The Collected Poems of Erik Barry Erhardt

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14 December 1974 —

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For Shomari Vincent Deluccio, my brother, and Darrell Whitney Royter, my friend, for encouraging my self-discovery.

“It’ll destroy you if you try to make it mean anything to anyone but yourself.” Henry Rollins (American Rock Singer, Author, Actor and Poet, b. 1961 Feb 13)

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CONTENTS

Memory Maze 1991 — 1997 High school and early College. Thoughts are Liquid in the Memory Maze 1991 — 1997 Laughter ...... 3 Period VI ...... 3 Period VI with Mr. G substituting Part I ...... 4 Period VI with Mr. G substituting Part II ...... 5 If ...... 6 My Only Fan ...... 7 Our Flight ...... 8 One Funny Dream ...... 10 Groundless Perception ...... 12 I Love The Way ...... 13 Valediction ...... 14 Phantasy ...... 15 Lights on, Lights oﬀ ...... 16 The Apple Tree ...... 18 Let This World Become Your Own ...... 19 We are People ...... 20 I Know...... 21 Song of the Dandelion ...... 22 A Simple Request ...... 23 Shy Mellowness ...... 25 Understanding ...... 25 Smiling ...... 26 Hello? ...... 27 It Is Wild ...... 28 Kneeling ...... 28 Sweet Beef ...... 29 Eleven 28 ...... 30 Entropy ...... 31

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Are You OK?! ...... 32 Separate Beds ...... 34 My Friends ...... 34 Nature’s Pull of Night ...... 35 Day Dream ...... 36 That’s the Main Thing ...... 39 Tired Pendulum ...... 40 Leaving Summer Behind ...... 41 Withdrawn Wintergreen ...... 42 Cynical Pen ...... 43 Flanging Images ...... 45 Silent Rebellion ...... 45 Faint Overtones ...... 46 Intermittent Mirage ...... 47 Going Home ...... 48 The Audience Was Kind ...... 49 Mother’s Day ...... 50 I’ve Moved On ...... 52 Real ...... 53 Selective memories ...... 55 If You Wait Till May ...... 55 A Dream With Ann ...... 59 We’re Right ...... 60 Prose Illusions into Life ...... 61 Food is an art ...... 62 Why ...... 62 Night Life ...... 62 From Fantasy — Reality ...... 63 Mind Words A Point of View I do the things I do for many reason ...... 72 What You’re Missing ...... 73 Creative Junkyard Stupid Poetry 1996 — 1997 College: London and brieﬂy thereafter.

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Stupid Poetry Piss Puss ...... 81 Jelly Swan ...... 81 Window White ...... 82 Distance ...... 82 Gravity Girl ...... 82 Ballerina Girl ...... 83 1995 College: London 199507 — 199509 As I Lay Alone in London ...... 87 1997 Finishing college. 199701 — 199703 Cancer ...... 91 Cinnamon bun ...... 93 The Journey ...... 93 Sport without conscious ...... 93 Song for Orion ...... 94 Lazy ...... 95 From within I am ...... 96 Sonnet ...... 97 I’m crippled ...... 98 Place ...... 99 Glow ...... 100 To Play ...... 102 Again by the bedside of a woman weeping ...... 103 She Dies ...... 104 Black Clock ...... 105 Plastic canister ...... 105 Stepping ...... 106 Giggle ...... 108 199704 — 199706 Still wishing for stillness ...... 109 Weaving Watersongs ...... 110 Let me not go again into silence ...... 110 Baccalaureate Speech ...... 110

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Movement ...... 112 Three Ways ...... 113 Grass three inches long ...... 114 As a child curious of my world ...... 114 On the Baccalaureate Service at the Cathedral of the Pines ...... 115 The Car ...... 116 Skatepark ...... 117 Naked Void ...... 118 (with music) ...... 121 Thin black lesion ...... 121 199707 — 199709 Water / Slowness ...... 122 bits ...... 123 I am a gentle person ...... 124 If I became my emotions at this moment ...... 125 How can I be feared? ...... 126 Where does the stream of conscious lie ...... 127 A tear forms ...... 127 How sweet the sweets of sin are ...... 128 There are billions of bodies ...... 128 Each thing in the universe ...... 129 A woman outdoors walks ...... 130 A deep exhale as I fall ...... 130 I can’t stand public vehicles ...... 130 Why is it that ...... 132 Rudyard Kipling wrote ...... 132 A Room Not My Own ...... 133 I’m 22 but I’m older than you ...... 133 He wondered why ...... 134 I stared strait through ...... 134 One Second Too Long ...... 135 Waiting for the laugh track ...... 136 The thick air is swallowed ...... 136 The phone lies dormant ...... 137 5 seconds with Becca ...... 138 Cards to Jenn Lorrie Brown ...... 140 We are reaching an end to mystery...... 141 Nothing softens a man’s heart so much as a woman weeping...... 141

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199710 — 199712 Leaf-Peepers on Parade ...... 142 Story Plot ...... 143 These people come in not knowing ...... 145 Slow and shy melancholy washes ...... 146 Sincerity dropped face down ...... 146 I give my shade a quick jerk ...... 147 There are many people seen ...... 149 Heart-whole ...... 149 In a terrific moment of depravity ...... 150 Vanessa ...... 151 The manipulative mutilation of consumerism ...... 154 Today I am using my day to regroup ...... 155 Men are such fools...... 155 When I court my gravest fears ...... 156 This whole life is temporary...... 156 In the morning ...... 157 A large pasty-faced man ...... 157 Tonight, as a course of circumstance ...... 157 I notice my hands completing repeated ...... 159 Minding the means ...... 160 The Janitor ...... 160 “The stakes may just be too high at a coffee house.” ...... 161 Happiness is no good for writing ...... 164 This same bed with me ...... 165 A Small Road in New Hampshire ...... 165 Every man wants the freaky girl ...... 167 You have come to a coffee house ...... 168 Recommendation for Gerald Burns, my friend and mentor...... 168 I asked her because she was an English major ...... 170 How the men watch you ...... 170 Extract still those useful parts from the trash ...... 171 1998 199801 — 199803 I take pleasure in the meaningless poem ...... 175 Right through you ...... 175 [Continuation of Stakes are too high?] ...... 175 In a dream, I killed men ...... 176

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I sink into this ...... 177 This is a good way ...... 177 The reasons I...... 178 The reasons II...... 179 I seem to remember a number...... 180 A man stopped ...... 181 The hair was the last to leave ...... 182 The persistence of memory ...... 183 I’ll let you win ...... 184 Freedom — Nature ...... 185 Impasse ...... 185 So here it is ...... 188 OK, College Boy...... 189 An angry man ...... 191 You often stood there ...... 191 The Gaze, Consciously Diverted ...... 192 (the gaze, consciously diverted) II ...... 195 The poem written with the cap left on ...... 196 The women wrapped up tightly ...... 196 Everything in my world is dusty ...... 198 199804 — 199806 If I didn’t write ...... 199 There are several ways ...... 199 One on One Story Idea ...... 199 Sincerity ...... 201 So do I...... 204 I am my only child ...... 204 Because it was not like any wind ...... 205 199807 — 199809 Yes, I know ...... 206 Melding height and bondage ...... 206 Film canister ...... 207 Autumn poem ...... 207 September memories ...... 208 Shadow poem ...... 209 Acorn ...... 210 It’s October...... 211 From a window ...... 211

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199810 — 199812 Stiff winter months ...... 212 Song in the coffeeshop ...... 212 Harvest time ...... 213 How many times have I already lived this night? ...... 213 40th at the Colonial theatre on the 18th ...... 214 This night an acute suffering finds me...... 215 Have you had adventures? ...... 216 the most violent of animals ...... 216 Before the theatre there’s a space ...... 216 A thin woman inadequately dressed ...... 218 I can not distinguish what is important...... 218 The world in her tender palm weighs heavily...... 219 The Horizon ...... 219 The breezes that awoke me this morning ...... 222 I’m beginning to question consequence...... 222 I convince Darrell to travel south with me ...... 223 On sweet ...... 224 A black bird ...... 225 Before a cemetery ...... 225 Within the umber folds of violet curtains ...... 226 You can not know how deep my feelings are ...... 226 1999 199901 — 199903 They personified hope ...... 231 The snow tonight fell slowly ...... 231 Prince ...... 232 Discovering Contra dance ...... 233 Waltzing Partner ...... 234 It’s a long climb up ...... 237 Man and rock ...... 237 Tonight my brother is brought to jail ...... 239 As once I was a wave of icy air ...... 239 199904 — 199906 As once I was a wave of icy air but ...... 241 199910 — 199912 Last night, as my mother left in her car ...... 242 My wound ...... 243

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2000 200001 — 200003 I was going to write of ecstacy ...... 247 Ever followed a person’s face ...... 247 You are lucky ...... 248 In a hut with one light on ...... 248 200004 — 200006 My nethermost beast returns ...... 251 What were the delights we felt in childhood ...... 251 defending the castle from Erica ...... 253 You ask me if you still make me nervous ...... 254 As I get older ...... 254 I am a great, magniﬁcent bird ...... 255 200007 — 200009 Slipping into winter ...... 256 On a stage ...... 256 In the folded skin of my hand ...... 256 Again I’ve gone to sea ...... 257 I have a few things I’ve wanted to tell you ...... 258 His head is held in her hands ...... 260 Silence ...... 260 200010 — 200012 It (whatever ‘it’ becomes) ...... 262 2001 200101 — 200103 Today is a day not on any calendar ...... 265 Mirror ...... 266 Indigold buzzing ...... 271 He has a history before him ...... 272 A young couple comes in ...... 272 She sits on his lap ...... 273 There is a hunger that lives in the curl of the lip ...... 273 Vagina Monologues, impressions ...... 274 About Softball in College ...... 274 On Dancing ...... 274 My shoulders sank as I entered my kitchen ...... 275 I’m feeling vernal ...... 275

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In my chest is a clean, stainless steel box ...... 276 A thick leslied electric hollowbody ...... 277 My lover began her flow ...... 278 I remember when it used to be important to me to feel accepted ...... 278 200104 — 200106 My body is clean ...... 280 Beyond my ability is the greatest wealth ...... 280 Todd Lavoie went to Moraco ...... 280 I enjoy most women who ...... 281 An old man in the cafe sat drinking ...... 281 In Propria Persona ...... 284 Fight ...... 284 Sometimes a line, or even a word, is a flint ...... 286 When the door sounds its resonant creek ...... 286 Through May’s days ...... 287 On the first day of life ...... 288 Twice did a woman cross my path ...... 288 For years I gave away sexual love ...... 289 At least one month of the year ...... 289 Living is synonymous with limiting ...... 290 Few people take risks...... 291 200107 — 200109 The Pond and me and her ...... 292 There is an art show ...... 294 Program ...... 295 Program (to poem) ...... 299 Gretchen, take five ...... 300 Form ...... 300 Speed ...... 302 One Wheel Among the Stars ...... 306 200110 — 200112 Erotic ...... 310 The world comes at me ...... 313 A topological study of a good relationship ...... 314 2004

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200407 — 200409 Wounded Bird ...... 319 Index of Titles and First Lines ...... 321 Explanatory Notes ...... 331

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Memory Maze 1991 — 1997

High school and early College.

Memory Maze was initially called “Thoughts are Liquid in the Memory Maze”. The title comes from the three-diminsional mazes that hung on my walls during high school. Much in this section exposes me as my most na¨ıve, just being to experiment with words. Since I did not grow up reading, this was the beginning of words for me. I did not keep track of when these were written.

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Thoughts are Liquid in the Memory Maze 1991 — 1997

Laughter

I laughed. Not so much in humor, but in the incredible feeling of laughter, and Happiness, and all things that make us young, innocent, and earthly. The swell of the moment overwhelmed me, and in my chest an aching built, becoming too Unbearable to contain. My lips sputtered, my stomach ached and, oh — the sounds produced. My joy angered one of the dark and miserable, 10 and he turned with his book in hand and struck At my shoulder, demonstrating his insecurity and childish self-control towards me and mirth. Yes, his anger is powerful. An evil overpowering virtually everything. But, I, in happiness am twice his strength. His pain Will not take my joy. The only criminal I may face is a slap to the heart. Learn to love laughter, for your heart is a wondrous entity. letting your mind clothe it may bring you To a point of staring face down at your desk uneasy 20 in your demonstration of misery.

The worst quality of angry people is their ability to keep others from their happiness.

Period VI

A round room with many faces, All of them from diﬀerent places. We have been gathered here for a time - A time to learn, a time to ﬂy.

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4 The Collected Poems of Erik Barry Erhardt

Scattered papers on the floor, A heavy lock upon the door. Most fix their eyes upon the clock, At the bell is when they flock.

The people here, their heads do twirl, 10 Ten of them boys, eleven be girls. Hit with facts of grammar and rhyme - Most of them couldn’t give a dime.

But here I am, here to learn, Within my brain, thoughts do churn. My goal is far — I do pledge, My constant thirst for knowledge.

I see things that are not here, And elude things of which I fear. I’m hungry for sun and sick of moon - 20 The world will be mine sometime soon.

Period VI with Mr. G substituting Part I

He doesn’t know who he’s dealing with, He cannot see my power. His eyes obscure from a million words - Or perhaps smoke of many ﬂowers.

I neither bring trouble, nor magnetize it, But it comes, and he is there Standing rigid with a certain ﬁnger Pointed at my long hair.

Yes, our relationship didn’t start out 10 On the right foot. But whose doing was that? The blame, on him I put.

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Erik Barry Erhardt Memory Maze 1991 — 1997 5

“Let’s get to work,” he says as My ink ﬂows on the page. I now know he is not, But I, am the sage.

Save my experience, Save my time. I am the one 20 Who inside, is ﬁne.

So the page runs out, for the trees are scarce. My body is stolid, while my thoughts are ﬁerce.

Period VI with Mr. G substituting Part II

Should we all be happy, in a room, Where a teacher restricts, a student to learn?

This student prepares, for the prepared, But ﬁnds that the lesson, is not there.

The clone in the room 10 to look over us all, Is neither real handsome, nor very tall.

He sees my hair and my white torn jeans. I’m wearing a hat to add to the scheme.

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He hasn’t a clue to where I am from. He shuts his eyes, 20 his back to the sun. Yes, he is learn’ed, and yes, he is ﬁrm. Yet, he fails to contract the strength of a worm. An enemy to me is bigger than he. He cannot see the water from the chaotic sea. And as he sits there, 30 a smile appears. A miniature sleigh and eight tiny reindeer. I seek a book, to ﬁnd a word. And trip in my travels, and everyone heard. This is the end of the terrible man, Who divulged dictatorship, 40 in a free land.

If If you had a fear, would you share it here? If you hadn’t a clue, would you know what to do? If you thought of me, would you call me and see, If I was thinking of you too?

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Erik Barry Erhardt Memory Maze 1991 — 1997 7

If you had a dollar, 10 what would you buy? If you held a ticket, where would you ﬂy? If you had the music, what would you sing? If you went away, what would you bring? If you held a hand, whose would it be? How much would you take 20 before you’d break free? How would you feel if you lost a friend? What would you do if I said it’s the end . . . ?

My Only Fan

In my desk I see the color of time. Three small circles all in a line. I understand not your symbols and signs. All I care is for her to be mine. Do you see the light high in the sky? And the small stone on the other side? The tools we use all are not ﬁne. And the ﬂowers we smell all are but dying. I live my life entangled in sound. 10 It is better alone, I have found. Watching people at life opening the ground. Jumping inside to join the crowd. Truth’s all-existent, it’s not easy to see, Perception is not reality. I am more than others see me to be. They will never see the real side of me.

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8 The Collected Poems of Erik Barry Erhardt

I will hide from their eyes as long as I can. Playing my Paul in my imagery band. And the sound will come and take my hand, 20 And die, I shall, my only fan.

Our Flight

That little angel I know unveils her wings and Lets the winds take her oﬀ into the vastness.

I watch her there, high, higher in life, but she soon Loses the winds and screams toward home where she wakes.

Unknown is her ﬂight to her, 10 for she is only she, in my eyes, And in my arms, but in the soul - we are one.

I watch her take the winds in her arms and let go the World she so fondly loves, and a man with her, I.

We soar into the blue, lighter than our own spirits, and watch what is around us 20 take part in our joy.

The new environment nips my cheeks, and at my nose as We soar higher than the peregrine, and just under our hearts.

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Erik Barry Erhardt Memory Maze 1991 — 1997 9

We stay for a while, here, far from eyes of others and Rules and strings. Only sight — sound — touch.

Here is where we play and 30 are more comfortable than Anywhere. Here from a world of darkness and cold.

In our cosmos are the colors of imagination. Powerful golds and Yellows, pinks blues violets peaches and others express the feel.

And the light swirls and rumbles and soars with our touch, and Our warmth. My body trembles 40 slightly as I feel her love’s bliss.

I cannot see home from here, but perhaps I am there; in the Clouds, in her arms, in her heart. my hat shall hang here.

Time comes back, and the hour is late. We glide down the light Currents of the sky into their world, and light blinds my eyes here in the darkness.

I kiss her lip and step out the 50 void waving my arm, as she turns In toward her world. I sit in my seat and turn the key, and into mine I return.

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One Funny Dream

I lie awake in my room of mazes The sky is dark on this side of the globe The day’s been long my strings are tired My legs sore my mind racing Racing through mazes 10 caught under a spell Images shifting constantly changing I create conversation with a girl I’ve met The time has expired it’s too late I lament The shadow’s too dark it takes me away A rolling thunder ball 20 away from this day I cannot see home it’s all too far This world is a blur to my crazy blue eyes Black to gray gray to blue I can see only sky and some clouds here I feel a chill 30 my feet are cold But it will not wait for me today

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Erik Barry Erhardt Memory Maze 1991 — 1997 11

And with my arms spread and my legs I dive and loop and ﬂoat in my dream

I am alone but I see them there They are far 40 and grounded I regret

They don’t look up I don’t look down But stay a while in my curious new space

The light has expired and the shadow comes near I’m not so frightened this time

Its gentle black 50 engulfs me again And returns me to where I belong

I see things clearer on this new day The picture is crisper the colors brighter

I have never seen such beauty Not even 60 in my new world

I remember the girl and the conversation I want and need

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I’ll see her on Tuesday Three days away three ages away

The girl wearing red 70 with the clip in her hair So elegantly she plays ﬁngers of ivory eyes of opal

This is the beauty I felt in the sky With cotton clouds and baby eyes

Next time we’ll ﬂy her and I 80 Perhaps the lovely shadow will ﬁnd her too

And with a shiver I turn on my side And grip my pillow my feet still cold.

Groundless Perception

It’s been rare that I’ve had this feeling — But when I get it, I am sure.

It’s a kick in the rear and an alarm in my head, It’s the sun of a new day that gets me from bed.

But this one is diﬀerent — they’re all diﬀerent — And this is ever more powerful than what I remember.

Some would call me a fool for thinking it so quickly, But they would then be the foolish ones.

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Erik Barry Erhardt Memory Maze 1991 — 1997 13

This is it, it is now, now will be a lone time — sanguinely, 10 But this is how they always start, don’t they?

And starting is sometimes the best time - I hope it isn’t this time.

I felt tonight it was a battle of: “I wish she would make a move,” “I wish he would.”

It is a quandary because when one is unsure Of how he will be received, he doesn’t deliver.

But there will be plenty of tonights to try again. And I will — and be successful.

20 I know this will work. I know it will! If I only knew what she has running through her head.

She is too wonderful sometimes — all the time, so far. I try to pay her back all the ways I can, nevertheless I am left in her debt.

I deserve this. She deserves me. This is bliss. I am temporarily sent to my special world each time we are somehow together.

This is it. I was found by a person whom I was too timid to ﬁnd myself. Thank You.

I Love The Way

I love the way you are openly honest. I love the way you leave the toilet cover down. I love the way you cover half your face with hair and look at me playfully. I love the way you notice the little things. I love the way you dress. I love the way you listen to the same music as I. I love the way you can ask for help. I love the way you are curious about me.

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I love the way you wear a dress. 10 I love the way your hair falls across your body. I love the way you look at me and smile. I love the way you roller skate. I love the way you keep your room. I love the way you pick on your sister. I love the way your friends are awesome. I love the way you comb your hair. I love the way you walk in jeans. I love the way you drink Mountain Dew. I love the way you run. 20 I love the way you blink. I love the way you help others. I love the way you feel when we dance. I love the way you hold me. I love the way our relationship started. I love the way you are.

Valediction

About ten minutes from now my eyes will view something else, my ears shall hear a diﬀerent song, my mind will think on a new situation, and my arms will be a little farther from you . . .

And as the miles roll slowly by, the earth takes a diﬀerent shape — a diﬀerent size. And the further I am distanced from you 10 the tighter I hold on inside.

My lips have lost the moisture from the exclusive kiss I know. And my pupils are dilated and steady as I try to ﬁnd you in the red lines of my imagination, here in the dark.

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Erik Barry Erhardt Memory Maze 1991 — 1997 15

Here in my world, unconscious in the other — the skies have been crying, for the surface is moist — moist from the remembered kiss, 20 a non-existent time ago.

I can feel my hands grasp the ﬁngers that are not there. And feel those gentle ﬁngers rub my cheeks and explore my lips. I am lost in myself, in love . . . am I

Here, trying to understand these sounds that tremble in my mind, and these ardent feelings deep inside — They throb, calling for a release to the other — 30 So far away . . . She is here.

Phantasy

There’s a place I dream of, far away — There’s a girl who lives there by a bay — She is hanging the whites, her skin is bare — There’s a yellow dandelion in her hair . . .

She turns and sees me in my dream — I wonder what she thinks of me — I see her turn and gallop away — She turns back to look, and a word she does say . . .

That one small word I carve in my mind — 10 wishing I could turn back time — wishing I could turn back time . . .

Into my dream do I appear — I look for her having nothing to fear — I need a clue, somewhere to start — I look to the light, forsaken in the dark . . .

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I wake myself, I hear a song — She is playing my dream, the wind whistles along — She ﬁnds my refuge and reaches her hand — I reach my arm and hope that I can . . .

Lights on, Lights off Each night I am able to stare off Into the suburban city of mine, and watch the sky dim, And the lights glow. Tail lights, head lights - they’re all the same From my room upstairs. 10 none of them know me, As I know none of them — just lights . . . busy lights. As much of the world I think I have seen in my given life, I have seen nothing assessing the limit of 1/n to infinity. I am as anyone else is - ignorant of detailed surroundings in our fractal world. We spend so much time 20 trying to see the big picture and how we each fit in That we neglect the pin hiding in that proverbial haystack. I like to see the world as some lighter shade of gray where not all is sordid, and people intend virtue as well as I’d like them to.

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Erik Barry Erhardt Memory Maze 1991 — 1997 17

30 Perhaps that is a premature notion Similar to “all are created equal” and “justice for all.”

Our “supreme” society has provided the laws and ideals Of equality but sells out to greedy economics.

The all-mighty dollar is mightier than some see it. 40 It is the desire that creates greed. And with greed appears The betterment of few from the belittlement of many.

It is an unfortunate and evil force, yet, governments have us convinced Of justiﬁed greed corrupting minds and morals of all born under the machine.

There is nothing that can be done, 50 even collectively. The evil is greater than all of us. it blinds us then manipulates us To the pleasure of itself and When we break, There are plenty of replacements.

It is the supreme weapon. We have already been beaten. There is no war, only casualties, and with all that has gone on . . . 60 The slaughter continues ...... and lights continue by . . . forever.

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The Apple Tree

I’m a piece of the apple tree. There are so many places I could be. I could be the water that came from the storms, Which sustains the tree and keeps it whole.

I could be the forking veins That absorb the moisture from the storm. I could be the sturdy trunk with rigid bark To secure the tree from harm.

Or the many branches right and left 10 That hold the fruit so sweet.

But I am none of these. Nor am I a fruit that hangs itself low To fall early and rot or be picked or smashed. And I am not an apple at top Who would ripen and ripen only to spoil.

I have endured each of these stages to Now have a choice on my where-a-bouts. And now I make my choice.

I am the fruit neither big nor small. 20 I am the one who does not fall. And as I ripen I begin to shine and Beautiful fractally symmetric leaves spill around me.

When I am ready, I will know For a lone child will pick me. With jumping and reaching and grabbing and challenge, I am chosen.

And after I’ve nourished and been eaten away, I ﬁnd myself under nurturing soil. The water comes and I grow again, but 30 This time much more handsome — whole.

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Love is where the water ﬂows and With that water transpires growth. I have grown so many times and Nourished so many more.

Let This World Become Your Own

So you don’t know why you’re here or how it came about. Why the baby cries and why the parents shout.

Sound surrounds your tender ears and there’s ﬁre in your eyes. You’re scared of this land you wander, it’s unduly ﬁlled with lies.

But, you managed through yesterday, 10 today, and ready for the next. Your life seems nebulous stricken with a vex.

Don’t let it stop you it may do you some harm. With or without you, still deadly, its charm.

It tumbles and veers reckless en route. Thoughts and images 20 transpire roundabout

Where you hang your hat is what you call your home. Let this world become your own.

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We are People

We are people of the sun shining in our souls We are people of the earth with a lifetime to grow We are people of the moon concealing the bad, exposing the good We are people of the heart seldom understood

We are people of the spring 10 escaping the bitter cold We are people of the summer always getting better and better We are people of the autumn withering in fear We are people of the cold enduring without a tear

We are people of the day exploring this old land We are people of the night 20 don’t misunderstand We are people of the calm friendly to the kindly We are people of the storm enemy to the sea

We are people of the land destroying by development We are people of the water and why it went We are people of the sky 30 ignorant of why We are people of the core sentenced to die

We are people of the rain

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dilute of individuality We are people of the hail beaten with self-immodesty We are people of the snow buried with our hate We are people of the thunder 40 blackened in our fate We are people of the We are people of We are people We are We . . .

I Know.

Hello. Are you alone, too? I know. I know. Are you still as strong as you once were. Not me. I have broken. I keep riding, though. What have you done without them? 10 I know. Me too. I have done it all in my world, without them. But now I need them, not the converse. Yes, I know. Do they? I suppose you are right. Where have you been today? I haven’t been anywhere, either. 20 I’m mostly here with myself. I know. I know.

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But she leaves, rather than stay. She might survive. Yet, she could break. I know.

Song of the Dandelion

Scuﬄing feet and smoking heads We walked along behind the shed

The path lies packed from foot and carriage Today in month of Indian heritage

The leaves now covered the grimy terrain I had began to wonder if it would rain

Right into a darkened path Where challenges lie, less so than math

Ropes and logs and walls to climb 10 Provided with only an hour of time

The ﬁrst, a rope swing, so slyly hung Slipping here could puncture a lung

Men swung across the void to land On the platform where nine would stand

One by one they came across Tossing the rope back for another cross

One lady came, though not in our class When the rope went back the others said, “pass”

We had ﬁnished here and decided to go on 20 In my head I sing a song

Next we try the suspended log Not so many went along

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Many bored and the sands running low Walking a path, it’s time to go

Muddy, slippery, unfamiliar cold I’m glad we went, for knowledge I hold

A tall treed trek, single ﬁle at best Deep in the brush, a ﬁring contest

In a clearing ahead, a small car lies 30 A lady said from cold she’d die

Pavement hard, solid underfoot Aside, a bucket of tenebrous soot

Making my recurrence to the room I retrieve my books in thoughts of a remote dandelion in bloom

A Simple Request

I’d like to feel another’s knees beneath the table with mine, And a slender arm around my neck for some amount of time.

I want something I can reﬂect upon: something recent, something new. For three years of late those colors have lost their hue.

That woman has been the flint by which 10 a flame has been restored, And although many flames soon starve and die, some burn bright, endured.

I am one with little impetus to ﬂirt around, one to the next. So I, myself, am lucky to have someone who was easily met.

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She has a humor ﬁve score fold, and talents that few others know. I think of her often, being a man, 20 but I wish I knew a way to show —

How I feel, without her backing away, threatened by my emotions. But perhaps a similar sense has played a part in her thoughts and motions.

I need a security few can bring, something to make church bells ring, And to watch a humble lark sing, so I don’t keep walking —

Alone. I have known too long 30 the path of rare journey — The one of isolation. my scars are inmost and motley.

People who have known the tragedies, pains, and sorrows of love, Will see diﬀerently my desperation and my need for a love.

No one is right when emotions tangle a simple strand in the web of life. Yet, no one is wrong feeling emotions 40 which justify a stage of life.

I have passed stages which had not been fulﬁlled by my small connection to the world. I refuse to travel any longer if I should be a solitary pearl.

Let the oyster reveal a second pearl to compliment the ﬁrst silken sphere, To be strung together by love and luck, by fun and ﬁre, right here.

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And this my request, so bold and swift 50 I’d melt in simple passion — That you could share your life and thoughts with me, and I with you, in fashion.

Shy Mellowness

Swift and bold it is received by match in ﬂame, it burns at dawn. With hardly a ﬂinch she carries on and thus I am left, withdrawn.

I have lost great things in my quest for greatness yet, I gain nothing when I have no quest. I feel my losses have occurred in my hasteful journey toward a goal, missing the details, modest.

My research of her was incomplete 10 thus half blind of her person. I dove into the quiet stream I thought was her, and found myself amid an ocean.

Not quite starting over but starting again, yes. Each time continuing from a loss slipping silently, shyly into mellowness.

Understanding

The naked Maple embrace me while in the wood I crouch Remembering everything and knowing nothing — smiling.

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I ignore friends’ treatment of friends I ignore fatigue and distance I ignore myself in the landscape I feel what others feel I strike at them for boasts and lies 10 Everything disappearing together.

I rise with help from an ambitious sapling. Walking without a compass’ consultation. Over Autumn’s Northern Earth in a Cosmos creating me to a man whose love is Nature in form and fractal in Honesty, Truth, Strength, 20 and Passion.

He smiles unselﬁshly to greet me We embrace to Understand . . .

If she, too, understood Nature would be whole.

Smiling

I felt passionate today I am feeling passionate tonight. I sit in the library to do my work so that I may watch the people - the women, who’s beauty seems new to me. I am distant from them. I see them, and them, too, me. 10 And I sit here, meager to their eyes. I smile wide and often hiding as I can.

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I am unsure of their glances and unsure of how mine are taken. I sit, continuing my work with hope that one of them will advance me. Will anyone come to see what oﬀered the smile?

Hello?

Oh, how you are beautiful. You must have some idea of your beauty. You rest passively just in front and to the left of me. Your sharp nose and soft hair illuminated by the delicate theatre light. Your clothes drape clumsily and comfortably from your 10 elegant legs and shoulders. Your hands ﬁddle on occasion without purpose, without pain. You are calm — you know safety. You are gentle — you know compassion. You are here without companion — surprising?! never a singularity. I long to know who you are . . . have been . . . 20 can be . . . Hello?

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It Is Wild

It Is Wild man’s total abandonment of art and talents of mind. There are some seniors who understand. There are youth who butcher it with misunderstanding. This great gentleman before me does not belong in this 10 money-trap marketplace, but in concert or entertaining those royal. He is romantic, witty - majestic modesty. He knows complexity. He understands elegance. Listening, my thoughts na¨ıve. Absorbing his music, seeing faces, seeing innocence. 20 I am ernest - straight forward - poignant - assensitive - self-enclosed - dreamy - ﬂoating - spiritual - impractical - hoping for the best.

Kneeling

I knelt by the couch in which she lay. My hand held her arm

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and her hand, mine. She was so full of sadness her body shook, and I resonated, not needing to understand, to understand a need. She said, through gasps 10 of breaths like hiccups, when I ﬁnd that special girl show how I feel and be able to talk about anything, anything at all. I know what she says. I shift to bring circulation back to my legs. I want to say something but I know nothing 20 I’m an emotional failure I’m a social failure I want to give her a pint of peppermint-stick ice-cream with rainbow smiles. This is a problem not solvable by such magic. She is more calm - exhausted from emotional motion I drag upstairs to leave 30 her with the Christmas tree to sleep.

Two weeks before she leaves.

Sweet Beef

What a great spring in his step — to help him run from his life. So eager to do things away from the boiling pot, not worried about it boiling dry so the sweet beef and greens burn to ash.

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He sings the song of the na¨ıve male. His single voice acappellaed by his actions. The longer the path he takes from problem to solution the more tired others’ respect for him becomes. 10 His ﬁght for time is like adding wax to a wick only to smother the ﬂame. All is dark.

Eleven 28 1. Memories and thoughts of you ﬂutter through my mind as a squirrel or a jay in the wood. Is there connection? Is there syncopation? There is freedom. There is unison. 10 Glass. The unthinkable liquid. Life. The unthinkable goal of a cruel and thoughtless universe. Yet, I exist. You, also. I think, I feel, I smile. I increase the entropy continually in this armpit of a galaxy. There is connection. Sweet syncopation. All answers exist in me 20 but I sit restless and bored. I know nothing — understanding Hanoi’s towers, feeling anger, dreaming of life. So much is missing. Is something wrong? Not until our actions aﬀect more than our stone. Death is the only solution to life. There is unison. I love you.

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2. 30 Vibrations Unconscious separation Eyes close, mind open More — it comes No reason, no need. Fingers echoing body shapes Mimicking sensation Feeling nothing Knowing nothing Understanding twice 40 Twisting resting Yearning denied Vibrations

3. Rotation in absence of time and space Empty — origin. Shifting, never in comfort Inside nowhere. Water eyes left alone 50 Selfish undeserving destructive men ruining spirited women Language slowly filtered Scouring empty resources Reflections, mindless images VOID

Entropy

Thermodynamics law number two doesn’t allow anything you choose I live as I do, working each day disordering more than I put away

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Contributing entropy as I do I should assemble my own entroprise And being an entropreneur I will consume fuels and untie shoes

I will shatter glass and disturb ﬁelds of 10 electro-magnetic and gravity I will break symmetries of C, P and T and ﬂow in time — imaginary.

Are You OK?!

Are You OK?! How are you feeling? Did you have a good time? Are you go — SHUT UP!

Your speech is useless. Your life is nothing. My life is nothing. My life is everything.

You are not of me. 10 Brian is. Sam is. Jay is. Paul is. Clark is. Mark is. These are my people.

They love me. I love them. We enjoy each other. 20 We enjoy ourselves.

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Life without you would not be deprivation for anyone. You are a nice part of the whole, neither taking nor giving anything.

You just exist. We all exist, but There is more to life than you see.

30 I add to others. I give and help and advise others on their journey.

But only the ones who are going up.

I don’t bother with those who move slowly, Or backwards, or sideways. Up or forwards.

I’m sorry for nothing. 40 I do nothing worthy Of an apology. And that is me.

Subconscious dreams are ﬁnding me and my Pen is heavier now than before.

Good night Brian and Clark. Good night Sam and Jay. Good night Paul and Mark. 50 Good night me.

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Separate Beds

Their bodies warm separate beds separate by a wall Sometimes in laughter all is grand sometimes not at all.

The conversation they had tonight was mine four years before. A crying voice on the tired line at once I had adored.

“Do you love me?” A simple plea 10 I wasn’t sure at all An hour I was made an ass tripped, blundered, pitfalled

Finally “No, I really don’t.” Suddenly I was stuck My emotions stolid in the dark My thoughts bid ‘good luck.’

What happens on the threshold is sensitive to conditions That existed at the very beginning 20 ﬁrst touch, dance, emotion.

Thus this is left uncomplete for tomorrow could be quite unique. Yet.. .

My Friends

It’s another Saturday night I sit and stare at the beacon-light I know I’m alone so it helps me search for someone

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The night is dark. It’s ten o’clock and I haven’t anyone I can phone I sit in my car dreaming up at the stars there’s nothing but my overtones

I’m not going home, it’s too far away 10 they show you and rub it in your nose They tell what they did and tell it again until their company decompose

The rock’s in the hole, the spread’s on the bed the strings are tuned to four-forty The coke and the gin, the spider again the car and the tux kind of sporty

Still down in my car, strips of lights and a fence a sign keeping people from adventure A leach and a worm both on hot tar will burn 20 but in the night I keep them my friends.

Nature’s Pull of Night

Yes, I’m sweaty but I don’t mind because I’m alone. My skin feels rough under soft touch but it doesn’t matter because there is no one.

Well, perhaps one, though 1000 miles away. 10 1000 miles closer to our equator less though to sun.

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She luminates through liquid words and smooth penship. careful carving of thought and page.

Yet, I’m eclipsed 10 to midnight 20 so I release the stomach’s curving hairs from my wandering ﬁngers and give in to nature’s pull of night — sleep.

Day Dream

A simple day dream is what I need There is nothing here where I spend my conscious hours

So I’ll wander oﬀ to a land with cotton ball clouds and candy cane trees

Everyone here 10 loves me very much It’s what I need most not reprimandment.

And with every step I take, I know There will be someone watching out for me.

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The panorama is beauty here Can you see it? 20 Any of it?

What?! — Clean my room! Who? — hey, come back With the phone. Damn him.

What am I? Perhaps nothing?! Ah, those cotton clouds again.

Ooh, I love it here 30 It is so — Yes, I’ll pick this up.

What did you do today Erik? I ask myself. But I already know.

Dinner? — What?! That was four Hours ago — You’re 40 welcome — I guess?.

I could stay here forever. It is much Nicer than back — What phone?! Who?

Oh — go away. What? — No thank you — sir?! Who? No Him, — Him.

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Ah Yes, I like it 50 here. Very pleasant No work, no cleaning, no him

Car? — Who? — What? Bomb. I don’t — Hmmm — no, but — well C-ya.

My house! — No, why - Yours? — what. I Don’t under — oh 60 God, Help!

Time? — When? — Now?! Changing again! — Now! And again! Look — It’s gone.

None — Privacy? — who No, not me, thanx. You can think anything you want — NO.

Absolutely, positively, 70 without a doubt - SHUT UP! How many times must you, no!

Leave me — Blank to black to blue ah the clouds see the — rain?!

Always rain — what parade?! Not mine! No, 80 never — me?!

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Yes, me — look — what — who’s doing the writing here anyway — You? Who?!

C six nine, E nine then what — oh G thirteen — I love sound — love.

Nothing else is more. 90 Music is Love — yes Love. I love you music, music.

. . . wo, three four — blam boom. So loud, who?! Yes, it hurts.

Tired — yes. Hardly any — leave me. Black, cold feet, 100 soft music, sleep.

Where?! Oh clouds. The, I love this No more world — I leave you — bye —

That’s the Main Thing

I’ve been paciﬁed just one of those strait-A math geeks never sipped the booze — but I’ve got friends who . . .

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Ahh, but anyway I kept my hair long, and on my ﬁngers the callus hard 10 and that’s the main thing right?! Oh, Mark. Keeping with me I never left your sights Thought two years behind Always with me Always with you. We weren’t one of them But always better than those sports kids 20 playin’ ball, running dizzy with adrenalin. But that’s a long time back for me, less for you as my mind slows, you speed along with your strength of body and kindness. Keeping with me, my brother I never left your sights though two years behind 30 Always with me always with you That’s the main thing that’s the main thing.

Tired Pendulum

The dials on the wall rotate in elegance, as artiﬁcial lamps overcome our star’s brilliance. And while darkness surrounds the outer wall, isolation within is a soothing calm.

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Alone with thoughts of scattered days, swirling violently in a tempestuous haze. Soon the lamps lie black and the world is gone, but the pillow will stay until the dawn.

Blankets lie cold on a lonely body, 10 which thinks in geometry and threnody. And so often that body ﬁnds fantasy, and shifts around in ecstasy.

There, the sun climbs once again, to ascend and fall among the heavens. Guiding life through time and space and dreams, and all other things which seem not to be.

Leaving Summer Behind

A mist hangs over a sea of yellow-red, leaving the summer behind. Leaving and leaving, and the wind is unkind.

They ﬂutter from tree top to house top. To the book shop to the bus stop.

They gather in our yards, 10 swirl around our cars. Dance and play away, until they see the stars.

Then they slow, some hide away, they are tired from the day. And as darkness settles in, some ﬁnd themselves a speedway.

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They race by your windows, rattle your screen door. And when you think they’ve tired out, 20 they sputter ’round some more.

These are what bring people north. New Hampshire’s the big winner today. Families, couples, and stray photographers enjoy, till the sky’s a dapple-gray.

Withdrawn Wintergreen

Wandering through a crunching white, travel is slow this starry night. Breath crystallizes as I make footprints through the path I take.

I’ve been this way few times before, the lush nature is what allures. But not this time, in the snow, and in the dark, in the glow —

Of the moon, so far and bright. 10 It gives a superstitious fright, To those who hold irrational fear, at scarred life their minds will leer.

Snow has its way to make generalizations of a landscape. Navigation is a trick tonight, landmarks and paths are hidden by white.

Hours it’s been since the somber night, the horizon is never within my sight. I ramble this land alone, coyly — 20 wandering inside this grand lace doily,

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Of a land after crystals have drifted through time, benign to the air, crisp as lime. Yet, I’m still alone, in the after-glow, and behind me I carry a single shadow.

It weighs heavy as I trudge though time — a chain on the ankles, as if from some crime. But I have never, not that I know, caused a trail of such sorrow,

As I have in the wood this lonely day, 30 so this is where I have chosen to stay. Sheltered by cold and wind and night, life gives me no reason why now I should ﬁght,

An isolation so deep the top is unseen, except by the rock and the wintergreen. Weary are my eyes, so I sleep, giving myself to the night to keep.

Cynical Pen

“Oh, I don’t know” the paper says. Isn’t it strange reading my thoughts?

And to know that you are somehow trapped And will read whatever I spill on the page.

I can write of war, 10 of life, of love. It hardly matters to you.

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You are just reading, reading my thoughts. And it should be sobering, I’m not thinking of you.

You don’t mean anything to what I write now. You are somewhere, I don’t care - 20 I scribble words just the same.

I don’t even know that what I think is real. But it seems to be or could be.

But it hardly matters, why should it? Thoughts, words, images, emotions, feelings.

Those things don’t mean 30 anything to you. You can’t relate to my mind. You can’t!

I can’t relate you yours. you have been everywhere I have not. But I have done the same.

A little diﬀerent perhaps — unique is a nice word. I’m alone on a journey 40 which knows no end.

Oh, but how ironic. here is the end. The end of my thoughts, the end of the page.

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“I don’t know” the paper said. Because the writer laid down his pen.

Flanging Images

Smack-dab in the earth I felt like I never had before Here I am now listen to me Step away from the common door

Listen to my strings and you know my feelings I’m the lonely type I get caught in my liquid mazes It keeps me out of sight

Flowers, fantasy, and distant places 10 Keep my spirit everywhere My room, my lair, my bathysphere The sound is my confrere

The nightlight keeps my wits about The air is dark and frore Ann, she plays a melody Not unlike this one before

Silent Rebellion

I’ve moved away and I try to go on And I manage, but it’s not easy It’s hard to work lengthy days a week And be alone, myself, the others

I keep in touch, though it’s not much But it gives me a little sanity Because getting lost in liquid mazes Is a lot more fun with two

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Running in sand, I trip and I fall 10 And get sucked in and ﬁnd a whole new world I ﬁnd myself still alone but A comforting tone warms my chilled bones

And all throughout the window screams and shouts Blinds me and keeps me away from the world But I don’t mind ’cause it’s been this way Most of my life — but not today

Solitary trees had fed me fruit and kept me Here for their own loneliness. But, I’m now hungry for the outside ’cause I’m 20 Weary from the inside — Here I come.

Faint Overtones

My head is heavy heavy as stone, Nothing is harder than being alone.

I laugh at the wind and cry at the sea, But no one can hear me no one can see.

Headless and heedless 10 I run through the night, Nothing to guide me but dizzy starlight.

A change would be nice in maybe a night, When the season has gone from the dark to the light.

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My voice is shadowed with faint overtones, As western heathens 20 hurl moonstones.

I believe we can be the integral of ourselves, And let our derivatives be the elves.

I could see heaven if I were inside out, Stalking the devil he’s all throughout.

I lie on my back 30 and stare at the stars, I reach out my hand nearly as far.

The sun arises with hope and heart, And I choose my direction with the throw of a dart.

Intermittent Mirage

You were once in the ﬁeld with the blooming ﬂowers I remember how you’d lie there for hours

I had always been with you at least in my dreams And you didn’t mind or so it had seemed

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It’s been a long time 10 since I’ve thought Of the ﬂowers and dreams and butterﬂies caught

So here I am still in dreams My ambience is smooth and calm and serene

Going Home

It was lovely. Just her and I, and the highway, and the stars.

The road made us a couple, moving together through a soft, silent night.

Her headlights were kind, 10 and her face would glow quickly under the lonely lights.

The pavement united us; we passed cars together. The night was cool, but our bond was warm.

She didn’t seem shy in her emerald two-door, though she didn’t know me 20 and I didn’t know her.

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Traﬃc was light, thus was the spirit, as the transistors pumped and the engine hummed.

And if she’d let me, I’d call her my friend. She’s my companion - westward as one.

Exits pass on exhausted 101, 30 but she follows on. And it is more than comforting knowing she is there.

Black. My rear-view is empty. I guess she is home and is greeting someone.

I do not wonder whom, it is enough believing she is with someone 40 and not alone.

So I stretch my neck, shift in my seat, ﬂip my cassette, and press on the gas.

The Audience Was Kind

The Audience Was Kind. They speak quietly things I cannot hear.

