The Black Sparrow 'Selected,' along with the subsequent Black Sparrow volume 'Cultural Affairs in Boston' are as close to a John Wieners' 'Collected' as now exists. You'd think that in the ten years since John's death, UCal would've gotten it together and do the same thing for Wieners - putting together a comprehensive 'Collected' - that they've done for Robin Blaser, Charles Olson, Ted Berrigan, etc. Why the long delay? Stephen Jonas is another who deserves to have a significant collection gathered in a single volume, hopefully more complete than the still-lovely collection published by Talisman House in 1994. One wonders what the problem is, getting such things together. Money? Prejudice of some kind? I, for one, certainly look forward to relief from this kind of neglect, as this is work that should be far more readily available.
*
Friday, June 1, 2012
Thursday, May 31, 2012
Wednesday, May 30, 2012
Tranquil
Rain rides hard
past nourishment
of flowers
and rips down
petals it once
fed. Roots
gleam with wetness
and remain
unseen, as atmosphere
gives sweat
from human bodies
the chance to
ooze. Heat differentials
give love
the language of
pursuit, where the torn
petals that once
blossomed are
given fully to
the increase of
soils and passion.
What is balance,
But more storm?
Peace is in agreement
to live with
total imbalance,
and an ability
to write a shortened
sentence that breaks
all rules of
grammar by
being spoken
sharply in the soft
delay of the whole
natural world’s
domain. Dominion
is surrender to
what finds you
out, as you seek
your imperfect
source. Storm is
an interior condition
that waits for
the sky to pour out
its celebrations
down around all
that is, mirrored
and abated
where once it
mounted to
the equivalent of
pain become
garment or flood
you either wear
in florid style,
or chose otherwise
to be born again
naked in, while
letting it caustically
wash you away.
*
past nourishment
of flowers
and rips down
petals it once
fed. Roots
gleam with wetness
and remain
unseen, as atmosphere
gives sweat
from human bodies
the chance to
ooze. Heat differentials
give love
the language of
pursuit, where the torn
petals that once
blossomed are
given fully to
the increase of
soils and passion.
What is balance,
But more storm?
Peace is in agreement
to live with
total imbalance,
and an ability
to write a shortened
sentence that breaks
all rules of
grammar by
being spoken
sharply in the soft
delay of the whole
natural world’s
domain. Dominion
is surrender to
what finds you
out, as you seek
your imperfect
source. Storm is
an interior condition
that waits for
the sky to pour out
its celebrations
down around all
that is, mirrored
and abated
where once it
mounted to
the equivalent of
pain become
garment or flood
you either wear
in florid style,
or chose otherwise
to be born again
naked in, while
letting it caustically
wash you away.
*
Monday, May 28, 2012
Sunday, May 27, 2012
Eleven recent poems [April-May 2012], unposted 'til now, because of various 'technical problems'
[ Landing Gear ]
Spring sloughs itself
down around what it
became, only to
become deaf to itself
as gene flow regroups
and the names of
species gather in a flurry
of birds who care solely
for the basis of what is
edible, to shit out seeds
that later may grow to
plenitude that dies
on the surface
of anything that is not
paved with intimacies
of plural dirt
and the absolute
regency of knowing
there is an end to
everything that ends
in darkness, for the light
dies as void to the fire
whose blind heat
alone can fulfill it.
*
[ Danger Zone ]
The donation turned
loan that bought up
the gift, as heavy
metal in tincture grew
fury from stems
that tide not, root
loss and root false
that grows the lesser
evil, where ‘resplendent’
and ‘splinter’ feed
from the same stamen,
and rootless are
the birds but in our own
perception, for they
ground the air so
heard, and have air
as ground, where we
stand, up or out,
coward to be proved
in classic close
certainty, by
a window, opened
from outside in
a dream, to linen
and limes, the dry
air of softly taking
or giving in to
the caustic glow of
dull cloud high above
their rain, its pieces
in exchange, back
and forth as up
the evaporation
goes with all that
would otherwise
remain content
and obey the perils
of simple gravity.
*
[ High Tide ]
How then does bone cut
into flesh from the inside,
the ache that props, as how
flesh hangs onto, as leaves
to air from their twigs?
Eyes grow sharp and cut
slowly along the horizon
and dart upward at songs
of birds, as noise of passing
cars cuts hearing into such
folds as blind the ear to
dangers it can only listen to.
