"As we go on living..."

.

As we go on living
moving further away
from the zone where names are distinct
or slinking

like night animals
of interior vision

between memory
and oblivion

recapturing spaces
we pass unconscious
from intermediate names
to gradual


struggling from absolute
reality to subject
subject to reality
struggling from absolute

to gradual

from intermediate names
we pass unconscious
recapturing space

and oblivion

between memory
of interior vision
like night animals


or slinking

from the zone where names are distinct
moving further away
as we go on living

Binturong (Arctictis binturong): photo by Tassilo Rau, 2004
Honey badger or Ratel (Mellivora capensis): photo by Joshua O, 2007

Postconceptualism (Water Version)

.

I like breathing better than wireless ideation
But strange is the human meat
When it is ripped out of the sky
And arrows are shot into it

Nothing is personal then
And everything is true
Including love's great circumambience
And the skull in the mirror

The mortal intimation
Of souls of beings long since lost
In a forgotten past
And the deep pink nescience

Of the thought evacuated tissue
Glaring back at you
Through the empty eyeholes
In the mask

A Dead Shark Isn't Art: photo by Charles Thomson, 2003
The Physical Impossibility of Death in the Mind of Someone Living (Tiger shark in formadehyde solution): Damien Hirst, 1992 (Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York)

Thinking About George

.

for George Schneeman 1934-2009

Thinking about George in
January in California
The sinking sun lights a few late
Streamers of cloud with faint blooms
Like the distant inklings of
All one remembers

Under the bare plum tree
A white cat sleeps on a chair
And squirrels chitter in the ivy
Audible for once in the vacuum
Created by traffic's absence
All one remembers

Returns in a moment and
George is present in the mind
And we are alive in the light moving
Into the darkness of all that is lost
To fill the emptiness of the day with
All one remembers

Dal Moro: George Schneeman, 2003 (Cue Foundation)
Wheat Field: George Schneeman, 2003 (Cue Foundation)

Divine Dancers

.

for Edwin Denby

“The angels standing

two or three feet away

terrify,”

Edwin said

The Great Ones

when they sweep

across our sphere

of the universe

move

in a state of

presque vu --

almost seen

in the phantom

motion

of a curtain

stirred by no breeze --

hovering

behind a screen

waiting there

to manifest themselves

Hummingbird in Golden Gate Park #14: photo by Mila Zinkova, 2009

Hummingbird in Golden Gate Park #11: photo by Mila Zinkova, 2009

Glassitude

.

Silence is a distillate of noise.

Beneath the traffic hum and whoosh a tiny

Island of quiet is deposited

An oasis of reflection leached out

Of a symphony of power saws

The mechanical tools of human convenience.

Whereas:

In the universe of glass I dream

(Which is actually made of icy words)

The glass boat that floats in

A glass pool to the musical

Silence of a glass étude…

Is absolutely unheard.

Cobalt blue sea glass bottle top: photo by Swampyank, 2009

Libyan Desert Glass (impact glass found in Great Sand Sea): photo by H. Raab, 2006

Fractured Karma

.

Early morning light archery off a far boom shore

Thrust bellies to air fool moon’s plum shades awaken

Beneath them voice and ghost curve away to ocean deeps

In the hollow bowl of the drum of the body

Moon pictures propped on the morning gestalt

A plum gray flood of light de Kooning would have killed for

Its full Rig Veda morning alarm glow rising

Like water bubbles into a drowner’s mouth

Dawn over Mekong (Chiang Khong, Thailand): photo by Ondrej Zvácek, 2007

Antibubbles: photo by Julien Costard, 2008

Contraction

.

My heart, then, though small, was full -- having caught
In summer through the fractured wall a glimpse
Of daylight, at the thought of where I was
I gladdened more than if I had beheld
Before me some bright cavern of Romance,
Or than we do, when on our beds we lie
At night, in warmth, when rains are beating hard,
The radio playing -- a distant ballgame
In some city we've never seen, but dreamed,
And then, the rain driving through the night
Silences everything the passing years
Incorporate into their dying bodies,
The way stars dissolve, with long thinking,
Into the harrowed centres of themselves.

Cloud study: John Constable, 1822 (National Gallery of Victoria, Melbourne)
The death of a star: Cygnus Loop supernova shock wave: image by NASA, 2007

Survey Research

.

Night, rain, lamps, man in the street -- what does he want,
And that child he was, his mother wondering
As she stands holding his hand in the rain
What chance of happiness awaits him,
What happens now? I think a bus comes, the town
Simpleton plucks at the grass, all these silent
Faces fill the square, false moons in wet midnight --
The fleet probably already lost, yet no
Talk yet of wrecks of hats found floating,
The bandbox filling up with ghosts, the mothers
And wives who've been through all this before,
Who know the ships will be lost whispering
No warnings to the tiers of shadowy trees,
No rumours of life, no other signs so far.

