FCF 109

My favorite thing in this poem, and I think it’s extremely special, is a phrase that’s stayed in my head since I first read it, and which often comes to mind when I walk out the door each morning. It serves to remind me of the wonders I hope to encounter in the world, or even act as a kind of talismanic chant that might evoke such things.

ecstatic buckets of daytime

and that phrase is something else. It’s rapture, the rapture of day-energy, caught in words! That phrase gives me giddy joy. Thank you, Mel Nichols, for this line! [I dreamt about you last night] The fragment / image seems all the more glorious given that it’s sandwiched between an emphasizing interjection (“indeed”) and [the extraordinarily

perfect]
“in the
ellipsoidal notorious some.”

Green
shores appear;
we assume our

names, ...
Green is
green, according to

Husserl.
“She hears
the loud bells.”

"Green
is or":
if you would

like
to fill
another prescription please

press
1. the golden
mountain. "man with

five
hands". Fark
Yaraları. Scars of

Différance.
Jerk the
verbs, word honey.

Adequation
and identification,
with mediation as

their
means, but
towards what We're

running
a business
here. If it’s

9:45,
I’d think
it’s after midnight.

In
1998, a
silver-assed monkey

touched
me and
changed my round

square.
There was
a telly in

there,
as well,
but with its

own
content. I
stared at it

longer
than I
might because it

seemed
that Suzanne
Somers was in

the
video. Could
that be? Is

she
fresh enough
still? I could

be
wrong, it
could have been

a
pure nobody.
The Starlings, so

I
believe, imitate
death here in

the
theatre. And
sweeping them again

from
the aisles,
their legs of

branch,
hardened, yes,
but wingèd, Lord,

had
you not
made them to

fly
above the
earth, in the

open
firmament of
Heaven, pure coding?

I
like to
read because it

kills
me. I live
in the figurative

world.
Everything has
an almost brownish

clarity.
Who wanted
feet in the

first
place? How
did the arrow

fall
down the
chimney? & there

we
were, by
the gas station

on
the eve
of it could

be
world war
III, our arms

filter
thinning what
senses ‘eerie is

the
right word
for it’ (CNN)

100
BOOTS go
to the supermarket,

100
BOOTS visit
a cemetery, 100

BOOTS
ride a
roller coaster … and

I never wrote but to say that I had never done anything, could never do anything and that in doing something I was doing nothing. My entire work was built and could only be built on this nothingness            on this carnage, this fray of extinguished fires, of crystals and slaughter; one does nothing, one says nothing           I don’t know why it should be precisely here that my steps take me, here that I almost always go without specific purpose and without anything determining it other than this obscure clue: namely that

it

(?)

will

happen here

“It
should be
fun / Let’s go,

leave
the dishes,
get dressed / I’m

dying,
On a
night so
murky and blue

it’s
criticism.” Its
accent was bad,

bad
like the
puke of / 15

Dr
Peppers / With
the sort of

vapor
foreshortening that
makes / A squirrel

face
into a
walrus face/ As

I
write we
are 9 years

into
this ridiculous
war. … All, the buried ones included
      and without forgetting the dead ones, he specified

      as an across-this-world's-swarming-and-whirling-large-
      flat-floor-walking,
                    specifying shadow

      as a snowy rain
      a-flooding with butterfly- and certain kind of bread-formed
                           words

      with cities, objects with their aftermarket, pots, flowers
      on window sills, with carpets shelves light-spots measure-
          sticks houses
                  concepts

      containing partly acoustic music, partly that from the turn
          of the century,

shrinking as we grow

hemmed-
in by
something in the

water
or something
coming over the

water,
wind through
the horn, a

series
of notes,
scoring what won’t

echo.
Fuckin’ A.
The farmer who

yet
sees stars
catches their elderly.