I’m too busy voicing my song.

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The irony of performing is that I am not what makes it happen, it is the people. They watch, ﬁddle with their ﬁngers, and smile to the person next to them. 10 I am here for them, but more, they are here for me.

And somewhere mid my song, everything becomes liquid and ﬂows without thought or st ra 20 i n .

It just is, and I am happy. They applaud. Everything is smooth Everyone together As one voice. Thank You.

Mother’s Day

Life is liquid and therefore the bond between mother and daughter and mother and son

From the gentle womb of liquid life through years of struggle of learning right

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To years of revolt 10 and teenage ﬁght child remains coupled with inner sight

To mother with or mother without to mother with calm or mother with shout

The bond remains — often strong as when was heard 20 a cradle-song

Soothing voice and soothing hand comfort child and understand

Mother as teacher child apprentice against hate and greed and prejudice

Mother as exponent 30 holder of home by feeding water and reading tome

Mother as protector Mick asks shelter strong will carries and soft skin oﬀers

Mother as heart sustains for whole swirling silently 40 life’s barber-pole

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Mother as love strongest of all ﬂows life over kin as Hawaiian waterfall

And so this day in honor of you within you have means few others do

Life is liquid 50 mother’s the love and so much more than what’s alluded above.

I’ve Moved On

I’ve moved on though I’m not sure where currently I haven’t will to care But each night as I comb my hair your picture yields a gentle stare

Resting bottom-left 10 of my senior photo my heart in song accelerando But it seems my love will only Zeno continuing approach but never reach you

So I rest room moonlit recreation remains

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20 void illicit And so it is as a hermit one with seldom social visit

Along our earth my mind is wanderin’ to many things I’m still virgin And rare is it 30 I feel chagrin my mind provides many more therein.

Real

I didn’t realize just how lonely I was until the little love that I had gained (or imagined) disappeared.

So I stay awake slunch in bed Listen to the soft tones from my radio and the pitter-patter of rainwater on the roof.

I don’t have tissues 10 on my table because I haven’t a need for them. I haven’t cried for over two years, that I know. Today is not bound to break that streak.

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I compensate by pulling my comforter over my 20 knees. It, however, is not all that comforting. My arms remain empty, my heart desolate.

For the ﬁrst time I notice my eyes dry. Even contacts don’t bring a dryness of this type.

30 I am empty, my eyes, my tongue, dry as the frame which holds my picture, and hers. It tarries over the dried ﬂowers of a wedding, and over my everyday pocket things. Despite the closeness of our tender photographs, 40 we remain apart.

I don’t feel regret, or anguish — just empty. I know there is someone who is searching for me, she just doesn’t know that it is me in the glass.

I remain alone in my warm bed and drag 50 my pen through the hair on my stomach and chest.

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It doesn’t make me seem real — but what makes me real anyhow?

Love.

Selective memories

Selective memories graffiti the inner-walls of the maze. The skill and beauty of the art is like that of the best of New York with the aerosol. There are brief flashes of time through my perspective and words almost sing-song. 10 To slow deterioration through electron emission, much appears red, connected by Borromean superstring relations. And by means of mercury mirrors I reflect upon the doodles time has not yet taken from me.

If You Wait Till May

Rainbow curtains A ﬂower lei I do things My own way

I play my music I play my games I play them all They’re still the same

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A stitched picture 10 Upon the wall A hook is there To secure no fall

Hair always growing Growing everywhere Some look in wonder Most don’t care

Someone is calling It rings three times Taken for granted 20 Is this electric line

The emerald skies Never lose the sun They stay bright till The work is done

A wooden desk One hundred trees Paper to write A tissue to sneeze

A small metal can 30 To ﬁx up her hair Tons of CFCs Fill the air

A hole in the sky My kids shall die My parents do cry I wonder why

Thoughts of hate And signs of death If I only knew 40 If they only cared

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Love is there By my ﬁngers By this girl My thoughts do linger

She’s a friend One of few In my wallet One may view

Up and down 50 The tired stairs Back and forth I know not where

I close my eyes The sound does churn My mind lies waiting For more to learn

Each unique None the same One with grief 60 One with fame

A maze is put Upon the wall A place to climb Where no one falls

Ideas are scarce Hidden in time Waiting their turn Standing in line

Ink on a page 70 Does not matter The girls still talk In senseless chatter

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Third from last By twenty past Sometimes slow Sometimes fast

Any questions You may have My answers are many 80 I do not laugh

Many try hard Too many not at all I’ll let them know I’m not gonna crawl

A page I’ve ﬁlled With useless rhyme It would not sell For a dime

Miles to go 90 Before we sleep The ground is cold Beneath my feet

Wheels of wonder Move the earth I wish I’d see more in mirth

Pants of jean Jackets of leather A shirt of cotton 100 A pillow of feather

Money makes the World go round The more the money The bigger the hound

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My heart pumps blood My lungs do breathe The smell of salt By the sea

I keep saying nothing 110 In diﬀerent ways But it all means something If you wait till May.

A Dream With Ann

In April my ﬁngers will move at night a hundred ears following my ﬂight Ann will sing “The Forgotten” the sound as soft as cotton.

There will be where my mark is made the memories will try, some will fade Dressed in black, my hair pulled back at posers and braggarts, I will attack.

Some of my friends, and all my family 10 and a wonderful girl who makes me happy The lights of blue and red and green I cannot hide, I have been seen

With a timid wave to the crowd it seems the silence is just too loud I hope to them it too will seem as if I’ll be creating a dream . . .

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We’re Right

Love and love and love in everything I do I want you to know I love you It’s all been meant for you.

Pink and purple ribbons tangled in my hair Searching for a thought but you’re soloing up there.

You’re all I ever think about 10 a single wanting need To hold you in my arms at night just to hear you breathe.

No one else seemed right for me but you, I will protest You know just what I want from you I could only love you less.

You know not how the world does turn or why the bird takes ﬂight But I hope some day the light will ﬂash 20 and tell you that we’re right.

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Prose

Illusions into Life

I have stepped away from Illusions into Life. When Life appeared a game, I didn’t know the rules as well as others. But now, being a little more experienced, I have my strategies which almost invariably work.

At birth I was handed Something — something special, something unique. I have developed a number of my ﬂairs to a point 10 where I am a bit over par. I have no intention to be the best at any one thing, I believe it to be impossible.

There are people who live for a sport, an art, a cause; I live for me and I think I can only be the best at being me. No one this time around will know me as well as I.

I wish that for one day I could experience being someone else to see if these other people really exist. 20 Life seems strange from one viewpoint, yet, that’s all we have. I wish I had the chance to step into someone else To see Life as they do. Just once . . .

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Food is an art

Food is an art, an art I experience each day without retaining an aptitude for its prepa- ration. This art is a faculty I both admire and respect because it brings something to the world that didn’t before exist without the destroying or taking of something else. The judgment that I do not know good from bad is not entirely unfounded, because in com- parison to those who apparently do, I do not. My appreciation does not lie in the product of your effort, but in the effort itself. This account is not meant to detract the ends, which have each been composed in such a way as to satisfy even Grandma and Lloyd’s taste, but to commend the endeavor which you are far more proficient at than myself. For your investment, I thank you, because it turns out that you are investing in me. Why

WHY is a question often asked in this world. This why concerns a person, I, who began going out of his way by putting in his contacts on a day he wasn’t going to. He was going to drive across the border to buy lottery tickets that he is strongly against in the ﬁrst place. Now as he was about to leave, his father says, “No, you don’t seem to be too interested.” Well, obviously not! Since he stopped what he was doing, since he spent eight minutes putting in his contacts, and since he was taking his father’s directions generously how could he possibly be interested. And after all that, his father goes himself. Next time you decide to shit on me, make sure I don’t try to do anything for you ﬁrst. You’re damn welcome! Night Life

It is what makes me vivid. I live oﬀ of the lights which combat the surrounding ignorant dark. Their intensity speaks to me and pull words from me to the page. The world is ignorant of me and my words. Inspiration comes from the mind — not money, not authority, not rules. The lights out my window are stars and I revel in the brilliance and strength of each one. They let me live. They let me live how I like, unlimiting mental freedom. This freedom is sharply slaughtered when the bluntness of a cheap plastic blind is pulled. Let the night breath into me. It is when my mind lives, it lets me breath with it. We are one, the night and I. Threnody spreads softly through dark calm crispness. It showers me with images it remembers, molding time, space and dreams to one distinct manifold of possibilities. It all ﬁts together so smoothly when it is free. Man is the only animal who creates restrictions to life. We pull the shade on things which require sun and moon and stars. I leave myself

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open to these things and fill with their vigor I am empty without. The shade comes with a pickax that draws life from me. I require the sky — it is my only connection to infinity. Without infinity, I am limited. The shade is the limit staring me down with a tight blind leering glare. From Fantasy — Reality

I may know better, but I create fantasy anyway — a mind can’t play without toys. So semi-ﬁctional situations become mental reality and exercise begins, or more realistically, continues, on a much higher level than realistic encounters. This is probably because of the lack of sensory inputs. Rather than the continual process of interpreting the data gathered by the senses, the mind is more free to analyze the isolated problem, concerning itself with only the seemingly necessary variables. This practice of mine mimics reality closely. My evidence of this relies on my ability to predict, sometimes to the instant, some action or response of an individual under speciﬁc conditions. Today happened a prime example. I had been working in the back yard for just under two hours and my hands had begun to ache, forewarning on-coming blisters to my digits. I went inside as my father continued working outside. After a short while my hands had begun to feel better and I decided to return to my work. During this time where I decided to return to work I predicted through the process mentioned earlier that my father would come to my room, where I was currently observing a spider in my window sill, and see why it was I was inside. Not forty seconds passed after my prediction when, at the sound of his footsteps, I turned to see him at the door and gave him my response to the question I didn’t give him time to ask, that I would be right out because my hands had begun to feel better. Several other instances have occurred similar to this one but are vague in my recollection. And so from fantasy results a caricaturing reality through simulation. My question is whether others 30 undergo a similar process.

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Mind Words

Once you know someone, you always know them, somehow.

Have you ever gotten lost just to see where it leads? Surprise yourself sometime.

Do what you feel, not what you are told. However, you may feel it is right to do what you are told.

A person may ask a question to answer it.

Playing with perfection is a losing game.

It’s much easier to do the “what” when you understand the “why.”

I love the subway; you get to meet everybody at the same time.

Time ﬂies whether you’re having fun or not.

An instrument can be an extension of one’s inner-self.

40 Stolid is an unfair balance of mind and heart.

We’re not fated into anything. Anything we have or do exists because of what we and other people have done in the past.

Remember, today is the future’s past. What would you like to see when you look behind you?

Sometimes to be silent is to lie.

Why does day break and night fall?

You can’t use the ashes of the past to fuel the ﬁres of the future.

You know someone well when you can recognize their footsteps from a distance.

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Friends need not words to eﬀectively communicate.

You can teach an old dog new tricks, but you can’t make him do them.

Trying to be diﬀerent, they’re all the same.

50 We each do our master’s bidding in our own way.

Sometimes a poem must be ﬁnished before the reason or idea behind it can be identiﬁed.

She is the type of person who will win a man’s heart. It would take a little more and a lot less to win his lust.

You feel like you’re dead, but you’re not sure if you’re not.

When one don’t try, they both shall die.

It took feeling miserable to understand the potential feelings of others in response to my pride.

One ambition of life is to help yourself by helping others.

My whole being speaks to me through my ﬁngers.

The world is full of winners and losers; lets just hope you’re one of them.

Never comment on a person’s ability to drive, unless it is favorable to him or is physically threatening.

60 Take a breath from the breeze, think of someone to squeeze.

The children danced about like moths around a ﬁre ﬂy.

Love is a perpetual source of hope of mine. Without hope, I cannot start the day.

A car for under $500 is not a “good deal” when the person realizes what he is getting for that price.

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She looks pretty much the same everyday, but she’s always a little diﬀerent.

It’s not the other person you have to look out for. Look out for yourself! By looking out for yourself you are helping to look out for that other person.

A person is able to realize how rapidly time goes when he is on his ﬁfteen minute break at work.

The people look as though the weather got the best of them.

If you want something done right, don’t bother doing it yourself — give clear instructions to people who can get it done.

Heat, oxygen, and fuel are not the only ingredients of a fire. It is remarkable how much attention a simple fire can also consume. This ever changing light is a chaotic flame capable of easing tensions, anxieties, and a simple case of the shivers.

70 Don’t argue theory with someone who has lived it.

Don’t ever tell your parents to stop being your parents.

A person doesn’t realize how loud things are and can be after having sat in silence for some time. We are a truly noisy animal.

Physically active people maintain the world. Mentally active people change the world.

Hard times within a family does not make the good times go away — but it may make them harder to remember.

The second best aspect of Italian cooking is the perpetration of scents throughout the home.

It is better to be caught in a bad excuse, than a lie.

We started to go wrong when we felt the need to put fences up to keep people in or out.

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Wear fancy underwear beneath jeans.

80 Leave me to my thoughts, for they represent my untainted spirit.

If a person wants to be the captain of his own ship, he needs to draw his own charts.

Bright is waking up at two o’clock in the morning, stumbling to the kitchen and opening the refrigerator.

At the completion of a book I always feel a period of intelligence and reﬂection. My mind forms paragraphs of knowledge and my body is calm and secure with its mind’s new ability. By bettering either mind or body, I am bettering the whole.

After a test I generally feel introspectional, combining my own thoughts with theory and how it relates to the world with which I interact.

Changing the past based on the present to give advantage in the future is wrong.

We noticed his presence because of the silence.

There exists a constant compromise concerning quality and time.

There has never been a technique for three people to walk and talk together comfortably. There is a perpetual eﬀort for the middle person to ﬁnd a tranquillicly strategic position so that each of the three people can adequately interact with the other two.

The white highway bleached from the salts of winter carried the familiar songs of wind, snow, and exhaust.

Once in a while, I am actually able to experience what everyone else uses as a reference. 90 (I don’t recall ever having pea soup, though.)

It is interesting how time changes our destinations.

Age . . . wisdom.

Each of us have our own skewed version of how things should be. Some are more universally correct than others.

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Forever may only come once. Don’t let it disappear on you.

Don’t oﬀer criticism without solution.

Don’t let the present let you forget the past. The past is the most valuable resource we have.

Wash your hands before cutting your ﬁnger nails. The cut will be softer and the pieces won’t ﬂy as far.

Don’t let the organization become bigger or more important than the people involved.

Be patient. People’s ﬁrst reactions to you are not necessarily their net reaction.

100 Adult movies are for those who lack imagination.

Don’t let other people’s opinions matter to you more than your own.

For most great things to happen, there must be great sacriﬁce.

Do not let your ego outgrow your humbleness.

I may seem distant, but I am always close to something.

I become my true self when I am alone. Yet, my true self arose from my involvement with others. So who am I?

You are the product of your investment in yourself.

Don’t trust that someone else has made it their responsibility to tell you. Make it your own responsibility to ask.

Unless mist is vexatious, walk a visitor to his vehicle when he is leaving your residence.

When I blinked, my contacts were cold, reminding me I was staring oﬀ at something.

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110 I was so tired that, when I lied down to rest, my body didn’t know where to start.

And as I looked around discouraged by the day’s events, I saw her there, speaking with the person across from her, her back to me. A hint of a smile came to my face and my spirit. A regenesis from a girl I hardly know.

I emptied my bladder so quickly I thought my lower body was going to collapse.

Any game involving probabilities suggests that a player will probably lose.

The crescendo of applause was like the realization of a broken cloud.

It surprises me how something shrill can be slighted by the senses before it suddenly stops sending sound — silence.

Curiosity is the strongest gravity.

A person can not learn anything if he thinks he already knows it all.

The grass may not be greener on the other side — it just might be the wrong season for growing grass.

We are poor imitators of nature.

There is nothing worse than being in a relationship with someone who does not want to 120 be in the relationship.

People with the least to say tend to say the most.

Trust is everything. If you do not have trust you just have a ﬁnancial responsibility.

I emptied myself so quickly I thought my lower body was going to collapse.

When I blinked, my contacts were cold, reminding me I was staring out at something — or perhaps, in.

Stubbled face or not — we all have hidden parts.

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I don’t do what I do in hopes of making a living. I do it conﬁdently, knowing that I am making a life.

I saw her today — a moment of simple elegance. Her face smiled, wedged between two supports in the door, framing a wired glass — clean enough to see her blink.

Don’t let the mouth be quicker than the mind.

In the game of life, a mistake can not be taken care of my pushing ‘reset’.

The goal of each individual should be to manipulate his/her surroundings gently, kindly, and positively with patience so that he/she eﬀectively changes the elements of his/her sur- 130 roundings to his/her beneﬁt without hindering the quality of the existence of anything else.

Speak softly and meaningfully. With each word should come pleasure and improvement of some condition, in any term, long or short.

Actions which contribute negatively to a situation should be minimized to allow resources for improvement.

Let people talk for themselves when they are able and willing.

Accept fault, personal as well as external.

Improve faults that aﬀect positive actions.

Keep at least one diary in a lifetime.

Write your thoughts.

Enjoy all life.

Accept challenges.

140 Overcome handicaps.

Touch.

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Envy no one, admire some, respect most.

Enjoy short terms of pleasure, grow suspicious of long terms.

Questions unemotional ineﬃcient actions.

Die wealthy without money.

Enjoy your acquaintances, adore your friends, love your family, love yourself most of all.

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A Point of View

I do the things I do for many reason

One is that I don’t take others’ perceptions of me seriously. This is because no matter what they happen to see any particular day, that is not me. I am an extensive collection of virtually everything and a very low percentage of my true being is exposed at any one moment. Being me would be, by far, too massive a chore, for I am hardly limited. The perception one acquires of me is how I react under specific circumstances. From that, assumptions are immediately and automatically developed to form a paragon of my being. Only after ample investigation is this refined to a more accurate, but ever-changing, blueprint of me. It is quite humbling to understand that everyone is similar to me. Each has their own world, own thoughts, own experiences, own mind, and own perceptions. One’s perceptions are revealing but give little true insight into another’s being. Be- cause each of us are incredibly complex chemically, biologically, mentally, and with experiences, we are forced to create prototypes of each other due to lacking resources. We each forego an astounding abundance due to finite resources. Not being able to share each 150 other’s experiences may be one of the greatest losses. Listen to people’s tales, for each is unique and important, most of all to the speaker. From other people’s experiences come new lessons in life and possible new paths in The Journey. There are so many things I value in life. But, there are six which I hold highest. Intelligence, Good Health, Stubborn Determination, Personality, Musicianship, and Voice. As one understands me, the reasons I choose these becomes obvious. Intelligence. Intelligence brings with it infinite power and pleasure. Being able to find and manipulate information is a forte of mine. I enjoy learning and believe that is the reason why I have become a powerful mind. Good Health. Health controls us more than almost anything else can. When I feel well, I can perform well and efficiently. When I feel poorly, I may be unmotivated and not do anything. Without health, we become useless. Stubborn Determination. I have set goals and attested not to let myself fall short on these goals. Falling short just means I did not work as I should have because my goals are not unrealistic. This value is the force that keeps me on track when I begin to slip.

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Personality. I am able to make tasks entertaining and easier to do if I put some of my “fun-loving” personality into it. I make ideas personal and generally humorous because I like seeing comedy in most everything. Musicianship. Music is my emotion and creativeness which is inexpressible in any other form. My guitars are my tools where I sculpt love, anger, beauty, and a dozen other passions that I actually feel each time I play or listen to them. Being a good musician brings pride to my work and esteem from others. Music is a love which is inseparable from me. Voice. Voice uniﬁes my words with my music. It helps to impart a more direct message to an audience. It becomes my music in the car, and other times when I have no guitar. My life is tangled like the snake and whispers like the willow. What You’re Missing

You can sit at the edge of a pool all day, until your toes shrivel like the raisin, but you’ll never learn to swim. — You won’t get water up your nose and chlorine in your eyes, either.

You can watch the sledders from your front porch, racing and spinning and crashing, and never leave your front yard. — You won’t get snow in your face, freeze your ﬁngers, or break your leg, either.

You can sing a thousand songs in your car, to and from work or school, and never touch a microphone. — You’ll never vomit from nervousness or be embarrassed about hitting a wrong note, either.

You can talk the weather, speak cliche’, and constantly agree. — You never will let others learn of you and risk vulnerability, either.

You can listen to songs, watch movies, and dream, dream, dream. 10 —You never will feel at a loss, having not loved and lost, either.

Nor can you ever gain anything but regret of chances lost, and opportunities wasted. Grab the mic and sing your song the best you know how!

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Creative Junkyard

The wind was blowing this April morn The sky was blue or white I could see the trees swaying by the wind The clouds were in front of the light

The door would not open that April day I looked out the glass to see the children play There in the ﬁeld, three or four of them there They noticed my presence, they felt my stare

20 He is a man, a man of men Power hungry savage from within Eager to show what it is he can do Eager to know what it is I do.

Look up at the clouds in the sky With the full moon singin’ a lullaby and The people out late playin’ their tunes I just sit at home an’ pick away at the blues

Can you see heaven, are your hopes too high Am I the same kid or a diﬀerent guy 30 I got some friends but we don’t talk We just wander around trying not to be caught

Can you see the sun, is it the same They say I’m always changing from yesterday You can’t help but to see lucifer in my eye He won’t leave me alone and I’m not gonna cry today

It’s become too cold to sit in my car.

It’s not much of a car but it brings me home when I’ve been far. when the wind’s been cold.

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Why is writing more revealing and personal. uninterrupted, more time, uninhibited

40 I talked to the girl with the high heeled voice.

The brisk autumn winds whip scattering the leaves While mother rocks her chair and her ﬁngers silently weave

falling in my mind down the unending abyss until the light shines only to reveal what I have already seen

50 miles to travel, at least in our minds a book, a riddle, a perfect rhyme.

we sit here now and maybe later some are lovers some are haters.

we all wear shoes of diﬀerent sizes some are there as disguises.

Making a mistake has several drawbacks and one benefit. The benefit is a lesson of how the operation should be done. The drawbacks consist of wasted energies, poor outcomes, unwanted reactions, embarrassment, inefficiencies, inadequate allocations of supplies, and most importantly, wasted time. Time can rectify any of the above but nothing alters time.

Consider the notion that an individual’s actions will resonate among those close enough to vibrate. Some shimmer with harmonics, others show faint overtones, some retaliate causing beats, and some don’t ring. But sounds do not fully dampen in life. Strik- ing the right frequency may resonate exponentially causing a dynamic release of other frequencies — chaos; minor seconds battle, thirds and fifths endure. All trying to fit a chord, playing their part — be it fifth, ninth, or thirteenth — by adding a frequency to each personality.

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It’s not strange. I think about what it would be like to be another person. I think that it would be very much like being me. I also consider if other people think about being me. Each person uses all the time they are given on what ever they want and so there isn’t much of an argument for becoming someone else when time is a universally equal resource. My time focuses on creation. The creation of music and words, the development of my mind. Others focus on hanging out with their friends, keeping the house clean, working to buy a car, ﬁghting to meet that next bill payment. Time is the only resource that allows things to be done. People just need the right incentives to make use of their time in a way that will create things rather than take away.

60 The gentle breeze carried the mist All so far from the sea’s tide And the pools of attraction kept what they could Under their special inﬂuence

Tremolo bar stools spin the mellow patrons Of melliﬂuous magic with Mixolydian watch dogs howling before the Dawn in the mist from a gentle breeze

I’m not tired but my knees are sore 70 So I sit and rest them on the shore Of a lake so clear in a dream of mine where I sit and enjoy forever in time

. . . and so we begin, a struggle for survival. Growth, strength, and mind come to us. To conquer the world — the ultimate goal. Yet, mind overcomes growth, then strength and we find the world of little yield. So we turn to other recreations, with less effort and greater yield. Aptly focused, we begin our creation of something that has not existed on earth before. From our personal areas of exploration ripen fruits many of our human coun- terparts can use and enjoy. Occasionally a person may find someone who’s exploration is solely to support others’ explorations. That person is a catalyst to the experiment. Smoke, heat, and hidden chaos flood the laboratory and as it settles, something very special can be found resting on the work bench. It is yours. It is of any color, a little dull on

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Erik Barry Erhardt Memory Maze 1991 — 1997 77

the edges, proudly ﬂaunting what intricacy it has. You smile, clink wine glasses, and die.

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Stupid Poetry 1996 — 1997

College: London and brieﬂy thereafter.

I knew that not all poetry was good, or even marginal, but here I don’t take it seriously at all.

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Stupid Poetry

Piss Puss

Toaster Oven Toaster Oven how happy is my cat High upon the river wary My tabby lies alone Since the toast did burn Me my cat did scorn And hence how far is he I know he digs it 10 But it’s hard to take My cat has split to sit near a lake Piss oﬀ anyway, you piece of shit cat

12/04/97

Jelly Swan

Parchment on which jelly swans are left upon halloo, hello. For with wooden stick, hot chia swirls happy in its lead sack of quill pens without foot in cheek tongue in fireflies dost make poor Lilly cry. Oh Lilly — why, Lilly, did you leave for a hair cut so low and without frisky moonbeams to 10 play your lovely flatulence upon. Oh, if only I might have a soft wing — with bones bright — that I might munch upon — oh, jelly swan.

06/27/96

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Window White

Shining window without white lines — do you become cold in the night without blanket nor humor in the silvery wall? It seems the lurking screen ﬁnds its way upon you, but only when clumsiness ﬁnds wind without you. If gravity hath but one love, it should be that of bringing you down — down so that you open no longer, but on top, on fevery days.

07/21/96

Distance

Distant as a midnight calm, I sit upon my ass. Some seem far with peacock wings and wine without cork. Yet, what is so near that distance does not scoﬀ its warble? Yet, what so close that it is not removed? And in this light, though I may hold your hand, I could never touch your ﬁngertips. Though I wish it not — not until you wash.

07/29/96

Gravity Girl

Gravity spirals without use for water. Where is she, who falls so swift? The tender sand beneath her feels the absence of sun for a moment and wonders, “will I see our glorious light again?” And she in ﬂight sees the sand. A terrible bond of girl and sand from gravity without water made. Thud!

10 07/31/96

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Erik Barry Erhardt Stupid Poetry 1996 — 1997 83

Ballerina Girl

Forever in position three indeed, of course, this is not me. But the ballerina girl so trim though cold enough to lack a grin. Tip-toe-teetering on a life not metering the acupunctured rhythms flip-flop-fleeting. So with little more than a far away sigh (for such display would for her be a lie) Falling from a high above place 10 holding skirt down, such a disgrace. Finding the hollow tunnels shallow below she remembers her character and now knows That depth in life, though she lacked, would make quite a long fall. Splat!

03/12/97

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1995

College: London For Kristen M. Karlicek, college sweetheart (December First).

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199507 — 199509

As I Lay Alone in London Even as I lay alone tonight you resonate within me. I take hold of you and as I pull your figure toward me your back does not resist my pull and, as two liquids, we fold together swirling in tendrils of the most serious love for the other. Often I lay behind you, facing you, 10 you facing away. My legs and waist folded up parallel to you. Your heels touch my front ankle, your calves, my shins; your pelvis, mine. I hold you with my arm hung loosely over your stomach like a cotton scarf and fall into the rhythm of your breathing. I breath into your hair and smell the deep, full fragrance of a perfume many hours old and I remember when you 20 fingered it on, as we stood nude in your room and were just waking from a long night to a busy day. You held the elegant bottle by two fingers and smoothed it on with Your index of the other hand. So gentle and deliberate you moved touching your finger to your neck and gliding it toward your breast. Three times on this side, three on 30 the other. Then some on the wrists and you rubbed them together and looked at me with a small smile.

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I remember tossing my things to the ﬂoor and taking you from the chair where you were writing poetry and dancing about the room in a frenzy of laughing and kissing and touching and undressing. I remember the moon not low enough for me to see from the bed 40 but not high enough to escape illuminating your face.

And I remember laughing loudly and completely when we reached orgasm, and you looked up wide-eyed with gaping mouth and when I kissed your forehead you exhaled and breathed deeply in complete satisfaction. We lie there sweaty and tired and listened to public radio playing Bach and Mozart, knowing love.

We turn on our sides, crumpled 50 in this beautiful pose. Two lovers, understanding love and recognizing unity. Intensity of art and song, poetry and logic, food and emotion bind us together tonight in a world of one room, one bed, one warmth and one love as I lay alone in London.

19950924, 3am

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1997

Finishing college.

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199701 — 199703

Cancer

A disturbing image came before me this evening. It is half seven and I am listening to Garrison Keeler’s monologue on A Prairie Home Companion, a weekend public radio program. He is describing a peculiar ceremony where, to reconcile past offenses, a woman is having a stone placed at a grave cite. As I listen, I am sitting in my car, my hands pressed between my thighs and seat to keep warm. I can see a couple with their son entering Foodie’s pizza restaurant just meters in front of my parked car on Keene’s main street. I watch a student of about sixteen or seventeen years sweep crumbs and dust from under tables. The father stretches his arms out wide, taken aback that they are the restaurant’s 10 only customers. Garrison continues, describing how the Lutheran priest gave brief words at the grave, as they were standing knee-deep in snow in the thick of Minnesota winter. Thinking of this cold I have been rubbing my hands and rolling my shoulders to keep it from me. Looking up, I see two people hastily walking past, blowing, not steam, but smoke into the air, as though the image of the natural white of breath in cold were not potent enough for their desired effect. As they passed, the one, clearly older than the other by about six years, looked over one shoulder, then the other, as if keeping lookout at old Germany’s border. After passing my auto, he handed the lit cancer to the younger one who puffed and blew with the grace of a seasoned macho and modern advertisement actor, with one 20 unnerving difference. The younger one could be no older than eight years. Imagine for a moment that you are this young boy of eight years. At eight you affiliate yourself with a popular shoe company paying more to star Michael Jordan for a thirty second commercial than the combined annual salary of a factory of 200 people assembling the shoes in Taiwan; with a winning football or basketball team as you wear jacket and pants which scream their name and image in words and symbols in all directions; with cancers which come in red and white packages, or packages flaunting a bull’s eye dead center as if over the heart, or packages showing a desert animal whose face resembles an uncircumcised penis. You say, “I’ll walk over you like Lawrence Taylor and put my lit fag out in your eye if you cross me,” without even being aware someone is spying you. 30 You say, “I don’t care what you, or my teachers, or my parents think of me,” though I’m sure all of this appears in different language. You say other things like, “I’m old enough,” and, “I don’t need anybody,” yet your mouth hasn’t opened — aside from to get a breath of 1000 poisons in the conveniently sized and attractively packaged version of assisted suicide, brought to you by your local tobacco farmer.

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Now take twenty seconds to see yourself as the parent of this young boy. . . I can go on to guess his other qualities but that would be unfair to him and unfair to those people who rack up statistics about such social categories. Besides, who am I to know such things. My first ten years I lived in Mason, New Hampshire. A town of roughly 500 where the only person I knew my age in my first six years was my brother, younger by two years. 40 In my first three years of school I made few friends and spent most of time in the woods playing with sticks and rocks or inside playing with blocks, playing poor rock records, or weaving pot holders on an old loom. I know nothing of, and have none-too-easy a time relating with, children who grow up in urban, or even semi-populated areas. Though I don’t think that the image of these two children smoking on main street at night would come any softer if I had grown up in a city myself. I could not see myself as a smoker singing him praise: “Way to go, kid! I wish I got started as early myself. I had to go through the coughing as my friends did the same. I would have been damn cool if I could have puffed away, smiling, as they all hacked and choked and spit blood!” Yet, I’m not ready to condemn the boy either, for his knowledge of the world can not be great enough 50 to know the affects of his actions beyond what he can see or feel. The obvious targets for blame, if one cares to throw darts, are the parents, and ultimately society. But I must admit, this dart is much too massive for me to throw, let alone pick up. For this dart embodies every materialistic poison proclaimed to be favorable to image, to enhance enjoyment, and generally to appeal to the physical, i.e. the States culture in union with European popular culture. I’m afraid the only dart I’m willing to, and have right to toss is the dart of my person which I choose to toss at public radio, libraries, coffee shops, park benches in the summer and fall, classical, folk, and jazz music, and dozens of other items I consider of quality. Yet, with my other arm, I wish I was a thrower so skilled as to steal with one throw the cancer from this young boy’s lips, without injury, yet inflicting 60 fear — hopefully enough to have him fear each time he lights up a cancer until the time he tosses the fag end into the street, and still until his next light. Yet, I fear the best toss I can make is embodied in this brief essay. I only hope to hit everyone who reads it. A society in which a child of eight can smoke as well as a person of twenty-eight has some serious cancer in it, none of which is curable by modern medicine. Going further, none of these cancers will be curable by modern anything. The machines of modernity which spawned the machines of post-modernity together are likely to bring few cures for the many. Rather, they will, with growing efficiency, spread cancers of growing potency, to a growing population, with a growing abundance and availability. All of this I see in that young boy. 70 19970104

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Cinnamon bun

In the coffee shop in which I sit at the first of three tables lining the north wall it is, despite the light from the large front windows and the many electric lights, dark. In front of me sits a short obese woman on a soft and sturdy couch with small regular white details who not completely quietly enjoys a cinnamon bun. Beside her lies a red full length wool coat and a brown leather purse. She wears drab light green and brown shirt and pants and her hair is a melon with curls. She rises to ask for another cinnamon bun, her plate and knife clinking together with the shaking of her arm, straining to hold it at all. She sits again to resume cutting pieces off and, with great amounts of movement quite the opposite 10 of being called fluid, placing large pieces to her mouth. She then, while chewing, shakily forces her knife through the cinnamon bun to make another cut.

19970104

The Journey

We live at once, two lives simultaneous. At one turn going round two circles, one in life one in death. There are times the paths are distinguishably separate yet most, to each foot a circle, and so we tread.

19970105

Sport without conscious

Of all the types of people in this world, there are a few I hate. The first that comes to mind is the overconfident, arrogant, yet testingly playful gamesman. He is found mostly in one-on-one situations, often with a friend who is newly acquainted with the game. He takes advantage of the beginner as though he were playing a master making drunken moves. His first few games with the beginner are characterized by crushing wins, after which they laugh, at the beginner’s expense, at how smartly our hero played. After pounding the message into the beginner’s head, “You can never beat me! Ha, ha, ha,” as if calling

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from the cliﬀs of a dark and stormy mountain, then disappearing into the black, he will 10 abandon this game for another.

19970106

Song for Orion

Orion, my warrior Friend, I spread my arms to greet you. You are the first I look for the first I find when I look to the night for companions. Tonight you have brought your friends with you. And with them behind you, you nearly fade from sight before them. I see before you the bright band which is 10 my galaxy. There are days when I look up, my star a bloody distraction. I search for you, but many times without finding. So today I found the highest hill so that I might be closer to my friend, so that I might be closer to the one who keeps me in life so many nights. There is nothing I should tell you, for you are older than my star and 20 wiser than God. I just wish that I may distract you for a moment from your deep stellar contemplation so that I may peer into the abysses which are your eyes as you are spying me on this hill. I wish never to be knighted by a King or Queen or given an honor so blind and useless in my life. Yet, on death I wish that you might awaken your sleeping sword from its 30 shiny scabbard resting at your side and take my head so that I may

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ﬁnally be at peace. Orion, my warrior friend, I open my arms to you and bow in my love for you and in your honor.

19970107 climbed Mt. Monadnock to sing and bow to Orion

Lazy

What is lazy. A statement and a question? I find myself being the target of a strikingly sharp and well thrown dart with the tail fins of this slender missile reading, “Lazy.” So, struck coldly in the temple, on this I dwell, unable to remove it from my head. I am lazy. I will admit this. I don’t do much in the way of exercise, do as little of working for money as possible, and my room is in shambles. I can’t keep things in an order that makes them presentable. My room most always is a landscape of books, papers, a pile of clothing, a corner of tapes and CDs, a counter of pocket items — actually, I think it quite organized. Things are where I can get at them, and see them (for my memory 10 serves me as a cat its master). So without this ‘distributive organization’ I would be lost in a world of hidden treasures. I say, “let out the treasures, to view, for I!” So I am lazy. The darter, as we may call the woman of deadly accuracy (my head is feeling pain now) — she is of action. Her family are people of action. She works, prepares delicious meals (some are the best of my life), volunteers to raise money for the community, bakes for colleagues’ birthdays, attends school part time, spends much time watching talk shows, spends time with her granddaughter twice a month, plays golf, and does many other worthy activities. She is someone who I could not call lazy — not in a physical sense of the word. How do I compare to our busy darter? I’m glad you asked. Of her list, I spend time with the granddaughter, always a time of good fun and learning for the both of us. But that is 20 where the similarities end. I create a list much different from the one above. As I fore mentioned, I am physically lazy, or efficient. Yet, it is a harvest unseen which I reap, and in great quantities and quality. I am a bookish person. Reading is an ongoing project whose benefit and effect are slowly and subtly developing. In cooking, working, volunteering, the effect is obvious - eats, money, generosity — yet the effect of reading is less direct. I don’t read necessarily for knowledge, though it certainly comes. It is mostly an exercising of ideas and exploration of creativity, mine and the authors’. Aside from reading great novels and clever and witty ones as short vacations, I write. This again is an exercise of ideas and recreation of language, a tool whose limits I test the patience of

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each day, as I mispell, misuse, mis-punctuate words as I attempt to expose an idea I have 30 created mostly from images and feelings. If I’m playing, I am mostly likely playing with mathematics. I am a budding mathematician with interests of music, art, literature, philosophy, and most anything else which drives the mind. I often sit at a coffee shop and play. Here, Jenn serves me a cup of En- glish Breakfast Tea without exchanging more than our polite greetings. At the shop, with just the right quantity of the right variety of distractions for an ADD person, I perform proofs of ideas that come to mind, sketch topological surfaces which bring me happiness by their beauty of truth, muse on striking, silly, clever, witty and absurd remarks people make there, and daydream. Is this lazy?! Am I not creating as a carpenter builds a house from measuring and cutting boards, 40 hammering nails? The difference is that I am the house that Erik built. I am a thinker creating ideas to compliment or challenge others. My pen is a hammer, striking the page faster and as accurately as the greatest carpenter. And just as people can live in the well built house, I can live with myself. I am a busy student of the world. And of the people who can move it best, it is those bookish people who give the strongest shove. Though I won’t in anyway mock the power of a certain Jewish carpenter. . . But even Jesus did not make his effect by measuring beams. He, too, was a thinker. He brought more change to this world than any person I can think of. Yet those who contest were also bookish. Shakespear, Einstein, Hitler, Churchill, Bach, Mozart, Darwin, Freud, Aristotle, Plato, Russell, Kofka, and thousands more. (Can you name some? Bet you can 50 name scores.) It is ideas that move the world. To overuse the phrase, “The pen is mightier than the sword,” for the sword is heavy and difficult to convey more than two ideas, those of death and honor. I recognize this to be a mighty claim for me to compare myself to those above mentioned movers. But, though I should never be a mover, I am queuing up to be. And so, ultimately I pronounce to the tosser, “Best consider your target, for ‘I’m rubber, you’re glue’ 40 here has come true for at me you say two words but hundreds do I return.” 60 I am lazy in action as you are in thought, for each do as much as needed for survival, and neither enough to be considered proficient or effective in them. And so strikes the pen of intellection as did the dart of inanity. (look them up. . . )

19970117

From within I am

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How I have come to sit in the cube I have rented from the world for a time and perform these idle tasks, no longer useless to your eyes nor mine I must admit I do not know the logic nor a reason thus it must come from nothing but fate, necessity, being.

Laying on my back, upon the ceiling, my mind’s palette, I paint images of neither truth nor falsity, neither tragedy nor elation for I know not what comes to me in fantasy, my wild daydreams 10 and without knowledge of that cosm there is no hope for understanding

Candle light cuts through twofold, but without need for amour propre to guide my pen upon modern stone, blending more than biting and my ﬁngers upon her neck, delicately running over, six layers deep, the brilliant bronze strands from her beauty, the source, and my love’s end

As in Joyce, that in absence is as potent as the present so can be seen for my longing present speaks also of my pleasure absent yet, for as longing is a pulling for that without, it is from within it comes and without my within there should be no more. Be no more 20 from within I am, to be is my choice.

(written as a song) 19970131

Sonnet

If ever, from within, you can ﬁnd a love Which, by spring’s sun shining brightly above, Yearns for the burning heart of another, To be quenched either there or by rose water,

You needn’t travel searching at longish length Over mountain, stream — through labyrinth, For about you is one, a heart of great ﬁre, And it be your manner and beauty he doth admire.

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So if in your breast a love does stir, 10 An excited longing — again alive amour, As lark with voice not wasting time Not waiting till summer when so lovely’s springtime

From my heart to yours, I embody great zeal, Each body, mind and love from you, hence, do I appeal.

(for Rendi Bolton) 19970208

I’m crippled

I’m crippled I’m broken As the insecure young women of our culture say “There must be something wrong with me.” — though I can’t see it. But perhaps I look too deeply. It must be surface, for substance is sure. I am marred — scarred. Many battles has my body lost for a victorious war, 10 and history here is kept, not in my ﬂeeting memory, but on my soft skin. Gorgeous I should be called by blind women, Smart by the simple, Emotional by the stolid, Sure by the clumsy. I have nothing others demand, at least not in this packaging. I’m a failed product in a market that scans the labels for the pictures. Does anybody read the text anymore?

19970208

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Place

If someone tells me ‘I love you,’ I can’t trust it. Language — the silly game here. Actions lie, too — though here more convincing. The way the heart feels makes all the difference 10 Truth, Beauty, Kindness though once from the Mind I thought they came now feel I from the Heart trusting in feelings, though inherent is the danger, genuine the experience. Manipulators use words and action Lovers, feeling in these — but, first feeling. 20 Feeling first! Words can be a mile wide, inch deep — feelings begin with depth. I do not speak lightly here. It is not the feelings of school children, popular culture or na¨ıve people of which I speak. Here are the men and women who 30 wander their rooms of life in soliloquy — finding meaning, feeling, daydreaming. It is the great daydream, the one of life I evoke for the feeling genuine — it does not come from

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other spheres. It is not from our Artificial Life, that of society, 40 that feeling comes forth. Artificial Image. It is climbing the Mountain, Staring at stars, Catching a snowflake, Fighting and Embracing pain that is the true life. It is in my daydreams that I transform from the boy society wants 50 to the man I want and It is here that I learn to live and It is here that life is good and It is here that I feel 60 I live.

19970214

Glow

Here I breathe the tripping waterfalls of candle light glowing gold against calm walls and softly falling upon mine eyes. Here in silence so sharp my ears

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10 make dizzying screaming sounds so I know blood still in me ﬂows as oil to a wick of a lantern burning. Here I am living, though not ideal, but I know I live. In life now are feelings and so welcomed are 20 they my restraint is poor and passions great. The candle constant pushing from gravity sucking dark so much as making light. But, gently, gently and ever so silently glowing in simple life. Its perfection in glowing, 30 purity among light and warmth, matched in quality only by the wavering string, steady, constant, whole, bringing sound. How, candle, I envy you for you live and die many times, each time in life brilliantly bright 40 in death cold calm. Though apparently simple I know my complexity matches yours. I know you fever at a touch I know you burn without envy I know you shine without diﬀerence I know your purity of passion I know you because

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I know myself and I understand. 50 The diﬀerence here though is that you die tonight, your time comes, no warning though I am ready my time waits and I am happy, I want to glow I want to live.

