This hurricane, his namesake
stalked him before it tore into
the infrastructure and careful
calculus of lives, the very breathing
of beating hearts. Hearths,
as it were. Homes. His brand
hand picked after agony after
agony, checked against
nicknames and popularity
gauges. His brand
slammed by whisperings
around watercoolers and wraiths
of smoke. They said it,
his name, as they spoke
of it, its terrible
path. There is no mayor
of association, no federation
to detach
the briar of holy terror
from the simple material
of one man's life. "You have been
named again, and this time
by a dark agent, a force,"
a voice said
each time he flipped
station to news to
signature
in a new hand, a hand
with a tiny, the tiniest,
new pulse.
Monday, September 29, 2008
Sunday, September 28, 2008
You have been upgraded to hurricane status
http://www.ctv.ca/servlet/ArticleNews/story/CTVNews/20080927/kyle_canada_080927/20080927?hub=CTVNewsAt11
Wednesday, September 24, 2008
Tuesday, September 23, 2008
Saturday, September 20, 2008
Out Of Month But In Season
A house in Helena, Arkansas, two gingkos straddle the yard, and where it clumps alive as the street is slow
the tug of a frontwalk leash, a porch, with glider, three humans harmonize wide disfiguring yawns.
Townfolk have been stopping through the afternoon to watch them. Mass incendiary haloes. Mellow supernovae that shock
eyes from a block's length distance. But as you get closer with visual charisma, the otherworldly
charm punishes a left hook: downwind updrafts of rancid, post-coital swelter.
The Comptons, the Spader children; Mrs. Freeling and her out-of-state Church friend Millie
are standing, in
compromised awe, each with a writerly hand lifted, to pinch their noses. One assumes they breathe through
the mouth. Sparkling, but sluggishly. In bodily attitudes of discomfort obstructing gratitude.
Only after arriving weeks before the schoolyear had we slowly, intuitively adjusted, like the chill of sea
outside a wetsuit, maybe or just not a person that was a certain unmeasurable swath of skin inside, plus the
predetermined webworks of nerves, the obscure heart, confiding without disclosure a brain's hidden, confused
potency, to the town, and its rhythms--that where there was a motionless nexus there was a Delta, Mississippi, and no amount of romanticism in roast of some Horrific, Fertile South
could counteract that.
Such was Arkansas. And those pedestrians, in solvent late light, what would you call them? Onlookers, voyeurs
gone public? Of course and then again, not. More an alien naturalism of cutout harmless darkness. Across the grass,
dry as arid. With exhalations as creative as sound. Arkansasans.
the tug of a frontwalk leash, a porch, with glider, three humans harmonize wide disfiguring yawns.
Townfolk have been stopping through the afternoon to watch them. Mass incendiary haloes. Mellow supernovae that shock
eyes from a block's length distance. But as you get closer with visual charisma, the otherworldly
charm punishes a left hook: downwind updrafts of rancid, post-coital swelter.
The Comptons, the Spader children; Mrs. Freeling and her out-of-state Church friend Millie
are standing, in
compromised awe, each with a writerly hand lifted, to pinch their noses. One assumes they breathe through
the mouth. Sparkling, but sluggishly. In bodily attitudes of discomfort obstructing gratitude.
Only after arriving weeks before the schoolyear had we slowly, intuitively adjusted, like the chill of sea
outside a wetsuit, maybe or just not a person that was a certain unmeasurable swath of skin inside, plus the
predetermined webworks of nerves, the obscure heart, confiding without disclosure a brain's hidden, confused
potency, to the town, and its rhythms--that where there was a motionless nexus there was a Delta, Mississippi, and no amount of romanticism in roast of some Horrific, Fertile South
could counteract that.
Such was Arkansas. And those pedestrians, in solvent late light, what would you call them? Onlookers, voyeurs
gone public? Of course and then again, not. More an alien naturalism of cutout harmless darkness. Across the grass,
dry as arid. With exhalations as creative as sound. Arkansasans.
Friday, September 19, 2008
Two Dancing in Laws
1.
