A Fatal Conglomeration of Toxins

Without a filtration system - mechanical and or biological - fish in a tank will die. We have to do certain things, don't we? Buy toilet paper, fry breakfast sausage in syrup, read to the children when they can't for themselves. Thus one assumes the mode of cranberries, one adopts a salty way.

Without you I am a block of wood on which somebody has painted eyes. Feathers fall, memories are recalled. We pull the past out of our brains, polish it a little, and call it reason or cause. The filtration system - whether mechanical or biological - enables the inhabitants of the tank to survive what would otherwise be a fatal conglomerations of toxins.

I am saying it is all in how we look at it. The ghosts near the forest rallied a last time, but I threw Jesus in their faces and they gave up with nary a whimper. Or am I remembering the old dog who died approximately one year ago today? Without some method of arranging our memories, we would lose entirely our longing for the present and then what?

Perhaps it is because we transitioned to hunter gatherers? Somebody said hey look that'd be a great place for a village, let's make babies and hem our stories in on calf skin. On the other hand, there's Las Vegas. Well, we have to perceive until we accept we don't have to so . . .

So one wants to mitigate what obscures a natural joy and peace. Transform obstacles to love? We arrive at each moment with the capacity to be born again. If a certain language leaves you cold then go find your own flaming pronoun.

The Startling Dark of Midnight

The pilgrim landscape dusted with snow. The interior fire can sometimes be gray. One walks all morning and all afternoon just to speak with fellow believers. So I declined to play the part of Macbeth, so what?

Lives are altered by our actions hence the need to choose - to decide - carefully. Eschew lawsuits. At times it behooves the hungry soul not to feed itself but simply to observe the terms of its hunger. Sentences, my love, not lines.

We advanced confidently in the direction of our dreams. Decomposition beckoned, lent its shadow to the project. This is what I do and if you don't like it leave me alone. Little crescent moon, what did you think would come of the startling dark of midnight?

Oh but then a cup of tea comes. There are always firsts and they are always repeating themselves. In other words, wake up and allow your dream to interpret you. Remember you?

Remember that night on the fire escape, drinking brandy from a thermos and talking about the apocalypse only we knew was coming? Everything that happened is still happening, if you want to see if that way. The other night, out walking, I was aware of him in the distance - his black frock, his ancient pistols - and felt again - faintly - the powerful desire he wields, the yearning to know our experience, the anger at having once chosen otherwise. One hurls oneself from Heaven, one discovers that eternity is simply the longing to make it back.

The We We Really Aren't

Nowhere is better than here. One's life fits into a shoebox which can at last be dropped into the sea. There was a point I wanted to make about the space between waves but . . .

The morning walk abjured in favor of dreams in which Jesus was invited to appear. A simple yes or no would do. Yet the answer, when it arrived, was in the form of an email and only complicated the question's nature.

Question nature? How often do I return with blood on my palms and mud in my pant seams? There is only death worth talking about and it happened a long time ago.

Raise your hand if the crucifixion appeals to you. Stand if the reflection of broken glass in the driveway is more memorable than a lover's parting words. Do you believe in pain?

How about grass stains? Suisecki? A one word sentence has a lot of explaining to do.

Yet we kept going, as if into a photograph. We wake from one dream into another and have to choose the one in which we really wake up. What I meant to say before I embarked on the twenty sentences was thank you.

Or yes? Time doesn't pass so much as the we we really aren't does.

Intense Almost Divine Love

Fear on the logging road that tracks the old potato field (next to the frozen pond). Overhead, stars flicker heedlessly. One walks as if into a painting, as if some artist or authority had made this in a state of intense, almost divine, love. Understanding this or that social setting is not critical. We fumble, we make do.

We approach writing a certain way, as a process in which product is not valuable, not saleable. But malleable? Historically, our preference for gold is a function of the fact that it gleams in sunlight and yields readily to heat. We want to measure. We want our treasure.

While later, one assumed the stance of one who wears a frock coat. The past is never not with us. One prefers the abstract to the dense text that often follows. Pull yourself together! My boot strings broke and I cobbled together something else for the long walk that winter morning.

