I've deleted the three KEYWORDS posts. The impetus for what became 84 short poems spread across 3 sections was described in a September post.  I'm going to see what I can repurpose.  The practice of this art, my art, is messy.  

 

BODIES

 

I open an old notebook and find the scribbled over word BODIES, legible but as if wrapped in looping wire.  This partially obscured word was meant to be the title of a poem – a poem which was never written.  Now, in this moment, I see that title under erasure as an inadvertent poem – one which seems better than whatever might have been created with intention.

 

*

Intention and Address.

Attention in a dress.

*

 

Sometimes I carry myself like a series of almost life size cardboard cutouts stolen from an art house cinema lobby.

I impersonate myself and then shrink from the performance.

I peek out at the world through anxiety loops.

 

*

 

I feel myself to be saturated with invisible ink.

I (crossed out) feel (crossed out) afraid (crossed out) and (crossed out) aroused (crossed out) at (crossed out) the (crossed out) same (crossed out) time (crossed out).

 

*

 

I interrogate myself like a potential lover.

I interrogate myself like a cat licking itself and hawking ungodly hair balls.

I interrogate myself as only an insomniac can.  Sleepless in Kent, Ohio.

 

*

 

My heart beats irregularly.

My circulation (both venous and social) is not what it should be.

I’m too tall and frequently bump my head.

 

*

 

It’s difficult being a patchwork of conflicting desires and drifting attention.  Especially as one ages into invisibility.

The abyss beckons as the ellipsis beckoned.

 

*

 

What is to be done?

It is difficult being anyone.

Even the Tyrant shivers in the teeth of Winter.

Weather is indifferent to one’s entreaties.  As is time.

 

*

 

Everything matters, but everything is exhausting.

 

*

 

Beginning over again.  Over and over again.  Continuity and discontinuity.  Parts and Other Pieces.  My life in poetry.

 

*

 

Are you sure?

Are you lachrymose?

 

Are you a boy?

Are you a churl?

 

Are you generous?

Are you sui generis

 

Are you somebody?

Are you you?

 

*

 

Am I off track?  Am I getting my way?  Am I getting in my way?

 

*

 

Liminal and libidinal are not just near homophones.  They refer to crossover states of being.

 

*

 

I (crossed out) feel (crossed out) afraid (crossed out) and (crossed out) aroused (crossed out) at (crossed out) the (crossed out) same (crossed out) time (crossed out).

 

I and you: interchangeable.

Sadly, everyone’s replaceable.

 

*

 

Feeling profoundly unsettled.  Yet, not wanting to turn away from this particular moment.

 

*

 

Noting what’s missing.  Following proverbial breadcrumbs … deep into the present.

Everything is unfinished.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

   

 

 

 Am 

I an

Archaeologist of Moaning?

 

Construals

 

Ways in which

One moves

In space

And comes

To feel

Misunderstood.

 

 Ways that

One looks

At some thing

Or things

And thinks

What the fuck

But then looks

Again seized by

Something new.

 

Ways that

Experience is

Disfigured

In hindsight.

 

Ways in which

Being touched

Alters

One’s borders.

 

Ways in which

Others

Change everything.

 

 

 I'm trying to find my way out of some sucky kinds of stuckness.

 I've a backlog of good, uncollected work, but no book prospects.  After a few years of frustration I'm no longer sending things out.  I'm 72 years old.  Maybe my season has passed.

I have, in fact, destroyed a lot of work recently.  So it goes, as Vonnegut used to say.

I'm spending time in notebooks trying to shake something loose.  Keywords is what's going now.

The first Keywords appears below.  It may get repurposed or trashed.  I don't know.  Am currently at work on a second installment.  The same qualifications apply.

Each "Keywords" is a constellation of word prompts and responses. There was no conscious plan beyond that.  I was creating homework for myself.  I made a list of words which have resonance for me and attempted responses to them. 

The armature is alphabetic but the composition was not linear. 

 Journal Entry

The need to

write down

more of

my off-moment

liminal thoughts,

recognitions,

misperceptions.

The need to find

some flow,

but not go

unedited.

I crave beginnings

that continue

to begin.

I want to

straddle thresholds

like time zones

and lovers.

I'm a filter

that can be

overwhelmed,

but that's

not without

interest.

I'm often 

overwhelmed.

I'm

a

poet.

Sometimes I'm

sadly

inattentive.

I'm an

anxious person

prone to

stage fright.

Given to

anxiety loops

in the middle

of the night.

I'm old

and

feeling it.

Thing is

song in my

head's

a kind of

static cling.

Ding-dong sticks,

dig?

Don't entirely

want

to know

what's going

to happen

next.

Don't exactly

get

what's happening

now.

That said,

two uncertainties

make for

terrible rhymes.

One lives

in a mulch

of thoughts,

misrecognitions,

perceptions

and felt

experience.

Uncurtainty,

bad circuitry.

I don't know.

An ecology

of mistakes.

 Chord shapes

I saw

but could not

make.

The beauty

of scratching

fretboards,

                  practicing.

 Haunts

What haunts me?

All my fuck-ups,

for sure.  The list

is long.

I feel, though,

ghosted

by myself --

cocooning unbeknownst

in sticky webs

of intuition, sensation,

perception and

affect.

What do I haunt

(if not myself)?

From the Sex Lives of Philosophers 

The Big Bang

and subsequent

smaller bangs

are expressed

in a flood

of zeros

and ones.

This makes

Leibniz hard.

 

maidman

waylaid

  gainsaid 

TUMBLEBEE

STUMBLEBEE 

RUMBLEBEE 

MUMBLEBEE

FUMBLEBEE

DUMBBELLBEE

CRUMBLEBEE

 

Number*

 

Paint-by-

numbers (number

 

than one

should be)

 

and out-

of-order. 

 

A sleeping bee

dreams of France.

 

*

 

False starts.

 

1, 2, C . . .

A, B, 3 . . .

 

Alphanumeric stainzas

color everything.

 

One is composed

and decomposed

 

in sequences

of wash.

 

*

 

The buzz

is uncertain. 

 

Our body

seems to

be another. 

 

What if

we pretend? 

 

Don’t call

it anything –

nada, rien.

 

*

 

*Hard and soft bees.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 Enthusiasm Couplet

My enthusiasm for orgasms continues apace.

My enthusiasm for death with a big D remains negligible.