"[We] are doomed, by the fact that we are practical beings with very limited tasks to attend to, and special ideas to look after, to be absolutely blind and insensible to the inner feelings, and the whole inner significance of lives that are different from our own. Our opinion of the worth of such lives is absolutely wide of the mark, and unfit to be counted at all."
2.
"The really important kind of freedom involves attention, and awareness, and discipline, and effort, and being able to truly care about other people and to sacrifice for them over and over, in myriad petty little unsexy ways, every day."
"[We] are doomed, by the fact that we are practical beings with very limited tasks to attend to, and special ideas to look after, to be absolutely blind and insensible to the inner feelings, and the whole inner significance of lives that are different from our own. Our opinion of the worth of such lives is absolutely wide of the mark, and unfit to be counted at all."
2.
"The really important kind of freedom involves attention, and awareness, and discipline, and effort, and being able to truly care about other people and to sacrifice for them over and over, in myriad petty little unsexy ways, every day."
Wednesday, September 17, 2008
The History of Modernism, as Ignored By Augustus John; or: Saying Goodnight Through a Cellphone, To The Future and Other Such Loved Ones
When nearer to each imaginary fact, as it is, laid bare, sensitive and unconscious, the chances, meeting where
they came from, increase their edges, for the cut.
What I mean is, I'm remembering, but also, I'm mellow, floating in a careful grade of happy.
The man, I even read his essay. Free time, and I became of it--Augustus John. A painter. Of portraits. And
look at me, I am too, one, in the studio of an exposed ear: in there, I've fit Nicole's chore-voice as it shifts registers.
Bathwater slogs in the background. Nieem ambience. Earlier he'd shuffled the living room around
surprising teal pantyhose she'd worn in a row, two days. Through the receiver and digital pulse, down from
satellite mediation heaven, a boy yells spiderman over the body-shaped exhaustion of his mother. A portrait.
Just with a touch John could turn a woman into a wishbone. Not even with a hand or sometimes minus
cold joy of whatever he chose, to exclude from his art. Different but equally forever. I watch from a windowseat
and wonder. Victorianism. Then Vorticism. Which is to say--people hardly change, it's not their habit, even though
style stirs the color of what they stave.
Happiness? Who wouldn't rather have people? The portrait receives transmissions. When I'm so involved I'm
not aware, but emanate like smiles and sudden drops, the chewing of lips and nails. I return from myself as
them, if only for as long as they're there. It's called love. And if not, or more complicated--at least the rarest
of someone.
they came from, increase their edges, for the cut.
What I mean is, I'm remembering, but also, I'm mellow, floating in a careful grade of happy.
The man, I even read his essay. Free time, and I became of it--Augustus John. A painter. Of portraits. And
look at me, I am too, one, in the studio of an exposed ear: in there, I've fit Nicole's chore-voice as it shifts registers.
Bathwater slogs in the background. Nieem ambience. Earlier he'd shuffled the living room around
surprising teal pantyhose she'd worn in a row, two days. Through the receiver and digital pulse, down from
satellite mediation heaven, a boy yells spiderman over the body-shaped exhaustion of his mother. A portrait.
Just with a touch John could turn a woman into a wishbone. Not even with a hand or sometimes minus
cold joy of whatever he chose, to exclude from his art. Different but equally forever. I watch from a windowseat
and wonder. Victorianism. Then Vorticism. Which is to say--people hardly change, it's not their habit, even though
style stirs the color of what they stave.
Happiness? Who wouldn't rather have people? The portrait receives transmissions. When I'm so involved I'm
not aware, but emanate like smiles and sudden drops, the chewing of lips and nails. I return from myself as
them, if only for as long as they're there. It's called love. And if not, or more complicated--at least the rarest
of someone.
M
It's not as if truth were extractable from behavior, Jordan was explaining, but tents of humor regarded from afar
resemble goosebumps. What makes a faithful partner, anyway? If you have a man in your mind for longer
than a minute, you can be sure he'll stray. But mind you, there are different flavors. To grasp one in his
travels, from photon, dissolution, electrical spasms on the retinal screen; from optic nerve to laces crossed
and quavering in private three dimensions, so even with closed eyes he can see, can be--a saint
or mistake will, if he's with, have to be your honesty.
resemble goosebumps. What makes a faithful partner, anyway? If you have a man in your mind for longer
than a minute, you can be sure he'll stray. But mind you, there are different flavors. To grasp one in his
travels, from photon, dissolution, electrical spasms on the retinal screen; from optic nerve to laces crossed
and quavering in private three dimensions, so even with closed eyes he can see, can be--a saint
or mistake will, if he's with, have to be your honesty.