If you can't make room for your fleas then you can forget about enlightenment. A blanket is helpful against the cold, dust that's visible in the moonlight can help you recall old friends. I mentioned fear and I'd like to retract it. Retrace it? It passes is all I am saying.

A Cherished Noun

The notes find themselves. Which is to say that music is there in a way the sentence is not. Oh but then you never write now, do you? Was it something I said? He waited all day for the mail and it never came and it saddened him but there was always tomorrow and what is tomorrow but a comfort?

Or that's what you told yourself when the closet got too stale. Albany freeways from which the distance beckons in a hazy, in a Saturday, kind of way. Remember eating frozen apple pie and crying about what we had just done? Remember our issues with the upper class? John Ruskin is absolutely not the kind of guy you invite to parties.

People who go to school to study ice sculpture have my vote. Art that grows old and disappears is all yay. Consider that Emily Dickinson asked that her writing without exception be destroyed upon her death. What was it what's-his-name said? To be a great artist you have to give up everything including the desire to be a great artist?

Or something like that. We are perhaps doomed by our incessant hankering for repetition. Rankled by imitation? All afternoon I wrote and sang and you were right there in my mind. Like a cherished noun before which verbs fall weeping.

Both Visible and Hidden Patterns

One recalls Jesus while studying the art of floral arrangement. A wind that recalls hills, a howl that carries in a way train whistles never do. Snowy fields facilitate memory, especially in the moonlight. You give and give and there is no end to your giving.

The dog sits by the window mulling. Curled up into the shape of a button, weaving himself like a thread into our lives. What is family really? We shed our maneuvers, we surrendered our strategies.

We meditated with coffee, waiting for everyone else to wake up. You have to engage, you have to risk conflict. Solve problems? A fish rises and falls in the current, indifferent to its environment.

More plastic flowers! A tire swing nobody has used since 1949. We are not what we use but rather that to which we aspire. Rhyme leads to the center of nowhere which is why we keep using it.

A king begs forgiveness, a mendicant preacher gives up and gets married and lives in a little cottage, happy for many years. You have to alter both visible and hidden patterns. To follow him to is submit to renewal, moment by moment. Heaven destabilizes which is how you know it's real.

The Maneuvers of Extraordinary Men

Shall I allow for the maneuvers of extraordinary men? Pay the rain for when it blesses my field? Dross will do, when gold is unavailable.

There is no such thing as unavoidable complicity. We are called to love, not to overthrow rotten systems. Beware the lure of the big picture!

I await the mail as I have for decades. He came down from the mountain bearing arrows, a strange - an almost crazed - look in his eyes. One sentence follows another like a lesson in reliance.

Fragments, all of you! The dance grew violent and thus one abjured all art. What are calories but tiny funeral bells?

Many questions that together comprise an answer. The farm implements gleamed in the moonlight and in the distance a few deer could be heard tearing frozen leaves from the bracken. It's a nice enough world if you can tame your expectations.

Blame the infestations? Time passed, the dead turned over, and soon enough came the enlightenment. I shall want for nothing when I am in Heaven but until then, more chocolate cake please!

Ah, but I cannot really ask for that, not that way. You call me away from shifts that are mandated by ambition.

Narrow and Dim

Like a dog twisting in folds of the blanket, anxious to get out in the snow, I continue to think in terms of what I don't have. There are always consequences. And jewelry. One can look lovely while feeling lonely. Deeply – even dangerously – lonely.

Is it all a narrative, all a story? We characterize ourselves but what are we really? The shoe fell of the ship and sank quickly into the gray sea. Later, a dream of empty bottles, mermaids bobbing where the waves rose and fell. We are all part of whatever it is, without exception.

Mothers who drive buses. Horses who canter to the field's far edge then stop and stare as if thinking. Our capacity for selling never ceases yet our wares change from year to year. The truth is we can grow accustomed to anything. Like, say, dogs.

The row of books one hasn't read grows longer by the year too. The stage on which we prance grows narrow and dim. Dancers remember us in drunken moments. We are all part of it, this thing I call God. He means the part of the brain where language is not language yet but only sound, maybe only the idea of sound.

