Thoughts Through a Blue Crystal

In days, omens and signs were sought – moments in the brain swelled with meaning –
– the shape of the clouds dreamed by chance at night could have seemed like a perusal at noon

and in the evening when the rain murmured on the rooftop –
– already the surprise could be felt somewhere –
(sleep could come along with its childish prayer found disarrayed in the morning)
– or used to head after two strangers
to listen to familiar – (remember?) – conversations –
(in the rain, in the grey weather and wintry evening flowers bloomed lilac with memory)
– in the bends of little streets with no names, would diminish – out of a vague feeling – breath.
– or there used to stand then on the road: –
someone who had a mouth with your smile! – –
- - - - - - - - - - -
They used to take hold of thoughts with their hands,
revitalize eyes with the chill of windowpanes
and convince the self – coldly, that you could be surrounded by walls
it has been forgotten: thoughts, like children, are too, too drunk
– and that they tread mute, circling the wall
– and that they look at you through the wall – –
- - - - - - - - - - -
Until they fell asleep because November came,
because the wind was staggering by the streetlamp: –
days changed on the roads like signs, made it tiresome to wander senselessly
– and peace will already be believed (sun overwhelmed with grey)
– so it was believed: there will already be peace –
– so it was believed: it will exist for a long time – –
- - - - - - - - - - -
When you swear truthfully, as if cutting the lie in half, like a knot, an entanglement,
you can learn from an undivinating conversation:
– on the day that passed without signs you came back!
(someone overturned on the desk by accident
the steel ink in a round blot: –
I will carve from two railroad tracks a serpentine ornament again in the distance.)
- - - - - - - - - - -
Tomorrow will have faded, like yesterday – the clouds pallid, like a canvas.
I will take a blue and shallow crystal in hand so that all’s less gray, sad –
I’ll peer at clouds through the window azure where gilded sculptures glitter;
the clouds do become a blue sky
in which the stars gild vastly.
– – as do Your eyes – –
(Probably You don’t know about it at all, have you even thought of it in a blink?
that you have eyes blue each day is grand to me, a miraculous event –)

6 November 1932

                          Translated from the Polish by Alex Braslavsky

The Elegy Machine

thoughts on vibration because why not

ask for taint close-up

ask Isabelle Huppert if she wants to converse with me

at a Viennese restaurant

we sat on the porch

under her supervision or with her knowledge

or was my family suddenly polite

the color loosens when water is applied

when she proposed “stir-crazy” as a new concept

near the birding retreat in emulation

a poetry magazine by the toilet for newcomers

habitués of the garlic festival

climbing the rock hill with presidential delusions

pretending I’m crawling under his desk

looking upward at the clock rather than at my crotch

pick-up-sticks on the fireplace bricks and hot egg nog

a tour of ABBA’s dressingroom

and I keep bringing up starlings

or the eel breakfast with beans

why sex seems like a shortcut to the symphony

typing a play about the angel in the backyard

he said aural massage

he is the plateau and I am the magazine

shower and peer through the hole

the bus trip could be a liberation-fest

like El Capitan in Yosemite but Lust Capitan

hoodwinked by natural sublimity on 8mm reel

Venice too with its cupcake holes

sedentary angel with collapsed ribs

grabbing my arm in the taxi to scold me for not being aesthetically radical

I was somewhat radical but I chickened out

and then he died but not as a result of my cowardice

town of the cats where masturbation on a bumpy floor

dropped licorice-like into the past’s mouth

shoplifted a radical book

expecting mystical hints

but what are sour balls

can you seize the homoerotic cavern

climbing over the sprocket holes

can you be cavalier about the arrival of the sleeping masses

nickel-and-diming the hot-tub salesman

I’m a fashion publicist

I teach drama to kindergartners

basic theater exercises

did your girlfriend ask you to shave your dick or was it your idea

did I offend you by including your name

or omitting it

and then more sex he said after undetectable

hang around the cavern until it starts popping out tidbits

like a gumball machine with big suckers

he also has a penchant for asymptotes

dipping his overalls in the toilet by accident

toss everything into the elegy machine and tumble dry

_from_ From a Winter Notebook

With winter settling on the place, the sedge
is dry, the woods stand bare. No enemy
to you, I watch the shadow of one hill
rise on the opposite, the valley sheds
its golden skin, grows dull before it drops
in darkness. Sounds sharpen—shards of dry leaves,
wings’ flap, the shake of an abandoned branch.
Outcroppings lose their yellow to the gray,
the swallows drilling holes in the blue air.
More smaller life beats in each metric cube
than in all of my body there is life.
The wind is noise, the wind is movement. Live
branches mingle with the dead. I’m barely
bigger than the ants, slower than spiders.
I don’t move the way these insects scurry.
The beetle has no map of the terrain.
They can’t see all of me at once. Each knows
nothing of what the other thinks. Maybe
they know what water cut these rocks to shape
of heavy brow above blind eyes. I’m not
a stone, nor a bug—that knowledge only
separates me from cicadas sleeping
under my feet. Flies will far outlive me.
The laundry stiffens. Stars, like sheets of white,
sing fearlessly of their own howling.
This perverse season has no fantasy.
Your absence deeper than the gorge, empty
geological truths that come between things.