Shipwreck in low fog at Ocean Beach, San Francisco: photo by Mila Zinkova, 2009
Wreck close to Arrezife, Lanzarote: photo by Gernot Keller, 2008

"First cold winter twilights..."

.

First cold winter twilights despite this
week’s Richmond refinery fire
never more perfect even the
burned and corrupt air stunning
saffron violet orange indigo

becoming blood red as sun descends
with a delayed shudder or retarded
tremor into ocean fire
and night begins to close in
over the whole sky from other
(eastern) end -- a deep blue bowl

or dish inverted convex
glass dome extruded
pyrex lid over boundless
now starless ozone
depleted spaces of end
times -- last hundred years of
human habitation? -- rendering
in view of coming loss
earth in ever more damaged form
ever more beautiful than before

Twilight, bands of cloud above, ripples on sea below: photo by John Bortniak, 2005 (NOAA Photo Library)

Remains of sunset over ocean at onset of twilight: photo by John Bortniak, 2005 (NOAA Photo Library)

Eldora

.

a valley
of aspens
and wild flowers

with the wind
dithering in them

Snowbowl Aspens (Populus tremuloides): photo by Doug Dolde, 2009

Fidelity (Later)

.

Fidelity, after long practice, to
The things that have crossed one's path in life,
Moves one to find "history" in a morning,
A moonlit night, a transitory patch
Of sun upon grass, the turning of a cat's
Sleek head over its shoulder to look back
Into one's eyes, a lifelong lover's touch,
The memory of the shy sweet sidelong
Smile of a friend one may not see again
In "this life"--these things define home
To one now that one lives largely in one's mind--
As though there had ever been any other
Place--once born, once having existed--
In which to somehow locate a world

Because brief hours before fadeout life becomes

A late awakening, much as one assumes
Is the experience of "lost" generations
Whose youth is turned back toward childhood by
Dreams; just so one's own dim youth now at last
Appears a kind of slumber from which the slow
Process of waking took a half century
Or so, as time now opens up its eyes,
Yawns, stretches, struggles in dark to discover
Where it is among whirling things, places, years.
But of course one will never fully emerge
From this fog, nor in one's heart wish to do so,
For mere excursions don't suffice on visits
To dead cities--excavation too's required,
Cries out the hungry unborn poem
Within us, demanding to exist as
If alive

"King Penguin singing": Two King Penguins (Aptenoydes patagonicus patagonicus), South Georgia Island: photo by Lt. Philip Hall, NOAA, 1994-95 (NOAA photo library)
King Penguins (Aptenoydes patagonicus patagonicus), East Falkland Island: photo by Ben Tubby, 2007

The X of the Unknown

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Sweet notes in dimensionless clusters
Eighth notes and fluttering cue balls
And Tibetan gongs in the side pockets
Those are what Charley Johnson heard
When he got his bell rung

He could stand but he could not see
He could hear but he could not talk
He could think but he could not walk
And over his head in the thought balloon
Little birds tweeted

So he continued to stand there
Until they came out and got him
And even then it was hard to lead him off
For he seemed like a man leaving his mind behind him
Somewhere there on the ground

Meteor crater, Arizona: photo by USGS, 2005
Speech balloon, thought balloon, scream balloon (top to bottom): image by EnEdC, 2007

Hardcourt Highlights of 1971

.

Long trek
Through the lost night
In Randy's van
To the Novato High gymnasium

Psyched for the big matchup
With the Wise Streetboys
Of Marin City

I'm bringing the ball upcourt
Like an educated yo-yo

Feeling this rush of power
I shift into overdrive
And dribble the ball
Off my cheapsneakered foot

It spins away wildly to starboard
Where a skinny guy with cornrows
Plucks it out of the air
With sublime nonchalance
And in one motion
Fires it full court
To the sprinting quick releaser
Who glides in for an easy two points

And we succumb 85-47

Well somebody had to lose
And we palefaces always knew
It was going to be us

Later the showers are cold
And you have to walk a long way
Over cold asphalt
To get to them

And then the long ride home
Under speechless starlight
Through the black January night
On the floor of the defeated bus

Early morning view of Novato, Ca. from Big Rock Ridge Trail: photo by Sophisticatedcat, 2008
Hoop and ball: photo by Athens/Clarke County, Ga. Leisure Services, 2009

What Is That Bright Star Next to the Moon Tonight?

.

