Not seeing my self Self as a consolidation of effort toward desire, not at my age.
Just to write, just to stop and write.
Write Mt Fuji, Write Kilimanjaro, Write Annapurna, Write Denali, Write Mt Everest, Write the Moon.
Category Archives: writing
Will never
Will never
Will never
read a bestseller
will never
swill never
will never
write a bestseller
too much written
too much written
Dogen sailed to China
how did Gary reach Japan?
Does she use the we the they?
The tremor.
Tremorer.
The harderworker.
I am tired of articles.
july 20, 2007
Fear of start.
july 16, 2007
Emmy’s birthday uncertainty. Overwhelmed this morning. Poetry oozes pus.
she lacks fluency
she is being careful rigid
she is being beside herself
she is soul shallow
she has a spoon to stir herself
she has a spring to mail herself
she does not have a skirt or shorts
when in doubt compose
july 14, 2007
Washed up on the shore of paper.
june 25, 2007
I will only be here for five minutes.
Some remarks on poetry. Some purity. Some pain. Some stretching.
There are “the’s” in the work, there are no “the’s.”
june 22, 2007
Unknowns and failure to adapt.
The lowness, lack. The this the that.
What about no articles?
No questions, no answers?
What about The Questionnaire?
Poem: all the old-time ladies’ names gathered in one place old-timey timey.
Pillow Book, I want it.
Secrets in the teeny tiny.
Uncle Blair dropped dead.
Uncle Ubriaco, come back. We need you.
this is a worthwhile occupation
even though I don’t have shoes
and looking trail
I want to make a stanza
this is something that I want to do a stanza
this is what I want to do an ice cold water
this is something that I want to see a mountain
This is me relaxing
this is me not liking what I’m writing
this is me still looking for the answer
this is me with a vestigial sense of boredom
this is me with mountains petals mountains petals mountains
this is something like a bag of petals paper catching petals
this is vision you are bequeathed a vision and you grasp it whether it is sandwich bags or earth house hold
this is your gift your vision
this is how we do it
how and how and how
this one wants to write through everything
this one wants pigtails
this one wants to be the age I am
this one wants disabilities and aches and pains
this one believes in happiness
the floral happiness
the petalled extras
the extravagance
the vagaries
the vacuum vengeance
the cosmic curiosities
the wretched
there are unawakened
there are emotional storms
Ralph’s sadness and his brave front
how do you like your brave front now
Knit crochet or write
writing forms a lacy shawl
lying on the page
Kore Improvisations
Stanzas in Meditation
Invo Invocations
I won’t allow the conflicts of the day into my prose. All illusion all the time.
It’s unusual to have a mustache.
Override non sequitur.
june 8, 2007
Stopping. moment. moment. moment. need a punctuation mark like “bullet,” period raised, superscript,
This is a house of wax.
This is a fashion statement.
Wandering. Needing an infusion. Noting—or—composing. Note-compose, note and compose.
Computer science, computer necromancy, data alchemy, a shifting science, a business logic, a failure.
There is a subtlety in all this writing, subtle refusal to let go. Subtle refusal of the whimsical the circumspect the lack the luck. Subtle refusal to charge off in all directions. Subtle refusal to mentor the young self into immersion. Subtle refusal to merge with the white whale
Markers. Stream of bubbles where it all went down.
I write to dissolve, to learn how to dissolve.
Unwieldy Characters. Awesome characters that I will try to separate. An effort.
Well, this is a form of discovery. A forum. A process. Why do I make comparisons. She is struggling. She is struggling with the form. It is daunting. But what else is there?
may 29, 2007
Hot page cool breeze. Birds and juice. Death in the air, creeping. Suicidal Ideation. Nothing but pleasantries, a need to scan the lines. Rustle woods, the deer step, squirrel shuffle. Peculiar disconnectedness of individuals, editors, the edited smile, the censored speech. Pileup of phrases. The litter of prepositions, the punctuation of punctuation. Texture of voices and air conditioning noises. The bands and patterns of tension. Often I ask: what are you talking about? What does it mean, the transfer function?
The smell of garbage mixes with a hint of lilac this is it I will not write
no rhythm
no awful
no silly
no sentence
no courage
no dependability
no glancing
no gazing
no call
no dependency
no tooth
no braids
no exoskeleton
Small and without punctuation although
the sky is pleasant forming I am not alone
Having tea and toast face raw with bugs
alarmed
may 28, 2007
Halting pages. Tumbling trembling. The -ing captures things as happening things. Alliteration. aligned with Dogen avoiding capitalization language forming sentences no declarative I declare, no comment Alleluia Amen this is how I end it
None of this material was ever here.
None of these objects can be licked.
None of this writing can be read.