Heavy breathing tosses bread
into the garden in a gesture
of non-growth, preferring
to live elsewhere, where full
flourish can prevail. A wound
is what then builds, where
pain shows that nothing
can go lost. Inner boundaries
play trust for a stock room
as radio waves go into storage,
and a history of having not been
interpreted, as color is what
despoils the light that brings it
whole and restful to our eyes,
which stray, as attention
caught up as a principle of
growth, atrophied by defect
in a room of its own.
*
[ Gravity ]
By song alone
we cannot move
to actual milk
and honey, for
the land of plenty
is fisted in
the credit of
nostalgia where owing
is pure mimesis,
wanting what you
cannot have beyond
desiring what you
then must be,
the skim of proper
poeisis and its
converse measuring
tape, itself
the worm that
uncoils equal to
the tact of rose
unfurling as a step
further into
the menu of constituted
aesthetics, streets
closed off where
each mouth swings
open, and windows
against infection
all drop shut.
*
[ At the Source ]
Learning moves through
male flesh as sky
spreads its shallows
and the moon is
pale lemon set for
licks. Desire is
a kind of bone infection,
bright in its
always-partial emergence
across the marrow
and brocade of the land
as purchase goes
‘over the top,’ and a hand
pulls back pansies
to see crushed stone
for decoration over
the standard nourishment
of soils. Names
read metaphoric
and trans-human,
cross-dressed sky for
breath, as the voice
gives them up
trees and rivers
and tends to
refrain from more
aimless targets
for the pull of slow
frequency waves
and the ulterior
paradox of
continental drift
and techtonic plates
piled in vast displays
of millennial intent
and carnal fracture.
*
[ Shock Wave ]
What climbed up
as the rain fell, who
climbed into
sleep, and heard as
dream, fingers of
dread drum across
their inner ear,
deedle-dum, or
rhyme with the sum
of all they are
not? Who climbed
in under what’s
not there, to wear you
down and hear you
being heard by
all you thought
could not be
you? Body is
electromagnetic
and gravity is
desire, to be
heard in the push
to get in under
cover that cannot be
covered, and pull
forward while
stepping back to
see the action,
perceiving what you
would not do
by doing it,
and having
something other
in its stead: To
see by looking to
what’s inaudible,
to hear the invisible
strain of knowing
you are not heard,
yet still hear is
the end from which
to begin, never
arriving but to
this quivering
rectitude that
rises in feeling
and drops, as its vortex
spreads and gives
thought something
to think about.
*
[ In Nomine ]
Rain pulls petals
of dahlia from
their stems, left
glinting with
raindrops, globes
in which the rest of
the world is
reflected, as in
loss, petals fall
by gravity of
agreement,
and agreement
becomes too dense
to easily
discriminate
but by stillness
and water left
hanging or gone
under earth
for nourishing
further roots
that have in
cycle human mind,
that erupts
and interrupts
growth to record
the growth of
time that pulls
each reflection
out of us, to reveal
how far ahead
or behind we
continually have
become in the difficult
face of what is
clear before us,
as we consult
how we recorded
what led the past
back through
a past that is
in process of
evaporating into
the fullness of
an atmosphere,
and this we cannot
trace, but to
name all that
we would set
aside, for all that is
set aside when
outset tells
our finale what it
ought to address
and what tax
can take the place
of fallen flowers
that we must
seem to pay to
rise up in a season
that will never
finally arrive
to our tenancy
that blurs against
what cannot be
seen, whose power
makes the continents
drift in no sure
way, whose displacement
brings us away
with it to its own
presence and whose
flowers were blue
in part, the color
of violence seen as
how sky remains active
entertainment induced
imperfectly through
resentments acquired by
our fullest participation.
*
[ Resistance ]
Full around the arc of
time, earth turns
and comes back to
its point of departure,
always where it is,
for it cannot depart
even as its horizon
remains proximate
in its distractions
to our ability to
locate it. I see you,
as you, her. She
watches a river
move through trees
as unknown to
one another, we
wonder over the fact
of skin. Earth turns
intact from a center
located by measure
from its edge, where
gravity to us is simple
gender difference,
the attending heat of
desire, how the earth,
too, must exhale
and breathe more in
as we upon it claim
its green, go vertical
and crazed, or how this
plunge can tell you
nothing of where it all
begins is basic mystery,
that I am she and we are
thee as the story remains
forever told. Are you
schematic in your
sudden corners
and ovoid embracing
limbs? For what
otherwise disturbs our
nature with its
growing mechanisms
but this simple
glaze of surface
and our instruments of
measure that fail
to know more than
the sheer distance of
how we turn from
the ways of growth
that encourage yet dim
the instinct to create?