Out late and looking again to the hazed red urban evening sky for a sign
What is that bright star next to the moon tonight?
Asking myself this among other questions of fleeting consequence
I watched Jupiter the great fluid king of the night
With his rude belching gases and submissive fluctuating moons

His swashbuckling bright streaks flaunted like sans culottes
Boiling firestorm spots and magnetic auroras
Cozying up, it seemed, to the chaste and shying
Waxing gibbous Lady Luna -- seeming so close,
Though in reality far more distant and intense,

With nothing of her ethereal luminous
Silent running beauty, her unearthly milky violet glow --
Challenging her brightness perhaps
Though hardly her pulchritude --
Until my view grew occluded under the constellated neons

Of the Pyramid Ale House

Waxing gibbous moon, with Saturn, Venus and Jupiter: composite photo by Michael Myers, April 28, 2004
Jupiter eclipses (shadows of three of Jupiter's moons in alignment across the planet's face, two of the moons visible): image by NASA/ESA/Erich Karkoschka (U. of Arizona), 2004
Aurora borealis on Jupiter (bright streaks and dots caused by magnetic flux tubes connecting Jupiter to its largest moons, Io, Ganymede and Europa): Hubble Space Telescope UV image by John T. Clarke (U. Michigan)/ESA/NASA, 2000

Moon and Jupiter in conjunction, the two brightest objects in the night sky, October 27, 2009: image from EarthSky

"A child's things speak..." (Joseph Cornell)

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A child's things speak of the shock enigma world forever
star charts movie actresses ballerinas soap-bubble sets

marbles toy birds seen though the magic prism
a child's vision the mind assembling a cosmology
a bricolage of bits of this and bits of that
maps pieces of cloth illustrations in encyclopedias

the child grown alone noting down on scraps
ephemerae envelopes cafeteria napkins slips
of paper inserted into books each particulate
of dream and wanderlust

explorations obsessive quests for the materials
to objectify dreams and then for the systems to order
to contain those objects in assemblages

boxes private universes of buttons movie photos stuffed birds bottles globes corks liqueur glasses elusive texts mystery things

sequins toys feathers spools of thread in the dead season prowling
five and dimes in Flushing and Manhattan an unexpected
"flowering in the teeth of winter" (a Woolworth's window display)

Angels fairies "sylphides" populating "shadow boxes"
windows facing in facing out -- searching for dreamgirl
shop clerks waitresses librarians "sales girls"
"Courtesy Drugs check-out girl -- seen in Food Shop
Piled up hair again -- warm light
brown corduroy slacks, no socks
but the same dreamy docileness remembered
the immense innocence + beauty of expression"

Intense imaginal "relationships" longings mood
swings violent turbulences creative
elations out of nowhere lifting the undisclosed soul
into the clouds in the suburban
back yard

"temoignages" moments of witness to a condition
of sudden grace marked in diaries
by a star as "special signs" the gold threads in the weave
the inexpressibility of life's fleeting moments its transitory
epiphanies a brief shading of light on the side
of a building

the abrupt rising of a flock of birds into the air
a piece of classical music heard on the radio
a face on the bus a brother's smile the odd buoyant
being-alive quality everywhere a rare harmony and calm
as if a dark sky opened suddenly
to reveal with wondrous clarity the constellations he so loved

Dec. 9, 1948 (Wednesday)

the "all over" feeling that makes of the incidental a never ceasing wonder and spectacle of the spiritual

Diary entries from Joseph Cornell's Theater of the Mind

Joseph Cornell boxes:
Cassiopeia 1, c. 1960 (Estate of Joseph Cornell)
Untitled (Soap Bubble set), 1936 (Wadsworth Atheneum, Hartford)
Untitled (Penny Arcade Portrait of Lauren Bacall), 1945-46 (Collection Mr. and Mrs. E. A. Bergman, Chicago)
Untitled (Paul and Virginia), c.1946-48 (Collection Mr. and Mrs. E.A. Bergman, Chicago)
Planet Set, Tête Etoilée, Giuditta Pasta (dédicace), 1950 (Tate Gallery)
Grand Hotel Semiramis, 1956 (The Joseph and Robert Cornell Memorial Foundation)
Untitled (Solar set), c. 1956-58 (Collection Donald Varshan, New York)
Untitled (Pharmacy), c.1943 (Collection Mrs. Marcel Duchamp, Paris)
Untitled (Grand Owl Habitat), c.1946 (Collection Mr. and Mrs. Richard H. Kaplin, Toledo, Ohio)
Toward the Blue Peninsula, c. 1951-52 (Collection Daniel Varenne, Geneva)
Verso of Cassiopeia 1, c. 1960 (Estate of Joseph Cornell)