ENIGMA OF THE CAT
1.
She walked along. She looked out.
Nothing here, among these, resembles.
She went on. There were lists,
objects, names, but still
nothing resembling. The sky
was a kind of sorrow, cold
and stained a pale sunless gray,
it too did not resemble. And she,
her lies adrift over the humdrum,
thought to turn back but by then
as you already know was lost.
2.
The wristâs illness, having
touched the spider,
erupting as grid
sewn before and after the fact.
The dark hall, the walls,
the imagined street
where the forecast
elicits a halo
broken from the entireâ
cusp, turn, rim.
3.
Cat sleeps through world.
4.
Come then, undo the truss.
Mayhem waits like a sting.
Look down into the face puddle,
look across into the alarm.
There is a boat on a roof,
an image of a boat
on a roof. All else is heaved
as if giving birth on a floor.
Have you come this far?
Will you pass the wet caul?
5.
Cat is spared from angel.
6.
Mute extravagance
trapped under tarp.
Wave good-bye or
establish some rules
despite the glare.
Look down, there are things
dumped into a pail of glue.
This belt is way too tight.
These buttons, coins,
crumbs, a derelict parade
awash, happy tramp drowned.
7.
Cat plays with dead bird.
8.
You cannot avoid
the information.
No one cares what you
say unless you say
the information.
No one cares
what you care about
unless it is
the information
turned toward
a vocabulary
as if written.
9.
Cat turns in the chair and subsides.
10.
For what do you search?
The quick being
out of which
the conceptual flares
like a toy bomb.
The medieval crescent
born from prolific
reason.
Are you ready?
After the after, please
throw away
the photographs.
We know the image
came to nothing.
11.
Cat at the threshold.
12.
To dream is
to proliferate
in the opening that is
always shut. The long self
drawn into patterns of shadow,
girls and boys nameless
across the playground.
Stranded here
in the partial real. Ground
parts on
lacerations of the newly good.
The stone is mentioned.
A law is invoked.
The event floats in from afar.
13.
Cat waits until dark to go out.
TRIPTYCH (VAN EYCK)
1.
The woman
with a child on her lap
sitting on rugs
what is she doing
there
in the middle
the day
might always be cold
March light
what is she doing
sitting with a child
on her lap
long drapes
behind
and rugs
like wings
or feathers
feathery rugs
alive in the cold
March light
flat as the moon
at dusk
the cold
rakes
blue plumes
into
traversing
signals
aside
and because
it can never be
early enough
she is always
sitting
aside
in wait.
2.
Mal, mal, trivial thwart.
Stop this
glare, stop
goading the ill
into consequence,
the extra
bloom
unheralded
by day or by night.
Go off
into a woody scene
and take
the painted epilogue
with you.
Burn it for heat
and burn the
currency of emeralds
mistaken
for new life.
3.
If no timeâs
not want
stay and
renovate
traced gloves
sweet digits
adhesives
bound for dispatch
and so cling
to the tiered ensemble
stupendous enrichment
during the spell and
start, start.
for Stacy
UNTITLED (PORTRAIT)
Up here in the ancient gold trim      the news not yet visual
so that he or she or we are invisible to the naked eye
whereas the gold trim on her gown is etched
falling down along and over to the hem
like an evening sky.
Or like nothing yet announced
so the missing and the present are singular in their dress
as we await the address and the black
river of reading aloud over the phone
George Eliotâs intervention between the walls
so that we walk through them as if turning a page
we agreed again you and I as we have agreed before
you are not going to be with me on the other side of the wall
despite George Eliot and despite Daniel
in his pink house with the book
whose cover is reiterated on the wall
the picture of the beautiful woman in black
who had to decide whether to
1.
She walked along. She looked out.
Nothing here, among these, resembles.
She went on. There were lists,
objects, names, but still
nothing resembling. The sky
was a kind of sorrow, cold
and stained a pale sunless gray,
it too did not resemble. And she,
her lies adrift over the humdrum,
thought to turn back but by then
as you already know was lost.
2.
The wristâs illness, having
touched the spider,
erupting as grid
sewn before and after the fact.
The dark hall, the walls,
the imagined street
where the forecast
elicits a halo
broken from the entireâ
cusp, turn, rim.
3.
Cat sleeps through world.
4.
Come then, undo the truss.
Mayhem waits like a sting.
Look down into the face puddle,
look across into the alarm.
There is a boat on a roof,
an image of a boat
on a roof. All else is heaved
as if giving birth on a floor.
Have you come this far?
Will you pass the wet caul?
5.
Cat is spared from angel.
6.
Mute extravagance
trapped under tarp.
Wave good-bye or
establish some rules
despite the glare.
Look down, there are things
dumped into a pail of glue.
This belt is way too tight.
These buttons, coins,
crumbs, a derelict parade
awash, happy tramp drowned.
7.
Cat plays with dead bird.
8.
You cannot avoid
the information.
No one cares what you
say unless you say
the information.
No one cares
what you care about
unless it is
the information
turned toward
a vocabulary
as if written.
9.
Cat turns in the chair and subsides.
10.
For what do you search?
The quick being
out of which
the conceptual flares
like a toy bomb.
The medieval crescent
born from prolific
reason.
Are you ready?
After the after, please
throw away
the photographs.
We know the image
came to nothing.
11.
Cat at the threshold.
12.
To dream is
to proliferate
in the opening that is
always shut. The long self
drawn into patterns of shadow,
girls and boys nameless
across the playground.
Stranded here
in the partial real. Ground
parts on
lacerations of the newly good.
The stone is mentioned.
A law is invoked.
The event floats in from afar.
13.
Cat waits until dark to go out.
TRIPTYCH (VAN EYCK)
1.
The woman
with a child on her lap
sitting on rugs
what is she doing
there
in the middle
the day
might always be cold
March light
what is she doing
sitting with a child
on her lap
long drapes
behind
and rugs
like wings
or feathers
feathery rugs
alive in the cold
March light
flat as the moon
at dusk
the cold
rakes
blue plumes
into
traversing
signals
aside
and because
it can never be
early enough
she is always
sitting
aside
in wait.
2.
Mal, mal, trivial thwart.
Stop this
glare, stop
goading the ill
into consequence,
the extra
bloom
unheralded
by day or by night.
Go off
into a woody scene
and take
the painted epilogue
with you.
Burn it for heat
and burn the
currency of emeralds
mistaken
for new life.
3.
If no timeâs
not want
stay and
renovate
traced gloves
sweet digits
adhesives
bound for dispatch
and so cling
to the tiered ensemble
stupendous enrichment
during the spell and
start, start.
for Stacy
UNTITLED (PORTRAIT)
Up here in the ancient gold trim      the news not yet visual
so that he or she or we are invisible to the naked eye
whereas the gold trim on her gown is etched
falling down along and over to the hem
like an evening sky.
Or like nothing yet announced
so the missing and the present are singular in their dress
as we await the address and the black
river of reading aloud over the phone
George Eliotâs intervention between the walls
so that we walk through them as if turning a page
we agreed again you and I as we have agreed before
you are not going to be with me on the other side of the wall
despite George Eliot and despite Daniel
in his pink house with the book
whose cover is reiterated on the wall
the picture of the beautiful woman in black
who had to decide whether to
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