A double-masted, wooden sailboat moves at a steady knots per hour over Puget Sound.
The Center for Wooden Boats may be captaining.
A rate treat to see this in my burrough.
Wooden ship
Category: Circles & Squares
King Crimson: in/Discipline
Two songs.
The catharsis of juxtaposition produces handmade syncretism.
Pendulous and diabolical.
Indiscipline. (Old Grey Whistle Test, 1982)
discipline. (Live in Argentina, 1994).
As good as a cuppa
I had slipped into sleep and fell deeply.
Ten hours later.
I microwave a cup of coffee from an old pot.
Function over taste.
Immediacy and no waste.
I snatch the cup by its handle, immediately after the ding.
Heat radiates into the nerve endings of my fingers and palm.
Too quickly. Hot sensation becomes burning.
I hold the cup midair, as the realization is apprehended.
I will my hand to stay clasped about the handle.
I lower the mug to the counter.
No spill. Nothing dropped. No broken glass.
It takes two seconds but the difference seemed an odyssey.
Time slowed as I accomadated° a mini-crisis.
°Courted a-coma-date.
A Comma.
I pay attention to your punctuation.
TimePassed
America’s PASTTIME.
emits/smite
step-
pets
MassaM
mist
time/s
Cartesian-ism
I’ll see it when I believe it : I think therefore I am.
I’ll believe when I see it : I’m seen therefore I am.
_____________________________________________
“I’ll believe it when I see it,” say the lesser apes.
“You’ll see it when you believe it,” you said.
Cogito, ergo sum.
What René Descartes is remembered as saying.
Je pense, donc je suis.
How Descartes first wrote it.
I think therefore I am.
(tautological?)
“Whatever I have up until now accepted as most true I have acquired either from the senses or through the senses.” (7:18 Principles)
But Descartes feared a deceptive God or an evil eternal deceiver.
Could he trust the apprehensions of his physical senses?
He could not disprove that his sensations were not the result of deception; so he dove into doubt. How is sensation different from perception?
“We have a true or genuine perception of something if, when we consider it, we cannot doubt it…In the face of genuine clear and distinct perception, our affirmation of it is so firm that it cannot be shaken, even by a concerted effort to call those observed things into doubt. (7:145 Meditations)
Descartes tried to free us from “I’ll believe it when I see it.” He tried to disavow the authority and immediacy of knowing the world through sense and sensations. He did not believe that his five senses could apprehend truth in a way that overcame his doubt.
He found doubt and did not believe.
His belief was not dependent on sensual stimulation.
I’ll see it when I believe it.
I think therefore I am.
Perceptions that I cannot find a scrap of a reason to doubt, may be genuine.
So, we doubt the hell out of everything; and, if we exhaust every doubt of which we may conceive, we firm up our grasp of reality. Through dint of doubt, all doubt is removed. This is intellect.
“I think.” He couldn’t find a doubt about it, so he allowed his capacity for thought and doubt to validate his existence- that he “is.”
His sensations could be virtual reality, so he doubted what he saw.
When he had no doubt that he “thought”, he then believed he truly “was.”
—————————————————-
Empiricism resists and refuses the subjective realm, and is founded on a principle of obtaining information via senses and standardized measurements.
Science, empiricism, and Western culture say, “I’ll believe it when I see it.”
I got a (dumb) cell phone in 2002.
My family got dial up internet in our home around 1998.
Before the mid-1990’s, we could not be in two places at once (physical, say, a restaurant, and cyberspace).
The advent of Facebook, Instagram, selfies, social media and internet culture creates a condition for, “I’m seen therefore I am.” I validate myself and reality by reproducing images of myself digitally which I post to get views online. I act the role of myself in a construction that I calculate. I show what I want when I want to in the hopes others will come to know me as I have shown myself to be.
My sister’s generation operates on “I’m seen therefore I am.”
Little digitally savvy savages.
Groups eating together and everyone has a screen. Silicon is always in hand. Take it away and they sweat.
