The blue specks return at
this time of day.
Scepters of spectres.
Spectators of the Spectra.
Speculators and crusty prospectors.
Gold merchants running along-
side the train.
The Highwaymen will
see to
them soon enough.
Yelling: always pay yourself first.
The only people not fearful of
such speak
are snickering kids.
The immortal ones.
How old do you feel most
of-the-time?
The sun will set in the next
five minutes to five hours.
It gets
Tricky.
I sit at the striped, canary yellow
No Canary Row.
(I never finished that book either, to be
Candide).
Now bemused,
Now nearly bored.
Now frenetic and feral.
My long-hand is no match for my keyboarding.
In this state.
Of non-sense,
Everyone is a poet.
Everyone is an idiot.
Everyone is exactly who they are.
And perhaps we are just dummies.
Silent until we realize we are they,
and, they are
Leftover
pure fools,
Fools.
This much I believe to be true:
I make others comfortable.
Frequent descriptor from people that touch me.
It makes my eyes harden then go curious.
Comfortable.
Huh.
I do not get cold.
I suppose that is speculation.
I try to warn people.
Everyone seems to be cold or worry about it.
I wish I got cold.
Faded out of my rabbit-holes.
Fell behind by one miss-step too many.
But, I wake up sweating whether the weather is
February or july.
But, I grin, now, and giggle at the very idea.
Behind this smile
That betrays a happy tear.
That aches in my stomach.
Of course, I could get cold, right?
This is
Howl i silently howl.
Now, I see how large this place is.
The placelessness is almost too big.
Me and these ghosts make good company.
The chorizo finishes.
Eggs and a bottle of white
Microwave hood fan
Setting two.
Discounted granola.
Time to cut meat from casing.
An unused balcony.
The window with the looking-glass.
The other window that is looking-glass.
I drove the perimeter of a street festival.
Ludicrous.
People formed a line at the
Automatic Teller Machine.
I could have walked for my eggs.
But, the milk would
Have gotten spilt.
I arrive home.
My salt is gone
I saw the last five yards of your memory.
You were simply sleepwalking
Lucidity from insomnia.
Asleep and awake at the same time.
Rest here.
For a moment.
You are still
In the field.
Come here but close your eyes.
I did write something for you
before we met.
At the little theater you barely
Remember.
Painted stars on the roof
twinkled to indicate
the show was shortly
Underway.
A connoisseur versus a collector.
Coat-tailers and chasers
Partners in crime.
A trail-off of the trellis
Braided-up locks
Flow like tresses
Caught in bureaucratic
Lochs
Being and nothing
Ness
The dragon is impatient.
Selectively scorching leaves
Such as these
Fading embers still ablaze
Sparks off burned tar.
Shedding hair is ripped.
Old roots know where to look
And look gracefully.
A leaf suspended.
Not alit by wind.
Brambles
Steles revel as Black Pond evaporates.
A lean-to against a cut-down.
A greasy blender rubbed wrong.
I slept until three p.m.
Because I could-no usual m.o.
In the pac NW 7 a.m., 3 p.m., and nine p.m. all
Look the same
Waking from dreams to remember
This is the one from which you do not know how to wake.
I imagine the world can
See and know what my mind holds
In that state.
Like there is nothing to doubt
Nothing to fear.
The cat slept on my feet.
They were not cold.
The gray summer sky
Resembles the colors of your silent eyes.
I slept by scraps I scrawled for you.
I slept by a bit of wrapping paper from a gift
Half a year old.
Oh howl, you make me sentimental.
To ask for what you hope
And to wait.
As hard as crying non-sad tears must appear to observers.
The sea is soft today.
But, í can always find a reason to smile.
I.e. “cheesecloth”
Sobriquet que ridiculoso.
raze or a ruin?
Just to defuzz.
But have you ever considered
Why you get clean?
So much water to make yourself smell different.
I get clean to be defiled.
I get clean to be dry and then wet.
I get clean to show
What not-clean is.
I made fresh pasta with hand cut veg.
I ate ice cream instead
I put on the new season of stranger things.
I fell into a sugar sleep.
