On an evening in June, alone with anxious mediations, reading by mobbed light, I come again, taste to taste, with my own self-inoculations.
Paying double but taking only half.
As swill becomes saunter.
The sky lies so the dirt can give the boot.
Then again, there are certain things I never understood, yet lately I find myself mesmerized by these blank spots. They have become the sign posts of my consciousness.
The old becomes new again when it arrives after whatever is recent and seems fresh. On the other hand, nothing is so old as that which comes after but seems as if it must have been from before.
It's so quiet you can hear the lint festering in the fog.
I'll give you a hand but only one.
Fighting fire with sugar to make pie while the hay dries in the oysterman's holiday.
Winter tears, summer shadows.
Poetry is patterned thought in search of unpatterned mind.
Love is the messenger not the message.
Till you get to the backside of where you began. Neither round robin nor oblong sparrow.
My faculties are impolitic.
But at least: For two dimes and a nickel you still get something like a quarter.
Sometimes a gust is just a gust.
The ghosts just left.
That still, small voice may not be the root of all evil but it's no innocent bystander either.
There's tackle in the tackle box.
How can you separate the breach from the brook, the branch from the book?
The haze doesn't obscure the view it makes it palpable.
It's not the absence in the presence but the presence in the absence.
When you go away there's no back to come back to. All the addresses have changed and the locks have new combinations.
A husband returns home to find a burning cigar in his ashtray. He soon discovers a man in the broom closet. "What are you doing there?"—"Everybody's got to be somewhere." [Henny Youngman]
Rabbi Eliza asks, "When is a Jew no longer a Jew?"—"When the book is closed."
The pit of the cherry is like the soul of a self-righteous man: when you find it, you want to spit it out.
The slips have become skirts.
The dove cannot find rest for the soul of its foot. Neither can I find peace in the inner worlds beside the nearby.
Inoperative nomenclature.
A series of hints without a question, a slew of clues without a crime.
Why did the turtle cross the road?—To find the chicken.
What you don't know is a far cry from what you do.
Desperately searching for a book that I don't even want to read.
"The world is everything that is the case." But the case is locked in the trunk of a stolen car.
Everything that happens is lost. Even what is recalled is lost in the recalling. Nonetheless, things go on happening.
Memory is to life like a band-aid to a wound.
A girl I once met told me her name rhymed with orange.
Did I just imagine that?
Complexity is a ten-letter word, like difficulty. There's moxie in complexity and tilt in difficulty but what difference does this make?
I'll give you ten minutes and if you don't come out I'll give you ten more minutes.
My cares turned to wares.
Simply stated, there's nothing to state.
It's not what you say that counts nor what you don't say but the relation.
He understated the price of the property to be sure he got less than it was worth. This was the only way he knew for the exchange to have value.
Give me a place to sit and I will look for a place to put up my feet.
TILT
Everything in the world exists in order to end up as an opera. An opera without music is what we call everyday life. Poetry is opera without the story, score, costumes, make-up, or staging. It's a libretto set to its own music. The reader is both the conductor and lead singer. The audience gathers at the unconscious. Tickets are sold only on the morning of the performance; students pay half but often stand. Unsatisfied customers may claim refunds for twice the cost of admission; these are paid directly by the poet.
"You've got a lot of moxie."
The "double silly" consists of making two complete turns with another person while walking in the street.
I've got my next few years of work mapped out for me: figuring out what to do over the next few years.
When you say baroque you're barking up the wrong tree, which suits me.
The station wagon stayed stationary at the station.
Stunned he put down his gun and started to run.
The Jew stops being the Jew when the movie's over.
No horizon on the horizon.
Going to sleep to continue the story.
Third eye hindsighted.
Making another patch for the patch.
There's no business like no business like no business I know.
Blue is no longer blue when it loses its hue.
Terrible day to start the way. (Terrible way to start to stray.)
If language could talk we would refuse to understand it.
Hue is a property of optics not objects.
As to "avant garde": I am not in advance of anything but perhaps close, in the neighborhood, around.
Better to come up from behind than to lead. If you lead you'd have to know where you are going whereas I only know where I am not going.
The politics in a poem has to do with how it enters the world, how it makes its meaning, how its forms work in social contexts. The politics in a poem is specific to poetry not politics.
Now I am getting weary of ideology and would like to give it up entirely but it seems the more I give it up the more it has me by the throat. I write so I can breathe.
And better artificial respiration than no respiration. Better imaging reparation than silence.
Or let's say trying to re-imagine the possibilities of sentience through the material sentience of language.
Don't ask me to be frank. I don't even know if I can be myself.
You never know what invention will look like or else it wouldn't be invention.
We see each other as if with hidden sensors. Those not tuned in miss the action entirely, even when it's right before their eyes.
The Greeks had an idea of nostos, which is not quite what we call nostalgia. Nostos suggests the political and ethical responsibility of the human being, in orienting herself or himself. You can't go home again but you can stay tuned to your senses of responsibility.
So much depends upon what you are expecting.
The chicken she is cooked but the liver is raw.
As for we who love to be admonished. . . .
Certain that this satin would intoxicate even Satan; the trips of the trade, the lisps of the frayed.
If that's the price I will pay it but not gladly.
Like I told her, you can add up all the zeros in the world but it will never amount to anything. Whereas two plus two, while barely four, suggests progress.
If progress is a process, what is the purpose of purpose or the allure of allure?
You see I told you so but you weren't listening or maybe I forgot to press SEND.
It is equally problematic to shout "Theater!" at a crowded fire.
I break for speed bumps.
Eugene Ormandy wore organdy. George Solti speaks in sotte voce. Toscanini dons a bikini. Neville Marriner slides down the banister. Herbert von Karajan had two carry-ons. Kurt Mazur abhors clamor.
Everything that happens in life exists to be reflected on in Boca.
"Do you see that? Those people came in after us and they're being served first."
It takes a village to read a poem.
The patter of petunias in the marmalade.
Everybody's got to be somewhere.
Save the last chance for me.