The Notion of Originality
Hey the warp
hey the warp is the graded chunk
that pulls you deftly—
wax
wax on the batter of the moon
and the tumble-down
tumble-down old
random old wall
from the garden
the garden where the slice
of the melon grows to pulse
and droning
on to drown:
stuck to the water
and to die along it—both
the pull and the body
closing—sound
as if it were not water
as if it were not sound,
light feet picking up
from the road as if
coming loose,
as if once and for all
Love Song Variations
[AS SCHUMANN]
So twice the morning falls
into chinked key-spaces windows placid
gray of buildings opening New York
quiet and humble like the night was not before.
Here curtain-edges
palely dawning in swiveled motions
appeal to ambulatory innovation
laid out in fanned space—
the wild rumpled shirt of day
and its echoes: like two pianists echoing
and trilling one another, each at his own
well-tuned and black piano, that glares like a sleek
groomed buffalo, shaking off
crystal trinkets of water that a wooden concert hall
is made to thirst for and ponder dissolving.
[AS KURTÁG]
Brittle as the fool’s gold
in your speed
faltering
the apartment, not invited
drifts of paper bags
like ore.
Now to clang awake
with hotel bathroom glass
door, light
and London;
I won’t go home to the ground floor
so here
it’s all over listen no motives done
with my stupid optimism
in the dark
put on my glasses.
[AS DEBUSSY]
Like the camera lens there are no pictures just the flushing
water sound of the cool waiting and the wild optimistic plans.
4th of July where the restricted bay makes fireworks expand the sense
of place and small time well paid for, and I left and sought you
stringing together haphazard idea after idea in the amphitheater
where we agreed on Brecht and walked in circles around
the rainy night to prove there could be no obstacle
and with weight of description approximated something sincere.
[AS BARTÓK]
On the grass experimenting
abstraction of the drummers’ faces
wrongly switched
bodies arcing round the music
strongly taken, breaking in the
robes of black the war
of frame
in the grace of the measure
the march is
needling outward
nostalgia of the intrepid decades
chaos churning and fixing
the daft present of forms
and Conrad’s double wakes next to him
in his bed and jumps back
into the sea
The Real and Unreal Mind
Nonspeech
is an action intricately
humming
So I waver
an unsubstantiated
avalanche of extras
to assuage
all split apart in this wind
still brisk enough to
separate from the skin
I scatter
and it moves
sharp, not biting
as in the pine needles
as in the engine
it makes
a different sound,
and also cloudy
like the shell of an ear
directing us inwards—I
scatter
as drips
reach near-constant
speed
the outer flowing
in a whine
of wires and all the wind chimes
interrupting
making this negative
space of tap
and slipping,
all this while
my hands hammering
the block of ice