I dreamt I was your dream.
You reveal.
Why i call you a revelator.
The revelation, you dummy, should be your own effing libidic power.
Your blood, smell, adrenaline.
Desire, anticipation,
Your submission is not persuaded.
It is inexorable.
The day ran past without a backwards wave.
I found myself, coffee in hand, at four p.m.
Dreams of the red whale re-meander through my mind.
Recall people asking what we do?
You would say: meander, me and her.
I would smile. I would try not to, and I would fail.
I smile right, exactly, now.
The whale was larger than a breadbox
But, smaller than a tidal wave.
Blood red. No variation in shades, as though block colored by a child.
You did not even consider dinner,
the whale said.
I do not want to eat.
Why not?
I don’t know.
Just say you are not hungry.
i/i
Sweet man, they have been telling our story all along. I’ll tell it to you as I heard it so just sit down and:
“Hear the sad rhyme of how love turned to lust, and lust invigorated love, and love shone brighter for the stain it rose above.” 21
Sugrbeat, it is day one and already are you floating in your peaceful, wet c/sea with “all foolish loves of men” and suddenly you said, “Thither I Fled.”
While later you said “Come hither” to me. And, hither I came.
You later told me, “I followed like a dog…tied by some soft bond of twinning.”
I saw your eye sparkle while you spoke it. I hear you in those moments of desire unexpressed, dear. It made me think the “perfect sage could make the perfect lover.” Singular purposed in their craft as I try to be for mine.
( “Fool! Later on. Not to tell her. Triple fool to fly away.” )
We met because “she read-and saw him but a beardless boy…quite powerless to destroy her life’s long peace; the ten year-walled city,
And then I said, “I think the poem is pretty.”
Howl we endeared “under the dim glory in the shrine of Artemis.” She is ally to me as Aura was to my sister. Do you remember that night we stayed over in a b&b? I told you a filthy version just to try to get rise from your denim, button fly.
“The heart’s pulse quickning; the fear; the increasing ecstasy of this. The foolishness of love”. And, yet, we “give love one chance before its wave retire,” and “Maytime shone in us; with words of art.”
“Unless my Alice be the sea,” you kept repeating.
“As you yield you
To love that is stronger than shame, no music but kisses, that pealed you their paean, proclaim: the sound of the sea is made still
The climax shall come unupbraided, obedient alone to our will.”
” it was impossible that she should come,” you said,
“Over the summer-coloured sea, alone, with love and laughter and tears for me.”
Therefore, not fearing anything, I came; lit my love’s candle at my body’s flame and fought with the fevers now that swell.
From Alice: An Adultery
Sun-chapped, vermillion gravel lines the Arizona interstate. The smell of civil anticipation of draught conditions.
De-ride derision. Re-sent. De-ridden. Hostile.
Reproachful.
Regurgitate…come here, baby bird.
Under my wing where the sun does not scream.
Absolution awaits.
Abscond
like wild things run fast.
I run so quickly it looks as though I am lazy.
Because, I smiled all the time, my narrowed eyes confuse.
Rode hard but not to be
Put up wet.
I asked him not to say things that seem to be true.
Show.
A certain gaze becomes requisite.
A dis-focus agile like a cacti forest.
Look for the invisible shrub-brush. The one that may or may not actually be there.
When you see that you do not see it, you will know you’ve got off on
The good foot.
So scratch, scratch pen to paper. Then take tips to keyboard.
Pleas. If you cannot silence your mouth, write it instead. For yourself.
Spit yourself upon the page.
See what floats.
Mercury corresponds here, where air is the element?
Striations of stratifications.
I am not what you expect, because I am not as you’ve known me to be.
Newly transmuted. I let my stomach gnaw on it’s own emptiness.
Acclimation. Deceleration of mass.
A bob becoming weightless, still tethered to a Flagstaff.
Asphalt lanes crisscross terrain like varicose veins.
Little, red blood cell cars traverse. Scrub-brush grows on either side.
Entering Sedona. The elevation changes. Ears pop.
The energy comes on before you fully make it to the valley.
Invigoration as my heart beat hastens, my skin quickens.
