Seven Poems

Norma Cole

ABSORPTION or a noun of action

For you it’s called absorption, for your dream, the hood was wearing a cape, the little division sang

division sang a little space
causeless light can blind you
 always focus as respected
depthless field behind you

Exactly and the line is not exact, those elaborate devices divise us, it just doesn’t know how to be two at once, cover your faces when you speak

Absorption of the baby, absorption of the Idea of the Baby, isn’t it like eating the predicate – or being hungry, an assortment, the tiled floor of the stock exchange

the painting lowered its eyes
swallowed
the dream of absorption

Without living a taunt can right absorb lost benediction comma redemption warm intervention icy extrusion nothing is like

SEA SWALLOW (La Goélette)

an overarching voice
rustic and being
gular flutter
flower of the rock
that sunny comfort reach
and out of hearing

sing me the, whole song

about to speak
will is only nearer
to speak nothing but
arterial equivalent
gular flutter
punctuate equilibrium

RAVEN

Says I am invisible in my feathers

World knot
young beyond half casual theme
courtoisie & turbulence a few more slowly now
we read little gold suns over the airstrip
no medical treatment for civilians
expeditions speaking like through a screen door
peaches for eyes

How faint the spot harmonates unbarred by time, wit and the shape
memory bolted
unobtainable until we learn it

Come up now onto the roof of my mouth and see this shadow that has
driven people mad

Common denominators this papers generosity
waters constancy emptied field
what we know passed to the back
mirrors open up another front

“Thou wilt never see that raven again, for I am that raven”

SWALLOW

fly over in silence

powerful registration before sleep
on your experience falls
recent but complete

areas of color
next to each other
“you ask” did they release him today
but with some affection
method asking
and began
respiration falls

and the thorough world is great

Washing brushes in a lake
sibilous net
trend or engender
long hanging word
shivering when it sings
to the one natural day
one thought

THE RAPTOR TRUST    

“their infinite nest…”
–V. Huidobro

Being is done
a being
seething
and outside
from which automatically all questions the individual deviation
style is or fit what we were looking for
the market becoming intimate failure
2 versions
since every part is active
unnamed or untamed
consumed or recent

Allies of the future
when ceremony is over
discomfort the preoccupation
we celebrate these perfect errors
what’s necessary, quella bella petra
conferring chance household goods besides rhyming agreement
anxious and various endurance

It’s nice because you can remember it
a long cylinder of
d r y
dried grasses – and hay
w a l l
leaning up against
s t u d y
the studio wall

If that’s logic who’s looking at it in order our forces condense
flatly
up the hill
have grace

the well surfaces
have plenty of it
spelling

but each and each
of no and no
days exit and former
nectar and sap

Archives of the future
how lucky to hear the iris and mini-atlas aid each delirium
cordis clears its own throat meaning a social releaser
proof and consequences starting with music
entirely convincing this time perception smear
one’s not the symbol but the censor
melting tone or fixed pitch
hand belted in violent encounter
policy and choice rustle in the creatorium

From bird to word
only as you get it
hands off that book or what the inscription don’t show
the alphabet will clue me
but wouldn’t we
use one generally
except for the ones in petition
who make their own beds
try me
I’m not far enough yet flying has its own history
dichotomy I’m all outside
(the thing) presented is (the
thing prevented
s e a
spectral shells
t r a s h

and be and remember can conjure yourself
and a thin ripping concern and return time
so we can see with their eyes
this gift that obliterates

Sublime the hearings begin you mean your eyes fall out finally you
mean dishes clatter (what can we know of winnowing grain) pretending
pleasure isn’t for instance patience about this keeper of forms

X imagines the universe
exactly how it looks
Y are welcomed
before all the city
periodicity doubles the outward call of thought
and fiction in its own way
remains in the puzzle. remember the earth?
fly back to it each summer

Oval skylights in the second circuit house
nonplussed motivation taxes matching revealing
what required feeling – nobody
takes it in the head – is an explanation
for an act and their laws results
which are bonding through more rounded up material
all equal wonder to some more immaculate
the complete danger zone “for reasons which
I forget” how wild is thought