As/Is







8.31.2006



Meet you in Spring

red is the haunting specter
shrieking isolated
summoned you out of skin

released the mortal chariot
beneath mount zion

we have become rumors
in the elysian fields
where you rest

time has been broken
in the divinity of your soul

you have transcended the fall
now you design eternity

and we beckon to our lives
fate haunting relentless

farewell stoic warrior
meet you in spring


For Okan
my cousin departed



Billy Jno Hope








8.30.2006


"The basic problem"   [shi #2]


The basic problem of being   would need to be solved
within the arena   of the particular being

if it's worked out there   the questions are all resolved
if not   you'd always be chumped by what you were seeing

it's beginning to rain   it's been a rather dry summer
I sit outdoors   in my corner   and light a cigar

the purpose of living   is not a pedestrian rumor!
but why does it always elude   and seem afar?




=======

[This I will regard as the second poem in a sequence that follows (in feeling as much as in form) from whatever I may have absorbed, in gone years, dabbling at reading and translating from classical Chinese shi. The most typical form of such a poem is in 8 lines, either with 5 characters per line (mirrored in the English form by five stressed syllables, as here) or with 7 characters per line (mirrored in the English form by seven stressed syllables, as in the 1st poem in this sequence).

=======

Chinese poems, late summer, no. 2

no. 1:
  Rooftop Scene





moodgrapher _-_ moodfeeds

in that world
we call
fractalis
<   

underpayed
moodgraphing agents
monitor individual synchronicity
<   

controlling off standard
deviation with
moodfeed
<   

the first derivative
of flattened
emotion



moodgrapher _-_ moodfeeds; ©Dreaming in Neon
MoodViews: blog mood analysis





'sponge

it counts one less ",thus succeeds"

removed position apostrophe (placed
head first) that long "inside"

to arrange agreed linguistic desire

"fucker, commas open vitiated one"
counting two "particular potentialities,"

burnt above east occidental east

tobacco fire can (plastic paper
connotation(s) many) 'esse

that surround "forget it" adjustment

external part (them configurations)








8.28.2006


Rooftop Scene


Atop the building   wind moves
                  thru the lolling leaves

an idling sun   is barely seen
                  thru bluegray clouds

somewhere   the bell of a church is ringing
                          life's serene

I guess   the traffic roars like an ocean
                          muffled lauds

O honking horn of worship
                  horn of lazy hurry

the red of blossoms   festival
                    in kitschy planters

two black umbrellas stand
                amid the chairs & tables

I sit alone   this August evening
                        one gull enters




=======

washington dc
this loosely follows the form and feel of shi
(a classical Chinese poem, most typically in 8 lines)








8.27.2006


The Precision of Leaving

There are places less significant
than this: gnarled trees,

the barn with the face of an old man
carved in its slates, the stagnant

black well. There were seasons
stacked like the fields,

rounded haybails left out to dry,
the berry bush tangled

in weeds; each red fruit
choking. We gathered them

thinking of mulberry seeds
and imagined the pie.

There are reasons for leaving-
when the snow came down

grey ducks would fly
in V's precise as decision,

the pond still and mourning
in the farmer-child's eye.





parchment is a wannabe

give (not up) give (not over) just
exist. I'm talking through my coffee now I welcomed
this new one and I spoke to him I welcomed
this new one and I sipped. he had no shirt on.
I had a shirt and also on my wall within
a frame I had this kin of sheep (asleep).

who has been my mentor in this frilly quasi
spacetet. am I wholly
(am I what) in dream? you tell me
and I'll be frankincense (demur). articulate
retractions take the p(l)ace, the cake
and so forth. look at how I say I am
according to this frame.

whatever has been true has now been
relegated to a pseudo present tense.
that's how it is in wardrobe. one shifts
lightly, gradually, one pounced, even,
on an opportunity that recently has not been
even partly known.

the act of noticing deserves no badge.
the act of noticing is not the same as an invention.
by what process are you recognized apart from just being
yourself?
today the roses are the color of light copper.
when will their patina start to show?








8.26.2006


melancholia's tremulous dreadlocks issue 3

the third issue of melancholia's tremulous dreadlocks is online now, featuring work by:

annmarie eldon - diana magallon - gina myers - gm quinte - matina stamatakis - jerome rothenberg - logan ryan smith - mark lamoureux - noah falck - ray hsu - mark wallace - richard meier - brane mozetic - noah eli gordon

http://www.melancholiastremulousdreadlocks.com


melancholia's tremulous dreadlocks is a bi-weekly journal of poetry and curious bits co-edited by andrew lundwall and francois luong...





