Ars Poetica, October 2024

All my worst poems saying I was here

All my best poems, We were here 

Somewhere in between, You were here

 

 

 

Swing, Batter. Swing!

Indistinct Overlapping Chatter

Language as Guilt-Free Operation and Pther Fantasy Literature

Connections Made and Documented

Seasons, Broadly

It’s funny how we’d go to the Keys in August — are thereabouts — year after year with the occasional break between.

And now we’re just back from time in Mount Desert Island and this very week last year were in our way to Nova Scotia.

We hadn’t been to Bar Harbor for like 12 years? And we’d gone what? Two or was it three other times?

Future Islands breakout hit, Seasons (Waiting on You) — the rhythm then the tune then the lyrics as I’ve heard them. 

Seasons change. Seasons change.

But I’ve been waiting on you.

And then the lyrics I’m looking up for the first time and damn there’s a whole lot more going on there even if I’ve heard that song a hundred times, maybe more.

I’m thinking of walking along the road and visiting Thunder Hole, even if it wasn’t the best thundering time and the time before that maybe 12 or 14 years before that that was a better thundering time and what of that I was carrying with me then and carrying with me now.

I’m thinking about how you refer to someone as him in a crowd of hims or her in a crowd of hers and what happens in that moment for those that hear you.

I’m thinking about how it has always felt a little sad to me when you color up at a poker table — and how this connects for me to everything I saw up close with dementia.

It’s Sunday morning in Baltimore.

I have coffee and I know who I am a little bit.

But I don’t know what I am to be, at least a little bit.

It’s ok, it’s ok, it’s ok, it’s ok.

A Sharp Stick

A sharpened stick and then
A honed edge and then
Too too much belief

I live in the woods, kinda

And I’m on vacation in different woods, kinda

And that’s one way we live in many worlds

Bad decisions create new directions all the time

While new decisions remember you well enough

And the ends of something aren’t the end of something else

What I mean is that I’ve never been strong with left from right

Or putting love and trust and admiration all in the same box

Mornings

I wanna spout some bullshit like,
The body is strange
But the mind is stranger,

Bullshit that sounds good but I don’t believe in.

I’ve been alive 50 years to see so many dangerous things,

I’ve been alive 50 years to see so many wondrous things,

I’ve made lots and lots and lots of decisions,

So many decisions that my favorite thing to do on vacation is not make any real decisions and just be.

But it doesn’t always work out that way and that’s okay.

I’ve gotten better and I’ve probably also gotten worse,

Like it’s funny the unexpected vanities that rise up.

Fuck them, but there they are saying fuck you right back.

As in lanterns, mirrors, cairns, talismans, temples.

Delicate boats built in bottles. And storms in old coffee mugs.

Distance Is

Onions have layers and find themselves in all kinds of metaphors.

I first learned to cook some Indian dishes and Italian red sauce and they always seemed very similar.

Something is always next to something else whether it matters or not and then it matters.

Waves are functions in some circles.

Directions seem arbitrary to me, but I don’t think about that too often.

I’ve been trying to be here more, but I don’t know what that means to all this —

To everything I was trying to be and become before.

I know all-or-nothing thinking is a trap, and I see it all around me.

The lobster boats start early, the sun goes down early, everything is wet.

Books on books on books on books.

What do you want? Where are you going?

They know their ice cream around here, they’re my people that way.

The little loops still bug me sometimes and I know that’s about me not the little loops.

Coins have two sides, that’s what so fucking boring about them.

I Need to Write Things

What You Have You Don’t

What you like or
What you thought

What you have on a Thursday

When it’s Tuesday

Whether desire when it’s gonna be 90

Which way kinda wandering

A wheel and a track

A collection of wood and padding and rubber and wingnuts

Assorted guards, a crossball, or even just not being there when the payment’s coming

The good side of the opposite of connecting

So to speak and a lap or a trick and a slide

He keeps showing you how the world is made

And you keep staring at the sunrise

Ain’t nothing wrong with that

Do Humans Dream of Transparent Engines?

Overdrive vs. overtime, we’re at it again

We’ll always be back then

Unscrolling and jacked, checking it out

Checking it in, calling it in, dropped

Noise filling your ears

Days filling your time

Nobody wants to talk about forced meat

Indenture, obligation

I Think Thinkable Things

I’ve read many books, I won’t name them now.

I’ve listened to so many songs

And talked to so many people

Forward and back and I imagine.

Constant change and constants

Speed downward that’s long for velocity

Both senses of banking and both sides of the coins

What’s true, what’s false, what’s known.

The pitter-patter of so much technology

The boundless sums of everydays

Sets folded into bigger sets wrapped in bigger sets still

And the stillness of the surface when no one’s looking.

Fast friends in faster times fear the falling apart

It’ll come again and again, more than you can remember.

Make Yourself Useful

Make yourself large or craven or blue

Make yourself mirrored and wondrous

Coffee and meals and moments in between

There was sleep and there is sleep and there will be more

Centuries have accumulated and it’s all happened

I mean centuries have accumulated and we are here

You’ve spent countless moments counting

There’s nothing and nothing you can get back

Put your head to pillow again

Breathe it all in and breathe it all out again

The world is winking at you while you’re winking in and out

The breaks are sometimes subtle but their still there

So bring on the reset we’ve tumbled too many times

Witness the fusion when you’re back and we’ll see how it goes this time

What matters here doesn’t matter there

 What matters there doesn’t matter here 

Many Things Make Me Question Many Things

David, but it’s not always why

Years flying by and moments that linger

All manner of circles and spirals that hide among them

Directions on all fronts

Every useful false binary and the relationships between truth, facts, utility, information, more generally

Do we call it an economy?

We will always be back then?

But I am here and then (now) you are here.

Many words have many meanings all around your feet.

My hands are stained, there’s still that, and I prefer bar soap in a shower, but have only the slightest preference in other settings.

Remember Lava?

Like, Where do these things go, and what does it mean to me? I mean for me? Or I mean that, too.

Like lead and  read and tear.

And like stew, and hew, and steer.

Flood the Zone (Again)

Heavy trails mixed with trials

Simple shapes like spheres and cones

One reign follows another

The thing about a metronome

Comfort food, arithmetic, working the stops

The weather is up and down

These signs mean something to somebody somewhere

Carrion Bird

On on on on

On off on on

The swelling a sign

The signal a progress

Off on on on

Far from home again with the precipitation

Buying being bringing among

The filling and then the filing then the forever

Off off off off

You’re on and then you’re going

Suddenly follows perception

This container again

This gravity

And finally this willingness

The Fingers Move in the Light

What you hide, I now know

Fall forward, again, and mark your consequences

The light flashing in the corner of your vision

The long dark road, the shifting borders

Field after field after field and once more with the lights

This is the sunrise that will become a memory

This is dew on the exposed skin of your forearms, inside your elbow

You know the smell and you know what it’s like for the possible to be sitting right in front of you in a smart get up

What will tomorrow taste like after all the stitches

Books Are Dangerous (Sonnets Are Dangerous)

AI is dangerous

The Internet is dangerous

Isolation is dangerous

Dynamite is dangerous

Bears are dangerous

Kitchens are dangerous

Mobs are dangerous

Stairs are dangerous

Tylenol is dangerous 

Ungrounded outlets are dangerous

Driving is dangerous

Ideas are dangerous

The sky is dangerous
The sky is dangerous