Tuesday, January 30, 2024

ford ranger

taking pictures with my eyes
the soft blue and yellow sky
the cypress and oak
the green fields and the red fields
the way the white truck looks 
like a hotwheels from here 
flip off the flag with one blue stripe waving
in front of a house covered by a red and black striped termite tent
thoughts multiplying like needles in a haystack
peas under a mattress
when he plays dead 
face down in the center of the bed
when he goes mute
& i roll him over to pull off his clothes 
driving south is like driving back in time
the hand painted signs multiply
memories careen off the path/past
flip off the mission bells
a hitchhiker standing still 
like a statue with his legs crossed
the time I picked up a hitcher in king city
who smoked meth in my car 
the ferdinands in the field
sun glinting off their horns

Friday, January 26, 2024

smoke letters


my feelings for music
the way the cattails glow 
at eye level across the field

the chiaroscuro after the rain
between me and the mountains

lately flashbacks bringing me 
not just back to 1 parallel place
but 2 or 3 in quick succession

maybe as to illustrate
how little the present knows

Thursday, January 18, 2024

capture:

speckled black and white pets
with red bows on their necks  
and a black and white ball
that color palette

that edible pink sky
the basic human condition
of being plural while walking 
looking at backlit glass waves

pink panther drawn in paint pen 
on the exterior storefront window glass
so he walks in the painting of blue magnolias
leaning dusty in the window right behind

a song like the segment 
in Fantasia when the fairy is
touching the landscape
and covering it with sparkling frost

desperation and desire
visions of things I want to paint
sitting just outside of me
over there out of reach





Tuesday, January 16, 2024

sw

gravity & grace

1
easier to stand in line for an egg
than to save a human life

base motives have in them 
more energy than noble ones

the faculty of feeding on light
my meat is to do the will of him that sent me

wings raised to the second power
can make things come down without weight

moral gravity
makes us fall to the heights

2
may I never sully anything
though I be utterly transformed into mud

to harm a person
is to receive something from them

heaven helps those
who help themselves

even if we kill or torture our enemy
it is still in a sense imaginary

a beloved being who disappoints me
I wrote to him, it is impossible that he should not reply

by saying what I have said to myself
in his name

men owe us what we imagine they give us
we must forgive this debt

I also am other than what I imagine myself to be
to know this is forgiveness

4
extinguish, empty desire
desire without any wishes

to detach our desire from all good things then to wait
then we touch the absolute good

attachment is a manufacturer of illusions

5
the imagination, filler of the void
is essentially a liar


waiting for god

the beauty of the world is the mouth of a labyrinth

attempts to eat beauty

this universe where which we are living
and of which we form a tiny particle
is the distance put by love between god and god
we are a point in this distance

those we call criminals are only tiles 
blown off a roof by the wind
and falling at random

nailed to the center of the universe

MRSDWVW


1
a touch of the bird about her
of the jay 
blue-green, light, vivacious

first a warning; musical
then the hour; irrevocable
the leaden circles dissolved in the air

can't be dealt with by acts of parliament
for that very reason
they love life

2
because it was silly to have other reasons
for doing things
half the time she did things not simply
not for themselves 
but to make people think this or that
perfect idiocy

one roll of tweed
a few pearls
salmon on an ice block
that is all

a lady is known
by her shoes and her gloves

the moment between 6 and 7
when every flower 
glows
every flower seems to burn by itself

the world has raised its whip
where will it descend?

a square of dove gray
this gradual drawing together of everything
to one center before his eyes 
terrified him

3    
sifting the ruins of time
when London is a grass grown path
and all those hurrying along the pavement this Wednesday
are but bones with a few wedding rings mixed up in their dust

a single voice
expanded and made sonorous
by the might of a whole cathedral

thought of the housemaids
the innumerable housemaids
the bedrooms
the innumerable bedrooms

white smoke actually writing something
making letters in the sky

standing and looking up into the sky
bells struck 11 times

tears filled his eyes as he looked at the smoke words
languishing and melting in the sky
bestowing upon him in their inexhaustible charity and laughing goodness
one shape after another
of unimaginable beauty
for nothing
for ever 
for looking merely
with beauty
it was toffy
they were advertising toffy

plumes on horses heads
feathers on ladies
would have sent him mad
but he would not go mad

4
part of the pattern
sounds made harmonies with premeditation
the spaces between them were as significant as the sounds
all taken together it meant the birth of a new religion

men must not cut down trees
there is a god

there is no death

look look
notice real things
he must not talk aloud 
to himself out of doors

eating drinking and mating
the bad days and good

seeking and questing
and knocking of words together

5
gilded her own future with calm
grinding blowing flowering of the day

narrower and narrower would her bed be
something warm that broke up surfaces

she could not resist sometimes yielding to the charm of a woman
faint scent or a violin next door
so strange is the power of some sounds at certain moments
she did undoubtedly feel what men felt