Our center is yours,
mine, his, hers, theirs
and but the noise of
this perpetuum, stars
that fade without a
sound as the motor
of a refrigerator clicks
on from a foreign
room, and the space of
mind that invents
a place where heart’s
care can flourish
and provide the answers
to no question I can
know. A tangerine
sun that never rests
is unsettling itself
through eastern trees,
full upon the arc
of its arrival. Can
arrival be as simple
as how dusk
and dawn throw us
into the relevance of
how their shade
and light flicker
and glint upon a single
feature at a time?
And that the heart,
unseen in all things
that continue now to
live, is witness to
the unrehearsed
gestures of all it
gives to each our
acts, and forms itself
in our perception of
what it wants to
be, but will always
fail to resemble?
Can ‘I’ result from
me, and still feel
true, could I not see
in my mistakes that
there is more than
just another ‘you’?
*
[ Radius ]
For the birds
and their quantum
songs, love is
not preordained
by international
relation, but
spurts, like
flowers on local
stems, where
rapid eye
movements
give sleep
an entrance to
their light,
that flows
down our spines
and spills
as sheets gone
wrinkled in
our bed beneath
the yellow stain
that rises
as a sign
that sun and moon
are close
to how the garden
grows. There is
devastation
in dream,
whose sole
purpose is
to inform
all that is
discarded
in its wake
without the words
we use to
tell about its
aftermath,
where none is
present but for
void. Water
in morning
grass is called
‘dew,’ and refreshment
comes to
human life
always through
the bottoms of
feet that stand
upright upon
the steaming earth.
Give to the gods
your name, that
we might make
through it
a river that will
carry you close,
direct, and far
away from it,
whose rub
may still agitate
the legs up
which it climbs,
where the nest
is sought
and found lacking
nothing when
treated to
the absolution
that comes in
waves that meet
along the horizon
of the geographies
we cling to
as if our skins
could also hold
all that rises
outwardly, kicking
from within.
*
[ Escape Artist ]
My eyes are
forever at
the horizon,
where sun,
Orion, the moon
all rise and go
adventuring
in a cosmos
predetermined
by what they will
do, for
they can do
nothing else,
even as we can
be nothing
but who we are.
The sun rises
and lights
the inner
chambers of
local flowers,
where my eyes
go blind in
full color.
Is the world,
perceived,
anything but
a child’s drawing
of the stars
seen through
the petals of
flowers that
close against
the dark,
rendered
with many-colored
crayons on
the petals of
flowers of
a different kind?
We live in
worlds superimposed
one upon
the other,
and know this
chaotic
interpenetration
as human
personality
that is released
as my breath
also is, as
a wind that
carries such
words as
encounter
the stickiness of
new flowers, who
confront us with
our names
for them as they
beautifully unfold.
*
[ Pleasure ]
The ear makes
music out of
everything it
hears, and air
is what the sun
moves through,
whose light can
burn our skins,
yet does not
burn our lungs
when we
breathe it in.
We exhale
words from
our warm bodies
and move our
parts close in
upon each
other out of
love, touching
each other
as the sun
cannot and in
the way that
only air can
do, as each
caress is
a message whose
combinations
keep it clear to
us who feel
alight and lost
in passion
as if
the sound of
the sea were
birds and horns of
passing cars, but
no, it is
the fact of simple
joining, how
the sea clings
fiercely to
every fiber of
the boat whose
hull continues now
to ride and cut
through it
at each instant
by a murmur.
*
Spring sloughs itself
down around what it
became, only to
become deaf to itself
as gene flow regroups
and the names of
species gather in a flurry
of birds who care solely
for the basis of what is
edible, to shit out seeds
that later may grow to
plenitude that dies
on the surface
of anything that is not
paved with intimacies
of plural dirt
and the absolute
regency of knowing
there is an end to
everything that ends
in darkness, for the light
dies as void to the fire
whose blind heat
alone can fulfill it.