19970215

To Play

To play to sing to see to feel To stare into another’s eyes watching how she watches me as I sing and strum I sometimes barely believe that I am here before these people 10 and that I should be giving sound in song, giving feeling by sound. I feel good when in song where song flows, life follows It is a river through fields of time, spring with life within and about its shores. Without so much as a melody in one day the day should be empty. Here is why I carry in me music 20 hence life flows about me keeping most things complete. So tonight, as I sang, as I peeked into faces I did not know but that

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wished to know me, at least for that moment, I brought life and completeness. I became part of the whole. 19970220

Again by the bedside of a woman weeping

Again by the bedside of a woman weeping for her love lost for a man deformed. Again knowing not my place in here for action for her my desire to heal To still the rushed breath 10 the choking tearing the thick thunder from clouds heavy in head If I knew my place my hand could be sure to her shoulder bleeding pain into soft space So the decision comes that I am weak and have others define 20 my place is untruth. Or, that I define myself to live the passions I know alone I must now live these. I learn here to be strong in the moment and now to define it and live as I am. 19970228

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She Dies

venting (and inventing) prose And so she dies. This troublesome and selfish victim of short-sightedness. Though it may have been from her hands to know life in another way, he lacks pity for her who squandered all her moments planning for others. To take from a world which is only half hers and respond only with self pity dripping from uncertain lips is near laughable for the sufferage the second half endures. But this is made manifest by what followed. After months of silence, strong and certain among two roommates, R2, though rather enjoying the situation, arrived home to find self-pitying and proper-pretending R1 on a 10 roll of slander against your humble narrator and friend, R2. This he regards as a petty act of hostility and pathetic portrayal of pharisaicness. Humored by this, our narrator finds himself in his rented space holding pen and scribing some silly poem of how gravity joins our determined ballerina R1 with the consequence of unsupported altitude. This he muses to be silly and becomes suspicious that the theme of the poem could act on his character. So he tosses the poem from the window to see if the consequence of what he had desired of our most shallow R1 holds truth. It does, landing without rebound, and the wind takes it from sight. He wished R1 would take a lesson from the poor lost and crumpled paper with the silly poem and sod off, by wind, wheels or water. How she would know the musings of our dreamy narrator, only Bog and his band of 20 seraphs knows. She took these thoughts to a consequence most fitting and satisfactory for us. R2 looks out his window where only moments before a cold burst sprayed upon his bare legs as he stood there in his underwear tossing a ball of paper from the second story height. A new cover of a few inches add to the ice and existing snow of a winter overstaying its welcome. A flush of joy burns through him as he hears R1 closing the entry door, clomping down the stairs and treading heavy for a delicate and graceful ballerina across the delicate and graceful layer of fresh powder. Driving away, our narrator bids a fare-the-well to her, spitting as his tongue flaps on his lower lip in the true style of the eternal child. Puerilis R2, why do you live in such reckless and useless extravagance? 30 An hour later R2 receives a call instructing him to take a seat for the news. He lies and says he’s seated as he looks into the open refrigerator scratching his stomach. He hears the uneasy voice tell him of this terrible accident someone has had. This person had stopped her car by the bridge just minutes from the rented space in which R2 now stands pondering his breakfast. As the voice slurs and accents his narrative, R2 decides on the second half of a cantaloupe, soft and wanting him. The boy on the phone goes on to explain how she walked out on this bridge and must have stood peering over the side. An auto passed and in an attempt to miss being covered by slush she stepped, misstepped, and flew from the

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bridge as a bit of failed poetry. R2 pictured the thud, turn, slosh, whish, whish of landing on the broken ice below, rolling from it leaving thin streaks of our red, red friend on tap 40 and sliding nearly silently into the cold ﬂowing southward into the nearby pond, unaﬀected and wanting to eat. To know the parallelism her jump and spin evokes is artfulness R2 would have denied her otherwise. So your narrator gives her that for all her shortcomings. By R1’s desire to keep up appearances proper she loses sight, . . .

30 19970311

Black Clock

The clock black, losing memory of sounds echoed in it moments before. For it knows not the color of time, itself being the embodiment of all. It counts without knowing what. It sings at tempo and knows not why. In its humility it loses sight of itself knowing neither the value nor destruction of its service to a populous blind. 10 Man always planning and missing the moment. This clock, knowing only the moment, knows more of itself then the man who, in his lack of planning, glances brutishly upwards, his pace quick to meet a moment, only truly to miss.

19970312

Plastic canister

Comfortable resting is a small plastic canister on the corner of the bed. It’s golden- brown with a white and yellow label, tipped on its side. The open end is as an eye looking for its lid. Inside remains only a few cotton strands and some residue powder. About a foot behind the canister lies its cap, upright and discolored. The words can’t be made out since the top is smeared red. The bed stripped of its comforter and blanket holds a body

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of 18 years wrapped in the forest green sheets, stained black in round and flowing patterns about the body. At the foot of the bed, seeming to push heavily on the baige carpet is a filleting knife splattered with a sticky red. 10 Outside is heard the clock tower chimes. The young man ascending the apartment stairs counts eight. He thinks briefly of his brother who seems to live his life about that number, with his compulsive counting games, the symmetry of his life, even his licence plate shows Euler’s identity changed to equal eight. The young man recalls ‘EIPI+9’, meaning eiπ + 9 = 8. He smiles at this as he turns the key to his apartment door. The apartment is quiet and he walks to the kitchen, stripping himself of his jacket and sneakers on the way. Opening the refrigerator to get the water container, he looks over the door into his bedroom where he sees his comforter and blanket in a pile by the open door. He pours his glass of water and replaces the container. Carrying the glass and taking a sip on the way to the bedroom he steps over his girlfriend’s sneakers and sees the knife at the 20 foot of the bed. He is quick then to see and realize the body and understand the stains. Dropping the water he rushes bedside screaming, “Becky! Becky!” Silence. “Becky!? Shit! Fuck! Ahh!” He grabs her, goes to check a pulse but becomes faint when he can’t see skin on her wrists, only sticky blood. He vomits on the pillow and tries to get a clear head. He wraps her in the blanket by the door and carries the warm limp body through the hallway, tripping on the sneakers, and strait out the door, barely grabbing it enough to latch. On the last flight of the two story stairs he realizes he is in his stocking feet. “Becky?” He says breathlessly as he pushes the outside door open. Briskly and smoothly across the parking lot he scurries. He manages to get his keys from his front pocket, unlock the car door and slide her into the passenger seat. 30 19970314

Stepping

I stand comfort in my safety and lack of risk Standing I’m the one whom pushed does not push back I lean uncertain and anxious now in the danger 10 Leaning

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I must now make the decision I fall I give myself to danger letting it have me Falling gravity now my master to betray I step 20 catching myself securing security Stepping I recover from danger ﬁghting fate It changes now no longer stepping now a series of fallings and catchings 30 Each time risking Each time abandonment Each time a critical moment when the choice is realized or denied Each time ﬁghting the master arguing the argument that can not be won Knowing that to fall is to lose 40 to lose is submission abandonment complete to stand no more I’m afraid I’m afraid of stepping But to stand is worse than to fall To stand is horrible So in fear

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sometimes blinded by it 50 I lean I fall I risk I step I transfer I stand I lean And so I can live

19970320

Giggle

The binding of the stomach at the critical nearly going over though I bite my cheek I sputter, giggling just giggling because I’m tired because I’m with people and I’m happy because of subtleties logic makes illogical I want to giggle more, 10 to laugh loudly and ridiculously to ache and ﬁnally, after much straining, to work my facial muscles back to a relaxed position The joy of pleasant company the delicate comfort of fatigue in gentle circumstance reveals the puer and I giggle.

19970329

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199704 — 199706

Still wishing for stillness Early Spring Late Autumn If I lacked a sense of history I would not know how to describe today. Beneath the trees Dry, crunching leaves, Brown without life, lay silent Until crisp wind carries them across rocks and into bare branches. I think of my kite today 10 Resting in the dark of my closet. It should be at the end of its string With, on the opposite end, my happy hand. Bundled in a coat I feel I should have out from by now But the sun seems reluctant to radiate I know this day and who it’s for. I see children in coats Packed as snowmen Running in circles, giggles, 20 rolling, spinning, tagging, laughing, silly time. I remember my childhood Alone in the woods Smashing dead branches from the pine trees Climbing, jumping, daydreaming, counting. Always my eights Around this tree eight times Then back ’round to untangle Order those things invisible all but to a young boy. Still alone am I 30 Still counting the world Still persisting an order Still wishing for stillness. 19970410

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Weaving Watersongs

A waggish woman wooed with wild whispers wiling wanting and winning. A willful wallowing warble whither winter wind or winding windbaggery winnow. A warrior’s watchﬁre by water’s side the warrior withdrawn into welkin in a whimsical whirlwind whirligiging wistfully. 10 Witful and wily the warrior warmly asks here heart-whole whither the woman would weave with the warrior.

— will thee? (for Rachael Rivard) 19970416

Let me not go again into silence

Let me not go again into silence. I watched crocuses bloom twice in my last silence. Let it not happen today.

19970418

Baccalaureate Speech

I had a speech planned for this day. For weeks I had it. In it, I was the hard academic being critical but hopeful for our generation. That was the speech I was ready to give, but reluctant to do so. I went to my friend Nancy Monette with this problem and she said that I should come here [the Cathedral], spend time and I would know then what to say. I went to the cathedral there on the hill as I have done about once a year to spend some time with the green of the trees, the brown of the earth, and the sky of varying temperament.

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I know I was very lucky to sit here by myself with the robins and chicketties. I am very 10 lucky to live in a place where life comes easily, the states. I say this now after putting myself though school. And I could do this because I know life is easy if lived simply. Simplicity allows for great richness. The reason I’m so critical of pop culture and the media is that it is all too obvious. It is the face, the surface, the image in which everything lies. When I retreat to the woods, to the hills, things are simple again. Two years ago I would have said things aren’t simple. I would have been ecstatic to talk with anyone of the complexity of weather, of population ﬂuctuations and the logistic equation, of the chaotic dynamics of a stream of water. Now I’m more apt to muse on the seemingly chaotic dynamics of a person’s stream of conscious, and let the water return to a state of simplicity, a state of truth, a state of beauty. 20 The Indigo Girls sing, “some long ago when we were taught, before whatever kind of puzzle you’ve got, you just stick the right formula in, a solution for every fool.” This is why the hardest to learn is the least complicated. Though formulas for both relativity and quantum theory have been realized, I have doubts that a theory of everything will ever come about. Life is not formulaic. John Keats wrote in his Ode on a Grecian Urn, “Beauty is truth, truth beauty, that is all ye know on earth, and all ye need to know.” I believe this. Those things which hold truth, have for me the most beauty and these things also often have a remarkable simplicity to them. Einstein’s e=mc2, Euler’s identity eip+1=0, the Mozart piano sonata, the Bach fugue, the Shakespearian sonnet, the tree, the stream, these old houses around us, all 30 these have truths, many of them simple truths (like that of a stream), but that makes them beautiful. For those who are skeptical of this, that beauty and truth do not coincide. consider the contrapositive. That is, ‘if it is not beautiful, then it hasn’t truth.’ This is illustrated by the morning hangover, clonings, pornography, missile tests, mass suicides, any violence-any violence. These will never be ﬁt here in the hills with the trees. As I walked the paths surrounding this cathedral I thought about the stream of water. A stream of water has one purpose; to exist in accordance with gravity and descend to bring life so that nature might ascend. As we are part of nature, we must all ascend (since if we didn’t ascend we would go against water and ultimately gravity.) 40 But to what purpose do we ascend? I think it is to live a good life. To live a good life as a tree might live a good life. It lives soundly and beautifully and lets animals and other trees live well because it lives well. Of kindness, beauty and truth, nature provides the greatest model. Many of us here have been traveling paths guided by the qualities of kindness, beauty and truth. Those of us will recognize the fruits reaped by such a journey as whole in their goodness. We each have our own ways of expressing this type of journey in life. I describe

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mine here as a composer, one composing a life. I know in my time here I have been as a composer of music, but not limited to a single discipline or style. Huddling over my desk from my hard chair, my back tired and my eyes 50 straining, my ﬁngers curling on my pen, I compose my life in delicate phrases, running up, then down, punctuated by tight syncopated rhythms, often without accompaniment. In a pop world where so many feel obliged to listen only to others’ songs, I feel a completeness for a community of people who choose to compose their own lives. I admit I have not rested much to take a listen to what I have composed so far, but I believe that very soon the time will come for me, and many of you who have not listened yet, to stop for a time and listen to our songs; often dwelling on a single wavering note, as though a whole composition could be based on it alone. And so, as in Old Bach’s Canon per Tonos from the Musical Oﬀering, where the canon ends one step higher in pitch than it started, so we leave Pierce, the class of 1997, so we leave Pierce steps higher than when we entered. 60 Thank you and live well.

19970418

Movement

The movements of people about a desk. Unaware of their subtle probing at its edges, the gliding hand across the surface. The rap-tap-tap of the ﬁngers pounding a thought out from its hiding place.

The movements of people about a tree. Children running in dizzying circles, hopping, jumping to reach the branch just from reach. The shade pouring from the cool green above 10 washing worries from the tired, daydreaming traveler.

The movements of people about a fence. Hands raking with bouncing ﬁngers, grasping, tugging, pulling up and over. The quiet man walking lightly along content that his side is a good side.

The movements of people about a garden. Walking rows, dipping, touching, studying,

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deeply inhaling, raising the head, eyes closed. A man holding nature’s garden as a 20 woman’s hand in his sight and in his heart. The movements of people about a child sleeping. Careful that each step is gentle, whispers spoken and keys carried in clenched hands. But though silence is tried, still into the dreams the soft pitter-patter of sounds permeate. The movements of people about music. Mingling whole bodily, showering with sound, bouncing, spinning, absorbed in the waves. The ﬁngers running over the frets in 30 delicate patterns, moving strings, moving man. 19970424

Three Ways

1. Finding envelopes to physical possibilities and defying Burning holes in the fluid of life Driving their inner anger out upon the world Unaware of the hole they burn in themselves 2. Walking without minding landscapes Tripping, kicking, stumbling then blaming Pushing against head and cross winds hinting 10 Fighting the energy not understood 3. Pulled with the currents of our fluid space Avoiding difficulty because the currents exert no effort Gliding with whole vision, being nothing in everything Freedoms infinite, life force eternal 19970425

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Grass three inches long

I rub my feet forward and back letting the cold ﬁngers tickle me. I jump and spin I believe for a moment I am a dancer capable of graceful movement and art I cross half the pasture tugging the string in my hand both pasture and string never ending My hand holds the timeless string 10 suspended up and through the sky and I think I could climb to Heaven But my friend at the other end is not there yet I must let out more string.

... Such a gentle grasp on the string kite, I want to see all that can see you ...

19970426

As a child curious of my world

As a child curious of my world I would spend hours nights discovering what I would in years long forget. I lay in bed, in a room of my own, a thin veil of light flowing from the southern window and the flip-alarm clock steadily grinding. I learn the intricacies of a minute 10 counting sixty between each flip precisely then not counting and letting it surprise me as my attention turns to my blanket.

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The world of the under-blanket is wondrous as vast as the imagination of the adventuring child

. . . (lightning storm under blanket) (the persistant pitter-patter permeated pricisely)

19970508

On the Baccalaureate Service at the Cathedral of the Pines

We gather today at a place of Nature and Worship; Still, we place our autos in methodical rows on the uniform grass, We sit in ordered benches following a linear procession of events. Speakers speaking into the microphone, the birds are forced to sing loudly, Beyond the level of comfort, 10 or to settle for the speakers’ interruption of the wind. So much empty wind is spilt today, to the microphone’s careful transcription. I suppose we need this talking to, so few know what the birds inherently do. There is a message for listeners who really know how to listen. The birds know, that’s why they fly away from the gathering here. The wind is speaking to all, 20 with a greater wisdom, a greater message; The wind gives herself to us because she wants us to know. As I feel it, I let her take me; I shiver at its, at first, coolness. Then, when I do not fight it, when I yield, I am comfortable. I know the wind here, today, as a messenger of Nature.

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I know she speaks to me, because 30 she speaks to everything. Today she shakes her eternal head with me at the ceremony on the hill; She’s not understanding how the humans can designate a place for Nature. And, if that wasn’t enough, then use it as a lecture hall — ordered and barren. I don’t know how to respond, I’m part of this silly ceremony, But I protest its structure. 40 I take the natural way today, I don’t sit in my robe today on the bench where I should. Instead I wander about in sympathy with the birds and snakes who are disturbed today by all these people and all this noise.

19970517

The Car

The master slices the shell, gets in, turns the key, impaling the steering column. The beast groans, howls, spitting death from her flaming innards, a grinding metallic hell, scraping, fornicating pistons trapped, caged, enslaved to the makers of destruction, to a life withering life, wrinkling space, compressing time until it is gone. The master’s foot sends the ingredients of hell’s fire, where nothing lives, not hope, not viruses, nothing, nothing, turning, spinning, the universe now controlled by this new axis, a new center, in the caged heart of this machine new universes one by one, born and expelled, like seconds on a clock, appearing almost nonexistently and then gone forever, 10 unremembered, unknown. The master ceases the pollution production of the factory cold to the world, yet with burning innards, to inject the fuel of industry, of time compression, into the delicate sore spot, unhealable from the bruises and scars left from its enslaved sufferings. To fight the pain she grumbles, spits fire, spins ruthlessly over animals, plants, stones, children’s toys. She accepts credit for, but no responsibility for her retaliation against the suffering she endures. Her master presses on, uncaring, unfeeling, unmoved by small obstacles, and

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unaware of the destruction brought by the pressing, racing, spinning, grinding of the caged metal abyss in the heart of a factory of death, spitting poison, noxious nausea, suffocating life left to die behind the master, rushing to be in another place, missing the moment, 20 killing it so quickly and easily it never existed, like the squirrel running from the wood to fuse with hot, roasting tar — the place everything dies, the war with nature begins with tar and continues with the master’s quick acceleration into space, erasing memory, flushing life and questions into burning certainty, cold dead consequences, finding holes, unhealing passageways and pushing hard, splitting the world into past and future, dichotomizing a continuity meant to exist as fluid, a fluid the master half freezes and shatters into billions of worlds, half burns scattering dust and steam into a chaos of death and sadness. The master is unforgiving, uncaring, desiring forceful conquest of fragility. The slave of the master’s kicking, hammering, forcing, fights the hell she is made to burn in her chest. She rejects all things forced into her, poisoning pure air, blackening earth’s soup, igniting the fire 30 water forced into the bruised, scarred tunnel leading to a hollowed, purged stomach where life is impossible. A world of dark, cold, asphyxiating fumes to fuel the fiery, churning, irreversible world of racing, grinding, spitting, determined to cut through nature, ignoring balance, knowing only the impaling line to the ever-moving point of destination, the point of cool down, of death to the death machine, the waiting and rueful anticipation of the master’s spearing into the hurt place, unhealing, unwanting. To die only to be reborn into a rebellion against life. A terminal machine.

19970616

Skatepark Logic denied The war against nature against the body, pressing, kicking, grinding against metal, concrete, pavement Gravity the master, Newton the unforgiving enforcer “You fool, you are in my playground where bones are fragile cracking things and ﬂesh is laughable, splitting, peeling 10 as paper on a gift, tearing and ripping at it to expose the innards.” (Yet, that’s the perk of youth.) 19970617

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Naked Void

This is the unlife unemployed unprovoked untempted ignoring the challenges I usually set for myself I lie here doing nothing hardly eating hardly sleeping My mind has returned to the child’s mind 10 I once had when I’d smash through branches left dead on pine I’ve almost ceased to exist ceasing to think ceasing to learn making meaningless motions Staring through my pen splitting it in two I stare through everything before me I lose myself in a vacuum of space as vision goes blank 20 as sound silences as sensations numb I no longer understand what goes on about me I become more confused about my inner workings I only know life’s in me by this steady inner disturbance Seeming to disappear I feel my body invisible and spaceless holding the unsense as it passes through objects in my rented cube Empty Time now makes great leaps 30 No longer moving the smooth liquid continuum Dissolving into my bed sheets dripping life’s ﬂuid I no longer will for anything I haven’t the strength to raise myself to eat the dry bread and water from the night that became this morning before my body gave in to the gravity of heat exhaustion

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People said there was greatness for me graduating summa cum and doing everyone proud Here I am as I know myself 40 the air of disappointment weighing heavily on me as I waste myself in space’s deception I focus on nothing My eyes no longer look a resting eyed stare looking at objects which are invisible even to me I find pleasure in nothing I play games that have turned hollow I go through motions unchallenged or uninvolved I masturbate just to get to sleep some nights 50 as casually and uncaring as taking another bite of the dry bread and washing it down with warm water Desire is other people’s disease But I would lie if I said it wasn’t mine too I don’t think I even write this poem I lie here and it seems to happen It happens the same way razors cut the cables of children lying alone in bathtubs running water I desire passively 60 as this paper desires ink I desire But I discard all these things I discard the world Trapped in what seems simultaneously infinite and infinitesimal I hide in my hyperdimensional bathysphere where I’m untouchable unreachable unknowable 70 I hide out of apathy I hide out of confusion I hide out of lack of language The objects in my multispacial cage define a language without meaning

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one that’s untestable undefinable in the inworld so I stay out from inadequacy I suppose I’ve misunderstood living all my life I’ve misunderstood cars and television sets 80 beaches and cigars I will never be a part of this world I have tried I’ve read recommended books and studied prescribed knowledge but these things pass through me as pollen in heavy winds undirected unabsorbed unused I can barely write this poem 90 these simple words allude me and I can hear the echoes from language’s laughter as the child who does not speak I do not use words in my thinking only shapes, colors and sounds appear there in the spacious conscious It makes behaving easy My mouth never shoots off except when possessed by persistent sound then one or two of the parts vocalize themselves 100 I sometimes make noise for the feeling of resonance my throat head and chest in steady synchronization with the wavering string in my throat I think now I have gone too far I am lost in the mindlessness I no longer understand what thoughts are I disappear fighting nothing slowly slipping giving in to the gravity of the naked void 110 With my pen here something in me dies it dies

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And what was once me is now left with empty pages

19970621

(with music)

Walking stepping left right left right running skipping left left right right I come up on my tree my favorite tree and soon I’m peering oﬀ from the top

The / puﬀ-puﬀ of the / wind tugged me / forth and back and forth / till a / splintering crack / was / heard all around /

on my / last pass / over the / top of this tree / 10 looking down I / want to pick / up all the / small things

but before I could the tree whipped hard and snapped me from its ﬂimsy branches sending me high into the sky

19970623

Thin black lesion

The pine’s new growth in the spring, like fingers flicking-off the makers of the road, dividing entire populations of trees and life. They have great reason to curse us every year and they have the greatest strength in the springtime to do it.

19970624

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199707 — 199709

Water / Slowness

(to nina˜ music) slowness, slowness whole absorption of water and life absorption, absorption in the slowness, slowness speed defers to time absorbed into living completely.

Sound in this time’s absolute the other senses submit 10 the water falling falling, fall spinning spiral thunder lull

splashing through a forest snaking through the trees gliding barefoot over rocks covering all the six directions

20 walking softly, wu wei erh wu pu wei

being wu [do run down] wei

19970703

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bits

What a dry, cold and detached life the life of the suit on the road, cell phone, beeper large yellow tie with small detailed blue spots the man become machine ...

words were intricate sounds absent from meaning the articulations were admired but misunderstood

May you never die till I shoot you. 10 And that’s the wishes of a dear friend.

A lamp

when ﬁlling a lamp one must choose the pure oil and then pour the oil carefully so as not to overﬂow the funnel.

Secret eyes, secret searching we are the last that touches a man in most heart seat of the aﬀections the coins on the eyes the skull turns to powder 20 I am come to pay you another visit I don’t want your custom at all come out and live in the graveyard courting death

19970711

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I am a gentle person

I am a gentle person I live above a family with two children: a boy of eight, a girl of ten, and a couple who do well for the children providing a good common life. Often I’m speaking with the kids, or, more likely, playing frisbee, ball, checkers, or sometimes writing poetry with them. Those are common days 10 Today is a day of another sort Today as I drive, I’m looking out over the dashboard from under my eyelids My face points at my knees as my eyes stare into the blurred pavement ﬁve meters before me and I go blind in that spot. I’m barely aware of the cars and people in the peripherals Today I shut the world out with a personal 20 noise in my ear, like a stampede of wild boar or like having my head out the window of the car moving at 80. I hyperfocus into a vortex of anger, unable to escape, not knowing what to do once there I do not have enough evil in me to facilitate the anger that now ﬂows in me Overloading for moments at a time and then recovering I yank my car from the opposite lane or speed up to give room to the quickly approaching semi 30 But I’m mostly frustrated about having an overwhelming amount of anger Everywhere I look I imagine small holes from a .44 or 9mm; I put them in signs, in car doors, in the foreheads of drivers who look at me. I hate all things and know nothing of the children who live below me.

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19970716

If I became my emotions at this moment

If I became my emotions at this moment I would go blind, smell of a toxic death bubble and foam in a black lurching mass of apathetic loneliness and angry sadness

Writhing here I project this hatred of myself into images of violence and destruction to everyone who comes into the sphere of my vision and everything untrue to itself

I don’t know why I’m still here 10 the venomous acid burns the gravel on which I suﬀer yet, I don’t descend deep into the rock to be crushed and forgotten

I have no idea why I stay in this world there is no world for me I have diﬃculty pretending to be happy or enjoying what trivial things I’m involved in

I can’t even write a fucking poem all of words are drab winings of someone with unexplained anger and sadness 20 this does not make a poem without language

I’m just one of those people destined for suicide, this seems right. I’m too weak. I wear a frown so long my jaw hurts damn me, not the world.

19970805

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How can I be feared?

How can I be feared? I am gentle, gentle only my mother is more. No one fears my mother This fear comes not from me. Yet I know it is connected to me I am bad? No, no I cannot be that 10 I am good as water in matters of this sort The anger remains hidden in that dark place in that lonely place when I am out This fear is in her I overwhelm her shy lady who cowers in the arms of fear who protects her 20 I am not afraid I understand too well and am not fooled by excuses of unﬁnished projects or the cries of fatigue. I understand I do not press what will only bring agitation I do not question when the answers are there 30 I accept, I understand and the suﬀering endures I am alone without fear.

19970809

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Where does the stream of conscious lie

Where does the stream of conscious lie in relation to its hidden, driving counterpart Above the depth of the unconscious is our knee-deep playground of thought

Imagine the news coverage of the world as consciousness and the activity of the world — every water drop, every beetle, bird, spider, leaf, person, the movements in every acre — the unconscious

... 10 19970810

A tear forms

A tear forms in the outside corner of my right eye. I know it’s there from the coldness brought to my skin from its evaporation. What a little tickle it brings my cheeks, but I don’t smile yet. Instead I continue looking about the room, aware of the small pain in my chin from this heavy frown that comes from deep inside me. I take a deep breath and arc by body so that only my shoulders and feet are touching the bed and peer at the clock across the room through my near-sightedness and play my game. 10:29 it reads. The 1 and 0 make 0, the : and 9 make 0, and 2 is 5. A game I don’t remember the origin of, but know it is one of the dozens of counting modulo 8 games I play. Do you play games too? 10 My eyes make their way to two objects resting on the open hard wood floor. A wooden boomerang lies, back up. I imagine it as a small leather booty with the toe stained red from kicking a drunkard’s face in; that’s its handle. The white, scruffy frisbee from playing in parking lots covers half of the ends of two adjacent wooden planks in the floor. I don’t want to play a game with the wood but my eyes flutter about, counting the boards of wood, not quitting, working systematically around the room despite my inner cry to stop, that this game is useless, that it makes no odds, that I’d be better off if my bowels loudly passed some pressure on in place of my games, or, no, if I pricked hairs from my arms for every second of this compulsive game playing. I quit suddenly, feeling the anger begin to flow in me, a raging, fiery stream beginning in 20 my chest and branching into my arms. I push myself from my bed, landing and taking up the boomerang in one motion. With my other hand I take the frisbee as I leap up towards the bright window. Piercing the two panes of glass, the boomerang crashes to my car

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below. “You are now without a master.” I hear the loud reverberations of my uncontrolled yelling about my hollow room. The frisbee hits the framed portrait of myself but is not thrown back.

19970810

How sweet the sweets of sin are

How sweet the sweets of sin are. Yet, be mindful of the temptation for expectation, for there lies a sour fruit heavy with ﬂies and larvae.

Mindfully, gently, silently he fingered shreds of hair her maiden hair her mermaid’s, beaming a chilled fire red (a reflection of passions withheld?) her stomach smooth and warm like polished sunned marble on a late summer’s afternoon

19970812

There are billions of bodies

There are billions of bodies but this one he’s holding Now, not wanting to release but to share with, something

Yet, in her there’s fear not yet known or explained So though together for time disturbingly dormant they remain

She’s unsure of her hands 10 delicately reﬂecting thought She knows what happens this day but lacks what is sought

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His thoughts are raindrops once on earth, then heaven Till on earth returneth thusly falling with frustration

Uncertainty lies with everything but the ﬁnal resting destiny Time answers possibility 20 now, mights; then, be.

Still arm under head and thoughts under breath Hold the woman he’d have and hold until death

He holds her gently there letting futures beginneth Together both sleepeth inside he weepeth

19970812

Each thing in the universe

Each thing in the universe has a reality which is just as real as everything else in the universe. If I am on a road for the first time in a place quite different from my home, and I am driving through quickly, as if to deny the place from my time, then its reality to me is quite absent or like a tunnel with walls not worth studying because of the focused end. If on bicycle, pumping through with the light wind I create, this street becomes a place of quick and jumping thoughts. None lasting long enough to make a nickel’s worth - yet here at least an inspiration for thought, a cry for further investigation - but not necessarily for an emancipation from being ordinary — for all things are ordinary in the eyes of a universe 10 such as ours. We are all made from star stuff. It’s all equal. 30 ... walking ... living ...

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dead ...

19970814 20 A woman outdoors walks

A woman outdoors walks along with her young son who has taken to walking but still enjoys sprawling on the ground. The mother encourages him with a gentle tug on the arm, lifting him to his feet and they carry on. He points at everything which occurs to him that might be of some importance. The mother takes an interest the way mothers do, looking in the direction of the free and pointing arm, smiling at her son.

19970814

A deep exhale as I fall

A deep exhale as I fall to my seat launches my brown napkin aloof and fluttering down off the table, as an oak tree’s last leaves. Laughing a silent windful laugh at this sends my blank pages rustling. I bend awkwardly after my napkin, snatching it up between my index and middle fingers, and take an unbalanced seat on a used wooden chair. The words I will weave into these here pages are nothing but doodlings. The grand production will come later, bound to become soon archived in a brown box in my basement, but it will come. As water from clouds, what I release into history will be from the caverns most true to my purest nature. 10 In the coffee house where I now rest my legs, with a slow tingle each time repositioned, I see a table chess board through the entry door glass reflecting table lights and undisturbed chairs.

19970814

I can’t stand public vehicles

I can’t stand public vehicles always so obvious screaming to the world

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“I’m here, I’m important, I’m vital, without me you could not live!” Lights that cut through the ether harsher and more absolute than screeching sirens 10 more empty than a popular life it’s a city in Nature porn in love oil on a fish a gun in a hand a missile in space and underground hemlock in wine popular culture in private life Yet we live in a time of 20 the face, the image and if there were ever a use for such a substance lacking device it would be to popularize those who are substance lacking But I have neglected words of the glories of goodness given by the men and women who save our self-endangered population. The intention of the act 30 conflicts with itself the inherent goodness of health and safety fatigued from the pull for an elevated esteem sucks the marrow. It is a lampshade which cannot illuminate itself and so surrounds, but dampens, the pure flowing light we are careless, dangerous, fragile 40 animals who need janitors Someones to clean up the injuries

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we set the traps for

19970814

Why is it that

Why is it that each time the madness begins to set in I begin to smile a mischievous smile, a smile of absence. My head tilts itself 10 with quick jerks and without control it swings from side to side, then bangs itself against the wall where I lean.

19970815

Rudyard Kipling wrote

Rudyard Kipling wrote in ‘When Earth’s Last Picture’, “and those that were good shall be happy: they shall sit in a golden chair; they shall splash at a ten-league canvas with brushes of comets’ hair.” When? I am goodness made ﬂesh. Yet I am so sad and angry and miserable. I hope for so many good things in the world, for the right reasons, for a common Aristotelian goodness. My happiness is as an eye’s blink during a ﬁlm. The eye stares strait on until it dries a little, then the painful itch, and before the clouds come — a blink — just enough to make the itch go away. But it will return, and the eye is still irritated. 10 19970815

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A Room Not My Own

When I graduated from College I moved back in with my parents. Well, they were not both my parents. They were my father and step-mother. My father, who decided that I was mature enough to do as I wanted, or who had begun to understand my ways, or had acquired a respect for the things I did knowing that they meant a great deal to me, supported my choices by not ﬁghting me and sometimes helping out. Priscilla, my stepmom decided early on that I was not to her liking. I was to her a lazy do nothing who could not keep his room clean or his bathroom towels folded. She believed I did not care for my own dear grandparents by saying on their last day in my home town, “Well, I know 10 you didn’t go over there much.”

19970826

I’m 22 but I’m older than you

I’m 22 but I’m older than you because nobody ever dictated my dreams I make them all by myself, like a big boy. I turned you on the other day, just like that, just to see if you’d learned anything, but you haven’t. You’ve got older, you’ve brought the money home, you’ve stayed nice and warm in your little life. I only had to do that . . . and you jumped! 10 Apart from that, you work hard and cook well.

Do you hate me? “No,” you’d answer. Then I haven’t been of any use to you!

19970827

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He wondered why

He wondered why he could not talk to the family about his work. At first, when he was younger it was not possible, for he didn’t understand it much himself. But now, what was there to say? They had asked, it was true, and when ever they asked, whether the questions were sincere or not he had answered elliptically, turned the offer into an ironic joke. Why? He knew that he did want to confide in the family. Now they were asking. Why had he rejected the chance? He felt that he was close to understanding, then something intervened like a shade drawn down. After all, they could not possibly care about knot theory, topology, nonlinear dynamics, or about Joyce, Kofka, Robert Bly or 10 Stephen Jesse Bernstein. Nothing of this would make sense in this situation. They might listen, but it would be a strain. No. “No,” he thought as he peered into his glass, “there is almost nothing I can say to them. My life is cut in half. The halves remain side by side in perfect equilibrium, like halves of a melon. I suppose the same is true of most men, or are they somehow unlike me? Are they able to share themselves?” The question was familiar, he had asked it many times. “I know very little about other men,” he thought, “although I go through life assuming that I do. I know only myself. But I do believe I know myself — what I am, as well as what I am not. I think I know, even if I may not know exactly what I may like to be. In any case, whatever I may feel, or think, or see, or believe is a consequence of my own sensibility, not that of some other man. I believe what I believe, 20 and I have not yet believed a single thing only because it was believed by others, nor do I intend to. I can be grateful for this at least, that I have kept myself. I have not once dressed up in a costume. There may be stronger consolations, but not many. Be that as it may, I can not live differently than I do. Whatever the reasons for this, good or bad, exist. Evidently that is enough. So, early tomorrow, I must get up again to do what I have done today. I will get up early to do this. And tomorrow, and tomorrow, and tomorrow — and there is nothing to discuss.”

19970829

I stared strait through

I stare strait through and past my shaking, trembling knee, into the illusioning mind trap. I do not breath. My sensations dissipate cleanly in deference to the intensity of terrorizing misery. My left hand crushes my right ﬁst so that joints separate. I scream silence — stark and absolute.

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19970829

One Second Too Long

Empty film cases lined the walls, each having its respective cassette in a rental case just behind it. I headed down the far wall to where the foreign films took two sections, each on one side of the corner of the large room. There were mirrored pillars, and televisions playing an continuous advertisement video put out by the company of which this was a branch store. I didn’t know right away what I wanted, I only knew I wanted a peaceful escape tonight. I was in no hurry. I browsed the cassette jackets of films I thought I would like to see sometime soon and remembered how I felt about films before me that I had already seen. 10 I’m a bit sad today. My dark blue dress shoes could use a buffing, the pants I wear of the same color have begun to wear and the fabric textures like small cotton balls where my left leg rubs the steering wheel when I need my hands to eat or write on my clipboard in the car. My tie hangs undone down each side of my short sleeve shirt, the skinny end nearly covering both the pen and mechanical pencil in my breast pocket. I’m sad because I must go against my philosophy that looks count for little and do something with this hair of mine, which reminds me at times of Beethoven or Einstein. I’m sad because nobody loves me this way. Tonight I think I should resolve to shave it short like a terrier. I’m then distracted again by the French words I never remember, ‘Tous les Matins du Monde,’ ‘All the Mornings in the World,’ and think of my great friend and teacher Tony who has been 20 the reference/serials librarian at the college for two years now. Peaceful escape. I put my hand on a cassette that does not jump out at me. In fact, I grabbed it when reading a neighboring case. I then saw ‘Le Petit Amour’ when I became aware of my grasp. Some silly film about a woman in her forties loving a teen who’s favorite game is ‘Kung Fu Master.’ This is good, just the thing. I take the cassette with my other hand and return the case to its spot on the shelf. I take one step back and glancing over the shelf blankly, satisfied with my choice, I turn to my left and head down the long aisle. A young woman stands with a stack of films leaning against her stomach in one hand. With her other hand she replaces the films here and there as she finds their cases. She 30 sees me from half the distance of the aisle, and as I walk towards her, our eyes meet and do not part. Rather, it seems as though we stare into each other’s souls. There is the first second of general, curious observation. The second of satiating familiarity follows. This is where it should end, each of us acting cool, in our north-eastern way, as though we each have everything we want and was simply noticing the other so as not to walk into the other. But the glance did not break. It lived a third second, a second of depth, the

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second that could change the course of time and space, to give birth to entire multiverses of possibility. A universe seems to materialize and vanish between us. A second, one second too long for safety, too long for two people who had everything they wanted. Just as it is the last feet of flight that makes a hit a home run, and the last yard of distance 40 that makes a touchdown, here the last second, the second that passed as a day, took two people prepared for a shielded approach and reflection off the other and shattered and scattered all protection so that there were just two bodies with eyes staring into eyes as though there was no distance at all, a profound intimacy and then the break. The break like a cut in a line of rope you find yourself swinging from to fall an unknown distance to an unknown fate. A break for an instant before, “Find everything you were looking for?” in a tone suggesting more than the question — slight bewilderment, slight familiarity, an anticipation. I bring my head up, fighting shyness, a dangerous invisible battle, and reply. “Why couldn’t we stay here together and talk, enjoying each other, embracing the embrace of the third second, everything that was in there, bringing whole worlds together, bigger 50 than this world, folding and stretching, be?” This I say to her in my words, “Yes, thank you.” My eyes grasp hers once more and I am forced to release her only by the momentum of our passing bodies. I close my eyes and slow my pace. I am remembering, I tingle for a second, the second that it takes for a world to collapse flat without distinctions. The clap of the film case on the counter is cold and absolute and I think of an old friend far off.

19970902

Waiting for the laugh track

I make my motions, waiting for the laugh track. Waiting for the laugh track as though that were the panacea, the nectar of American life, the pith of an empty body. I’m not on TV and don’t need to be the petty jester, let pity fester for there is nothing funny here. These things have ceased to be funny. There is no laugh track. A thin ambiance of droll drone evaporates spectacles through a cloud of absence to a land of recorded mirth, a place funny without jokes, hilarious without situation. I am no longer laughing.

19970910 10 The thick air is swallowed

The thick air is swallowed up by the frantic screams of a neighbor’s child, the six o’clock

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bells of the church, and the persistent grinding song of the mating crickets. My ears follow the bells in different directions, get lost, recover, find each other and settle on the small child’s desperate cries, cries to a world apart from this one, cries to a world it deserves, not this polluted crust of nature’s persistent recovery from a billion selfish, uncaring devils all working simultaneously toward their own ends dying off one at a time but bringing into the world twice their own sin. The bells stop at the sixth and lingering stroke, and the child gives in to the rattling 10 crickets and finds sleep under blankets, his only pathetic protection. The persistent buzzing rattles the trees and ferns, all life becomes a sequence of discrete steps — a dichotomy of starts and stops, growing longer and longer so that the instant is held like a wine glass up to the lips of a drunkard child too far gone to know the red liquid covers his white dress shirt and tie. The glass crashes to the floor, millions of tiny venomous fragments scattering into a hostile corner of pacifiers and baby blankets — there is no protection here — rising, he stumbles to the empty window, glass crunching under his meager weight, and opens it with one arm, the other too tired from masturbation. It falls swiftly and shuts in a hard SLAM sending a spider’s web of cracks through it. Raising it again he regards his blood wet feet and falls forward through the frame, the window 20 grasping his knees in his faint leap hanging him like a limp doll that not even the birds investigate. The orchestra of humming crickets envelope the boy and the window and the cheap wine and send it with the child’s screaming to a world better than this one.

19970919

The phone lies dormant

The phone lies dormant its antenna retracted its buttons cold from isolation face up like a dead roach stiff and hard My palm presses to my forehead the oil softening my fingers Dipping my head I roll my hand about my head, fingering the short 10 bristles of hair from the corner of my one open eye I study the steady vibrations of

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red juice in a clear glass resting on the table a foot from my elbow my heart is moving the juice this small bit of sweet juice a chemist’s creation preservable for decades This juice moves with my heart 20 The juice moves The phone absolute in its stillness moves me — to desperate fatigue to anger, to the common room of loneliness I consider the juice I drink the juice it moves in me it is part of me The glass now rests with the thin ﬁlm two lines converging where my lips rested 30 In the bottom a small red circle like a bullet wound, a clean entry yet with a most undeniably horriﬁc exit The juice splatters I reach for the phone but I’m too scared to touch it My arm freezes My heart no longer moves The phone rests

19970920

5 seconds with Becca

I grasp with my own, her eyes soft deep eyes in the Warm shadows of a curved brim of a worn cap. I could look into them forever a heated delight knowing A most pure goodness lies

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just beyond our matched gaze here. As she looks at me, something 10 passes from her to me, Like the life mother passes to child or the heat from a body to blankets A heat nearly fevering and intoxicating, my eyes grow dizzy and useless. Behind her the room glows dimly, the low wattage bulb humming A constant hum that is indistinguishable from silence. My heart beats. I feel 20 it starts in my chest And the pressure splashes about my face and limbs. She begins to open her mouth preparing a word that is Living in the foreground of her consciousness. My mind, shuttering, takes up every conversation And tries to find what 30 she’ll say. I search desperately. Her lips part slightly, making a circle like a lazy kiss, And draw forward where they crinkle and become white. The eyes open and the brows pucker in the center The place my brows connect like two nocturnal oceans But on her this is 40 smooth flawless flesh. My heart beats again and I feel it in my shoes Laced too tightly and worn too long this night. Her breath leaves her

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and I take her two words, “Would you. . . ” and wait for a predicted ending but only receive “. . . no.” A word not punctuated, 50 barely articulated. I notice the seconds change on my watch and see how we’re into the next day. We’re both tired and sleep beckons with dark gravity I make a personal noise in my ear and scream into it echoes How I’d like nothing more now than to take this woman to bed with me Carry her an intense maiden 60 in simple beauty to the enfolds Sharing a warm spot I’d take sleep, sleep glorious as sun’s rise A moment that quickly passes but is eternal in memory. I let my eyes blink and in the moment when there’s nothing I weep that though we are here now it might never be again like this.

19970923

Cards to Jenn Lorrie Brown

70 1. Splashes of yellow and orange washed over my conscious dreaming. You raised your head, smiling from under flowing hair a disappointed smile, then laughed openly. I floated from your passenger seat, up through the roof, to a place behind. Your car lit up and dashed ahead, and I confirmed to myself it was you by the white and jagged green plate. My heart jumped. I cried.

19970927 10

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We are reaching an end to mystery.

We are reaching an end to mystery. With millions of insects classified, a name for every possible reason, rational or irrational, a person or animal would do something, and everything else neatly bound in libraries and basements across the expanse of the world, there’s not much more to explore. I was in Bennington, Vermont, visiting my mother and my friend Becca there. Becca’s lived in the neighboring towns of North Bennington and Shaftsbury all her life. She picked me up at my mom’s one Saturday afternoon in late September. She brought me to her dad’s work to see the biggest tree in Vermont; not the biggest tall, but the biggest round. On the way there she was explaining to me, “They’ve 10 seen every tree in the state. Pretty soon there’ll be nothing left.” We got on the subject when we passed one of the oldest places in Old Bennington. “This place was preserved until they starting messing with it. It was adulterated so much as to not be worth preserving any more, so they got permission to dig there — Dinosaur Bones, I wouldn’t want to be digging up dirt that hasn’t been exposed to the sun or air in 20,000 years.” “You’d have to have a strong will,” I added. Becca continued, “I wouldn’t want to dig, though I’d like to watch.” “A voyeur on the end of mystery,” I thought. The tree was big. The area around the tree had been cleared of smaller trees and large brush. Only small plants surrounded its great trunk. I felt I was gazing upon Yggdrasil, the world ash tree, because its trunk divides into three distinct sections before branching fur- 20 ther. As I was considering its circumference she answered the unspoken question; “We’ve gotten six people around it with outstretched arms holding hands.” After visiting with the tree for several minutes, Becca noticed an awful cosmetic en- hancement to the tree. Twelve meters above us were three cords, each cord connecting two of the three sections. “Now it’s not dignified,” Becca cursed. I agreed, studying the cords then looking at my feet. Two days later, thinking about this tree I disagreed. The tree itself was dignified. Until recently it had stood strong against gravity and weather. It was man who decided claiming responsibility for this ancient tree would be for the best. Man was ignominious, his naivete and selfish short-sightedness left this tree looking crippled and desperate. The truth might be that it’s dying, that it’s too weak now to support its own 30 massive limbs, that its roots are busy with insects. But it is presumptuous for people to lend a hand, costumed as God’s or Nature’s hand to help the old soul.

19970929

Nothing softens a man’s heart so much as a woman weeping. Nothing softens a man’s heart so much as a woman weeping.

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199710 — 199712

Leaf-Peepers on Parade

Leaf-peepers on parade tromp, tromp, click, click Southern cars at B&Bs dollars, dollars, ching-ching Foreign people gratulating back streets marveling at dying trees Colors the fornication foliage the ejaculation While the setting sun a 10 female insect murdering the male Taking from his, the life she gives refusing him so he’ll want her More than life that’s given nothing, nothing but these crude spectators Interested not in the life but, rather, in the killing knife Not stabbed in, but withdrawn - masochist’s sickle of frustration. Leaf-peepers peeping poop 20 left, right, up, down, Click, ching, ﬁll’er up 40 miles to Vermont from The intersection of 101 and 202 Our Town, New Hampshire Half way to, in Keene stop to get a cup of Chinese ginseng tea to sharpen those photo ﬁngers I sit here simply putting 30 the woman’s face in my Eye’s blind spot but this fails to erase her fake courtesy Dropping 20s as the

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oak leaﬁng life away Counting on Ginseng and colors to solve her mysterious miseries Try going home, talking to your kids turn oﬀ the television and live Put down the date book 40 you miss any moment you plan for And all the time planning misses you — falling leaves, indeed! Like a supernova booming away dying away heroically So you avoid the important qualities sheepish ignorance, running looking For any part of you you never had seeing death and thinking it is life Watching misery and thinking glory 50 take your city-eyes out from Under those hundred-dollar shades mirrored on both sides And look away, away from the conveyer belt Of city life and memos spinning a downward spiral.

