shyku for angela, holding the face of her eldest

in this time of living rest ^ listening, making void ^ tree-faking ^ two grandparents in synchronized dying ^ reaching out becoming hands on ^ the face ^ held close ^ shored by ailment ^ what's been left ^ out withheld ^ by what hides it ^a quality of ^ vigilance ^ ready to be let go ^ attentional ^ echo^ location of a woman ^ from ^ inverted spirit ^ radiating don't, not ^ yet, breathe ^ me my eyes some ^ more ^ a little some ^ more ^ of us nuanced ^ by the quiet

shyku for one voice

only will ^ dreaming ^ how it happens ^ spine makes this trend ^ is ^ no it cannot ^ I almost ^ anything ^ lived so as to ^ blood ^ yes it can ^ you ^ barely be believed ^ lost ^ I had to include all religions, even bone ^ in baseball, the fans ^ but for the guilt, its homily ^ they finished ^ but in closing they flourish ^ desert ^ it is, after all, a way ^ flourishing, happy ^ machine ^ what rules desiring ^ much ^ fusing, wondering ^ we can, we almost lost ^ much more ^ concision, home ^ richly ^ a conclusion ^ the distance ^ sad ^ then our losing bending ^ did I say distance again

33 west 67th street shyku

these days, the elements of time are perfect ^ grays fog ^ making often symphonic, that is, many driftings, possible ^ they blur, engage passage ^ for example, I want one of his further studies ^ so ^ find the studio where Duchamp, what you see, lived briefly ^ and sat there ^ sequence, in element, is ^ for an hour ^ and then add ^ there’s that word again ^ element ^ will it last ^ a periodic table ^ everything needed dissolve ^ who cares ^ for a world

shyku admiring your late clarity

eye missing
longwalking with you collective breathing riding
the silence to language
mas h blas-
pheming the daybreak is healthy mood for distance
learners Mason Dixon
lines everywhere gaffebliss,
gaffebliss, we are inhaled
by churches derelicts
tussled by hands but don’t touch
my eyes let heaven unknown harmonics
hum the belove
don cheadling in pizza shops, buscemilike
Houdini in liquor
the heavingart of
stallioning down ave.
smelling
heartily discount hookering
breezeway to blundertalk
everything’s a beer Bronx air
behind us your own mythic way of approaching
a sandwich stopping to admire
the poetry
in certain bookstores
zooy with eyes
I think I saw a giraffe Chinatown smells like
dyslexia yes I enjoy
my senses when I am

greatest compliment shyku

I'm taking your dance moves
all the way back
to Oklahoma

sex with 2 sticks shyku

pas de bourree--a walking or running
ballet stop executed on the points
of the toes

pas de deux--a dance or figure
for 2 performers

with new clothes surging up from the floor

mirror space for 18 shykus

Another still morning born—

Another stillborn morning—

Believe the maker born in the morning.

Still believe to give birth to the country of lies.

The country of lies is born in the morning.

Morning lies, another believes.

Lack of dust means lack of settling; before that, lack of lack. Nothing dust means nothing lost, nothing stillborn.

Do you believe that stillbirth is better than still-life? Your answer means so much, even if it is a lie.

The maker, too, is in the country of lies, but he does not believe in the morning.

Dust lacks only nothing, another still.

Let us always fail to lack lack.

I believe I would choose stillbirth.

The country of lies is never still, and never still the maker.

Still-life in the morning is far from nothing.

We do not believe in still-life; each breath is morning, each breath shuffles dust.

Stillbirth gives birth to the country of lies.

Morning believes, another lies.

The maker fails to choose.