The viewpoint of this age group: I am capable of being observed by others, this validates that I “am.”
The desire to be seen, get friended, followed, liked, hits is the want of confirming and calculable feedback that digital you has been observed and accepted by others. The cyber persona may be chosen moment to moment, so to speak. Day to day personas are less so chosen.
They’ll believe it when they see it.
Yeah, we’ll cure cancer,
And pigs can fly,
God exists,
Well, that is, I’ll believe it when I see it’s already been done.
The more individuals who say likewise, then the less individuals we have working to solve these problems. Presumably, the people waiting to see it will not be trying to manifest it. Why would they?
To them it is impossible until somebody else says, “I’m going to believe it is a possibility to cure cancer, and then I will find out if I can realize that possibility, perceive it.”
There is a lovely lack of cynicism in “I’ll see when I believe it.” There is a proper dash of humility regarding our own self-awareness.
————————————————————–
“I’ll believe when I see.”
This, however, indicates an inherent incredulity and it absolves the self of accountability.
That which cannot be seen or sensed stands on unbelievable ground.
“I’m seen therefore I am.” I see myself and receive systematic, calculable feedback that others have seen me. This validates that I am. I can show it you, point at it.
Alternatively, “I think so I am” puts the onus of doubt back on any given individual. She talks of what can or cannot be seen/perceived at this time. She does not have to state a belief position. This frees the mind in the sense that here belief follows one’s own perceptions, and, perceptions may be addressed through the process of doubt. I do not choose my beliefs as much as I become aware of them. I do not choose to believe based on what I have or have not perceived.
My beliefs are revealed to me by the things I perceive and then I am unable to doubt them. What I see allows me to come to know my beliefs and tweak them. My belief in the possibility of things does not necessitate their appearance.
I’ll see less things on earth than things I will see in this lifetime. Shall I really constrain myself to such a small set of experiential data?
I’ll see it when I believe it : I think therefore I am.
I’ll believe when I see it : I’m seen therefore I am.
Monday’s Hostess
It is nearly sunny over Puget sound by eight a.m.
My feet pound pavement. Walking to work.
A simple luxury of the highest order.
A man hugs three people outside the osteria,
one at a time,
ring around the roses style.
Lighting a cigar, he and his bulldog walk away and across the street to
my side of the road.
They precede me by about six feet as we walk.
I inhale deeply the spirals of smoke that follow him.
I feel less sheepish about the plumes of vapor I emit.
He stops to let me pass.
“Don’t want you breathing my fumes.”
“I was enjoying it.”
I was enjoying it, too.
“Showbiz Kids” comes through my cans.
Steely Dan’s Countdown to Ecstasy.
Five minutes later, I arrive at the cozy, little bistro located on Main Street. Two blocks from the water. I see the beach town’s Monday morning is already in full swing. Live and bumping with mostly silverhairs, at this hour.
The exception being a thirty-something couple that I wager is still out from last night.
They drink a lot of water.
(No one likes ice in their water here.)
I hum my hellos to the front of house crew.
I get mumbles back. It is early.
I announce my hellos to the back of house who are singing a song in Spanish that I have never heard. They wave enthusiastically. They have been here three hours longer than front of house.
Their coffee already kicked in.
⊙
11:05 a.m.
and, the sun finally asserts itself, breaking free from behind clouds.
This thrills and disappoints.
I am already sweating. The A/C unit has not worked since I started.
I am used to the heat from my former life.
I hear garbled voices rise:
“[Something, something, something] Moroccan immigrants!”
Followed by:
“[Something, something, something] So what?! People look at you funny? Big deal.”
I doubt he knows what that feels like, but
what do I know?
As he leaves, I smile and offer the obligatory: “Thanks for coming in. Have a good day.”
He halts.
“No!” he says, then approaches me.
Stepping in close.
“I had a friend and when people told him to have a good day, he’d say, “Don’t you ever tell me what to do.” “
I laugh and I mean it.