Flutter

I read a few lines,
the moth-of-it

caught between
the left pad

of my palm
and window;

released
into the night...

missing
dreadfully

captivity
and its fragile

flutter.








8.25.2006


What the Lamppost Said





"Asking a writer what he thinks about criticism is
like asking a lamppost what it feels about dogs."

  -- John Osborne




"I've got a special liking for Chihuahuas
(I'm thoroughly delighted that you asked!)
one needs to be more thoughtful meeting Schnauzers"
      the lamppost laughed

"The Bulldog and the Poodle both concern me
(it's really most amazing that you care!)
I think the darling Shih Tzu don't discern me
      with all that hair!

The Rottweiller's another tale truly
Coton de Tulear are simply fab!
the Labrador deserves good mention duly
      is that your cab?"










8.24.2006


Silver's Good as Grapes

I wish you'd like the tintypes
And their reasoned scars.

We were an item when the sleeves felt
Needful of more warmth from arms.

I've felt my way to modesty near places
We were met with corresponding violets.

"Let me take you to lunch" against the grain
Of present tense to draw energy's drumming the way

Of near-term parsed insomnia where we'd ride
The waking dreams with flair resisting envy.








8.23.2006


The Art of Watching

Sometimes, seeing
thinks clearly, knowing-

across a field she watches
the sleek-feathered crows

each dark shape strutting
divergent, unplanned roads

picking purple-red beetles
from the dug up snow

as the brown-hooded hawk
circles down.








8.22.2006


The Window's Light

When we look in
from the dark,
the window's light
is cruel; when a body

becomes transparent
as leaf veins held
against a glowing sky
and struck by its beauty...

we sacrifice
our hidden
future.

Who shuts out
the cold by dying?
Who feeds the mind
with grains of night?

If our weight
becomes the same
as thunder, as infinite
as the shadowed hills,

if we look away
from suicidal stars,
the burning arc
of nature's will-

we come away
with nothing.








different rooms tossed in midnight
slipped hands forward moon leafing
through light escaped pages toward
fire hydrants of loss when things
go wrong down an inescapable avenue
walking barefooted and drunken
like a zombie shrunken under
the crackling of foreign hands
painted brightly zero'd in
crotchwise

momentum indented
slanted in sexual
hyperbola
or else fragmented
or else or elsie
she's been acting
kinda funny lately
i'd rather not
listen closely
groping seconds
pessimistic unrest
distressed








8.21.2006


Towards Bethlehem

Like so much of this country
the lemon groves are sunken.
Oct 7, 1964, a night
and she was out of milk.
There was something left,
a bronze coffin with pink carnations,
200 mourners of Ontario.
Of course she came from
somewhere else, something
she had seen in a movie.
Unhappy marriage,
the bridegroom in black
the bride wore white and sweetheart
roses with her illusion veil.





Abandonment

No way to explain
the facile, indefensible
thirst that saps dry
any discovered reservoir
for fear its contents flows
elsewhere. You'd be frightened
to learn that the stricter a dreaded
outcome of a given body, as in
beetles to leaves of a crabapple
the more the bugs abound—
and their scouring.
Odd that I should so perpetually
love a woman, that I can't eat
for the literal physical pain of her
absence, and I withhold the name of her
whom I love now, worried that she,
lovely, distinctive, light heart
is another strand of twine, binds me
to my own burning effigy, ghost
of habit and fear.





"love love" (adam fieled)

take night trains:
out, through woods.

dantean "tracks." go.
hedge bets. suffer.

if. lots of "if" you
must live with.

that's love: "if."
not a condition,

but a possibility.
receding horizon.

think "if," reach.
sacred procedure.

believe in it, not
you. you're "what."





The Vacant Electricity of a Lifetime

her thrumming promontory a softness landing on
damp, red earth. our hollow sleep being droned to death.
particles offering only stale water amidst the errors of
love grafting love to the colour purple.
an association prophesied in bundles of wet feathers.
in the interstices of figures haunting the tops of trees.
one lone woman swelling brightly smiles. hard skin becoming
radiant again above the vacant electricity of a lifetime.
reserves dilapidated. loving the yellow reason stepping around
the wisps of crackling dawn. schizophrenic nastiness spat from the
merely descriptive other lover. hands moaning with
forgotten ambivalence plucking names from puddles of silence.
an established inventory shining a numinous light
on abandoned beds of awe and wonder. everything happening
in frozen cycles of emphasis. our mystic imagination
having to crumple the boundaries between the
broken nothing and mystic ceasefires hiding in
this lasting forever. just to confuse matter.
thrown words following the edges of alpha to phantasm.
made green to licking after regular intervals of stolen
precipitate. swallowing a channel of whiteness.
untamed branches clearly breathing in tufts of DNA.
a wearied newness drooping for you in the heart.
lucidity braying where life lies hidden. blue intensities
wearing beads of conflict around their mirror of clouds.








