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 -