water seems to rise black and insistent
boats take off
lights grow small
talk
is so difficult
two pairs of eyes
see
two different initial
questions too
disappear
as in a dream
the body
thinks against itself
No slush across the page yet
“my” words
drop of the Allegheny when
the Ohio takes it
the mask of context evaporates
in a mild winter
the spectacle is elsewhere
I need a book to say
I love you
the curtain goes up on
your face
turns toward me on the pillow
contracts and crossfades
into your other larger
dilated pupils no longer search
across the impersonal
meaning there’s nothing
my body hides that
you don’t know about
As if nothing had
started yet
energy of beginning pushes toward
my life ahead somewhere
interval difficult
to close no matter
how I curve
the questions I
live in are always too big
I’m not talking about
violent wind blows the mind empty
new beginnings nor our
walking toward where our horizons
for an instant
overlap but where
I could get into my story
the road catches
up with itself and I’ll
be where I haven’t left
the road is everywhere,
or stop this body
Exaggeration of a curve
exchanges
time and again
beside you in the car
pieces the road together
with night moisture
the force of would-be sleep
beats through our bodies
denied their liquid depth
toward the always dangerous next
dawn bleeds its sequence of ready signs
a question of
no just a cigarette frays
analogies out of
too frequent a departure
leaves only an ash
of memory itches for words
in my mouth won’t be born into
tranparency no longer open
before me
accelerates
into solid illusion
so I try to shift or at least
talk
the road comes back to the surface
in spite of the cigarette
licks my lips
two horns
and a field blown with
wildflowers withdraw
(gesture?) I don’t
like the car herds move through our caves
and the life I thought mine passes
by an inch
the extreme tips of
my expectations
time’s skin shrinks under
these 2000 pounds of metal
knot villages and fields and
rivers into repetition
explodes
eyeballs windshields
onto a distance
slopes off the air
around nerve lost
would make
crash across
my weight
still untransparent
in beat with the explosions
not talked about
deafen
can I add more than
100 simultaneous miles of
presence every
day shifts unceasingly
parallel bodies
obliquely conscious of
larger and larger blue or grey slabs of air
squeeze through the ventilator
widen the angle of
my look digests field
after field of the “world”
till my eyes fat as butter bloat
outlines
into threshold
smell of fresh grass sails through
the years harden
between you and
your language shields (you thought) against time’s
arrows pierce the lungs of
some giant faceless beast with
missing eyes beyond
the range of
pronouns snare us centaurs
half car half man
and what you took for granted
rises from the wrong end
of a sentence and from then on
it’s
after
through the slums of possibles
batteries plunged in their own
acid erodes the
consonants cut in on vowels
before they can fade in
the air makes way for illusion of depth
streaks the (possible)
spectator into grey blur of
a squirrel?
disguises
the lack of more than
two dimensions
roar into view
the difference between here and
here “simple” extension
rushes into
the blare of a horn
would rip the air accompanies
the tissue of pleasure inside
pleasure
the ground swells the
double sheet of the
way back of
the outside rises up
into the bright blue sky
off balance
now a different economy would
balance
never happens without words
spill down into
the levels in between
my sex and the beginning
of a cycle skin signs and
obliterates in
the same tumescence
carries the words across
my very blood
rolls through the pages toward
void suddenly of our language
a light
flows like ink
for Otto Graf
curve
of a present perfect twisted
might
continue backward beyond
the “point”
belongs to no one
is as fuzzy as
beginnings recede to
deeper lairs
won’t fossilize the embryo “we
have never had”
an edge on passage
steams up my corvair’s window
and something
doesn’t get said
cars simulate
the ambiguity of stone with
compact outsides
cave
into hollows
our rites abolish
distance as tombs were thought to
but metals conduct faster
and without decay
opaque vibrations from old immobility
amplify
the constant small change
in our cells
behind your
eyes on the ambush of interest
unravels this rolling system of
diminishing utility in
vents
new happinesses
in time intensity and mostly
prices bridle the movement
as gravity (“just
the right amount” he said) would pull
your impulse down to
metal ploughs deeper
into a sharper space
the rapid shift into a
probes the viole(n)t sky
oscillating
between middletown connecticut and
providence rhode island
the always open
circulation grows with the prices
train the eye on
opaque metal
the slower language of
dust softens the horizon
recedes no farther
than shifts in the spectrum
the waves
the blue bodiless shock of the air
200 miles of nerve per hour with the guardrails down
can churn the intermittent
shapes into sheer
bodies touch there’s no
question why
my tongue on your