“Well, in that case, I sure hope you have an awful day,” I say with nonchalance.
He looks confused then smiles.
“This one, huh?” he says to no-one, indicating me with a finger.
“Didn’t you learn pointing at people is impolite?”
A Bath for archimedes
Ardor is ard(ours).
Come, I shall draw a bath for you.
Two glasses of Malbec.
Close your eyes and speak the words you hear.
I wish to take diction.
Victorian modernity mentality bound, hound.
Smile creeping in small doses.
Your eyes become 30 years younger.
You speak words softly.
Steadily.
Slowly
But, only at first.
My pen’s scratch against the paper changes. Surface tension of woven papyrus shifting with
Variations in the
coarseness of the grain.
The way my scrawls sound is how you felt when you wore your wool sweater against your bare skin.
White sox lay discarded in the corner.
Shea and lavender scents.
My body quickens at the gravity you begin using, speaking ecstatic poetry.
Body rush. Pert and tightening
to hear you speak in wild abandon, surrendering.
Clutter
She was clumsy.
She forgot other people could not
tell right away.
And, so, she had raced in and embarrassed herself with a bit too much gusto.
Or, so she assumed.
She wanted him to take her dancing where real players made analogue music in a room where people were still allowed to smoke. It would be loud. It would be crowded. And, their lungs would hurt the next day.
⊙
“Sing into my mouth.”
That’s what she didn’t say. But, she thought it.
“Did you really just ask that of me?” asks the voice of consternation. Her version of Jimney Crickett.
⊙
“How would you know ferocious?”
“Perhaps you have not prompted the ferocity in my nature.”
“Hum. It is there. Abiding patiently with a kind smile. To imagine requires a capacity for imagination.”
“Provocateur.”
“Hago lo que puedo.”
“You can’t always say what you mean!”
⊙
Matter is the matières of the matieres.
The contents of the materials.
Catchling calling.
You enter, please. Come to me catchling.
I hear you in the forest, leaves skulking.
I smell you just as before.
A little sleep following a long night jolts my mind into these new, waking dimension/s.
I turn
to look at you.
And, I know that I want.
I want with wanton desires.
This kindled flame did fell me before the universe in prostration to the sensation stirring in me.
I shall know you when I see you again. I see you everywhere.
My surrender to pursue the mastery of your pleasure and discomfort.
Your stoic stillness and
those heavy shoulders.
My reserved disposition conceals me
as I see past veils, into swirling thoughts of desires to devour.
Delectable with shameful kindness.
To tell you:
I want to.
I want, too.
I too want to.
Desire wanting after waiting
demands:
be wrapped in gossamer as I
shake you loose from yourself so you can breathe deeply
before me.
I am a trenchant blade.
The kunst of a trenchant blade.
Unity does not provide
immunity, imp.
Impunity.
I am held fast, tonight, by unseen forces.
Letting letters flash before my eyes. Solitary reverie.
A silent moment un-obfuscated by the conversations of idle chatter.
I got nothing to talk to anybody about
on this Night Ride Home.
[]
An attempted review of causal factors.
A language within a language.
An odd mood becomes me these past couple of nights.
An internal bio-rhythm harkening me. But what does it signal? To what effect?
Am I being daft?
I know that which I miss, but what am I missing?
What did I miss?
Miss his hiss.
Misses Hiss.
[]
The corona is the crown of a head. Not a crown worn on a head.
Korone, garland wreath,
bursting from your skull as effulgent plumes, loops,
Plasma was found to be the fourth type of matter in the 1920’s.
Plasma derived from the ancient Greek word meaning
moldable substance.
Lightning and neon light produces plasma.
Corona is an aura of plasma
that surrounds the Sun and other stars.
[]
I am unrelenting not ceaseless. I am the yield of not yielding in strength, severity, or determination.
However, constant and unending?
Like a northern star?
Where’s that at? If you want me I’ll be in the bar.
[]
Wandering star, Venus.
The Greeks came to accept
what the Babylonians had already known.
