in scale

All day long the sea went back and forth, back and forth. At night the moon was as if suddenly clear of obstructions and showed huge and plain. There was no talking to the moon, and so we kept our heads down and argued among ourselves.

A kind of camp was established. Its fire burned all night, various hands tossing in pieces of driftwood, paper, cardboard packaging - whatever those hands found for the purpose. Some of us stayed by the fire, lounging, one's back against a log, another hunched over, face peering into the fire. His hands move busily but without any particular end. Nervous hands.

I got up and walked out toward the waves. I heard them before I saw them, trim little ridges of foam obliterating over the barren sands. Then I reached out and felt your fingertips touch mine, as if you had read my mind. I can't say I was pleased. I am impossible to know, I am sure. I am unlovely, untrue, and will live out an undiscovered life.

But still you find me.

Walden/Concord

I dreamed a dream where I could write poems without it taking so much out of me, but it was just a dream. Likewise, I am drawn to the experience of where the doing and knowledge of doing come together. The location of this experience or understanding is at the apex of a slender curve. I must be rested and more or less confident in my life to find this place, which is after all interior. I cannot be unique, and so this place is interior to us all, though I must suppose it goes by different names. I am uncertain of what is interesting, however intriguing, and so continue on toward what I hope will be true, even as I fall, again and again, out from my understanding. I pull my life about me, I settle my affairs - it may take hours, days, weeks or months - and set out again. I write in form in blank recognition that I am a form of a man writing in the form of poetry. In the act of writing in form - in the act - I feel like I am in physical correspondence with the location of which I speak, where the doing and the knowing are nearly as one.

Rest@Play

Several years ago I wrote a poem called Fifteen Tercets, where I applied the structure of Terza Rima (abc/cab/bca) to the structure of the strophes, where a = one line; b = 3; c = 2, like this:

Our particularity

This capacity for
dead landscape...
name living lands

a car door slam a
race up the steps

Gray lockers flex
with a generation

quick tumble chew

On the formica my
hand exposed Noon
destroying detail


Just like a clock
to talk a lot but
keeping to itself

Old Mr Henderson,
young mrhenderson

chewing on chalk.

My idea is to create a book structured in this fashion, juxtaposing the block form Fictions I have been writing (in the "B" spot), Poem Drawings (in the "C" spot), and black-and-white drawings in the "A" spot. So. The book would start with 1 drawing, then 2 poem drawings, then 3 Fictions/break/3 Fictions 1 drawing, 2 poem drawings/break - etc. Of course three rounds (a Tercet) complete a cycle, adding up to 18 entries (18 pages, as all this material is one/page). I figure four tercets to give the thing corners and balance, or 72 pages.

I am happy I think though tired from my job and hope this works. I get to choose what goes where, of course. But I have to say I have not been looking forward to trotting out yet another collection of poems. This book will have shape upon shape upon varying shapes. And the best part is I have all the Fictions written (I will need 36 and have 43 keepers so far). I need create 22 more poem drawings - which could be a problem, granted (I have 2 and am not convinced of the form) - and 12 drawings - which I can do in two days. Of course I can switch drawings for poem drawings if things get dire.

I Will Get Around To You Eventually

I want to write more poems so that I can publish more books. I want to publish more books because it allows me to think about and write more poems. Sooner or later I will die and who knows what that will lead to.

Speaking of poems, I have 43 drafted Fictions but have slowed down to where I wonder why I have slowed down. Ideas are occurring to me - never a good indicator - ideas of variations and different forms to interpose with the Fictions. Ideas though are the lazy man's way out. Anyone can come up with an idea. It's takes something special to do the same thing over and over again. Yessir!

That's out of the way. The process indicates a slowing then visualizing a form of the completed work. It may be some of this or some of that. I will bet you a dollar that I end up with the book I first intended, being 87 Fictions. I would have to write I think about 50 to 60 more to end up there though. Factor in that I can't live in this project more than another six months. Tops. I live in a point/counter-point universe, and too much of even a good thing can be bothersome.

That brings me to you.