19971011

Story Plot

1. Man who says nothing. Does everything he’s told, wants nothing from life. Each day he talks to different friends who each tell him something different about finding women, jobs, happiness, etc., and he does what each says, without thought, without ambition. Each following day he meets a man or woman who critiques him on his dress, manners, etc., that he acquired from the advice of the previous day. These snippets are given as monologues from the point-of-views of the other people. He simply takes it all in as a recorder robot, doing as he’s told, responding to the world as a servant wanting to please. 2. However, the real story is this. A young actor out of work is working in a clothing 10 store dressing mannequins, and he talks to them as he’s dressing them. (actors understand this behavior, we normal folk do too, it’s called madness.) When ladies are shopping the

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next day they see the mannequin and he, the mannequin, imagines what the ladies are thinking about him. He, the mannequin, eventually gets put on an outside display, a dog pisses on him, and a group of young boys push him over and run, taking his arm. All scratched up, he is put in the dumpster, a pigeon craps on him and he is compacted and forgotten. 3. The story will be illustrative of corporation’s say in public affairs. (People wear as Nike says, and foreigners drink Coke, the real thing, over water, Nature’s real thing.) Start- ing in contemporary conservative dress, we’ll be sent back to the 1920’s or so, whenever 20 dress and attitudes began to be largely influenced by companies, promotion of actors and actresses, floods, transportation, everything. Each step will be a jump forward to a next semi-generational changing step. As business changes, the public pool it influences grows and becomes more obedient. Adherence to norms or counter-norms only by the companies they exclusively purchase from. Our hero travels in discrete steps through the decades, not aging, not learning, not seeing, until he finds himself (suddenly with conscious?) in the early 2000s, tattooed, pierced, bruised (artistic bruise patterns will be ‘in’ by then) and cut, earring expensive and logoed rags of polymer plastics shaped too tight for him, and in a stream of conscious monologue, he dies, too skinny but too fat for fashion, in stylish clothes but behind the times, 30 and mostly confused like tuna being clubbed on a pier. 19981011

1. “Pheromones?! Shite, mate. It’s not your bloody odor them ladies are smellin’. It’s your B-fold. They can smell a Franklin from across the room, and, yeah!, probably the fact that you hadn’t showered today, too! Listen, you worry yourself a bit too much with thinking of the old in-out that you flash your cards and people don’t want in with ya. When there’s a game to play, the rules are what you go by. You can go by like inspiration and all that rot, but please be decent. You’re not gonna get a lass by flashing and waving your full monty about like a noise maker, though you’ll get more than enough attention. What 40 you want is something stylish. Something saying, ‘I got what you need,’ but not in a dirty way. Ladies like a guy with class, and the kind you’re showing they saw in eighth grade. I mean look at ya, you barely fit into those jeans there and I’m seein’ stomach hair through the holes in your rock ’n roll T-shirt. “O.K. What you want is a white shirt, with a collar and cuffs, and a tie, but not something with spots like a CEO, and not something with puppy dogs or anything cuz it will look like you got kids and an old lady. Can’t lose with a black tie, black shoes; patten leather’d be just the thing, with light slacks, or dark if you’re wearing a jacket, a sports coat or something — nothing with a seal or emblem on it either. Comb your hair back with mousse and shave that scruff. If you can’t be in society, at least you can put on the airs of

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50 society.” Character types - 60 lawyer/politician hippie (communal) — late 60s British punk poor immigrant European traveler (Victorian — rich) Maﬁa higher-up factory worker young (14y) letter/package courier 60 philosophic university student

19981011

These people come in not knowing

These people come in not knowing what comes over these youth of Gothic get-up, piercings and laughs like witches on opium The khaki and loafer crowd see nothing from under their eyelids Eyes rolled back to a childhood of ice-cream and toy trains He never became that astronaut 10 she never was that towered princess and they will never see dynamics beyond their checkbooks and dinner parties Here’s a couple drooling over each other their hands, ﬁlthy groping things, dismantling the other of dignity speeding blood to those dirty places Click, Bang! That’s the door helplessly issuing restless customers consumers blindly, helplessly buying 20 what the market dictates to them a man smiles down to me I return it complete with exit wounds

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the limp smile falling like gloomy pocket change to the ﬂoor, ching-ching

19971011

Slow and shy melancholy washes

Slow and shy melancholy washes in short bursts, splashing delicately and deliberately under me, against the shore I’m miles from. The sand soft to feet but stubborn grinding cruelty to a fallen one, saturated with life’s liquid then moist, opens wide to embrace her mother’s 10 fallen unprotected child. The air lashes against me in thin smarting smacks makes me think of licorice and ice cream — peppermint.

... 19971018

Sincerity dropped face down

Sincerity dropped face down like a child’s doll held by one leg loosely gripped, hand bumped and the doll trampled, stampeded, overrun somewhere at the crosshairs of Main’s intersection with West to be scattered and forgotten. Why is it that truth suﬀers 10 and the face glowing translucent,

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stick my hand through it, curse, stomp the ground so a stinging pain shoots from earth’s center to my neck where I cringe, a tear, a shiver and I preserve the face by wiping my eye and steadying myself, distributing weight away from the truth, the pain, other’s expectations and bring on a good happy-faced boy hollow, empty, betraying himself and the whole world. 20 Life is not this surface, where the dung of parasites spoils the ﬂesh into decay, it is the inner substance keeping what’s true through expulsion of vile waste to the surface to be forgotten and reused.

19971018

I give my shade a quick jerk

I give my shade a quick jerk, standing on my chair, naked, save yesterday’s underwear, to let the morning sun’s light in, but it lengthens two invisible clicks and fails to retract, only making it darker. I try again, but this time with my other hand, reaching out tugging on it expecting it to give 10 and spin up in an artful introduction, but again my room grows darker, a heavy gray which makes my ﬁngers indistinguishable from the ﬂoor or walls. I stand on the chair, feeling my way, tugging the sides in to look out but it’s now blindingly dark outside except for a lower window in the adjacent house. A dim glow spills softly from a now visible boundary between window-frame and shade

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20 pulsating unevenly as though from a television. As I struggle in a cold room enveloped in darkness, just as all of nature outside me, light funnels in from a television, from a television — a television! The world prays for light — and television, in a delighted face, bestows, dumbly offering everything desired to those not worried about their own or nature’s darkness. I give another tug and my chair gives 30 from under me and I’m on the floor groping, hoping to find something to burn, something to give life’s heat and light. My foot catches on a power cord. I follow it to the wall’s outlet plug it in and in a burst of black and white warring, scattering specks, I submit dumbly, deafly, blindly to a light numbing and comforting, my anger pacified by this personal distraction 40 I slowly decompose in a chair not meant for sitting in and forget the darkness, forget the cold, forget all of nature, forget my self, forget how long it’s been. I don’t feel or smell my own urination my own defecation I’m drowning in, diseased I no longer exist before my personal ministry of truth — does two and two make five? What did it tell me on the tele? Beautiful people, evil always triumphs, 50 wars, children, buy, buy, buy send your money, tune in, laugh, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, HA! Hypnotized into a void, feeling nothing, no cold in my body, no stench, no more light, the world compressed makes no room for me, now a passive victim who can’t complain

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because I’ve gotten everything I wanted.

19971018

There are many people seen

There are many people seen, what makes me think that my presence in the busy landscape is of any signiﬁcance? For practical purposes, my obstacle is only seen to be physically avoided. “Can’t go that way, I’ll bump into that wiry thing. Such a fragile thing here, 10 more so in the dark.” Thoughts touch and go and I remain still as a spying crocodile. Attempting camouﬂage by existence but failing though lack of style.

19971021

Heart-whole

Always, sincerity — unpainted, unadulterated, unbetrayed — is most important. There is nothing that can alter this in my mind.

19971021

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In a terriﬁc moment of depravity

In a terrific moment of depravity, as a vacuum tube punctured, it rushed in — in the time it would be most real, when least sheltered, when hyper-dimensionally inside about; she appeared, white, absolute, confident, sincere. I suppose it’s simply something 10 of a burst of naivete, but it’s impossible to tell. “Inspired?” she tosses at me whimsically. “No, simply maintaining the internal monologue.” But I was — I was! Constantly reworking the past to find wit where I could have been, but I’m a fake. 20 She knows and spells Africa with a ‘k’ and I pretend I’m writing a novel. Hell, my poetry is no more than formatted diary entries on free floating loose leaf paper written by a nervous hand, worried someone will read, but feeling as though I’m writing to someone . . . someone — anyone. 30 I know her name has seven letters, two syllables and that I suddenly become aware of every motion when she is near. Naivete or truth? Is it the horrid face or the substance?

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I know beauty alone leaves me impotent I know my face is scarred 40 and will be until I’m recycled. Resonance with others is the measure of substance independent from ﬁgure.

On Seeing Heather Wright 19971022

Vanessa

Vanessa kept moving her legs, together, then crossed right over left, then crossed about left over right. She had been shifting like this for twenty minutes due to her thin sneakers and having not worn stockings under her pants. She and her young companion Jesse sat at a small table by the window of the crowded tea and coffee cafe on main’s south side. Jesse was not shifting because she was cold from the window and the door which swung open and shut with the steady stream of customers, slapping their arms on their sides and stomachs and passing cheerful remarks about an unusually chilled afternoon. She was uncomfortable in her woolen coat which she had over a short-sleeved blouse. Her arms 10 itched horribly but Vanessa had promised Jesse’s mother that she’d be firm about Jesse’s keeping her coat on in such cold weather. Jesse pleaded with Vanessa: “But I’m itchy. Mother wouldn’t want me to scratch my skin off. Oh, please, Vanessa. I won’t tell mother.” Ten minutes passed and their hopes that Jack would meet the two of them there were waning. Jesse, having tired of itching and complaining, moved her attention to folding and unfolding a brown paper napkin. Vanessa was growing impatient and had all but given up hope when Jack, a sturdy boy one year her superior, tromped into the cafe turning his head, his eyes darting about the room like spotlights on figure skaters. Jesse sprung from her chair in an explosion of suppressed energy and ferreted her way through the tight 20 crowd toward him. In one motion Jack focused on her excited face and snatched her up into his arms. She waved back at Vanessa, who was at the same time relieved to see him and angry at him for his being tardy. Taking a seat with Jesse on his lap, he addressed his patient friend: “I see we’re both early. Have you taken tea?” “Early?! Early for tomorrow, maybe. You’re a full thirty-five minutes behind the hour, and if we’re to catch the film we’ll be in a trot the full distance to the theater.”

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Jack was expecting this. He had often been behind schedule. He never put enough time ahead of him to do what needed be done. Part of this was due to his overestimated ability in efficiency, and the other part to his poor memory. He had been teased by his friends 30 that he could only remember the things he was currently engaged in. To this he both took offense and took seriously. If he was to be an academic in later life his memory would have to improve. But in the current situation his companion had been the one to forget and this small fact he held as a dimple in his smiling face. He was thinking quickly of how to use this rare gem. He was fighting the temptation to embrace her, to make her feel small and apologetic. He knew he would feel good to be right but also reasoned that admitting such would only highlight his being forgetful and late so many times in the past. Jesse pulled away and dropped off his knees to the floor where she hopped up and down, singing a playground song into her clasped hands so that Vanessa and Jack could barely make out the melody. 40 Jack looked at Vanessa’s chin and watched as it wrinkled and relaxed. “I’m sorry, I took the extra hour to sleep this morning before doing my chores. Weren’t we to meet at five?” She was taken at this, and grew frustrated. Opening her mouth in retort she sighed heavily as her eyes followed his arm down to his wrist where his watch reported 4:38 in a gray liquid crystal display. “Have you checked your watch today? You have clearly lost this one without even leaving the gates.” He smiled plainly. “Today is daylight savings, and I’m having tea. Will you join me?” 50 Jesse fancied this idea, for she was hungry and hoped she would get a slice of apple pie from under the glass enclosed counter. She offended her mother once by reporting how the pie at the cafe was so tall with slices of real apples and ground cinnamon. It was nothing like the thin soggy pie she made every year for Jesse’s Father’s birthday. Jesse had told her she should get the recipe and not use hers any longer. “Pie and tea, pie and tea,” Jesse sang. Vanessa flushed crimson and remembered, ‘spring ahead, fall back.’ How she’d like to fall back, right into her coffin and buried. She grabbed his hand tightly: “You brat! I hate you for this! Sitting here an hour early for you.” She even remembered trying to count the bell tolls but Jesse, with her incessant singing 60 and hopping distracted her. She was breaking a smile now, and he offered tea and brownies. Vanessa chuckled an o.k. and Jesse reminded Jack to get a slice of Pie for her. He rose from his seat to get in line, and glancing back, he made faces at Vanessa to cheer her. He had to make two trips with the tea, and Jesse excitedly took her pie and fork from the counter and nearly dropped it when a man backed into her. He braved the other obstacles

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and leaped into the chair, the pie plate hitting the table with a loud clink, the fork rattling onto the table into Vanessa’s quick and ready hand. Jack borrowed an empty chair from a table occupied by a young German army man, who smiled at him, winked and said something politely in German covered in a thick accent. Making a clever pun he took his cold seat, which surprised him a little and made him shake off the flush of goose-pimples like 70 a wet dog. He wanted to take her hand as she did his earlier, like an animal, but he didn’t want Jesse to make any comments to Vanessa’s parents tonight. He enjoyed when Vanessa baby-sat Jesse, but today he was disappointed that he would not have her all to himself. He wanted to put his hand on her knee under the table, and to sneak a kiss to her cheek to surprise her. But he made light joking conversation instead to entertain Jesse, who understood his clever jokes and would giggle and cover her face with her hands. Vanessa tried to follow Jesse and Jack’s joking but got lost by some of the logical contradictions and so felt stupid here and there. She was glad they didn’t notice her occasional blank expressions as she busied herself with the warm chocolate brownie when she felt uncomfortable. Jesse nearly fell from her chair with laughter, and Vanessa suggested that she work on 80 her pie, that she might need the whole extra hour to finish the large helping. Vanessa smiled at Jack, and he took her eyes as if he would never look away. She bit her bottom lip and kicked him playfully under the table. He tried to catch her leg with his but the pole interfered with his right leg and shook the table. Jesse asked them to quit it, trying to kick them both and nearly falling from her chair again. Jesse had finished with her pie and started again pulling at her sleeves. Vanessa, who was tired of sitting suggested they go, and Jack jumped up and helped her with her chair as Jesse bolted for the door, bumping into a woman and pushing at the door that opens in. Vanessa jumped when Jack squeezed her sides and he played innocent when the other customers looked at his chirping friend. 90 Along the stone path the wind stung right through their clothes. Jesse didn’t mind, it helped remedy her itching sleeves. She went on singing and dancing in zigzags across the path. Jack wished Jesse would dance clear out of view so he could warm himself against the newly blossoming Vanessa. He would dream often at night about holding her, her soft chest against his like two pillows and how special that place was becoming. He started to get hard thinking about it, but the cold scrotum tightening wind made him shiver and he flexed his buttocks. Vanessa felt herself grow hard and in embarrassment folded her arms over her chest. The way to the theater took them down Jacob lane, walled on both sides by stone, under the footbridge connecting Isling Court and Mason Road, and into the employee parking 100 lot of the local grocers’. Jesse ducked and hid among the several late-model cars and Jack took to ducking under them to try to sneak up and scare his little playmate. Through the lot, past the barber, and onto Key Road brought them into a clearing where they could

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see the theater signs above the chocolate shop. Jesse made an awful fuss about wanting to go to the chocolate shop to get some peanut butter fudge arguing that she had her own money. But Vanessa insisted the pie and tea were enough for tonight and that they needed to get tickets for the ﬁlm. Jesse stopped and stood kicking with her foot for a moment, then hurried ahead taking up another game. ...

110 19971025

The manipulative mutilation of consumerism I’m thinking of something that is all around us. . . -Air? -the sky! No, this controls each of our lives. . . -Gravity? -our parents? No, parents mean well, this gives to get. . . -Sarah, when she pushes me on the swing? 10 -the sun? No, the sun wants nothing. This is green and full of ﬁngers. . . -A lizard? -a G.I. Joe Man? Close. This is ruthless and will do anything to get more. . . -A shark? -Cookie Monster? He would share. . . -The guy on T.V.? -the psychic network? Certainly both good examples. 20 This would take of people unconditionally. . . -Vampires? -a taxi? Well. . . -God? No, but he’s certainly been in the business the longest. . . 19971027

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Today I am using my day to regroup

Today I am using my day to regroup, to interrogate every part of my life and ask the question, “Do you matter? Do you matter enough for me to keep you, or do I sell you, throw you away and extinguish your haunting memory?” I have kept so many things, at a great price, and my spirit has grown poor; Kept things because they evoke an emotion - 10 some an emotion which is not a pleasant one. Today I sever myself from many of these things; I sell or trade these memories for space - for space on my shelves, under my bed, space in my mind, which is so cluttered. And, I discover through this process that life is deeper than these things; and it is this depth, amid memories and ellipses, which is a likely centre for art.

19971029

Men are such fools.

Men are such fools. Not because they act it, but because they know when they are acting it and continue, as though the petty amusements of women were some absolut-tion, and carry on as foolish devils, witless and without pride.

19971030

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When I court my gravest fears

When I court my gravest fears, I fool myself. Acting the hero, I push back a dense cloak of protection which blinds me commondays. Laughing hysterically inside I imagine Hollywood and all those invincibles Braving death in multiples because they are not controlling their destinies. I seek an understanding of the means - 10 why does my body tremble with music, But mockingly I sidestep physicals, implements of pain and their masters? Is it that my life is false? That I’m in fortune’s favor? That, in all that surrounds me, my searching eyes can’t expose the neglected essence which, without, depth knows no existence. When beneath the towered room 20 of the hallowed havoc, standing in its great shadow stretching in every direction, I recognize my safety. It is above, enclosed, exposing only those parts nimble enough to peek and scowl. How can I ﬁnd fear in such protected situations?

19971030 + 19980202

This whole life is temporary.

This whole life is temporary. Everything we say we can’t do without is obsolete and becomes naustalgic.

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Nothing is irreplaceable by time.

19971031

In the morning

In the morning, before my feet hit the cold wooden ﬂoor, before I lose the pacifying inner heat, before. . . I admire my inner upper arm, soft and smooth as a woman’s, from night’s oil and sweat. I think in that moment I both need a woman most and satisfy my desire for her.

19971031

A large pasty-faced man

A large pasty-faced man in a cubs baseball cap and blue jeans enters, swinging his gray eyes from side to side, as though to chase other eyes away.

19971031

Tonight, as a course of circumstance

Tonight, as a course of circumstance, I happened upon my Alma Mater, where the nausea of nostalgia resonated with the havoc deep within.

I became the predator with numb unexpecting prey all about me. So many times I wanted to exercise the blade, but I resisted to save staining my coat.

My feelings vaguely remind me of an 10 attachment I once had to this place, now cold, detached and empty, the mush and sadness bring injury to memory.

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I grow assensitive and move mechanically, yet see a trying pain in others. With each movement, ﬁghting an internal, eternal friction and resistance of bone and withering muscle.

Fibrous and noxious, bodies decay in seconds, larvae spilling out replacing these pastiche pedestrians, who disguise the animal with 20 al la carte Cartesian camouﬂage —

Rectilinear cosmetic distinction imitating origami folds and mocking Nature in one foul swoop, powdering, lotioning and spritzing odours of exotic hamster urine.

I feel the havoc spin though me severing over-stimulated nerves anesthetically. I prescribe increased potencies as sensation uncontrollably wanes away.

But needing what I don’t want 30 castrates me from the world leaving the solitary, unsatiated glands to dry, shrivel and toughen insolubly —

A pit which rebels ﬁrst on all sides unconsciously dismissing its entrapment, then the havoc focuses the energy and forces a tunneled escape — liberation —

External and apart from crowded sensation and making the fruit easier for another to take. Blind and absent of everything but a center 40 I’m a shriveled homogeneous kerneled solution space.

Invincible and crystallinely fragile, synchronously — nothing harms the useless treasure — I am relocated, displaced, misplaced and forgotten by the only one keeping check.

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The loss of heat is imperceivable — the depreciation of will is unavoidable— the self-injected depravity is unconscionable. A center with the center extracted leaves

a hollow perimeter, void of dimension, 50 leaving nowhere to come from, nowhere to go to. Resigned, I resolve no longer to escape this.

The havoc forces a forfeit, ripping at me pan-dimensionally; I can’t see or predict it. Its comings and goings are as

varied and uncontrollable as an electron’s path. I calculate probable routes of attack but never account for the actualities, 60 ignoring reality now as it mocks me.

... 19971113

I notice my hands completing repeated

I notice my hands completing repeated motions, over and over, like a parakeet pacing forth and back on her perch, chirping nervously. I shouldn’t be nervous, I shouldn’t repeat actions, I should shoot sharply and precisely, doing once what only needs once doing. But the fevered nerves ﬁre within. I repeat 10 I repeat I repeat I repeat thoughts, my hand motions zigzag across the page, wanting the ink to ﬂow but stuttering before mounting the page,

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dropping and lifting and sweating and thinking.

19971114

Minding the means

If I ﬁght the page, carving deeply and quickly, abrasively slicing the ﬁbers, the paper doesn’t respond.

It already knows this sort of treatment. It remembers its history more accurately than the history we record on its surface.

When the pen slides slowly 10 soft and sleepily silent the paper is still and accepts the ink like folding the hair

of a sleeping child in your hand, carefully minding his disposition so his dreams are safe tickles and he sleeps still.

19971116

The Janitor

This is my third day working here. This is the driest and coldest place I’ve ever worked. The bank has tried three other services, I’m the forth. Each night I walk back and forth across the lobby with a vacuum pack on my back, like wearing a loud and vibrating suit- case, and wield a hose that snatches up all the receipts and clumps of dust that live and collect in corners each day. There’s no fooling about I can do here, for no matter where I am, I move into the vision of a diﬀerent camera with each step. At the grocer’s it’s much easier because I don’t have to carry this wimpy vacuum, I use their push vacuum which

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only takes 2 passes per aisle, and I can dance a little as I’m pushing because nobody can 10 see me from behind those highly stocked shelves. But here I can do nothing but the plain job. Sometime, in front of all those cameras, I’d like to dance and sing a bit, maybe a strip-tease, and let all those suits know a janitor can be more than a cleaner.

19971116

“The stakes may just be too high at a coﬀee house.”

The first thing I let myself become aware of is the cold at the soles of my feet. It is plain, and I feel the draw of heat at the ball and heel from each foot in proportion to the pressure of my foot on the ice-covered pavement. My throat protects itself from the harsh, ripping cold, but it makes me spit. I seep from between two tall buildings onto Main St., a four-laned shopping area divided by a narrow island of grass and young trees. There are many cars parked on either side of the street but all is vacant. I look left before turning right, and see no life, just one car coming from the south, which soon turns before the post office and the street is again left dark. 10 I stride by the theater and its large open entrance which is gray and echoes. I whistle a short burst to hear its sharp return, then a thin fading note behind it; the intonated sound of water at a shore, or of a thought. Above, there is the old theater’s sign hanging over the sidewalk with lights on top and bottom of each side. Each bulb counts to itself, “On, off, off. On, off, off,” so that a steady stream of light trickles from each side, converging at the outermost corner. On one side, an advertisement reads, “The Nutcracker,” and on the other, a G & S Operetta’s advertised. The Major General’s song comes to my mind and I’m reminded of all the mathematics I’ve done - and all for what? I have a hard enough time trying to justify my existence without trying to account for small parts of it. Gilbert is so clever! I wonder if the Major General is the same lad who served a term as office 20 boy to an attorney’s firm. Next is the great window of the coffee shop, and the handle of the big front door. I climb the painted steps carefully (metal, water, sneaker soles), and take survey of the crowd before touching the door. If there are no tables for me to take for myself, I won’t go in. I do not come here for the tea. I will pace Main Street for a while, with my cold feet until the shop clears a bit, or I will take to the pub for a Guinness. At least I can always find a seat at the pub, but it’s so noisy and when there’s music, the jukebox vomits the same 70’s rock to an untiring crowd, dull and pleased not to be at work or at home. Each of them disquises something with those tall glasses. But the coffee house is quiet. There is a couple sitting in a corner, intent on looking at their cups and hands on the glass tabletops. They each continue to wear knit hats though

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30 their coats hang stiffly from the back of their chairs. The young man is slouched over a small cup of black coffee while his older companion straightens her back and looks down over her glowing cheekbones. He’s struggling for something to say, tapping with his finger the rhythm from the music playing smoothly throughout the room, wishing his fingers could speak. Several small and round, glass-top tables fill the floor of the coffee bar. A dense-blue cushioned couch rests across from the counter. A young woman lounges there alone, reading a thin novella. There is a hutch, with teas and coffees lining the shelves, and a large bookshelf, mostly occupied by political texts and large, glass jars of beans. In the back is a U-shaped booth with a tiled table. Above, a painting of soft colors appears to me 40 to be some abstract map of roads in a desert, or the thoughts of a waterfall. Green stencils line the walls, and branches hang in a fanned array from the wall above the couch. A pair of wooden skis with cracked leather straps hang crossed like lazy legs between two strips of green paint, like pillars dropping from the ceiling, and dividing the flat white like trenches. “The fire moths counting cold the snow, soft and silent, lay” Jazz from vibes and a soft woman’s voice ripples through me and following the sound makes finding my usual table slow to a crawl. The young woman across the counter reaches for the tea box on the high shelf when she sees me. She knows my usual and drops 50 a bag of English Breakfast in a steaming cup of water on a white saucer. Hot black cup, dry white saucer, and a dollar, drop fifteen cents in the ‘good karma’ cup and dip the bag, dip the bag, dip the bag and study the photographs. 20 “A child remembering then falling back ‘purrr,’ the snow compresses to his head” The sugar like digitalized silk, and honey (translucently analog) with a spurt of milk, stretching and folding in a Smale mapped avant-garde ballet — this is my tea. Starting sterile and protective, I inject sweet mother’s life spreading this tea open, resigning passively and opaquely. I fire straight for the heavy German army coat I slung over the shapely wooden chair, 60 the right sleeve reaching for the small shoulder bag on the floor. I take my seat, turn up my collar to cover the scars on my neck from youth’s acne and to keep my closely shaven head warm. I want to take the booth so I can sit back and rest my neck, but I am one person, alone. I consider a woman, soft and strong, sliding in across from me. I look up from my page and she looks into me. “To be alone but so close to bear you near and bare” How perfect that voice is. It would be my companion’s voice if I let it, if I imagined

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it. But I don’t indulge the temptation of self-pity. I take my chair and look out over the tables. My friend Gerry says the stakes are too high at a coffee house. He and his wife, 70 Ruth, were arriving as I was, one night, and he invited me for coffee. We took the booth, a space many share, and Ruth started, “So, are you married?” I laughed openly, the idea so far from probability — and said so. Gerry suggested some bars and restaurants that had lower stakes than the coffee house — so philosophic, so cultured. I was wondering why people had to meet in a place of consumption. Why didn’t people fly kites and meet in the park, or on the bike path. But every time I had developed something to say, they had gone on talking, and so as a matter of my mind’s slowness, I became an audience rather than a participant. They rose to leave and Ruth made a joke about her coat not fitting over her six-month stomach. I smiled and waved, almost apologetically for my slowness. I watch a young woman and a foreign soccer player enter. She speaks loudly and shrilly 80 and he listens but does not seem to understand her uneven aria. [add more details here] I consider the stakes. I was once a mathematician, one who’d consider flighty probabilities. But this one was quite from my reach. I attempted some Gausian and Reimann stuff but ended up with some wack-shit I couldn’t figure out. On this page slashed with sigmas and epsilons I fill the empty places with windows, like that of Dali’s “Young Virgin Auto-Sodomized by her Own Chastity, 1954.” Knots and impossible figures float in the sky outside the window, or hang on the wall — or the floor — it becomes difficult to tell. But, I scribble over this. A young woman would never meet me in an art’s-improbable cafe. And a probable woman would clearly see the unsatiated searching in the window, 90 and phony decorations on the floor — no, the wall. “I see stars and waterfalls and wait till everything” A tall woman, all ablaze in orange and yellows, takes a seat, back to me, with her notebooks and coffee. This is a common occurrence — art a la estrogen to constantly wash against my conscious longings. “Did an angle speak?” I think. I pass some wind, thin and fragrant. “Where ever you be, let your wind go free,” Joyce wrote. Indeed, that is one of the most indulgent and least mentioned of human processes which brings both comfort and music. If life were a series of natural processes only, what a comfortable and gratifying life we’d live. All natural acts 100 are good. It is when we stray from these that discomfort comes, where the pain begins and infects. When we work against Nature, against the body, warring bodies, we torture ourselves, often imperceptibly, so that a numbness blinds us to the constant and insistent suffering. “Then you sleep.” I sit and read for a long time. I keep my glasses off so my eyes don’t work so hard

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on the page, but I miss the subtle movements about me. Occasionally, between tastes of tea, I replace my specks for a quick snapshot of the room. In a continuous dynamic I take discrete glimpses to keep an idea of my safety and company. The colors change outside the book, in the corner of my left eye. An autumn glow 110 rises like a crashing wave against a cliff. I place down my book and reach for my glasses, while following this bright sweater up to a face which asks me, “Why do you wear this German shirt?” I place my glasses on my nose, and the features of a tall German woman are distinguished. I lie to her. Her ears support a pair of thick black half-moon glasses. I speak to them how I’d like to learn German and that these clothes act as my constant reminder. I don’t tell her that despite my hate for war, these army fatigues are a feeble connection to the Germany of Mozart, Brahms, Beethoven, Bach, Kafka, Wittgenstein, and my ancestral Erhardts. America is so blah! So nothing. The epitome of image, our history is the face, our culture is the face. America is lacking almost completely in substance and it sickens me — so big, so numb, so much open space for emptiness — then 120 we fill it with malls, condensed existence. She tells me she’s a student here from Berlin studying dance therapy on scholarship at a local college, an offering Germany lacks, apparently. Spinning and gliding, I dance slowly, and look into the eyes of this foreigner. I watch her thinking in the language of the umlaut and smile. Then I begin in the language of the shape and sound, I open my mouth but my thoughts are not language and I am silent. I lose the opportunity and she leaves, crossing the street and starting her car. I lose the, “Won’t you have a seat?,” the, “How beautiful you are (in German).” I lose all these things which now exist in a branching space-time, impossible to see the other branches from here. ... 130

19971116

Happiness is no good for writing

Happiness is no good for writing because naivete’s presence is overwhelming. To be up in spirits and maintain literature is something I don’t know yet.

19971118

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This same bed with me

“Listen,” I said to her, as she lie on the cold ﬂoor, concealed between two blankets. “You shouldn’t be on the ﬂoor. I want you in here, on this bed, this same bed with me. You don’t have to freeze. We don’t have to look at each other, inches from nose to nose, smelling the other’s breath. We don’t have to get that serious look, then a pause, a realization, a hesitation — then a kiss, a kiss greater than all others, like the big bang with all the stars to follow, because it led to everything else.” I paused. She looked at me, chasing ideas but I heard no response. “You can sleep here without sinning. . . ” I rubbed my cold feet together under the blankets, rolled over and thought of another way to have her with me, 10 warming the same sheets.

19971120 [Becca Mahar]

A Small Road in New Hampshire

I live in New Hampshire. There are people all over the country who say there is no place more beautiful than New England. Its surface ripples and rolls like the soft two- dimensional analog of space-time in a busy galaxy. I’m often delighted by the contours here, for it helps to discourage its disfigurement. There are many interesting, solitary, and beautiful places to enjoy in New Hampshire. The poets have written many volumes on these characteristics. Friends of mine, Gerald and Ruth, have recently acquired a home on the fringes of a busy town. In New Hampshire, this town is defined as a small city, but it would be a 10 pathetic pimple if inserted into some of the large cities in the states. This house is actually a home. Real wooden slats covered in heavy coats of white brave the weather, a porch off the kitchen welcomes the summer morning’s sun to its visitors, rocking in wooden chairs, squeakily and unevenly on the slightly warped planks. There is an obvious personal history in this place. It is one of the good places in New Hampshire, and its owners augment and exemplify this. Their denying realization and horrification that their home’s earth would soon become a life-resistant stretch of pavement occurred at a small town meeting. To ease the predicted traffic density in the coming years, a road joining two small highways funneling into the city would be created. This bypass would accommodate the traffic now coming to the 20 city from one highway to get to the other. More and more people will be trying to get somewhere, and these needs must be met. I’ve lived in southern New Hampshire all my life. It lacks many of the earthy qualities which are plentiful in the north and fame in Vermont. Yet it insists essence against

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development’s dozer. The south has had a tougher time of it than the north. The north’s surface flaunts a higher fractal dimension than the smoother south. The south is easier to rectilinearize, easier to modernize. It makes creating ways of getting from and to this place and that easier. This is in tune with society’s progressive push to user-friendliness and simplistic mass-accessibility. The ordained doctrine reads something like a preamble or Aristotelian definition. We, in the name of progress, are to provide a quick and pain- 30 less journey, full of fun and spectacle, and allow everyone admission, at a reasonable fee, calling the destination authentic. A disturbing analogy occurs if the landscape’s development were education’s. Allow a bachelor’s degree the name of master’s and short of a master’s, a doctorate. Laxate on re- quirements so the destination is easily earned. Education, which once was Frost’s path, has been cleared, paved, polychotomized into nonconflicting frictionless tracks, hard-wired for success. The travelers wear Walkmans or earplugs, for healthy silent meditation, and run, staring only forward, down the tunnel of desire. This short road would be a redundancy of a smaller road less than a mile east. It takes with it this home, the center of a wetland, and the tree-bordering continuity, easing the 40 navigation about this once quite land. The journey simplification is trivializing the destination. The calculated limit of our construction habits — destruction its necessary dual — creates an image I first had when I was a young boy. I imagined a smooth sphere, without obstacle or distinction. I could travel in a straight line along its surface to get anywhere I wanted. Yet, after imaginarily traveling for some time I realized that the course I took to get to where I was going would pass through the destination of others. What if I had to go just beyond where I was going now? My current destination would be in the way. But by the structure of this world, my current destination would be part of the smooth route to my new destination. There is no place to go — providing a place for irony. Places obstruct passage to places, and since there is always some 50 place between places, an optimized route necessitates replacing the obstructing place with a passage. Therefore, the world’s surface becomes the maximized passage, with no destination, Reductio ad Absurdum. Humanity has extracted essence in progress’ existential replacement in remarkably puzzlingly inadequate levels. Progress’ name now defines this small road as a painful necessity. But I challenge, a necessity for who? I know an acceptable answer is that this road helps satisfy the dry equation which provides the horrifying overpopulation estimate. Are there people this benefits in greater qualities to those it selfishly afflicts, not to mention the tired phrase, environmental impact? Is there an actual planned process of development which minimizes short-term impact, yet maximizes long-term? Is this road part of that? Do we have the right to maximize and 60 minimize nature? I wish I could provoke a decidedly negative response to my article. I wish I didn’t have to feel or write these things. I am made sad by an attempt to satisfy.

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19971124

Every man wants the freaky girl

Every man wants the freaky girl, the one who is beauty by defying society’s conventional ideals - the one who scars herself to show where the true self is - the one who quickly ﬁlters the men who would want to use her. They want her though her jokes are lame, laughs half-hidden 10 and manners hyperesthetic - wit is speckled as a clear night, interests invented to intrigue - pain evades exposure under so many layers of shirts and hair colors. “Knock, Knock?” “Who’s there?” “Banana” “Banana who?” “Knock, Knock?” “Who’s there?” “Banana” “Banana who?” “Knock, Knock?” “Who’s there?” 20 “Orange” “Orange who?” “Orange you glad I didn’t say Banana?” “Orange you getting tired of pretending?” “I pretend less than anyone in a suit. I pretend less than stoners, less than parents, less than the deitized Hollywood and pop culture. I have fought this whole pounding world to become my own person, my own image of myself — not the images corporations attach to the Americans around us. What began as a game, as a rebellion with everything in mind, becomes a serious history, one I created. I didn’t imagine it, I didn’t read about it, the media didn’t inject me with it. I have invented myself. . . ”

19971215

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You have come to a coﬀee house

You have come to a coﬀee house, you can’t take it with you. That small bit of chocolate cake you enjoyed without completion, leave the end of it here on the plate. Lay your fork next to it and indulge in the satisfaction of consuming all that pleases you and no more.

19971215

Recommendation for Gerald Burns, my friend and mentor.

December 21, 1997 Dear Professor Douglas Ley: I am writing this letter to let you know that Professor Gerald Burns has a profoundly good impact on my life. He is a man who I can not ignore, knowing who he is; and knowing that he knows me is a great comfort. I am driving home from school one night, where I had enjoyed a game of Go with a friend. While on route 12 I pass a telephone pole with two red reflectors and remark to my companion, “I know three people on this earth to who’s likeness I hope to emulate as 10 I mature; one of them lives beyond those reflectors.” “Your father doesn’t live there,” my friend jests. “True, I have reached the stage of perpetual rebellion. No, there lives a friend, a teacher and a mentor in life, Gerald Burns.” It was not until my senior year that I had a class with Professor Burns; it was Senior Liberal Arts Seminar in the summer. Though I remember many good experiences from this class, most noteworthy is the manner in which the class was conducted. Gerry guides the discussions from topic to topic fluidly, choosing the path and allowing the students to flow the distance. Yet, these are not the first memories which come to mind when I think of Gerry. As snow lay outside his Crestview window, the campus silently recessing, he sits upright 20 in his chair looking over some papers I was preparing — poetry, or an important paper. He spends much of the breaks in his office, improving upon his classes and incidentally making himself available for students who are stranded at the college. Gerry has not once turned me away in the three years I have known him. He was always available when I had questions or wanted advise about anything. I have come to his office when life was the question, and he has embraced my presence with patience, respect and sincerity. Gerry is a model for me of what is good, what is humane and what is beautiful. In the time I have known him, he has been to me what a life can be. There are many lessons I have yet to learn from him, and fortune has it that he and I live close to one another. I expect to play softball with him again this summer, where he shows that one’s age controls

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30 one in inverse proportion to one’s self upkeep. He is my example of a man who is clearly alive in his middle years; he is not stuck and fighting in a job to secure a retirement, but is continually living. As my senior year was closing up at Pierce, I remember thinking that many faculty on campus know who I am but know nothing of me. It would be grand to close my career with them by sharing a bit of myself. I hoped to do this in the Baccalaureate speech (chosen for this honor was a colleague, Bonnie Webster). I wrote a speech over several nights which, in the end, was threaded with hinting arrogance in outdated language. I brought this to Gerry for his criticism which he was obliged to give. I heard back from Gerry the following day. He was both concerned that it would not 40 reach my audience and that it was not sincerely from me. Gerry wanted me to stand before my peers, not as a cold academic, but as the warm person he knew me to be. This first speech I should put aside, he suggested, and go to the Cathedral of the Pines where the ceremony would be held. There my new speech would come to me. He was absolutely right. If I had given my first speech I would have seemed cold and heartless, a skeptic belittling my generation. I put that speech aside and drove to the Cathedral in the rain. After a couple hours alone in the cold and rainy woods, I retreated to my car. There I filled page after page with a summarized stream of conscious I brought back from the rocks, trees and water. My car windows steamed from my wet clothes. I took a couple of 50 days to revise my new speech and set it in Gerry’s hand. I had known my first speech was doomed, but I was afraid to let it go. It was a manifes- tation of a thin part of me which I did not want to betray. Gerry is one of a few people who could have given me permission to try again with the goal of incorporating my essence, which the first lacked. I now realize, because Gerry knew my character and understood parts of my essence, that he had me write the second speech in the prescribed manner because by not doing so I would have ultimately and unforgivably betrayed those qualities I hold most valuable. I was deeply touched that he cared to do this for me. Gerry is one of four men in my life who know me beyond my shell. Whether this does him any good is hard to say, but it certainly helps me. For the times I had questions and 60 needs and could think of visiting only him with them, Gerry has been invaluable. His wit and lessons have been valuable and often come at a time when most needed. Approaching manhood slowly and surely, I have tried to miss very little with naive assumptions and expectations — or more substantially — skip whole sections like childhood and love. But I do not want to move so slowly as to miss it either. There are others like me in this regard. My relationship with Gerry has been an excellent barometer, letting me know I am OK and that my goodness, like his, is genuine. He sees deep enough into me to know when I am serious or troubled.

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Gerry is a great man who deserves the best of everything, for that is what he gives. Each quality he earns is an investment in our faculty, students, and alumni like me. 70 Sincerely,

Erik B. Erhardt, 1997

19971221

I asked her because she was an English major

I asked her because she was an English major. This is quite a leap, but I made it and didn’t care to justify that. Because of her major she was able to experience, moderated or actualized, a wider range of life than others. Because the major should be more about language as a means of communication between people than a set of symbols and a grammar, it should therefore be a domain of experience. And with the access this major affords to experience, I trust the answer. “What do I get parents who need no more things for Christmas?,” I pose. “Um. . . a gift basket with things that they like to eat in it — things that you can only get 10 around here. That’s what a friend of mine did. She got a bag of coffee and Vermont maple syrup, stuff like that. Gift certificates are good. Tony Clamato’s or Martino’s are really nice, even if you can’t read the menu at Tony’s. . . I don’t know.” And with this I knew I had what it takes in experience to get what needed to be gotten for the folks.

30 19971222

How the men watch you

How the men watch you, as dullards at a television or a blind child at fireworks. They remain entertained by your every motion, by every sound you make — clinking cups and saucers into the washer or the whipping frothing of the foam. One dumb bullock sits with his hands dead at his sides, a magazine flopped heavily in his lap as though just receiving a bullet to the temple but not realizing it yet. His face, thick and gray, pasty and unfinished, rests in a black sweater; from there his body is formless, becoming part of the couch. The thick black mass at top crops his scull so that only the dull eyes, expressionless as concrete, are noticed, set in their clay-like weather-proofing. From his waist, the forearm,

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10 like a stilt, raises to support his falling forehead. He grasps the hanging locks and pulls forward. He pulls so his hair straightens its full length, then a bit more, a bit more so his other hand rises to grasp the growing extensity. Right arm, left arm, accelerating like a mate at a shipyard landing a ship, tying it at dock. These thin strands cover his lap like cables and begin to roll at his feet, folding over themselves, rolling on the floor. Washing like waves to the left and to the right in tide with his arms, it flows. The mound grows slowly, and his arms are no longer seen, just a rhythm of a machine turning and lurching. No one notices. Then he’s gone. But I swear I saw something. As I was looking at the young men at their chess game, I though I saw the darkness collapse, as the sand in an hour glass, until 20 the silken mass was sucked down completely into the couch folds, the cushions fluttering slightly and letting off a sour yellow gas. An older woman passed with a hot espresso and the steam neutralized the yellow stench, silently suppressed. She sat down, looked about, searchingly. Stopping, she took the magazine from the couch and flipped through, back to front.

19971216 —scribbled in the back pages of Nikolai Gogol’s The Diary of a Madman.

Extract still those useful parts from the trash

Extract still those useful parts from the trash saturate Goodwill’s furniture offering with hippie soil — beer, mud, smoke, ash - and spend as pocket change your time in red lights and shadows. Music cuts through still, but it’s tiring and presses on as though there were no resistance, no fatigue — frictionless. I deny my spending time here. 10 My brother and I have been up hours, on trains above and below and walking the streets of New York’s Manhattan. A pipe goes around and around like a potato — flicker, puff, pass. The law fights it but it doesn’t touch me and I’m just concerned for my return. These are tired moments of lust and existence, but are those the same?

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19971228 : 3am

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1998

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199801 — 199803

I take pleasure in the meaningless poem

I take pleasure in the meaningless poem. It is my temporary happiness that brings meaninglessness — like that of admiring stars or butterﬂies. It’s the dreamy boy who resurfaces in these, and that’s not so bad.

20 19980113

Right through you

“Hey! Hell-lo. . . ? Yeah, you. You stare a lot.” “Right through your existence — past your goatee, baggy jeans and fleece vest. If you dusted away now, as a sand pillar in a desert storm, you would be worth the same. If you put your wallet away and your silly assumptions, your ego would shrink and your life would end. If I raise my eyes to where you are it is because I’m disgusted by the arrogance and vengeance a belligerent fucker like yourself holds by his teeth, unable to speak without letting them down, but unable to work without biting down on them, freeing the hands for your periodic rape of the world. Rogue, you are better than me because you are a doer, 10 and when you die your soft fragrant body will be an easier rot. You are so precious; if I could move my legs I’d rise, kiss your neck and smash your balls so you tear and fight the pain for breath. You’d lose both ears, not one like an artist, and that thin hissing tongue I’d split as a true snake’s. I know you are yelling back at me, but I can’t stop talking. No one hears me anyway, though the eyes crowd in around my corner where the floor is cold and dirty against my stomach, and reeks of vomit. Sod off, rogue! Bolshy yar blockos!”