None of this talking can be heard.
There are a lack of general principles
and analytical reach. There are.
My precious treasure.
I know I am halting. I know I am making it invisible.
I know I am policy, relying on the policy.
Wishing for a voice.
Wishing for a voice.
Almost done.
No, not quite.
No facility in the hand this morning.
You are privileged. This is a practice. I see my coworkers in their cars driving to work. I see them practicing. I see them wanting to be happy. I don’t see them composing. That’s how I enforce the differences.
I demand the freedom to misuse punctuation. The further
I go, the more perfect I get. Microsoft Word a continuing hindrance.
We have a get-together. There is a relationship with the page. We have not shown that to you yet. More to be revealed. Discovery is suspect. Discovery process is pigheaded. Nerves are jazz. Music is the instrument. Tuning is resisted, this is discordance. This is the dance of discord. This is a sort of hyperbolic naming. This is a frustrated desire to name in an overnamed environment. This is afterwords. This is the wretchedness of the beach. This is me being me, and I won’t apologize. She says “Excuse me, everybody.” She says “Sorry.” She apologizes. Her voice is a snake and hers is a frayed carpet. A stalled carpet, crumpled in the infrastructure. A plan, a cornucopia. This is disaggregated. This is a collection. This is a hard time. This is opportunity management. This is a to-do list, a task list, a watch list. This is a water path. This is a box. This is a box of books. This is enjoying my handwriting. This is an addiction to form. This is a crusty rind of moldy sentences. This is an appearance. This is a disappearance. This is an over.
I will ask why. Ask the hard questions. Adapt.
Not even in personal writing do I feel comfortable with the imperative.
Underwood. Undermountain. Mr. Undertree. Mr. Underworld. Underfish, undersmoke, under the weather. This is a cloud. This is a tornado.
This is an ancient cache of figs. This is early agriculture. This is unclothed. This is pristine.
This is what for. I will give you what for. What for?
What is it? Questions. Answers. Paralysis. This is a point. This is a letter. This is a word. This is a story.
She is sad and discouraged, head resting in her hand. Head in hands. Objectionable behavior. Pressed into a diagram.
This is the geometry. This is the measurement of her. This is the slippery slope, the slide. This is the choppiness of commas. This is the desire to relax. This is hunting. Hunting for badgers. Hunting in puddles. Hunting under the microscope.
This is looking. This is devising. This is an insult. This is non-allusiveness. Allusion, illusion. Protrusion, contusion. This is desperate. Separate. Disparate. Apparent. This is desparent. This is disappearance.
may 17, 2007
This is a false mystery. This is a place. This is an aftermath. This is a play. This is a break. This is a logical diagram. This is handwriting. This is an effort. This is the chirping of a loud bird. This is a GPS. This is too bad. This is a memory. This is garbage. This is unprecedented. This is a portrait. This is a holocaust. This is a small village. This is incurable. This is this. That is that.
Choking sensation in the solar plexus area. Driving sensation I interpret as a need to be alone. Desire for code, the secret code that expresses how and what I understand. My children are not fat and both are bald. That’s over that’s enough. Embedding secret line breaks in the work. Choking sensation in the lower throat. Anger’s like a cavity in the chest.
Happiness. Counting the days, the lines the minutes and the hours. Yes, yes I can see the Buddha in your mind is angry. The smells. You can’t deny requirements for meditation, you can’t deny the leftovers, the bowls, the cups, the glasses, the hard litter of the kitchen. You can’t deny your stomachache, you silly westerner, when are you leaving? yesterday? Someone made a study of her punctuation. And so long arriverderci after all amen.
A flicker in my toe. The obnoxiousness of writing the seethrough sheer. The obnoxiousness of writing, the impulsiveness. The retardedness. Someone has to be you and you are IT. Someone has to name the fashionable names. Someone has to translate. Someone has to have the skills. Someone has to be unresponsive. Someone has to serve the lunch, someone has to struggle in the office with a flicker in their left third toe and a stabbing pricker in their pinky and that one is me.
This is the long form. This is the long relax. This is the long white whine. Where is the invention? What is the distinction in the roots of literature?
I am sick.
Feel made sick by these studies.
The form is a worm.
Hello goddess, hello Godfrey. Here’s a secret: Karen Finley telling me the writing seemed like psychotic ranting, I should cut it back to one page. I felt like she had requested that I violate the “Form.”
Interplay. Fabric. The writing is a crazy fabric. No regular warp and woof to hold the thing together.
may 9, 2007
The journal “form.” Ha!
I forgot I was a poet
with this sun thing I embraced
there is an eager energy there
sun energy—she lets it play
she delights in the sun
a form of ecstasy
but dangerous
may 5, 2007
Trepidation starting to write—iron chains, bit in my mouth, torture devices all around my head—
wind blows fluff past these windows
struggle
it seems ceaseless
There are too many things, too many words, too many songs, and too much sugar.
