Tag Archives: question

by

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?

by

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.

by

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?

by

Play with the baby. The gratitude, the relaxation of no baby. The brutality of babies here at home. And how will they travel? And how do they know when to come home? And when to fold their little wings and settle down and when to roam? And what day must it be for questions to make arbitrary sense? And what day must it be to clear the question buildup, do some dusting, and serve sandwiches?

by

Longing for the quiet of the bustling morning shops. In the small town, does anyone arise before 6? In the village, do you encounter people on the street? In the English village, naked people with monstrous faces? In the white north, chanting lunatics? In the humid south, alligators are successful, polar bears are not. Difficulties among the animal populations.

by

I am unwilling at this point.

Unwilling on campus. Irrational fears. There is no healing balm for everything. So just get used to it. The most unpleasant thing of all is—heart dropping from fear. If I could avoid that automatic heart-drop from now on, I would. Do egrets have it? Flamingos, herons, other long birds? Birds with hearts that beat so fast and so unknown. Birds with eyelashes and bird dogs, slim.

by

Are sounds more interesting than devastations? Where does feeling lie, where’s the trapdoor? Wily, wily, wily, Mr. Coyote, let me in. Mr. Desert, let me bring my withered limbs. Just bleach my bones after you nibble on my skin. Irradiated or non-irradiated, genetically engineered in a most horrendous tribal fashion, I am here now, yet a remnant, a recessive gene, a regression sans vitality, a lack of luck, a loss. And here I am considering the withering of my death. Listening to this particular rain in its accumulation, the sump pump hums and gurgles, the train whistles, New York-bound.

by

And yesterday or last week I heard about a service, body washing. Washing the body. I want my body tenderly washed by my faith community. Nothing more beautiful than that. And here I chatted about inconsequences with co-workers and Margaret’s family, while her mother lay in state. I thought—at least there should be silence. We are so bereft. And Poland—what happens when you lose 3 million Jews?

by

No one’s here. Loud sound far away, a fog horn, some emergency of rain. Sam went out on a call about a flooded basement. Last night we ate at Pepe’s, the original tomato pie, no cheese. And hear the cheeping, the continuous chirping of suburban birds, and what is their mental capacity, and how do they stay warm? I want the angel of bird feathers and down to clothe me. I want the tendency to sing and fly. Their lives pass cheaply, no funerals at their deaths. No funerals, no funerals.

by

Stomachache. Did I say searching? Searching for a rhythm? Current, swimming against or with. Wet, water wet. Wet river, muddy. Feeling alone with it, in it. The embarrassment of my rivers series. No, I can’t. I long for the dry bed of lost rivers, Sarasvati. I have no hope. My standard life, a life that’s bled of hope. The philosophy that kills dreams and with them, disappointments, and what’s left—stomach stomach stomachache.

by

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.

by

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

by

Traveling back and back, remembering oh yes, failing to see the point. What is this? The pale awareness leaks, someone who really wants to make it work, solve it through all sick thoughts, solve for x, for him, for her, solve through all, something to be made right.

by

A need to relax the mind, heal the interaction. She is a poet. He is dressed in second-hand clothes. She resists friendship, the contaminant of it. He is studying in the hot, in the cold. She is working on images not words. He is dreaming of the garden. She is assembling her questions into a marble monument, he is handling rotten fruit and leaves.

by

One of the first sessions, we are asked who writes as the “I” in their poems. No one says Yes but me. Should I defend this practice? Is it passé? Have I stepped in it?

Thenceforward continuously tainted by my I, which shows.

by

If I could find my way to a simpler conception. If I could find my way to the egg on the pedestal, if I could find my way to the walking rock. No table salt. No laughing pepper. No funny farm. No moldy vegetables. Rot in a garden. Where do we see that rot, the heavy mosses, the packed earth of the path? The beaten borders, crumbling boundaries? The edge trees fallen into the river, bouncing, bouncing, bouncing, in a death flirtation with the current. Where do we see that? Where do we see the planes? How far away are they? The red light blinks far away at night and there you are, another person. We forget that all of these poets are also persons, one after the other, exhibiting bodily functions. Yes you are a wizard of language. Yes you may set a bonfire. Yes you can turn and turn and turn. No you are not a clergy person. No none of this should be bandied about. No you are not for sale. No you have no memory of the mountain of marzipan you saw in Italy.

by

Yes this was me. I am suspicious of me, what is it. Today spent time in completely anonymous pursuits that will never offer any recognition. I’m suspicious of my name. It doesn’t feel appropriate for fame. I wrestle expectations down and down and down again. Meanwhile, why not call it home? No this is not me. Me so what. I like the universal flux instead, brightened and tightened in a node that is my skin, my wrist. My stinging teeth, my statically electric hair. My shapeless brows.

by

Some envy. I enjoyed a short story that included a line about envy.

I enjoyed John Ashbery’s line “I write in the afternoon.” It hit
me with a great impact. Why? Because I don’t like afternoons. They are a negligible, hateful time, a chunk of time to get through. I am optimistic in the morning (usually) and pessimistic in the afternoon. There’s a wish that I could heal this. What would a good afternoon look like? Sunshine? Satisfaction? Rest?

I don’t like any hour of the day.

by

I heard about Immaculée praying the rosary to survive while shut up in a bathroom for weeks, hiding from murderers.

Something I want to know? Don’t know.

I said the rosary everyday for a year. Maybe it was a school year. My sophomore year. The cheesy pearlized paint flaked off my little white first communion beads. Once I lost the rosary—it fell from my pocket. That immediate pang of irrational loss— desperation. I retraced my steps and found it, on top of a desk in a classroom. I was ashamed that someone had found it on the floor, maybe even identified it as possibly mine, and decided to place it on the desk for the owner to more easily find. It meant another person was thinking about my things.