Splinters of Eternity

One morning, after several hours of prayer, I went to the window and saw a crow resting on a tree limb dusted with snow. As one teacher wrote of Jesus, his back was always turned to me. Yet what else are we called to do but follow? The road is many and the few upon it narrow. Well, sometimes it's better not to speak.

Yet upon waking - and following a few scattered minutes of prayer - a sense of joyful peace descended on me and I felt as if it was time to stride into Babylon with plans for a new society. I am going to run for political office, just like my Daddy. It's fun to eat figs with criminals and cavort with the generally unrepentant. The world is what you make it, my friend. Sally forth!

Yet on the docks - faced with a ticket for the ship that would crush every iceberg in its path - I hesitated, remembering the words of Saint Paul in his first letter to the Corinthians. What I am saying is that words fail me but who cares. A morning of snow, and birds who keep their distance making a different choice. I sat quietly with the dog who farted as she slept. We are here to open the shutters of guilt, we are here to illuminate splinters of eternity.

Hey, are you in the mood for some salted flakes of salmon? Faced with metaphysical improbabilities I could only say I know I am. Mountains in the distance, boots shrugging onto our feet. What is movement but an embrace of what might happen? Christ is the position we assume in love.

You Think But Woe

In a dark hour I was marooned. The howls woke me after just a few minutes sleep. Wherever light was, wherever truth was, that's where I was thinking about writing about truth. There are no exceptions to the possibility of getting burned on the way in. The road is easier to find than you think but woe to the one who finds it and just ambles.

Let me say it another way. Let me have my tea and drink it as well. The organist stumbled coming out of the choir loft and her daughter had a sudden idea for a hymn. Let's go to the record store and get ourselves a date. This poem (that prom?) must include a cornet.

A hornet stole my wedding ring. There's disillusionment at work, a proposition bound to failure. We marched all day until we reached the temple only to find that it was closed for renovations. A war can't begin if the other side stays home. Hearts pour forth their wisdom, angels fall to their knees.

Some people are harder to please than others. We studied the shore line, intent on finding the perfect stone. So I'm not the prize catch I once was (said the Tuna with his hand-carved cane). We begin (and end) where everyone else does. Your dulcet voice, your bloodied knuckles.

Thought In Those Days

We are never not dancing. The light falls where it does in the interest of surprise. The stage can be dismantled in a matter of minutes. Outside, clouds moved quickly from west to east, like commuters bent on getting home before dark. Another cigarette, another way to slow down time.

The teacher said quietly that talking is not working. We went back and forth between the main building and our little tent. Thought bogs us all down and yet. I once looked up from where I was fishing for perch and saw pillars of sunlight as if someone – God I thought in those days – was setting a new foundation. Doing never does anything.

She wrote about children and the loneliness was evident. Thus the desire to write this desire. It's good to ask what we're after. Bottles of whiskey, boxes of chocolates. You want a special song?

How about traffic sounds? Anything can be dismantled or so he wrote. I knew where the door was and still declined to enter. It's a question of rhythm, a matter of words. You are with me whenever I feel it.

A Grave Way, An Important Way

If we are going to do this, then let us do it in a grave way, an important way. As this morning I passed without speaking the frozen pond and woods. As one searches for words. What is effortlessness worth but nothing? With what is spirit made anyway?

Ah, the rigid constructs of thought! I became a Communist in order to see you clearly. Yet beholden to grief – and stuck still in the throes of silence – I also made soap from organic goat milk. We are all other. It's time to stop.

It's time to sing? I can still see you thirty years ago. I compose this sentence in your name. One or two stars and a cut of moon were perceived as affirmations. One falls into a pattern, one gets comfortable indeed.

Violets remains in attendance. Like politics or talking. You cannot bear the bear can you? I waited all day on my knees. And you, you draw the requisite voice from my throat like it's nothing.

All Is Well Or Will Be

So it is true that goldfish only die on dreamless nights. Punctuation is dictatorial, also helpful, at least in those situations. A bland wing does what petroleum cannot. Don't wake up! While in the most recent installment of my gargantuan novel I abolished all pilgrims.

A board on which a few words were painted. A poem in which a blue streamer was compared to my late grandfather entering Heaven. Tea helps. A little bit of crying never hurt anyone but still. We are the signal we are waiting for.

