And This Is Why The Poem Must Come

 According to Empedocles, there’s a distance infinitely removed from the day, which is also what is most intimate to us, more interior than any interiority.

The poem is what opens, what in opening is a call for everything else to open, to enlighten itself, to come to light.

You have to know where to look. It could be in a bin of lettuce. Or a pharmacy in Pocatello, Idaho. A sex worker washing windows on a brothel out on the alkali desert 30 miles east of Sparks. A timber king sitting down to a plate of juicy roast beef. Who suddenly takes a dive into the mashed potatoes. Death by myocardial infarction.

You never know just where or how it’s going to happen.

I’m not sure what anything is anymore.

I never really got into religion much. But I do believe in ghosts. Not like the one in Hamlet. More like qualia that stir the blood. Churn of starlings over barren earth. That urge to call a friend or brother or sister that’s been dead for years. That hummingbird hovering inches from your face. That horse on the other side of the mirror. That monkey wrapped around your leg at Angkor Wat. That elusive haiku waiting to be discovered among the ferns in a stand of redwood.

Think of it as a can of soup. You’ll need a can opener. And to escape the prison imposed on you in childhood.

When I was 13, I became obsessed with fighter jets. I remember staring at the Air Force Academy in Colorado Springs. It was the power, the roar of jets. But I was slow at math. And captivated by music. Green Sleeves. Green Onions. He’s A Rebel. Twist and Shout. The One Who Really Loves You. Blowin’ in the Wind.

The quality of the highway surface on I-90 worsens markedly once you leave Ellensburg and begin to rise into the Cascades.

Why is that? Why are the highways to the east of the Cascades better maintained than the highways to the west?

We stopped for gas in Moses Lake and headed into the night.

The surrounding country was desolate, flat, and lonely.

I saw Mars to the east.

A glowing red dot as desolate as the highway we were driving on.

I enjoy following the data coming into Nasa from the Mars Rovers, Sojourner, Spirit and Opportunity, Curiosity, and Perseverance. The desolation is so stark, so immaculate in its austerity, it’s spellbinding. It looks familiar and strange at the same time. Reddish dust with the character of iron under a pink sky with a shrunken sun gives the mind a craving for life. The drama is quiet. It’s a funny drama. This is a place of giant soliloquies uttered by a phantom life that may once have existed. Rocks resembling faces and bones mock the familiar comforts of a carpet and chair. How did this happen? These fingers typing these words. These words. These feelings. These longings. Propinquity and protein. Kinfolk and kneecaps. Illusions and disillusions. Primal mutterings. Dogs wagging tails. Orioles on a prairie. Clean bedsheets. Egyptian mummies. Nonsense and noodles. Gothic architecture. Tearful goodbyes to the dying.

The sound of our sun is an eerie howl.

The sound of the universe is a low-pitched hum. Oṃ maṇi padme hūṃ.

But there are no molecules to carry the sound. “In space, no one can hear you scream.” Alien.  Ridley Scott.

Man in a Chevy Silverado doing 90. Hard, determined look. Takes the exit to Ritzville.

A dead coyote at the side of the road.

There comes a point where reality is so hard, so brutal, so unforgiving, so absurdly merciless, it makes you want to laugh.

This feeling of an es tagt, of "the day is breaking," which makes possible - as much of the night as the day - the chaos as well as the gods, this font of divine light that radiates through all of Hölderlin's work, drawing it up with light, pure light, the allure of the pure ray, and because of this the words are suffused with a light beyond the light, which is clarity itself, and all clarity.

For the jubilation of the Universe always tends to distance itself from the earth and leave it stripped; if humans don't hold it back.

…that is to say the poet, calls it so as not to get lost in the expansive infinity that it derives from its origins: as it is, it is indeed a limitless totality and that must be, but it must also be that "without limits" becomes its limit, is integrated into the totality, and this is why the poem must come.

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*Lines in italics from La Parole “Sacrée” de Hölderlin by Maurice Blanchot. 

