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Autopoiesis XVI (Sonnet 6)

A text wrapped in leaves

Leaves

When the wind blows through the leaves

I wait while water boils

I knew I was awake but … couldn’t quite believe it

Hungry and wondering

I was wondering

What was in the mind of … Eurydice

I think Rilke tells us

… And when, abruptly,

The god put out his hand to stop her, saying,

With sorrow in his voice:  He has turned around--,

She could not understand, and softly answered

Who? …

The water has boiled

It’s green tea now

The thinner than a razor blade that slips between you and yourself is an imperceptible vertical hyphen

The want is ended

And then continues

Why do I keep typing then deleting

Is my heart

Your heart?

Who is morirroring my …

Who lends me this un-

Rooted passion?

A semblance of the sun

A wicked likeness of morning

Shines up among the ruins

Visible now

The sentence

Of interlocked bridges

It is all here

*

*

*

Cobweb between two branches

*

*

*

My teacup is empty

Not apocalypse but a wicked likeness of morning

Is my heart

Your heart?

The Death Ship passes the lighthouse on dark brown paper

[Notes: Sources: texts by the 6th “group” of 13 authors in Bay Poetics (ed. Stephanie Young), taken back to front: Julia Bloch, Dodie Bellamy, Kevin Killian; Helène Cixous, Dream I Tell You, as quoted in Jacques Derrida, Geneses, Geneaologies, Genres, & Genius (both tr. Beverley Bie Brahic – not in Bay Poetics); Jocelyn Saidenberg; Federico Garcia Lorca, “Confusion”, from “Mirror Suite” (tr. Jerome Rothenberg, modified – not in Bay Poetics); Alan Halsey, “Five Accounts of the Arrest of English Poetry” and “Coherent Light”, respectively, in Not Everything Remotely (not in Bay Poetics); Yedda Morrison, Magdalena Zurawski, Pamela Lu,  Mary Burger, Stefani Barber, Tanya Brolaski, Brent Cunningham, Laura Moriarty; and me. The Rilke is from “Orpheus. Eurydike. Hermes”, (tr. Stephen Mitchell). A super-supersized baker’s sonnet]

After Hokusai (For Alan Baker)

Just before I hit 50
I started writing again

But to date it’s certain
I’ve produced nothing of note

Maybe in 15 years or so
I will come to

Understand somewhat
The true quality of

Protein milagros
And maybe 10 years after that

The marvel
And maybe 10 years after that

The mu
And maybe 10 years

Further down the line
…

And if I live til 2060 -
Who knows?

[Note: this morning Alan posted this quote: “From about the age of fifty I produced a number of designs, yet of all I drew prior to the age of seventy there is truly nothing of any great note. At the age of seventy-three I finally came to understand somewhat the true quality of birds, animals, insects - the vital nature of grasses and trees. Therefore, at eighty I shall gradually have made progress, at ninety I shall have penetrated still further the deeper meaning of things, at one hundred I shall have become truly marvelous, and at one hundred and ten, each dot, each line shall surely possess a life of its own.” Katsushika Hokusai (1760-1849) Litterbug, 30 May 2007]

Autopoiesis XV (Sonnet 5)

The breath emerges

The sky has been illuminated

The sun fathers a cloud in my pocket

I write: the stone is blind

The pebble

/ /

Thinks

You

Are water

A light breeze picks up

The pebble’s last thought and

Blows it away

The water sings I’ll be your morirror

The water sings if you want to win a prize don’t ask me how to win it I’ve never won anything and why would you want to you are the prize itself and I am the administrator of your grief

The world is one

Sentence long

The soft flesh

Of

A splinter of light

…

A beauty of lostness

But perhaps at this point the notion that nothing is insignificant should be affirmed

Perhaps plants … perhaps they eat with their feet

Am I clean yet?

Shorn of unclear thinking?

From something called (what else?) “Poem”:

Every protein milagro is beautiful!

Abiding shadow of the infinite!

Blah blah comma twin born with the sun

…

Or

As Rainer Maria Rilke once said

“You must …

Know the gestures which small flowers make

When they open in the morning”

The pebble

/ /

Thinks

You

My tongue is bleeding because the sandwich was water

[Notes: Sources: texts by the 5th “group” of 13 authors in Bay Poetics (ed. Stephanie Young – tho this group actually includes 14; it’s a long story), taken back to front: Travis Ortiz, Kit Robinson; Ilhan Berk, Yesterday I Wasn’t at Home, I Took to the Hills” and “Water Days III”, in A Leaf About to Fall (tr. George Messo – not in Bay Poetics); Laynie Brown, Susan Maxwell, Chris Chen, Bill Luoma (with whose words I could do nothing), Juliana Spahr, Lyn Hejinian, Christopher Nealon, Joshua Clover, George Sterling as quoted by Andrew Joron, Garret Caples (with whose words I could do nothing), Eileen R Tabios; Geoffrey Dyer; and me. Another slightly supersized baker’s sonnet]

Autopoiesis XIV (Sonnet 4)

The body remembers

The beloved is everything that is the case

These moments made verbs

O so many waves

Lying face down

Noticing the soil

I’d rather hear the soil than an estranged drivel

And everything is all good

On no sleep

What does it mean to be balanced

Our military base is now a national recreation area

The Weather is Happening All Around Us

“I’m channeling some heavy shit!”