Worth waiting for? Something always happens around the tenth or eleventh sentence. Plastic plants shift and shimmy in the soft currents, the cloudy H2O. We have been waiting for the arrival of insight, which will alter our behavior, and transform the grim and grimy world to a beautiful gold city with streets that run with chocolate and malt whiskey. While in the meadow - right there - a calico bull quietly ponders the death of an Iris.

The syllabus was not in any way helpful. Prayer is akin to pine trees in winter. Let's put Jesus in it just to say we did. The silver bells atop the church were silenced by rust. And yet, in passing, one is reminded that all is well, or will be.

Privileged Glimpses Of A Certain Interior Landscape

I come to this project out of a sense of duty but also possibility. One wants to see what will happen when language - curtailed by form - is freed of its tethers. The result was an overly critical narrative that was judgemental and disapproving of both humanity and society. Well, plagiarism remains an issue unless you're invested in repetition.

Like shrinking closet space for those wedded to keeping pace with fashion. Thus - without divulging sources - I experienced riotous excursions with privileged glimpses of a certain interior landscape. It was bells, it was carols, it was men who were not afraid to kiss rocks. As if to say. Or rather, as if this thus makes the language of criticality a meta-narrative that represses any effort to begin anew.

A hibernating newt? He saw the river move sluggishly beneath mounds of ice and snow and it reminded him of his father who had died years earlier without ever having run for political office. You can dream and I can blow up balloons just to pop them. She invited me to a parade in honor of Minerva. I fell asleep imagining what I would say to you, having dreamed of us together all these years.

One weeps fecund tears. One reads Wordsworth again and finally understands genius. When cold, approach a working stove. I plucked a turkey feather off the trail and went on struggling with multiple strains of thought. Often it seems to start just when you reach the terminus.

The Dog Outside

Remember the days when there was nothing to do but dream about apples? Thus the poem - nestled in the twenty sentences - begins. A Roman senator passed by the window, his mind on a bowl of figs. We are what we perceive and what we perceive we believe. Push a little and see if the world doesn't give.

She was interested in liberation theology though she'd never heard the phrase before the conference. The dog outside will not come in. If you want meaning, you're going to have to come and claim it. Five more minutes before the house changes shape. Three witches in the hedge, plotting against us.

A gunmetal sky, a flat palm coming your way. It - meaning what - is never as easy as we'd like. Suddenly time begins to pick up speed, much like a car as it goes downhill. He paused only to ask if it was one word or two. In photographs you are beautiful but impossible to love.

In our brief exchanges, I have come to realize that I cherish in you only what recalls the burnished past. A tangle emerges, to the left of which Jesus gently reminds me that conflict is unnecessary. A temple emerges, another obstacle to peace. In a moment I am going to wake up but first let me tend to his corner of the dream. Cancer has entered our lives.

Slipping From A Cloudy Scabbard

One jumps, one begins. One gazes at the sky and wonders if there is another way to see it. Tea in bed. What a rotten moon, slipping from a cloudy scabbard, scuttling up the sky. Be bold my darling!

Letters come depicting a possible lifestyle, one I might have wanted. We are what we grow. Why is almost never the right question. He gave a fortuitous speech, one that paved the way to the nomination. Yet one never knows what the future holds.

If we're going to leave then we're going to have to leave now. I risked anger, I made unexpected changes. The speakers you brought are fantastic. A poem comprised of four letters. Did I mention the mail?

If you're going to leave then please leave now. A clean sharp break is needed. Also lessons in elocution. Evolution? We fall backwards almost always.

Secrets While Tending The Inner Garden

Walking this morning in the field surprised at how little light is needed to find one's way. Or perhaps knowing the way in advance helps? The beavers were quiet off to my left (that is, to the east). No visible stars. Last night I heard the far away train and talked to my daughter about the mysteries. Navigating puddles, listening for the dog's tags. We give up the little mysteries so there's room for the big ones. There is a bridge I will always remember for the God sounds you pointed out beneath it. Death is not the end but it damn well seems to be. Earlier we ate apples and popcorn and watched the sun set and discussed the role realism plays in funny stories. Pretty please with cheddar cheese? A head cold makes one struggle to communicate, which is another way of saying one struggles just to show one cares. Yet the practice of awareness is fundamentally healing. Does any of this make sense? She keeps secrets while tending the inner garden and we all know where she learned that trick! Must we then learn how to barter? Isn't negotiation a sign of weakness? All these voices in my head with which I must contend! Later, alone, I wondered who is served by the undoing of what is not real. You're out there and we both know it.

