American Poetry Read online

anywhere world small garbage neighborhood this coin is so dirtied with snake piss

  i wonder if i’m dead, shoved out into the cold new years night all alone and with no

  access to water, i most needed water. no one needed to sleep they were already and

  always. i never knew if i was or not was i asleep there

  was a man so depressed because he was asleep it wasnt the same as

  dead dead was full of light

  floated floating in the city of ancient ancient

  sleep, tears were sleep grief cold and dirt were sleep and fucking strangers for money

  was sleep and talking to strangers for money, and talking to people who

  gradually pulled closer and closer to one in sleep. in the church

  a mauve river flickers along its length its made of real amethysts not of water its

  made of purest thought

  flickering in and out of being messages

  from. i don’t know what, the ever future now the extensive reality which isnt a

  universe that no one understands but that talks to us all the time the whole thing is

  always talking within us and to us and outwardly toward the other us thats outside

  us and i, i am a focus an all-point with only fabricated outward characteristics but the

  medium in which i am alive is not fabricated. blood is not

  blood and see, see the blood, is not see, where are we

  then in a

  and what isnt dreams is now the future

  words dont remain her dead mouth opens and closes instead she

  FIGURE, SAINT, ON AN ARCH

  kept in thrall by someone who reads our thoughts. the story of the egyptian captivity

  babylonian captivity, reads the thoughts youve been given by him, thats how hes able

  to read them

  especially in a widows house, can read thought from outside, is outside secretly in the

  dark reading her thoughts. her house is all windows panes into night and she knows

  hes there listening to her head

  she says to me, he can read yours too. the more intelligent you are, the easier it is for

  him to read them. is that because intelligent means educated, to most, and educations

  so standardized. i know he can read my thoughts

  because when i speak my voice crackles as if through a microphone, presumably my

  thoughts crackle too, as if magnified in volume by his powers. who is he. is he her

  dead husband perhaps, someone else suggests.

  let me go. thats what all people say. or youll later be drowned in the red sea. thats

  what people say, drown them drown them all, golden bodies others beneath the

  waters dead and now knowledgeable

  if he knows so much says the widow why does he haunt me why doesnt he stay in his

  knowledge. what does the attachment of people for each other, including the desire to

  dominate utterly, have to do with the beginning

  of things. is there a mathematical formula for a two become one which later must

  split. a sort of symmetry, a kind of emotional elastic stretching in which the mauve

  feelings are horror and the green ones fascination still

  she now has given up on his death she accepts that hes never died though he still

  might, he didnt die disappear and come back, hes always been here sick reading her

  mind, hes moved back into the house

  this is the life of the past. there is no past its a story. stories are bodies we keep going

  on alive only in others minds everyone acts as if this is lovely its inutterably hideous,

  to live in others. there is a way out

  there must be, to leave the icon of symmetry tear it tear away.

  the only possible freedom is mental so i didnt speak to pharoah, didnt approach

  nebechudnezzar i entered a cave for seven years not even accessible to daniels dreams

  no one could read my thoughts there, fed on grasses slugs and bitter water. there is the

  picture, another gold cell, the only real monk in cappadoccia, under under ground so

  the dead man couldnt make my voice crackle, so all the listening dead men ruling

  the world couldnt have me. daniel dont dream of me

  destroy the thoughts hes given me in order to read them. he reads them backwards

  even, sthguoht eht yortsed. he uses symmetry to enslave me, he uses logic, but he

  doesnt use reason. the depth of all there is, in which he drowns his troops in order to

  rule, remaining ignorant, as you are ignorant who have never broken from formation

  broken symmetry, broken from any symmetric rearrangement of pieces after a

  presumed radical break

  i dont care about your welfare, you have what you need the ability to break and

  reform, the ability to force others to do so too, so you can read their minds. what

  would you do if you no longer could read their minds. what would you do in your

  own mind. what would you think what would you do about time always previously

  measured out by you in your own symmetries lengthwise and so exactly controllably

  widthwise, all mathematics your invention the stars have been lenient to you

  compliant havent they do you listen to their thoughts. of course you do in time they

  tell you all their secrets you are the great and have remained innocent like a graph or a

  snowflake, or a stave of 18th century music. under the dirt in cave unbidden invisible

  no name on list in time what a nightmare couldnt have mind read by history by

  future pharoahs of enlightenment. i break brek like mountains away into so slow

  there almost is none. sitting next to dirt part of one retime without tracks here and

  what is already in mind, still partly his, keeps singing, what did i do then and then but

  that was to be sequence, after this death theres no sequence, going on justly not pat if

  possi how does it look now in areas of if its symmetry well its not his is it can he

  read it i dont read it i look quickly at its movement staying still it and i all the

  movements in stillness. the swaying toward, hes out there again trying to get in

  by saying i need him to eat so dont eat tae benowst. having no sympathy is

  beautiful. the best of icons are unpat, unsympathetic are not about about projection

  of the superficial only the dee. upon mortuary slab pasts rising up in days going on

  symmetrically so wh wh do yo its for fod foo all of it the slave. ddeep deep green that

  year, a bit of a story. in the mid did wha, it was because of the baby. there was nothing

  else to do because of the baby, who had to be brought to a pass to decide for himself.