8.20.2006


From Over Here You Are Fine

Authority was first
thought to be
daunting, then grew
confirmed in blocking

entry, flow, and levity.
I tell myself
the track record
of projected patience

glides across the world
as though another world
were offering
a guiding ride.

Some unseen focus
primes the path
until fresh things
grow where you have been.





The Greatest

The music is endless image
of an immeasurably continual
waterfall, I
always want to walk there,
enter the wild throe of the band
of water, never to hear another
wrench or shriek, but the whir
become roar of cascading the
tumbling, enveloping
downslope.

Alternately, it is the dream
then the waking from dream that
sullies the heart, one cannot forswear
discovered clouds,
not sit a realistic instant
in any fold or furrow
no matter how delightful.

The wind, then, to move the stagnant depression-

times, however, there is not a whisper of breeze
and the trees in duress limp to horrible stone-
the earth sits heavy unto itself.

None can lift the body to ease the grief
hand that would mend
widespread damages
hurt itself.

What humiliation
to lessen the burden,
weight of greatness
acrid, awkward delusion,

that will not bring the body lower than the
ground from which it began to climb
but show an elliptical manner possible
one horizontal,
as in
benignly, to cross the room not to
rake shoulders of the others
with the cleats of boots
nor to uproot the ambitious
saplings crowding, aspiring

but to enter the throes
enter the ragged breaking down,
circumstance in which all
are twofold
swimming, grace incarnate and
a submerged worm drowning.

"Help me down" like she said,
never any better anywhere
but closer to where dirt is made of dirt
to look around from there
around there
the stars, small lights not
swirls aflame that dizzy the charlatan's eyes
among them without shine or any way to streak
across the sky where one
happily gently
is not a fixture.








8.16.2006


'pale't

expensive delivery for
stops backwards (not
reached) "same piss

dribbled addition 'vantage
seen" challenge events
(more less) transform'd

perfect necessary "not
to the severity
usual consensus" and

"it composed" not
lesser changed blanket
character(s) (ity)

pulled divided this
goal(s) constructed below
to pull down

together pushed hope
to fifth (method)
collapsed down (down)








8.15.2006


"Pang" (adam fieled)

They say the rain
may be hands of steel

trapping us behind blinds
where we crouch naked

counting each pang that
rivets us to each other's

pores. Or, something,
we don't know what,

dropped out of the sky
like a sodden death-wish.

Either way, "they" drops
dead the minute drop

one transfixes us to
somebody's innocent

lock of hair, curve of
thigh, hip-spread, tongue

pinkness; we have only
ever been one, "I," that

now must sacrifice every-
thing to lose the only

thing it knows, that
parched, livid center.








8.12.2006


new issue of melancholia's tremulous dreadlocks

melancholia's tremulous dreadlocks is a bi-weekly journal of poetry and curious bits...

issue 2 features poetry by jenna cardinale...caleb puckett...scott keeney...glenn bach...mary kasimor...christine hamm...donald illich...kudra delaney...pierre joris...reb livingston...louise landes levi...jessy randall...francois luong...tomaz salamun...elizabeth kate switaj...brian boutwell...and lena dunham...cover art by michal macku...

please visit http://www.melancholiastremulousdreadlocks.com

cheers!











impromptu

to whom one was speaking
was part of the question
but time was limited
who was it speaking?
what was the question?
what was limited?

out of philosophical
inarticulateness flows
what was the question?
that time was limited
was part of the question
to whom was one speaking?









8.11.2006


You Bring Me Awake and Even So

mornlight sifts consonantal boundaries
from warm vowel sounds

from over here I learn that
you are over there








8.10.2006


Pity

Joined at the hip, the minutes
and hours, the time it takes

for a hair to split
two worlds-

your mouth,
my skin; to peel

the beautiful, swirling
reels of rose

from its golden
stamen.

I prefer to write:
"there is no pity

in these wrists, no
counting measure

for these bones
growing together,

no perfect solemn
covenant of duty-

just moments
without their secrets".








8.09.2006


Sunset

White moves-
burns
the egret.

Flame
colored
wing.

Iris orange
eyes.

