philly drowning

I


All night

The rain's been making rivers

drowning men in

schyulkyll

passyunk

moyamensing

conshohocken

streets that were

people who shouted

like the staggering man

shirtless muscle yelling

"aaagggh" and "aaaaaaagh"

feet pounding concrete to let the earth know

he is coming and his voice

intent

but still

he falls face down on Washington

shirt in hand

the water rising fast

perhaps that's why

the cops won't stop their boats for him

but sail on

as he resumes his lurching run

south Broad, he leans on

trashbins
cars
lamposts sometimes
the sidewalk

and a man across the river sits
arms on his knees
below the bus stop sign
and
speculates

"maybe drugs"
he owns the grocery
he points
today a woman entered
"crazy"
bared her breasts
for everyone to see

he shakes his head
the runner's in a push up stance
but trying not to fall

on his left arm
a plastic band is white

with lamps
and the moon full searchlight - will it find him
under
racing clouds
like they have somewhere to be.

He'll charge as far as Tasker
then
who knows


II

the water's seeped
into my shoes
the socks are extra skin
and now
my pulse
is in my shirt

shoelaces
and shirt buttons
are prison bars

in the frenzy to strip

clinging pants
t-shirt
briefs
I

hurl them from my bed
the wall keeps them too close

it's not enough
with only skin

i'm still
not near as naked
as I need to be

III

he shouted "cuz", "hey cuz"
and wanted dollars
coins
whatever
he had walked
he said, from the Northeast
and his trashbag armour
reflected everything

IV

I bent
in the light of passing cabs
to tie my shoe
remembering
the desperate importance
that my shoe be tied
by father,
for me
while I watched.
but that was day
and he had darker hair
and i was not so haunted
that the river would seem inviting
when the rain had made it wide
and dark and full of secret
things

V

sometimes
cabs will slow
and honk

"Teruah" blasts

all night
at 24th and south
the residents
of that corner apartment
hear
beep beep beep beep beep beep beep beep beep
and know who's coming from the bridge

VI


"Manayunk": The roaring water.
all the rivers high, this year.
This wet september, with the hidden sun.
And west to east: the pines; the cedar bogs; the beaches
with long grass, pipers, crabs; the tiding sea
our sea, our salty sea
waves singing to the sky
that saw the boats that brought us
dry to shore

socks, shoes, whole sets of clothes laid
sudden on street and walk
like someone had a rapture slowly or all at once or multiples in the joy joy night released and have not come down yet from whoever they were smoking.
The clouds are full of seed and souls
drifting north-northeast to the Atlantic.

Interview

Jacob Russell Rusel Rusell I have always had trouble with double letters especially in names which are always made up and are especially made up like beds in this case.

Jacob Russell (sic?) is a guy in philly who writes a lot more than I do, also he is my dad.

Here is an interview in which he sort of answers questions.

http://starlightphiladelphiapoetry.blogspot.com/2011/08/feature-jacob-russell-spirit-stick.html

the sun above them

Their hair flashed
lightning white like Xanadu
Glowing over floating leaves,
darkening to residue
Fish below
and turtles, in the day.
A boat ride over choppy water:
Always, facing so much beauty,
comes the urge to swim.

Callispock maloon

Tch Pardo. Illim go floo neezis.
Thegree milann istok l'bor,
strino walum.
argh. pik biddy tin roasting mallow.
stick lyth bythy bin bulgogi,
welsh hills arthur barbeque.
and then?
the grim halloo.
the what.
the who.
wide eyed haroo.
I meant:
"it's new?"

the rosebud
remembering winter
protects the flower
by staying closed

Who you see is who you've seen, and where is where you've been.

That bitter old surprise:

that

each face coloring the bar

twins one

moved to another city

or served your father in his hospital bed

or stopped your calls

or lay with you naked and

promising

all

vanished
in magician's smoke

to be forgotten

remembered

doubted

seen again in 20 streets,

the strangers with that hair

jaw

voice

the shape of her

until

your grail's

the small curve of knee

the tilt of neck

the rarity

the new you can not quick.

until.

how was I lost

once as a child I lost my way on the short walk home from school.
dismayed that I was passing the wrong trees,
I wept, afraid.

now I can not trace your silhouette in the empty bed,
but I have learned to know you are missing:

my hands can not find what they've forgotten.

