today}
•
—shall I measure the split atoms
of pleasure flying outward from the core—
•
—To think of her naked every day unfreezes me—
•
Banditry, rapes, burning the woods
“a kind of primitive class struggle
with no lasting or effective results”
—The bakers strike, the needleworkers strike, the mechanics strike,
the miners strike
the great machine coughs out the pieces and hurtles on—
•
—then there are days all thought comes down to sound:
Rust.August. Mattress.Must.
Chains …
—when consciousness + sensation feels like/ = suffering—
•
—the people, yes, as yet unformed—deformed—no: disinformed—
•
—What’s realistic fantasy?—Call it hope—
•
—heard your voice on the news tonight, its minor key
your old-fashioned mindfulness—could have loved you again—
•
—Autumn invades my body, anger
wrapped in forgiving sunlight, fear of the cold—
•
—Words gather like flies above this carcass of meaning—
•
“this void, this vacuum”
•
—You think you are helpless because you are empty-handed
of concepts that could become your strength—
•
—we’re told it’s almost over, but we see no sign of it yet—
•
“caught between a feeling of immense tenderness for you
which seems … a weakness
that could only be consoled
by an immediate physical caress …”
[We must prevent this mind from functioning for twenty years]
“… and these inadequate, cold and colorless words”
•
—What I meant to write, belov’d critic, then struck it out
thinking you might accuse me of
whatever you would:
I wanted a sensual materialism to utter pleasure
Something beyond a cry that could sound like a groan—
•
—Vocalizing forbidden syllables—
•
—our mythologies choke us, we have enthralled ourselves—
•
[Writing like this for the censors
but I won’t hide behind words]
•
“my body cells revolve in unison
with the whole universe
The cycle of the seasons, the progression of the solstices
and equinoxes
I feel them as flesh of my flesh
and under the snow the first violets are already trembling
In short, time has seemed to me a thing of flesh
ever since space
ceased to exist for me”
•
—History = bodies in time—
or, in your language:
•
—to think of the one asleep
in that field beside the chimney
of the burnt-out house
a thing of flesh, exhausted—
•
—this flash is all we know. … can we shut our eyes to it … ?—
•
—more and more I dread futility—
“The struggle, whose normal external expressions
have been choked,
attaches itself to the structure
of the old class like a destructive gangrene …
it takes on morbid forms of mysticism,
sensualism, moral indifference,
physical and psychic pathological depravations …
The old structure does not contain and is unable
to satisfy the new needs …”
•
—Trying to hold an inner focus while hoarse laughter
ricochets from the guardroom—
•
•
—the daunted river finally
undammed?—
[prevent this mind]
2005
IV
IF/AS THOUGH
you’d spin out on your pirate platter
chords I’d receive on my crystal set
blues purpling burgundy goblets
Lorca’s piano spuming up champagne flutes
could drop over any night at will
with that bottle of Oregon Pinot to watch Alexander Nevsky
If no curfews no blackouts no
no-fly lists no profiling racial genital mental
If all necessary illicits blew in
like time-release capsules or spores in the mulch
up-rising as morels, creviced and wild-deliciousIf
Gerard Manley Hopkins were here to make welsh rarebit
reciting The Wreck of the Deutschland to Hart Crane in his high tenor
guessing him captive audience to sprung rhythmas we in lóst lóve
sequenceshearing it
skim uncurfewed, uncowled
pelicans over spindrift beating agnostic wings
For Ed Pavlić
2006
TIME EXPOSURES
i
Glance into glittering moisture
webbed in lashesunshed tears
I’d guess as yours
Known odor inhaled years later
in a brief social kisssudden conjuncture
soap, sweat, breath, hairother embraces
diffusedonce, again, time’s exhilarations
ii
Is there a doctor in the house
who in his plain mindful way
cared for his patients through
pain rain and snow
who at each and every grave
side knew
what could be done
he’d done
And where have all the patients gone
who wanted (more than one)
a tending hand
across the foreheadat the end
And what’s the house?
iii
They’d say she was humorless
didn’t go to the parties
giggleshow white teeth
So would suspend her in
their drained
definitions
Her body had nipples, eyes
a tongue and other parts
mirthful
obscene
which rose from lovequite often
hilarious into daylight
even forgetting why
iv
When I stretched out my legs beyond your wishful thinking
into the long history they were made for running
caught the train you missed sought you eye-level
at the next stationYou having run the whole way
to seize my face between your handsyour kind
of victory or benedictionthen
we swerved down-tunnel
in separate carsWhat is it to
catch yourself mirror-twinned
in an underwater windowwhat
about speedmatching
technology and desiregetting off
at the last stop:dispersed
v
You’ve got ocean through sheet glass brandy and firelog
ocean in its shaking
looks back at you with a blurred eye
Who’s that reflected
naked and sundered
reaching a hand
Go
down to the beach, walk in the wind
Pick up the washed-in shell
at your foot
Shell castle built on sand
your body and what’s your soul?
Is there a ghost-in-waiting?
time to bring that one in
2006
THE UNIVERSITY REOPENS AS THE FLOODS RECEDE