no one
an island
warmer than continents
would
in sharpest hemisphere
would mobilize
big masculine history
on tap
Chapter XIV: Of the Winds
Accounts for eight cardinalls flying out of context though not explaining the accurate division of the compasse or where to blow. A motion that now buffets, now cools, has passed, more fertile in another period, the way tradition places God to the Southwest of pleasingest and passive.
What Think You When The Wind Blows From The East?
burn
fall
lass
rose
row
ow
The wind from a past only recently mine drove racial discrimination between the poles of my life and divided the city into usage and flooding. My family’s limbs dispersed in reciprocities, but rejoined as if emerging out of water, more whole than before, but still bone-white as we lay on our bloated stomachs, as if already dead.
here
the wind
will be tomorrow
a constant disquisition
into the secret of
velocity
while men grow small
within their skin
tongue tied
into another language
Chapter XVI: Of the Earth and the Fruits Thereof
They are exact and punctual in the bounds of property and expectation, but do not admit Christian rights to Heathen lands. More densely seeded with disaster. Predictions have been found on paths familiar to the foot. The women hoe and weede and hill and gather in fruites of the field and forehead. But though their legs are firmly planted in the ground they do not yield a harvest other than decay. Radiation theory immensely fruitful. The men not bound to help, but of a sudden not so big, in turn plowed under, weeded out.
inconsolable
succulent
sphere
altered
appendages
Under a show of pink and white, field glasses revealed sensual movement which my reserve did not forestall. Nor going to seed. What was the secret of holsters, nearsighted daring, tools between legs? Who went from coast to coast, but stayed always on top with semicircular canals for balance? My antagonism dissolved into the illusion that I was one of them, consenting to slow harm.
if I say come
the siren
will also scream from the policecar
as when fields
are to be broken up
all terms are
physical
Chapter XVIII: Of the Sea
A site of passage, of dreadful to move on, of depth between. A native will take his hatchet to the Latin of daily life (without postulating long neighborhood or early development) and burn and hew until he has launched his morphological innovation on the water. Great transport of bodies, some carrying thirty, forty men. High surface motion, endless, endless. Close resemblance of heavy swell and bewildered, brackish and overwhelming. Heave out hell and high water, yet the future all at sea. They shall be drowned, the Sea comes in too fast upon them.
bed
biscuit
cucumber
farer
mstress
nce
scape
son
Against the threat of frigidity, I sought out thermal cures which brought me contact with short hair, gratitude, parts called private and more or less so. Without these unidentical skins, masts might have snapped and left me lying right underneath the sky. But my flesh close up was pale and terrified my lover.
a verb
tense beyond
my innermost dark thoughts
but holds
no water
no more than swimmers see
beyond displacement
in exchange
Chapter XXIII: Of Marriage
Flesh, considered as cognitive region, as opposed to undifferentiated warmth, is called woman or wife. The number not stinted, yet the Narragansett (generally) have but one. While diminutives are coined with reckless freedom, the deep structure of the marriage bed is universally esteemed even in translation. If the woman be false to bedlock, the offended husband will be solemnly avenged, arid and eroded. He may remove her clothes at any angle between horizontal planes.
mar
marrow
mutual
convenience
settlement
My lover was ready to overcome all manner of difficulty, but baffled by my claims to equality and clean towels. Even with the night between us, neither side would give up its position and prerogatives. We waited for a change of weather to reopen hostilities.
harmony prestabilized
is turning on its
axe to grind
to halt
to bind
to fault
the speed can’t be sustained
even in constant
rotation
through periods of waxing and weaning
Chapter XXVI: Of Debts and Trusting
They are desirous to come into debt and have bequeathed the habit. Nowemacaûnash nitteaùquash. I Was Faine to Spend My Money in My Sicknesse is a common and, they think, most satisfying answer since promises applied to parts of speech have no effect, but a priest’s pocket conjures paralysis, convulsions, detritus and death. In any case, narrow debts cannot offset the introduction of the number zero or opaque treaties of which no word can be deciphered.
anatomy
symmetry
tilt
expected
rust
I did not know if my desire to escape cash-and-carry was strong enough to eliminate the platitudes of gender identity or the crowds under my eyelids. I was stuck in a periodicity I supposedly share with Nature, but tired of making concessions to dogs after bones.
