Tag Archives: loss

untitled (flight of birds)

Wikipedia Poem, No. 625

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“as if social censure // is all that stops him from rending the sheep a kiss” Patrick Cotter

For Noam

זיכרונה לברכה

between eyes the diamond
it is the role of no one’s character
justice suggests a comic fainting fashion
to were i birdlike or losing your affection
allied to your paintings exegete
developed humane patterns for roman interiors
i could have mastered your movement within a week of kindness
cent femmes fantastiques tête allied to the calendar
of justice which is no time at all taḥrīf
no more and repeats it as if none act a stage
o the roman interiors i could have mastered
breath in translation a series of interlocked sparks

“What Rings But Can’t Be Answered” by Rebecca Lindenberg

ratbo-sm

You are beautiful as a telephone, colors
of bone, rocket ship, and cocktail lounge—

Hmm, says the neon sign, starting
an unfinishable thought.

Where do we go from here?

I’m a balloon,
each minute you don’t call is a breath
you blow into me.

I want to be the crackers in your soup,
I want to be your brass compass. Oh, mister,
just thinking about you curls the ends of my hair.

The clock tisk-tisks.

Moon, you old spinster, don’t you mock me
with your pockmarks and your slow, slow travels.

Moon, what would you know, cold as cheese?

Hmm. Tisk-tisk.

Behind a far-off door, a thought about me is being formed
out of nothing but light.

And when that phone does ring—

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from “Love, An Index” by Rebecca Lindenberg

House Should Appear to be Hovering in Space

Wikipedia Poem, No. 486

olds-sm

hangstar bendstar 
    frost 
    in supersonic 
sound on wax
    father's affect you receive 
one in 
the air 

report this suspension 
    technique max-herald 
suspended 
    in midair seraphim
    sense force 
and small scientists 
need to employ

emtpy because 
    you left
receive one house 
should appear to be hovering in space
because you recorded 
    uncertain unstellar star bendstar 
    fastenstar staystar

    illusion 
    glorious styptic 
show followed by speakers 
and floatstars bendstars stay up in 
    planes crash 
in speakers as 
temporary stop job hangstar bendstar 
    stay 
up in 
    these paternal jags 

in 
support of an effervescent decision
    this performance    weeks before 
is only a 
temporary 
    stop-among

The Roar of the Slain Protect

Wikipedia Poem, No. 413

wiki413-sm

“But they know how to pull / Arms in, a reflex of being dressed, / And also, a child’s faith. The mass of stuff / That makes the Sunday frocks collapses / In my hands and finds its shape, only because / They understand the drape of it— / These skinny keys to intricate locks.” Mark Jarman

For Bill

the roar of the slain protect the caretaker’s hut
that red clay pot portends tracks for the hunt
everything in the red clay pot belongs to the animals
though it is also fed on flour that
as a practice
belongs to those among us who do not touch bone
members of that slain ceremony
light as human gods
travel into prologues great and sprinkled with medicine
the ceremony involves deposited arrowheads emblematic
of horses and sheep and the enemy
eats our history
unlike the traditions of the keeper
the careful hunters of the ocean
traveling chosen

paculum-spec2-sm

Sources:

Wikipedia Poem, No. 372

wiki372-tk2

“Remind yourself likewise that what you love is mortal, that what you love is not your own.” Epictetus

present 
never givesway 
but 
rather cannot 
          be as 
       to your own 
restraint it 
       is 
mortal 
         that if it 
        like a 
      fig or 
   crystal 
        it restrains as mortal goblet if it not 
be 
distressed then in its seasons 
       present and 
        remember 
      what 
     harm is 
there mortal that if 
   it 
was 
          behind painted generals when painted to 
you may remind 
      these generals when 
you become attached to murmur softly 
  to 
something else while 
your affections nor friends not 
        be as 
love to you a mortal goblet does not wail as you child 
you remember
then that what harm is 
       mortal that 
harm is 
mortal 
      that the appointed became attached 
to 
you love 
is 
         that they ride to it in it on it

You Will Never See Her Again, No. 2

It’s unfair to compare the man to the woman one so complete the other bristling with prostate

But fairness was never one for this world
was born with a full head of hair
6’2″
he took a long time to come out unfairly
his eyes as is normal turned brown
had been
blue in witness he unlearned swimming
never drowned

Had no teenage years
no earning years
no sweet nor equal years
but instead went straight to death
not with ceremony not with love not with passion

What eulogy now–

He went with truth which did nothing for
he went with satisfaction
too soon and sour.

untitled, 012520142200

what characters?
what images?
then
what emotions?

& how that 
blankness
projects, flickers
onto the clean 
white wall. where?

where is the heroism?
(cocksure bravado of loss?
the drowning son
saltwater bites his lungs
his inutile hand
breaking the ocean’s lens?

ooh, there
I’ve gone and given it
away—retreat!
peel through the pteridophyta
knee-high, back to skull-island.

they’ll remember you if you tell them
who? what character? 
which image? emotion?

and what will they boil
for tea that morning
after his funeral
— well attended
— tastefully adorned (not too colorful
— a slow silent sob, no one weeps (not even … 

will it be black or green or chamomile
over-steeped or sweetened? how
at a time like this, can one decide
so freshly alive, so gravitationally piqued
washed red-raw with compassion?

those old films
now significant, so
wall space, interior
as if the boy were climbing
our orange tree
higher, then higher
his fearless lungs full
of bitter citrus.

when?
what’s lost?
again, what emotion?

Dream 06012013

I woke, feeling of particularly base moral character, because of this dream I had.

The dream was built upon a typically gauche bacchanal at a filmic hivelike Midwestern frat house, a free Chinese buffet erected on the street outside operated by presumably a crosstown rival frat, the unacceptable total loss of some unreplaceable button down-type evening wear, and the medically airtight revelation by special hand delivered letter that I did in fact have AIDS, contracted during a blasé threesome during the prior night’s hockey party.

I loved that shirt.

untitled 030620132117

the details unremarkable 
but important everything visual
mostly but alkali when you kiss 
it isn’t her mouth you taste but your
listing now gently breath bowing out
there on the sea lost in labor

what sense what’s lost and begs no leaving  
but for it time gales and there on the sea
floor full of tidal sludge — green, gray
hammering out — a stony pitch:

details unremarkable
nothing visual, nothing reckoned
but halved and accounted.