Simple. Simple. Simple. Sometimes your writing is so simple, you can’t do it, you’re stuck below the rungs of simple with your monkey-loving hands, reaching, reaching, fingerly grasping.
Nothing simple here. No lily.
The frog lily, the toad flax.
Animals have not been aroused.
I can’t write untruths.
And speech becoming cleansed to silence.
Dishes—plates. Cups, forks, spoons. Bowls.
So there.
Punctuation. A miserable experience. A chant, a chop, a chore. A child.
Trying to make castle, trying to make castle out of foam. Trying to lurk, trying to get home. Trying to write, trying to make room. Trying to elope, can’t elope alone.
No luck.
Hunting for something, hunting hard. Sometimes you just come up short, just dust and particles.
I wish this could be warmer. Or more expressive somehow. I wish I wasn’t tempted by shit, and tales, and mentally ill. I wish I wasn’t haunted. And am I haunted after all? I feel like yes. I feel some burdens, but you know what—it’s no longer all that interesting.
I’m interested in the magical indigenous under the sound of rain.
Just to catalogue your options: details, details, sensory details, grace, the yen for grace, the absence, flaws or beauty or perfection, memories or dreams. Objects or abstractions. Happiest with objects, but they’re few and far between. And most are shabby. Mug of oolong tea—swampy, with no sweetener. The little aloe, fading in its shallow pot. The sensation of flaring from beside my eyes, a tiredness. There’s a mouse living in the kitchen.
No, not working. The sense of distance, I am not there. I am paddling in the mud, pawing, clawing, mud between my toes. I have itching on my scalp, dry mouth, stomachache. I have to do my taxes. Vague sensation in the nipple of my left breast. Vague irritation in my rectum. Slight sensation of a single hair tickling my right cheek. Maybe there or maybe not. A welling up of anger that none of my co-workers are sitting in a library trying to clear their head with writing on a Saturday. A story. A gurgle in my guts. A restlessness in my legs—why am I sitting still? Sensation in my left buttock/hip, a sensation around the back of my left ear. Mother speaks sharply to her child. Ticking, periodic sound of wind—or is it air conditioning?
The memoir giving a consistent shape. The desire to be anti-memoir. The desire to be anti-craft. The desire to be antimacassar.
Dirty wall in the ladies’ bathroom near the light switch. Childrens’ hands. Wondering if I should call my brother. Wondering too long is never good. Stomachache. The regular diary. The jotting. The tendency. Dependent origination. The chain. The wrangling. The striving and the letting go. The seeking a rhythm. Child’s voice behind me. Heater ticking. Draft consistent. Periodically there is a sound of wind.
april 14, 2007
Just three pages, all boiled down to just three pages. My granola stomachache, the dryness in my nose and mouth. Heater ticking next to me, cold air drafting from behind my shoulder. Grayness out the window, brownness out the window, sign saying “wetland preserve” names that small anonymous swampy spot. My relationship with suffering is changing, trying to change. Or is this all in my head anyway?
Get me outta here. No rhythms to be found in here. Nowhere to go.
Her lines are very limited.
She takes pleasure in her documentation.
I used to write to You, but the You has dissolved out of my life. Rinsed of starch, I’m limp, limp as a cuttle-fish, scuttling, color-shifting, many predators. Laying eggs and going off to die.
That’s strange.
april 6, 2007
Wool socks don’t help. Cold feet, cold hands, cold pen, cold pages.
Just like meditating in a noisy room, this writing concentration exercise. Is it a strain, an effort, discipline? Does it leave a trace of joy? We’ll have to see—
Soft—softness of her terms. The soundness of her structure. Building system like a structure of spun sugar, stained with drops of food coloring. Where do you want to work? On the page, on the screen? at some point, I let go of all that effort. That did fall away like husks. I envy Mister You, at his desk just prior to dawn, staring out the window at the frozen lawn, no meadow. Cardinals and bluebirds. Resistant to maternal comments, on the —Robins or the —Peepers. Like a metronome each spring drawing your attention. And yet I have to trace my way through boredom, I have to throw my mind a bone to chew on and make Money. It’s awfully hard to retain my concentration on this thin high music as though here I was up in the mountains in my hut.
The absolute arrogant daring of a teacher. The heartbreak of the curious student. The value of curiosity is discounted. Do not examine. Do not look in. I know what I think, I know what I feel. All is different, the lamb is a dog, the horse is a louse. House. The mercury, the mystery. Free write disjointed. What’s going to sell. Hyperaudience, overengineered society. Leading to exhaustion. Aspire to humility. What do you hear here? What do we hear here? In the giant auditorium filled with five poets. Oh my god. How much compassion do you need?