Winter Room

An apple on a paper towel
on a dispenser of disinfecting wipes
on the carpet before us is just so
our eyes merge on one pastoral line

Z looked seriously and Z
looked at her serious looking
just so the leyline stretched
a scrim

A cold cone of mites
swirls before a shadow play
of night walks
across unruined city blocks
with people we miss

Folds of scratchy bed covers
shelter villages carved into hillside

I pack in my bag for tomorrow
a trinket box inlaid
with pearl flake

A dull husk emptied
of mung beans
once arranged
into a little henge
in the shag under
grandmother’s bed

Ancient homely stone
gathered into a box
stolen bead by bead
by mice or a ghost hand

R came in late
the morning I dreamt
of a twilit house
where I stood
knee deep in runoff

A radioactive stream
others just left there
vibing and ultrapink

Why Are Parsnips Confusing

the house has an itch

she told me about the disgusting ichor

Cioran or Coriolanus or Janus or tidal wave

is it rude to ask him if he's ever had a homosexual experience

nothing wrong with homosexual experiences

so why would it be rude to ask

it's like asking if he believes in God

why are parsnips confusing

stung by the end table’s nearness

the homosexual end table

like a highway with new tar

making the language fancy

when he grabbed me on the escalator

one of the longest careers in the history of cinema

Heavenly Hibiscus [01:04:00]

Man passes across a cloudy sky back in Malunguey, an open field, drone with a creaking undertone, /seeYAK/, /isang/ /kaunan/ /nyang/ /anghel/ in the eye of the sun, man in a hoodie with an earring, a woman in white profiled against the clouds. mutters soundlessly, a man’s voice, /i/ /Gumamela/ /Celis/, transcribed in the subtitles as Flower of Heaven, /Gumamela/ translated by Google as hibiscus or mallow, so /Gumamela/ /Celis/ is Heavenly Hibiscus, or Blessed Mallow, /Gumamela/ from my grandmother’s lips is red, floppy, showy, ruffly, a revolt in heaven, slow walk across a field shot as a tropical Corot

“A woman I love”

A woman I love
somewhere is dying
I sat in a park
My grandmother
came to mind
I was not taking the medicine
I was supposed to
I      shivered
My own words
             shaking me
The thoughts that drove them
How real     they may
       or not
       have been
Flowers everywhere

Fire [00:56:42]

Iron hammering a muted undercurrent faster than any action and on loop, lit by fire; a woman’s voice, /dyuus/, /lato/; both a steam engine far away and a stiff brushing against metal nearby against the usual long-held chord

Came Then

(Today childhood came to me unraveling)
There used to be drawers full of grandma’s keys –
rusty and shiny –
thick, thin –
you could whistle all kinds of songs on them.
Some had the din of heavy bumblebees
some the rumble of a mermaid’s throat,
but most were ones that whissstled high
finnnely – slighttttly
in sillllence,
like mice.
Quick, steely, sonorous, they beat against one another,
the keys to nonexistent, lost, non-doors;
sometimes red from rust,
sometimes mildew green.
(Today childhood came to me in the impossibility of dreaming in sleep)

And then I found the door for the lost key,
because every hour of life had a heavy latch,
and every day had its unlocked intricacy –
lost somewhere a bunch
of mystical keys
upon which I whistled naive ditties –
tiny, maudlin songs – –

(Today childhood came to me unraveling,
(Today childhood came to me in the impossibility of dreaming in sleep)

2 March 1933

                          Translated from the Polish by Alex Braslavsky

Dimpled Dialectic

yearning to film a dandelion

the psychiatrist invited me to an orgy in his new sober house

long kiss in front of the disapproving wounded subject

fear he will compile an obscene book from our chats

and then she died

eleven years ago when she still had a reputation

watercoloring the piazza

after your ballet fiasco

nylon stockings de trop on tanned legs

urinating on your laziness as if to neutralize a jellyfish bite

hosanna to the undertaker

the remembered aperture

pocking my consciousness

dimpled like an envelope vase or a pinch pot

promise me you won’t stay in the smelly hotel

what kind of incest pudding do I expect in my bowl

the wanderer has sun on his hind legs it says in the daybook

_from_ From a Winter Notebook

Dark on snow—hawks plate the wind
over a field in winter, empty now that
it’s written, a rhythm has begun in writing.
Sky troubling the toes, singing its songs,
to work with language and not mean. Elegy
are you a monologue, leggy, or conversant
in shadows? Suspect the word enough is not
enough. Come back to me, first encounter.
The curls are slacker or the time runs faster,
flashing coming away from the shingled
roof. There’s the tree, a woody quality
to forest words. The trace of a bird’s beak
on snow, embarrassing the bark. I’m stuck
on a dime, a moment in the stocking on
your leg, snaggled trellis, of peripheral glance.
I look around. I look around and around.
The mouse mounts a retreat. The ashtray
begs to differ from every other. I drop a little
mess of distracted matter. A comma forming
on the cat’s forehead; a comma hangs over us.
We are dying to know ourselves. When’ll the fake
fox enter the real life of underwater foxes.
A sock on the wrong foot. Tomorrow I
can pick up a piece of the pieces, the policeman
on the corner of my cloak of indivisibility.
The fly-shit on the windowpane might gleam
in the rays of divine winter hydrogen.
Communicating tragedy in parking tickets,
the policeman looks around—everything’s winter.