IN
THIS WORLD
the problems seep

into
me. When
the home team

loses
some men
turn off their

televisions
and beat
their wives. The

bad
news recombines
in the dreamlike

way
it often
does in poems,

only
this time,
to borrow Freud's

terminology,
the day
residues are instantly

familiar
and nearly
intact: “Spider silk

in
the milk
of goats,” “Refusing

to
acknowledge / the
legitimacy of the

mudslide,”
There was
simply nothing to

identify
with or
imitate. The whole pop-
ulation became a networked jumpiness, a distributed neuronal network
registering en masse shifts in the nation’s global state of discom-
fiture                          in rhythm with leaps.

Uninflate ”nose” at one end, then knot off the wattle: as the meaning continues into the wee wee, the freak stays in the picture

everything will be f-f-fine

Bowl
Of Air
and Shivers: a

cat
in heat
passes and the

[motion-
detecting] crime-
prevention light flips

on,
illumines the
driveway … the light’s

an
old court
gamelan, gong deeply

resonant,
ancient woman
plays … You are

magic!
You expand /
You are ever

crumbling /
You are
arenot a maniac …

[Note: Sources: a bunch of stuff. Another b’day poem. This is not just for me; it’s also a b’day poem for Richard Lopez. Steven Fama, reviewing Mel Nichols’ Catalytic Exteriorization Phenomenon, and Nichols herself, at the glade of theoric ornithic hermetica, 22 Nov 09 (Dear Ms Nichols, tho we have never met, forgive me: I dreamt about you last night or the night before, no shit. I was utterly in love); Google search results (Edmund Husserl Logical Investigations green); Google search results (Edmund Husserl Logical Investigations golden mountain); Bruce Andrews, “Please Please Did”, in Designated Heartbeat; Maurice Blanchot, The Infinite Conversation (tr. Susan Hanson) (thanks, Anny!); Angela Genusa, “Empire Trust Company”, “After the Rapture” (Hey Anglela, long time no etc; good to have you back!); Allen Bramhall, “The Mall”, at Tributary, 26 Nov 09; John A Scott, Sonnets: Theatre of the Dead Starling, in The Reality Street Book of Sonnets (ed. Jeff Hilson); Mary Ruefle, “Impresario”, “Go Verbatim”, “Minor Ninth Chord”, “Naked Ladies”, “Where Letters Go”, in American Hybrid (eds. Cole Swensen and David St John); Jam Ismail, “Casa Blanca 1991”, in Language for a New Century (eds. Tina Chang, Nathalie Handal and Ravi Shankar); Howard N Fox, “Waiting in the Wings: Desire and Destiny in the Art of Eleanor Antin”, in Eleanor Antin (ed. Howard N Fox); Antonin Artaud, and André Breton, as quoted in Blanchot; Brandon Downing, “László”, “Forrest Gump “, “Phantasm (1979)”, in Dark Brandon; Levi Lehto, “Snowfall”, “Ananke: A Pantoum”, in Lake Onega and Other Poems, as quoted in Michael Peverett’s review, at Intercapillary Space; Taylor Brady and Rob Halpern, Snow Sensitive Skin; Catherine Wagner, “The Argument”, as quoted in Johannes Göransson’s review of her My New Job, at Exoskeleton, 24 Nov 09; Crg (!) Hill, “Quickly followed by catbird, the wren, the wood choir”, at Crg Hill’s Poetry Scorecard; Michael McClure, “62”, in Touching the Edge; Anne Waldman, “An Aside on Karma”, “Steps of a Bodhisattva”, in Structure of the World Compared to a Bubble; Jordan Davis, reviewing Kevin Davies’ The Golden Age of Paraphernalia, and Davies himself, at The Nation, 4 Feb 09; Brian Massumi, “Fear (The Spectrum Said)”, at Brian Massumi.com; Nada Gordon and Gary Sullivan, “Fleshy Red Thing”, Nada Gordon, “Ted & Kit” (where she quotes Ted Greenwald), at ululations, 23 & 27 Nov 09; Eugene Gloria, in Chang/Handal/Shankar; Tada Chimako, “Haiku”, in Chang/Handal/Shankar]

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