I studied the maps of your skin and ceiling,
but was perennially surprised by the length of your hair;
the roughness of the plaster;
the warm give of your body;
the many unremembered shadows.

halahala

In your presence,

I leave unsaid the words

you'd take as poison

it burns my throat

And I am turned blue by keeping silent

but at least

you can bear to see me

even if

i die a bit

with every swallow.

something new: a de-fenition.

Calumny.

Inability to remember the correct date or day.

Stiff legged in the morning.

Early morning stiff legged inability to remember the correct day or date.

Calumny.

Silence in selection, or the ramble

There's not much I imagine is interesting about the process.

That is to say. I have an obsession with the process. Any "the process". The routes to creation.

But that obsession, that interest, is a selfish one. It doesn't, I don't think, carry to the audience.

Posting strings of unfinished efluvia, posting the process, what is it but self indulgent? A burden on the reader?

And but.. also however...

Have I more to offer? Is ever I finished? (In Pogo parlance)

So I write, to keep the flow, to keep the pace, to keep a routine, and let go the know that what I share is halfs, is balderdash digestion in the tripe of my mind, is cud, is offal, is pains and placenta...

There's a moon up there. Past full now. Near full a day or two ago. A whole disc. And 7 billion human eyes beneath to see. And if 1 of 1000 examine it with more than a passing eye, then, in one day, 7,000,000,000... -000 = 7,000,000 examining and contemplating and reworking...

700 songs is not so much to guess. 700 moon songs a day. What harmony!

No jump I make will reach that moon.

Someone somewhere is dying with the moon in view.

The moon sees the one I love.

There's a rabbit in it, and a man, and a spider.

And it's cheese. And gold. And hard rock dusty cosmic floating.

A reminder - a thing we all can grasp at without touching.

An ancient constant, over Rome, over Mycenae, over Egypt, over the Hun, over Lucy... that first fish saw the moon.

And the children we'll never know.

To reach it then. To stand there.

That giant leap.

How heartbreaking. To have been the first, and known, below, the bones of those who lay unreachably grasping.

The long fall... We can fall from moon to earth. We've done it, if he is we.

And so? Lucifer falling. The angels hurling mountains.

The celestial choir.

And the cheese mold grows and wanes. The rind of the moon makes pungent the stock.

The necklace of the moon wows suitors.

The gown of the moon holds off fathers.

The howl at the moon is the wild call.

The moon-eyed lover can not but someday reach their love. For the moon is not so far.

We'll hold our love some day. In moon-grasp.

And be loved.

And whirling dust we'll be.

And all the whirling dust, of the red and yellow clouds,the nebulae, the starstuff and the planetary punctuation, is loved, has been loved, will be loved, as we know it.

In the beginning.

And in the disparation.

Love the process.

Love.

Some vague explanadors. A post only 1/10th worth the pains.

Reality filtered through one channel? The concrete-physical, the physical-fluid, the fluid-intangible, the intended-physical, the intangible-immutable...

Memory of other words: "The readiness is all". Those words and their weight, close-linked-direct: "If it be not now" and close-linked-implied "We die eventually" or "seize that knowing and be fully".

The direct-linked-extended "To be or not to be" "Shall I compare thee to a" "Who's there (knock knock)". And ~implied "poetical; dramatical; old; respected; searching; universal; "tragical-historical, historical-pastoral"

Meaning folds and self-describes.

I sit. The seat is soft, the sitting comfortable, the will to move waxes and wanes, the moon waxes and wanes, the moon cyclical my rest cyclical.. Songs, poems, images of the moon, "I see the moon and the moon sees me/under the leaves of the old oak tree".

Concrete. I sit, I process. I process physical sense, and I process memory, and the memory informs the sense, and there's too much to it, but the words make it one thing. All one channel. Word-funneling. Homogenization. Which suggests without implying pasteurization, to most of my readers (plural, hah!). But not to some. Culture.

What's in the choice I've made, to usually disregard the distinctions?

This is as yet an unformed question, or a nebulous one, and answers are likely to be same if present.

But the question may yet be formed and asked.

Here's another attempt, or angle:

In living, I operate on one channel. One decision-set. Presented with endless decision-trees, my path can always be traced along one line.

But I'm not guided on that path by physical stimuli. Barely if at all. I've got story mucking it up. The story of who I've been in habit, and of who I should have been in regret, and of who I should yet be in hope, and of who I should perfectly be in story. Dennis Potter's Singing Detective narrates "never apologize, never explain" as some macho tag tossed off by a Titled European, and the narration's delivered bitter, but I took it somewhere as solid, and it echoes when I choose my way. Yoking the ox to my plow, I might at best avoid decisions requiring apology, knowing I'll hate the taste on delivery.

