Reconstructive Landscapes
1.
Guest aestheticians pell-mell into our newly enfranchised
options, minding their manners. Their full-grown sensibilities
comprise the grammatical codes of early 21st-century thought
more than is often recognized. Malleable injunctions
and freshness of topic are their touchstones. So many butterfly
wings, so little time. More real than snow and lilies,
they pounce when the door to the dining-room opens.
Successful modifications arise when they are most needed.
2.
Humble particulars reflect usual fondness for dream language,
its cubes and prisms. Undaunted by classical physics,
they invent their own contexts, mercurial disorders leading
them quickly on from one thing to the next.
Dimming the universal, they offer convincing evidence of
quotidian spontaneity, eschewing delusionary metaphor.
The world and its secrets rise from their window-boxes
obscuring both inner and outer strains of thought.
3.
Here now, our most devout stipulations: that something
must come of it all, that we find uses for everything,
but innovative nomenclature brings us not one iota
of true satisfaction. More real than shadow,
we swarm in the pool, though no lifeguard was present.
Lyrical Intensity joins us for dinner, her methods
on view for all to behold. Efficacious unsettlings,
we do really love them. Isn't that so?
Northland Graves
Arrested oilmen lie side by side with disciplined
car-poolers and CCNY defectors. Flagstaff tongue-
suppressors don black and avocado-striped zoot suits.
Goodnight, Mrs. Calabash, wherever you are. Bob's
choice autographs of Singaporean bishops tempt
more than one to succumb to envy and covetousness.
Avocets leave handwritten negotiating points in wet
sand gilded by as yet unsunk sun. Callahan's Mrs.
in cahoots with her brother bilked nonagenarians
in southeastern Catatonia of lifetimes of savings.
Sonnet: Stories We Never Told You
For example, we never told you about your Uncle Ted's
first wife Ellen, who wasn't at all what we'd hoped she'd be.
Nor did we tell you about what happened when your father
came home from the war and took to his bed for years.
The story about Jamie Wilson's adventures in Tanganyika
we've been saving until you are old enough to appreciate it.
We know, we know, you think you're old enough now, but
believe us when we say that you're not quite ready for it yet.
We almost told you about the night of your conception,
when we almost didn't make it home in time to do the deed,
yet finally did, so luckily for you. You can thank your lucky
stars for that, son. You can thank your lucky stars for that.
All in all, we've pretty straightforward with you, holding little
back. Pray that the day will come when we can tell you more.
Better Left Unsaid
"The eternal silence of these infinite
spaces
fills me with dread."
-Pascal,
Pensées
The air is full of the purpose of art, not
an
infinite number of
radiating straight lines considered independently
of
the succession of moments
embodied in the technique
that
severs that continuity
and exists apart from it
the more
the idea is profound
for the idea matters only to the extent that
the
paper upon which one is writing
may fall into a room in the form of the opening
through
which it enters
at each instance only fragments deprived
of
meaning into which
you
first stepped gingerly.
Can the meaning of a precise moment become clear?
One
cannot step twice
into the same perfection, it need hardly be pointed out,
without the
imagination being brought
into play, all men are equally mystified,
fragments
to other fragments
appear
all at once, more advanced
for
the water has flowed on
like a river, the same river.
What teaches hope is obviously nothing more than
a
painter's idea, not his technique:
Discourse is Light, an object of outer experience
which
must be its relation
to other moments, a very complete telegraph
free
from one's memory and imagination
which cross and weave together without
this
completed whole
one
moment has meaning only in.