19980113

[Continuation of Stakes are too high?]

The only woman in the coﬀee house tonight is the one behind the counter. With hard movements, meant to complete tasks but lacking in elegance, clean cups are stacked on the steel Rancilio cappuccino machine, dirty ones stacked in the washer, nick-knacks organized, and service given to the six men sitting at separate tables all facing towards the door. The women who come here are of three types — with other women, with boyfriends, with

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work to be done undisturbed. This is a helpless place for me and the other men. I might be the most pathetic of them. Every night I get here before eight and stay until ten. I come here to write — I’m no writer! The poet who could have lived within me was stillborn and 10 my shell is a fragile hollow, centered in an empty place. There are men here occasionally who get the attention. They sit quietly reading novels I would never read, in expensive shaped coats and leather shoes. Their hair is dark, short, and styled and they smell of expensive fragrance. I enjoy watching the women eye these men because I understand they are moved by the same pettiness which so moves a man. These movements I have lost. The effect and affect have left me. The absence of lust for an abused and punishing victimization and betrayal makes me stronger. No one needs another disappointment. Our lives are driven by the expectations we and others manifest. If I continue to expect nothing, and nothing comes, the contented cow milks my tea. So long as my tea is sweet 20 and warm and soft I can sit and watch these other singles sitting, silently watching the door for life. A young woman enters, a friend of the cashier’s, and speaks quickly without interrupting the rhythm of her mouth, chewing and folding and snapping her gum. If a person could evoke less interest from me, that person I could at least find tolerable. ...

19980115

In a dream, I killed men

In a dream, I killed men. I killed them deliberately, and mechanically, aiming for the head to conserve ammunition. They shouldn’t’ve come. They shouldn’t’ve come after my family. They should’ve left when we asked, but they began throwing things and I had to make it stop. In 10 seconds I was around the corner, in my room and ready with my pistol. Steadily I loaded the second clip then ﬁlled my large pockets with shells. Switching clips, cocking the slide and advancing, I loaded the ﬁrst clip with 9, leaving room for switching clips with one in the chamber. Turning the corner, everyone I knew was dead. The men were savage, tearing them to pieces. My world turned six colors beginning and ending in 10 red. I knocked three of them before I was discovered by the others, barking and darting towards me. I would have got them all but I became bored and, near the end of the second clip, turning the gun, I ate one.

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19980117

I sink into this

Soft and warm with aperiodic moments of absence, I sink into this. I came here tonight to do something. It starts before my toe is even in, I feel it in expectation, like a mirrored illusion, rolling, rolling back into those parts of memory I’ve forgotten. The submersion is a reversed birth, disperance into thin subtle fluid greater than the breathed one. Its energy is greater than my core’s and my temperature rises, bringing instantaneous fatigue. Giving myself to it, my jaw quivers and I fold, a saturated rag doll. I touch bottom and sit. Firm strings of porous liquid rape my back and feet, bubbles filling my clothes so my legs rise to the surface, teetering my center, sending my head under. Feels like tiles raking against 10 my hands, but grainy like plywood. I manage to get some air but its thickness is stifling and lacking an exact scent. My hand scrapes against a sharp rasping object, then my back. I can’t tell how deeply I’m cut, but my legs become numb and heavy like sandbags. Time passes. Disoriented, unaffective and covered with a thick goo, I drag myself about a meter with one arm and open my eyes. I can only see six lines of gray above me enveloped in a thick blackness which makes me useless. I scream but hear nothing, no echoes, no vibrations within me. I try to remember who I was but I remember only three notes: [on Treble clef, D] under bottom line, C] on third space, and A on second space, none of them with meter (just three dots with accidentals) and double bar] 20 I remember three notes. The six lines fade and I remember three notes — three notes. The six lines grow a bright white, then stutter into a thin red whisper. It disappears and I remember three notes, hearing them with a third ear. Three notes overlap, beyond the threshold of pain, and everything clears.

19980117

This is a good way

It reaches for me, barely short of my upper arm. I’ve trained for this moment and in dreams it seemed so effortless. But here my mind is not moving space and there are no flashes of the third perspective. I dig my foot in deep, and unlike a cybernetic, a quivering collapse takes me under. I roll to the side and draw, injecting two into its spiny flank. Swiping again it takes my foot, and I’m pulled against the gravel, spun around on my back.

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I’m alone. I jerk my head around and nothing moves, only the sound of running water is heard. I lift myself to my knees; then crouched, I stop again to listen. A pulsing sound 10 capable of petrification, like a large cat’s warning, fills the cavern. I freeze and find where the sound is echoing from — it is everywhere. I remember my training, the exercises, the briefing. It would tear me apart yet leave me alive. I would be alive and awake for a long time. Medication — the medication — in my locker at the base, too brave to bring it. I check my clip for other medication — empty. One in the chamber? I try, but miss, blowing my jaw away. A darkness swoops down on me, lifting me from under my head like a baby kitten. This, I know, is just the beginning. I drop my gun and begin to laugh, spitting blood and choking. This is a good way.

19980117 20 The reasons I.

What do I write? That which can only be of interest to me at the moment, and to those who seek to understand when I am gone.

When do I write? When I am not in me; when the fevered depression and anger evoke the havoc. When a thought disturbs me and refuses to be ignored. When death tempts me with three glowing ﬁngers, tickling only those places too hidden to touch.

Why do I write? Medication against suicide. In that light, it is for others to whom I’m important, for my life interests me only while I’m living. After, it is for the earth’s taking.

How do I write? With a black .5mm Pilot Precise Rolling Ball Extra Fine Liquid Ink pen held betwixt the three usual ﬁngers, rotating it a negative 4/3 p radians every one to six words as though it is a pencil, I write. Its cap snug on its back end with the silver clip aligned with the words provides symmetry. The center of gravity is elusive, the liquid inside working itself forth and back as a wave in a motorized distraction piece. Also sipping Twinings’ English Breakfast tea with honey and milk from a circular cup sitting on a napkin oﬀ-center of its saucer. Solitarily.

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10 Where do I write? In my mind, through the nerves pushing forward to the ﬁngers which navigate the crude device upon the white lined paper.

Who do I write? Subject to the interpretation of the reader, critic, drunky, ﬂunky, child and woman who got away.

19980118

The reasons II.

What do I write? Tripping the incestrial waterfalls, lifting those parts of stained-glass memory forward, only what I haven’t known spills and I’m covered by techo-color virtual insanities, which, ﬁltered by laws of grammar and language, sit silently in the stark dichotomy.

When do I write? Between the moments of darkness and light, hunger and satiation, sickness and birth, if the moon looks the other way and the second sun rises violet against a somber sky, anon before a crowd of none and never in the hymen of money.

Why do I write? In a crystalline sphere beyond the reaches of real people’s lives, lives a void where zero Kelvin stills even the most fragile parts of a tinkling circus show. In a side ring I chisel at my ﬁngers, chipping each into needled play toys. When I ﬁnish I must restart again with the healing ones. Without this I would be either alive or dead. Chip, chip.

How do I write? Stenciled in the stone cabinet, pure and petriﬁed, an extracted essence of how history’s interpretation by sirens blew past in a silent bathysphere, calm and cramped, stutters one familiar word.

Where do I write? Growing gargantuan, where sharpness is reduced to the mono-molecular, a bald dome supports the particles between hunger and depravity. Deep below,

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centuries from this moment, is a vacant and ignorant eye which looks within to see the third heart. Pap-pap, pap-pap, pap-pap - it sends me 10 singing. Who do I write? Kiss me? If cut from the inside out, I glow. Without the pawn, the bishop is powerless, giving crooked a crooked hand. Taste — no, stop! — slowly, taste. Plod to stodge, martyrdom - deaf not dumb. Lick, ﬁnd the tender spot and suck till, numb and bruised, a silent trickle calls with a scent of bleach or sour sweat. If one and one is two, then that must be twice this clouded heart: thick, tenebrous and tendrile. Breath, if it is sent any other way it could cry, hesitant and choking until too thin for sensation. Yes, I mean, because it often comes like this. See. — The ﬁrst tips of memory departed from our dear James Joyce must have entered me here. Come stay. 19980118

I seem to remember a number.

I seem to remember a number. Well, not so much a number as a representation of that number. There were these letters in diﬀerent languages and symbols. An impression exists within me that there was some meaning in all this, but what it was is far away and forgotten. I’d go back, but what I’d do when I got there makes me anxious. What if I’m not wanted, what if there is no space for me, what if I never belonged where I was, that would make my point now illegitimate. I want this life to be wanted, to be for better. How can a man be sure? And I don’t know that the pressure of this question is greater for man or woman, but I do know that I’m unsure of its pressure upon me. 10 It began with an e, something in me pushes that out. There was something about it being what wouldn’t be expected, something elegant and useful. It had a little of everything in it, e — the natural log, p — ratio of circumference to diameter, i — imaginary constant, multiplication, power, addition, equality, 1 and 0 — the identities. How can an equality be made of this collection of famous numbers and operations? Wait, another e, Euler — Euler’s identity. Would I go back just to solve this mystery? No. No, there is too much since then.

19980120

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A man stopped

A man stopped. The world kept going. In a large city somewhere in Germany, on the good side, a young man rushed home from the office. He spent far too much time in the office, figuring the amounts, sending the notices, collecting the dues. He pushed for the long awaited promotion and was sure he would soon get it. After the years he had invested, it would be assuring to him by this promotion that he was valued. He was sure of himself. His boss made it clear to him that a decision was close, indeed, and that it looked favorable. This was the news he was bringing home with him this night. His wife and children would be very glad to hear this news. With the expected promotion would come 10 a raise and more time to spend at home. This is just what the family needed — more of a husband, more of a father. The two boys hardly see him, for he leaves before they awake and arrives when they are just tucked in. Often he will go a week and only see them in sleep, and thinking it unhealthy to disturb a sleeping child, will not wake them. His wife has twice been tempted by the love of another, but painfully declined each offer with the hope that the situation between her and her husband would improve. This night he doubled his gait. The young fruit vendor from whom he bought his two bananas each day asked him, “what brings the haste?” “Good news, lad. Good news.” The man did not slow one bit, but kept a measured stride at a strict and calculated pace. He knew this route like a postman. He has walked it at every hour of the day, in every 20 condition of climate. He has also told the story of sleep walking the route on one hot night, but few believe him. He passed the fountain, where he sometimes wets his face, and the brothel, where he lies and pretends. Turning the second of five corners on his way, he feels his heart pounding, the pressure throbbing up into his neck and temples. The clap, clap of his shoes always echo loudly in this alleyway, even as it is raining. He remembers the last woman he had at the brothel, then his wife’s face appears, startling him. The clap, clap stutters and resumes several times before evening out again. His children then pull at his memory, and though he can picture them, the names are vague. Eight strides and Anthony comes to him. Clap, clap, clap, clap. His younger son, his name — he can’t remember. Clap, clap, clap - 30 The last echo thins to a whisper before it is taken over by the city’s other sounds, re- verberating in the cold alley. He thinks, thinks, but his mind is either too noisy or too silent. He doesn’t feel his legs stiffen, or the skin toughen, or the passing of seasons. The family stops worrying, his wife remarries and Samuel forgets the few vague memories of his father.

19980122

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The hair was the last to leave

The hair was the last to leave. Mother had been very proud of her hair Mother’s whole life. Each Saturday she would go to the beauty parlor with Mother to have a wash, a conditioning, and a trim to keep it healthy. When she returned home, Mother would braid it, French or normal, to shorten it up and make it manageable. As she aged she kept up this strict regiment which Mother instilled in her. When she married she continued her weekly trim, though her husband thought it exces- sive. He offered several times to trim it himself, even buying an expensive set of sheers to help persuade her, but she stood firm. She enjoyed her escape each Saturday and had 10 grown accustomed to the regular conversations with the owner of the salon. She argued that the stylist would grow worried if she did not show, even one time. She so wanted a daughter to spoil in the same ways of vanity. Three sons came in alternating years, and each took to his father early. Their hair her husband kept shaven at a half inch. He would raise no long-haired sissies, that he made clear more than once. She drifted. Her life became mechanical. She lived from one appointment to the next. The time between she spent remembering the past visits and preparing for her next. Her boys were always busy with school, or sports, or playing outside with friends. Every activity was physical and they pushed with their full force towards the manhood of their father. 20 The life of oblivion was not new to her, but she never realized the slip into it; and once in, such thoughts were forbidden. Her husband realized it but she was becoming more and more difficult to talk to. Not like when they met, she would talk about everything occurring to her and they would laugh and laugh. She grew thin like those people in Africa, and her sons were embarrassed. Her cheeks sunk in, and her neck tightened like the base of a tree, the tendons pulling at the skin. But her maiden’s hair glowed like a back-lit waterfall, falling in a tight spiral down her back, bottom and thighs. When her sons left the house, the oldest took to college and wrote home until his senior year. The others — she didn’t know what happened to them. She didn’t notice her husband not coming home some nights. Her day was beginning later and later and ending 30 earlier and earlier, and the time awake seemed static, a still life. She began to miss her ap- pointments and would not answer the phone when it would ring those Saturday afternoons. Eventually the phone stopped ringing. She woke early one morning with a memory of Mother. Mother had done this to her and she was powerless her whole life to change it. Taking the knife from under her pillow, she trod slowly into the bathroom. With her head tucked down over the bathtub, making one sliding slice across the braid pulled tightly, like a bow of a cello, she took her life. Her husband found her that night, coming home for clean underwear and a shirt. She

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was collapsed over the edge of the tub, without a scratch to her person, her hand still stiﬄy holding the end of her braid. The autopsy showed nothing. Her husband sold the house 40 and moved in with his lover. Her children never knew. In the pine box, the braid lay down her center from her chin to knees. Years later, when the plot was needed for victims of the war, the box was dug up and in it was dirt, and the braid. It sold for the standard amount to a foreign doll company.

19980124

The persistence of memory

The persistence of memory dripping from the boasty parts leaves the shy unassuming thimbles unsharing, uncaring, apathetic. The spiny, tingling sensation of necessary, impersonal organization has diluted any message transmitted by chemical lust. If walking leaves me thirsty 10 then remembrance carries disappointment, whole worlds lost in shy memory where life clutches meaning. The dream, now my found invention, where all history and possible condense into a now universe of unworldly logic and fulﬁllment. I feel I should cry — wide open - singing vibrato, carrying one note, low Eb, building and rising in a 20 washing waving of creation. I shouldn’t have to start over where two halves touch and grow, all these beginnings ﬂy by without a completion or elation. It tires me, standing on legs like knives speared into a butcher board, not wanting to move, fearing the

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slicing of slippery softness. Paciﬁcation is the strongest argument 30 and truth no longer convinces me, when wind puckers and loses the moment, then I can kiss back.

19980131

I’ll let you win

I’ll let you win, you simply have to play the game. I’m here, I’m ready - waiting and smirking. I have to run into the traps you set for me, I watch you lay them, the small pathetic snares, and I step directly into them, 10 building your confidence with each turning mechanism releasing its potential — swak! I fain play this faena diluting realia, almost soubrette. To you I’ll seem dealate, impotent of flight from your venoms, but here my protected debauchery - you, in a great cloak of confidence. As a samara, I’ll appear predictable, 20 spinning downward — modus operandi - Into your hand I’ll seem to spin slicing space, sluing deftly. But your ego hard-wired to coordination makes the space between your fingers wide and slipping though a sure and uninhibited reaction.

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You, I’ll let you win, the game you’ll win. But not without my crushing, 30 butchering, mocking every part of you. And in the end, I’ll stand. And you, at my feet, on my floor, will be dropped your first place — face first.

19980209 and 19980214

Freedom — Nature

In this world, Art — all it represents, in all forms, in so much as it is beyond the interpretation of critic, commoner and artist (we are not talking about landscapes and portraits, here) — is Freedom. Nature is everything outside this. This, of course, is a metaphysical observation. Existentialists would take Art as surfaces without meaning — there is no abstraction without essence. That something can be abstracted is a mark of an underlying essence, whether seen or unseen.

19980214 10 Impasse

I. Today I awake: half present, half unreachable. I pick things up, but drop them. Either I forget I ever held them or sensation is severed somewhere beneath the skin, somewhere just before memory and after the fact. I see objects before I cognize, 10 very little gets through to me, the rest I’m separated from; I’m partitioned from the world, so petty and surfaced.

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Maybe there’s nothing to see, nothing to feel, nothing to hear. My impasse to the world, the ﬁlter of greatest judgment, allows only the essence, the substance - everything else: rejected, 20 shot back, reﬂecting the face upon the face, one on one, again and again until there are millions. But, still, they don’t reach me. More and more desensitized as the market hollows the world out, cutting and knawing at the marrow till even its surface is brittle and still, as I touch it, it is not felt, and dropped.

30 II. I do not improve. My insensitivity matures. There are sounds and colors that reach me in whispers, letting me know they’re not giving up, not popularizing. But they come less and less, and time travels so slowly. Even my thinking at times 40 is blocked, and my thoughts don’t reﬂect back to me - invented, then lost forever. III. My memory, fain failing, stays. Feigning my own universe which lacks all things, all those many myriad things. (I was much happier as a child). But is there a center 50 without a surface? — the perimeter

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keeping it all in, providing the depth of essence with recognizable, distinguishable, communicable symbols.

IIII. There is, there is, there is. Now to ﬁnd a way in. This should be easier than the Law or that forbidden tower. But how wide and tall, 60 even when I’m close it seems miles away, then I reach my arm and . . . nothing. That’s the face, smiling — pure silence.

V. I’ve given up understanding this nothingness of being. Whether insensitivity or hypersensitivity into overstimulation, 70 I release the numbness back, back into the world where it’s needed, where it’s breeded. Without it, existence like electrocution, Fizz, bite, zzipp.

IIIIX. It’s mostly murmurs, some light bouncing and a glow. I’ll soon forget everything, 80 I’m on my way out. I feel an aperiodic pull like a gravity unknown. My attachment . . . but, I can’t, without it I . . . I feel it pulled taut, but I’m attached and determined.

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I soon give up, though. I resign for the ﬁrst.

IIIX. 90 I’ve survived all this time within the impasse par¨ excellence. I came into this world and now I’m forced out; Never was I able to truly penetrate, slice through. But so much experience I lacked, so new and weak and fragile. There’s no other choice than to start over, reenter the cycle. 100 The deep fatigue grows ﬁerce and it is all too convincing.

IIX. It seems so long, so distant, but I recognize its repetition. The great symbiosis of presence and absence - A wide pulse between lives where truth dominates. And now I realize there’s 110 no in to necessitate an out, no depravity for desire, no freedom for nature. I started in without beginning and will stop without ending.

19980214 and 19980217

So here it is

So here it is — the giant puzzle with pieces wanting to ﬁt

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but deliberately left out of the box.

19980215

OK, College Boy.

OK, College Boy. You have something to mock here, something beyond every flashing memory of hollowness in your imagination. Jesting with your head, you point me out. Your friend turns his head towards me and I move my eyes from you to him as he peeks, then back to you, and I hold you there like a pathetic puppet. There, you think you are in control, you have me. I’m the one you scoff, but you can’t move your own eyes from me. I have you. I sit over a poem, weeping shyly — and you point me out. No problem. White striped sweater boy and your friend, big name college baseball cap, you are so lucky in this world. You find joy in everything you buy. You can sit without a care, sipping coffee 10 and making jests at me, and feel good about yourself because you are in college. Because you have money blanketed over you, as a tiny child — crippled, but warm. The truth is that I don’t give a shit about your looks or anything else. I do take my knife from my jacket and move it to my pants pocket. I so wish to mess your sweater and that fair skin — how handsome you are. You look again and again, how you must lust for me, and I, seeing parts of you you push coldly away. If only you had something other than your personified glory to talk about, something beyond papers and handshakes. But, again, it must be so hard wearing sweaters all your life — a whole adolescence and childhood of sweaters, one endless unraveled ball of ignorance and na¨ıvete.´ I’m sorry, but I must mention your hair spray. Indeed, why should you want to stay. You seem a traveler, an academic, a 20 theologian of the most important matters of this world. I would expect a most divine sense of freedom from a man of your rank. To defy nature is to only augment its control. But how tired you must be. Hasn’t the world worked you enough with all its many demands and requests, then there’s the times of suffering. How I have pity, how guiltful I am. Oh, to be the victim in a striped sweater. Our poor, poor martyr of this sickly world. How you are the envy of me. How wretched I must seem to you, how sickly and alone. If I could run away with you, I’d hold your pant-leg if necessary, up to the mountaintop, to the clouds, all the way to valedictorian. If the world stopped, you’d be the one to start the miserable business up again. If ever a problem persisted, you’d come with your divine solution, the one holding the blessings of all. If I could be a part of that, how the lights 30 would pass down, soft rays of grace, and the tranquil pacifying sounds — like the tele, but without the white noise and borders. If only you’d look at me again. Let me see your eyes, those deep somber eyes. I imagine your hand on my head, cleansing me — a purge of all anger and depression, a move to the constructed life, and you my carpenter. Give

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me an idol, something to hold and study, something greater than all greatness, something as a symbol, something beyond this world and beyond all understanding. How whole I’d be, part of something, anything. Please deliver me. Comfort me. Let me cherish you. I’m sorry I ever yelled at you, I’ve come down now, down below, far below you. Let me hold those soft fingers, I’ll follow you to your car, where you’d leave me. I’d watch the steam from the tail pipe whisp away and end it all. With your passing, so would mine come. I 40 want you all to myself. I want you to be with me, how jealous I am of that putz you sit with. That stupid hat, how can you like him. Look, I’m going out to buy a sweater right now. I will be like you and you’ll want to play with me. There won’t need to be anybody else. I don’t think you’ll want them anyway; who loves you more than me? We can go out in the sandlot, I’ll bring my trucks and play-men, and you can bring the soda and candy. We’ll get there early and stay until it is hard to travel back home through the woods, and we’ll have to stay out there, together, and it will be cold, and you’ll have to hold on to me for warmth and morning will come and I’ll wake first and I’ll get a fire going and when you wake to the warmth on your cheeks you’ll rise and we’ll dance around the fire and . . . Wait! Where are you going. I . . . hey, you can’t leave. We are alone in the sandlot and 50 you are putting your jacket on and leaving with that sweaterless prat! I can’t let you. You can’t leave me. Me, who’d give my life for you and you rise and turn and he follows and I sit and I stare and you don’t look back. I can’t let you. I might never see you again. You would leave me sitting here forever, looking at that blank chair. You must be stopped. You’re mine, you’re mine and you will be with me! Here, I just have to convince you. You just need to understand how much you’re needed. How the world needs you, to stay about your axis. How I need your stability, that look that set all this in motion. I’ll follow you and watch until you have time to be persuaded. I’ll follow you to your friend’s house, where he gets out, you drive on, then he drops to my silly instrument. How loud it is, but necessary. And I’ll follow you to your street where there’s no cars and no people. You’ll 60 get out and I’ll come to you and beg of you, I’ll plead to you. You’re everything, don’t go, and don’t struggle. How you talk, I’m embarrassed for you. Shhh. . . Shhh. . . Here, this will help. You shouldn’t have gone on this way, you shouldn’t have made that face. I didn’t want to reach to my pocket but you wouldn’t stop and it was making me nervous. I trembled a little, but it was soon all still. And now you are mine. It wasn’t supposed to be this way, but the ends are the same. Here, in my hands, something to hold and study, something beyond me. How I’ll care for you. Here, in my car, lay here. I’ll clean the floor later, just rest. You have so much to look forward to. So many adventures are planned for us. Come, you’ll see. You’ll see.

70 19980215

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An angry man

“An angry man with poor vocabulary.” That’s what they’ll say. I see it already. “Here is a frightened man, frightened of living,” holding a ﬂimsy volume of poetry and story. “He’s scared of really trying, 10 but untiring of blame. He dismisses the truly great inventions this world has promised. All the great steps forward.” Tossing the book down, it lands awkwardly on the table, so it half opens then ﬂops closed.

19980228

You often stood there

You often stood there before sheets of sky, the colors spread about you from dusk or dawn or depth.

How still I’d lay and still satisﬁed, watching how beauty can be, peering distant.

The sand lay there 10 as though it existed for those prints only,

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once carrying my muse.

19980307

The Gaze, Consciously Diverted

Ya, prismca obscura semi diffused meld into those gestures keeping so much distance. How the position inflates, eyes pointing out and over, almost deflected by insecurity. Will there be another 10 vision of the other vision where the edges curled to an internal flutter, quiver, where those many arrows pointing in, piercing so many parts — zing! Like great hordes of blood thinning hornets coursing veins and stripping 20 all protection, layer by layer until even fake glances penetrate to disturb, until beaten, the internal resonance. (Do we reflect equally against both our sacred mirror and this, our modular world? Are the projections 30 toward each issued and retrieved in like measure?)

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Beyond the surface of which sphere, so mirrored, is a penetrable aperture to a world connected, where dynamics are coupled, interdependent, and Nature is no longer 40 separate from Freedom. Will culture bring halves once again together? Will TV and Hollywood bear the only witness? Will the world of the diverted eye, modest amour propre, strengthen in blindness? Or, despite these, 50 will the hunger of one’s feelings — the physical origin and universal wish to be loved and protected by something stronger than oneself - open this closed universe? Is it the heat of the tea, or that of the smile, 60 or ereutophobia which brings this veiling pre-perspirative glow, covering in a colored crimson camouﬂage? I’m stilled, this world moving so hastily, all its many glances and diverted eyes - passive hostile elements, 70 semi-sadistic infestations -

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where a blink cuts, dichotomizing all of time. Where matched eyes slow, then skip, continuums made sparse then dense, tickling with prickly fingers, marring delicately the surfaces below the 80 face looking and hiding. Still knocking on the glass, neither looking in nor out (nor as a mirror) but turning in and fighting the need to look away, look away, look away, and looking in, eyes glazed over - 90 so much an unmirror - the silence smeared on thick and separate. Keeping distance - the ethered barrier dissevering every part needing connection. Shadows without origin, absent images whose keepers hoard without memory, 100 keeping only a moment. An ecumenical collection of forgotten moments, shuffled, so that each appears first if the moment’s his. And while this moment’s here, it seems still. It is again the first and I’ll forget the rest -

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forget diversions, distractions, 110 I ﬂip through long moments to get to the next moment where pupils hold their likes. Traveling this way diﬀuses time, trivializing the glances that are carried past, or shot through, and keeps only those just reaching me so that I might hold them 120 and live through them.

19980307 — 19980311

(the gaze, consciously diverted) II

(Where are those I once knew who could look, smiling, and not look away? How diﬀerent this all seemed when youthful and how imperceptible the many changes. Why is there strength 10 in an arrogant eye - one not curious for another eyeful expression? Are these more scared than I, with those many hidden eyes, afraid to double direct visions? I suppose it’s all very important, somehow. So I undo haste’s coverings 20 to admire its cold nakedness. And it’s slow to realize

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how vulnerable it has always been, how thin, how fragile, how far-sighted. Slowness and the cohesion of water consider haste’s separateness, but are too coherent to mend it. Naked and soused, 30 diﬀerence dissolves making one indiﬀerent many-face moving in every equally opposed direction, lickety-split, no where.)

19980308 and 19980318

The poem written with the cap left on

19980310

The women wrapped up tightly

The women wrapped up tightly like pleasing holiday gifts packaged too securely to be opened or even to be thought about, comfortably. How considerately they serve the visual necessities of these men crowded about the bar’s corner - three on stools, one standing.

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Like a siren, a black sinewy 10 mutt shrieks, raising the attentions of all but the chelloveck staring atomic, busting in, drawing his master to the couch. These men, they keep looking and looking. Each time the standing one steps I fear his approach and the inevitable attack of my work, here. Why do men always find the smaller and weaker to attack - the one who’s alone, who’s silent, 20 who just sits reservedly, watching? In another pub I enjoyed a stout - the same p. h. my brother and I spent new year’s (Time Square, eat it!) - watching two men at bumper pool. When the first asked I told them I didn’t play, though my brother and I took every bit of competition with delightful invention when we first played. The second followed by asking if it 30 were coke or pepsi I drank. Ah, the bully from grade school incarnate in a weekday buzzing heavy-equipped guise. Enchanting, the same dim bulb still too slow to catch me and still throwing punches too high and leaving himself open to be dropped by my kick. I ignore him. I don’t think it wise to encourage this type of talk. When he matures, he’ll know better, 40 and maybe won’t provoke his own excitement. No, I’m not on drugs. No, I’m not the toughest guy in the place. No, this is not coke or pepsi. No, I don’t wish the next game. I finish my glass and make an exit. I’m glad I didn’t take that route.

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Of course, I’m sure, stripped of history, art and language, a listener could enjoy the witful insights of these 50 two gents, clad in capitol garb, offering gems of genius — should be written! - Hey, can you guys write? You don’t write, I don’t speak — ok?! My words don’t flow so easily. Yet, I suppose the inverse proportion is readily decipherable (shall I define it fo y’all?)

... 19980319

Everything in my world is dusty

Everything in my world is dusty — an indication that my life’s stagnant.

19980322

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199804 — 199806

If I didn’t write

If I didn’t write I wouldn’t know that I had ideas. Only writing is patient enough to provide me with the opportunity to discover what it is I have to say. Talking is often too quick, and too absorbed by what the other says. In school I was stuck, as were probably many of the others. Many others were quite aware of how language worked and were fluent in ability. However, what were they saying? I sometimes listen and attempt to construct out of it something, but only find a cage of thoughts whose purpose is to contain the moment. When these people wrote papers I could follow their writing as quite effortless expression of something. . . what the some- 10 thing was, I wasn’t sure, but how easily expressed. When I spoke or wrote, there the artist without senses. I didn’t have the memory, the language, the understanding of the tools of communication. So many of the ideas I had were left just short of arising. It is true that with development of language, one can know his subject more intimately. The great shame in my rising from birth is that despite my complex mind, expression was not learned until it was terrifically burdening to develop, and with great effort.

19980402

There are several ways

There are several ways in which I approach writing. One is simply one of sound. If the words can be organized in such a way as to produce a pleasing sound, then I am eﬀectively pleased. One is of logic and construction. To pull words together by what proper grammar I’m aware of. So all the sub-ideas pull together driving the main one, that’s something. To do this well is so diﬃcult, but if accomplished, also quite pleasing.

19980402

One on One Story Idea

(serif, sans serif) A story in two fonts, both in the ﬁrst person, supposedly two people, but really one person talking with himself. The macro structure is two fonts which slowly evolve into the

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other, but remaining parallelly separate. The micro structure is a conversation whose fonts distinguish the A and B of the conversation.

The conversation: Frames A – self interrogation 10 B – Philosophical generalizations

10 A – Reﬂections on existence / The Face B – Reﬂections on essence / substance

A – The old man B – The child

A – Big city B – Small town 20 A – Glass as a window B – Glass as a mirror

Topics: (pass through sets of these, and in transition, change fonts) cigarette/chewing gum 20 movie/ﬁlm/life form/function window/mirror brick/steel 30 parody/pastiche/irony ﬂag, banner/speaker integration/isolation potted plants/raw forest, jungle passing through/going around means/ends 30 nature/freedom art/logic impression/deception city/town 40 history/myth pantless/panty hose slacks/jeans

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pornography/compassion pop culture/private life street lights/stars 40 smile/exit sign water colors/murals, wood carving pastels/solid colors Saturday/Sunday 50 candle/electric light pain/ecstacy milk/wine coﬀee/tea steamer/soda doubt/intuition 50 private anguish/despair

Can we change fonts so that eventually the ﬁrst serif becomes the ﬁrst sans serif, keeping them distinguished and separate? Also, can the store loop and make sense so that [it 60 goes around twice] both together it makes sense, and as one continuous stream (alternating).

19980409

Sincerity

Parallel Lines (eventually meet) Cowritten with Darrell Royter [E: Erik, D: Darrell] E: I’m not giving anything up, damn it! I’m not listening and I’m not having fun anymore. Hang up the phone and try to understand this.

D: Why is it that I’m always struggling to please you? I can’t seem to let it go, but something has to give.

10 E: All day yesterday I spent in the Park. It all seemed so big, like I’d get stepped on or wouldn’t be able to ﬁnd my way out. There were people — so many people that it seemed they were all together and I was the only one who was alone. I was alone, and here you’re stuck, stuck. Ahhg!

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D: Sometimes I think those people know something I don’t. Something of vital importance. But they won’t share it with me. I want someone to tell me. I only know that it can’t be revealed by just anyone. It has to be you.

E: Let me try. Late one night recently I was riding my bike in the rain. My neck and 20 face were cold while my legs burned. I came to a quiet road where all the houses were dark but two, staring at each other from opposite sides of the road. Here was a window, and here was a window, and each had one light on. In one, glowing and absorbing, was a couple laying gently on the couch, holding and caressing. In the other, was a man, sitting, a woman, standing, and a TV, screaming. Here, a ﬂuid continuum, there, a static structure — and me in the middle, my legs growing stiﬀ and cold. Now I’m here. . .

D: I realize that I don’t belong in either world. I want to touch and feel but I have nothing to hold. Sitting in stillness is easier, though less comforting. I went upstairs to my room, turned on my computer and made a shout heard round the world, yet never spoken. 30 I waited for a response, but all I could hear was the deafening cries of people like me, maybe like those in the park, who share in a marketplace of loneliness.

60 E: I’m here, now. Now. Right now, I’m here; and. . .

D: What do you want from me? I know what I’m after, I just need to keep my eyes open. This has to go according to plan. It’s too bad that I only have half of it. I wish I could make all the rules, run the whole show. Have I come to the right place?

E: Ah, ha! Now you’re looking for your own universe, a creation, a space all your own. 40 Well, . . . Your separation is a clear proof of your self-extraction — the self-taught, uni- spacial man existing in a dichotomy of personal and public examination. Desire — don’t fall to it. Slow down and listen.

D: I don’t have to put up with this. I can kill you with one finger. I only need the energy, the desire. If I find it, everything will fall. I’m sick of listening to you. This never ends and the pace won’t slow down. I need to find a way. Damn it all! I’m in it further than I wanted to be.

E: [silence] This mirror, I must fight it. Turning around and around. Here I’m strong, 50 there you threaten. Spinning and sinking and giving into it, I’m giving into it more now. The numbness and nausea consumes the moment and cuts it off silently. I no longer speak, I barely listen. I’m finding the way.

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D: Shutting my eyelids tight I see the topographic map of who I am. I try to fucus long enough to study the layout, but it makes me dizzy. When I try to dig deeper within, and I ﬁnd a new level, something hits me. It feels like I’ve been here before. It’s so elusive. Like a dream. . .

E: Shhhh. . . Whispers. Echoes. Who’ve I been? Where on this fractalesk map of tat- 60 tered equilibrium is equality? Where’s that tapping coming from? Ahhh, make it stop! So steady, rhythmic, reveristic. Slipping, now silent again. It’s not here but I hear it. Why doesn’t anybody else understand these important things? Whole worlds wash over me, then I’m placeless. Sssss. . . Tap, tap, tap-tap.

D: A tree branch scrapes against my window. Reality sinks in again. The tapping continues. I need it. I can’t go again into silence. Don’t let me go there.

E: Tap, tap, thump! I look down at the large limb before me and the deep impression in the earth its descent brought. Above me, an endless source of branches falling and crash- 70 ing. From this limb, from this childhood, I snap the mightiest stick — one to smash all others. Now I am master, there is no history and planning is no longer necessary.

D: Running, swinging, crashing I more through the wilderness with my primitive club. My tool. It is such a part of me. I come to the grove of trees where I spent so much time as a child. There is something so familiar about this place. Everything is green, there is a carving on a tree. A declaration for the whole world to see. “is nice try” it says. What does it mean?

E: As compulsive as the tree’s tapping comes the insistent counting game. I count the 80 letters and find 1. Over and over it I go. Starting here, then starting here, each time finding 1. Then when I can focus I try to discover its subject. It’s all here, in the forest, in these letters. What is it really saying? What is it people would try to find, try to be in the forest? What is expected from an attempted self-extraction from technology? Why am I here? It’s 70 all here. . .

D: I feel the tears stream down my face. What have I been doing all this time? Who have I been? If something’s not right, it must have begun with me. This burning inside is getting hotter. I understand the plight of the trees. In our carelessness we destroy things, never looking outward. How evil can I be? I can’t even imagine. But these trees know. 90 How I wish they would take vengeance on me. Converge upon me and beat me until I split

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in two. Then discard me and ﬁnd another victim.

(unﬁnished due to fatigue)

19980417

So do I.

You love him? I don’t think so. Do you? Do I love him? No. Do you think I do? I don’t think so. I think you love me. So do I. You think you love me? I think you love me. So do I. And you? 10 So do I. You love me? I think so. So do I.

19980419

I am my only child

At what point did I become my own child, or has it been scattered along this continuum so that at each moment I grow more as father, more as child, more as one. The whole world reorganized as a synthesis of the mature and na¨ıve, the creative and destructive, the yielding and stubborn, endowed with body, drawing in warmth, expanding patience. The child protesting in me against 10 the shock, anger and numbness, and the father despairing over him, hoping to

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pull the agony away and feed his own contemplative depression. Both rolling and drawing and thrusting in storms of need and drinking it all in in sizable portions. Oh, how it disturbs my gutty-wuts and expands the need, the searching, and the change. Here the fatigue and apathy renewed in a perspective both embodied and separate in a slow pulse between joy and precision counting all the 20 many battles I confront myself with. As the yielding child, I bend and survive. As the rigid adult, I splinter a fragmented death. How many the lessons passing both ways and always inside me. Searching for the one in mind, I’ve lost - a laugh, the name imbedded in words, a shirt, the back of a head. Reorganizing the elements into memories entrenched. Here thinking slows, drawing in warmth, 30 manifesting loss into positive memory memorials. A laugh, and what a joy, remembering how his laugh would carry with it whole worlds.

19980518

Because it was not like any wind

Because it was not like any wind, like one slow and building, then waning unapprecia- tively. This wind came thin and sharp, almost invisible but the dry sand let up a puﬀ of loose dust which curled up then dissolved like sugar in a steamy tea cup. It was enough to notice its brevity to lose my thoughts and consider this private whirlwind. “I don’t dance enough,” I said to myself. I had taken a one night class to learn the basic movements of belly-dance, but male belly-dance is hard to ﬁt in at any bar or club. This coupled with my infrequence at dance venues leaves me with the little I do in my room to John Coltrane and other free-spiriting music. 10 19980528

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199807 — 199809

Yes, I know

Yes, I know. You’ll understand because you’ve been shut out. You’ll find familiarity in these words because you’ve had them with yourself in the night when time and distance flutter into existence as echoes. All of this is unquestionable because this is shared separateness where millions at a time lock themselves away from everyone else and life is forced to pass, and dreadfully slow. Imagine what it must be like for the man or woman with a memory that does not forget, but hoards all moments crisply in a state of constant mental exhibition. How the time must refuse to pass, and the madness and havoc build in an unsuppressible growth of memory upon memory until echoed resonance tears him or 10 her apart. What an energy! There’s pleasure in the consumption where all responsibility is absorbed by the havoc and all temperature flows inward from that place just beyond the fingers.

19980714

Melding height and bondage

The ﬂower stripped of beauty is here in a seamless crystal spinning its petals outward signaling its place as martyr. Refusing the measure of water, it stands high against incandescence and ignores its fate as pollenless hybrid cut and cooled and capitalized.

19980730

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Erik Barry Erhardt 1998 207

Film canister

Above me, on a shelf I’m not allowed to pull things from, is my small ﬁlm canister with images I’ve suspended, captured where they do me no harm because they are out of reach. The eternal puer held me once by the hand and I smiled wide. He had given me a camera 10 and asked only that he be given the personal history returned from it, so that he may repay the coyote. In the years of childhood I brought my camera everywhere, snapping all the important images, and many mundane ones, and at the end of each roll, I hand it spent to

(unﬁnished) 19980818

Autumn poem

In early September when I walk, I see how well everything leans on each other, How the alive support the dead, and how they’re all one. The ferns make a good shady hiding spot for the chipmunk gathering nuts, nibbling mushrooms, Daddy longlegs pace the path with stern precision.

Along the paths, I ﬁnd many places I would like us to spend the night. 10 Where the smell of the earth is pungent and the moss and rotting wood give to The weight of my body and thoughts.

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Across the rocks I swiftly trot, holding my bag, But by the gurgling stream I slow down and listen.

The air ﬁltered over the stream tastes lavender, it is sweet like lilacs or wintergreen. Sparrows and chickadees, with their short cries, disappear then reappear in the leaves, Playing the game people do. 20 The doves no longer play this game But sleep through the night hearing two breathes and the wind.

19980901

September memories

Ascending from the thin brances and pineneeles ground to dust against the forest ﬂoor, to the monumental rocks above the petite weathered trees where the wind comes hard and cleanly,

The sweet, soft smell of a woman ﬁlls me up. She once stayed with me here open to the sky and stars and possibility and ever-reaching shadow. It is September ﬁfth; I’m climbing through memories.

I wipe my cheek with my long ﬁnger and lick the 10 sweet salt. The wind is of the ocean and the rocks I’m climbing are covered by seaweed and barnacles that cut into bare feet, but the rock is soft and smooth.

Rhode Island is well aquainted with the ocean and wind. Beside me stands a woman who carries me in the wind to Maine, where the water’s colder and the night is no less lonely.

The ﬁddleheads are long past and their grown ferns stretch out like an afghan under the birch. The crisp blue sky fades thick purple and I’m 20 face down in the ferns with the spiders and chipmunks.

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Erik Barry Erhardt 1998 209

How richly the earch lies with death and smells and life, and here and now I’m one with it, grieving and happy. Slipping, I’m lucky to catch myself with my foot, a wispy aria of warning heard in the legs.

“You look as though you’re going to laugh,” she says as I look on from my small dark table. And he does laugh, and she, too, back. I get up and leave without my things.

Here, from the spine of this modest mountain, 30 one can see west, north, east and the plain pinnacle rising in the south before the sun. There’s a cloud like an old boot, and a rock just like it.

I ﬁnd a table stone overlooking the northeast and it’s noght; the dippers I can see but it’s too early for the great warrior, Orion, who protects me now but who will slay me when the time comes.

19980905

Shadow poem

There is a road I know in New Hampshire that feels its way along in the dark, Past fields without fences and straddled by small streams. Beneath the pavement like an old man’s face, and the supporting layers of sand and gravel, are crushed animal bones, moles without faces and earthworms bumping their rough mouths on smooth stones like the many fists of children. 10 In the field where the grass, shaped like soaring birds, lick the humid night air, a doe stands tall with her feeding young, speckled with the colors of forested earth in autumn, rich with a fresh bed of pine needles and small granite stones. When the wind stills I think I hear them chewing, and the earthworms below me, but mostly I feel the deep

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pulse of life in me extrapolated into a child’s imagination which I pull from the darkness. Deep in the mud where the toads hide from winter, my shadow dwells all summer. 20 It rises with the shortening of the days and is with me when mature toads press their faces to the earth to escape the falling leaves. 19980926

Acorn

Pock! A great oaknut falls freely from its tight-fitting beret left at the tip of one of the thousand knotted and gnarly limbs, landing at my feet, still in the cut dewy grass. Acting on my first thought, I lift it from the green and place the moistened globe like an unyielding waterdroplet in my palm, smooth and cool. How brightly the sun pokes through the soft, shifting white. I hold my hand under it like a child by a waterfall 10 and hum a phrase from ‘Angel Eyes.’ Holding it closely to my eye I study the fine vertical ridges running from the circular scalp to tip like a healthy excited nipple. With my smooth fingernails I scrape away the waxen skin by the scalp and like a topographic map three distinct bands appear as a history. I consider returning this seed to my mother, but like thoughts of sleep, it is too familiar. Instead, with great pressure, I form two cracks 20 and peel the shell. Its seed is veined and has the fragrance of maple sugar candy. I continue to pull it apart in my hands, then let the individual pieces drop to the ground like friends traveling back in time. 19980927

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Erik Barry Erhardt 1998 211

It’s October.

It’s October. The trees return the darkness to its home close to the ground. The sharp gusts of wind pull the leaves upon the ground as a cart led by a small child; These sounds and colors pull the shadow up from the darkness, lifting its gentle weight into me. Clouds reflect moon brightly against the deep sky, where stars are nearly visible with Venus and the slender crescent. The biting air, the first taste of winter, purges 10 the chest of the thick lethargies of the sun. Winter selects against weakness as a comfortable condition, bringing the strong into it, into its definite. Below these leaves are roots, and under the snow they’ll lie closely together through the days of short light. The brick wall consumed the boy’s day, but he counted them all — exactly the length of his life.

19980929

From a window

(unbegun) There’s a man and another man they appear as white noise against buildings moving in Brownian motion like dust, which is invisible and all around us. And her hair is short and shirts collered and buttoned all the way up. She feels she is watched even when she’s alone before the audience of myth.

10 19980929

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199810 — 199812

Stiﬀ winter months

In the stiff winter months men breath the cold deeply in and spit. Great distances are traveled in this way, past fences held together by tradition. The air is pulled apart on opposite sides of buildings then in the fields it’s formed again. Beneath the simplified snowy surface are whole worlds of life we don’t see.