I feel my circulation pulsing.
We are told to Be Prepared to Stop.
We prepare.
We are stopped.
My father acclimatizes to the energy but not the dry air.
My sister fidgets with her fingers in her mouth.
My mom crossed and uncrosses her hands. Fingers tapping on top of knuckles.
The four of us seem far too old to be in a car on a road trip. We do not mind.
Joe Cocker. Feeling Alright plays on FM.
Sharp. The energy is sharp. It will hone you.
Make you diabolical, I giggle.
I feel you giggle against my ear. Echoed back to me despite your absence.
Despite your presence on another curve on another side of the world
I magnetize you to my mind’s eye.
There is a church situated in an open expanse. Nothing surrounding on its acre.
There even an atheist might easily see some god.
The orange and red rest easy in my eyes.
Like short pants slung low on hip bones.
I found a word on a notecard.
Assoil.
Present it between gritted teeth,
heavy lidded. Pleas
see before my snarl creeps back.
To acquit, absolve.
Solve Loose.
I call this word how we untangle each other.
You are Unmade and in need of collection.
Soft, sweet, slow.
Until inertia overcomes.
A harsh lunar body with love that annihilates
Your self-doubt ,
Ashames with kindness.
Pains with inelegant honesty.
You
Have
My attention and pulse,
sorrell.
Kept with you and resent but a moment ago.
And, I wonder where
we find ourselves
On this reading of what I just write to wrote?
To discern the coefficient of friction.
Re-scribed an umpteenth time.
For your inexorable sea, no doubt,
remains a’wave.
Unyielding. Relentless. Assiduous.
Paramour. Swoon over and give us some room.
Aragon and lavender, salty mists of sea tides
Aroma wafting through the scene.
A contention that new tangential elaboratorations
exert mild pressure.
“You are uncomfortably comfortable,” whispered with gravity.
So came I, cloaked.
Amateur ingenue
Feminine made anew.
I sow.
Sew you a pillow case all the colo(u)rs of Joseph’s coat.
You will dream of Argonauts. You will watch legion run
head first off the cliff.
They seek demise, but you have desire and
A dexterous handle with an au gauche moniker.
There is power in having a title, because to have is
To hold(,) dear.
To become the multitudes contained
within my circles.
The circles I contain.
The circles containing me.
A ruddy red demonstration of diameter.
Obstinte and obdurate at heart
I am a junkyard bitch who sometimes likes to bark.
Your home is no show place, but you are so fine
that lyrics write idylls for you
and scheme to catch just a sight of you
blushing. I’d sooner have you stern
Looking.
The lost cause of
how you used to be?
The wilted cæmellia
tucked behind the hero/ine’s ear?
Wilt
wither and thither.
Return to stasis,
never static, sugarfoot.
But, what you chew up and
cannot swallow
will feed your
root structure.
Poison returns if you
leave it elsewhere.
Sum it up and send it
Back to the earth
Quake for rebirth.
You saw a wryneck
Hum
In shallow waters of a
Good place to be
Candide.
The best of whose
Possible worlds?
It is how you
See the question.
Just glad to hear
The presumption of my
Body is no assumption.
Getting ready
To be fretted
For being willing
To be the bay-at-sea/c.
A cistern formed by basins of shale
Far beneath and beyond
The pale where
Sun is always shadowed
But for somme.
I have stamps for the postage.
The ferry leaves the same time over here.
I checked the mail and I don’t think City of Revelation is here yet.
Sometimes, I silently swear I can sensate an-other/s, holding my head,
three fingers of pressure and support to my forehead.
My hair sweeps down and closes around my face like a curtain drawn across a stage.
Breath is
Rest
I learned to sleep whether my eyes were on
the open or the closed.
A nap in blink. A relative delusion.
The pull of fo/u/rces up-on me.
I am force moving through and enlivening the body I wear.
Or
Maybe that is you.
Maybe I am your optimal conditions.
The intersection of wave patterns with which your waves may coalesce.
Converged
Attenuation
Reattuning
A’toning.
A ton/n/e.
A ton.
The current ether capable of manifesting your revivification.
