70. On an exhibit at the Mudam

Great generator, loop-void growing green at the edges, cannot keep out the living. Only water, lightness, plastic and the free-moving air. Then the sprouts will flourish. Then the white-walled womb looks more fertile. Still, those high-flying tubes and convoys make a bad go at veins. The corpus spread all about the room, distended as body/moment/machine.

69. Upon Reading a Letter of Loss (2)

For Sergei

We save ourselves with the written word.
We say, it must be recorded
because the featureless waters of silence
lack holiness when death still fills them.
Because speech is the best outlet
for an unpronounceable grief,
but reminds us how impermanent
our disturbances on the world are.
Because we see no other option.
Because it absolutely happened.

It’s been raining all day.
Of course it’s been raining all day.
But when we are pulled
from the bodies we inhabit
by dumb reality we need to touch
the cold, wet outdoors.
We need to enter the world
on its own terms and temperatures,
embrace its undeniable water.
Embrace knowing that what we are made of
might also drown us.
It’s been raining all day but
in a green patch in the park
the world is still full of miracles
as well as deliberate misfortune,
and I know only that I need to write it all down.
To keep my hand holding a storied world
and commemorate the live memory of existence.

68. Upon Reading a Letter of Loss

For Sergei

We save ourselves with the written word.
We say, it must be recorded
because the featureless waters of silence
lack holiness when death still fills them.
Because speech is the best outlet
for an unpronouncable grief,
but reminds us how impermanent
our disturbances on the world are.
Because we see no other option.
Because it absolutely happened.

When I read the letter
it’s been raining all day.
Of course it’s been raining all day.
But when I finish and am pulled
from the body I inhabit by dumb reality
I need to touch the cold, wet outdoors.
I need to enter the world
on its own terms and temperatures,
embrace its undeniable water.
Embrace knowing what we are made of
might also drown us.
It’s been raining all day but
in a green patch in the park
the world is still full of miracles
as well as deliberate misfortune,
and I know only that I need to write it all down.
To keep my hand holding a storied world
and commemorate the live memory of existence.

67. Meadowbrook Park

From this spot
you can start to grasp the
scale of a summer storm.
Here where the sodden grass
yields but supports a shoe
willing to muddy itself
and the tree line doesn’t encroach
past the edge of the field a
hundred yards away;
here if you had waited
with the patience of the doe
and orchard all afternoon
you would have seen these thunderheads
gather their skirts and
glide effortlessly up from the
South, puffing out their breasts
and drawing in air currents
across the plain
ready to let out the first
few sopranic notes of rain
before crescendoing to the
real force and forte of storm.
And then its begun,
and there you are
in the midst of the music,
hardly able to see now
those trees at the field’s edge,
wondering when and if
God will turn it up to 11,
let the rain become a sea
and drop heaven’s bathtub right
here, right on top of you
in the wide, empty
fields of the living.

66. Ways of Living

Much could go wrong.
You might fail in your grandest attempts,
your turns at beneficence
might be diabolized.
You might never find the other,
the one whose understanding
you find unimpeachable.
You might live with a kind of
Victorian restraint,
not calling it modesty because
that would mar the purpose.
You might fill an entire life
with things you do not love
and watch the sun set on some
remote mountainside while vacationing
only bitterly, with none of
the abandon a warrior of joy[1]
should bring to the project of living.
But these are just the shortcomings
that ground us in the realm
of animated humanity.
For that, it might be worth it.
For that I can wait.

[1] Cf. Robert Phillips “The Changed Man”

65. Closing the Summer House (2)

The window screen are stacked
like so many black dishes on the back
patio, sunning themselves.
Soon they join other seasonal
ornaments and fascinations
in the garage (the boat, swim fins,
biycles, sail cloth).
My father pulls all of these
into a clockwork storage pile
and shuts the door.
Done–
and early enough
for one last swim,
one last accidental gulp of seawater
and the sight of the house
from 30 yards offshore.

I had a dream the tide rose
over the dunes and up to the
highest level while I waited
inside, unconcerned.
The captain goes down with
his ship, but I trust
the water. In my dream the waves
come right up against the
house but it neither moves
nor makes a sound.

64. Palacio do Freixo Hotel, Porto, Portugal

Would the young, bathing-suited gentleman
who has scaled the pool terrace’s walls
from the harbor road
kindly care to remove himself
from the premises?
In my dream the
beautiful, gilt wedding reception guests
on the hotel grounds applaud
his galantry.
But no,
only a few notice
when he crosses himself
and swandives like
a taut scissor
into the river.

63. On Salvador Dali’s “Dream Caused by the Flight of a Bee around a Pomegranate a Second Before Awakening” (2)

Every girl makes a good fisherman
when dreaming on the edge of the earth.
What have you caught
exceptionally?
Shunning the common fictitious rockfish
of contemporary waters
you net felines and looks
from sailors on passing
elephantine watercraft.
They thought you were a mermaid,
but no–
with your exposed breast and pomegranate heart
you merely affect the casual demeanor
of an aquatic native.
You make it look so easy
as to seem threatening,
so they sail on,
leaving you the contents of your illusory nightmares,
your conjuration of beasts,
ice-floes, and tusked aerials
in the light of the moon.

62. On Salvador Dali’s “Dream Caused by the Flight of a Bee around a Pomegranate a Second Before Awakening”

Every girl makes a good fisherman dreaming
even on the edge of the earth.
Shunning the common ambiguous rockfish of contemporary waters
you catch other seal-felines
with your exposed breast and pomegranate heart.
No one blames you.
No one knows
the contents of your illusory nightmares
decries your conjuration of beasts, ice-floes,
tusked aerials. No one even knows
you exist,
but the crew of the passing lucid ship,
who swear they saw a mermain in the light
of the moon.