speed leaps ahead of
he will come on a stallion
he will come on the power and
fury of wind races
out beyond calculating the
of soil of labor of investments into
the warp toward a dimension
we don’t yet have
opens layer after
layer pushes past speech
for Charles Hine
halfway between false exit
and spectators swarm up
into the old texts strut out
of our crystal ball
as if the future had to be
remembered words
as in a prison
when head-on into
speed
is the evidence
we have prepared
from sperm and egg
to spring into the muscled current
sweeps through
roads connect all tongues
locked into my own momentum
could bang bone
against bone but just
shoots by the
busy and deroute me in
changing relays
the future works complexities into
my optical concessions
blend real surfaces
with the illusion of
deep space and solid
paper consumes
all representation back
into force and field
it’s not enough to think to see
shock of the “outside” at our
fingertips
radiate a cone of attention
through the steering wheel out into
points of space my body
haunts from inside
the “world” is not ahead where I’m
launched into the gap
of mind ahead of body
widens with the metal lining of
my skin
flaunts its refusal
to harden into
durability
the signs
of course I want this sequence
won’t get me out I
participate in spite
of me
if I look back
there’s no trace
of my passage
no improbable footprint
or tire mark
sitting in my own obstacle
eyes open on
the constant disappearing
translating
one measurement
into another
when they have senses
The Senses Barely,
or The Necessities of Life
for Sophie Hawkes
I (Weapons)
doubled corners
of the situation
the words duped by this dialectic
know
the pose of “brushing against”
insistence
on detail
severe eyelashes
the weapons must
be kept in order
(take the
game
of courtesy
of charm)
her knees crossed
over the manner of
his undressing her
a chord
(deceptively resonant)
a strength of image
but scanty provisions interrupt
her concern for doors
into sleep
focuses
the story can be carried in two hands
finale:
I have turned on
with shifting strands
of light
II (Pursuit)
“I have turned on,
with sifting hands,
the light”
which in rehearsal
of place
he (I fear) resorts to trapping
or sits where atmosphere
exhausts the drifting ice
and the other inconsistencies
sits still in the slant
lays in stores
her skin
the bare necessities of life
(blurred crash
picks up a chair
a flash bulb stays
the position of the group)
distance
follows the slow argument
the pursuit of game
held back by the sleeve
untangled
a statue of Washington
of songs
of burdens
of
cannibal spirits
do violence to words
III (The Closing)
they have no street in their hurry
but leave with the cold
and few household goods
a body of pure salt
stationary abode
preceded
by repetition
by empty bottles
the time it takes
to mix
matter
none of the steps may be
omitted
changes into
unrecognizable
straight lines
“she was with him”
the day after
in relative order
whereas
the necessary eye
of the sun
overgrows
The Senses Wolgamotly,
or There Were Men and Women
I (His Initiative)
duped by the curve
the living tickle of revenge
of which a geometric cunning
changes wives
institutes trouble
the angle or how to
avoid it
I picked up and
to which
curiosity did
he sell her
now that secrecy seems
irresistible
the crawling street
curb lined with bicycles
experience (hive)
determines the doubt of the visit
the pleasure whose
repetition also
humiliates
smell of food
the execution
believed liquid
perplexed
II (His Method)
whose humiliation he had
witnessed
he throws himself
into the law, the book, and thus
attracted
he figures a supple equation
in the eyes of his mistress
fake wishes (possible?)
responsible to circumstance
owed, that is, the
juridical paradox
sliced
her appeal deepens in his eyes
III (Retrospective)
this rehearsal is also
in the attitude
the fragrance of it
choked me
which cautions against contraries
the roles
that of the nape
in his first wife
her melancholy breath
generous, our haste,
my knees
do I lose the common torment
does he turn
whose manner to living
which
takes old conceptions like
“horses stiffened with priapic fury”
for me
this is betrayal
or homage
IV (His Greed)
food
reconciles his frame
he put my thumb in my mouth
or his, perhaps, supple
so many jaws
pretends
because he can’t cut the corner
of the mere thought of a meal
hefty
and only usual
nothing has changed
A sort of empty number
relations
never more present
all you
around you
let yourself
it moves but that’s my fault
yes yes you said across the words
_____
When did you
what a funny
he didn’t anywhere
that is he lived and before
he found then why with you
he seemed and he
could stand the center of
to his surprise
more than she ever
awakened a distance with
_____
The pressure not to live in
but streets and incessant
we’re not
not really
would we accept
alone
to be not altogether
Parallel open so we could
against one another
turn
you know there is
between attention
a place never direct
nor an object to stay near
impersonal attention you don’t with
extreme
_____
Latent agreement not to