'shyku interlude' (exegesis)

Reading this I think of Wittgenstein's example of how we are tricked by language into conceiving our place in the world according to certain narrow, culturally inherited habits. Describing time in

terms of flow, in comparison to a river, etc. This is totally fallacious, says W. To illustrate his point he cites a passage from St. Augustine—time as river—which he then, I think, traces back to

Heraclitus (can’t step in it twice) and the Greeks in general. His point is funny because it's so obvious. This Is A Metaphor. We have no proof time flows or even progresses—progression,

which may just be an illusion produced by cause and effect, which might also be, or could be, David Hume, an illusion produced by the ordering mind. Time is a river, cause and effect: consonance

from chaos, gestalt. But the metaphor is totally inappropriate for another reason (and this is me talking, not W.) in that it describes something immaterial in terms of something material; and moreover,

in terms of materiality-in-movement. This is totally inaccurate because, though, yeah, a river 'progresses' and produces form from variable substance (from moving water, a shape, a river), it

is also entirely defined by its environment, by banks, obstacles to its flow, etc. A river’s shape is determined passively, reactively; as a series of responses to the run and wring of the land. Which doesn’t

resemble time in the least. First of all, time doesn’t have a shape. Secondly it is an active agent rather than a passive one, both everywhere and nowhere. Moreover our only proof of time is by

way of material rumor. By which I mean: we have always deduced the existence and persistence of time according to material responses to its effects. Time is more an aftereffect than an actual

presence. From the metamorphosis of things and the emergence, interpenetration and development of events, one from the other, we’ve deduced this abstraction descriptive of an

action, time. Which ‘passes’ (like living people into corpses). Which ‘heals all wounds’ (and produces them). Faced with patterns of emergence, growth and decay, we orient ourselves

within this idea of time and then stick to it as if such a view of things were natural and even preferable.

That’s why I like this passage from "Austerlitz". For Sebald's switch of metaphor: no, time is indeterminate and unpredictable, like weather. And like weather can't be precisely measured;

and because of that, isn’t conducive to the regulation of lives in any fixed or predictable manner. In other words, time is more a play of fluctuating patterns than a unified march. Slow here,

fast there. Contracting and expanding, according to its own internal logic.
Actually, when he switches his metaphors from river to weather I wonder whether he isn’t just

reorienting our relation to it, from an objective, material, empirically measurable event, to a subjective, psychological play of phenomena. Psychological time. Which is to say: bodily time.

Which no precision of description can catch. Since the heartbeat is not a clock, after all, nor a barometer, bridge, or ladder.

a shyku interlude by w.g. sebald

Time, said Austerlitz in the observation room in Greenwich, was by far the most artificial of all our inventions, and in being bound to the planet turning on its axis was no less arbitrary than would be, say, a calculation based on the growth of trees or the duration required for a piece of limestone to disintegrate, quite apart from the fact that the solar day which we take as our guideline does not provide any precise measurement, so that in order to reckon time we have to devise an imaginary, average sun which has an invariable speed of movement and does not incline towards the equator in its orbit. If Newton thought, said Austerlitz, pointing through the window and down to the curve of the water around the Isle of Dogs glistening in the last of the daylight, if Newton really thought that time was like the Thames, then where is its source and into what sea does it finally flow? Every river, as we know, must have banks on both sides, so where, seen in those terms, where are the banks of time? What would be this river's qualities, qualities perhaps corresponding to those of water, which is fluid, rather heavy and translucent? In what way do objects immersed in time differ from those left untouched by it?...Could we not claim, said Austerlitz, that time itself has been nonconcurrent over the centuries and the millennia? It is not so long ago, after all, that it began spreading out over everything. And is not human life in many parts of the earth governed to this day less by time than by the weather, and thus by an unquantifiable dimension which disregards linear regularity, does not progress constantly forward but moves in eddies, is marked by episodes of congestion and irruption, recurs in ever-changing form, and evolves in no one knows what direction? Even in a metropolis ruled by time like London, said Austerlitz, it is still possible to be outside time...