19981002

Song in the coﬀeeshop

She asked me, because, you know, I’m always thinking of her, “If you had children, wouldn’t you sing this to them?” “I did sing this to him.” My mother sitting before me, living whole sections of her life over again, replies, allowing me to laugh and enjoy the situation. The song, I don’t remember. The feeling separates my life from all other childhoods, bring me to a moment where all qualities meld.

19981002

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Erik Barry Erhardt 1998 213

Harvest time

Harvest time, when whole landscapes of autumn come together, then separate into individual experiences bonded by common origin, Earth.

Shattered streets of small towns are quiet as I pass, their lights are left dimly lit and no shadows stir. Long stretches of nothingness with crows following.

A car passes, lifting the crisp leaves from the shoulder and carrying them in its wake, ﬂipping about like a hand in conversation.

10 19981003

How many times have I already lived this night?

How many times have I already lived this night? A storybook of repeated themes drawing in and back like an old man’s breathing. Of the existential history for which I await; I sustain its weight with prologs of glory, worlds which are all possible, but none which exist in me. In all this creation, I live the life of the hairy man, dancing, lifting legs high and howling, the dance of spring, when substance returns and darkness pales. 10 Large thunderous drums of hollowed oak trunks and tanned buﬀalo hides pulsate with the rhythm the earth has carried for 400,000 years; it commands my days. Among the drops like seaweed from the willow and the crows hanging upside-down with wings outstretched, sunning themselves, I clearly distinguish what is important; it sings to me a constant noise, a melodic rumbling, remembered, like the songs of whales. The old men dance in spring because they know the 20 darkness of winter, the slow, steady shadows

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moving in and out of footprints and wheel ruts, the invasive chill that sharpens the blood and tightens the muscles. All these myths pass through my prememory, and I smile as an idiot before a wall of glass, at once seeing himself, and through himself. I continue my pause with a glacier’s patience.

19981005

40th at the Colonial theatre on the 18th

She is frigid as an acorn, all passion and mystery is hidden in an entwined space, untouched and forgotten. A shell is thinner than shadow. There’s a long winter comfortable paused before us, reminding us of those things we can’t change. A flyer is posted; Mozart’s 40th at the Colonial theatre on the 18th. Ah, Bliss! In the future of each person is a moment when Mozart reaches into him and there’s the smell 10 of honey and the eyes close. From the window the music stops breifly, but it is carried within like a smooth stone in the outer pocket that is rolled warmly between the finters. It is covered lightly in dusty lint, but never leaves — its roundness internalized. The uncertatinty, unfamiliarty and spreading expance of space brings awe to those not distracted by human myths. I will never go there; there is no sound in space (my appologies, Hollywood). 20 A ii65 V I is sweeter than gravitational freedom.

19981013

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Erik Barry Erhardt 1998 215

This night an acute suﬀering ﬁnds me.

This night an acute suffering finds me. With its twisting fingers it discovers those delicate parts I’m too scared to touch. The hidden-self, the one seen only by others, comes reflected back by futuristic mirrors Echoed back in a thin negative noise which I distinguish only by its pallor. My lips can pierce a whole week, opening Only for water, wafers and dream sounds. 10 Yet, I’m sure fifteen minutes would suffice To reach supreme self-contempt. The trees seem to hum an inconsistent noise And I match it phrase for phrase with a white rumble of blood in my inner ear. In a room which encloses both my bed And library a single deaf bulb burns. I watch my body turn yellow and melt away. It used to be that when I was lonely I slept. These days I maintain the night but receiver 20 Nothing more from these tragic solitudes than a little empty purity and dry eyes. In the city the world lives differently. People pass in a continuum, yet, in order to exist, they also must consort with others. But that is all, they exist. When walking clad in coat and gloves I stop once and breathe deeply. The shiver reminds me of plunging into icy waters. Entoned: Am I myself not a way of icy air? 30 With neither blood, nor lymph, nor flesh? Biting my inner cheek hard until I taste its sweetness, I am reaffirmed and disappointed. My gait is one of calculated arrogance, Briefly minimizing the journey, gently sliding into refrains, only to return, sadly. Carried with me are all the decisions I

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made the previous day, and I return them each a miserly glance without construction. In the city one can not suﬀer so acutely. 40 The darkness a forest of growth embodies, Bears generously all substance. A faraway solitary tone is carried to me.

19981015

Have you had adventures?

Most of my adventures end in my outstretched hand, palm upwards, folding back upon itself as a plant whose source of life has been removed. These moments create me. My scars carry history forward where they will end in unity. I blink my eyes many times to return the moisture to them. I ﬁnd my ideas in the corner of a box, in the symbol 0 on a clock, in the symmetry of tiles, and don’t release it until my image blurs; I twist my neck and blink.

19981016 10 the most violent of animals

I maintain that we are the most violent of animals. It is our nature that many weak can appear strong. In mocked strength a word or single sound can spike fear into a very strong and swift one. It is true that men in groups are more reptile than 44&2. This world breeds the many numb over the few receptive. One may witness this in their boisterous cries over a lamp-lit Friday night corner. It will be a long time before I can release the fear others harbor in me. Their words as empty as their source still strike brutally with mock courage.

10 19981016

Before the theatre there’s a space

Before the theatre there’s a space whose people, benches and trees exist artiﬁcially. The light catches the leaves from all directions

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as in a prism and it takes on the waxen quality of the dusty plants in my grandparent’s house. (I never understood the bowls of plastic fruit.) A short, streaked blond who tells a story with her whole body, plants her feet squarely and begins moving her arms and rolling her torso 10 around and around like it was trapped in a tornado. She makes everything still around her, pulling all potential motion into her center. The young woman behind the counter looks through the plants at customers watching each other. She is composing a poean while I scribble geometrical ﬁgures, sloppily. There’s something extremely attractive about the way the corners of her mouth tuck into her cheeks glowing brightly with blood while 20 she scoops small bits of fruit to her mouth. Tomorrow, in a sunlight which brings out the most subtle of contrasts, people with dark hair will be entering from the back in black clothes and pressed white shirts, humming K. 550. So rarely does the air resonate with the distinct brilliance of The air must laugh when the oboe skips up the scale, with the violins falling softly after. How gay it would be to be a pocket of 30 scented air in the hollow of a viola. The crows catch a thermal, carrying them to where the mountains of three states are visible, and they circle slowly like a pinwheel warmed by the sun which seems so close. A young woman in Florida spent a large sum to remove the consequence of a small palm nut rooted and strong. The appearance of permanence can only be broken by the passage of time.

19981017 — 19981018

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A thin woman inadequately dressed

A thin woman inadequately dressed for the sharp chill of the wind presses gently on the door with her right hand, her arm appearing rough from shiver pimples. Stepping through the doorway, her hand returned to the other at the base of her pale neck. Pacing, arms rigid, eyes small and ﬁxed in their sockets, she turned on every third step. Air seemed blocked from either entering or escaping her body; she turned yellow and went stale. I watched her alone from my table for as long as I could. She began to breathe short breaths and her eyes moved from her feet to the tables.

40 10 19981024

I can not distinguish what is important.

I can not distinguish what is important. Everything in this country lasts for a few minutes, then we need more. The kids all dressed up for Halloween, arranged in tiny formations, drift along on the conveyor belt of doorsteps. The parents watch their little munchkins, they have forgotten the tricks (they couldn’t stand to think), and after an hour choose a child and bring the little 10 monster with the candy sack back to watch some favorite American rerun. In the Autumn there are three sounds: the first is the common one; cars, flourescent lights, fans, little motors, sirens, the neighbor’s stereo, laughing and screaming. The second is rustling, when the first sound passes the leaves swept to the edge of the street, people walking on the sidewalk, the wind lifting them in tight whirlwinds. 20 The third is silence, the combination of darkness and cold, the one we all need most. In the silence the streetlamp casts my shadow slowly, starting with deep contrast then stretching it out to cover the length of the street, until it is

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eaten up by the light of the next — a metapulse of the one within me, slow growing darkness.

19981025

The world in her tender palm weighs heavily.

The world in her tender palm weighs heavily. She borrows long moments tucked into the couch’s arm like the arm of a mother or strong and tender lover. She rubs her knuckles, chapped from the dry wind blowing forcefully in the narrow side streets, against her lips. She studies them intently, they begin to consume their own identity and complete the distraction. In these moments the body is kept too warm. Like in a Saturday night’s bath, or sauna after a swim. 10 Movements take on a weight and slowness as when before a day’s sleep with inﬂuenza. The sounds fail to separate, melding into one thick fabric whose beginning is forgotten, the end far away. Her body is as driftwood, smooth and salty sweet. All I see of her are the little ﬂashes of sun on the surface of a cold, dark sea; a great hold full of black water which moves all by itself.

19981122

The Horizon

My hands were thick in soil, a moist roundness that we’re all made from. Around the roots of a gromwell the dirt was its darkest. Lavender that brought life to my mom’s faded Summer dress came from these generous roots. I bring my ﬁnger to my mouth and dab it on my tongue, it is sweet and crisp with water. Autumn is breathing deeply and the mountain blossoms are preparing, curling their leaves when the sun sets beyond the hills. Darrell comes slowly from the trail just behind me, his tires kicking up dust and disturbing leaves that crunch into many pieces — closer to the dirt — or turn over and cross the path in his wake. He was looking wonderfully young and handsome. We’ve been riding

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10 all morning and the sun is strong despite its acute angle. An Autumn sky, to remind me of those days in my history, when I’d make my way down the dew-drenched path. I remove my overshirt and place it in my faded canvas pack behind my clipboard to keep my pages dry. I pick myself up, kick off with my right foot and we pedal, continuing down the trail into town. We speed on quickly, on account of the trail’s smoothness and the wind’s fullness, hissing suggestively in my ears. Riding so long, my taste becomes tart, but placing my tongue on my arm brings back the salt sweetness of morning. I kick a couple times hard so we can follow single file around the rocks blanketed in shadow, the forest’s leaves scattering in our wind. As it is just us two, the squirrels and the crows, I howl loudly 20 against the wind. Darrell sounds in with a major 6th above. What joy — shadows, crows and minor harmonies. We burst out from the trailhead onto Hurricane Hill Road, passing many homes with grand gardens full with lilacs and rhododendrons. Their gardens sang a full chorus through the spring and summer months. They once again quietly await the spring, permitting the winds to bring a touch of Autumn. How I enjoy the silence of riding. Silence, I know, is finer by far than words. Its sister, dumbness, at times is rather painful. In Winter only, is silence really known. It takes on the pure quality, as the darkness between the most distant stars. The tightness in my cheeks and throat are fair investment for the supreme silence of winter nights, pedaling 30 effortlessly through, past the long driveways of homes deep in the trees of country roads. In silence my thoughts can only be whispered. Leaning into the turns sharply, our tires slide spinning in the film of rough sand. Squir- rels are busy gathering and hiding their Winter supplies. They chase each other away from the places they won’t remember when the snow blankets our rocky terrain. It lays over us as a grand lace doily on the back of our grandmother’s couch in the adult’s room. The crows watch these busy creatures from the phone lines, patient for one to find himself alone. Then they’ll swoop down mischievously to taunt the gatherer, who often gets away, still leaving the crow amused. Darrell and I soon find ourselves Main Street bound, darting east on West Street. The 40 traffic is thinning; people are arriving and staying put. I see a monarch flying a stray left over from Summer, and trap it in my hand. “Ah, here it is,” I speak to myself, letting go, “- and it is gone.” Softly, my child adds with a riddle, “Here, and perhaps not here at all, symmetry spotted sunset.” Time moves very quickly, many of the details I forget immediately upon their passing. The road’s many cracks, the signs and licence plates live only for the moment. During night rides when the world lies still in my passing it moves in great leaps from moment to moment, in the spaces between thought. A friend once spoke of time as a human construct

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in which our lives become parenthetical statements within a greater parenthetical statement whose parenthesis were forgotten. Though it is consistent with Hawkins’ Universal model 50 (open, therefore no god) it pleases me only because of the hierarchy of moments and their metamoments, ad infinitum. Death becomes a simple closed parenthesis which some bold, other italicize, still others ignore. On the horizon lies two great parenthesis, one in the east, open, and one in the west, close. Each day the sun celebrates these with colors, and the animals with song — we have forgotten, we are no longer listening or watching. Leaping a curb we land in a parking lot where the skateboarders come. Darrell’s hopping over drains and patches of sand, lifting his bike up to meet his launching feet. Our shadows pan out wide and I keep my projected torso just beyond his front tire. Floating through the parking lot, my arms outstretched to catch the wind, I consider my 60 shadow hiding from the low sun: “You fly off wing to wing through mountain forests and in this nest of mine it is lonely spring.” It seems to have taken my heart with it to a crevice in the splintered rocks of Monadnock. I must return tomorrow to retrieve it. When I was a young boy my mother brought me to the mountain’s top. Running ahead up the rocks I’d pause for her hanging from a short limb. Dropping off, she’d catch me and we’d continue. All morning we climbed, my legs being short in proportion with my youth, and by noon we could see all sides of the world from the steep, lumpy granite at the pinnacle. I was munching on read grapes, one at a time, watching the clouds moving overhead. “You still want to know what the horizon is?” she asked without much pause. “When 70 you look toward the hills, beyond the rivers and ponds, beyond the trees, where the earth touches the sky, that’s the horizon. Tomorrow morning, when we travel by car, I’ll show you something. The closer you get to that line, the further it moves. If you walk towards it, it moves away. It flees from you. I must also explain this to you. You see the line — you see it, but it doesn’t exist.” I watched this line for a long time. It was all around me, surrounding me; it had trapped me long ago. Looking up again, I realized that’s where liberation could be found, in the clouds that shifted easily between forms that I mistook for a face or a kitten or a small automobile with a kitten’s face. Later I learned that active thought was where liberation truely lived. I became restless having finished my snack and hopped about on the rocks on adventure, discovering little pools where the birds and 80 wolves could drink from. “You feel like tea?” asks Darrell. “Very good,” I reply, “tea this early is certainly a luxury, and one I’ll enjoy the partaking of.” “Bravo!” Darrell mockingly cries. He leads our way through the abandoned weekend parking lot, across the street, past the

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newly erected skatepark, into the half occupied lot behind the shops lining Main Street. This is a very pleasing and familiar place. Many people pass us as we secure our bikes to a hand railing outside the theatre. There are many couples, and when they aren’t in couples, people travel in twos and threes. Only 90 the young joggers, of which there are few, travel alone. They have schedules to keep and in their haste can’t enjoy the many shades of grey the birch gives in the course of a sunset, the deep patches of darkness a pond embodies between the sharp flicking tongues of light, of the skill of pen shown on the sign I read slowly before the coffee shop. I enjoy reading the options even though I know I will only get tea. There’s always a swell of sound in the coffee shop. Yet, if you stay long enough, all the voices exchanged, the music from the speakers above, the noises of the various machines for grinding and frothing, and other things like cars outside or the scratching of a pen in a journal, in all of this, it melds, swells wide and pans out into a silence that can live for itself and be happy. I order my tea and sit at the edge of it. 100 19981127 — 19981207

The breezes that awoke me this morning

The breezes that awoke me this morning seemed very much like the sea breezes at Kauai. I looked in vain for a way to tell you so. This mountain village you embody, garlanded in eightfold mists, is not inferior, we have found, to that where the boat disappears among the island mists. All that had seemed wanting was that the pines were not the pines of old. It is a comfort to ﬁnd that there is no one who has forgotten. “If you’re a little boat with nowhere to go, Just tell me where you’re tied. I’ll row out and meet you.” He had been fond of her. “I will see you again,” he said, and returned to the night moving as he had before in a smooth continuum.

19981206

I’m beginning to question consequence.

I’m beginning to question consequence. Before me is a set of woman’s lips, colored deep crimson and shaped as an architect would shape them -

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sharp corners and edges with slight French curves. This seems far too deliberate so the only accident is probably that I was able to see this.

19981212

I convince Darrell to travel south with me

I convince Darrell to travel south with me to Northhampton where Mary Ellen’s charcoal is on display. She lives in me among worlds I create. As Autumn gives a wink to Winter, the falling flakes show like white noise in the headlights. It moves for a moment, then the night is still. The lights of our blessed season of consumption carve silhouettes into the night on porches of old houses and on the iron gate of Smith College. The sidewalk is cold and damp. 10 A Holga series of train tracks with found objects frames a headless cast of a man. Paintings cover the walls, my eyes trace their frames. The ceiling fleeing from us, the wall seems endless, hiding itself behind thick paper and canvas. I had felt this way, then shaved my head bald instead. On the bodies rising in charcoal from the paper a thin black line of lively ants march, cross contouring their torsos, thick with palpable, pallid flesh. Behind the ants, when they dissolve in the imagination, 20 are bodies I have touched before, ones whose skin folded over itself and others that are held tight like water in a waxen bowl. I shifted my weight from one side to the other, then back. I remember holding, then being held, times when my arm would numb under her neck, my stomach hot, my back cold. Mine was a slow, tepid life, but now my palms sweat. Darrell stands next to me and we discuss what is important to us. How time’s density throbs. Our whispers permeate the room and in silence we hear footsteps. I feel like dancing — there’s a piano 30 on a hardwood floor — I’m healthy and blithe.

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Among the footsteps and uneven voices is music that comes from me! Pivoting on the ball of my left foot I leave my friend amused at my unbegotten gaiety. This night I fold my hands into that flesh, my fingers full of black dust which are my dreams. The young artist reads my letter after I’ve gone. When it’s cold and silent, the heat compressed by the blankets in many layers, she considers the many shadows of men, the burdens and deformations they carry inside. 40 I have folded mine many times over, many more than paper allows, yet they do not change. That I have made my acquaintance with them is not enough, I introduce myself and we befriend. Among art there is a permanence of truth; my pen could not be so trusting of my fingers. For the images of my morning dreams, the rising sun on my face, there is no solution. Instead, my vision creeps up the golden moats of dust in the shafts of light. There’s a rhododendron curling its leaves and shaking in the Autumn wind. I pause in self-awareness but can not feel my heart, 50 my breaths are wide and shallow like a sleeping bear’s and my myriad inarticulations are bathed in a salty sweat. [last stanza not to be included] My whole life goes on like this. I have learned to laugh loudly, to feel anger, to cultivate slowness; what I would change in me I can not relate. 19981213

On sweet Honey is round, whole as its many makers. Sugar (it is not its fault) is digitized, insincere, remaining separate from its ether until forced in like a rapist by heat and motion. Its soul extracted long ago means nothing because its existence is solely for green ﬁngers minus a thumb. 19981214

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A black bird

A black bird the shape of a child’s fist snatched onto a branch to shake out his speckled chest like a porcupine’s hide. The sun sunk into his whole front side, and into the stubby tail feathers dripping below the branch. Balancing on one leg, the other lifted his wing like a mechanical knife for cleanly slicing the air. He strikes his beak on either side of the claimed branch as a chef sharpening his instruments on a leather band. 10 No sooner does my envied performer arrive above me, in a tree overhanging a parked car, grooming himself, and he has vanished in flight as brother has tried many times. Removing my shirt, I rise and follow beside a trail leading away from human noise, scuffing my bare feet in the grass as I trod, grabbing grass between my toes.

19981214

Before a cemetery

Before a cemetery, where the dead bury their living parts, up the slope where in Winter we’d sled, my father and I lived. In a condo was a forest and we were the hunters. I didn’t understand the weapons, at the time they went unrecognized, yet I turned them many times over in my ﬁngers, polishing them smooth in my sleep.

10 19981223

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Within the umber folds of violet curtains

Within the umber folds of violet curtains, petals with curved edges enclosing the intimacy and ﬁerceness of thunderstorms, lives my female deep in the torso swarming with longings and secrets, calming me. Yet, as it does each Winter, her geometrical maximum from the surface of sickly palpable ﬂesh has become a vacuous cavity. My body fakes a tickle low in my throat hoping 10 that I might cough it out, expel my now massless center. Some say she’s both invisible and poisonous; in her left breast he caries three drops that wounds men to death, modus asphyxy. In dreams she reveals convincing stories sweetly, and in consciousness all is sensation and inspiration. Having escaped me, I imagine a fallen limb on this trail absorbing my female for the somber Winter. I check branches bent backwards over stones and those deeply slumbering in snow beds. 20 Some hang from above having not yet reached the ground. In the clarity, both tenebrous and frore, I ambulate with silent steps beneath slender clouds veiling the moon. The path shattered as the skin of an old man’s face turns my mind as young fevered dancers. I think of childhood, I think of my father.

19981227

You can not know how deep my feelings are

You can not know how deep my feelings are. Their colors are hidden, like waters among the rocks. And whose feelings might they be? And what, I wonder, could you be thinking? Although I scarcely saw the tender grasses they look as if I has tied them all in knots.

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Which seems silly of them. Watching through the dense textured leaves and iron bread baskets standing at attention at the counter, 10 the brief glimpse I had had was the sort of thing that makes for romance. Yet even in this, the distance is crippling. Distance, you put out this silent fire to no avail. Can you extinguish the fire in the human heart? I hope to understand all this. The shadows return a reply. The firefly but burns and makes no comment Silence sometimes tells of deeper thoughts. Raising my eyes to her I consider 20 Even today the iris is neglected It’s roots, my cries, are lost among the waters. The vapid face of existence smiles delicately. It might have flourished better in concealment, The iris root washed purposelessly away. Exposure seems rather unwise. The gaze consciously diverted harvests sallow gardens.

19981228

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1999

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199901 — 199903

They personiﬁed hope

They personiﬁed hope the most irrational and unyielding of emotions. Mysterious hope, that makes life bearable, lost in a bewildering universe.

19990105

The snow tonight fell slowly

The snow tonight fell slowly as the sumara seeds from the maple tree. There is a small pocket of air at the very tip of the seed’s wing, and like a black hole, we can’t see in. On the cars and steps leading to houses the snow lay like weightless beach sand that never tires from the sea’s visit. Land laden folk go to the water for the sun, which is everywhere, and miss the cold hole filled with dark water. It is a great shadow whose sharp tongues 10 lick at the sky, its torso moves all by itself. The snow dry as this, the air deceivingly warm, makes the night appear light, though in my sleeve I carry a thin sliver of pure darkness that I keep all to myself, a secret gift of my father’s. When, as a child full up with energy, I’d grow thirsty from hours of sledding or snowball fights or exploration in a forest made from scratch, sounds not yet added, I’d drink a plain slushie from my hand, reclined in a chair fitting perfectly. Then I’d relieve myself by spelling my name in the snow 20 or see how far I was capable. The pine trees would steam with the warm liquid, I was an animal and I claimed the world as mine. Winter days in snowy woods are almost entirely without shadow.

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The shy parts of the branches are lit from below by the reﬂecting sun. The night refuses to share its dense shadow with the day. Not knowing of such things, the day doesn’t miss it.

19990108

Prince

A Prince sat on a hill rubbing his feet in a plentiful bed of rose petals. Sitting there each day, when summer climes allowed he would hear the suggestions of his many advisors. After tea he would plunge into the icy waters of the reservoir and consider the ideas before him. His father had recruited the wizest men of the land to sit with his son in hopes the Prince’s spirits would heighten with council and knowledge. 10 But, day by day, the Prince did not improve. Worn by months of men with long beards and crooked backs sitting by his side, he halts it. After an entire fortnight with no advisors, rose petals or icy swims, he receives a letter. He masks his enthusiasm and places the stiﬀ folded paper in his breast pocket and climbs the hill. By the tree where he took his lessons as a boy, he unfolds his tunic and sits cross legged.

“Low in your grasses the cricket awaits the autumn 20 and views with scorn these silly butterﬂies.”

The two short lines he memorizes before refolding the coarse paper and returning it to his pocket. He descends through the orchard to the stable where he saddles and mounts his steed. Without anyone noticing, the Prince glides from the yard to the forest where he waits. By a steam his steed drinks. It is cold and sweet, the rocks are soft with umber moss.

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Removing the paper from his pocket, and an end of 30 lead from his pouch, his eyes follow the strokes repeatedly of the mysterious author, enamored. His feeling brings him to compose a response.

[maybe later: “Come with me, we will sink on this blue raft down through acres of continental waters.”]

“The early butterﬂy envies the ﬁrm, melodious and resonant body of the curtained cricket. His admiration continues through waves of pollenout breezes when his direction is not chosen.”

Returning the lead to his smooth pouch he realizes his assumptions, but hopes it is properly taken.

40 19990126

Discovering Contra dance

At one time many of us were as the moon. We came forth from the mountain upon the world that offers no home. We returned again to the mountain. Deep though we plunged into the rivers of tears, we came upon occasional snags of remembrance. That place we once visited, separately, where three Rhinemaidens sing in resonate waters. In each, in the left breast, are three drops 10 that would wound and kill. That is their secret. I have tried one drop from each among moray eels and rays, and it has made me strong. Also I realize I was never of the moon, but only of the earth, where Ophelia returned. The whole night reaffirms my origin, translucent spirals of breath against and opaque vestige. Twirling and weaving beginning with a rise of the chest and continuing with music, lovers and husbands in rows whirling round and round to a fecund fiddle,

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20 our burly desirousness is eaten by the wolves on the hill.

19990130

Waltzing Partner

It was a moment when time filled up and overflowed, nothing more could happen; or if it did, would go unnoticed. Normally time is much too big and passes idly, but this moment presented time a bottleneck, bringing it quietly to a standstill. The change was sudden as a downpour that begins without any warning from the wind, who is often so telling. It has been a long full day of dancing; rocking up and back, twirling and spinning, sharing weight, turning by this and that, Polska and gypsy, even a handstand entered my day. Now it is midnight, the first minutes of St. Valentine’s day pass and thoughts of the womb my bed would seem to me makes my face and tummy warm. There’s waltzing in 10 the main ballroom and I intend to passively watch, in my fatigue, the beauty that are men and women spinning and smiling together with triple-time piano. Fifteen minutes pass. My saliva is sugary, my body warm; I am comfortable. My head has cleared from the opaqueness I’d felt after the long contra when I danced without any reservation, getting in as many spins as I could. My feet feel swollen, but are rested. The music is not as far-reaching tonally as I’d enjoy — no pulls from minor tones or sustained resolutions. Instead it consists mostly of cascading chords like a small electric recycled waterfall over stones that makes a thin humming noise, distracting from an imposed tranquility which is false anyway. An apparition who tickles the corners of my eyes approaches my chair; when I look up to see her, her eyes pull me up from my own weight, 20 effortlessly. My tepid gaze being broken, I thank her for disallowing my body’s fatigue to override my heart’s yearning. She and I take firm hold of one another, the fingers of my right hand tracing the corner of her scapula, she is good to share this solid hold with me. Her fingers with delicate pressure on my lower back relaxes me. Our bodies rest gently together as overlapping shadows upon a plush carpet at the end of a deep hallway. Enter Music We begin our waltz step, slowly building momentum so that we are soon turning evenly through the other dancers. I shift my focus from the people about us to her eyes, and how startlingly indulgent a change that is. I realize this is not my choice, this adventure 30 is happening to me. [My mind’s back chambers amiss think that something is beginning in order to end, it only makes sense when dead.] My eyes feel clear and diaphanous like white wine while her lovely eyes speak of a fugitive tenderness I so want to know. At this moment I now someone is watching us, noticing all those things which are invisible to

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young people. Our intense gazes are two mirrors eaten away by rust spots, reflecting and reflecting back something I had long abandoned now embodying a living intensity which does not allow itself to be ignored. I feel comfortable with her, already, as I did with my dog when I was a child. He would stop by where I’d lie on the floor building card houses and lick my ear, then lay down pressing his back to my leg. She offers her name in a voice as a fiddle resounding over 40 moss laden stones, something that sharpens one’s senses and lets him know he’s awake, which I very much am at this moment, against my body’s immediate wishes. My consciousness curls up upon itself to hold the sound and for this brief time I remain tongue twisted, feeling I’ve crossed into a foreign country. Then, with a blink of her eyes, suggesting a hemidemisemiquaver, but feeling as a lunga pausa, my passion, which was waiting on the alert, pounces unforgivingly on me — it flows through me, I am filled with it. The music pauses briefly and she stays on for another waltz, I breathe deeply. I feel like a great hole full of dark water moving all by itself — like the sea, salty and shivering. This dance I bask in the fun of it. We’re past the formalities a first dance can carry on its 50 head, its neck stiff for balance — on to an exploratory one. Now’s a smile showing teeth in her fluid and sparkling face; the language of old times hiding in a closet with a friend trying not to giggle, hoping to be the last two found. I laugh because I hope to be found with her. I look about for a second hoping someone will point us out, crying out, “They’re here!” Like the silence that becomes the bath when the water stopped, the music ends and deeply we press into each other’s bodies, as though we were making impressions in clay. My mind clears, I become aware of her shoulder, and of her necklaces, and of our sweet fragrance together. The seconds pass precisely one at a time until they run out. I am perfectly happy. We part. Stoically, I occupy myself by trying to devalorize the dance for 60 it could be a siren’s song tempting my heart. Time skips and flutters as a bird with one bad wing. From the far end of the ballroom something returns which helps to link the scattered moments of the day and solder them together and which gives them a meaning. I would like to take hold of myself: an acute, vivid sensation would deliver me. Between the dense moments I long to capture the horse with only one hair from its mane. The great tortoise from the mountain passes before me, his claws like princes’ swords splitting rug’s fibers with each shift in weight. If I were alone I would ride with him away into the darkness. The dancing ends Beginning to ride away, myself, I gather my things while looking over my shoulder. 70 Everything changes without my making an effort. My bag, jacket and water bottle which consumed my space are now joined by my exquisite waltzing partner. I feel the air open

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up, as though I am reaching the crest of a hill and am looking out over a lake thick with greenish water. Our hands dance together by themselves and we watch them. Along the floor people have chained themselves as a Jacob’s ladder, the head of one on the stomach of the next. A laugh would bubble up and trickle down the line. I am firmly pulled by the arm and we join the end of the chain, my head on her stomach. I let out a breath I have held in my torso for three years. This moment was extraordinary. I was there, motionless and icy, then overwarm and tingly, plunged in a blissful ecstacy. 80 Someone is taking care of me, holding my boney, sincere and spent body, moving her fingers like weightless flightless birds over my arms and back: I am being held by a woman; this hasn’t happened to me in years. Because of this, entirely out of my control, my thoughts turn to this young woman, who brings great floods of desire from my center, where it has hidden from me. My body flushes and I feel for a moment like I’ve plunged into a hot spring, pockets of air rising about me, rolling uncontrollably up past my skin. Following her hand with mine, past the small wrinkled patch of skin at the elbow to the shoulder and neck, I caress in the opening of cotton the white ecstatic flesh which falls back gently, touch the blossoming moisture of armpits, the elixis and cordials and fluorescence of flesh. Beyond this moment no promises are made, yet there is no need. 90 We are quiet; happy at being together, happy at being seen together. The chain of people begins to rise and shrink away a link at a time. A sweater is substituted as a stomach for my novel partner, as we are thickly entwined in each other like the roots of an aspen forest. So easily could this become the morning with sliding shafts of light making warm pockets on the sheets. She is as hot honey-sweetened tea; if I drink of her now I could be severely overwhelmed and fear return, but if I am patient and allow for a tempered clime, I could drink deeply of her with great delectation. Still, how sweetly she smells and the lure of the steam rising from the swirling surface. I endeavor a sip. Oooh, Mmmm. How wonderful, but far to feverish for me, already so consumed with the steam. 100 The night cools my head, my breath condensing in tendrils of undark. I follow the feeling in my feet through the soles of my shoes, past the unforgiving pavement, to the dirt which man moves recklessly about, through clay and springs to a center where I will again return. I replace all the air in my lungs with one breath. While I often follow the flower down its stem to the soil from which it rises, tonight I pleased myself with the petals, pistil and stamen; ah, bliss! If I pass this from my hand, then the opportunity to know the rich soil may be as sprint, soon in coming.

19990220, 19990221, 19990302 and 19990304

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It’s a long climb up

It’s a long climb up when one falls in love. It’s a climb that is made out of this vertical rock tunnel whether love fails or succeeds. As any journey over rocks, there are many paths. I met a man at a contra dance who had a collection of rare rocks. These were all rocks he had found himself, on bottoms of boulders lifted by great machines from the ground, or in caverns he had found while climbing. He gave me a small quartz crystal, the size of my thumbnail. I considered his climb a graceful and lucrative one. I hold the quartz in my hand, rolling it between my fingers and pressing it firmly into 10 my palm. I think this is a lesson I pass while I’m still falling. I probably won’t find it on my climb back up, but there are many, and I always climb so slowly and discerningly. I have always like the feeling of falling because there is no need to fear it. I don’t need control over my destiny, there is no such thing. I would prefer to allow the old forces, who have never failed, to guide me through the ether or passions or waters. All hide whirlpools and tumult where I may get caught, then thrust out from again. With nature, I can never stay in one place or be forever safe.

19990306

Man and rock

In late spring a man climbs a rock face, his fingers dense with callous. Where he stops to rest, halfway up, he hangs out by one arm like a shop sign. He lets his skeleton do the work and allows his mind to wander. His eyes follow a small river, beginning at the pond directly under the sun, where it had fifteen minutes before reflected into his eyes, southward to a second pond where he spent a whole day with a woman. That day they paddled the perimeter by day and floated at its center through the night, so that the start were for them only; he was happy. He looks back at this great rock which he clings to like a parasite. It will be here long 10 after he dies. In a crack, inches from his ever gripping hand, lay a small quartz crystal submerged in moisture, ferric oxide, and shadow. He draws his other hand up and plucks the rock from its quiet home. “Always six,” he thinks: the first perfect number, the number of years I cried when my father died, the fingers of a snowflake. Tucking the rock into his breast pocket, where it will warm and resonate with his heart, he again looks out over the landscape to follow the river down further to the marsh where its flow seems to stop. Again rested, he continues his climb with more energy than before. The wind gusts are wonderfully strong. Sweat that starts its ant-walk down his face is turned over and rolls

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sideways and off his eyebrows by the wind between his body and the rock. Sometimes he lays against the warm rock and he’s reminded of sleeping in the summertime on table 20 stones after late evening hikes. When his body is fatigued the rocks always soften to him. He is a good listener. He has listened to the wind and rock for years. Wind hushes, screams or is silent. Rock is quiet for a long time, then lets a thought fall in a whisper or ululation, then waits for a response. He does not fill his world with chatter, the senseless dust of the mind that many tend to shake about. Instead, he allows for clarity, as an azure sky of deepest summer. The seasons change, he is constant, neither fearing death nor keeping secrets. At the top, he rests, laying flat on his back with a patch of moss under his head. The clouds that travel effortlessly for miles consume him. He might have been a cloud in his climb, for he made no effort, but found himself always higher than before. Venus reaches 30 his eyes as a single pinprick of light when the sky appears darkest between moats of water and dust. He closes his eyes and sends his mind out further. Two sharp-winged birds slice past him, but he stoically contemplates the colossal oblong orbs, all resolved to be an outer roundness of a star at their center. He is struck by a fit of cosmic anguish. Poor planet, dark, cold, hurled into infinity. He feels, weighing on him, the real presence of Neptune. The dark and icy star weighs on each part of his being. That crushing mass of darkness, of hopelessness, of desolation and abandonment. Like a bad dream and yet, how very real. He opens his eyes, he has made it back to Earth! Back to this planet full of flowers, rivers and people. How beautiful it is, our Earth. How beautiful. With its changing skies, blue waters, continents, islands and 40 hills. The life that trembles in its womb and rises up toward the light. He stands, feeling like the world’s first man on the first hills. His heart swells with awe, joy and gratitude. He thinks of forests, wild animals, of flies, elephants — he loves elephants — and of men. There’s nothing more wonderful, more gentle than man. Their wars, laws, their justice, for him these are just pranks, sound and fury. They have a song for their pain, for their selfishness, and their hypocrisy. Man’s selfishness is as lovable as that of a butterfly or a squirrel. Nothing in man is evil. He removes the small quartz crystal from his pocket and places it in the ticklish spot of his palm. Always six, with sometimes small portholes or rarer windows to alternate parallel universes, places of transcendental plurality. He wonders if he could make it back 50 if he were to pass through one of these windows, an atom at a time; would he want to return? Glass is a liquid yet he trusts it to remain the same for his whole life. He drinks more water. It is full like the sky around him and fills him up uniquely. Yet, his mouth remains dry like the inner walls of a chimney, so he eats fruit from other continents. Wind comes to him again, unexpectedly, and he shivers, his skin becoming goose flesh. He weeps. The wind accepts his tears and delivers them to where Neptune

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makes a sea.

19990307

Tonight my brother is brought to jail

Tonight my brother is brought to jail, where he’s treated like dirt. Probability has caught up with him and for a moment, no struggling will free him. I stand at the sink, my back tense from work, sore from standing here, doing dishes. All the oil leaves my hands leaving them pruned and I slice a ﬁnger softly on a chipped glass. My roommate is doing his taxes, narrating the 10 instructions out loud as though rehearsing the lines he will say once and once only. My ears are tiring into a compression in the temples. Mom and I discuss my brother; I get mad, I yell a little, then apologize and shake my head. He’s a wonderfully kind and bright person who makes a wrong turn at each intersection. I feel like not helping him, considering the expense, the bother, the frustration; then I do. If only he were less volatile, less reckless, 20 less scattered — less Mark? No, more Mark. I’m convinced life can be better for him, but I don’t know how to help him.

19990318

As once I was a wave of icy air

As once I was a wave of icy air. Solitary, silent trembling through the darkness — a necessary part of it — embodying at once frailty and shadows. Many miles in a day I would travel if the wind invited. I had had many adventures. Beyond the boundaries of memory, I’ve hidden in a pack of a Vermont hiker, drifted among spelunkers, taken the

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scent of the sea, been thick with water and smoke and vibration. Four years have I stayed safely enclosed within a small tin in a damp corner of an elderly widower’s basement. Every moment here is an echo of the last. I become so confused in this existence that I die over and over again. 10 You come, I would never learn, door to door collecting old items that no longer exist for themselves. The hollow apathetic and stale canister, my begotten tomb, awakes and the circular walls move about, bringing my center to a tight spiral. Confusion abounds, I move recklessly about, thrashing clumsily to understand. Opposite sides begin to warm slightly, I am changing. There’s an exchange, a deep thump as a drum, then the shell is cracked. There is movement and water and dust and the sensation of splitting and melding and spiraling. If only I could understand my ways. At once there’s a small sound, then I’m whisted up from the darkness into light, then back into darkness, through the shutters of breath. I’m made to cover a moist and fractaled surface, my temperature rockets, I feel 20 myself changing. [note to myself: more here, like feeling] I feel I’m fueling the greatest fire, losing singles for sixes. [H2O to CO2] From my host comes a pause, a moment for regrouping and understanding — oh, I’m forever changed. Motion reverses, I find myself ascending as a resonant sultry wind. My sound-shivers reflect off tonsils and ivory castles and a furry creased muscle that is my God. All at once, around me is the world I once knew but I no longer am a section of its continuum. I begin my ascent through the severe aridity, my edges curling over themselves endlessly. I feel myself evaporating, I’m becoming once again my stayed wave, chilled and isolated. But, then, I have no memory; in this moment there is only the scarring bricks that I rake against, tumbling again into existence, unchanged. 30 19990320

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199904 — 199906

As once I was a wave of icy air but

As once I was a wave of icy air but that time has left me, and with it a collective of ineffables. In everything that touched me then, the rust on joints of handrails, the shadowed detail from cracked plastered ceilings, on slats of wood whose paint has been disturbed from an inner rot, the sun with reaching fingers bleaches with light. I retreat to proof poems from my past. She dares to look me in the face: all my flesh feels flush and sloppy, as though she had touched it. Ever since it began, my body has lived by itself, but she will not see this. She is feigning a history for me now, somehow that I have arrived here to return her interest. 10 19990501

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199910 — 199912

Last night, as my mother left in her car Last night, as my mother left in her car, the first snow began its intrusive and shy decent. Aware of this I would have taken out my long winter coat, lifted the hood and walked for miles. Instead, newly accompanied, I hid in the basement of the large house playing ping pong with a woman. The furnace warms the house from the earth up, pipes hanging low alternate scolding and frigid. I go to bed with this woman, and try to recapture 10 the darkness and moisture and walk through the night. Though I try — many times — I can never leave. I am kept at her side in dreams, unable to escape her magnetism. At morn I leave the car alone and walk to work. I am not where I would have been, but closer to myself. Work is frustrating and unexplainable and plagued with problems without solution. I walk home, cursing, looking down. My breath is shallow, as in sleep. At home, I claim the night from the woman and walk out with my hood drawn. The pebbles poke through the thin soles of my sneakers. I have given up walking the stride of a stoic, 20 it wore me out long ago trying to fit those shoes where I would not feel the ground at all, nor get anywhere at all since it did not matter where I would be. Instead, the wind bursts up my sleeves bringing water to my eyes and feelings that accompany a sneeze, without one. I am thinking of my father who is barely living out his fifties, driving seventy miles each way to work, spending time at home at his computer. He is as absent as ever. When I was his child, he substituted video games for his presence. I conquered every one looking for him. I miss my father. I miss his love and attention and companionship. 30 I miss these though I hardly know these qualities as his. Just two days ago we sat at the same table and did not speak, but later shared a half hour of cooperative video game play, in silence.

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My father’s father died long before I was new, and my father sits at his computer each night knowing this, perhaps mourning. His mother keeps her house ordered and clean; no boy can play there. In her house, a boy leaves himself outside like ﬁlthy shoes for the visit. Thus he passes on, knowingly or not, a great and overwhelming deprivation which he is unable to go back and reject for something dark, moist, covered with hair and generous without strings. 40 So deprived is he that he’s forgotten that such a condition exists.

His mother would say he has done her proud, fulﬁlled her to a happy death. My mother would say that he can’t help it. I have rejected my father so that I may start anew, so I may discover my father as he is unable to discover his own father. He has adopted a model that may resemble his father of the ﬁfties, valuing early to work, responsible labor and admiring discipline and by doing so has disappeared into the woodwork. When he dies, it will be silent and invisible — later there will be an explosion.

50 19991108

My wound

Isolation is the location of my wound and so will be the source of my gold. In company I turn to lead. I reiterate the world, am too dense and slow for individual thought.

19991121

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2000

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200001 — 200003

I was going to write of ecstacy

I was going to write of ecstacy, but I’ve discovered I know nothing of it. There is nothing in our culture to provide a model for male ecstacy, not in men’s diet of life. Thus I ﬁnd myself searching for this, just as the stupid son searched for what ‘the creeps’ are. I’ve looked for it through the feminine, which is inappropriate and damaging. I can only admire and leave the experience like a large hole in the ground, 10 desperately hoping for more to fall in, only to grow.

20000108

Ever followed a person’s face

Ever followed a person’s face from the acknowledging smile to the inward, horrified necessity of feigning? It is obvious when observed from the side that the first glance is insincere and the second is inwardly scowling and haunting, not happy to be in this moment, fleeing on feet failing to move her into the sky.

20000108

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You are lucky

You are lucky. You are tall, handsome and have found a white collared dress shirt whose sleeve cuﬀs drape over your hand. Your face is strong and healthy, and hair long and abundant. The woman with whom you are now sharing your life is beautiful and tall, and her breasts are relatively larger than her waist size. Your time is leisurely spent in her company while you make sketches of summer scenes and write poetry. 10 Is this not youth’s perfection?

20000108

In a hut with one light on

Inside the body there’s a healthy ﬁeld of violets; earthworms wind their way through the soil, they make no plans and things are ﬁne. The rain comes, the sun, night leaves dew on the furry leaves.

I ﬁnd a day left all to myself and walk out on this frosty ﬁeld, barefoot. It’s like someone has begun a long journey and his shoes are dry and unmuddied.

A large ebony bird, both powerful and graceful, approaches 10 from the easy and I watch as it comes down low over the violets. Their petals quiver in its westward wake. It soars toward the hut by the wood with one light on.

The hut is short and squat like a healthy child. Inside it is warm, and when the door opens it exhales into the cold like a father leaning on his shovel, the driveway clear of snow.

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The large oak beams overhead hold jars of vegetables and jams. Below the stove there are ashes I have never seen. As I brush my hand over them, they are still warm. 20 I take small handfuls and rub my arms, the hair of my chest,

the back of my neck, my heels and ankles. I am dry and black and clean, like an old man in a fairy tale. I crawl on my belly over the large wooden ﬂoor planks. Pulling a splinter from my skin, the ashes cure the wound.

There are so many distinct smells, my saliva runs. Greenbean casserole, meats and cheeses, delicate desserts with shaved coconut and whipped cream. Ah, how happiness ﬂoods me!

Flowers and vegetables abound along every window ledge, 30 in each corner, from each nook in the wooden frame. The hut is a sea of life both in high and low tide, both stormy and calm, both salty and sweet. Closing my eyes, I touch a ﬁnger to the tip of my tongue.

I bundle my things, give and receive a hug and kiss and walk back out into the world. After several steps, I pause and turn toward the hut. Light comes oﬀ the snow so that the whole

ﬁeld, the many trees and plants, the great bird perched on the eaves, the mist, me with my hands out of my pockets full of ashes, everything glows with 40 the light and life from the little hut.