*
[ Danger Zone ]
The donation turned
loan that bought up
the gift, as heavy
metal in tincture grew
fury from stems
that tide not, root
loss and root false
that grows the lesser
evil, where ‘resplendent’
and ‘splinter’ feed
from the same stamen,
and rootless are
the birds but in our own
perception, for they
ground the air so
heard, and have air
as ground, where we
stand, up or out,
coward to be proved
in classic close
certainty, by
a window, opened
from outside in
a dream, to linen
and limes, the dry
air of softly taking
or giving in to
the caustic glow of
dull cloud high above
their rain, its pieces
in exchange, back
and forth as up
the evaporation
goes with all that
would otherwise
remain content
and obey the perils
of simple gravity.
*
[ High Tide ]
How then does bone cut
into flesh from the inside,
the ache that props, as how
flesh hangs onto, as leaves
to air from their twigs?
Eyes grow sharp and cut
slowly along the horizon
and dart upward at songs
of birds, as noise of passing
cars cuts hearing into such
folds as blind the ear to
dangers it can only listen to.
Heavy breathing tosses bread
into the garden in a gesture
of non-growth, preferring
to live elsewhere, where full
flourish can prevail. A wound
is what then builds, where
pain shows that nothing
can go lost. Inner boundaries
play trust for a stock room
as radio waves go into storage,
and a history of having not been
interpreted, as color is what
despoils the light that brings it
whole and restful to our eyes,
which stray, as attention
caught up as a principle of
growth, atrophied by defect
in a room of its own.
*
[ Gravity ]
By song alone
we cannot move
to actual milk
and honey, for
the land of plenty
is fisted in
the credit of
nostalgia where owing
is pure mimesis,
wanting what you
cannot have beyond
desiring what you
then must be,
the skim of proper
poeisis and its
converse measuring
tape, itself
the worm that
uncoils equal to
the tact of rose
unfurling as a step
further into
the menu of constituted
aesthetics, streets
closed off where
each mouth swings
open, and windows
against infection
all drop shut.
*
[ At the Source ]
Learning moves through
male flesh as sky
spreads its shallows
and the moon is
pale lemon set for
licks. Desire is
a kind of bone infection,
bright in its
always-partial emergence
across the marrow
and brocade of the land
as purchase goes
‘over the top,’ and a hand
pulls back pansies
to see crushed stone
for decoration over
the standard nourishment
of soils. Names
read metaphoric
and trans-human,
cross-dressed sky for
breath, as the voice
gives them up
trees and rivers
and tends to
refrain from more
aimless targets
for the pull of slow
frequency waves
and the ulterior
paradox of
continental drift
and techtonic plates
piled in vast displays
of millennial intent
and carnal fracture.
*
[ Shock Wave ]
What climbed up
as the rain fell, who
climbed into
sleep, and heard as
dream, fingers of
dread drum across
their inner ear,
deedle-dum, or
rhyme with the sum
of all they are
not? Who climbed
in under what’s
not there, to wear you
down and hear you
being heard by
all you thought
could not be
you? Body is
electromagnetic
and gravity is
desire, to be
heard in the push
to get in under
cover that cannot be
covered, and pull
forward while
stepping back to
see the action,
perceiving what you
would not do
by doing it,
and having
something other
in its stead: To
see by looking to
what’s inaudible,
to hear the invisible
strain of knowing
you are not heard,
yet still hear is
the end from which
to begin, never
arriving but to
this quivering
rectitude that
rises in feeling
and drops, as its vortex
spreads and gives
thought something
to think about.
*
[ In Nomine ]
Rain pulls petals
of dahlia from
their stems, left
glinting with
raindrops, globes
in which the rest of
the world is
reflected, as in
loss, petals fall
by gravity of
agreement,
and agreement
becomes too dense
to easily
discriminate
but by stillness
and water left
hanging or gone
under earth
for nourishing
further roots
that have in
cycle human mind,
that erupts
and interrupts
growth to record
the growth of
time that pulls
each reflection
out of us, to reveal
how far ahead
or behind we
continually have
become in the difficult
face of what is
clear before us,
as we consult
how we recorded
what led the past
back through
a past that is
in process of
evaporating into
the fullness of
an atmosphere,
and this we cannot
trace, but to
name all that
we would set
aside, for all that is
set aside when
outset tells
our finale what it
ought to address
and what tax
can take the place
of fallen flowers
that we must
seem to pay to
rise up in a season
that will never
finally arrive
to our tenancy
that blurs against
what cannot be
seen, whose power
makes the continents
drift in no sure
way, whose displacement
brings us away
with it to its own
presence and whose
flowers were blue
in part, the color
of violence seen as
how sky remains active
entertainment induced
imperfectly through
resentments acquired by
our fullest participation.