Endangered [00:12:50]

Full moon sky, softly /papateyyewh/ /ng/ /bilay/, part of your tongue slowly pulled out, /kalkalnaraan/ /inoyus/, from your mind, /su/ /kakabatan/ /tan/ /kawawayan/, /natan/ /angukabat/ /su/ /diling/ /pag/ /mu/ /maibalikas/ /su/ /anlong/,   woman silently chants over a bowl of water, /no/ /may/ /cancyon/, within your inmost self, /unsulieen/ /ulalalm/ /tan/ /lignaan/, /onoo/ /angmulabat/ /nang/ /talusan/ /ta/ /sika/ /sunandiyiay/ /ng/ /boses/, /ta/ /sika/ /tisulakay/ /pangilet/ /ed/ /pangitinglangmet/ /su/ /salita/

“Time goes”

Time goes
The story

stays
A city

A landscape
A place to be

This one
true life

Asleep
I shake my head

A seagull
with a fish in its beak

flies over
the highway

Lands
Eats

A manufactured
scenario of safety

The idea
of a country

Lives of the dead
we’ll never know

Mystery
complete

Our Cities of Birth

Outside the city of X
a child hid in the fields. He hid
in the fields of wheat, the wheat

grown for the mill that sat at the edge
of the fields where he hid. What languages
did he not speak? The languages he spoke hide

in the fields of language. Here is the mill,
my anti-inheritance.
I’m powering it up for what?

Old, he talked to me about the mystic
economy. He wanted to fill the mill
of his mind with bucks, fund his languages

with bucks as their absence brought him
to sell his printing press, buy thin dresses
to sell at markets in the fields of English.

I can’t money the mill of his mind now, trace it
from wheat to what to ideas we can move into
instead of a homeland. I power

the mill down, am powering it down.
I’m revving the ferry, shooting
an arrow into a past I can explain.

The dead economy of home funds me.

Divorce Poplar

The house was empty by then.

Realtors flicked cards across the table.

Little marketing faces.

I am interested in this house;

I am no longer interested.

The living roof took rain.

She pulled seedlings out of the moss

tossing them on the slab below.

She framed images.

She arranged images:

they protected each other

when he went below.

On return, he let her know

he had forgiven himself.

He followed her upstairs.

I can’t show you upstairs.

Boasting emptiness and light.

Mountain views. Remembering

is private; by “private” I mean

the poplar blows open every May.

Catfished

The stream is someone’s childhood. Or someone’s only child. Next to each other the two seem to mean the exact same thing. The exact same thing has happened to me more times than I can count. But not this. Not this thing. I will speak like Lee McQueen about waistlines and wankers. I will watch his documentary when suddenly alone. “Suddenly alone” is a contradiction when you stop to think about it. How innocent you are. How lucky, my swimmer. Someone’s verse, someone kind and tough, with glitter lips and springy hair. Someone gone, someone again, a sudden end, the just againing. Pay them back, world. Take me back. The hook is in my spine and I am casting anyway.

Song to the Cypress

The sky is filled with invisible things,
                                         yet I can see the wrecking ball clearly.
We used a meat thermometer
                                         when the medical one broke,
              but we didn’t know where to insert it.
Fish scales can’t measure the flop
                                         after everything falls apart.
That’s when we went viral
                                         along with a video of a dancing houseplant
              as algorithms drive the meaning,
although I’m hoping it’s only the caffeine
                                         that’s making me sit here and shake.

The feedback loop is mostly static
                                         and drives the boats from shore.
I’m still waiting for the technology that lifts us up,
                                         as the cameras see me on the inside too.
These words have got me around the neck
                                         like seeds in a sparrow’s tiny talons
              before making their way to the landfill
along with whatever couldn’t be included
                                         in the estate sale and the backlash
              known as Tony Orlando and Dawn
because I’m not interested in nostalgia
                                         when the past was designed to hurt.

We watch a Greyhound bus in the distance
                                         as the railroad crossing gate
              bounces off the car’s hood
                            on a trip to the vet and then the florist.
Anyone could come through the window,
                                         so like me that flock is getting its waddle on.
I have ever only lost what I’ve loved,
                                         but sometimes it was also my fault,
              either too close or too far away,
and that’s a bigger story about the world
                                         that I don’t know how to tell.
Some bugs just want to cling to the screen.

Self-Portrait at Forty-One

Through a blank slate of feelings,
I ran miles wondering if it rained
or if it was dew when I stepped
out to light this morning. How
to know when I’ll feel like my
old self or maybe life’s just a new
click of urge and want, the buzz
of an airplane I saw and a stalk
of bamboo split near some
graffiti unreadable. I’d like
to remember today
even though it feels pretty
ordinary. Some purple patch
of wildflowers. The mystery
of everything sudden.