In the wood there’s a stream where, nuzzled in mud, box turtles dream. A salamander grips a dry granite rock. When I throw a stone into the current, a ripple never appears, like the mites in my eyelids, it is not seen.

Rivers and streams are much too much in a rush, they have no patience and talk nonsense. That’s our daily lives, hurried and confused. The days of the stream ﬂow into the life of the sea.

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The sea breathes and breathes in the moon’s wake. 50 Among the cliﬀ hollows it rises in the rock shelves, hurrying into long crevices, rising like a woman’s belly as if nine months pass in a second.

In me the waters swell, the ashes wash away cleanly. The mouth of the spiny urchin tickles the water a molecule at a time. I dip my hand into a pool of water warmed by the sun, the tiny hairs dry white with salt.

Remembering Ann Lena Vickers, 82 20000131

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200004 — 200006

My nethermost beast returns

Psseeesaweeeusss! My ﬁngers descend from my lips and return to their folded position at my navel.

My nethermost beast returns, excited as a puppy, yet standing shoulder-high. I let him pounce me, lick my face, all the while his claws tearing at my skin.

I am so happy.

10 He sleeps on my belly. I labor for breath. My shoulders are pressed ﬁxedly against my shadow.

Below are boar’s tusks, deep pools thick with algae, an ogre with bat wings, rageful women’s malice, A large cook tending a seething pot of thick stew whose bubbles send droplets over the edge and into the ashes.

20000512

What were the delights we felt in childhood

What were the delights we felt in childhood before we gave our lives over to pleasing other people, or being nurses to them or doing what they wanted done?

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Inside of me is a great castle. Like all castles, there are towers with peaked windows, walls eight feet thick on all sides, 10 a great hall with three levels, each leading to many doors, a garden with many plants in everbloom, a stable with powerful horses, in the basement is a kitchen, hot and fragrant, and below, a calm that has lasted for thousands of years.

I am currently standing in the great hall. Heavy changes have occurred in the last year; 20 all my decorations, hung carefully over banisters, over each door to identify it, everything removed and replaced by unidentiﬁable, meaningless symbols. A year I lived in confusion, so I neglected the hall.

Upon entering the hall again now for the ﬁrst in that lengthy time, I ﬁnd dust thick on the stairs and doorknobs, rodent droppings, tarnish and rot. There is work to be done.

30 I ascend the staircase to the third level and, in turn, try each door. As once they swung freely upon the slightest rouse, now, even with all my force, the latch stays.

Shaken, I descend to the second level and again, in turn, try each door. With all my eﬀort, enhanced by a growing rage, still nothing. I strike the door with my boot, and the hall sounds with the dead thud.

I descend further to the main ﬂoor.

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40 At the ﬁrst door I yank with viscous eﬀect, the door freely swinging open. In surprise, I release the handle which imbeds itself into the wall, which I then can not undo.

A cold wind blows across the door, whirling the dust and rat droppings into a grey dancing spout from their previous stagnation. All my treasures are gone. But the room is not empty, there are traps of all sorts awaiting me.

20000514 (last 2 lines ‘All my . . . me.’ 20000612)

defending the castle from Erica

she continues to move in on my life from all sides, slowly removing me from it. my place on the mountain, frank’s, dancing, everything in my world slowly removed from my comfort, even my words (which will probably be forwarded to your friends, as every part of me seems now violated) will lose their taste in my mouth. with this I return to you your daggers, which have been placed by your hurtful comments (which I never once gave you) of what was my deepest affections, the most sincere love, the caring and what at times was nursing for you, my personal games, even my father has a symbol at the hilt of a dagger which I have removed from those many hurt places, and am 10 returning to you here. may they find a dear home in the next loveful person who will not soon recognize where all the energy has gone to until that person has felt a death inside, one that is not revived without dying with it. continue to bring me up in circles, toss me in the boiling pot of malice where they make me an example to those who see me, let them decide who I am with the words coming from your black tongue. tell my story a thousand times so that it is clear where the laugh track is to be played, and where the booing and hissing is to begin and not end. I will continue to keep your story to yourself, let you tell it yourself. You ask me to tell a story that is not mine for the telling, and I respect Kristen and decide not to tell you. You say that that is why you think we would never have worked, because of the respect and trust 20 my other friends have for and in me. I can not trust you with me, or anything that once belonged to me, and the finger prints do not go away with cleaning, but only by covering them with ash. while I stood there in silence I replaced your daggers in your car where you will find them. they have been scraped and broken so as to make it more difficult to be as vicious,

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but I know you have a ﬁne sharpening wheel and they will soon be ready for use in under- the-breath, last comment, underhanded digging which so easily drips from your black tongue. I will not let you back into my life because your knife wounds let the life drop from me, where you scoop it up, while I watch. the energy I have given to you is diﬃcult for you to 30 imagine, I know, because at every turn it was not enough, so you continued to take more, never leaving me any or giving me time to refuel. I pick you up in many moments unaware you had not yet been raised, you belittle what I have given you. I rescue you when I have no reason, you say I am my father. [she calls and I defend my castle and reclaim my life]

50 20000516 on erica destroying me.

You ask me if you still make me nervous

You ask me if you still make me nervous, and I fumble innocently, now knowing what the answer is. I quip, with unsure expectation, of hopes I still scare you, not knowing if ever you’ve been. A part of me is scared, and resonates throughout, and I joke because I have, by this, been shaken. Yet in this feeling you’ve made so many warm impressions, like the form a lain mountain hare leaves in mountain grass, that the wind is but impotent to shake.

10 for AnnFD 20000518

As I get older

As I get older I’m becoming more and more of the opinion that it is better to be doing things than to be remembering things. After all, if this were not the case, I would spend much of my time remembering opportunities I never took.

20000524

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I am a great, magniﬁcent bird

I am a great, magniﬁcent bird — wings the color of spiders, eyes of the night hawk — with a scaly serpent’s body. I take the apple back, ﬂy over the mountain, where the weather changes to storm, and plant it. I remove it from where it had done so much harm; from the lies and pain and betrayal the men and women of 10 christianity have endured for centuries.

20000622

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200007 — 200009

Slipping into winter

It’s July fourth and I ﬁnd myself slipping into winter I ﬁrst noticed this last night, when with infant tears, not knowing what to say, a woman held me for the gifts I had given her.

20000704

On a stage

Have you ever felt you were just doing what you do — could be anything, reading a book, having a sandwich at the cafe,´ washing your car — and found that you have put yourself on a stage, and at the same time, in the audience? I’m sitting on a blanket, the same blanket that would produce winter static-storms when I was four, on the dirt near an overturned wheelbarrow. From the windows of an old barn is music of Beethoven, which tonight tastes bland as an unbaked potato. Down the hill from me, with her newly colored hair — earlier today, blonde, now purple — is my ex- girlfriend, whom I still love a little. She sits with a younger man, more her age, who is all 10 shaven except for a colored clump of bangs which is knotted and also colored. Her back is turned to me, I’m glad for that. Yet, still I feel I am on a dirty stage with disheveled props. I look awful and know it. I feel how tight my face is, how all the muscles seem to be pulling in diﬀerent directions. Legs of a spider each wanting to walk its own walk, the abdomen learning what it is to have emotions.

20000704

In the folded skin of my hand

In the folded skin of my hand lies an ant, black and shiny as coal kicking with its legs and moving its antennae about like banners at a sports game.

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Does it suffer? I had pounded it with my meaty fist, it did not die. Am I cruel to watch it here, struggling without any hope in the warmth of my life-line? Across the street in another city is a man 10 drunk with drink and rage pounding teeth in, everywhere are men knocking the knees of women’s image, respecting their own frailty above all. In the window is a movie of savagery below in the bar a woman is raped on a pool table the ecology of the earth fornicated with gargantuan yellow machines, stripping life, breathing fire. I pass a cornfield in my car, and with the sound of the crickets, I imagine running through in pursuit of a tusked animal, and when I reach 20 the other side I smear my own blood on my face. This ant in my palm is not of the savage world, but of the wild, instinctual, naturally intelligent one. It was found in an unlucky place, and now will die. There is no mercy killing — that is not nature’s way. As I begin to follow you into the woods, stop and turn back, I imagine the ants half crushed under pine needles and dried, crumbling leaves as you walk to the stream and back and I wonder who did the greater harm — neither. 20000723

Again I’ve gone to sea

Again I’ve gone to sea with everything that does me no good. This time I abandon each of them as the track of the moon wades up to me. Oars, each to a side,

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(notes to side: anchor to bottom stuck there, 10 still attached to boat — I don’t know. Water rises, the boat starts up, then stops, I’m submerged)

20000728?

I have a few things I’ve wanted to tell you

I have a few things I’ve wanted to tell you for a long time. The thing is, every time I have a thought and ready myself to express it, all these feelings jump up and get in the way. These are feelings I don’t recognize, ones that seep right up through the pavement to put up roadblocks. I didn’t invite these foreigners to my house, but every time I have a thought I want to share they all show up with their 10 forged invitations, the ink still wet.

There was a while when I felt that every tendon and muscle in me was attached to a bruised feeling in you. With each movement, you’d bend to the side or reach for your shoulder and rub, ﬁnding it strong and healthy again, only to be taken again by a pain in your back. Hey, that pain is not from a knife I put there! and if I hug you and don’t know it’s there and it ﬁnds itself deeper in you, I’m not taking 20 responsibility for your not pulling it out long before.

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Yes, so there are these ideas I have and want to share with you, ones that show liberation can be achieved through active thought. That’s why I’ve organized this special meeting place in the large vault in my father’s bank. But as they come to the front of my mind, the air thickens with the feelings with many hands and soon our ears are six and seven layers covered by hands and the silence of the vault before 30 is now silenced further so that I close my eyes and disappear into a wide mouth, the teeth touch and join, stretching when it again opens and when I again open my eyes, I’m under water. The bathysphere holds us in the shafts of sunlight that ﬁlter down from above. There is noise, but it makes no sense — it is white or pink.

As I look about me, a bubble rises and ascends warbling through the metal frame, and as I peer down into the darkening depths, my mind rushes 40 forward and again I begin to share myself. The seams of sunlight that before had played on my skin become a noose, a gag, and bind me so that I can not move my lips and the thoughtful air can not vacate my lungs, so near the heart.

I still have a few things to share. I thought I did, but it doesn’t really matter. I know now that it’s not really worth it, and besides, I’d rather no one felt hurt. If there’s someone out there ready to take oﬀense 50 ﬁnd them and direct them to me. I’ll cover their world with pillows and pads, wrap myself in the straight jacket and pull the clouds over both our eyes.

20000728

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His head is held in her hands His head is held in her hands, freshly shaven, it is exciting velvet. He tells her, “They tell me this is where my brain is kept, though I’ve never seen it. And what an awkward place to lose it to.” “Never trust anything that you can’t tell where it keeps its brain,” is her reply.

10 20000730

Silence I’m in a dusty room of the old cathedral building. through the colored glass a dull yellow line leaks onto the floor, dribbling into the cracks and pits of the damp cement with the scent of spiders. I am finally alone, and what I hoped for and expected of the silence betrays me. Where I thought I would find nothing, finally nothing, my heart beat surfaces, my slow and shallow breathing rasps the tender flesh and thin mucus in the front of my neck. 10 Blood, which in these tricky shadows seems to leak from my skin, then dissolve into again, this same blood I hear rushing past my inner ears, the muffled sound of a waterfall in a cavern. The only moment when I truly knew silence was when my friend John unlocked the cabinet to his mother’s gun and we stood by the river studying its slender black body and smooth wooden butt. We were nervous and giddy — this was real danger. We each began to fear each other, my mouth tasted foul, stomach acid and sour milk, my hands sweat a 20 sticky film that got over everything, my eyesight seemed to sharpen but my mind no longer was able to distinguish what was what and I had to sit down.

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John was full of energy, waving the twin barrels here and there. He tucked the shiny butt into his shoulder muscle and took aim at leaves sliding eﬀortlessly past us down the smooth water, at birds that ﬂew past high above, or any rustling in the brush. He even once pointed at me, causing me to leap up in a panic, trip over some dead branches full of leaves and 30 crash onto a stump, cutting my forehead and elbow.

To this he hollered, turned thirty degrees and ﬂexed his ﬁnger.

[silent pause] In the three seconds that followed, before the tinny ringing from the stratosphere of my mind crept down to keep pitch for an orchestra of one, there was silence. I felt I was watching a silent movie, John tumbling backwards from the kick, a branch snapping in three under his heel like a brittle bone, one end swinging up to meet his calf and leaving its signature by 40 carving two long parallel lines into his uneven ﬂesh.

I was too shocked to be mad yet, and my eyes instantly ﬁlled with the sea, my jaw and sphincter tightened at once, my breath was held by the moment so that I wasn’t even able to cough. My skin felt thin like cray paper my forehead covered with fur and legs missing. I inhaled hard, and the choking breathing stung my chest. It was then I heard the stream, it was like my arm was being twisted, the paper crinkling and tearing.

But if that’s what true silence is all about, 50 I’ll stay here grudgingly satisﬁed with my body and mind — being one entity now separate from soul, which I gave away as dirty coins moments ago in the collection basket.

20000805

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200010 — 200012

It (whatever ‘it’ becomes)

It (whatever ‘it’ becomes) started as a firecracker, just lit and thrown from my hand, its wick crackling and sending off sparks. Yet, when the wick has nothing left, the explosive lies there dormant. I want an extra moment. I want to bend over and lift it, but I’m scared of it. It lies there staring back at me. I want to ask of my father its retrieval, for he’s seen many firecrackers, many of which have gone off leaving craters in the earth, and others that rose into the sky coloring it with their glory, and still there were those who whispered their wick away, and lay there dead. This is mine to pick up.

10 200010-200212 (not precise)

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2001

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200101 — 200103

Today is a day not on any calendar

Today is a day not on any calendar. Today I’m crazy, absentminded, wild, disgraceful. All day and night there’s music and silence. The day and I are lover, bread, and gentleness. Today there is no room for confusion or belief, all the clutter and business have evaporated with the dew. The beauty I love today is what I do, laboring for wealthy men is replaced by my newly discovered taste for pleasure. 10 Instruments bringing music and dancing, we are animals in ritualistic pursuit of beauty, sensuality. Today I’m nimble and quick, youth abounds! My hands are not crippled from repetition, my attention spreads and covers as stratus the whole day. I’m strong and balanced, my heart does not climb the walls, always reaching the ceiling. Today my heart swells and bursts again and again, my vision penetrates people’s faces and I realize I can not resolve their pain, 20 but instead share intensely in their joy. The caretaker my parents trained in me I have given a magic potion and he will sleep now for a hundred million years. I do not control my life today any more than before, I have simply stopped trying.

20010114

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Mirror

The door creaks open, nervous and desirous. Four large black shoes, thick soles, fat laces. A constant jabbering, the sound from a stadium at kickoff. The man’s pelvis, metronome, 10 toward the woman, against her jacket, arm, staring at her moist lips. Off balance, ghost pulling his sleeve, his body is querulent, his mind is obliviously clear. He finds a mirror, lovely mirror. He sees a genius, a sex fiend, 20 a hero. His image is an obsidian dagger, sharp, spiny, atramentous. He cuts through the obese air, leaving pieces of it behind him in disheveled piles, the rest he tucks into his inside jacket pockets. She’s a frosty tart, 30 fragmented cold, spilling over with indifference. On his side she clings like an ornament, lifted up what seems a thousand miles. Tentacles

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of woven flesh flutter into the air diced up into pollen-like dust, 40 perfume, parts per billion, overwhelming vacuity of substance; she passes above me without issuing a glance. Tonight, vagina, a steaming fig, the sweet hollow false fruit, pulpy flesh, opens, the lies staining the sheets, knocking headboard, 50 carrying through the ceiling into thoughts where before was sweet calm sleep. And after, he finds a bit of sensation beyond the retracting numbness, umber folds, replaces the mask, slinks down behind his childhood towers, 60 encircled by a moat of shame, guilt crocodiles with twin fangs of sin and depravity. She calls after him, but he’s long gone behind his semen, like shellfish, petri dish, Bunsen burner stir the civilization 70 around and around with a large dollar bill, the marketers, advertisers, and propagandists

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at their big party, celebrating another containment of thought and desire, pantheism adored, squirting out around the edges, 80 catching and flaming up, too far from the mucus tunnel, flagellation (a worship of love in the highest) then all lost, burnt dead crisp, scrape out the dish or throw it away, unsalvageable. A winding, tubular desideratum, though slick with clear slime, 90 an image that moves from grasp, pulling at you, taunting you with twitching fingers, with need to survive and suffocate, world ending, blasted out of a solitude under the afterbirth of the sun, onanism after 100 onanism. Man and woman watching but from opposite sides of the screen, it’s all said, done, done, said again, repressed, comes out hollow, snakes around but wisdom intentionally left out, shit out, rewrite history, 110 the opulent to control the masses, to become slaves, instill conformity, the family,

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the most important job with no training, with no training, push you into it, shove it down your throat with no understanding to wash it down, choke it down with a hard slap, 120 a scream, a shatter line moving through a mirror, splitting his image of genius, of lover, of hero, into broken pieces, the healthy parts here, the diseased parts here, the happy and sad parts, and each part of him 130 living and loving incompletely. His images split and meld, estrange and condense, dividing precipitously, multiplying himself out of control, marketers putting him into their pants, their ﬁlms, their automobiles, his mental stock invested in 140 an outward body where the nation’s soul lives and where we are meant to suﬀer in silence, complacently, our egos bought and sold on Wall Street, and resold to us again and again to pay for a privilege we never see. The hunger ungulates 150 like the cocoon of a forgotten moth,

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writhing, dripping of reddish-yellow acid, letting off invisible fumes, it is then shrouded by a base pinkish liquid flowing out from the public relations industry the one-in-six-dollars ad industry to the satellites 160 in through the parabolic dishes. Fill a glass of clear water with salt you get salt water, with shit you get shit water, with greed and insecurity you get our country, ununited consumers in a corporate feudalism and we forget each other, live for ourselves, forget the revolution, 170 hoard and guard like individualistic little nations, but only that which we are meant to desire, forgetting what we originally hungered for, which is alive, subtle, energetic, flexible and vulnerable. Will we ever see that ever again? Will we ever see, see a single true image of ourselves 180 in one mirror, all of us together, staring back at ourselves, watching, zeal, noticing the sly motions of the hands, the irony in the eyebrows, the crackling sounds made before voice, no-one nervous?

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The battle zones missing? 190 An undone ﬂower bed swimming in a spa of its own fragrance, pungently sweet and magniﬁcent? Or will we always be fed, as serfs in the deep and foul corporate ocean, one broken piece at a time, to the hunger of the missoner’s teeth, digested, forgotten, 200 loving every minute of it?

20010201

Indigold buzzing

There was a moment of silence, but the preejaculatory nature of noise brought back the dazzling hum and through my regimentation I leave my clear pure thinking space for the indoctrinated indigold buzzing of complacent obedience. Remembering, it seems like a vacation. After months of slaving away (and I mean slaving, bending to another’s will, sacrificing my internal artisan for the art, which advances far beyond me, because of me, but without) a moment comes and I have peace. Brunnhilde¨ dissolves into her cascading magic sleep and when the strings soak through the intellect and into history, as rain through a felt hat, the moment to be honored is born and we choose to honor that silence or ignore 10 — oh, if only I wasn’t so busy, it’s just that I told Sam I’d meet him at 2, then off to aerobics, a salad on the way to meditation, and tomorrow I’m packed again, living my life back to back with myself and there’s no signs of it letting up. If only I could stop for that moment and honor it, go through the decisions that I live my life by one by one and choose them again, shuffle them in my mind, play 52-pickup, and come up short — discard the royalty I thought I needed from the outside, make room for my inner King, my inner Queen, all the many jesters I’ve collected and locked away under the castle when I was in high school, spend some time in the basement kitchen and rub the stove soot on my sweatless skin, peel the shadow back and discover who I might have been. 20 But, of course, I don’t have these thoughts, because I’ve put my gloves on, run out the door, the radio fills up the car when it starts, and there’s no room for anything else.

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20010203

He has a history before him

He has a history before him, poised, excited, ready to strike. You know something will happen, and if you try to anticipate he will always surprise you. I see him in my memory in a long black coat, he appears in still life as a man walking backwards, a cloud of memories trailing in front of him, but actually, those tendrils of history are before him — this is hard to understand how this births itself out. Put yourself in the passenger seat of a car traveling through a night snowstorm, the large ﬂakes clumped together move predictably through the streamlines (which don’t really exist) and soon you are hypnotized, relaxed and dismissive, approaching the land of Nod. 10 With the quickness of lighting a large clump crashes through the windscreen, kissing you on your cheeks, right-left-right, passes through your chest, which brings a shivering chill. This is not fate, but was before you. There’s a diﬀerence. Your cheeks are moist.

20010203

A young couple comes in

A young couple comes in. They’re both in fancy dress, the boy with razor creases in his pants, black jacket, white shirt, clean, nervous. The girl in a slinky black dress, black nylons, the back drooping in a low U, like a leotard, hair up, necklace, shivering cold. I watch for a moment, topping my tea with milk, he makes his way to the counter 10 looking down at that angle one does when aware that others are watching. I ask her, “What’s happening tonight?” Replying, “There’s a dance tonight.” “At the high school?” “Yes.” “You gonna give it away tonight?” “What?” “Are you going to give your pussy away tonight, your pussy, pussy?”

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“No, I mean, I don’t know, wh, what?” 20 “Never mind, let this boy screw you out of your mind, like me, you won’t feel a thing your ﬁrst time it happens. I kept thrusting until she said, ‘you done?,’ I said I was, tossed the rubber out the window to land with all the others and I dropped her oﬀ — horrible.”

20010203

She sits on his lap

She sits on his lap, his legs are spread wide apart, she sits on his right thigh. It will soon be asleep. He wriggles to get his arm behind her back, where it won’t be cramped up in a ball trapped behind her; she isn’t comfortable either. They think they are sharing in something romantic — this is an infancy of sex. They are wrong. They are sharing a discomfort, too chickenshit to tell the other that this isn’t working, it’s painful; his leg is now numb, she feels foolish up so high. He’s extra careful not to spill his coﬀee on her when she speaks with animation. It’s not about this one moment. It’s about minutes and hours and years and torsion, that 10 selﬂess twisting of the senses, including desire, which works tirelessly against itself. We put ourselves through so much trouble through our silence, a month of this ends a relationship, a century and the corporations have taken us over. We look around, not knowing what happened, slink into bed and try to weep, but nothing comes. We feel out of place, our feet are too big. The sky sinks down low to meet us and we feel it pressing down as the ground hardens below. Our voice chokes and we no longer recognize the sounds as our own. We are left desirous.

20010203

There is a hunger that lives in the curl of the lip

There is a hunger that lives in the curl of the lip, a hunger that hurts.

20010207

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Vagina Monologues, impressions Always is mentioned, ‘A strong, wonderful, incredible woman.’ Never ‘man — strong man, incredible man.’ Do you know how easily our bodies are abused? Moaning comes from not getting what you want right away, with putting things oﬀ. Where do men belong in all of this? We have died, gone to work, set in the grave. When women unite, men dissolve and disappear. There is no need anymore, nothing. 20010208

About Softball in College

The sun was a cantalope on the horizon, as dusty and tired as we were, the peel strewn about the playing field. It was the last inning and we were each relieved to be in it because it meant the inevidible ending was near. This game was not going very well for us. We played badly and we knew it. It was less about bad play so much as incomplete play. A strong shot to short grounded expertly would, on the throw, dribble to the left of first and out of play or soar overhead, a lead goose in early migration. This is how it went, a series of half events each finding completion with a sense of relief that it did not continue to go on. 10 These were gloomily happy times.

20010220

On Dancing

I remember standing on stage, the reel-to-reel machine at my side on a small table, and a large microphone on a stand that was taller than I was. I was four years old and singing ‘Honey’ to an ocean of square dancers, amongst which were my parents. An ocean of waves, stars and [others]. Each square like a whirlpool using an alternate set of physical laws.

10 20010325

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My shoulders sank as I entered my kitchen My shoulders sank as I entered my kitchen I dropped my jacket on the chair and It hung there like a moldy slab of meat — precisely how I felt. I was tired, completely worn, on the threshold state of a headache — and I never had them. Why? What is this for? Fuck! If I work all week at something I don’t enjoy and it takes so much from me that I 10 don’t have enough left over to do what it is I really enjoy, then something is painfully, sickeningly wrong. Do I go dancing? — Sag. Hhhh. Hell yeah I go dancing. I’m doing to dance my ass oﬀ, all weekend, my sweat is going to bleed into my whole wardrobe, then I’m going to sleep all week. They’ll call me at home, but I won’t answer. I’m not your slave, I’m not stooping over and managing the data for you, build your own code to harvest the money that never reaches, nor is important to, me. 20010325

I’m feeling vernal I’m feeling vernal this is going to be the best spring and summer of my life. I’ve been going over the list of all the things I’ve wanted to do in this life and I thought I was near the end and I would be if I continued my slave state but, you know, it’s no longer worth shit.

10 20010325

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In my chest is a clean, stainless steel box

In my chest is a clean, stainless steel box, just larger than a man’s ﬁst. I feel its corners rub against my ribcage when I turn in my seat.

This is a product of my age.

Inside this box is a slippery summer night — I sweat in the breeze that lifts my bangs from my forehead. My skin has grown rough with salt and with shiver pimples with the wind is steady. I’m with my sweetheart, we stay out all night in the center of town. Later, we’ll be in trouble with our parents. I’m horny as ever.

I’m 26 now, and that slippery object of sexual appetency is caged with no windows, no doors, no air holes, no nothing. It has become a breeding eﬀect, the center of biological gravity, a lame duck.

No longer do the girls and women who pass look delicious in the same ways. Those with plump asses pushing out at the surface of jeans a size too small, perky bosoms, sagging, ones that seem to look longingly up at you. There is a thin ﬁlter of context which as clouded all the images I had taken in and forced back out from my over-educated adolescence.

All the sex, lubricious porn, gobs and gobs of cum and moaning that makes men swoon and topple over — it’s all evaporated, lifted up and away from my vision that had for so long been distorted and deceived. Poof!

[breathe] What do I smell now as the humidity leaves my skin? My own sweat. 10 What do I crave and desiderate now? My own sweat. Where does my thirst come from now? My own sweat.

My sweat is not a shield, my sweat separates me from the machine, the machine desires my sweat, it would love to see me die, draped out on its circuits, the electricity arcing through

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my sweat, forcing my hair (my fur) 20 straight out, it would love to win.

I probe my chest with my ﬁngers, feeling along the edges of that steel cube and then along the sides, and am suspicious at sparse rectangular inconsistancies. The further I probe, the more suspicious. I split the skin, grappling with my ribs and organs, clumps of steaming viscera wrestling back, wires and screws — I rip the steel box from me, splattering the ﬂoor and wall and chair. Ah! Ah! Ah! [screams]

The steel case has evolved integrated circuits which shatter on the ground, logic membranes tear. The machine is winning, it has been this whole time, slowly encaptulating my desires, lusts, my being!

The case breaks open with great clamour and out writhes my slippery self. I take it with cradling arms up to my chest where it mends my skin, healing it over with sweat, then I lift it up to my mouth and it wriggles in, over my tongue and down my throat, pausing, adjusting, then sliding down.

A reclaiming of birth, appetite working its way backwards into the body, I’m an infant with my toes in my mouth looking up into the air, seemingly at nothing.

20010328

A thick leslied electric hollowbody

A thick leslied electric hollowbody shakes throughout the room. At the window seat, shifting nervously back and forth, waits an overdressed teenage boy. A blond child with flushing pink skin. A beautiful specimen. He leans to the window, follows the sidewalk with his eyes out in each direction, then returns to his cup, where he dips his forefinger and rubs it between his thumb like saliva and feeling it dry on his skin he remembers. He remembers good-bye kisses from his grandmother’s mouth, planted squarely on his lips, those cold kisses, wet with bitter saliva. Dogs that nose his crotch with their moist 10 prodding snouts, dew drops on the early morning handrail, seashells on the northern coast. These events change the air around him, he notices the moisture. It can become filmy, or electric, or muted like the sounds of sex from the apartment above his. He licks his hand and rubs it on his face.

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When he wakes in the middle of the night his legs are too hot, the covers thrown about, his chest is thick and breaths shallow. Throwing the covers, he lowers his body temperature in an instant, he gets chills, sneezes, his legs and torso are moist and shivering and his fevered brow protects a brain that exceeds in complexity and beauty of any machine, which will never know nervousness or the white bubbles of saliva. That guitar is thick, I try to put it in my mouth, opening wider and wider, but the sound 20 does not ﬁt there. When I uncurl my palm and blow a focused fountain of breath, it is cool and I remember the pressure of ﬁngers and the heat two hands produce with the refreshing cool that indulges upon release. Either no moisture or sopping. The ideal lives in the extremes. It is the middle ground, the space between the neck and the navel, that bears out the subtleties.

20010329

My lover began her ﬂow

My lover began her ﬂow in the folds of sleep last night. In the morning she underestimated and without precaution leapt naked from the bed landing squarely on both feet, and she burst a rivulet of blood that splattered speckling the ﬂoor, a stream down her leg, all before she could grab a sock to plug herself up. She left foot prints in the bright snow a few steps from the cabin with a dribbling trail between them and the steaming patch was both colors, the third primary claimed above.

20010329 10 I remember when it used to be important to me to feel accepted

I remember when it used to be important to me to feel accepted. When I’d sweat for hours at the side of a girl — just a girl — feeling tough and sinuous like a grizzly piece of meat, wanting to fall from the grill into the coals.

These days she and I pull all the blankets from my bed, an open stage with all the lights on us, and play for hours, then sleep for hours, play, sleep, play in our sleep, call into work with a groggy voice, “uhh, I’m not feeling well, I may be in today, but not until late, at best,” while she rubs my back and legs.

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There are no shadows to hide in, no glances dripping of doubt, no secrets. I have opened up the world and pour myself into it.

I did not open up the world, I realized it had always been open. I opened myself up to it. There is no reason to hide — there is no reason for any of us to hide!

10 When I give of myself, the world receives a great gift. That is true for us all. If I give of myself incompletely, I betray. If I hide, I am a motiveless thief. If I do not share what others give, I do not understand the virtue of generosity.

When I stand on my feet, the earth holds me up. When I stand on my hands, I hold the earth.

20 20010331 If I don’t fall asleep, I won’t wake up, so I will be ﬁne. I can’t tell if I am doing this in my mind, or if I am really [walking].

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200104 — 200106

My body is clean

My body is clean, clean and cold like ice that doesn’t melt. Of course, more noise, news is coming out each day on the body burden this cleansing causes, the chemicals and cancers. I’m tired, but I’m cold, so I’m wide awake. If I don’t fall asleep, I won’t wake up, so I’ll be ﬁne. The sky is an encompassing lake, frozen over 10 feet thick, my hopes trapped inside where they can do no harm.

20010401

Beyond my ability is the greatest wealth

Beyond my ability is the greatest wealth. Just to where my ability reaches is wealth enough. But this only is true if when I fill the lantern I employ the cleanest wick and pour to fill with the finest oil so that the light satisfies even the moon.

20010402

Todd Lavoie went to Moraco

Todd Lavoie went to Moraco and brought back pictures so that I could go there, too. I went to Moraco to see the skillful stonework, the lovely arches, sand that rolls and lays ﬂat, skies the same color as ours.

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[People who wear North American labels (reorg the ideas)] There were lots of things to see, and lots of things not to see, which, I suppose, are the two reasons why he went. So much not to see. 10 There’s a picture of the rolling, swept hills of sand, smooth and unbalanced. Arches, lined up like a contra line, to dance down, howling if you like, to hear your own wilds call back to you.

20010402

I enjoy most women who

I enjoy most women who, when they pass, smell like nothing but themselves. Women who speak with a clear voice, who ask serious questions with joking style. Women who do not enter the house with claws left in your ankles and who leave little piles of themselves after they’ve gone, to retrieve later. Rather, women who use the space, ﬁlling it up, and when leaving, leave the space behind. 10 I don’t really know what I like and do not. I think I have lost myself after having worked so long to understand, or rather, come to an understanding with myself. Never mind. I’m returning to my bathysphere.

20010402

An old man in the cafe sat drinking

An old man in the cafe´ sat drinking a cappuccino with that tuft of foam getting in his coarse moustache. He was with, who I presumed to be, his wife drinking a regular coﬀee. This man, not because of his manner, his appearance, or his words, but simply because he was old, reminded me of my grandfather. My grandfather is a crotchetey old bastard. My

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mother’s father has been like a grandfather his whole life. Not just his whole life since I’ve been around, but since he first had children himself. My mother complains the common complaints — that he always has to be right, that he mistreats his too loyal wife, that he is rotten to us kids, and so on. Complaining to me does no good except make my mom feel 10 better, which is good enough. My grandfather, Jack is his name — Ol’ Jack Sawyer. My grandfather forbid me into his house when I was 10 years old. He claimed I stole an old movie projector. Of course, I didn’t. What the hell would a 10-year-old do with an old projector? I wasn’t a sophisticated 10-year-old, I could barely read. The only things interesting me was the pogo-stick, jump- rope, and bicycle. That old codger was always all over my brother and I. There was this one summer we were at his house in Hicksville. It was hot, and very dry. As children my brother and I had incredible amounts of energy. When I was four I used to run around our house out in the too-rural hills of Mason, NH for hours. Just run and run, waving to mom at the 20 kitchen window at every pass. She’d begin to count but give up after a half and hour or so. Grandpa had bureaucratic rules that made me feel I was living at IBM. This day was really hot, and being so active I required lots of water — many quarts a day. However, he didn’t have any plastic cups and you couldn’t bring the glasses, even the cheep ones with the cartoon characters on the sides that you could get with a fill-up at the gas station, couldn’t bring any glasses outside. So we were forced to make many trips through the back kitchen door to get a drink, then again to return to our play. Seems simple, even trivial, right? Well you can’t walk in the house with your shoes on — no big deal since the table where our glasses sat was right by the door. Here’s the kicker: Every time you come inside, you have to wash your hands in the guest bathroom. I became expert at tying and untying my shoes! 30 Here’s a typical block of 15 minutes that day: Play for 10 minutes, acquiring thirst, come inside, stand next to glass of water, watching the condensation on the glass puddle on the table but I can’t touch it until I remove shoes at door, putting them under the table, under my water glass. Walk through the house, smiling at my too-happy-to-be-in-control tyrant grandfather, wash my hands with lava soap, now wearing thin, dry them on the towel still very wet from earlier, come back to the kitchen, walking past my grandfather, saying, “That’s a good boy,” or some other bullshit line we often get from grandfolk, gulp down the entire glass of water, which would have tasted so much better when I first came in, fill it back up, toss in ice cubes, wipe up condensation puddle on the table, replace glass on table, put my shoes back on, lace them up, open the kitchen door, careful to close it gently, 40 play for 10 minutes, acquiring thirst . . . Having to perform such a rediculous ritual over and over just for a glass of water became an enjoyable project. I went through two bars of soap that day — my revenge at 7 years old. I despised the bastard tyrant early on.

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It’s nearly twenty years later. Last year the stubborn oaf almost killed himself when he tried to get up the stairs and fell, the second time, this time landing on his head. He can barely talk, can only see out the very edge of his periferal vision. His hearing has never worked well. I went to see him in the hospital after his fall. He was there by himself. Grandma had left for the day after hours of abuse by him. I don’t know why she bothers. Stuck in a generational position of servitude that she can’t escape, I think. Grrrrr! 50 I want to tell him that I wish that fall had killed him, that when he landed his neck be twisted just the right way so that he torment of his women would end and both my mother and my mother’s mother finally have some peace from this stubborn tyrant. But he is stubborn beyond death, and I have a bad feeling he will insist on living for a good while longer. I don’t tell him this. I tell him instead that I’m doing well, that I just got my pilot’s certificate and have been bringing my friends up to fly here and there, that I’m with a wonderful woman who brings me happiness. To see me he has to look about 50 degrees to the side, his eyes are covered by milky cataracts. Yesterday was mother’s day. I don’t celebrate any holidays but my giving my mom 60 a computer fell close enough to consider it a present. It was ‘just because’, but became ‘because of a holiday’. What a hideous transformation. My mother came to town, we had a picnic in the park, she took the computer and my brother and went off to see her own mother. This afternoon my brother tells me that the only thing my grandfather said during his entire visit was, after many labored attempts was, “How is Erik?” My brother gave him the basic, “Fine, fine” mantra. If only the old bastard knew I wish he were dead. What a sad, pathetic fool for spending energy on me. He only had one opportunity to know me and he lost that when he banished me because of a useless projector. At the same time, I had but one opportunity to know him, and he saved me from that with his hate of my 70 father which he took out on me. Grandfather, you are a tyrant whose death will be a happy ending to an otherwise miserable story, and like Richard II, you have fallen from power but your compassion comes too late. Liberate your women and die! This old man in the cafe,´ he may be just like my grandfather, I don’t really know. But as I watch this old man with his wife, when their hands touch, when he wipes the foam from his mustache, he is a gentleman. If I put on some Glenn Miller he might even dance here, in the cafe,´ before me. He doesn’t know I watch him and his wife, he’s on stage having a coffee and is unaware of his effect. The old man wipes the corners of his lips with his hankerchief as his wife rises and gathers her purse. He rises by pushing down on the chair back, getting most of the way, but 80 loses his momentum. He is unable, his feet shuffle hurriedly back, but he’s in no danger. He tips back to lean against the wall where he pushes himself straight. His forearm wavers

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from age and from excitement. He walks slowly as if on stilts, swinging his free leg then landing ﬁrmly. He’s on his wife’s arm. When a friend’s father died several years ago, his mother died within 24 hours. Some people have a reason for living. I don’t know what my grandfather is waiting for. Maybe he is waiting for me to forgive him and to love him.

20010514

In Propria Persona

This is not meant to be the work itself this is the paralipomena. That slip of paper that slips out, slides between the cracks, lost under the bleachers for years and years covered by soda bottles, bits of food, ﬂakes of dead ﬂesh, encumbering the vacant purpose, the afterthought decomposed.

20010518

Fight

As a boy of tender youth I had one brother, one dog two parents and acres and acres of woods. But no neighbors, no friends.

My brother and I would seldom ﬁght and my dog could wear me out. Retiring to nap with my head on my dog’s belly, the shafts of afternoon sun panned across my arm.

School-age stole my away, and isolation from me 10 The replacement was an orthogonally tiles, antiseptic, order, packed with children confused as I. I longed for my crooked branch of mountain laurel.

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My social inefficacy bore few friends, and they’d say, “we’re friends, but let’s fight!” and we did. When we bled we’d stain the victor’s shirt, to make his mother ask the questions. At eight years I had the chicken pox. My grandmother stayed for two weeks. I patiently taught her how to play Donkey Kong on my computer, 20 but kept the two pox on my penis to myself. Long before ten my parents were close friends, but then they changed to distant fighters. My father’s distance baited my mother’s infidelity he exploded, punched and slapped, then disappeared into the woodwork. When my mother turned to me, her eyes as magnifying glasses brought her helplessness very close, it was a hulking presence. She was not my friend, but my mother, and he my father, and I did not know how to fight so well. Mother, you are not my friend, I can not fight you, 30 I can not help you. Father, you are not my friend, I can not fight you, I can not help you. I love you mother, I love you father. I am clean, na¨ıve, simple, pure and unable to solve your hurtful problems. Stop looking at me, magnifying the sun on me, stop looking at me, the knotted eyes in the woodwork Stop looking at me, STOP LOOKING AT ME! I learned distance by counting my steps 40 and from an early age could run by myself at full sprint for hours at a time before requiring rest or water. In middle school the boys in the neighborhood would play football. We were friends; we fought hard. When we hit hard the boys would circle, looking down, waiting for breath to return, then lift him to his feet.

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Sometimes I’d look down at the hurt boy. Other times, I’d look up at the groins and faces. We each knew this type of pain in the same way. 50 We shared the pain, the brotherhood, the agony and love. By high school friendship had evolved and dissolved. It was the attention of girls for which we fought those days were both immediately critical and lastingly trivial our ﬁghts were like a play from which there can be no victory, no exit. [weak] When summer came we moved. Sitting on the grass’ edge sifting the sunned sand through my toes, time had slowed to a sleepy dream. When the sun set the black ﬂies would poison my neck; I turned all night.

60 ... 20010521

Sometimes a line, or even a word, is a ﬂint

Sometimes a line, or even a word, is a ﬂint striking just the right place in one’s mind. The word itself had no intension, no capacity to understand the result, which is why words maintain their innocence. Meanwhile the sparked fuse blazes a scorching path through minds and pages and history. 20010522

When the door sounds its resonant creek

When the door sounds its resonant creek I know it is the furry demons issuing into my room I ask them why the blue green sea so loves the stars and why the wind makes trouble for desert snakes. 20010530

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Through May’s days

Through May’s days, under so welcome a sun Judith’s skin turns like steeping tea, bringing forth so brilliantly her white cotton coverings. She tends gardens through the sunned seasons. It’s rained now for nearly two full days but Judith tells us the ground is still quite dry. Thirst for that growth water abounds in those same wells which work withered has. Gardens I understand. There are paths and 10 places for sitting where certain ivys hang and shelter. There’s walls about the perimeter, perhaps a maze. The stars can be seen clearly. Gardens also have dirt in which worms dwell. Colonies of ants and bees are near. Ash from the stove cover the beds and in the air is an ocean of fragrance washing over everything. In my garden, which I tend in my soul, I discovered anger of a gentler strain that had overgrown my brother’s garden. Knowing anger took 20 great work and only after years did roots take. Zoe¨ has taken a man as lover. What a sensitive and wonderous event. Sexual play for man and woman is diﬀerent. My lesbian friend is going on an adventure. The many ideas I’ve put to death that were so unfairly injected into me have freed me. I am most beautiful when naked, and so are the few women I know in such a manner. The same I’m beginning to think is so for other men. 30 That is, it is when naked that beauty is attained, most pure and natural, which is also said so of art. That which most closely imitates nature is most beautiful.

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I once had a lover who could not enjoy penetration, but she so loved my hands, as I did her body. When she woke from mid-night dreams she told me she dreamt my hand held ﬁve penises where each of my ﬁngers would otherwise be. This was a beautiful abstraction of our love-making. (If only my hands had the excitable sensations of my penis!) 40 In the mornings my arms were tired and did not stick to sheets.

While my parents were in the middle of divorce we four went to Disney World where I discovered that the only ugly part of the human body was the backs of knees, while for hours we stood in lines under an uncomfortable summer sun, sweating and ﬁghting.

20010602

On the ﬁrst day of life

On the ﬁrst day of life the baby opens his eyes and even this is too much. He cries out when they put a cap on his head. Too much, too much. When he grows older the whole world will reach out to touch him and he won’t even ﬂinch.

20010612

Twice did a woman cross my path

Twice did a woman cross my path but only on the second did I rise. No origin is like where it leads to.

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After we spoke she walked oﬀ a black wave of ocean leaving a mist on my body. I watched until I no longer knew if she approached or receded, then I watched until it was only horizon splitting the speckled night from the starless earth.

10 20010612

For years I gave away sexual love

For years I gave away sexual love with my eyes. Now I don’t. I sought the peacock but found just a color then the nightingale but found just a voice. So as a wave on itself, I turned in and receeded back, sehnsucht, where my blood rose to the surface to ﬁll the veins of darkness and light sharing a common skin with the mindful air. My blood sick with rage or polluted by excess 10 wicked up by that same sky, an old man, returning to me my blood fresh.

20010612

At least one month of the year

At least one month of the year all of us should be allowed to walk the streets naked. Nothing but a hat and portable seat cushion. Take all this hype away let it evaporate in the noon-time sun. Let us approach the limits of our beauty and let’s be plain about it.

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I’ve never used a shoehorn to ﬁt my foot into a shoe that didn’t already ﬁt. 10 I’ve never allowed anyone’s handicap of shame force me into a false image of myself. And I’ve since out learned those who imposed their irrationally irresistible ideals upon me.

Tear the faces from the magazine racks lift the image of sex from child puppets. Return sexuality to wild animals, to the lover in us, withing, beyond reﬂections.

[Let the toad sleep oﬀ winter in the frozen earth press the ﬁgure of your body in the spring-time mud and 20 imagine yourself being silently drawn by the stronger pull of what you really love.]

Let us ﬁrst be the lover of ourselves. Exercise the erotic trancing of self-love (th). Plant that seed deeply that no storm can lift it from the soul’s soil and no drought can parch it.

Imitation has imperceptibly lulled them to sleep, all these beliefs standing in place of active though. Separate yourself from them! Can you yet convince yourself you throughly are alive! 30 Question/comrade.

20010613

Living is synonymous with limiting

scratch: When a child is newly born, that child is a glorious ﬁgure of potential. Light streams from him in every direction like a star. [eventually . . . shade on lamplight]

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1. In the womb a moon becomes, from new to full, through tree seasons. Patience with small details makes perfect a large work.

2. 10 No need to announce the future — it is this now. The deepest energy is this moment, birth. Here in your hand is potential.

For several days nearly full the moon is but a singularity claims the complete illumination. From that moment is backward movement toward

again becoming an opaque globe, obsidian cold. Full, everything is too much. The state of being overwhelms the neonate.

[incomplete] 20 20010618

Few people take risks.