I offered sleeplessness
in payment of my debts
but might as well have counted
on my fingers
unlike exposure to harm
the possibilities
of keeping warm not infinite
Chapter XXXII: Of Death and Buriall
He that hath death in his house blackes his face. Soot clotted with tears and gaping with vowels. They abhorre to mention the dead by the name sealed into their lips, the bleeding stump of their tongues. Sachimaûpan. He That Was Prince Here is wrapped in wailing, in flexion, in hands before the face, in smaller and smaller particles. Perspective unsettled by chemical methods. They bury sideways the mat he died on, the dish he ate from, the empty regions of his body, and sometimes hang his shadow upon the next tree which none will touch but suffer to rot.
occlude
occult
orthodox
haphazard
obsolete
irreparable
Solitude in heat. I resented my lover turning his back on me for other mournful realities. Though each crossing of space casually implicates the flesh, attraction increasing faster than distance diminishes, I found myself alone among the rubble of love. I had finally reached the center of the city. It was deserted, in ruins, as useless as my birth and as permanent a site of murder.
a hitch in time
then the world changed
then there was no memory
then life could not
be und
erstood forward
or backward
split infinites
from Pre & Con,
or Positions & Junctions
The sun’s light and
is compounded
and lovers and
emphatically
and cast long and shadows
of and a look
and on the
and face of a girl
waiting for and
the night and with imperfect
repose and secret
and craving
and bodies operate
and upon one and
another and blue
may differ
and in depth
Of bodies
of various
sizes of
vibrations
of blue excite
of never except
in his early
in childhood has he touched
of the space of
between of
to allow
of for impact
now of that color
has slowed
its pitch
or of skin
of but light
no deep foundation
nor of leans into
the blue
And possibly color is
divided
into the octave
gradations of
into love into
impalpable
in spite of into careful
attention into
leaves blown
into autumn blown
into tension into
between
growing into and
into ungrowing
desire into and into
If a bird if
up into the air
if cold if
we must if adhere if
a road if renamed by
if each if traveling
more than one set
if of darkness no angel
no annunciation
deeper yet if
voice if
borne if by grief
as if a bird
if on wings
As for the
explanatory
as art as relation to
death as and as
must negotiate
as time as and place
as fear allotted as
as silence that
as follows as dilates
an as great variety of
as noises in as
different
as makes me
as shiver
Split Infinites
Association
for Claire Needell
no sooner does one appear than the next comes at a smart pace down the aisle, bent on a game of love, and sometimes crying. I’d prefer the single exclamation. To stand small, insubordinate, in the sea of fertility.
Are you sure, she asked, you’re talking of ideas? Dark emptied of touch would be entire, null and void. Even on an island.
Explosives. It was war. There were no condoms. We swapped knives to peel off childhood like so many skins. Cause, far from being opposed to pregnancy, is in truth the most exquisite species of proximity in time.
Electricity through interruptions in the countryside. Practice of blindness. Clipped fingernails.
A nudge between thighs. The weight of a single egg. A single body multiplied into many instances of speculation. I ran up steps worn into a smooth path to motherhood. The motion as if natural.
If this streaking is disturbed we stumble, and consequence reveals its dimensions. Of which we are the sole survivors. Please clarify.
Techniques of avoiding Spain. Castles in. Of separating existence and essence. With tongue and teeth. A tight sweater strips a single clockwise.
The toxic side of felt in the bones. And other couplings. The pleasure of writing a poem. The slow behavior of stars. Does not overwhelm the body.
A Great Number of Arbitrary Signs
and a deep discontent with variable wavelengths. The shining dandelions had already bloomed into puffballs. The air apparent, flickering with heat.
Light cannot turn corners. The steep program of the pleasure principle. The splash of the fountain. Fingers on arteries practicing scales and arpeggios.
While concepts lay unobservable in the brain, the leaves began to fall. During the blackouts, the city gave in to the dark like any countryside. A wide space of hearing, but free from entanglements with fertile soil. And like lovers knew the time that was given and the time we must take.
