Itinerary

Spend a year attending to the taste of things
Such as sunsets on a cold morning
or the red of a policeman's gun
or waiting with one's hands empty

At the end of the year ask how tastes an apple
if sharp or blue or like a number

develop sensitivity to sour bliss and smooth hopeful desire and
simple things like gravel underfoot
at the beginning of the road away from home

grow up and throw away your toys
the motor blowers screaming on a sunday morning
hunched clowns puffing their cheeks to move a pile of grass
forgetting how to kick it
put the gas into another rocket maybe
the moon
 for your 75 year old neighbor who doesn't leave her house much
let the grass grow or
cut it with a scythe
keep the computers, tell your aunt
on another continent
you had a tough day
send her photos of the woods
your visit with the neighbor
who pointed out a jack-in-the-pulpit
why not
but
stop screaming
don't buy another rifle
from the back of that comic book
x-ray scope
guaranteed to kill a sleeping
elephant
it's ok
everything is ok
will be ok
you are forgiven
roll in the hay
with everyone
and leave alone
permission
from a mountain of moles
stamping your ok ass good to go
take hands
take lands
some of the crops are for the bugs
some for the sheep
some for you
rum is for special occasions
as are fireworks

education

the presentation of philosophy when I tried college: linear, progressive, foundational, proscripted.
"first learn the greeks; later, the renaissance; later still modernists, so on."

a progression of gates and allowances: you wouldn't understand this yet, first learn what inspired it...

and that isn't wholly wrong- foundations help.

But how about, "here is someone modern and accessible, dynamic and relevant... King, Rohrty, Barthes, whoever... "

read it. when you don't understand something, ask questions, do research, and leave class understanding more than when you came in.   Learning is an endless rabit hole, you'll never fill in all the gaps, just have at it and there you go.

Prismatic holographic education.

I'd have preferred it.

Today I've had an exaltation of errours
lapping blood in the den
exploding grossly
strangling me sans glee sans pity
because it is in her nature to strangle
and exalt in bursting
she has strangled
because it is my nature to err
I have strangled in my bed
my own self
a sort of autoerotic failure
squeezing out the chances
so to joy in the blank unconscious moment
where I explode into
a world without bridges (all burnt)
sans friends
sans cash
sans every tie to yesterday
then, free to bursting
step into the day

Why sleep?

Tomorrow is a charging bull
a coming storm
a terrifying thing.
Hide from it, under blankets, turn off lights
perhaps this time
you can avoid it.

too much is behind
lost
beckett lived when I lived
but never met me
nor wrote me
nor of me nor to me
and his death i missed
in all languages

what is the word for
that
for this
for just lost, recently, not recently, but too recently, too quickly
what wondering
squint for it, the proper word
won't help but
squint
see
other words for
waiting wanting waltzing
dance into songs
some recent
some long
longed for
Ancient Roman songs
all Ancient Rome is gone
but remembered
is it remembered? In a dream of songs.
lost songs hummed in a field
heard by bees
echoing in the earth
in ruined structures
ruined meadows
empty hives

the lenape
still alive
speak umi
now
what words are those
never speak to me
my name
never of me
my name
not here
where I am
where they lived
but here
where I am
and they live

not in my carrot patch
the lenape
the chickasaw
but in this place
many are
and have been
and are gone
and are not gone
this turtle that does not swim
but waits

I have a book of photos
with no names
family I never saw but
can see
who
never saw me
spoke me
did not conceive me
though they did indeed
conceive me
as they wandered like moses
from coast to coast
of this turtle
but never saw paradise

did they shed tears
looking over new lands
Are tears for what's
behind
for wondering?
Where could you have stopped, have stayed
in the desert
ceased wandering
and not missed
so much

so much is just behind
just lost
beckett lived when I lived
but never met me
nor wrote me
and his death i missed
in all languages

what is the word for
that
this
what wondering
squint for it
won't help
squint
see
other words for
waiting wanting waltzing
dance into songs
all recent
even roman songs
lost songs
hummed in a field
even the lenape
still alive
still speak umi
what words are those
but
never speak to me
never my name
not here
where they live
but i live

not in my carrot patch
the lenape
the chickasaw
my great uncle
or any other book of photos
with no names
family i can see
never saw me
wandered like moses
never saw eden

the tears
shed on the mountain
looking over new lands
are tears for what's
behind
where could you have stayed
in the desert
and not missed
so much

acting jokes

It's like our director thought "Waiting for Guffman" was an instructional video.

stupid shit - "the audition"

Thank you for seeing me today, I'll be singing...
I'd just like to take - I know this is frowned on, I'll be brief- just -
this musical means the world to me, it's part of who I am, and I believe, really,
the message, byeond the blood and the cannibalism and the jacobean organ music and the rapes and the burning of live human flesh.. it's all icing -
under all that, is a message of hope and promise - that Sween..
if I may be so bold, that *I*, before succumbing to hopelessness and despair and dying inside,
thus ALLOWING myself to be killed,
before all that I'm truly alive because he believes in his own promise, in his own soul, I affects my will totally on the world because he knows he is beautiful, and he becomes invincible, unkillable, unstoppable, he becomes what he was meant to be, by the strength of his own -
you get it... it's just like it says in the Bible - my favorite book next to the 7 habits of highly effective people,
which really has the same message, both books-
you can do, and BE anything if you refuse to compromise.
So, thanks for hearing that out, I know you're busy, I'll begin...