Tiger
sky.





the lost norman rockwell









8.06.2006


never come back

firescapes
scraping sway
of drunken

it hurts

flies gather
tiny circles
spiraling
create a sphere

there's something
that i wish to contain
there's some thing
that i often wander around
never successfully capture

eating carpet
midnight left
an hour ago
and her words there
hardened
against the window

'never
come back'








8.05.2006


Outside the River House

I am southern in such a way:
blue salt courses
through my veins, enters
the house leaning
on the river- beats

against the windows
calling someone
home.

My memory
is a torn green apple
caught in the tree-bones
like a stubborn thorn
or a throbbing nerve.

It lives and so
do I before it falls,
outside the river house,

in the swollen,
sweet-grass.





"Unreflecting Love" (adam fieled)

I dream endlessly of days
of unreflecting love.
I make my heart skip beats,
brain go soft, gut get lean, all

for unreflecting love. The books
don't say how to get there.
The gurus are stumped. All talk
of love reflected upon.

Years have passed, nothing
like it in sight. Sometimes I
get by looking at kids'
books. Unreflecting love lives

there. Then, the book shuts,
the heart. Nothing left to dream
of but unreflecting love. Dreams
of reflections not reflecting.








8.04.2006


Prose Poem #1

God and the devil are at the kitchen table sharing a sandwich. Outside an angry preacher is banging at the window with an old shoe. On the sole is written the history of the world-- it is a very short story. On the lawn is a collection of circus tents. There is a line of people that extends to the horizon. Inside the main tent there is an ape chained and someone has giving him a picture of Fay Wray. He understands more than you. He is smiling, and off in the distance a group of pilgrims have mistaken his smile for the sun setting over Golgotha.








8.03.2006


trotsky

cold
this night
will make
icepicks
of us all





Comparative Lit

I put you on the stage where you feel comfortable not looking good, not sounding. Then I put you on the stage again where you decide to extract a vibrato from a place vibrations ought to be, deciding further that the people looking stageward yearn for you. And I believe you tell yourself another thing not one of us will bother to interpret. How could we check our work?

I put you on a stage so I can leave myself atrance, and I am not entranced when I look at the stage. Every so often I look at it, and tell myself pronouns are handy. Pronouns help us carry baggage. Pronouns are intact and quaint. Were you saying something?

I put you on a pedestal you made yourself, and I would vote for the probability that each time you use it, you project another builder and another. I would further say that you decide each of the builders lives for you and longs for you.

I put you on record so I can prove that I was here, when in fact I was not here at all. I was instead confirmed as present and accounted for in past tense, where I lived comfortably, rent-free. From that vantage point I looked from a white dock at the country of my heart that matches perfectly the very bluest of salt water mirroring the sky.

I put you on hold; I dazzle my learning with the scent of consequence to come. I plan the cold renewal of once blemished heart, considering a way to cradle what I am and how I used to love without an obstacle. What obstacle could stave off perfect love? The many numbers capable of being rounded to near selves begin to stagger me. I think that I will go lie down now that you're planted on this stage. I tell myself another thing you could not prove, even if you were to listen closely and define.





Something (adam fieled)

yet we're stuck on each other,
"somehow." or, your picture on
my wall (the clothes, the deep
looks, how adorable) signifies
an ambiguity inherent in

love's prosody. anyway, this
in meant only to be a torn
anemone sent up along
ocean currents to your
door, a way of saying

you're in me "somewhere."
if that's regressive, so be
it, but let no silly man
accuse me of "quietude"-
this longing is loud indeed.








8.02.2006


Heron

The bleak or
solemn
raven-cold, beam of iron
no-weight
rusted
endurable underneath-
how apply
ponderous human concept
of the ominous
or numinous
to simply the
weird presence
of eyes looking
manifest as body.

Heron.

Some old ditched house
with framed picture
of a gone person
on the mantle inside

it's Nana Jo is in my mind
not looking at me or anything
always old wife to Bill
she sat in that chair, now

concerted to a stick upright in the marsh
and
into flying a
beard going gray or
a chest breathing sleep






play

half moon rising
shrugged of
the artifice
on bended knees

Billy Jno Hope








8.01.2006



swollen stars stumbling
cease features in parade

the luminous nipples of trees
spectatored rotating nuisances

that elfin clowns jumble up
and jump
should come as no surprise
to my wet nurse





pear

hold one up to
whatever light of a lamp

silver coin, angled
to show a sheen

lift
lifted at the sun

you can see old Bill Milnes
his cheek with vein scrawl

and the back deck in
Dennis, Massachusetts

Andre the poodle, black
curls of his fur, soft contrast

to pine quills, brindled
stacks of thatch , brief sticks

that scare the bared feet, or
Andre's hot nose.

If I was there now
I'd be bored in the

afternoon, nothing to do
not eating a pear I never

had a taste for pears.