On Everything ___(Some Portraits) (Fragments)

Isn't there any body you want back from the grave? We were less generous in our time

____Palinurus







Glen Erler from Tiny Vices


On Words

it's easy enough when you deal with truncate, which can happen- say the ending of a story, or...

____- do you mean it?
____- what?
____- what you just said to me, __do you mean it (?)
____- [...]
____- [she looks at him looking at the table top, lost in nothing, just having decided he'd come to the end of something, but she couldn't sense what]
____- [...]
____- yes.
____- then say so.

but dress is a tetrapod. 1. dress me mommy __2. such a beautiful pattern on your dress __3. a tower built of dressed stone __4. we have dressed professional clowns for three generations. But at least it has corners. What about night, what about visions what about (i'm scared to say it, it's too big: love) (time) (history) (gravity) what about them? I have no sense of words, what words mean - it is a morphic heiroglyphics the language of poets and fictionalists- like shapes made of shadows: that come and go and grow sharp and can smile and diminish and be vague and are grey on sidewalks and experience wind all on their ownsome.

when someone says to me "nightvisions", or "i'm gonna fly right through the walls", or "i will, i will", or "i love(d) him.her" or "it's my shoulder blade" or "please?" or "sshhh" i cannot collapse that universe to mean just one thing. there is no such thing as just one thing. i do not know a just one thing, even god can only be interpreted as the whole of alleverything from allinfinity(past) to allinfinity(future) including alltheinfinity(of the present) bar no fly, no kitchen sink, no emotion passing through a dead man's wife at his funeral, no palpitation in the heart of young strangers making out by the grass besides the river, or the parallel fifths of Debussy. i am a failure.


On Life As It Once Stood

i am wearing a tshirt that says ONE PLANET
______________________ONE PEOPLE
_____________________ ___...PLEASE
____ ___ _ _____ ________ __Baha'i Faith
i remember too many things from that day. a long parade. an overcast day. we were tired (the two kids, my cousin and i) by the end of it. our parents promised us burgers if we just got through to the last. Ended finally and there was a Carl's Junior right at the finish line. That was 19early90something, i was a little fat that year and my cheeks were puffy, and my hair was still an unkempt fro. We were a poor family, just returned from Africa. my sister had just been borned (all babies want to be borned) so we were also a sad family. except for me, i wasn't sad, as much as i was... confused. one day i was playing with my yellow (hollow) plastic baseball bat (which was also: a sword, machine gun, a row for a rowboat, walking stick, normal stick, karate stick, electric guitar, fireman's pole, pilot's gear-stick, snake, magic flute) in the quiet living room where no one ever came and the dust was always gold in the air and i'd stare out in front of me and follow them around, perennial falling stars (since i wouldn't see a shooting star for another 8 years), wounded fireflies, or drifting galaxies lingering in gravity's tail end - all silence and sorrounded by the black of a shadow civilization, and my mother walked in red cheeks, puffy eyes and said: Qdudsu, you have to be a grown-up now. I'm sorry, there's no more time for you. and walked off. Which of course made little sense at the time, given that He-Man had just been given the 'other half' by The Sorceress, and must now prevent Skeletor from linking the two halves to gain access to the castle. Unconcerned, i unsheathed my yellow sword and dived back onto the persian rug that bore too many of my tiny sole's steps for those years.

After that there was no Carl's Junior for 19 odd years. When I finally returned to a Carl's Junior, an too, too long night, Monz and J-Bird exhausted from the drive, and me still too lethargic at the realization that i could not just climb under Sunday afternoon and be lost there forever. it seemed smaller, the burger this is, smaller. dripped a transparent oil so we were all a slippery wet by the end of it, lubricated inside and out, and the 2am soft-drink was too sweet and too sharp and felt like a pierced acrid farewell (like the soo too many others i've known, made, manufactured, been happy for, would rather die than have gone through with, died doing, was born at the moment of

________III. Finale, Duetto: Adagio ma non tanto

____- this is what you want?
____- __i , _think , it's ; it is, is , ___for the best.
____- [I did not know death was so strange]
____- hey? ____hey ... you gonna be alright?
____- sure.
____- i... it. ____hm.
____- hey. don't worry ok, it's. ____fine.
____-
________________
________________fine.


I wear it now almost as a joke. I am full of jokes today. I am riddling myself silly. Constantly challenging the who-i-am/who-i-was ,__ who-i-want-to-be/who-i-shouldn't-let-myself-be ,__ who-the-f-am-i frontiers. and mostly, no matter how you spit on it, it got me here.


On Here

the bedsheets are still pink. (today my sister, after seeing the net-link i sent her, cracks up. she has a high-pitched laugh, genuine, absolutely ebullient, are_you_crazy? that's the ugliest car i've ever seen! which makes me soo happy, because she is laughing). i'm not sure what's happening. or true. or... present. where we are (going), if there's any more room to fall, or if it's safe to start believing now in uphill climbs, in altitude, in slow, placid love affairs that feel like feathers (and not semi-trailers), in the concept of future, in meaningness, in floors that actually are there beneath your feet and hold you in place- locked into a certain space and time- like a pivot, in the universe and i's general concurrence.

there are the mistakes of the poet- derived from the multifid nature of some words, and the transgressive, shadowy nature of others. there are the mistakes of the man, derived from steeps and notches of inexperience and miswisdoms and brutal roullette games; and the vague, floating.diving.falling.sinking realms of human whatever-all-of-it is that drips and drops in and out just in time to ignite tragedies, and remind miracles to occasionally show up.

Also, i don't even know what this post is about. I don't know even know what anything is about- but i tell myself it's about tomorrow, which alone is an irrational enough idea, that it just might be worth staying human for.