FCF 21

“Stand
up tall
like a flowerpot.”

“Stand
up tall
like a flowerpot.”

“Stand
up tall
like a flowerpot.”

Inexplicable
bits are
underlined in the

copy
of The
Activist I just

picked
up at
the Prison Project

table
at the
farmers’ market. Personally

I’m
tired of
pretending I don’t

see
the bridge.
“Please go home

and
feed your
pets and children.”

Palpate
the shoulder
blades with the

breath.
Let all
that oxygen swirl.

“Stand
up tall,
like a [two

word?]
flower pot.”
or two?] like

a
flower pot.”
Kris asks what

my
responsibility is.
To stand up

straight
and say
Personally I’m tired

of
pretending I
don’t see the

bridge.
Big ink
blob on 94,

and
traced over
and. From now

on
use knives
only as mirrors.

“Look,
I want
to say …” or,

just,
“Look.” I
won’t say the

best
time is
at dawn. Two

poems:

                  We have these big brains
                      And excrete the same pathogens

                  Here in the shadows
                      It’s raining porcelain frogs

“Camera
reveals light
of the real

room.”
You are
In. There. … I’m

beginning
to believe
in the I

again
because why
not? It’s as

real
as everything
else is. Hope-

pipes,
love-pipes,
fright-pipes, thought-

pipes,
loss-pipes,
hate-pipes. Pipes

of
coarseness, pipes
of sanity. Pipes

of
confession. Pipes
of purity, pipes of

sanctity,
pipes of
flight. Riding-pipes,

rubbing-
pipes, sliding
pipes, wiping-pipes,

confronting-
pipes, adoring-
pipes. Potential fracture

of
the pipes.
Corridor of grey

mucus.
A number
of other points

served
as premises:

      - a poem is not an isolated autonomous rarified aesthetic object
      - a person (the poet) has no irreducible, ahistorical, unmediated, singular,         kernel identity
      - language is a preeminently social medium
      - the structures of language are social structures in which meanings and         intentions are already in place
      - institutional stupidity and entrenched hypocrisy are monstrous and should         be attacked
      - racism, sexism and classism are repulsive
      - prose is not necessarily not poetry
      - theory and practice are not antithetical
      - it is not surrealism to compare apples to oranges
      - intelligence is romantic

An
instance of
a sign: I might

see
a flock
of crows flying

in
some particular
direction. The dessert

course
arrives: it
is sweetened air.

If
They like
you, you say,

the
sign will
become a Messages

[sic]

Take off                                the red shoes

Sit down in                            the green chair

Quote a whole poem               “After the Persian”*

… from
“Altar Pieces”:
A Dead Hand

from
behind a
beam / / the coffin

tilted /
on a
rock / / a bird,

no
bigger / than
a mouse / / moves

down
the floor.
Cows at their

business
bow a
hundred heads, ah

I
speak of
why our skin

is
our largest
organ                      When I

speak
of skin
I speak of

a
slow day
in the forces

that
are compelling
all of us

to
be brushing
up against one

another.
A succession
of moves, severely

old
music in
skeletal form contending

with
underestimated maelstroms,

      *Your sweetness and generosity
      Both capture and astonish me
      I am too drunk now
      ever to let go

[Note: Sources: Shin Yu Pai, “Vinyasa Instruction for R.Y. Yoga”, at Makura no Soshi, 3 Jan 09; Renee Gladman, The Activist (the big blob bit and the traced and are in my copy, too, as are a few other tracings and underlines …); Kris is Kris Hemensley, with whom I’ve been discussing, via the comments section at Alan Baker’s Litterbug, Israel’s invasion of Gaza; Belle Gironda, as quoted by Katie Yates, “On Belle Gironda”, in On: Contemporary Practice (eds. Michael Cross, Thom Donovan & Kyle Schlesinger); Tom Beckett, “A Witness Rhythm”, “Statues of Limitation”, in Unprotected Texts: Selected Poems 1978-2006; Reed Bye, “Welcome Back”, in Join the Planets: New and Selected Poems; Roy Fisher, The Ship’s Orchestra, in The Long and Short of It: Poems 1955-2005; Lyn Hejinian, “Barbarism”, in The Language of Inquiry; James Koller, Messages (If … messages is a very loose paraphrase); Laura Moriarty, Ultravioleta; Simon Pettet, “Take off            the red shoes”, “After the Persian”, in Selected Poems; Jerome Rothenberg, “Altar Pieces”, “The Road to Holland”, in Seedings & Other Poems; Juliana Spahr, “Poem Written from November 30, 2002 to March 27, 2003”, in The Connection of Everyone With Lungs; Marjorie Welish, “Empire Illumined”, in The Annotated “Here” and Selected Poems]