I entreat catalyzing. I desire catalyzation.
Cathartic enzyme.
I see from the Vacuum and
It-is lonely even though you are not alone,
A lone,
Or, a loaned.
I want to draw your energy
To magnetize your electricity.
Resonate and then shall I feed you some of
Yours with mine.
We will digest and rebirth ourselves in juices charged.
Rings of /re/comings
/un/becoming.
I may want to circle you a while yet,
Even a long time.
Finding out while up-on the vortex again.
Teach me to live well yet simply.
I will teach you gladness.
My adoration of discovering you through you
Raises a moon-day sun.
A car sounds like
a breeze.
A sneeze of leaves
through the noses of
trees.
A quickly pealing pair of
tiring tyres.
Screeching steeple
belles.
Hark or hail.
Who goes there?
Conceal to reveal
weal
Twenty spokes
of the wheel may not
be a’woke;
But, daydreaming
Night-mares
whom you may ride
Up-on.
Tripping your shores of
not-here
nor their’s
Ewer’s.
The center can still hold
or ready, steady, go.
Despite the
quicken-
ingpen hares.
Ewe
turn on cloven toes,
split like the tongues of
Snarling snakes.
Smooth as slick.
Bare, like
plucked
Gnus.
Aria for the ballerino.
[Dreams of the alpaca hotel by the bay].
[Fables of worm farming, chain letter writers].
The poetics of “defamiliarization”
Representing something in such a way that one feels as if one were seeing it for the first time, thus making the perception of the object difficult for the reader.
“Ratios of revision”
“Nonextraneity of structure in art.”
extraneous: irrelevant or unrelated to the subject/of external origin (Concise OED, 2008)
Structure of words in a poem/story become art in that they are a looking-glass house, a skeleton key, a scaffold.
An example of the aesthetics of structure creating art in unexpected places. Like the table of contents of a book on aesthetics.
Luigi Pareyson’s Aesthetics (Milan: Bompiani, 1988)
Section 3 of Chapter 3 is titled: “The parts of the Whole”
Chapter 3 is titled: “Completeness of the work of art”
subsection 10 of Chapter 3 Section 3 is entitled: “The essential nature of each part: structure, stopgaps, imperfections.
“In this sense the relation that the parts have among themselves do nothing but reflect the relation that each part has with the whole: the harmony of the parts forms the whole because the whole forms their unity.“
As regards “stopgaps in literature”:
“It can be a banal opening, which can be useful for finding a sublime ending.”
Until three days ago, Parçigal had not slept well, no more than three hours in a sitting. Her mind ran busy moving invisible, imaginary things.
She was not tired. Her eyes unfocused but wide ovals.
Had she dreamt it all?
Maybe she had it confused: was she awake for those three hours, and, in fact, actually sleeping right, exactly now?
No-mind either way. Sleeping and waking became less distinguishable to her a decade ago. There was just lucid and sleepwalking.
She plods herself with aloof-nonchalance that conceals a passionate heart (smart or not). She can look until something appears.
Then the sleep will always follow.
Trivia: she says “thank you” aloud every time she yawns. To remind herself.
What a strange breath is a yawn. Inhalation and exhalation are required to breathe and live. Sneezing cleanses. Yawns seem like alarm clocks to wake you up from real life and let you know it is time to lucid dream. Yawns are the only type of breath that appear to be contagious.
What Parçigal found three days ago:
Mr. Price Preface from History of English Poetry from the Twelfth to the Close of the Sixteenth Century. By Thomas Warton, B.D. With a preface by Richard Price, and Notes Variorum. Edited by W. Carew Hazlitt. Volume 1.* London: Reeves and Turner, 196, STRAND. 1871.
“The immediate source of Eschenbach’s poem [sic. Parzival] was a Provençal romance written by one Kyot or Guiot. Of this writer nothing further appears to be known.”
Capricious as she had not been seeking it. But, sometimes she can see things when she believes them.
Curiouser and curio-user.
*Incidentally, “Of this Edition 500 copies are printed on small paper,
and 50 on large.
What are we to make of this?
WrittenCasey 