The Status Quo and Muddy Waters.
They dedicated
To Aphrodite.
–
Vespers:
Supper
Prayers to the
Evening Star in the
West.
Roman Hesperus and Phosphorous.
.Hesperus is to Venus. :: .Phosphorus is to Eosphorus.
《》
INTERPRETATO GRÆCA :: INTERPRETATO ROMANA
“Greek/Roman translations.” Interpretations by means of Greek/Roman models.
A discourse that is a comparative methodology used to look for
equivalence/s
correspondence/s
resemblance/s
《Pliny the Elder》
NOMINA ALIA ALIIS GENTIBUS
The translatability of deities as different names to different people.
The syncretism of the Hellenistic.
《》
Die Krisis der europäischen Wissenchaften und die transzendentale Phänomenologie.
Telos: an ultimate object or aim
Entelech: realization of potential ; the supposed vital principle that guides the development and functioning of an organism or system
The sēmeion as the signal evidencing the daimonion.
A Phædo.
To Nick a Horse’s Tail? Parçigal writes
I it is,
writing to you as A’ licentious Alice, a chalice, from AL by way of LA origin-ally, with houndstooth donned:
It is the sense of loving the moment. It is remembering the sensation of meta/physical love and then remembering the sensation of how it feels to lose it. That ache. That sense of how many times will they wreck me?. How many times will I play the Fool?
Again and again.
Why lose the Fool of yourself? If I killed the Fool inside to be hip, where did the real me go? With whom do you share your inner fool? Can guarding it be anything authentic?
In this mp3 and streaming world, a mix CD burned,
a cassette tape made,
breaks my heart right open. Is that why we have one?
This is not sadness; it is a necessary devouring of self.
My existential orientation continuously regenerates as at the point of origin, and I can be painfully patient; but,
does your silence actually speak: you are only useful until used?
Bemused at the thought. At you. By you.
And, a comma can change the entire meaning of a sentence: I say.
I know your way.
I knew before you showed me.
You play semantics and fancy it is a game?
<>
Splayed pieces parsed in preparation of a preheating oven.
The intimacy of this is but the sense of mind behind it.
I understood that years ago. I learnt it in a dream.
Tonight, I feel my patience hotly boil, as though I must make it into impatience simply to show you my elasticity.
You say: I’ve been here before.
So? I’ve been here forever: I reply,
Curtly but with a curtsey.
Here, where the desire to conduct currents raises meta/physical energy in the nerve endings concealed under my skin.
What a waste to not make use of it.
I would waste that energy on you alone.
Waste it in the face of
your silence.
I will howl until you howl back, to punish you.
Does that spook you,
you ghost of the man of May?
Giggle-snarl.
I espied your inconsistency immediately since taking my flight of departure.
Curious.
It was my mistake. I should not have allowed you to let me leave. I thought I was being kind, but I was only being polite. Stay. That’s what I really meant to say or do this time.
I abide still. I stoke fires. I test the limit.
I care for you. That is all. I can unconditionally hold you(,) dear.
My love is not tethered to needing love.
My devotion is my loyalty to my beloved. You endeared yourself to me.
I desire you. Now you must suffer the cost of your own, odd charms.
It is no matter of ‘should’ you, but rather, ‘could’ you
tell me true?
If you could, I hold you(,) dear.
If you could not, I hold you(,) dear.
<>
There is heavy magic in your air and I am magnetized.
Some integral things reduce to simple vibrations, to sounds, to sounds like bays, being transmitted through our air.
I wrote all these words first
in longhand to show you how inane I can be.
How frighteningly unafraid
you could be,
should you so choose, ewe.
Or, perhaps, your hands are tied.
Perhaps you have no choice but to be so.
I learn the record of your timeframes
still.
Deliciously diabolical it seems: both your pleasure and your desperation.
Does it make you forget which side of the road on which you ought to be driving?
Were you just checking out your mojo?
Taking me for a ride in your fast car?
There. Am I impressed?
Hum.
Good question.
