A Little Poem During a Cold Spring

Posted on March 31, 2008
Filed Under Personal, Poetry, River Notes |

Poetics

Here is the world.
It’s a cold place &
There’s not much
you can do with it–
a little shaping or
arranging around
the edges. Pattern
emerges through
accretion of detail.
Denote. Until light
clobbers you hard
in the face, a salt
wave stirred full
of sand & knocks
you off your feet
& nearly drowns
you in the actual.
The world is heavy
it turns out. Hard
with denotations.
You come up sput-
tering. At least I do.

Comments

5 Responses to “A Little Poem During a Cold Spring”

Peter on April 1st, 2008 10:02 am

POETICS

I could feel you
in every part of my body
in those first days
when I was alone or
with other people
so much so I wondered
if they couldn’t feel
you too the loud
blood or sudden
hand reaching for
something not there
as if part of you
wanted them to see
how much you loved me.
chris robinson on April 2nd, 2008 10:51 am

I know all about waves of salt and sand. Beautiful line and poem. There comes a day, usually in May, when I step out and feel the warmth and smell the fertility (however nascent)and understand that winter is hard.
edward mycue on April 6th, 2008 12:12 am

SOMETHING INHERES IN THE MARIGOLD
(A POEM IN 12 PARTS: 1. AFTER TIME IS RIPE,
2. ELEVATED FROM WATER, 3. BRICKS,
SWOLLEN CHILD, 4. INDIGNATION HAS NO
SUBJECT, 5. AUTUMN LEAVES, 6. KNOWING
NOT, QUESTIONING NOT, 7. SO WHAT,
8. BEING, BECOMING, 9. OCTOBER SURFACES,
10. FINGERING FEELING, 11. STUDY
REFUTATIONS, 12. FORM IS FUTURE’S)

1. After Time Is Ripe
After time is ripe it is banished.
Root did not come down.
Nuclear swords, dialectic knots
hang over camps of candidates
for Alexander’s shoes.

Rot eats down,
seasons repeat new crops—
scatter as I read in them.

I stare into futures
for accidents looming
in drifts
in yesterday’s tapestry
swallowing the “not conscious”
–Greece, Cathay, constraints
of Leviticus, Darwin’s determinisms—
fraying from the Amazon’s mouth.

So yet, still yet
where I exist
is space
is something
in root time
gnawing into now
after time is ripe vanished.

I change my clothes.

2. Elevated From Water
Elevated from water
paleethnologic suns suffer.

Ordinary, extraodinary
everybody plays
clay sex, hunger stone,
hostile roles manured to loam.

Blood victims stomach within
entailed cities of blind spirit
urine-daubed on old Spinoza’s wall.

Coffled evolution’s felt a torture chute.

Players, played-upon
working hot from cold floor
screech to Bergson’s will acts.

So yet, still yet
where I exist
is space
is something
in root time
gnawing into now
after art is ripe vanished.

“Of” is “from’s” motive.

3. Bricks, Swollen Child
Bricks, swollen child
queer
coats,
hat in outrageous colors
recreating
meaning
from repeating loops
of changes
is coral clock,
common
Tradition.

So yet, still yet
where I exist
is space
is something
in root time
gnawing into now
after art is ripe vanished.

Let grey alder be unkind, scatter.

4. Indignation Has No Subject
Indignation has no subject,
that vise is hinged,
buried in bone duct:
an “nothing” will give back.

Has ash intention
against vicious frost
against fragile forgetfulness
of Kahns?

When forcing, dilating,
beating intelligence past
nature’s width—
foreigner
around the corner—
I feel old, used,
think nothing inheres
in the marigold.
Comes Spring,
transposing both stranger, the strange,
and again
black mirrors, white minutes
turn again again.

So yet, still yet
where I exist
is space
is something
in root time
gnawing into now
after art is ripe vanished.

So I eat
both ghost and machine.

5. Autumn Leaves
Autumn leaves no function to perform.

I do not affirm, am fearful—dumb.

