The Ontology Murders

Poetry is not the poem any more than humanity is the child. That would be to insult the child to label it so.

If a poem is constituted, first and last, in being the most reliable means by which poetry is enacted, so be it, but we cannot be convinced.

God is the answer to Why, as art answers the question Why not.

Purity is best rendered in acts of utter self-neglect.

I do not care much that art and poetry meet, but I would like to see poetry and interstate trucking brought into closer proximity.

The first fact was being from which no other facts could be deduced. The first fact was a point of being. A poem can suggest this truth, which is all we can do on the artistic end of the spectrum. On the opposite end is plain old worship, which is another sort of pure form.

Poetry matters in the same way that accidents disturb my sleep.

Conversation should not be conducted in neglect of meaningful silence.

All silence is a kind of conspiracy against meaning.

The fact of a thing exists at a 270 degree angle to the shadow of its being. When I say shadow, I mean old friends.

I was true, then more true, then alive to death before I suddenly was true again.

The new thing is not the old, but the old made new by understanding.

You say you fell, but I saw leap.

Language has in common with music an elaborate scheme for the exchange of tickets.

Criticism is essential, as is weeping.

I trust that at the end of day I will be credited with having fashioned my own coffin from out of virtual paper.

A Discussion

for John Beer

I had in mind this conversation with this guy that began at the left margin, where we traded quips. It got to a point where really we were repeating ourselves and each other, so the conversation moved toward the right margin, but slowly. Achingly. Looking down the page, we had about 20 lines to cover, so that we were taken up with cross references. Active ones at that. Some of these propelled the discussion at both ends, while others seemed to embed themselves on a letter or punctuation character. Things got noisy, with people coming and going and a variety of bands on stage. People calling out others' names, laughter, cigar smoke. Things then began to wind down with one or two small accidents, of course. The day crew cleans those up. This guy, a friend, really, and I ended up at a new, usual place, which is what we almost always do, for reasons that they, I am glad to say, keep to themselves.

Form is Marriage for all

Form is the formal knight, dressed in the white of a blank page

Form the span between the tomorrow of plans and appointments and what tomorrow brings

Form is the arch of category rainbows, a situational span above the ark of inherited forms

To assemble forms under the direction of all that is

The name, form, where the sound, form, invokes love of form

Form the matter not the measure

To assemble and discern after the assembly

Form what happens all the time, while getting dressed, or between relationships

A middling terror. A hop, skip, and jump

Form is the discussion that led us to form as the conversation regarding form

A looping effect, like a rope tossed, twisting on the ground

A shape

A sphere

Form is the concern that distills time to such a point that people take their share

Directing traffic, at the center and apart

A curtain of no substance hanging loose across a bedroom window

Emily Dickenson turns in the gate

Form is never second-rate

A variety of of bodily gestures and moves and symbols that lead to form

Not the first or the last. Never the first, or the last.

A statement released to support other statements while indicating recent events

Not people, or things, but what things dream of people

A personal history, if that person is Caesar

Twice the work and three times the hardware

Form is the lawn before and after it is cut, from a certain perspective, today, for instance

Tiki torches, and the ladies who surround them

The moon, when the moon is what we think, with concern

What gentlemen do, when they are gentlemen

What people do because they are people

Form is the shadow cast by form upon the object of our making

Form is the mirror we push form to to look upon itself

A draft of a speech, the speech, and all manner of murmuring

A triumph of tendency over fact

Marriage

Marriage of one

Marriage for all