Can you answer this: if I told you that your heart belongs to me now, would you hold your head up high in the air?
Could you even if you wanted?
Could you even say if you didn’t?
The difference between ‘can’ and ‘may.’
Simon says he went birdwatching but only saw his own feet.
Not many birds to be seen in that scene?
Just grounded, flightless birds, you adorable dodo.
<>
I saw a porcupine ripping out its own quills,
one by one by one,
by one at a time.
Onlookers horrified at the sight of so much blood.
The porcupine stabs them while they are stunned into stillness by the reverie-stupor of their surprise.
Slaying ampersand slain.
I see your look of discomfort at this friction.
<>
There was a slight drizzle of rain
as I laid myself
down to sleep early this morning.
I imagined how lovely it would be to
put my hand about your pelvic flair.
The jut of your hipbone.
Cup it like an anchor to
hold me fast
[☆]
The night sky was so poorly lit, that I could see
Fleeing the lack of light is not the same as seeking a light.
I raise my lantern for you tonight.
If it is lit
it is done so through and not by me.
But, for you is for whom I raise it.
A beckoning through a beacon.
Here is your
sea shore.
Fall, like a wave, upon me.
Surrender your summer-self and embrace the autumnal ewe, you.
Water, no ice.
I seat you.
I put down
Menu/s.
Menues.
…
minutes of
minute
minuettes
A fun dance, perhaps,
Menuet?
<>
Your food arrives.
You chew and
Swallow it into your
hollow.
Hallow and also
a shallow wallow.
Low halls, and(,) walls.
<>
Allow
how many commas in the Oxford Comma?
Coma correction.
<>
Your indignity makes me indignant.
Indigestion is caused by digestion but not
by the undigestable.
Top Quotes from Foucault’s Pendulum by Umberto Eco
Umberto Eco became like a new Hermann Hesse to me, over the last two years.
I have only read Foucault’s Pendulum and On Literature, but these were undertakings filled with amazing rabbit holes.
I recently reread the pages of notes I took from Foucault’s Pendulum. A very hermetic-y work, at least to my unaffiliated eyes.
Here are my favorites.
Believe there is a secret and you will feel like an initiate. It costs nothing…to live as if there were a Plan.
To dismantle the world into two saraband of anagrams.
Le monde est fait pour aboutir a un livre (faux).
Tout se tient.
Books of diabolicals must not innovate.
Yearning for mystery. Initiation is learning never to stop.
The most powerful secret is a secret without content.
Foucault’s Pendulum
Belligerent B’s
break
bread.
[tread the thread]
breadth read, dear.
red
breath. rath. dare tar he/r.
breathe bare, bear.
here
hear
her beat- tab.
hearth- the heart,
ear at the earth.
<⊙>
heat herb tea. bard art. he
bathed at
Bath.
bather: hare; bat; rat.
rate brat hate
[TARE]
Parçigal Passionately Possessed
My deer, stag,
I it is.
It is I binding you in this ecstatic existence, suspended between
the Star and the Satellite.
The sun and the moon; yet, it is you they call Janus.
I am the feminine, arched gate-way granting the descent of your
spirit into matter anew.
I do not redeem, I conduct currents.
The sea of PARChVAL is the conjunction of /K/ and /C/.
I am the sea, KC, the reason
a /z/ becomes /c/
Parzival becomes Parçigal.
Congruence creates /Ch/
Why do you think I remember my name is also /Alice/, at least sometimes?
KC becomes Ch(eth) and conjuncts to /Alice/ through a confluence of circumstances causing me to recollect that I am
A ChAlice of Ecstasy. A grail.
GRAL, deer Parzival.
moon and sun
known to gods and, simultaneously, known to k/NO/w-One.
Socratic circles unaware of one another.
Let us ignore the voyeurs gawking at love’s blazon painted on our lips
We exhibit authenticity in current, capacity, and conduction without being simple exhibitionists.
They tricked you into believing you are the monster and me a prize if pure.