new fabrication shyku

that mattering of facts
suffers all
bleak, momentary suspensions
is
one reason to dress oneself
in shyku

shyku as living fable (ending in negation of a group hug)

it started around midnight
on June 16 when a group
of friends was finishing
dinner on the patio of a
District of Columbia home
authorities and witnesses
authorities and witnesses
said that's when a hooded
man slid through an open
gate and pointed a hand
gun at the girl's head "Give
me your money or I'll start
your money or I'll start
shooting" he said the
witnesses told The Washington
Post everyone froze but then
one guest spoke up "We
one guest spoke up "We
were just finishing dinner"
Cristina Rowan 43 told the
man "Why don't you have
a glass of wine with us" The
intruder had a sip of their
intruder had a sip of their
Chateau Malescot St-Ex
upery and said "Damn that's
good wine" the girl's father
Michael Rabdau 51 told him
to take the whole glass and
take the whole glass and
Rowan offered him the
bottle the would-be robber
with his hood down took
another sip and a bite of
Camembert and put the
gun in his sweatpants then
the story got even more
the story got even more
bizarre the man with the
gun apologized the witnesses
told the Post "I think I
may have come to the
may have come to the
wrong house" he said "Can I
get a hug" Rowan stood up
and wrapped her arms
around the man and the
four other guests followed
the man walked away a
the man walked away a
few moments later with
the crystal wine glass in
hand no one was hurt but
once he was gone the
once he was gone the
group went inside locked
the door and called
the door and called
the door 911

shyku of the rock kicked kicking back

to have been
is to be

perceived,
Bishop

Berkeley
(these

eyes of
gone old

mothers)

call and response shyku re: the sad acupuncturist's lament

why would you write a poem
about a sad acupuncturist--
in this climate
wouldn't it be more challenging to write a poem
about a flower
without winking?

ah, but I was born
with a wink in my eye
and it is slowly turning in
to a coin

dotting the seas shyku

victor brauner's

eye

{inframince...}

like the i

hidden

by ahab + yoga =

cough, yowl, suture

of love stutter

a.k.a.

the collected corkscrews

of claude cephalus

(the c.c. of c.c.)

assisi

ah, see see

si! si!

imposed symbolism shyku

while I have only seen a man
strip down naked
to be handcuffed
once,
I have seen
solitary karate in the park
a half dozen times
which means it must be read
symbolically
and stands for
what I do not know

shyku in the middle

A tremble of /cup in water .
Victor Brauner's /eye .

for example shyku

I invented the word "mistalking"
as a response to my own mistyping--I meant
originally to says "it throws stars"
but the t got left
in and I liked it better that way
because that seemed to illustrate my point
better and then I thought of
"mistalking" as a way to reiterate
but that led me down another path (start),
you know
the idea of stalking
improperly
the wrong person
or something

start of [critical] response shyku

it throws true starts
that blackbook, the flightbook,
like closing the eye
until a fist jostles
********(stars)
those are the kind
of starts I'm mistalking
about

skyku within a fiction of running water (from black flightbook #2)

bad art . know it by how it sounds
as if passionate to be art and just
that . Allan Kaprow . Forbidden
Knowledge . Proust smelting down
the seen . diseased by host likeness
out of the cradle gently mocking .
iniquity . how so much could meet
in so little as an opinion and be
crushed . contrived dualism Apoll
low to Dionysus . postlude . maimed
oxygen . cartomancy--fortune
telling with cards . pleasure-mash
homomorphism . private as a
corpse . alive as ham . selfishness
won't help inherit the inches . water
is 800 times more dense than air
spinarets--with which a spider
manipulates filaments . gallicism
sleep-scrimmage . a glutton
for English . a flesh expresser .
no allusions . more narrative . less
humor . flowing diction . fiction
The Last Gentleman--Percy . no
sweets for a week . coffee--2 cups
not stillness--concentration in
movement . Freeport Wolf Neck
State Park Wells . desiranoia
of the flow . henotheism--the worship
of one god w/out denying the
existence of others . obnubilate--
to obscure . gratis--free . the
display of pointless plumage . "En
and Omen" . secure a small place
in the whirling . "Some Story No
Blame Would Care To Read" . Vidal
versus Mailer: "Words fail Mr.
Mailer once again" . capsis . ungelic
down in a meaning hole with hearts
outside their bodies . all equal
in the eyes of lice . flight of the
understandable . slow and purposeful
applejack . copracognition . Olmecs
self-aggrandizement via put-down
Laura USAA . Steve from Pennstation
for I am my loneliest best friend
again

