unobserved verginity

how lucky are the green stars
 beyond our sight
singing their own songs
still
unbound by
 names we give them
  blindly

I said goodnight but remained

fear is like a stone
what a stone is
not a thing
but observable
a part of gravity
 in that around it we fall
  part of time
   meteorites and melted stars
  things we're told of and say "we know"
 as the gods
we know their names which we have learned
but before we learned their names
 they were larger
  they held the space beyond the edge
   we filter out
    to see

fear is
 our friend
  in the lion's thicket
   and we hold it too long
    the wrong talisman
     when the new gasses have begun to burn
 
we call our fear love
 I've seen you do so
  and I've learned to follow

   that stone
 which is
 beyond our presence
  is

  snow will fall
   whether we love or no
  whither you go
 or i

   the snow has held the memory
  or foxes feet
 and rabbits                                                       jump
 creatures I don't see pass in the old hours
  but pass the same
   as white as a plaster cast
    as though
     the memory of rabbits
      fell by flakes                                                         fall
       from the moon


     that stone
    which has been so many known things                           change
   and was
  before knowing                                                                              death

                                                                                                                      become
      Maya
    Munnin
  Moon
                                                              memory
the space between                                  without      
the source                                                the brilliant web
and the reflection                                    of wordmaking
where light is invisible                           the charted stars
as though it were dark                           before birth

Dry Clay - edit and questions - mar 26 2012 -

Should you look for me
try the house we built
of photographs
and sex
the bricks of our days
who now resides
within
may know

---




if you should look for me
Try visiting the little house
  we built
of sex and photographs
Before we learned to build with stone


--

?why the capital T and B?
 ?does "visiting" belong? or "little".
  ?what about the ambiguity of "should you"
?what is the significance of building with stone? of preceding it?
?what are sex and photographs? things that are other things? moments which can't be captured and captures which are not moments? snapshots of larger experience. landmarks.


Should you look for me
Try the house
we built
of sex and photographs
the stones of our days
who lives there now
may know my new country

--
?country?
 "where I've gone" my first impulse but it's an ugly cadence.
?"may know", full stop?

Should you look for me
 try the house we built
of photographs and sex -
 the stones? of our days
  (or bricks, old clays)
who lives there now
may know



Should you look for me
 try the house we built
of photographs
and sex: the bricks
(dry clays)
of our days
who now resides
within
may know


--

there's something snide
in "now resides"

and the clay and day are bitter in their nursery sound but do bricks need explanation (but then he slipped it in the title)

--

Should you look for me
try the house we built
of photographs
and sex
the bricks of our days
who now resides
within
may know

--

on seeing a plane in a starless sky

one red star
 a roving mars

the only light
 in an ink black
  dismal night

   though told we live
  with wonders -



 I have
 doubts

  squatting low
  on the rocks
  fearful as ever of
fire

flying machines
 with red tails
  like fishing lures

as unfathomable now
 to our understanding
as in the days of icarus

but now
 even the stars
  have abandoned us

-is rising our only aspiration?

how can we fall
 with no light
  to melt our wings

This morning
With its cars and broken streets and
I don't know
Birds
Fences
People who feel urgent
Disconnected like cut fingers
Instead of waking together
Sleeping together
Singing
Holding together the wailing new day
They let go
And chains of Others
               like mold in soil
      Let us suspect a collective continuance
and alone in our places
 Synchronize sighs

Villanelle

I said “I'll try to write a villanelle.

The work's been slow. I wish I'd not begun.

Having written's joy, but writing's hell.

I barely can remember how to spell

these words. I thought I was John Donne;

I said “I'll try to write a villanelle”

I'm terrible at this, I feel unwell.

My tercets are unraveling one by one.

Having written's joy, but writing's hell

Perhaps I could quit now, and never tell.

I never did announce to anyone,

I said “I'll try to write a villanelle,

I hear, I think, a distant tolling bell:

is it for me? I wish I had a gun...

Having written's joy but writing's hell

I may let out a strangled desperate yell

If ever I can get this damn thing done.

I said “I'll try to write a villanelle.”

Having written's joy, but writing's hell.