Tuesday, September 16, 2008
For We Must Know Why We Walk Softly
After the storm, which weathercasters never tired of calling fall-out from Hurricane Godfried, the whole
city seemed derived from remnants of what was left over from ancient Rome. Thick, full scale branches
obscured the roads. Powerlines were strewn like spaghetti. Parked foreign cars appeared at the end of walkways
crushed from the weight of their own payments. It seemed, to the honest, most storm-fearing observer,
a wreckage willed by what they were too bored to make homely.
For three twenty-four hour periods, not even the cell lines were accessible. National Guardsmen were called
in by the Governor. Every lamed intersection found its triage--lean, white men in fatigues, the seriousness
of the hour glued to their faces, inched clotted traffic toward and past them, into a general malfunction that
held more than enough sleep behind their eyelids.
A number of unnatural events had been noted. Not recorded, jotted out in the open. Where the panicked and
exhausted and disgruntled could argue and discuss just exactly the best way to illustrate them. In the span
of a half-hour, the temperature and air pressure registered epic shifts. Winds that chased them indoors
welcomed them with jacket weather. Instant Fall scents released a premature return from nostalgia. And what's
more, all manner of fowl had relapsed. A brevity in the sky gone South.
Battery and candle. Doubleteam heating ceremonies, beneath covers. While above and outside the throb
of emergency busyness, chainsaws, days linked by coffee, brought civilization out of the mouth, of nature, into
the tamed, shared lap again. Still, some couldn't manage to resist not taking it.
Nearly one hundred blown transformers crossed the River Fixed, spit sparks, caught water, touched dead land,
found power, brought it back with life in the gun against the gondolier's threat's wishes, lazy, then locked, electric
and around their unsupported appreciation cleaved the continuous dark from humble, unspoken borders, one
guy and girl and another, each of them persons, who had no reason to follow the sun anyone, since they could
continue to see in each other's faces, talking. The Dark and the Ice welcomed the Warm and the Light. They were heaven.
Despite those rows of saplings downtown, which crinkled without gratitude's permission.
city seemed derived from remnants of what was left over from ancient Rome. Thick, full scale branches
obscured the roads. Powerlines were strewn like spaghetti. Parked foreign cars appeared at the end of walkways
crushed from the weight of their own payments. It seemed, to the honest, most storm-fearing observer,
a wreckage willed by what they were too bored to make homely.
For three twenty-four hour periods, not even the cell lines were accessible. National Guardsmen were called
in by the Governor. Every lamed intersection found its triage--lean, white men in fatigues, the seriousness
of the hour glued to their faces, inched clotted traffic toward and past them, into a general malfunction that
held more than enough sleep behind their eyelids.
A number of unnatural events had been noted. Not recorded, jotted out in the open. Where the panicked and
exhausted and disgruntled could argue and discuss just exactly the best way to illustrate them. In the span
of a half-hour, the temperature and air pressure registered epic shifts. Winds that chased them indoors
welcomed them with jacket weather. Instant Fall scents released a premature return from nostalgia. And what's
more, all manner of fowl had relapsed. A brevity in the sky gone South.
Battery and candle. Doubleteam heating ceremonies, beneath covers. While above and outside the throb
of emergency busyness, chainsaws, days linked by coffee, brought civilization out of the mouth, of nature, into
the tamed, shared lap again. Still, some couldn't manage to resist not taking it.
Nearly one hundred blown transformers crossed the River Fixed, spit sparks, caught water, touched dead land,
found power, brought it back with life in the gun against the gondolier's threat's wishes, lazy, then locked, electric
and around their unsupported appreciation cleaved the continuous dark from humble, unspoken borders, one
guy and girl and another, each of them persons, who had no reason to follow the sun anyone, since they could
continue to see in each other's faces, talking. The Dark and the Ice welcomed the Warm and the Light. They were heaven.