skyku of 'the unanswered question' (from black flightbook #2)

a too easy conflation of severity
with honesty . aphonic . twain
mistake church acoustics for cosmic
resonance . the sublime more a
charade of tiny noises a chewing
on the other side of a sand grain .
consoled by the failing and pains
of the perceived to be mighty .
carding wool . a vitality panic
-ing worms . squirts confidence
like a cuttlefish . to create the
illusion of sufficiency for this
they play tree in a forest of
poses or a real place a park .
Lucky In Love ... Life Not So
Much ... Hope To See You Soon
x0x0 The Loaf . exaggerating
to be accurate . to a slender point
my person has been diminished
even farther . miscreant . abattoir
simplifying into caricatures of
the generic . Mika . Parnassian
storytime . unexamined atheism
with flippancy on top . a moral
or emotional problem can be
presented or defined volitionally
but actual point of entry is
intuitive . surface structure
versus deep structure . Fort Foster
past Kittery route 103 Chancey
Creek right hand fork stop sign
right over creek and follow road .
diatonic containment of chromat-
icism . 'circle of fifths' . monogenesis--
languages stemming from one
source . The Harmonic Series . energy
in vibratory motion . ictus: attack
morpheme rewritten as a pitch
event . acromegaly . macroglossic
(enlarged tongue) . hypertension
optic chiasm . as boys pass in their
sleep into a lawful drinking age
Snape Maltings a concert hall in
Aldeburgh . Takemitsu . appellation
of a lady . vision bullion . biofuel
The Middle Path. Breytenbach
by way of Nagarjuna . move-
ment and pinhole of attentional
focus . bundles of cruelty and noise
Licht . licked . German for light is
licked . our clean and well-licked
place . alluvium

new england bricolage skyku (from black flightbook #2)

Girondo--Scarecrow and Other
Anomalies . Murio Mendes
Regis Bonvicino . phenobarbitals
George Balanchine . idiopathic
bon vivant Paulose S. John MD
contretemps ver digris . Concord
woman in museum (from San
Fran) who corrected me 'thorough'
Thoreau ('how do you say'?)
conCURD no OH . appletree
in bloom Emerson's house and
family orchard . spare strident
string quartet (Henze) irrational
connection: waterstriders . sojourn
to Glouchester shrank his
heroic concept to the size of
a lobster trap . geological layers
Cafe Dolce cappuccino $3.50
wraith verses starved for any
coloration . places are always
better than the people who
write about them . nutmeg spritzed
on top froth . camera obscura
archivolts bunting aspergillis
hydrangea tamarack bluebottle
hawkmoth katsura marigold
muscae volitantes--shadows of
motes in vitreous humor . ornate
precision: Nabokov . coenesthesia--
organic sensation of existence
what he said I added to by hearing
it what was seen carried the
amplification of clearing meaning
cumulophobia . Little Filth Flower
Nadacephalus Golias Baby Nickels
Roderick Angela Tate from this
angle I'll admit . Greenblatt lecture
condescension well-hidden in
ingratiation . Schopenhauer--art
object as objectivication of the will
Emil Cioran 1-800-Genocide . Racine's
Phedre . a few stragglers on the
grass behind the bathhouse adding
flesh to time . labored attempts
to convert pain to charisma . Helvetius
simplistic hick gumption . a
decorative outgrowth of philosophy
each house an epicenter . Gombrich
Art And Illusion