The way the fountain braids my listening after sparrows, swallows and soldiers have been broken into phonemes. And the waves pounding the achievements that are wedged between our lives. One cup poured into another makes different animal ancestors.
What is important? The body of water itself? The sublimation that makes civilization possible? Mother lit candles and kerosene lamps.
Soap not necessarily a source of happiness. Marrow of water. A fountain’s sound is changed by the slightest gap in the air.
Love draws its orbit through the heavens, while the land beneath heaves with calamities. I lifted the blind and looked down on the color of war, now lost. I might not have known all the meanings of red sky at night.
The light has turned the corner. When sublimation comes to rest the jet of water falls back upon itself. As if the fountain itself were under water. A sleep incautious and entire.
Split Infinites
a small square with tram lines in several directions, bounded on one side by a church. Attempts at recollection succeed soonest with corresponding sepia. I myself cannot discover any “oceanic” feeling within me. Adding up dark cobble stones against more unguessable events.
Lilies with heavy pollen powdering priestly fingers. Indiscriminate application of adjectives. The next day my throat was swollen. To the extent that sex is in the mind I threw snowballs.
The towers of the church rose into red shifts. The snowflakes drifted slowly in the opposite direction. God blesses those who are careful. Not to step too far into rejoicing.
We’d done it twice already. Mother moved slowly with a small hook. But the longing for the father is incontestable. You feel a splinter and you don’t know where it came from.
Narrow rooms. When we say infinite we have no conception but our own inability. Therefore the name of God is used. The I has no sharp boundary inward.
A train of thought departs. Spokes of the mind wheeling backward. Exhausted, the light. Erased, the fine line of the horizon.
Snow drifted in under the door. The iron stove glowed red. Tense flesh of lilies thick to the touch. All receding, toys drawn on a string.
Roma quadrata. Inaccessible, he says. The embryo cannot be proved from adult lips blue with cold. Memory not regenerated in the marrow.
Rising from the grass, the trees, the park, many obscure modifications of the spiritual life. Tumbled garments, faded photographs. The bodily forms of light can’t be looked at face on. The snow continues to fall.
Memory Scan
not the green mountain embedded in strong feeling I expected. More an exaggeration of fog than German poetry. The iris expands to the vast range of beasts. The focus not tamed down to meet a repertory of formal signs. Calculus meaning stone and used for counting. Not applicable. Dark reek of bliss. Ready for. The tasks of culture.
An inlet, a very small clear center lost amid cobwebs. Light smooth as
fruit. Ready to bite and sin, original. Pebbles wet, weeping willows, poplars, plum trees. The fog vast sweat. The sun too, mute. Because of the distance, a terrible thirst for love. Six thousand years ago, pictographs of trees, sacks of grain and heads of cattle. And the nature of the moon, its light borrowed at interest.
Looking at a picture of the landscape is easier than looking at the landscape. The past, upon scrutiny. Not just postwar focus, but deep and fetid. Interval eclipsed. By fog misunderstood as bird and egg, shadow by shadow. Once father and mother dissolve: dragonflies, mosquitos, missing ribs? The sign for hand in the upper right corner perhaps indicates ownership. Culture gives us these ideas. Depending on the number of chambers in the heart, trepidations of the flesh.
To understand the full clearing as the young animal turns human.
Coupling curiosity with upright for speed. Hands become intelligent, economics, incorporated into body temperature. Not necessarily for the best. Raw blood, urine, faeces transformed into resemblance, contiguity and cause. And the more sensitive but sparser rods. Condition of anxious suspense converted into the tongue as home. Still, strangeness makes us shiver and retreat inside the skin.
Balked in my simulation of childhood. As consciousness flakes off, the animal soul plunges into haze. Relation of didn’t perceive to didn’t happen. Coercion and trimmed fingernails. Does the right to despise those outside our culture make up for the wrongs we suffer in it? Several strokes descending from heaven meant night, the principal language of Mesopotamia. Here, as in dreamlife, curiosity nestles into the fur. From humble beginnings as an accounting system. So rich a store of clay envelopes on arms raised toward gods most apt to fail us.
Memory Tree