Mistaken For Grace

The impulse to avoid praise mistaken for grace. You are what you teach. There is no escape from the Truth.

There is no escaping Duluth. We stood outside while it rained, talking about our children. The night passes, with or without you.

Saint Paul is sometimes also mistaken for grace. The train lay rusting aside the tracks, blue jays nattering nearby. Silence grates.

Do something! He wrote, just before the sun rose, remembering that night in the rain. A cup of coffee went down the wrong way.

What did the clown song say? We have to laugh or else we're going to miss peace altogether. We studied a schedule, mistaking it for Truth.

That moment when they lose their first tooth! Please accept love, please don't reject doves. In my dream, I saved you a piece of raspberry cake.

Why must it always happen in the past tense? In other words, thanks.

Into The Same River Twice

Few things are as moving to me as remembering Elvis shooting his television. Well, maybe members of the so-called peace churches training dogs and riding bikes. We climb hills only to see more hills and our legs are tired and now what. You cannot leap off the same bridge into the same river twice.

Heraclitus sends regrets. One apologizes to God in the moonlight, one contemplates an act of violence. Rebellion? Standing near the willows I imagined I heard deer breathing and crows shifting in their nests atop the pine trees.

Childhood is a photograph. All spirals are reminiscent of what decline? In this sentence, an old friend is held and remembered. Much like swimming in the creek, much like our knuckles after fighting.

The horse lifted its head as if anticipating the gunshot. What ends, ends well. Cheers rose, one dreams of a rose. One walks a long way in the dark to find a home where it is quiet and the soup rests on the stove all night.

Have me will you? The dead return for no reason other than to sip the joyful dram we can't surrender. Drama? No, I never turned to you for anything you weren't already giving.

No Other Miracle

I implore you to use language precisely (not bluntly).

One rephrases the last sentence in particular.

Is a word missing?

There is no other miracle than to see the world through another's eyes.

For all my mysanthropic tendencies I do love you.

The fragments of Christianity, the crumbs of Buddhism.

One makes a good catch (in a metaphorical way).

Yet the next sentence - which was this one originally - needs revision.

To make clear what is possible.

Are you referring then to the miracle?

Thus, be careful of concluding.

Nitpickers unite (with certain caveats)!

How many perfections are possible?

Hence the Latin origin, the Germanic adaptation.

But why exactly are we qualified as fools?

He whispered - there in the dark, before the sun rose - is it foolish to even try to be perfect?

We have not eliminated all our weaknesses.

Ask, too, what is amenable to elimination and what is frankly not.

Our natural hunger for what?

I meant for the nineteenth sentence to be the twentieth so now what?

Breath Deceives Us

One insists on positive affirmations.One gazes at his son and does not see his son. As the wave rises from the sea, it also falls back. We insist on other. Yet is also helpful to ask what problem cannot be solved by radical hospitality.

Weeds where yesterday just soil. A stand-up bass where yesterday was cigar smoke. I followed the moose's tracks for close to ten miles before letting him go before me into miles of unmapped hills. Gifts are as gifts do. One looks for his son in a familiar face and sees another child.

We are bent on love even though we pretend otherwise. You can choose peace or you can choose victory through conflict but please understand the two are mutually exclusive. One or two stars where the moon is visible, there between fading contrails. Everything will be just fine in the end. Thus the end, thus this.

One takes their tea late, as the moonlight seeps through shuttered windows. We insist on repetition. One sees their son wherever one looks. Our breath deceives us. I love you even so.

You Are What You Haunt

I am witness to a crime that was never committed, a trial that was never held, and an execution that took place only in the dreams of certain angry men.

A jail cell is a comfort in other words.

I can see without my glasses, just not as well.

Left rotting in a cell?

Awakening is the goal.

And yet.