What is this ox? Paul Bunyan had Blue.

Davy Crocket knew every tree.

As a kid I heard the Davy Crocket song "Born on a mountaintop in Tennessee, raised in the woods so he knew every tree".

And then "Killed in a bar when he was only three".

And I took the line at its face. The man was killed. In a BAR. At three years old.

And then he went on to do all the rest of his life's work.

Bad-ass beyond bad-ass.

Most people aren't killed in bars, you figure, till their teens or later.

And none of them, it occurs to me in hindsight, though not to my childhood ears, went on to do so much after.

Absurdity and misunderstanding lead new directions.

Spin round, till you fall.

Spin round till you come to the place just right.

Whirl.

The absurd has been a friend.

I read a bit on another site tonight. And was reminded that nonsense is in me.

The overlap I disdain to make coherent - I have another impulse than poetry, or transmission of single-channel reality made from multi-channel input.

I just like nonsense.

I like the garbling. There's value there.

Opening neglected channels. The captain can dream through the black.

I dreamt this morning. In a room in a wood cabin, I was told going to Warp (star trek style) was possible. But it would undo personal histories. Without the stability of a ship, no one going to warp would ever have had a childhood.

How perfect that Tibetan Buddhists have ancient scrolls wherein are laid designs for spaceships for fighting invaders.

Of course they didn't build them, if they couldn't solve the history problem.

Roaches stumble drunkenly when left alone, but dash straight-quick when prodded.

My meaning too will straighten if given the note.

Till then six legs take my waterbug words peregrinating in an inebriated spiral.

When the wind is southerly, I know a hawk from a handsaw.

Pickled moon.

Front step house with pickled cucumber and moon. Moon full or near it and pickle half sour too large hollow middle. I put the moon in the little hollow of the pickle. Like the thumbnail. Green at edges. Neighbors talking socialism and needs of the world "not jazz"... "light a fire". Thurber's princess took the moon on a chain.  I'm mulling a post. Fountains, connectedness, memory, impermanence, joy. The usual themes. Streetlight dims the moon, there's a thought in there: the bright and beautiful  dimmed behind the glaring glow. Thurber and Baum wrote tales of the moon. Dahl too, and Dodgeson. Pickle almost gone. Who writes tales of the pickle jar? Think of it, cucumbers bobbing in barrel brine, the splash bringing one out with tongs. Maybe a  clear plastic lid to lift, the lid and barrel moon-round... Salt-acid smell. Juice dripping. Crunch. Plenty of story to tell. A pickle bought as a treat. Dropped. Moon sinking past rooftops. Neighbors behind doors. Love departed. Four air conditioners hum their barbershop. "Childhood lost. New green promise. Seeds. Tomorrow. And tomorrow and. The readiness is. Wait.

What will lay us low?

Some editing difficulties.

First the image of the text in the layout I wanted, then the text.

You can click on the image to see it large enough to read.

See my comment on the post for an explanation of my intent with the layout.

Waking

confused by the break of one world and another

all our objects without context

We might choose the butterfly

or

sudden trauma

gasping like fish

while our bodies

cease function

or

disengagement

our bodies strong

while we forget them

or resent them

all the parts of us are barely linked to will

and fingers may grasp for food while the thoughts eat dust

and what will lay us low?

today and in the coming days, and all the days

and at the moments of our individual ends

which moments are the making of collective ending

our hives and tribes and planetary organs

what will it be

which consequence of thought or action or of stillness

might cast us beneath those sands

over whose grains and composite body tread, even now,

the feet of the spirits of observers unborn:

the ghosts who haunt us most faithfully,

who will remember "Who will remember"

as we walk under arches of broken Rome

or Pueblo Grande

as we pore on our own archaeologies, letters boxed and booked,

we inhabiting as in dreams as in possession as in haunting

those ghosts who we haunted

when they cast us

in their own prayers

and we answer them

too late

as we will be answered

or unanswered

and knowing this -

Lyric fragment

My legs move up and down / my spokes spin round / I hear a sound / I find the noise / it is my voice / I'm calling out your name / again.

The innards of the clock.

Here are words, and the words that made them. I don't love the words, but I do love the process that stirs them up... and it isn't for me to love, anyway.

