I am a wall. 1600’s in my weekend. So I toil along, mud along, muddle along.
Tag Archives: metaphor
july 14, 2007
Washed up on the shore of paper.
I feel my diaphragm, it wants to contract. It wants to lift up and pull in. It wants to furl up like an umbrella.
there is a layer of judgment in the clouds
it’s atmospheric pressure there
thin band of cloud that blesses you
this is the way of cloud
like the turtle laying her eggs on the beach
trance tears running
trance tears trance tears
your 10-year-old body cannot take it
there is the sweetest delicate salve
like flower scented
and it flows
it’s over all that
and the meaning—
Knit crochet or write
writing forms a lacy shawl
lying on the page
This is a house of wax.
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
may 31, 2007 lunchtime
Flying into the air. Nothing here but words. Oh my ice tea, avocado sandwich, chocolate bar. 70%. Dietary happiness.
The book I haven’t read yet, haven’t even started it.
An effort of mindfulness. Velleity. Volition. The will, the right intention. Touching on these things, my bird claws grasping round the twig. The whole tree shakes. Or is this a story?
Feeling mountain in my legs, train in my direction, gladness in my pelvis.
I want the jewels. The fiery heart of jewels. Topaz, citrine, aquamarine. I want to investigate the heart of the ruby emerald sapphire. Wisdom, compassion, purity. Okay. Something higher than a mountain.
You are a zine, you are a zone, you are a megalith. The signs. Hiking to observe the signs. The craftsmanship of systems, we are in a monastery, we are monks in cubicles, with our practices our forms, making up our disciplines and our discipleship.
And this morning—wrapped in the cleanest sheets of calm.
And still worms tackling.
Desire composes. Composing, composing. Greed, hatred, and delusion. Putting away desire and grief for the world. Burdens. Putting away the burdens. Freedom is tranquility but composing is not. Composing is agitation, discharge of mental electricity. Composing, composing. She is a random fragment.
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.
She doesn’t want to do the “right” thing, just create a crisis. “Ask the hard questions.” And who was so careful here? And who gave such good advice? And who worked through tears watering the pity plants the plants of plot the plot of price the price of play. And who uses paints? And what’s the picture?
Anonymous harping. The effort to situate ourself I mean herself outsides the bounds, the grounds. Here I am—a Deity! a Diety of the Powerpoint! Someone rolls on the floor laughing —
Interplay. Fabric. The writing is a crazy fabric. No regular warp and woof to hold the thing together.
tenderness, an inchworm, a pea sprout, a thin stalk of asparagus, the tender impulse of creation, tenderness in documents at work, tender care with headers, footers, table of contents, extending tenderness, your ravaged leaves, your petals bruised and brown, still vines of tenderness, your tendrils, tendrils reaching out, there is a sun of brightness hiding in the data, there is a shadow of creation in the project, the sun is out, the bright light of discovery, the light is beaming from my eyes, my hands, my ears receive this light, I love the light, I am an instrument of the light, an Apollonian, with my seeking tendrils climbing high
just an image
Girls as big as horses, reminiscent hooves of shoes, long hair like manes sleek with exercise.
What business are you in?
Every movement seems audacious. Basic rule: to think, to work, invent.
Dave and Heidi. Julie and her baby.
Conestoga.
Mental flexibility is so important.
Just to let you know.
issues with travel come up when other people are doing it
the day your son gets a passport
the day a friend misinterprets
the horsey women leave and so do the foxy women and the blondes
I need my myths. Myths and symbols. You know I am an arbiter of objects, time for splotch art, hey I am a splotch art.
Hunting for something, hunting hard. Sometimes you just come up short, just dust and particles.
New moon. New moon draws out subtle energies. New moon. This is the new moon night. I am supposed to tune in to that energy. oh your energy. Instead I’m resting in the flawed field, the field of fallow/fallen, the failed field, the coordinates are my face. I can’t describe this. I am alleluia.
I am eclipse. I am an-atta. I am not even approaching Sati. You have to watch out for me in my current state.
Dogen’s pearl—dissolved. You can land on a metaphor and live there. Metaphor is like a planet. Furnished with your furniture, your fauna and your flora.
Fast talkers. At work, an impulse, so intense, to slow down all conversations. Slow slow slow slow down. Make you repeat each word in line so the thoughts can be absorbed. So what is this phenomenon, this riffing disrespect? Does it hide ignorance or escalate frustration? Where is the mountain, where are the waters?
Egg looking for the riverbank. Eggplant seeking streamside.
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.
When something’s not that easy to continue. When I have left the field and gained the hermitage. When lunch is lost and chores still stare you in the face. It’s 2 o’clock and women wearing scarves.
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.
Tiresome. Tiresome culturally. Advice is grating sandpaper. Would rather taunt the shy mink. Or is that tempt? Would rather tempt the shy mink into my clutches, offering morsels. Would rather miss my family, friends, than see them. Illusions. Going to move.
march 14, 2007
Unashamed evaluation. Here in Starbucks, tears behind my eyes unreasonable. Feel pressure to make phone calls—Kristin, Lorna, Margaret, and I don’t want to do it. Feel the competition of Stamford, everyone is out. Feel a freaky drama starting in the house, so tied down, so unhappy, so oppressed, so much by what who knows the lack of private time, the restriction on my inner life my meditation my suffering over inability to recharge? Yes, I am an aging Ipod mini battery so
Thirsty and so suffering—it’s been coming up for hours, weeks, and months—I put it down (PUT IT DOWN) you see and there it is again this vagueness this unease the only solution that I want
Luckily no tears—K stopped by to say hi—my friend—oh well.
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.
I am solved, I am resolved, I am in solution. Shaken, stirred. All my salt settles to the bottom.
february 24
All the way to here.
And here is a powerful stranger. (Fronsdal)
I am resting. My arm feels like a brittle painful twig twig of pain.
I am vibrating nervously,
my nerves are twigs in wind.
Ashbery drives the emotion into metaphoric schemes.
I don’t really want to understand it.
I don’t want the poet’s sympathy.
My shoulders have regressed since the injury. They are back up around my ears. I am waiting for a beating, another blow to fall.
I am waiting for the pain. I like to devalue, much more than most. I do not like children. I am an ana-pest.
So what. The leaves are fallen. Falling. The leaves are alphabets.
I like to put myself in a place where a metaphor might make itself known to me.
I am seeking the grand, healing metaphor.