Howl silly they were.
I want your masculine beauty, that prettiness you cannot see,
to come
to love
the feral beast I conceal in my hotly, howling heart.
I show her to few outside the eyes of ewe.
Come
sit beside me and show me ewers.
Let me call you a pretty thing, fellow.
This gal knows objectification as well as the absence of it. All gals do.
It becomes a bore, sweet sorrel.
They taught you the trick of objectifying
Let us trade places, like swapping clothes.
You may become the direct object of the verb I enact.
I will do the work because I want to see if it makes you squirm.
To see if it makes me squirm to do.
The embarrassment of being kindly admired.
The sensation of feeling yourself being eaten by the eyes of another.
Empty yourself so that I can see you better.
So, I can better show you yourself as my eyes see you.
My mirror may reflect the unexpected.
Do not spook, unless you must,
when you discover you are the Dove and I am the female goat.
Secret she-satyr.
Why do I think we should go on?
Because what else is there to do?
As far as I can tell, ain’t nothing else happening at all.
Shall we find something which makes us belly-laugh?
Care to cackle along with me?
Cast upon me your strange glances, my deer-man.
My irises drink them like wine intoxicating my soul.
Straddle two shores of consciousness:
with one foot in every-day
and one in ecstasy.
In a balanced imbalance.
Our wabisabi is our Tao.
Tell them that they may call us by the handles
Priapus & Pearl.
Those dummies don’t know that my mantle is reversible.
They only see the dark side, the light side; and they leap to the conclusion
it must be so below, on the underside that is hidden from view,
as it is above.
It is red where the two sides meet.
The red turns green when I see you;
although you cannot see it,
you can feel it as a sudden drop in ambient temperature.
Being bespoke, not beholden.
Not needing, choosing.
Bound in the unbinding of wearing each other’s invisible maverick’s branding.
They will know us by
howl freely
we move as ourselves.
Our brand is authenticity having no mark burned into the skin.
A silence screaming: simply see and know.
Be still for me and feel the essence of softness?
Make your hardness melt into delicious vulnerability?
I will call you /Sweet Thing/ in such moments, derelict deer.
And, I will wonder at those instants when your eyes cannot meet mine.
I will call them up to me without words.
Your eyes will go wide, then soften to
see me look upon you with such hard eyes.
This is how
my femininity penetrates you.
All this I can do while
taking care
to not stomp the little flowers growing underfoot.
These are the open secrets of our Tao.
Inner sanctum unseen by the sleepwalkers.
Methodology provoking zealous jealousy in awoken ones.
They see us and cannot remember
if love differs from devotion.
I can show you how to move mountains.
It is as simple as letting yourself hold my hand.
I hold the world for ransom when I take your face between my palms.
Unspoken psalms.
What comes next
be-comes
unspeakable.
Just like Tao cannot be apprehended through words
(only hinted at)
It can only be obtained
through direct experience.
Tangential Orienteering
I walk to the new gig. First-day-of-school-style outfit donned. Old, fuzzy threads, nonetheless.
I espy a blanch in a branch of the shrub, with wooden threads of splintered
timber;
And, my mind initiates the below (tangent umpteenth).
That timbre of timidity from the ghost mice scurrying under my feet,
running like a wide river at a moderate water pressure.
They can give your toes an itch or a twitch.
Quick as you please, I leap to the limb.
Back to the blanched branch which is
splaying, shredding, snapping,
no longer bending.
Critical load bearing exceeded.
The shrub shrugs
it off like a crab with a too-tight shell.
I was warned it was awful hot
to walk to that new spot.
Do I want a ride there in your car? Thank you, kindly,
but, nah.
I forget how to breathe in those things.
I cannot forget how to breathe when walking
in the heat.
I arrive to do the job and their A/C is on the fritz.
The windows bring the sun in full frontal until night falls.
Hotter than the hot outside,
front and back of house have been sweating it out longer than me.