  thus became tied to the process of money for food. thats the only story really and its

  real a real story, where i solemn not mad eat wild grasses and nurse the baby. there is

  no ending, dont you know a. wants a humane piece of furniture. honor. but i want

  money so i can eat. i dont really have to eat in here which is why i spend as much

  time as possible. i cant find out anything unless you stay out. its not a cave church it

  needs too much light its in light but cave is a figure on a wall i go in in reaction.

  underneath as always there its the same as in the light.

  VIRGIN AT THE FOOT OF THE CROSS

  is there some loss

  connected

  with the hybrid baskets lovely but woven into machines,

  straw woven with wires, robotic as at la villette

  fish there with our eyes but small bodies, treated like robots edible robotics

  mice genetically engineered fluorescent for no reason.

  have evinced no reason in eras. have not
and within here is there reason. is there

  some loss, tracy? yes, tracy replies there has been great loss so great we can hardly

  recognize whats been lost, “how do you like your country?”

  “its cold. i was lying with abrith oil

  before.” a birth oil

  and i was born once, but am i now

  ceaseless need to care for adolescents, in a black dress when someone needs sex.

  we are needing needing what have we ever. all the dead fish, thrown back to

  rot because we didn’t need them, with their sensitive eyes, electricity

  burning stupid the metro on the way, what are we on the way, everyone

  was on the way. straight, so straight

  singing in the ash trees, is a too fragmentary knowledge of happiness

  remember the 666 that the purchases in the dress store added up to. you always

  knew it, said the clerk, what have i always known? that white

  peoples houses contain too much water, flowing at will, they have coopted all the

  birth or is it rebirth, have coopted it, shit, says the indian, look at all that lifegiving

  edenic water inside a white persons house, i always knew it. and i knew

  how cold it was to have no oil in the afterbirth

  too fragmentary the tropes of a nonfunctional mind. ra rings. goin on, the virgin

  at the foot of the cross is simple desolation, in black and nearly faceless, at the end

  of eras eras erase all this and have created this sec sec you are that i i c must concen

  have you t noticed how the future is always anticipated by letters which will appear

  in future words?

  plastic cans of iowa anywhere says the invader of houses of water

  mind mine, mine is not their developments or yours, mine is not yours, my mind

  is there some loss

  concentrated, just alive this morn in the after of butterflies in cages up and down the

  rue papillon cocoons, worms and les comètes the grand yellow ones of madagascar

  scar gas of what keeps us going, throwing useless dead fish back, because

  we’ve joined the worldwide capitalize project.

  so you preach revolution, revolution, against who everyone, the

  figure on the wall is looking at you, if you would simply stand up straight

  is that figure that straightbacked saint or prophet or sad

  viri virgin virgin free? oh so yes, to be free is to face the world straight on and gravely

  united robe not to obfuscate the sex the delicate and lightly

  lubricated flower or, flower or, sea life of erect pipe or the convulsed vulvic flower

  shapes shared with others those animals and plants

  i left the man on the floor with it, someone must care for the young, the

  preadolescent children, in a black dress on second avenue, first avenue was first

  on it a different care, on second avenue on second there is no change without a bit of

  stroking without some sex returned in the chicken cafe

  then i can carry the dead chicken, with the vultures head attached too, all the way to

  the new houses on the edge of the desert

  talk to saint talk to, lib-bay, beau-ty, yes, is the good

  anthropos, andromeda, multimedia wind and rain

  beauty the good is, blow suffer a blow though? suffer it why, purifying

  lying there, dont do another ill. bad hawk scream, aguila arizona, desolate on

  the way to a little water appears near wickenberg. there was a stream there wasnt there

  lib-by, all of it, come here liquid for pai, pain dance, force not

  performed as such, no art of it. thats how painful it was, blew through the

  house like an alien personality of my own

  sensitive eyes swimming, trapped next to a food counter

  blow of force and of life, stop carrying a dead chicken, saint open again so i can see i

  want to see see it the message from all whove ever lived

  drink jerez de la frontera, cross the border into, into a room of the good

  it is instead of what they call god or some piece partial name,

  integral, the leaves beyond number glitter like scales or pieces being one, one shining

  a union, an un, a hyssop nonhybridian nonpantocrator

  fills. fascinting fascinating light of non doom, no doom

  mood nair thedniw, come come, hop to in, in the kitc kitchen of breaking cant break it

