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8.31.2006
Meet you in Springred 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 
'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 significantthan this: gnarled trees, the barn with the face of an old man carved in its slates, the stagnantblack 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.commelancholia'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.comcheers!
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 someonehome. 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.
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(2) Comments:
The closing couplet is very fine.
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