I left a bar tonight. As I left, the shades were being lowered - brown venetian blinds. Where the blinds were still raised I could see the bar, a woman, tall and pretty, there talking.
The sensation of it - standing in the cooling quiet street, unlocking my bicycle, ears still popping from the noise of the place... watching inside, a woman's mouth moving over words I couldn't hear. And even that mystery in turn hidden by the dropping blinds. Cut off and cut off again, and let loose on the streets alone, but knowing inside, it was happening.
Around the corner from the bar, a bright green light shone outside a door. All the associations of green came to me, the traffic signal, the joke about green blond women's lipstick, the green of a lawn, the child's game of green and red light, running...
but none of those associations fit. The green was an accident, the light lit a dark closed house. The signal was not for me, racing past. I thought of invitation, of open and closed spaces, I remembered what lay ahead... a rowhouse on Morris st, the second floor always lit, no shades ever drawn. Inside, an oversized stuffed bear, and a painting of the Virgin Mary, a halo round her heart, her hands open to the viewer... nothing concealed.
Again the invitation, but through a private home. An accident, a crossed signal.
The words swirling.

That window is the central theme. Glass, clear, showing and hiding, darkened, lit...


In the crowded pub her lips form words that shatter on
the glass that frames her face.
The dropping blinds obscure her.
The angel approaches.
What doors have blood?
Those children in their beds behind dark windows
cannot know he passes,
counting.
First house has a green bulb shining.
Door fast against the cooling night,
eyes closed, the invitation's cold.
The angel smells no copper:
He'll visit there.
And here? This house hides nothing, night or day.
The virgin holds her heart in light,
her words through the window
are always: "take".
She knows the angel
and the lamb.
Her tears, and the beer, and the spin of the bicycle, and all the revelry behind closed doors
won't stop the night from ending.

He thought the taste of her was baywater.

3am 4/5/11

"Haven't you"?
She sat on a concrete barrier. Gravel and grass beneath. Apartments ahead, and the asphalt lot, and trees and the houses and a small cat observing.
"So weird", he repeated himself, caught in a loop, unable to remember her, hoping she would stay, making himself heard against the roar of his pointless history.
"You said that".
"So weird"
She lived there years ago, he in the house.
The cat lost interest.
He, fumbling at her body.
She unaware spoke of the shows they watched.
He remembered kissing her, first time.
She wandered off. Maybe to a marriage, or employment.
He couldn't pass her father, wide and angry, so he wept in bed.
She passed him in the street and would not stop.
He thought the taste of her was baywater.
He thought she was a hundred other women.
He held her body like it was another body, he could not find her,
so she kicked at stones, and fell a thousand gravities away.
She had twelve children, married twice, kissed goodbye her grandmother.
He stumbled drunk and said "so weird" and could not remember how to open
the kitchen cabinet.




4:43pm 4/5/11

"Haven't you"?
She sat on a concrete barrier. Gravel and grass beneath. Apartments ahead, and the asphalt lot, and trees and the houses and a small cat observing.
"So weird". He repeated himself, caught in a loop, unable to remember her, hoping she would stay, making himself heard against the roar of his pointless history.
She, unaware he'd lost her, spoke of shows they'd watched.
"So weird".
"You said that".
She lived years ago, he in the house.
The cat lost interest.
He, fumbling at her body.
He remembered kissing her, first time.
She wandered off. Maybe to a marriage, or employment.
He couldn't pass her father, wide and angry, so he wept in bed.
She passed him in the street and would not stop.
He thought the taste of her was baywater.
He thought she was a hundred other women.
He held her body like it was another body, he could not find her,
so she kicked at stones, and fell away, a thousand gravities.
She had twelve children, married twice, kissed goodbye her grandmother.
He stumbled drunk and said "so weird" and could not remember how to open
the kitchen cabinet.

In the beginning

When I created this space, I subtitled it "Writing. Practiced." Unfortunately, I let myself be intimidated into silent non-practice by my own first post, which took many, many hours of fevered research, rumination and writing to produce, and which all-told I really liked.

But writing avoided isn't writing practiced at all.

Few of my friends will sing. They fear their own voices, or hate their own voices if those are different. They compare their own sound to the sound of an ideal, whichever sound they love. And this love destroys their voice and cripples them to silence. I argue, sometimes, that singing is for singing's sake. That the act of it is the beauty, and not the result, not the sound.

So with writing. So with any composure of the Tovu-V'Vohu into light, and time, and order.