Despite those rows of saplings downtown, which crinkled without gratitude's permission.
Monday, September 15, 2008
Correspondence Abandon
Last Friday a headline and a black & white photograph caught my eye--something in the Times about the return of "Lennie." Without further inspection, I folded the section into my bag and carried it around all day, carried it home later that night, went to bed, and in the morning, when I had a few minutes and a steaming hot cup of coffee, I remembered with pleasure what I had waiting for me. Lennie. Lennie Bruce. An article in the times would give me just enough (but not too much) to ponder.
But the article was about Leonard Bernstein. I had it all wrong, the wrong Lennie. There must be a word for this condition--when all your Lennies are wrong, when all your Thursdays are Tuesdays.
Since then, things have seemed mostly out of whack. Playing football with H., I feigned a tackle and he flipped the ball right into my tooth and then dove on the ground. My jokes, too, have landed on the ground. Explaining the intention behind them leads to headlocks, toothaches, mud. It gets as ugly as four fish in an olfactory. So, too, the Jets lost . . . and Lehman Brothers.
Finally, today, a correspondence.
You use the word suicide in a poem and all morning I'm thinking about it. The word, a theory. Peculiar. Then I pick up that same Times, the one that betrayed me, and see David Foster Wallace's mug. A suicide.
And this is supposed to make me feel better?
But the article was about Leonard Bernstein. I had it all wrong, the wrong Lennie. There must be a word for this condition--when all your Lennies are wrong, when all your Thursdays are Tuesdays.
Since then, things have seemed mostly out of whack. Playing football with H., I feigned a tackle and he flipped the ball right into my tooth and then dove on the ground. My jokes, too, have landed on the ground. Explaining the intention behind them leads to headlocks, toothaches, mud. It gets as ugly as four fish in an olfactory. So, too, the Jets lost . . . and Lehman Brothers.
Finally, today, a correspondence.
You use the word suicide in a poem and all morning I'm thinking about it. The word, a theory. Peculiar. Then I pick up that same Times, the one that betrayed me, and see David Foster Wallace's mug. A suicide.
And this is supposed to make me feel better?
September Principles
It's a lame failure of language but a bitter enrichment of the self--or what priggish pundits call "the lateral
movements of the head through the world"--to accept the suicide watch without a darling.
The important refutation is that she's often there, despite your lack of attention. Stunt double to a disappearance
of understanding.
But what could it mean--to understand--if the literal mechanics of the word aren't parsed?
What's fascinating is how busy, bristling with concurrent lives, it makes believe. First I'd have you notice, have
you take responsibility for, what's not there or apparent (not quite the same thing): any presence or
concept of Beneath. (ps--an interesting commital of sense in itself, mostly out of sound, a semantic blur.
Like a light drinker three scotches into speech, "Be neat.") But nothing is. Syllogistically two-parted,
in stead of a silent third. The Under in the act of standing. Or a brave, clumsy, largely unconscious attempt
to sculpt everything unaugmented by analysis and intention to welcome the frightening, exposed life
of the erect. A frosty reversal of poles: the charmed head beneath its kingdom.
But then again, how else can a suitor manage to ignore his heart, so steadfastly the opposite of
his affections?
movements of the head through the world"--to accept the suicide watch without a darling.
The important refutation is that she's often there, despite your lack of attention. Stunt double to a disappearance
of understanding.
But what could it mean--to understand--if the literal mechanics of the word aren't parsed?
What's fascinating is how busy, bristling with concurrent lives, it makes believe. First I'd have you notice, have
you take responsibility for, what's not there or apparent (not quite the same thing): any presence or
concept of Beneath. (ps--an interesting commital of sense in itself, mostly out of sound, a semantic blur.
Like a light drinker three scotches into speech, "Be neat.") But nothing is. Syllogistically two-parted,
in stead of a silent third. The Under in the act of standing. Or a brave, clumsy, largely unconscious attempt
to sculpt everything unaugmented by analysis and intention to welcome the frightening, exposed life
of the erect. A frosty reversal of poles: the charmed head beneath its kingdom.