A challenge to full voice.

You cannot adopt the methods of what you would undo.

Nor sing.

Nor write by a South-facing window and call it of all things home.

Yet there are times when the inchoate fear is absent and those are the times when I am writing.

Put it this way: you are what you haunt.

Hence the sense that desire is inevitable.

Regrettable?

I am not a traveler other than in secret.

Someone - Kierkegaard perhaps - said that to be a Christian is to be a type of spy.

As living in the world is a sort of puzzle one completes piece by piece.

A certain street in Vermont, a certain song on the radio.

Screw that - a certain slant of light!

Before which - again - as ever - I fall.

Perennial Composition

What is anger? Who has been hurt? What is being defended? What good are these questions?

A possible metaphor for necessary surgery. The narrative I in perennial composition. An idea, a segment. This is how certain people grow rich.

This is how a poem moves away from the poet. This is how a river seen through trees in early December makes one want to exchange their walking stick for a tie. This is the futility of planning. This is falling, again.

A wren? A lily. A man helping a man that his brother would only hurt? Me capitulating.

If at the end of the writing you feel no better is this success? If at the end of the writing nobody applauds is that success? What good are questions? If at the end of a piece of writing - this one or another - there is only silence is that a cause or an effect?

If I Have Presented Myself As Not Fallen

Between stars and clouds, the moon. A dog's paw, crusted with blood. River sounds, trains sounds. Turning the corner, the smell of cinnamon. I am always going.

Always at one without knowing? The mentalist guessed my zip code from 1974. Between stars and clouds, unbroken darkness. If I have presented myself as not fallen, forgive me. Forgive my spelling.

Be aware of how verbs work in your sentences. Don't be jealous, it's a waste of time. Be willing to love your enemies or at least understand why someone else might. Saints is as saints does. The more practical model might be Mennonites.

At the beginning with lilies. Between stars and shreds of cloud, the memory of a dead dog. Passing the river, at one with fear. Bad things were done and I won't let them go. Withered apologies are thin gruel indeed

The Dubious Gift Of Knowing

Duck shadows, tall grass. The sun rose and kept rising and when I looked again Venus was up above the pine trees. That world which I love despite knowing better. What do you think?

Gypped out of a taco. The tractor tires lay covered in snow, mouse prints going in and out, tending each of the cardinal directions. Repetition is fun, period. Later, we went out ourselves, mulling the dubious gift of knowing we are going to die.

"And yet" is why you can't go home. Another writing project, another self of which I must disabuse my self. High shelf? Sometimes you build mansions where a cottage would have done.

And yet. I wake the same, unawakened, and wonder what it is I think is going to happen. We open our arms to the sky. Open, unopened.

That dream is okay but I want another one. You in it. Despite the baubles attending the necessary ceremony, I continued to care for you, and it was that more than anything which led me to the  balcony where I saw, for the first and only time, as it were, Christ's face. You can learn a lot watching dogs.

Bad Guides

In trying to account for anger, one is inevitably led to fear. Dogs struggle against the fence between them, their jaws snapping, intimating cruelty. Yet any point of identification is only marginally helpful. As a writing project can serve either to hide or partially reveal authorial discretion. One is invested in the nineteenth century, one has a certain predilection.

In the morning I choose my words carefully while at night I babble. The study of commas are a substitute for life. Walking the same trail I walked in dreams, aware of some interior kernel from which peace might spring were I ever to discern the right method, was itself a kind of peacefulness. Or else bring all the pieces to the table and then let's decide. Grieving parents make bad guides.

Yet loss - scarcity - abounds. And the perennial emphasis on Jesus can only be marginally helpful. We eschew coffee, go for long walks, remember a point about poetry, made I think it was decades ago. Thus this in the wake of prayer. Thus absence.

Thus you leaped a second time and that was both end and beginning. The past as a beacon directing our attention. And yet, again. In trying to account for anger, we come to fear, which appears inexplicable, without source, at least without resort to mythology. What I am saying is that dogs matter in the same way prayer can reduce us to desire.

A Helpful Poverty, A Real Party

Disappointment near dark. One rises, one prays, one does. One reconsidered in light of the narrative I. Oh remember that little lake in Galilee, the one where we talked about our fathers? Also olives.