Anxious to break-out
from forced gardens, guessed pleasures,
from sterilized fringes of
hooked heat, ordered storm.

Splintering, bunched stamens
echo rope, ringing noon—
as cunning silk strokes
the emphatic “jug jug”
throbbing into sheaves
over shadows of a concert-hall trill.

So yet, still yet
where I exist
is space
is something
in root time
gnawing into now
after art is ripe vanished.

Nothing seen, nothing unseen.

6. Knowing Not, Questing Not
Knowing not, questioning not,
supposing I exist,
exist am compelled,
what am I afraid of today?

Barbarians are bureaucrats
meeting in public rooms
accented with educated place,

gushing platitudes,
deferring to hydras,
bleeding new herons
that are the signs of difficult times.

So yet, still yet
where I exist
is space
is something
in root time
gnawing into now
after art is ripe vanished.

Ecstatic torments learned in body time.

7. So What
So what, some say:
“In no time IS”:
4th dimension:

pre-

re-

tension:

– is rusting marigold
singing out of stinking shroud,
swirling
into fading lilac
into extensions of old roots
sucking skull soup, flooding
thirsting seas of privilege.

So yet, still yet
where I exist
is space
is something
in root time
gnawing into now
after art is ripe vanished.

The world arrives when it can.

8. Being Becoming
Being Becoming: Essence Existence.

“A” and “”B” : therefore “C”?

And “C” because of “D”—

that “D” precedes “C”?

Stone of abstractions.

Truth smells no meta-
without -physics:
wants its pillar on fire.

So yet, still yet
where I exist
is space
is something
in root time
gnawing into now
after art is ripe vanished.

Visions in camps graze dis-en-hoofed.

9. October Surfaces
October surfaces, seeds slumber,
altering colossal channels.

I sit on Ashbury’s steps.
Who’s child sways
swings
shipping air with her hair
slashing
at Haight’s burning streets?

Words are smoking in leased houses.

Recognized faces remain
to be seen.

So yet, still yet
where I exist
is space
is something
in root time
gnawing into now
after art is ripe, vanished.

What I don’t feel
of dew ‘is’ dew—yet: not.

10. FINGERING FEELING
Fingering feeling isolate
crawl from competence
to impotence—
narrowing reality
to
primal limits
coral velvet—
ideas devolve, mutate: picking
again at blind windows,
recurringly articulate;
burrowing,
still refusing
the subject.

So yet, still yet
where I exist
is space
is something
in root time
gnawing into now
after art is ripe vanished.

Rather settle for the marble overglare.

11. STUDY REFUTATIONS
Study, refutations: all
mental archeology
of common contradictions
is circle, is square, is
continuous.

Without Spring, Summers leap
over shifting
bulky earth,
accumulating,
scaffolding,
weeding in the womb.

So yet, still yet
where I exist
is space
is something
in root time
gnawing into now
after art is ripe vanished.

Each length is measured by a spade and rope.

12. FORM IS FUTURE’S
Form is future’s secret
feet move away with
even as I
am unable to hold our symbol,
entangled in an endless, radiating hope.

After donning the hat, to wear it.

March falls heavy
and the sea swallows
the flowering apple tree.

Sudden access, bridge of light
invade the system with a tonic strike.
Though cargo and a scar of leaf may rust
in shredded veins upon a grave of moss,
brooding exhumes impulse out of mythic stench.

Between no beginning and without an end,
lyric spiraling and the leafing mesh
survives like green shoots in a bowl of dust.

Until pilgrimage into unrecognizable
connective tissue sears far enough,
to move on, over, around
still swim, following desires.

So yet, still yet
where I exist
is space
is something
in root time
gnawing into now
after art is ripe vanished.

It crafts a purpose to defend.

Something inheres in the marigold.

Edward Mycue
mark on April 10th, 2008 10:18 am

you come up scut-

– this very good
mark on April 10th, 2008 10:19 am

sorry; “sput-” of course