*
[ Resistance ]
Full around the arc of
time, earth turns
and comes back to
its point of departure,
always where it is,
for it cannot depart
even as its horizon
remains proximate
in its distractions
to our ability to
locate it. I see you,
as you, her. She
watches a river
move through trees
as unknown to
one another, we
wonder over the fact
of skin. Earth turns
intact from a center
located by measure
from its edge, where
gravity to us is simple
gender difference,
the attending heat of
desire, how the earth,
too, must exhale
and breathe more in
as we upon it claim
its green, go vertical
and crazed, or how this
plunge can tell you
nothing of where it all
begins is basic mystery,
that I am she and we are
thee as the story remains
forever told. Are you
schematic in your
sudden corners
and ovoid embracing
limbs? For what
otherwise disturbs our
nature with its
growing mechanisms
but this simple
glaze of surface
and our instruments of
measure that fail
to know more than
the sheer distance of
how we turn from
the ways of growth
that encourage yet dim
the instinct to create?
Our center is yours,
mine, his, hers, theirs
and but the noise of
this perpetuum, stars
that fade without a
sound as the motor
of a refrigerator clicks
on from a foreign
room, and the space of
mind that invents
a place where heart’s
care can flourish
and provide the answers
to no question I can
know. A tangerine
sun that never rests
is unsettling itself
through eastern trees,
full upon the arc
of its arrival. Can
arrival be as simple
as how dusk
and dawn throw us
into the relevance of
how their shade
and light flicker
and glint upon a single
feature at a time?
And that the heart,
unseen in all things
that continue now to
live, is witness to
the unrehearsed
gestures of all it
gives to each our
acts, and forms itself
in our perception of
what it wants to
be, but will always
fail to resemble?
Can ‘I’ result from
me, and still feel
true, could I not see
in my mistakes that
there is more than
just another ‘you’?
*
[ Radius ]
For the birds
and their quantum
songs, love is
not preordained
by international
relation, but
spurts, like
flowers on local
stems, where
rapid eye
movements
give sleep
an entrance to
their light,
that flows
down our spines
and spills
as sheets gone
wrinkled in
our bed beneath
the yellow stain
that rises
as a sign
that sun and moon
are close
to how the garden
grows. There is
devastation
in dream,
whose sole
purpose is
to inform
all that is
discarded
in its wake
without the words
we use to
tell about its
aftermath,
where none is
present but for
void. Water
in morning
grass is called
‘dew,’ and refreshment
comes to
human life
always through
the bottoms of
feet that stand
upright upon
the steaming earth.
Give to the gods
your name, that
we might make
through it
a river that will
carry you close,
direct, and far
away from it,
whose rub
may still agitate
the legs up
which it climbs,
where the nest
is sought
and found lacking
nothing when
treated to
the absolution
that comes in
waves that meet
along the horizon
of the geographies
we cling to
as if our skins
could also hold
all that rises
outwardly, kicking
from within.
*
[ Escape Artist ]
My eyes are
forever at
the horizon,
where sun,
Orion, the moon
all rise and go
adventuring
in a cosmos
predetermined
by what they will
do, for
they can do
nothing else,
even as we can
be nothing
but who we are.
The sun rises
and lights
the inner
chambers of
local flowers,
where my eyes
go blind in
full color.
Is the world,
perceived,
anything but
a child’s drawing
of the stars
seen through
the petals of
flowers that
close against
the dark,
rendered
with many-colored
crayons on
the petals of
flowers of
a different kind?
We live in
worlds superimposed
one upon
the other,
and know this
chaotic
interpenetration
as human
personality
that is released
as my breath
also is, as
a wind that
carries such
words as
encounter
the stickiness of
new flowers, who
confront us with
our names
for them as they
beautifully unfold.
*
[ Pleasure ]
The ear makes
music out of
everything it
hears, and air
is what the sun
moves through,
whose light can
burn our skins,
yet does not
burn our lungs
when we
breathe it in.
We exhale
words from
our warm bodies
and move our
parts close in
upon each
other out of
love, touching
each other
as the sun
cannot and in
the way that
only air can
do, as each
caress is
a message whose
combinations
keep it clear to
us who feel
alight and lost
in passion
as if
the sound of
the sea were
birds and horns of
passing cars, but
no, it is
the fact of simple
joining, how
the sea clings
fiercely to
every fiber of
the boat whose
hull continues now
to ride and cut
through it
at each instant
by a murmur.
*
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