But then again, how else can a suitor manage to ignore his heart, so steadfastly the opposite of
his affections?
Wednesday, September 10, 2008
Not Unlike Greek Tragedy
Before he'd left her apartment, he'd made the miraculous difference. Without her in the room but in the
shower, bent, mutated the accident his elbow had created, a potted spider plant burst like a first-rate
liar on the floor.
Had she heard the ceramic scrape? The counter letting go. The faux-cedar crack of the lower cabinet
struck first?
No. She was too lost in the slick pleasure of apricot body wash. The collision of pitches the vase found
as it bumbled linoleum into explosion.
He had approximately, or maybe roughly, five minutes. The memorized Rolodex of habits went leafing. Legs,
shaved? Odd-numbered days. Today: the second. Shampoo, the hair? Once every four. Just yesterday. Towel
dry. Step on scale. But maybe avoidance. And then the baby-sluffs of bare feet intending coffee, the kitchen.
Pigeon thumps. Windowledge. Sheridan Drive elongated. North shore. From carpet without the least
twitch of comedy, in the hall, the elevator would lower ease deeper past the twelfth floor. To reach his
desk at work to end the rush, he would have to catch that. With the terms of the disaster and his future of
getting yelled at, on the floor.
As instincts received them there were two choices. Leave the scene, launch the door. Or inhabit a nearby good
boyfriend: kneel to sweep, cup, trash, apologize, kiss, promise, and displace himself that many times from
his schedule. To subject himself gladly to the rhythm of a mishap. And work overtime to erase into its
whim fully.
Two of them. And that was his error. That there was crack enough in his time to open. Where they were,
divided and explicit, decisiveness was already a fantasy. In that pose she found him. In an ugly, absurd
half-crouch; like a beast of prey caught mid-bowels, too weak to fight the privacy of standing.
shower, bent, mutated the accident his elbow had created, a potted spider plant burst like a first-rate
liar on the floor.
Had she heard the ceramic scrape? The counter letting go. The faux-cedar crack of the lower cabinet
struck first?
No. She was too lost in the slick pleasure of apricot body wash. The collision of pitches the vase found
as it bumbled linoleum into explosion.
He had approximately, or maybe roughly, five minutes. The memorized Rolodex of habits went leafing. Legs,
shaved? Odd-numbered days. Today: the second. Shampoo, the hair? Once every four. Just yesterday. Towel
dry. Step on scale. But maybe avoidance. And then the baby-sluffs of bare feet intending coffee, the kitchen.
Pigeon thumps. Windowledge. Sheridan Drive elongated. North shore. From carpet without the least
twitch of comedy, in the hall, the elevator would lower ease deeper past the twelfth floor. To reach his
desk at work to end the rush, he would have to catch that. With the terms of the disaster and his future of
getting yelled at, on the floor.
As instincts received them there were two choices. Leave the scene, launch the door. Or inhabit a nearby good
boyfriend: kneel to sweep, cup, trash, apologize, kiss, promise, and displace himself that many times from
his schedule. To subject himself gladly to the rhythm of a mishap. And work overtime to erase into its
whim fully.
Two of them. And that was his error. That there was crack enough in his time to open. Where they were,
divided and explicit, decisiveness was already a fantasy. In that pose she found him. In an ugly, absurd
half-crouch; like a beast of prey caught mid-bowels, too weak to fight the privacy of standing.
Sunday, September 7, 2008
the loss of
spontaneous
gesture
=
the loss of
one's
heart, the ability
to love
fully
prove this
in 250
words
or less
(the beauty
of this
arithmetic
is that
any answer
even a non-answer
proves
the theory
but you
knew that
already
didn't you)
while you're
at it
can you tell me
what leaf
to bet on
in the winter
gambling
I am
just now
beginning
gesture
=
the loss of
one's
heart, the ability
to love
fully
prove this
in 250
words
or less
(the beauty
of this
arithmetic
is that
any answer
even a non-answer
proves
the theory
but you
knew that
already
didn't you)
while you're
at it
can you tell me
what leaf
to bet on
in the winter
gambling
I am
just now
beginning
Monday, September 1, 2008
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