6
the purity
the integrity
doing her hair in a kind of ecstasy 
now the old feelings began to come back to her
as she took out her hairpins
laid them on the dressing table
began to do her hair

one woman who sat in her drawing room 
and made a meeting point

far away barking and barking

8
she still had the power 
to make the moon rise on the terrace 

9
it was smashed to atoms
his fun 
for it was half made up as he knew very well
made up as one makes up the better part of life
making oneself up
making her up

odd it was and quite true
all this one could never share
it's smashed to atoms

a great brush swept smooth against his mind
down down he sank into the plumes and feathers of sleep

nothing exists outside us except a state of mind

10
the death of the soul
the words attached themselves 
to some scene some room some past he had been dreaming of

it all seemed useless
going on being in love
going on quarreling
going on making it up

11
still the sun was hot
still one got over things

12
good days bad days
for no reason whatever

13
jealousy which survives every other passion of mankind
once in some primeval May she had walked with her lover
the bright petalled flowers were hoar and silver frosted

14
it was a silly silly dream 
being unhappy

the happiest man in the world
and the most miserable

he could not feel
it might be possible 
that the world itself is without meaning

that boy's business of the intoxication of language
how Shakespeare loathed humanity
the message hidden in the beauty of words

15
plastered over with grimaces
his wife was crying and he felt nothing

once you stumble
human nature is on you

food was pleasant
the sun hot

12 o'clock
the leaden circles dissolved in the air

16
he never spoke of madness
he called it, "not having a sense of proportion"

love
trees
there is no crime

this exacting science
which has to do with what
after all, we know nothing about

worshipping proportion
penalizing despair
prophetic Christs and Christesses

17
shredding and slicing
dividing and subdividing
the clocks nibbled at the June day

the table spreads itself voluntarily
with glass and silver

18
drowsy and heavy
like a field of clover in the sunshine

and they went further and further from her
being attached to her by a thin thread
that would stretch and stretch
get thinner and thinner 
as they walked across London
as if one's friends were attached to one's body
by a thin thread
which as she dosed became hazy with the sound of bells
striking the hour or ringing to service
as a single spider's thread is blotted with raindrops
and burdened, sags down

19
first the warning, musical
then the hour, irrevocable

 but why did she suddenly feel
for no reason she could discover
desperately unhappy?

what she liked was simply life
an offering for the sake of offering

could not think
write 
even play the piano
talked oceans of nonsense

20
instead of lying on a sofa
she should have been in a factory
behind a counter

21
all the commodities of the world
perishable and permanent

a soul cut out of immaterial substance
not a woman, a soul

people were beginning to compare her to poplar trees
early dawn
hyacinths, fawns, running water, and garden lilies 

22
the trees dragged their leaves 
like nets through the depths of the air

24
life was good
the sun hot

it seemed to her as she drank the sweet stuff
that she was opening long windows
stepping out into some garden

I have that in me
which could now dissolve in tears
why heaven knows
beauty of some sort probably
and the weight of the day
the drip drip of one impression after another

a moment in which things came together
this ambulance and life and death

a theory heaps of theories
she felt herself everywhere
not here here here 
but everywhere
to know her or anyone 
one must seek out the people that completed them
even the places

our apparitions
the part of us which appears
are so momentary 
compared with the other
the unseen part of us
which spreads wide
the unseen might survive
be recovered somehow
attached to this person or that
or even haunting certain places after death
perhaps
perhaps

26 
the day changed
shed dust heat color
I resign the evening seemed to say
I fade
I disappear 

this interminable life

here he was 
starting to go to a party
with the belief upon him that he was about to have an experience
but what?
beauty anyhow
straightness and emptiness
the symmetry of a corridor

everybody was going out

the cold stream of visual impressions failed him now
as if the eye were a cup that overflowed

29
in the middle of my party
here's death

the terror
the overwhelming incapacity
one's parents giving it into one's hands
this life
to be lived to the end
to be walked with serenely

there was in the depths of her heart
an immeasurable fear

a dusky sky
turning away its cheek in beauty

the clock began striking
the young man had killed himself
but she did not pity him
with the clock striking the hour
1 2 3
she did not pity him
with all this going on

fear no more the heat of the sun

she felt somehow very like him
the young man who had killed himself
she felt glad that he had done it
thrown it away

the clock was striking
the leaden circles dissolved in the air

he made her feel the beauty
made her feel the fun

30
indeed the young are beautiful
she was like a lily
a lily by the side of a pool

one could watch
one could understand
and one did not lose the power of feeling

it increased
it went on increasing

what does the brain matter
compared to the heart?

what is this terror?
what is this ecstasy?