Questions overflow. Abounding, then melt away like fields of snow. Flocks moving wrestling through the heavens. Harbingers of arbeit. After all, it’s mesh, how much is mesh? I refuse at some point. Stop. Step.
march 30, 2007
Reflecting on the ephemeral life. OR
Reflect on the ephemeral life. But
we all resist giving instructions.
Parsed words. A need to flee. A need to be in the clouds for awhile. Poetry driven from internal states. Not always wise to trust the mind, the impulses. Not always wine. Not always time. Never overdue. Never blank. And do you want my autograph?
What I want more than anything really is an awesome turn of phrase that surprises me when I look back at it.
Ride. Free ride—
Entertaining writing requirements, forcing myself to sit down and put something on paper, I understand that urge to just fling up your hands and refuse to create, refuse to push a small pocket open in the fabric of unknowns. Quicker the better. Numbered paragraphs. Goose honking seems to be upset. And yes, I have a headache. The ache of loneliness and isolation—but is it really desire, the desire for recognition? here we go again. Maybe that goose is honking-honking for her mate.
Eyes open extra wide. Ears frantic over noise inside, frantic tracking—see her trying to compose
And what about the Virgin Gemshit? What about a nightgown when circumstances dare you to wear one?
Bye—
I have a calling to Practice. Writing Practice!
Melville’s objects, chapter title objects, what is a memoir? what is a long collocation with a masterpiece, what is an ars poetica?
march 25, 2007
Un visible
A standing stone.
Three standing stones, white marble, in the conifer garden (trust the rhythm it will take you where you want to go) the lax
whispers
the coffee
the hand
I have a huge investment in Perfection and in teamwork. Systems in the family.
Well all they have to do is Google me and then die laughing
not even sure they have the impulse to know more, being the oppressor
Happy to be so invisible
while in plain sight
Inconclusive, in conclusion.
Abusive, people under pressure.
Sometimes I can take it.
Other times I start to have a breakdown.
Sadly.
Sometimes—no, not sometimes. Why vagueness?
It’s better to be March.
It’s better to be rain and snow in March.
It’s better to be best in class.
Grammar and punctuation—I can handle it. The writing piece is challenging. I put a lot of structure in security. I feel my face abrasive.
I see a large format, almost transparent page, light tint of color (apricot, violet, pink, green) with a long private free write on it. Who cares if it’s inappropriate?
Writing seems rebellious, especially when I’m taking a break from work. A personal agenda is a big mistake, a high profile error. Well, guess what, she doesn’t care (as much as she used to).
2nd Prose Poem conference
Something I’m not writing anymore
the disintegration of
the diary
on purpose
the relaxed alignment
of destructive tendencies
and all those names
those names for things
far-reaching Adams
wrestle in the garden
double Adams
double Garden
and there is no Eve
on daylight savings time
something made of ill repute
that catches up with you
ROWE! Excitement breaking through.
Sample. Oh yes. Sample started it all.
Poetry magazine destroys, disturbs. Don’t do it.
After all is no way to begin a sentence.
Ekphrasis—shocking tub of lies and self congratulate
Reading today about a Stone Coast MFA and a Prose Poetry Conference #2 in Walpole, but it’s August 3-5 and that’s Sam’s birthday, plus $650. Still—I want to go. But really I am flailing, floundering, utterly without direction—just feel a hole inside.
Hello hole who are you I mean how are you? Drastic, raggedy, misused? Absolutely.
I am really struggling with a lot of questions—
- WRITING (I crave my eerie freedom)
- Relationship—how much is too much
- Dharma friendships (Batchelor)
- The coffee doesn’t taste like coffee
- America
- and where to go from here
Maybe this is the tail end of my tenure working I am certainly chafing under all the structure I felt Linda closing the lid down on my dear chaos Friday and I wanted to cry especially since there was no way to explain EXPLAIN—
pressures pressures decompression after Eli’s birthday party yesterday my eyes my eyes my moon
Visualize. Visualizing. Visualizing Kilimanjaro. Visualizing the bright shreds of sun carved off Vivasat. Visualizing nails in the floor. I took a washcloth, wiped the dirt fingerprints off the bedroom door. I arrested qarrtsiluni. Exacerbated. You can tell there is no channel carving here. You can tell the bird is disturbed and fluttering on the nest. Puffed up down against the cold. Chilly nest, someone might have to fly again. Taking care, how dare, not fair. She puzzles, then allows. A dream of behaving differently. Nice things for others, not to get found out.
You big dog, you dirty dog. Birthday card for Kristin. I want to
