from In Pieces

NATURAL 	

Though not real like thought or possibility. The pattern of my reading, beginning with there was, moves into the present. Like lifting a hand unsure whether to imitate duration or mimic passage. As long as form is never less than activity it’s not how the cookie crumbles, but simply that it falls apart. Happenstance. A hat. A window. Whirling leaves. Why not trust the rest will follow? In the dream I could not see you because you thought you were hanging from a trapeze.




TONE DEEP 	

No sound is less than a sound or more. But music keeps us from hearing each one by itself. Says John Cage. It is a pity. No mother tongue unless a mother. Or many books demanding we enter their superb monotony. What tongue would not allow us to say you in the deep sense, intimate? Years of melancholy, errors in pronounciation. Something in the middle slows down. So many times a day I do not speak any language. 




ANY SINGLE THING	

Is so complicated we can only give it a little shove with the knee. The cry of the gulls. The line between water and grammar. Horizon and interpretation. Between two blues. Field of error. My gestures not my own. Desire not a color. And the sound of the sea. Listen.




PRECONCEPTIONS WITHOUT DELAY	

Because light finds a place to fall. If intermittent. I can live in a small word and lose my head for another. Despite the slowness of my work. I’ve not explained, at best described in more elaborate terms. Opaque. Opaque, the space of hesitation, ricochet of recto verso. But the kiss. Is admirable, simple syntax, easy tale. Mouth undone at the lips.




THE PROBLEM WITH PRONOUNS	

All the bodies, one by one, the measure. Says Robert Creeley. Composite, containing simples, as surely as words are pleasure. The door, the white door, all the doors. To the small range of wavelengths called the visible world. We’ve attached names. So I could speak to you. Now something in the middle has come apart. The word “I” sits on my shoulders. Ready for carnage.