*deep breath*

Ok, Maestro? *points to accompanist*

music begins.

(singing): Butterfly in the sky...
I can go TWICE as high!
Take a look! It's in a book!
It's a READING RAINBOW!

I can BE ANYTHING...

etc.

Old love likes to nap, and reminisce look up friends, lament the ones who've passed try on new masks it's a special pleasure when the kids call but they usually are busy still it's not all waiting and remembering maybe a tree in the yard needs pruning and maybe you understand better than most what is urgent and what isn't

Rambling about Measure for Measure and natural law

every time I read this play I get more sympathetic to Angelo. He's less a villain than a schmo. Shakes really seems to be painting a man who lacks the power to fight the whims of lust - is Measure a Greek play with Fate played by Cupid?) .  Of course there's Angelo's previous dealings with Mariana, and his willingness to perjure himself and let others suffer in his defense, to keep him in the villain camp.  But he reminds me more of Hamlet's Claudio than of an Iago or Aaron.  He does evil but spends more time expressing guilt and conflict over it than in reveling in his misdeeds.. I know this play can be read as a political critique against Puritan morality in a time when the Theatre itself was under direct attack, but I wonder if there's something to a reading of the play as an exploration of natural forces...  The Natural Law above all expressed through lust and love, the state below becoming sick and corrupt the more it seeks to oppose the natural law.. I don't know what this says bout Duke Vincentio who (if Lucio is entirely false) is somehow above the whims of lust, his "complete breast" impenetrable by the dribbling dart (graphic!) of cupid...  but maybe that a complete philosophical education renders Man harmonious with nature, sort of a zen read? He isn't immune to love's pulls since he eventually proposes to Isabella (who is about to join a convent!), but since, unlike Angelo, the feelings that lead to that proposal never interfere with his execution of duty, and comes at the final scene, maybe it's an illustration of lust successfully sublimated into moral action..

Ukraine

In Ukraine they are dancing in the square
with fire around them
the human chain passes
combustible objects
to feed the flame
tires and boards and fear
while wolves howl
in the darkness
their teeth
like pistols


far away writers say "in this place the people made fires"
"they became cold easily and could not survive as we"
"so they burnt their homes and children"
"they had two heads"



seems silly but
read Herodotus

Objectification done right.

your ass:

I don't want to touch or tap it so much as I want to build a house of it - north of the city overlooking the Delaware, and live in it for 20-30 years 
then take an apartment, sell it for a quarter billion to the state 
as an architectural landmark.

• Smooth (laminar) air flow around blunt obstacles may result in the formation of vorticies (the plural of vortex) that snap off or shed with a characteristic frequency. This process is called vortex shedding and is another means by which sound waves are formed. This is how a whistle or flute produces sound. Aslo the aeolian harp effect of singing power lines and fluttering venetian blinds.

phhheeeeeeew

feeeeee

phweeeeeeeeeee

galway on flute, vivaldi's 4 seasons

i can hear it

even in a vacuum

(quote from physics.info)

This year I spent time searching the road and yard and trees for glimpses of the foxes
twice I saw a large fox standing quite close to the house, across the alley behind, at the edge of the grass. once I saw what looked like two fox pups, chasing a skunk over the awful cement barriers of the parking lot where students practice driving.
Most glimpses were an accident.
Many times I waited, watching, and saw nothing. Many times I failed to wait or watch, while they hunted.
Many times I'll think at 4 am, are they well, will they return, in summer?

great works led to satellites falling round earth

allowing me to whisper to you

miles away

you to hear me

and the same raindrop

to fall on both our ears

why not the same

though it startles me

and you hear music

Now rain is irregular at the windows
freezing on the pear tree like early blossoms
inevitably somewhere a car engine strikes its music - crescendo - decrescendo -
and i want to explain everything: why rain makes me nervous at night
why my words don't ring true on rereading
why i want to escape, or remain

these reasons are fleeting
and when i've said them they seem incomplete - like they are spinning themselves
so i leave them for after

and try to imagine a better way to say complex things, like that the branches of pear I know are new and green seem as dark as the branches which are established,

or a rush of warmth that comes of touching, before there's been time to evaluate plans, or desires, or conscience. Or some simple thing like one rain drop hitting glass with a note which might be G and disappears so quickly

until I stop imagining and listen

what words then

is silence life or death

well...

the wind is whistling through this room
like windows are for presentation
and reminders are necessary: worlds pass..
tempexoraneous
dinosaurs drinking tar
low filter, I have
enough gin to see the truth:
naked ladies walk from one room to another
 but
hey
in the cold we all just want another layer

i dislike my old poems.
mirror light is old light -
the face an old face
someone else, too similar for love
too strange for empathy
the most uncanny valley
better to hurl words
or make faces
out a window
than to store them in an antique chest
and peek in to balk at the mold