  the good these piece not really a broke al at all, know gla what do the dead say,

  mouths frozen throats vibrant they say in the field, near those houses at the border,

  in the light of the game where no ones playing, that struggles are becoming nothing,

  as we die into a ring around the black sea full

  of fish like us, i got scared

  and pulled back up into supposedly awake. beckons clumsi the mono, evening

  morning star, fluster faster and tear, tear open the wide silver foil lake, the skull

  leaders vanish, and we are left with silver water flowing

  inside here the good moves along these walls is the lighting up itself of, it does that

  rippling band the wind of the color, green or brown, or pupl purple

  is there a loss

  the everyo the embryo of what we live for to care of. we live to care for baby baby and

  go hope your gauge is on empty, so you wont be machine more ingrown

  or rubies there of this blood, would make you kill to see it, the blood of martyrs ruby

  clas face and see what color, come to stay, axoh, tear eyes

  the tears are looking for a place to alight in, they arent rain theyre desolation

  the tears are searching for you and will find you

  The Expansion of the Self

  Tessa Rumsey

  Does glass count as a wall?

  Does a wall made of glass meet building codes determined in the South of France?

  Does French glass reflect the pale light of springtime in the coastal village of Antibes, landscape of plein air and perpetual ennui, home of the author’s first kiss and subsequent disfigurement—

  Will local glass reflect Antibes more authentically than glass imported from another continent?

  Will the world seen through a window appear altered depending upon where the glass within its frame was manufactured?

  (Is the world seen through broken glass whole or is it fractured?)

  The kiss had a desperate tone: “Dear so-and-so, you are my last chance—”

  Later, unconscious by the side of the road: is this fate?

  Or is this circumstance?

  Will a lost world spend its last days pleading for survival?

  Is there a name for invisible cultural artifacts suspended on a molecular level?

  Does glass count as a wall?

  The kiss was meant to be a masterpiece: “a mythological experience—”

  In tune with Trojan horses: in tune with solar genesis.

  Clockwork romeo spidering—along—the outside wall of a building—feeling for her window—the footing getting thin—

  Satellite stalking the sun’s circumference: satellite fearing the sun’s hot rim.

  Which came first: beauty?

  Or disfigurement?

  (First came consequence: next, the accident.)

  If a speaker is uncertain, can a statement be a question?

  Does a window reflecting occupants fulfill its occupation?

  Contradiction Number One: we are bound by desire / we are bound by the sun.

  Contradiction Number Two: my face in the glass / the glass seen straight through.

  If each world stops at walls of its interior—

  (Where one body begins, where the next body ends—)

  Isn’t a wall a way of rubbing up against, of letting in?

 
Because history is full of distance and endless revision, “the kiss” came to resemble a window on the Mediterranean—

  A window, that when opened, granted a view of the world both utterly changed and exactly the same—

  Antibes in endless revision: Antibes held in a picture frame.

  (Contradiction Number Three: the only certainty / is the uncertainty of ennui)

  It would be a summer night made famous by both its harmony and antithesis—

  Her face pressed to his petulent lips: her face pressed to the pavement.

  How does a person inhabit a house—

  A beautiful house—

  A house of disfigurement—

  (A house perched precariously between romantic and revisionist)

  A house now, a body now, seen through, like glass, opened as a window, the air rushing in, closed as an interior, the air wearing thin—

  Wall of glass, roof of stone, to be on display yet utterly alone—

  Coastal village, a foreign ennui, romeo at the window, fumbling for a key—

  (Does glass count as a wall?)

  First the accident: next the kiss: then the question:

  Does the soul—exist?

  Two Landscapes

  Anne Waldman and Andrew Schelling

  MONTANE

  There is a mountain in the distant West

  That, sun-defying, in its deep ravines

  Displays a cross of snow upon its side.

  Such is the cross I wear upon my breast …

  —Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

  Past crumbled miner shack on quick return

  to mineral earth

  Shadow Canyon

  one ornamental plum hosts in full lacy bloom

  a riot of lavender petals

  Might have been torn from a page of Buson

  deserves anyhow

  a moment’s gratitude

  or why some mountain yogin piled a three-stone cairn

  kuhara-shila-samshraya

  “shelters in caves and hollow rock”

  to smoky voice wilderness goddess

  Mist whorling through limestone crags her breath

  hawklike venery her sport

  (Bear Peak summit

  2:50 PM blowing fog)

  When religion departs from the raptor’s wing …

  what is lost?

  Eagle & peregrine falcon aloft

  the poet is brooding about editors—

  Which is to say

  glad you got here before me

  dear salt dark feather granite peaks

  *

  Spine’s a cordillera of pleasure