Inches

Before

Disconnect

This is why I have been so transfixed

The beloved and the tune

Not 1 not 2

…

Shadow over

            Pooled water

A beautiful afternoon in the Coast Range near the ocean 35 years ago

A confluence welling

The verb of the everpool

[Note: Sources: Abelard, in Howard Brenton’s In Extremis, per Ernesto Priego’s “In Extremis”, never neutral, 27 May 2007; Ludwig Wittgenstein, Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus; texts by the 4th “group” of 13 authors in Bay Poetics (ed. Stephanie Young), taken back to front: James Meetze, Dan Fisher, Dennis Somera, Padcha Tuntha-obas, Kristin Palm, Kathleen Miller, Trevor Calvert, Avery Burns, Elizabeth Robinson, George Albon, Logan Ryan Smith, Stacy Doris, Jen Scappetone; and me. One step beyond a baker’s sonnet]

Autopoiesis XIII (Sonnet 3)

                    Click

        Click

… Then …

        Click

Wingless

We are ourselves because this is the world’s first morning

And we are ourselves because it is not

And we are also not ourselves

Lyric becomes possible

The poem’s line passes through the space of a beloved

After a long time of light

There began to be eyes

And light began looking with itself

And saw

The poem’s line pass through the space of a beloved

The music is loud and matters most

A stellar energy

A protein milagro surfing a mashup third reef immeasurable swell

The sun is relentless

When night falls

The world will have rotated another 3,540 kilometers

It’s all happening now

The bye-and-bye

The small hours

Light's blood’s music's itinual wheel

We’ll drive to some waterfalls

Lo and behold!

We’re driving right now

I’m afraid this might make sense

You know

Be a letter

Last week at the park

A small crowd gathered

Around two protein milagros who sat

On a bench

Feeding pigeons

One protein milagro was short and round

With pale skin. The other

Tall, dark, and bony

“We are identical twins!”

They shouted in perfect unison

Everyone believed them

Go for help?

It has been won

                    Click

        Click

… Then …

        Click

The beloved

The lyric is possible

[Note: Sources: texts by the ante-penultimate 13 authors in Bay Poetics (ed. Stephanie Young), taken back to front: kari edwards,Donna de la Perriere, Joseph Lease, Taylor Brady, Lauren Gudath, Beth Murray, Aja Couchois Duncan, Stephanie Young, Nils Michals, Catherine Meng, Yuri Hospodar, Susanna Kittredge, Amick Boone; Ronald Johnson, “BEAM 4”, ARK; and me. Another baker’s sonnet]

Autopoiesis XII (Sonnet 2)

The great translation of this

Tweaks the credible

And lyrics of the difficulty of integrity in a corrupt environment belted out of the car speakers

What’s represented in the mural

And THAT is history condensed on a single wall

If you drift on it

You can make something larger and more significant

A double mirror

BROKEN TEXT

For TEXT read EXIT

Naked like a moth in a scream of flame

Looking back dreaming back only from an unsafe distance

“They that Sit in Darkness are troubled

And shake their heads”

“The Protein Milagros that Sit in Darkness”

“The Protein Milagro Sitting in Darkness”

Soul

Spilled out in the street

I …

I’m that

The bare bulbs make every protein milagro look sick

Detained, and “safely so” in a container

Made of Chinese steel

TEXT is my strange misreading of EXIT

EXIT is my strange misreading of TEXT

[T] [E] [X] [I] [T]

Last night we discussed it with the window open

As usual

Outside:               the endless flow of cars

Moving protein milagros around the city

One more Saturday night

[Note: Sources: texts by the penultimate 13 authors in Bay Poetics (ed. Stephanie Young), taken back to front: Andrew Felsinger, Summi Kaipa, Barbara Jane Reyes, Jean Vengua, Stephen Vincent, Mark Latiner, Nicole Brodsky, Lauren Schiffman, Cataline Cariaga, Alfred Arteaga, Camille Roy, Bob Glück, Rob Halpern; Ernesto Priego, “Sweat”, never neutral, 25 May 2007; and me – thus this is another baker’ sonnet]

791

Autopoiesis XI (Sonnet 1)

Opened by unseen hand

Insisting repeatedly, “You are here”