Frequencies Of Atomic Scallop

Blithely configurational, we lobster against aesthetics. We have nothing against aesthetics, we just want to flirt, spend time in a laboratory mingling chemicals and brains. The lobster is a totemic spirit. Insults are crucial to my stock of photos. If I want to capture a look of despair, I don’t have to go far to do it. Repose is more of a challenge. Repose is private. It has to be coaxed. It cannot be coerced. A linen of Egyptian silk spreads in easy testimony. The eyes are closed. The breathing is easy. Except for bingo, I like to spew my guts and write sonnets. To mix the anonymous with the notorious, the serious with the delirious, the lyrical with the spiracle, the chimerical with the regrettable. If you’re tied up, hurry up, and give your casino a name. Gambling is a conversation with folly. Dark nights full of risk and inspiration. Gerry Marsden pulling to the side of the road to write “Ferry Cross the Mersey.” Wyatt Earp immersed in Middlemarch. It takes a special kind of focus to read a novel during a gunfight. No palette is a calliope. Try getting Jesus on your smartphone. We can do this all night. If there is but one thing worth isolating it's the sound of improbability. Put your pants on backward. Jiggle your qualifications. Frequencies of atomic scallop clip to the breast pocket in a perfect renunciation of irony. Scratch the entrance as I pull it into the sentence kicking and screaming. I shall do a structural dance around the ovulation of your umbrella. I must draw a little pollen from these phonemic anthers to create the nectar of propagation. Fertilization is a complex process beginning with thunderous interactions and climaxing with union. I believe, now, we’re getting somewhere. The possibility of achieving a fresh new perception trembles in the eyes of the reader like a flock of honking geese flying in a V formation over the meadows of Nova Scotia. The atmosphere grows thick with foreign energies and skittish intuitions. It seems we’ve aroused the suspicion of the guards. No matter. We shall disappear through the window I’ve placed here. The sky is the saga in which we sink to fly homeward. I put it on the coffee table. The coasters have sayings. Things like saws. Stilts and guided tours. Our curiosity is the boil of intellect, but our lineage is the sputter of blood on the lips. Burst grapes and decadent banquets. The point I’m trying to make is stuck in the wall. I threw it there in a rage. It only makes sense if you drape it with gauze and wear it like a gymnasium. Otherwise, what’s the point? It’s like I said. The point is stuck in the wall. But there is no wall. It was summarily demolished behind these words.  

Funny Name For A Lather

Like a lot of people, I resist wisdom. If a bit of advice is not to my convenience, I will ignore it. And pay the consequences later, as I do now, with a stubborn case of insertional peroneal brevis tendinitis. There are 19 muscles in the human foot. If you strain them too much they fray. They become inflamed. You can’t run. You’ve got to rest. Hope the damn thing heals.

So. I bought a pair of Brooks’ Ghost. DNA Loft foam (a combination of closed cell ethylene-vinyl acetate copolymer foam, rubber, and air) is a premium cushioning material that is a soft, lightweight and durable compound that absorbs and reduces shock as the foot contacts the ground. So far so good. I did two miles on Westlake. Minimal pain.

Flaming candles on a stone wall. Witches gathering moss. The Cranberries. Dreams. Official Music Video. Tiny woman in a white dress, long eyelashes, dreamy look. Dancing with a microphone. And oh, my dreams. It's never quite as it seems. Never quite as it seems.

You can’t live without distractions. Not in this world.

Barbasol. Funny name for a shaving lather. Sounds like the name of a pirate. Or a famous philosopher who never existed. Barbossa Barbasol. Bertrand Barbasol. Beverly Barbasol. Her theory on the criticality of naming things concretizes the human condition with a white blob of ambiguity.

Why would anyone want to put their ideas in order? Thoughts are messy. Thoughts are amorphous riots. Ideas roll out of the madhouse in flames. Ideas are gloves, painkillers, derivatives, regenerative agriculture. The kneecap is genius. Phonemes are phenomenal. Needles and pins. Jack Nitzsche and Sonny Bono. A giant mutinous thread. Flowing freely like water.

You get to a point where it colors your entire life. Every mood. Every thought. You can’t escape it anymore. This profound evil. This season of atrocities. And that’s it. It’s in you like a virus. There must be palliatives. No one anticipates a cure. Not this far in.

The Talisman of Charlemagne has a large glass cabochon on the front, a large blue-gray sapphire on the back, and an assortment of garnets, pearls, and emeralds. But does it work? That’s what I want to know. Will it keep evil at bay? Can I sleep with it? How do I spread its energy around?

You can feel done with this world, but it won’t let you go. It’s like when you get ready to leave a party and no one wants you to go and conversations keep happening, even though, deep down, you know there’s deep undercurrent of fear and panic. Enough to wade in. And everyone’s feet are wet. Wet like Jean Valjean escaping the barricades of the June Rebellion in the sewers of Paris. And not like that at all. If the room suddenly turns quiet and people are staring at you, congratulations. You’ve said something honest.