Spots of,
the sheen of,
sweat in my hairline,
on my neck’s nape,
curling strands; and signaling:
simpatico.
sections within floor charts ; table numbers ; two and four tops ; spare chairs ; polished silver.
A dining room
laid out.
Down.
She told me: I make circles and keep up everything with my eyes. You can circle the floor without hitting a wall and having to turn around abruptly.
No dead ends, eh?
I remember walking these circles with open eyes: I think.
I smile.
Prosing
I see enough motion to let it hold me
still.
I hear enough sound to let it shut my mouth.
Choices made
Timely dummy.
A day spent in an automobile.
The free riff of the exhaust pipe of a car in front of you in
Traffic just makes want a smoke today.
I opt not.
Vaporization. No combustion like an engine.
Nicotine: grease stopping the grinding of gears.
Politics prattle, pressing patience, like so much blood into wine,
Sounds of it waft, as aromas, into my ears for sniff n’ smell.
Emerge from a news blackout to find your-self
A Stranger in a Strange Land;
yet, still, I feel like every-thing
I missed, while sleeping, slept, also.
So, Who is on first, yeah?
But, who is lucid?
Unposted Letters Containing Letters.
I found an old letter
I had
written you.
Unposted despite having postage.
I let it age for you, ewe.
I could no longer read my own hand.
In my cans, no-one speaks, as I scribble this idyll for the popular, un-idle, idol.
Casting pods like fishing nets
sewn by hand.
Longhand and cool-handed.
Nothing in my hands.
A
Little something kept on-hand.
The noon approaches and I remember the rattlers.
Snakes giving fair warning: kindly, don’t tread on me.
Whispers of wisteria wander.
Shouting sprouts ready to be snapped then snatched from stems.
Quiet quilts covering made-up beds.
Panting pansies parched for water to partake.
What’s the plan?: he asks.
Wait and see?: I sheepishly speculate.
Why do you do what you do?: he asks.
Because, I can. The difference between ‘could’ & ‘should’ still alludes, though.: I say.
I walk the aisles of miles between your vines. I share the plants’ oxygen and they rebirth my breath.
Gaseous exchanges of my alveoli.
Nitrogen; Oxygen; Carbon Dioxide.
Periodic tabling with held breath.
Breathe, you; I hold my breath, not for you, dear sorrel,
I hold my breath for naught
other than myself,
for my next step.
I take the rite of alternating left foot/right foot,
Of being pedestrian.
I told him: I’m better on my feet.
The voice came through my cans
and said: I function better with the sun in my eyes.
I misheard it as something filthy and smile in realization of my mistake.
My eyes are moons whence comes all of tomorrow’s noons.
Day-suns.
Ræ-moons
floating in bluə-day skies,
stormy and grəy, like your
Sky-eyəs over a
choppy, white-capped səa.
Talking in my Sleep
I fell
asleep too early only to awaken at three a.m., then, five thirty a.m.
Dreaming in lines of prose
For the first time in a while.
/a kitchen hood fan/
I shoot awake and word-play potentialities for the phrase.
Three contexts I conjure before kicking the endeavor to
Fall
asleep again.
N plays ball with the deceased Jessie-pup.
A Border Collie with no one to herd but a slobber-covered tennis ball.
“She doesn’t know when to quit. She gives herself heat stroke. Don’t let her eyes get too red. She needs a summer shave. I did not know that she was still running.”
A nod acknowledges.
Then I remember, the gal knows how to throw the ball with her own mouth.
Huh.
A sharp knocking kicks me conscious.
Hello?
Just hammers from next door’s reconstruction.
Good morning.
Coffee. Chug.
Walk the block.
My body awoke, but the coffee still ain’t caught what passes for my mind up.
I sleepwalk.
Hardware Store
I stopped by.
The lady at the register compliments my manners.
“I am from the South,” I say.
“I know that,” she says.
[Shrug]
She says: I don’t believe in tearing down statues.
I intuit that she is okay with the tearing down of statutes.
No one thinks they are the baddies: I proffer.
WrittenCasey 