Few people take risks. This thin ﬂagrant episode before you is no example. I’m not half a common squirl hurling itself from tree to tree, slender branch to leafy mass. I made such a jump or two when I was young, was either hurt or scolded. My world shriveled like a plum in the sun, hordes of insects pulling back the skin and 10 removing the ﬂesh in a frenzied orgy of restriction.

20010625

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200107 — 200109

The Pond and me and her

Outside the door, the car door, a parking area of padded mud leads to the pond’s grassy shore. The damp night air mixes with my evaporating sweat — the coalescence of the thick rank smell of swamp with the fresh pungent smell of the sea.

10 “I have some good news for you, Erik. . . ”, There’s her hand, the rest I can’t hear — carried away, drowned in the aquatic shrill rotting seedbed singing into the mouth of the pond’s slimy green water. Big frogs, iridescent beetles, cattails, snakes, ferns. Hot breath coming 20 from the nose and mouth at the same time.

It’s like a love aﬀair I have with this water. All the noise and smells we share with each other.

After hours of dancing, lights and music all around and through me, I have navigated a speciﬁc series of hills and turns, serpentined through the otherwise 30 uninterrupted speechless road,

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to this scrodum-tightening skinnydip. Naked, I enter slowly, the mud bleeding up twixt my toes, I don’t always know who I dream of, knee-deep, surrounded by fragrant foliage, rustling, frog noises, and the strange mingled fresh-sour wind. Alone dreaming, 40 but without her ever looking away. It is impossible, I close my eyes as the air ﬁlls with the raw, vulnerable smells our bodies with age have learned to produce on their own. Diving forward, I submerge myself in the pond, black and brown and green, the every-colored water, 50 pockets of air rushing past my frenzied skin, bubbles playing themselves out on the sensitive hairs lining my arms and legs and chest.

I wade, I urinate, I wash, I shiver, I get out, I dry.

“Now that that’s out of the way. . . ” We steal back to her cabin, no phone, no toilet, and slept out the long and wild storm. Our dreams settle gracefully into the 60 erratic framework of our tangled-up needs and struggles. (Will we ever realize these subtle expressions?)

I wake with itching eyes to jam and butter on English muﬃns. We relax and talk together until long after the sun has done its business,

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the storm passing in disregard.

She tries again to explain: “I have good news for you. . . ” 70 The whole thing is a kiss. The whole thing is touching our adult bodies. The whole thing is ﬁlling yourself with your lover’s music and playing back their most secret music with your arms, your whole body.

She speaks the good news right into my mouth; dangerous, congested, substantial, ﬂuid, so that it is as though I am saying the words myself.

80 20010703

There is an art show

There is an art show and there is the artist. That medium canvas on the wall there, she’s studied those taught fibers for hours — nearly the span I’ve waited to talk with her. Why do I wait? Courage is weak, put a limit on my pleasure so that, in wanting, my desire strives. And with this desire, in an hour two days earlier I scribbled a 10 poem I now open the community reading with. At the end of the reading and all the other writers, I stand in the back, gathering my unicycle, chatting with my friends. The artist approaches from the front of the cafe,´ assumingly toward the toilet. I am taken off guard with, after stepping aside, I find her before me talking with me.

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She compliments my poem and behaves interested. 20 I’m still sure I’m no more than a pitstop on the way to the back of the cafe.´ After I pass feeling like a mule, I think she may actually have come back to talk with me. Not to the toilet, or the others in the back of the room. A group in the back absorbs her, easing my unease. How quickly my assumption distort a situation. How to resolve with forthcoming truth? I’m unsure. Image us toe to toe, my pouting hands, my foot making circles in the dirt, asking, “You didn’t come back to take to little ’ol me now, did you?” 30 I giggle at the pathetic thought. How else to attack this? Forget it, start on something else, something at which I can properly overreact. Excess is the only way to fulﬁllment.

20010711

Program

A. This is a program. What I am reading has been programmed. All this began a long long time ago. I was ﬁrst touched in a signiﬁcant way at birth. the egress from the state of subjectivity par¨ excellance the ingress into socially constructed reality. The means by which I understand myself had fundamentally changed. 10 I’m days old and already required to identify with recognised modes of behavior. Screw that! Watch me shit myself! Despite my excretive resistance, my identity is slowly incorporating stereotypical modes of behavior, laying me to rest. Years pass. Language chaperons the way I think so that even in the

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slap-happy absence of religion I receive the ideological codes inherent within that language. 20 Yet, language is only part of the code matrix, the visual, verbal and written occupy me. These codes and conventions are not neutral; what I express through them are not neutral. No one is immune, no one is innocent. Our culture is not innocent.

B. The program has been fixed. I will never win. To the degree that my discontent is due to 30 the culture I seek to criticize, I live in a moot position. But we can catch a fleeting glimpse of what is predominantly concealed. Our received social reality is produced and transferred through ideological codes from a dominant hierarchy. (what?!) To say that more simply, or in the regressing level of the main-stream media: everything we are meant to understand about our world 40 we understand in a prescribed way. Recognitions defined by our culture allow us to understand these sounds as words, their combination in specific ways have specific meaning potentially leading to ideas, even dangerous ones, and all of these exist within a framework we have learned. This framework being an encompassing body of ideas on which our social system is based given us by culture, the dominant culture. We, as audience, need to undo ourselves, 50 allow ourselves to question and criticize the codes used to communicate to expose the machinations of cultural production. Our language is a system of centered ideas repressing and marginalizing other cultures and societies.

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Thus, I live within a natural and correct viewpoint while the marginal and unnatural viewpoint lives without. This is all part of the program. So while globalization suggests a community, it is obviously the opposite — 60 we are open to one end only: to positively enable receivers of our information. Ship our LCD replicas on a one way road out of town.

C. The program is a virus that weakens us, makes us sick, numbs our taste, retards our thoughts, which are underhandedly part of the program. Resistance to change in a comforting similarity is a cancerous cultural artifact. Boundaries are set in place 70 dividing things from each other, marking out our representation of reality. Categorization. Organization. Stagnation.

Wherefore lies a remedy? Creativity is a collective experience, it is accumulative. Our Art is not a product of individual genius, but an adaptation from a determined condition, built on what has gone on before. 80 We draw on the collective environment to challenge, adapt, reforce and oppose, grow.

D. Transcendence of the program is a rare and precious event. We create the culture that creates us. (Participation is not manditory, nor is it suggested.) 90 Through our expressivity, poetics and artistry

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the aesthetic can transcend the inherent boundaries of language. We control, to some degree, the nature of the recognitions we produce. And because we are mediators in the transference of ideological code, we can intervene change in the act of communication. In fact, as artists, that’s kinda our role — Hack the program!

E. 100 (first line, bla) How to communicate in the refined ideological language an extra-program event? Describe the program and degate. Our culture is but two qualities: Spectacle and consumption. As such, commodity capitalism stands for and devours everything. So we must celebrate rejection and deletion to creatively understand its injustice 110 and eventually come together to oppose. (what I express is not neutral.) This is not a vision of a nihilistic culture, rather, a fundamental shift allowing both sense and possibility to reign over marketplace banality. Advertising, the supreme weed of suffocation, intrudes and overwhelmes in a one way transmission of information. 120 The audience is merely receiver and consumer.

F. Crashing the program requires a runtime mind in debug space to examine and trace, expose and ﬂow circumvent the fragmented logic imposing a confused immobility. Creation and creator.

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Conformity and rebellion. The program allows us to act, 130 and we can not somehow liberate ourselves since the program allows all our activities. If we are to further evolve, the only way now being through the evolution of ideas, then we must ﬁnd an end to the structural pressures of the market and the self-censorship of those imitating the world around them. We must open ourselves up to criticism and end the consensual silence. 140 Resistance is existence.

G. The program is a lie, promising lies, replicating lies, dominating us with lies so that we are left with lie to support lie to support lie. To the climatized mouth this tastes like truth. New forms of censorship have been emerging for some time. We need to crack open the lies and expose the hidden agendas at work. 150 Recode or crash, question and criticize, communicate, intervene change, resist.

20010807

Program (to poem)

Born from the slimy ocean of subjectivity, my form, free from geometry, suddenly structurally contained in orthogonal social reality cries out! Aaahhhh! Already stereotypical modes of behavior overwhelm me.

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Everything is too much. I submit. I lose myself. Years pass.

20010808

Gretchen, take ﬁve

We spoke today just after noon late morning for both of us and decided not to take the long journey to meet for the day.

Hours later I am alone reading I am taken by an intense urge to get to my car and drive south to where you are not expecting me.

For five minutes I attempt to bring consideration 10 to the rescue, but there is only urgency, the rush of you: olive oil, rain, salted sweat, fiery, confident beauty.

For ﬁve minutes I count the seconds I count the spaces between seconds my ﬁngers between your shoulder blades your boyish nose bathing in our breath.

20010812

Form

I. Form A. without II. Content 1 III. A. 1. ai1 . Form at the expense of content. B. ∅ C. 18. 1Structuralism for its own sake.

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b j4 . Formalism γ αβ. (is forbidden) D. [This line intentionally ﬁlled thusly] 10 • Logical Structure. ¼ invokes the question of sincerity, ½ and by sincerity it is meant ¾ direct expression of feeling, ♥ subjective, from the heart.

b Cold intellectuality. m rejection of expressiveness as mere c heart-on-sleeve d sentimentality.

L over-elegant stylism 20 () means G everything vacuous and )( meretricious.

¿How artiﬁcial can art be and still be art? keep a certain ♁ distance without expression “ ” $ [!not expressing!] not expressing anymore 30 • inner conﬂicts or · psychic geography. rather contemplate a world to which

a f f e c t i v ely at t a c h e d.

] the ego maintains a respectful distance [

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.※. dreaded subjectivism → direct ⇒ emotional V expression k to k be k a k void k ed k at k all k costs k _ the triumph of the Bizarre over the OBVIOUS.

Zz. We’re face to face with the ultimate ytiugibmA: : mediated experiences y. living and partly, /living . : holding on x. rooted and partly rooted .

2.718281828459045. 4.. 3... 2....

20010823

Speed

[patter] Some live are devoid of symbols, utterly blank. Let what is outside get inside. Eyes reflection of keyboard. Ears turn flat, hear only a soft hum. Open mouth, throat dilated, laughter wags tongue. Voices like distant insects. Tall, dreary, young. Unmatched feet. 10 Hopeless ambition. Grey-yellow eyes. Zero eyes, like eyes of foreverness. Boy is conquered, is prey of every hand of discipline. Men lift feet, unconsciously. Clock tells correct time, but is somehow false. The mirror reflects the world, hell, heaven, at random. You see what flashes in your face, there is no choice. Reports are split and scrambled. Grey retina fizzing behind chapped yellow glass lens. Dime on grass reflecting far away light. 20 If I look at it, it moves away. Monotonous job of feeding hunger.

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Aladdin’s lamp burns on greed. Taste of sulfur dioxide, stale oxygen. Suck poison air. Smell of coffee, cigarette smoke, settles on clothes, skin. Coffee catching in throat, then spraying into esophagus. Livid, terror, metallic, pinched. Grind teeth to little white kernels. Traffic whirls into a dense vortex, drivers, passengers, smiling, arguing, smoking, 30 wiping their mouths. Quick as . . .

[pause] too quick. [patter end] We are obsessed with speed . . . and speed. Caffeine, nicotine and the pursuit of happiness. There to get people working on their own version of the great American Lie. To put them into a state of paranoia: 40 delusion systematicus. Where they think they’re losing themselves: losing their minds, their lives, losing their status. It works in our culture. It only works in that it cuts off certain parts of us. Life’s contours flatten, the body no longer responds. No reprieve. 50 Some of us are beginning to see those things.

Pause for a moment and image with me. Image that we switch from our haste-reeling speed culture to a loose and relaxed dope culture. Duuude!

Dope is legalized. Speed exchange programs are put in place:

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“Turn in your cigarettes, coffee and soda for dope, your passport into the new culture.” 60 We start using dope to the extent coffee and cigarettes are used now. Imagine that. People would start showing up to work at 10 o’clock. The need for car horns and panic buttons would be replaced by afternoons beneath a shady tree. Life would be more fluid.

I don’t think basing a culture on any drug is a good idea. 70 Any drug cuts you oﬀ from some things and ties you into others. But some drugs might have a positive eﬀect. Maybe we can relax some of the squinched up sphincter muscles of our culture, allow us to lose the 19th century rules of labor, they no longer apply, 40 hours, mandatory overtime, we no longer live and work in an industrial age. But we’re still locked into that. We have centered work in our culture as an ethic. 80 This is inappropriate.

I see this as an experiment. The variables for speed are all in place. A child is born in a bright room of disconnection, rented by the sterile hour. Moments later, thousands more are born in the same way. Let the speed parade begin!

From an early age we subject our children to huge doses of refined sugar, huge doses of caffeine, 90 irresponsibly, immeasurably, automatically, disastrously, and to mindful cultures, unthinkably. We subject them to sitting-in-front-of-the-TV families, watching the set flicker, 60 times each second.

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We’re not supposed to have televisions, we’re not meant to sit motionless for hours, at the very least, you’re not supposed to sit a kid in front of the set until he’s six years old, so you don’t distort his perceptions.

100 So our children are strung out. Do you remember feeling that way?

So what do we do to help this condition? Pump them with ritalin! Then, we sit them in rows, in chairs designed to ﬁt no body comfortably, with all the other strung-out kids, shoot them mercilessly with facts, within an incomplete context, while, each hour, ringing a bell at them 110 to have them scurry through a maze of hallways among peers with mixed-up messages, shit-out texts, a barrage of signs and expectations, and ﬁnd their correct seat in the correct room in three minutes, pass or fail. Push the button! Reset the mind for the new environment, 120 new topic, new thinking, behaving, new way. Can you guess where ADD and hyperactive disorders come from? And pretty soon they’re waking up at 5 am for the bus to do this again and again.

We are each trials, we know the results. What do we do this for? What can we get from this tortuous whirling?

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130 This tired treadmill is an illusion and a lie. I’m getting oﬀ here.

20010907 — 20011003

One Wheel Among the Stars

Violet in the wake of a half moon, that was his favorite time to ride. When the frantic day delicately metamorphosed backwards through the rainbow, birthing placid dusk, the brief prelude to somber night, yes, those caliginous hues were Laszlo’s favorites.

From the earliest time he can remember, his long-spent childhood days, Laszlo loved violet. 10 In his dreams, he wore wonderful clothing of roisterous violet satin, the sleeves with fantastically exaggerated dashiki-like sleeves, and pants with bells and ribbons trailing behind him as he ﬂew among the night’s canopy of stars.

In winter, when the crisp air tightens his throat, and fences stand silently staring at other fences questioning their existence, he wraps himself in a violet scarf and packs snowballs between his violet mittens.

20 Yes, winter, with its many opportunities for silence, deliberance, slowness, and play was his favorite time of year. And his favorite color, always, was violet.

On a winter’s night, after a long day of exuberant play, a good hearty meal and warm cocoa, Laszlo tucked himself in, as a boy of eight years and two months is wont to do in great pride and bravery

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to demonstrate his ever increasing independence and maturity, 30 beneath his cloud-like violet down comforter, to sleep. Laszlo enjoyed sleep, and especially after a day of great energy expenditure, followed by a nice cup of cocoa! This night such dreams he had that well-nigh escape description, so singularly strange, so ridiculously absurd, so bizarrely conceived to make hardly one reference to reality that you can be sure, only Laszlo, and Laszlo only, had these dreams this night.

40 [things he dreamt. . . ] Laszlo dreamt of miniature antelopes, covered in moist fur, each with a string of radishes about the neck, lounging in the cracks in the sidewalk he walks each day to school, under the old elm tree.

Later, he dreamt. . . Even late, he dreamt. . . Then Laszlo dreamt of the stars themselves. What are the stars but perfectly indivisible singularities, each one a separate speck of light. 50 But, at the same time, together they are our night sky, together they allow us to reference our place in the universe. And what if we are all one with the stars? This universe is a singular, living entity and we are part of it, growing with it, moving in it.

What would be the divine way of traveling in a universe. Well, by unicycle, of course! And that’s what Laszlo did. That violet comforter of his transmogriﬁed into the 60 Milky Way, smattered with stars in the dusk’s murky violet hue, with Laszlo triumphantly braving the constellations on unicycle.

This was not an ordinary circus unicycle.

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No, this was a stone crunching, stump hopping, root loosening, mountain unicycle. Yes, no terrestrial obstacle (even extra-terrestrial) could stop Laszlo on this violet vision of unicycling par¨ excellance. This unicycle was taking him to the stars, and there he blissfully rode, 70 bogging through nebula, hopping between binary systems, riding the event-horizon of black holes, balancing, purchased on the poles of pulsars.

Even John Foss and Kris Holm would praise these feats if they bore witness to them, through the searching eye of a telescope.

And so he rode, a unicyclist einrading in the universe, one boy connecting with everything 80 knowing that together we are all one, on through the night from violet to violet from dusk through night to dawn.

Until, at last, he found himself unicycling, in his own town, on his own street, by his own house, into his yard, through the door to his room and into his bed.

And when Laszlo woke, he woke with a start! 90 It was a bright morning, and before him was his unicycle. Violet, of course!

For many nights he practiced riding his unicycle, and with practice his skill improved.

And for him, it was the unicyclist in the sky, the great realizer of unity within our universe, who draws behind him the violet sheet from the horizon to give the stars a place to play through the night.

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20010927

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200110 — 200112

Erotic

In what sense do we make love to the world?

What transﬁguring intensiﬁcations are necessary to mistake one’s self for someone else?

Awaken one’s relation to the world. Insist upon where objects begin and end. Venerate what light and color do. Seize what gravity forms have.

The dislocation one may feel seems intended, the purposeful psycho-physiological transmogriﬁcation 10 of one’s sense of place, the grotesque dilation in the import of status, the dehumanization of values.

Share in the surrounding environment gather and engage one’s percipience. Confront and admit to the secrecy of the phenomenal world. The brightness of the present moment. Extend premonitions of events to come. One ﬁnds interchangeable motives for one’s universe. Quickly objects vibrate, coming apart, precisely to play upon the nerves.

20 The incentive for situational receptivity is vast. Both place and objects are real but their condition is perilous (we are like them), [note: less ‘in text’, maybe written on object in artwork] their permanence is in doubt. Transformation (breakage as opposed to metamorphosis) is present in real life. In art, permanence.

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One’s context. 30 Both eternal and transitory, both real and non-existent. Feeling of instability.

Thoughts roaming through space [in art] states well unreal — a dream, a suspicion — can make reality itself seem unreal.

Sins of the dreamer, when committed, 40 are sins of thought, alone. Intensity springs not from the reflection of fulfilled love but from ‘adolescent’ desire, the particular intensity of which depends singularly on its non-fulfillment. A world of speculation and longing.

Stillness an expression of a refusal and simultaneously its exceptional vibration intimates a desire for it.

50 Desire is both ambivalent and anxious delineating thoughts that can not or should not be completed.

Desire in its intricately diverse forms trespasses upon every moment. Desire never stops feeling like madness.

Need takes what it can get, obtaining satisfaction where possible.

Erotic desires obscure the comprehension — 60 sparks between sexual pleasure [in art (sp)-(di) ] and the destructive impulse.

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Emotional negotiations.

Lust erotic craving seeks to prolong and extend itself beyond psychological need, to intensify and protract itself, to revel in pleasurable torment. Learned structures of signification of meaning 70 of pattern of purpose assemble in temporal proximity enabling interpretive links, even in absence of familiar connection. Links are established, setting aphrodisia in motion. Voluptuous desire fragments affecting the organic body dissolving unity, deliquescing utility. This craving does not involve passage from 80 formless nonsense to a body offering sense and meaning. Rather, it disarrays and fragments the resolve of a certain purposiveness.

Impersonal sexuality has the explicit power of passion without relationship; people can be narcissistically fascinated by one another’s bodies and 90 their own sexual pleasure while maintaining distance from strong feelings and emotional complexity. Impersonality frees the imagination, but imagination isn’t suﬃcient. What is usually required is more of them and less of us.

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We have to let a certain amount of them in. 100 That absorbative exposure can seem most frighteningly diﬃcult.

The overt irrationality of our emotional negotiations lay manifest in the primacy of the erotic. The desires of instinctual life versus The repressions necessary for the maintenance of social existance. A struggle between reason and madness.

Feelings demanding articulation remain blocked, language is both powerful and powerless. 110 I’d rather not put it into words, transﬁguring sexual desires into words, vividly suggesting signiﬁcance without ever delivering satisfaction. Statements are meaningful in allusions to the theme and structure yet meaningless in the interpersonal context. It is very much a process of anxiety. In the end I am a 120 captive of denial just as everyone else.

20011114

The world comes at me

The world comes at me from all directions at once. Anything less is incomplete. — probably mechanically mediated. Sometimes I get lost I forget where I am. Time’s responsibility then is to have me forget it. It sneaks by. Now it is late.

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Light travels only as quickly as it does, 10 and that’s enough. Some wish to travel faster, to catch some of that time who played the part of trickster and snuck by. But light knows it’s enough to go only so fast. Any more effort than what is enough is lost. But we are not light, no one has ever seen a perfectly straight line. We are more like molecules in slow vibration, attracted and repelled seemingly at random. 20 There doesn’t seem to be enough room for all the desire, for the excess energy we use going at first not far enough then too far until finally we have done too much of what we didn’t want ending, without any more energy, without arriving. In that same time, light has traveled between stars, knowing no more than we what the point of all of this is.

30 20011130

A topological study of a good relationship

[This is meant to be conversational, with topological pictures following the text. See hand written copy for drawing ideas. Additionally, many of the pictures have been drawn and labeled which goes where. See the pictures and handwritten copy for references.] [Key: [x,y], x = person, y = page]

[A,1] “Two sides of the same coin.” That’s what I said to myself when we ﬁrst met. “Two sides of the same coin, and I’m the tail.” Sometimes I try too hard, I stretch myself, I make a 10 joke a little beyond the bounds. Yes, in those moments, I’m the tail end of something, for sure!

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[B,2] Sometimes the world brings people together, I don’t know why, and sometimes it doesn’t work. But then there are those times when it fits just so. You each fill a part of the other that needed filling, and you fill it in the right way. That’s what it’s about. Needing, being needed, sharing and growing together.

[A,3] 20 Plenty of people come together all the time to ﬁll each other’s needs. But between us, there was something more. Something that ran through, opening us up to more, to poten- tials we’d never before considered. Truly liberating.

[B,4] And it’s interesting to watch how the relationship develops, how it evolves, how outside inﬂuences bend and stretch the limits and how together you can adapt and grow because of them.

40 [A,5] 30 Your world can turn inside-out on you in an instant, and somehow, together, you manage to roll with it.

[B,6] It’s like what Steven Jesse Bernstein said about love.

[B,7] “It has little to do with love or not love — it is minutes and years and torsion.”

[A,8] 40 An opening up, to see what’s really inside. Behind the surfaces, that’s where the true magic is.

[A,9] Cut away the surface and you can really get to know someone, and yourself. Then you can really discover what the relationship is made of, see where it’s going.

50 [B,10] And it doesn’t take extraordinary circumstances for extraordinary developments to occur. It can be the motion of the hand to your leg or shoulder when sharing a story, a few words 50 spoken during sex to further open what’s being shared, disintegrate barriers, or being held

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when in need.

The core can be strengthened in many ways.

[A,11] This can persist for a long time.

You know there are lots of people out there, but like my step-grandfather, Lloyd, coun- ciled, 60 “There’s more people out there you can get along with than you think.” I think he might have just wanted more serious action from me before he’s no longer here to see it.

But he’s right, and when you decide that the relationship is more than just play, or comfort, or convenience, when you decide that you want to spend the rest of it, all of it, with this one, well in reality, not much may change, but symbolically, a change has occurred.

[B,12] “Remember when. . . ” That’s a phrase lots of relationships don’t get to. Relationships take nurturing, sincere attention and care, like many plants. If two work together, and the 70 togetherness is cared for, the rest will take care of itself. The spaces ﬁll in, beauty and clarity abound.

60 [A,13] “All things are possible.”

Surprising events occur when you stop thinking of the limits and rules that never really existed. When cared for, growth is limitless.

[Observations and comments: 80 Should be more conversational, develop distinct voices/characters. Colors (in drawings) should start uniform, but should be allowed to morph and blend with the near spectrum, then with each other. Can include other unrelated pictures along with the text for fun.]

20011020

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2004

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200407 — 200409

Wounded Bird

Today a neighbor with unclear conscious placed a lamed bird outside my window, where it trembled in the flashes of light filtered through the tree’s thin canopy. Two young girls busy making a moss garden for snails, gardians, chasing away a cat by hissing and kicking. Let the cat have it! But that was not the way for today. Today, in a land shaped just precisely so 10 through human intervention in nature, humans interviened again. So I took the bird, smashed its head and discarded the box. Nature is meant to be cruel. That is how beauty so elegantly evolved. But when it goes only so far, not finishing, ugly interference is what we call “polite”.

20040903

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Index of Titles and First Lines

(Where are those, 195 A round room with many faces,, 3 (serif, sans serif), 199 A simple day dream, 36 (to nina˜ music), 122 A Simple Request, 23 “An angry man with, 191 A Small Road in New Hampshire, 165 “Hey A tear forms, 127 Hell-lo. . . ? Yeah, you. You stare a lot.”, A tear forms in the outside corner of my right 175 eye., 127 “Listen,” I said to her, as she lie on the cold A thick leslied electric hollowbody, 277 ﬂoor,, 165 A thick leslied electric hollowbody shakes “Oh, I don’t know”, 43 throughout the room., 277 “Two sides of the same coin.”, 314 A thin woman inadequately dressed, 218 1. Man who says nothing., 143 A thin woman inadequately dressed, 218 40th at the Colonial theatre on the 18th, 214 A topological study of a good relationship, 314 5 seconds with Becca, 138 A waggish woman wooed, 110 A woman outdoors walks, 130 , 196 A woman outdoors walks, 130 I rub my feet forward and back, 114 A young couple comes in, 272 The breezes that awoke me this morning, 222 A young couple comes in., 272 About Softball in College, 274 A black bird, 225 About ten minutes from now, 14 A black bird the shape of a child’s ﬁst, 225 Above me, on a shelf, 207 A deep exhale as I fall, 130 Acorn, 210 A deep exhale as I fall, 130 Again by the bedside, 103 A disturbing image came before me this Again by the bedside of a woman weeping, 103 evening., 91 Again I’ve gone to sea, 257 A Dream With Ann, 59 Again I’ve gone to sea with, 257 A large pasty-faced man, 157 Always is mentioned, ‘A strong, wonderful, A large pasty-faced man, 157 incredible woman.’, 274 A man stopped, 181 Always, sincerity — unpainted,, 149 A man stopped. The world kept going., 181 An angry man, 191 A mist hangs over a sea of yellow-red,, 41 An old man in the cafe´ sat drinking a A Prince sat on a hill rubbing his feet, 232 cappuccino with that tuft of foam, 281 A Room Not My Own, 133 An old man in the cafe sat drinking, 281

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322 Index of Titles and First Lines

Are You OK?, 32 Continuation of Stakes are too high?], 175 As a boy of tender youth, 284 Cynical Pen, 43 As a child curious of my world, 114 As a child curious of my world, 114 Day Dream, 36 As I get older, 254 defending the castle from Erica, 253 As I get older I’m becoming more and more of Discovering Contra dance, 233 the opinion, 254 Distance, 82 As I Lay Alone in London, 87 Distant as a midnight calm, I sit upon my ass., As once I was a wave of icy air, 239 82 As once I was a wave of icy air but, 241 As once I was a wave of icy air but that time Each night I am able, 16 has left me,, 241 Each thing in the universe, 129 As once I was a wave of icy air., 239 Each thing in the universe, 129 Ascending from the thin brances and Early Spring, 109 pineneeles, 208 Eleven 28, 30 At least one month of the year, 289 Empty ﬁlm cases lined the walls, 135 At least one month of the year, 289 Entropy, 31 At one time many of us were as the moon., 233 Erotic, 310 At what point did I become my own child,, 204 Even as I lay alone tonight, 87 Autumn poem, 207 Ever followed a person’s face, 247 Ever followed a person’s face from the Baccalaureate Speech, 110 acknowledging smile, 247 Ballerina Girl, 83 Every man wants the freaky girl, 167 Because it was not like any wind, 205 Every man wants the freaky girl,, 167 Because it was not like any wind,, 205 Everything in my world is dusty, 198 Before a cemetery, 225 Everything in my world is dusty —, 198 Before a cemetery, where the dead bury their Extract still those useful parts from the trash, living parts,, 225 171 Before the theatre there’s a space, 216 Extract still those useful parts from the trash, Before the theatre there’s a space whose, 216 171 Beyond my ability is the greatest wealth, 280 Beyond my ability is the greatest wealth., 280 Faint Overtones, 46 bits, 123 Few people take risks., 291 Black Clock, 105 Few people take risks., 291 Born from the slimy ocean of subjectivity,, 299 Fight, 284 Film canister, 207 Cancer, 91 Finding envelopes to physical possibilities and Cards to Jenn Lorrie Brown, 140 defying, 113 Cinnamon bun, 93 Flanging Images, 45 Comfortable resting is a small plastic canister, Food is an art, 62 105 Food is an art,, 62

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Index of Titles and First Lines 323

For years I gave away sexual love, 289 How can I be feared?, 126 For years I gave away sexual love with my How can I be feared?, 126 eyes., 289 How I have come to sit in the cube, 97 Forever in position three, 83 How many times have I already lived this Form, 300 night?, 213 Freedom — Nature, 185 How many times have I already lived this From a window, 211 night?, 213 From Fantasy — Reality, 63 How sweet the sweets of sin are, 128 From within I am, 96 How sweet the sweets of sin are., 128 How the men watch you, 170 Giggle, 108 How the men watch you,, 170 Glow, 100 Going Home, 48 I am a gentle person, 124 Grass three inches long, 114 I am a gentle person, 124 Gravity Girl, 82 I am a great, magnificent bird, 255 Gravity spirals without use for water., 82 I am a great, magnificent bird, 255 Gretchen, take five, 300 I am my only child, 204 Groundless Perception, 12 I am writing this letter, 168 Happiness is no good for writing, 164 I asked her because she was an English major, Happiness is no good for writing, 164 170 Harvest time, 213 I asked her because she was an English major., Harvest time, when whole landscapes of 170 autumn, 213 I can not distinguish what is important., 218 Have you ever felt you were just doing what I can not distinguish what is important., 218 you do, 256 I can’t stand public vehicles, 130 Have you had adventures?, 216 I can’t stand public vehicles, 130 He doesn’t know who he’s dealing with,, 4 I convince Darrell to travel south with me, 223 He has a history before him, 272 I convince Darrell to travel south with me, 223 He has a history before him, poised, excited, I didn’t realize just how lonely I was until the ready to strike., 272 little love that I had gained (or imagined) He wondered why, 134 disappeared., 53 He wondered why he could not talk to the I do the things I do for many reason, 72 family about his work., 134 I enjoy most women who, 281 Heart-whole, 149 I enjoy most women who, when they pass,, 281 Hello., 21 I felt passionate today, 26 Hello?, 27 I give my shade a quick jerk, 147 Here I breathe, 100 I give my shade a quick jerk,, 147 His head is held in her hands, 260 I grasp with my own, her eyes, 138 His head is held in her hands,, 260 I had a speech planned for this day., 110 Honey is round, whole as its many makers., 224 I have a few things I’ve wanted to tell you, 258

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324 Index of Titles and First Lines

I have a few things I’ve wanted to tell you for a, I’m beginning to question consequence., 222 258 I’m crippled, 98 I have stepped away from Illusions, 61 I’m crippled, 98 I knelt by the couch, 28 I’m feeling vernal, 275 I Know., 21 I’m feeling vernal, 275 I laughed. Not so much in humor, but in, 3 I’m in a dusty room of the old cathedral I lie awake, 10 building., 260 I live in New Hampshire., 165 I’m thinking of something, 154 I Love The Way, 13 I’ve been pacified, 39 I love the way you are openly honest., 13 I’ve moved away and I try to go on, 45 I maintain that we are the most violent of I’ve Moved On, 52 animals., 216 I’ve moved on, 52 I make my motions, waiting for the laugh I. Form, 300 track., 136 If , 6 I may know better, but I create fantasy anyway, If ever, from within, you can find a love, 97 63 If I became my emotions at this moment, 125 I notice my hands completing repeated, 159 If I became my emotions at this moment, 125 I notice my hands completing repeated, 159 If I didn’t write, 199 I remember standing on stage,, 274 If I didn’t write I wouldn’t know that I had I remember when it used to be important to me ideas, 199 to feel accepted, 278 If I fight the page,, 160 I remember when it used to be important to me If someone tells me, 99 to feel accepted., 278 If you had a fear,, 6 I seem to remember a number., 180 If You Wait Till May, 55 I seem to remember a number., 180 Illusions into Life, 61 I sink into this, 177 Impasse, 185 I stand, 106 In a dream, I killed men, 176 I stare strait through and past my shaking, 134 In a dream, I killed men., 176 I stared strait through, 134 In a hut with one light on, 248 I take pleasure in the meaningless poem, 175 In a terrific moment of depravity, 150 I take pleasure in the meaningless poem., 175 In a terrific moment of depravity,, 150 I was going to write of ecstacy, 247 In April my fingers will move at night, 59 I was going to write of ecstacy, but I’ve In early September when I walk,, 207 discovered, 247 In late spring a man climbs a rock face,, 237 I’d like to feel another’s knees, 23 In my chest is a clean, stainless steel box, 276 I’ll let you win, 184 In my chest is a clean, stainless steel box, just I’ll let you win,, 184 larger than a man’s fist., 276 I’m 22 but I’m older than you, 133 In my desk I see the color of time., 7 I’m 22 but I’m older than you, 133 In Propria Persona, 284 I’m a piece of the apple tree., 18 In the coffee shop in which I sit, 93 I’m beginning to question consequence., 222 In the folded skin of my hand, 256

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Index of Titles and First Lines 325

In the folded skin of my hand, 256 Leaf-Peepers on Parade, 142 In the morning, 157 Leaf-peepers on parade, 142 In the morning, before my feet hit the cold Leaving Summer Behind, 41 wooden floor,, 157 Let me not go again into silence, 110 In the stiff winter months men breath the cold, Let me not go again into silence., 110 212 Let This World Become Your Own, 19 In this world, Art, 185 Life is liquid, 50 In what sense do we make love to the world?, Lights on, Lights off , 16 310 Living is synonymous with limiting, 290 Indigold buzzing, 271 Logic denied, 117 Inside the body there’s a healthy field of Love and love and love, 60 violets;, 248 Man and rock, 237 Intermittent Mirage, 47 Melding height and bondage, 206 Isolation is the location of my wound, 244 Memories and thoughts of you, 30 It (whatever ‘it’ becomes), 262 Men are such fools., 155 It (whatever ‘it’ becomes) started as a Men are such fools., 155 firecracker, 262 Minding the means, 160 It is what makes me vivid., 62 Mirror, 266 It Is Wild, 28 Most of my adventures end in my outstretched It Is Wild, 28 hand,, 216 It reaches for me, barely short of my upper Mother’s Day, 50 arm., 177 Movement, 112 It was a moment when time filled up and My body is clean, 280 overflowed,, 234 My body is clean, clean and cold like ice that It was lovely., 48 doesn’t melt., 280 It’s a long climb up, 237 My Friends, 34 It’s a long climb up when one falls in love., 237 My hands were thick in soil, a moist roundness It’s another Saturday night, 34 that we’re all made from., 219 It’s been rare that I’ve had this feeling, 12 My head is heavy, 46 It’s July fourth and I find myself slipping into My lover began her flow, 278 winter, 256 My lover began her flow in the folds of sleep It’s October., 211 last night., 278 It’s October. The trees return the darkness, 211 My nethermost beast returns, 251 Jelly Swan, 81 My Only Fan, 7 My shoulders sank as I entered my kitchen, 275 Kneeling, 28 My shoulders sank as I entered my kitchen, 275 My wound, 244 Last night, as my mother left in her car, 243 Last night, as my mother left in her car,, 243 Naked Void, 118 Laughter, 3 Nature’s Pull of Night, 35 Lazy, 95 Night Life, 62

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326 Index of Titles and First Lines

Nothing softens a man’s heart so much as a Program, 295 woman weeping., 141 Program (to poem), 299 Nothing softens a man’s heart so much as a Psseeesaweeeusss, 251 woman weeping., 141 Rainbow curtains, 55 Of all the types of people in this world, there Real, 53 are a few I hate., 93 Recommendation for Gerald Burns, my friend Oh, how you are beautiful., 27 and mentor., 168 OK, College Boy., 189 Right through you, 175 OK, College Boy., 189 Rudyard Kipling wrote, 132 On a stage, 256 Rudyard Kipling wrote, 132 On Dancing, 274 On sweet, 224 Scuffling feet and smoking heads, 22 On the Baccalaureate Service at the Cathedral Selective memories, 55 of the Pines, 115 Selective memories, 55 On the first day of life, 288 Separate Beds, 34 On the first day of life the baby opens his eyes, September memories, 208 288 Shadow poem, 209 One Funny Dream, 10 She asked me, because, you know, I’m always One is that I don’t take others’ perceptions of thinking of her,, 212 me seriously., 72 she continues to move in on my life from all One on One Story Idea, 199 sides,, 253 One Second Too Long, 135 She Dies, 104 One Wheel Among the Stars, 306 She is frigid as an acorn, all passion and Orion, my warrior Friend,, 94 mystery, 214 Our Flight, 8 She sits on his lap, 273 Outside the door,, 292 She sits on his lap, his legs are spread wide apart,, 273 Parallel Lines (eventually meet), 201 Shining window without white lines, 82 Parchment on which jelly swans are left upon, Should we all be happy,, 5 81 Shy Mellowness, 25 Period VI, 3 Silence, 260 Period VI with Mr. G substituting Part I, 4 Silent Rebellion, 45 Period VI with Mr. G substituting Part II, 5 Sincerity, 201 Phantasy, 15 Sincerity dropped face down, 146 Piss Puss, 81 Sincerity dropped face down, 146 Place, 99 Skatepark, 117 Plastic canister, 105 Slipping into winter, 256 Pock Slow and shy melancholy washes, 146 A great oaknut falls freely from its, 210 Slow and shy melancholy washes, 146 Prince, 232 Smack-dab in the earth I felt like, 45

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Index of Titles and First Lines 327

Smiling, 26 The hair was the last to leave., 182 So do I., 204 The Horizon, 219 So here it is, 188 The Janitor, 160 So here it is, 188 The Journey, 93 So you don’t know why you’re here, 19 The manipulative mutilation of consumerism, Soft and warm with aperiodic moments of 154 absence,, 177 The master slices the shell, 116 Some live are devoid of symbols,, 302 the most violent of animals, 216 Sometimes a line, or even a word, is a flint, 286 The movements of people about a desk., 112 Sometimes a line, or even a word, is a flint, 286 The naked Maple embrace me, 25 Song for Orion, 94 The only woman in the coffee house tonight is Song in the coffeeshop, 212 the one behind the counter., 175 Song of the Dandelion, 22 The persistence of memory, 183 Sonnet, 97 The persistence of memory, 183 Speed, 302 The phone lies dormant, 137 Splashes of yellow and orange, 140 The phone lies dormant, 137 Sport without conscious, 93 The pine’s new growth in the spring,, 121 Stepping, 106 The poem written with the cap left on, 196 Stiff winter months, 212 The Pond and me and her, 292 Still wishing for stillness, 109 The reasons I., 178 Story Plot, 143 The reasons II., 179 Sweet Beef , 29 The snow tonight fell slowly, 231 Swift and bold it is received, 25 The snow tonight fell slowly, 231 The stakes may just be too high at a coffee That little angel I know, 8 house.”, 161 That’s the Main Thing, 39 The sun was a cantalope on the horizon,, 274 The Apple Tree, 18 The thick air is swallowed, 136 The Audience Was Kind , 49 The thick air is swallowed up by the frantic The Audience Was Kind., 49 screams of a neighbor’s child,, 136 The binding of the stomach, 108 The women wrapped up tightly, 196 The breezes that awoke me this morning, 222 The women wrapped up tightly, 196 The Car, 116 The world comes at me, 313 The clock black, losing memory, 105 The world comes at me from all directions at The dials on the wall rotate in elegance,, 40 once., 313 The door creaks open,, 266 The world in her tender palm weighs heavily., The first thing I let myself become aware of is 219 the cold at the soles of my feet., 161 The world in her tender palm weighs heavily., The flower stripped of beauty, 206 219 The Gaze, Consciously Diverted, 192 Their bodies warm separate beds, 34 the gaze, consciously diverted) II, 195 There are billions of bodies, 128 The hair was the last to leave, 182 There are billions of bodies, 128

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328 Index of Titles and First Lines

There are many people seen, 149 Today I am using my day to regroup,, 155 There are many people seen,, 149 Today I awake:, 185 There are several ways, 199 Today is a day not on any calendar, 265 There are several ways in which I approach Today is a day not on any calendar., 265 writing., 199 Todd Lavoie went to Moraco, 280 There is a hunger that lives in the curl of the Todd Lavoie went to Moraco and brought, 280 lip, 273 Tonight my brother is brought to jail, 239 There is a hunger that lives in the curl of the Tonight my brother is brought to jail,, 239 lip,, 273 Tonight, as a course of circumstance, 157 There is a road I know in New Hampshire, 209 Tonight, as a course of circumstance,, 157 There is an art show, 294 Twice did a woman cross my path, 288 There is an art show, 294 Twice did a woman cross my path, 288 There was a moment of silence,, 271 There’s a man and another man, 211 Understanding, 25 There’s a place I dream of, far away, 15 Vagina Monologues, impressions, 274 Thermodynamics law number two, 31 Valediction, 14 These people come in not knowing, 145 Vanessa, 151 These people come in not knowing, 145 Vanessa kept moving her legs,, 151 They personified hope, 231 venting (and inventing) prose, 104 They personified hope, 231 Violet in the wake of a half moon, 306 Thin black lesion, 121 This is a good way, 177 Waiting for the laugh track, 136 This is a program., 295 Walking stepping left right left right, 121 This is my third day working here., 160 Waltzing Partner, 234 This is not meant to be the work itself, 284 Wandering through a crunching white,, 42 This is the unlife, 118 Water / Slowness, 122 This night an acute suffering finds me., 215 We are People, 20 This night an acute suffering finds me., 215 We are people of the sun, 20 This same bed with me, 165 We are reaching an end to mystery, 141 This whole life is temporary., 156 We are reaching an end to mystery., 141 This whole life is temporary., 156 We gather today at a place, 115 Three Ways, 113 We live at once, two lives simultaneous., 93 Through May’s days, 287 We spoke today just after noon, 300 Through May’s days, under so welcome a sun, We’re Right, 60 287 Weaving Watersongs, 110 Tired Pendulum, 40 What a dry, cold and detached life, 123 To Play, 102 What a great spring in his step, 29 To play, 102 What do I write?, 178, 179 Toaster Oven, 81 What is lazy. A statement and a question?, 95 Today a neighbor with unclear conscious, 321 What were the delights we felt in childhood, Today I am using my day to regroup, 155 251

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Index of Titles and First Lines 329

What were the delights we felt in childhood, 251 Wounded Bird, 321 What You’re Missing, 73 When a child is newly born, that child is, 290 Ya, prismca obscura, 192 When I court my gravest fears, 156 Yes, I know, 206 Yes, I know., 206 When I court my gravest fears,, 156 Yes, I’m sweaty, 35 When I graduated from College I moved back You are lucky, 248 in with my parents., 133 You are lucky. You are tall, handsome and have, When the door sounds its resonant creek, 286 248 When the door sounds its resonant creek, 286 You ask me if you still make me nervous, 254 Where does the stream of conscious lie, 127 You ask me if you still make me nervous,, 254 Where does the stream of conscious lie, 127 You can not know how deep my feelings are, Why, 62 226 WHY is a question often asked in this world., You can not know how deep my feelings are., 62 226 Why is it that, 132 You can sit at the edge of a pool all day,, 73 Why is it that, 132 You have come to a coffee house, 168 Window White, 82 You have come to a coffee house,, 168 with music), 121 You love him?, 204 Withdrawn Wintergreen, 42 You often stood there, 191 Within the umber folds of violet curtains, 226 You often stood there, 191 Within the umber folds of violet curtains,, 226 You were once in the field, 47

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EXPLANATORY NOTES

87 As I Lay Alone in London 0: My first junior semester in college I spent in Kensington London giving me my first real opportunity to experiment with who I was and wanted to be. I remember feeling lonely after a couple weeks there. This is a reminiscence of my relationship with Kristen Karlicek who I dated for a couple years. She was very important to me. A talented writer, beautiful, caring, and my first lover with whom I was really comfortable. 20030802 91 Cancer 57: Rainy night in Keene, NH, I pull into a parking space and wait while listening to Garrison’s monologue to finish before entering the coffeeshop. In that time I see some young kids walk past with lit cigs. So I write. 20030802

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Notes

The symbol * is used to indicate a space between sections of a poem wherever such spaces are lost in pagination.

The symbols below are used as the author’s own ratings of the writing in this text.

read to others sharable good, but not worth sharing development not complete, or mine alone

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