Oh

Repeat 6 times

The things words want to move through

Geraniums all up

In that shit

“While we’re alive,” we kept

Repeating, kissed our lips raw

Truly I am in the designs of the Omphalos

I was like

Speak to me as a holy protein milagro would

But speak to me

Very well

Black and wooden

Threads of gold

Who could

Demand of us anyhow these minds

Which are not ours

Blue sky. Blackberries

Repeat blue sky

Repeat blackberries

… And then as I’m lying down to sleep I hear a hair-raising Grrrrr

Protein milagros are dots of color

Among the greys

Repeat protein milagros

Certain believers wash their feet according to the clock of ritual

Even, when necessary, in urinals

[Note: Sources: texts by the last 13 authors in Bay Poetics (ed. Stephanie Young), taken back to front: Kathleen Fraser, David Hess, Chris Sullivan, Alli Warren, Nathaniel Mackey, Sean Labrador, K Silem Mohammad, David Larsen, Cedar Sigo, Micah Ballard, Roger Snell, David Hadbawnik, Sarah Rosenthal – and my version of something my ref desk colleague Debbi Renfrow told me. 14 sources in all make this a sonnet. A baker's sonnet?]

Autopoiesis X (For Sam, Midair)

I find myself crossing a great distance

A special form of inner darkness

An infinite fold

A silence between sounds

A transit space

Like one of those endless tunnels in a great airport

(Yang-shan’s hand

Draws a circle in the air)

I find myself crossing a great distance

A silence

Between one of those endless tunnels

In one of those endless tunnels

Like one of those endless tunnels

In

An infinite fold of

Air)

(Yang-shan’s hand

Draws a darkness

An infinite fold

Draws a circle

A transit space

One of those inner darknesses

An infinite silence between sounds

A transit (Yang-shan’s hand

I find myself crossing find myself crossing a great distance

(Yang-shan’s hand

Draws those endless tunnels

In a great a circle in the air)

Air)

Fold

A special form of inner darkness

Air)

Draws a circle in

A silence between sounds

An infinite special form of inner darkness

A silence between sounds

A transit space

An infinite fold

I find myself crossing a great distance

A circle in the air)

Tunnels in one of those endless tunnels of inner darkness (Yang-shan’s hand

Myself crossing a great distance

A silence inner darkness

In a great airport space

(Yang-shan’s hand

Draws a form of inner darkness

A great distance in a great circle in the form of inner darkness

An infinite folded hand

(Yang-shan’s hand

Draws a circle (Yang-shan’s hand

Draws a circle in

A special form of

A silent distance

A special form of sounds

An infinite inner darkness sound

A transit space

An infinite of inner darkness

Draws a circle in the air)

One of those endless tunnels in

An infinite fold

Circle in the air)

A transit space

Space a transit space a transit space

(Yang-shan’s hand

An infinite hand

Draws a circle

A silence between sounds

Between sounds

A space

I find myself crossing a great silence between sounds

A transit space a circle in the air)

Like one of those endless tunnels in a great airport

Distance

A fold

An inner darkness

An infinite fold

Myself crossing an inner darkness

Tunnels in a great airport

One of those a circle in

A special form of inner air)

(Yang-shan’s hand

Draws

(Yang-shan’s hand

A special form of inner

(Yang-shan’s hand

Draws

(Yang-shan’s hand

A silence between crossings a great distance fold

A great airport those endless tunnels in a great airport I find myself in endless tunnels in a great between sounds

A transit

A myself crossing a great distance

A special form of hand

Draws a (Yang-shan’s hand

Draws a great airport

(Yang-shan’s silence between sounds

(Yang-shan’s hand

Draws

A silence

An infinite fold in the air)

A silence endless tunnels in a space

Like space

Draws a silence between sounds

In the air)

Draws a circle one of those endless tunnels in a fold

A silence in the air)

I find myself crossing a circle in the air)

Inner darkness in the air

A great distance in the air

A special form of inner darkness in the air

An infinite fold in the air

A silence between sounds

A transit space

(Yang-shan’s hand

Draws a circle in the air)

[Note: Sources: Jaime Saenz, “To Cross This Distance”, in Immanent Visitor (trs. Kent Johnson and Forrest Gander); Thomas Metzinger, Being No One; Gilles Deleuze, The Fold: Leibniz and the Baroque (tr. Tom Conley), as quoted in Tara McDowell, “Framed Drawings”, in The Art of Richard Tuttle (ed. Madeleine Grynsztejn); Julie Mehretsu, in Agustín Pérez Rubio, “Tracing the Universe of Julie Mehretu: A Choral Text”, in Julie Mehretu: Black City; Audrey Yoshiko Seo, Enso: Zen Circles of Enlightenment. I fucked around a bit with selected fragments of these texts (the 1st 8 lines of this poem). Then I put them through Lee Worden’s  vispo cutup engine. Then I edited the cutup results into an enso, a circle in the air]

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