Also sheep. Certain reminiscences are seeds of helpful poverty, a real party. A quick fox reminded you that words are not unlike numbers, at least one way. Thus, why bother with new? It depends on the meaning of thus.

A little shake, a little nudge. A little glass of cold milk mistaken for blue. I am a victim of a certain type of heart but not another. I am always surprised that people are not nicer. Still.

But what does one expect after years of prayer, years of making rosary beads with their teeth? How busy we have become, and how transient. For example, the mail lay stacked on the floor, disregarded for seven days. Is there not another way? You tell me, you Freudian speed trap with bangles.

A Pretty Melody Cast Into Space

One cannot be both a witty primate and a diminutive marsupial. What is it exactly that Lazarus says? The record of attestation grows thin, even marginal. Yet to raise one's voice in song - a pretty melody cast into space - feels precisely generous. Who is the you when I say You and I?

Do or die! He wrote, being entertained by dreams of clocks alternately sinking to the sea's bottom or being jettisoned into space. Thus time passes. Yet the words - what we might call product - remained. Thus, self-destructive utterances.

Thought will not suffice to undo thought! Nor can a fifteenth century King teach us anything about healing the effects of adultery. You will gather your will and appear at the barricades by dawn. Easter is as Easter forgives. A whole afternoon passes like moss on the south side of a favorite maple.

Even the distressed eventually come to rest. I notice that we (subtly) take pride in not sleeping. One does not die so much as admit to a writ of repossession. Oh you and your many excuses! I forgot what the last line was going to be but this one is a killer.

Dreams Grovel

And then sometimes not. But never without malice, or at least not entirely. As one adores this sound but not another. You can't think your way out of thought, nor write your way past language. Thus the mail.

Thus some systems are merely deficient while others fail outright. Rhyme being one example. Bob Dylan concerts in the mid-1980s. We walked through the parking lot holding hands delighted with the present moment. Faking poetry, before one cut their teeth on experience.

So you want to reconfigure your personal settings? No nonsense meditation only. He did not cut off his hand to signify the gravity of his longing but he is certainly descended from men who did. Oh for Christ's sake must we hear again that old canard about undying love? Once more, with emphasis.

Once more in Memphis, rendering new Mobile. What works is not in dispute yet somehow remains hidden. A lilac, a heart attack and also a bus. We wait and wait and for what? Dreams grovel where footsteps end.

Sometimes Emptied

Ah, 5 a.m., you know just what my vulnerability is. Tea with maple syrup, memories of second grade. I've been on my knees so long I forgot I had feet. Thus, prayer. Thus shame.

This shame. Or rather a particular memory which, upon recollection, makes one sad. Yet grateful? Well, living in a world of emoticons makes me sad, I can say that without compromise. On the other's hand . . .

And yet and yet. I argue with you while you sleep in the next room and then wonder what the next year is going to bring. Sometimes the twenty sentences aren't fun so much as familiar. Exactly the way "um" fits so well in so many conversations. I am the previous installation!

But somehow Jesus gets through. Oh, how I love saying "heaven" to scientists! So we are sometimes emptied of our natural inclination to peace, so what? There's always tomorrow (always more sorrow). There's always a skull that's happy with craters.

You Can Still Dream The Dream

Tides, perhaps. Some interior dismantling that may ultimately be favorable. Apostolic? After a long time talking, one begins to understand silence. One begins to see beyond what the physical eye can see.

Or crosses a bridge, where before they had turned back. Turned inward? There are so many ways to fall and be forgotten! Yet tears eventually come, fructive and cleansing. And Thomas a Kempis, after what seemed like many dry years.

Like the dark which in fact does own certain qualities opposed to light. It's poetry but it's also work. Spiritual problems demand spiritual solutions, do they not? Little stones, removed from one's shoe to make the walk easier, are dropped by the road to inhibit other walkers. So not all models are created equal.

What - or who - is other? He wrote he wrote. He was always writing and thus approached - and then crossed - the boundaries implied by - sustained by, really - language. As in, please keep your troubled lens to yourself. I'm awake at hours - I'm slipping through prayers - so you can still dream the dream.