shyku by proxy

battle on several fronts shyku

but we can lead many lives without necessarily
being sailors until the sea shall free us
invalidating any of them right
weirdness that instructs
only so much longing only so much endless
returning to your earlier question
yes there's plenty of room

shyku of lucid split/one true action

we break into hands that happen
and so jack the ceiling walls
to a great perihelion height
nearest to implosions that
perish in the frail as light
and fake you

duchampion shyku 2

"against the lucidity of
instinct he opposed the
instinct for lucidity: the
invisible is not obscure
or mysterious,
it is transparent,"
said Octavio Paz

duchampion shyku 1

"his attitude of amiable and
idle onlooker, puffing slowly
at a pipe in an apparently
empty studio, could not
have been more misleading
if taken for inertia rather
than serenity" said
Anne D'Harnoncourt

h.p. roche shyku

was an intimate New York friend
of Marcel's who according to
the novel he wrote in the fifties
I think which was later plucked
from the illiterate continuum
by Truffaut and made filmic
then remade only a few years
ago by Bertulluci (misspelled
of course) a movie you left me
to watch actually during my
last all-out trip to New York
so you could snuggle with Amy
and Hunter not yet snoring
nearby called 'The Dreamers'
about a young trio who tryst
their way into a menage and
echoing all the way back to
Manhattan in the teens and
maybe early twenties when
two French transplants with
Roche being by far the more
prolific in his carnal bagging
tussled a wealth of Amer
ican women in the vicinity
Marcel even once coming home
(an accident, I swear, this,
coming) to a charged herd
of nymphs in repose on his
bony squalid little cot that
nearly everyone was appalled
by when they visited his
studio which was not often
since there was very little
to appear there and in-
frequently as recognizable art
a snowshovel hung renamed
In Advance of A Broken Arm
or a footstool bearing a
wink and kinetic horn whirring
such the unicorn of aesthetics
emerging of course improbably
from itself from force of
belief in what can violate
laws of nature by being
imagined, much like any
story of conquest involving a
skinny but by most accounts
lizard-like lothario with 'smiling
eyes' an ex-lover called them
warbling over an always in-
expressive fall-out of the
face below in what could
only be stoic outgrowth
of everything quietly discounted
beyond control or concern
nothing of which has anything
to do with friendship or Roche
or an expansive or even
visionary use of one's time
but to that since that is
the topic at hand I should speak
of how time clung to him
and elongated itself
an effect due to his solitude's
ability to navigate its own
dimensions without growing
weak that is without being
converted into loneliness
as it is with most people
looking out of the other side
of the Large Glass

shyku in conflict

A bunch of well-tucked bastards,
'Come on, sissy dick', nothing obliterates
purpose like a surfeit of options.

blood sausage shyku

buy your sausages from a local
farmer if you can
and your wine from a local winery
and make sure it's strong
at least a Cabernet:
put down some oil
in a heavy-bottomed pot
then add some thick-cut onions
and garlic and when it's sizzling
add the sausages, brown the bottoms,
flip them, add about a quarter bottle of the wine
and let the whole thing cook until
the wine's about burned off
and meanwhile steam some spinach or something
and then throw it all on a plate
and put on an old Rolling
Stones record and
clunk your elbows down
on the knotty wood
table and don't worry about wiping
your face, don't worry about
taxes or time or
any other trouble that finds
men, just chew the good
sausage until you are
barely there like
the silent character
in an old film
or a Hemingway story
or, better yet,
one of the characters
the director or author
erases at the last minute
promising "someday
I'll write a story
just for you"

going away for a while shyku

off to Millerton tomorrow
to figure things out
alone and
something's waiting
shykus, shybans,
beckett, sunset, bugs
the image of
not my son

empathy against shyku sculptures

sometimes the shyku
is just there
to hang the title on

hawkeye shyku

apologies accept the space
they have rented behind the face
they are paid to