A poem is occurring every moment
for example
that fluttering of mute flies
—Mario Santiago Papasquiaro
Most mornings like this one,
silent and sudden and then
you’re awake
in a simple and dull sort
of beginning: the traffic
light along the edge of the couch
loud enough to mask
the intruding sun.
How to be noticed
in a world eager for absence,
eager for endless urging?
One’s senselessness
a surprise enough:
the sound of the newspaper landing
on the lawn is enough
for the birds of another year,
stopping over silently,
moving on. I don’t like them,
I don’t like the railroads,
the ambulances, the constant
noise of night worth little
less than its weight.
But what to do with the opposite
of nothingness? Can night
fill in the space
a sentence should?
You know what I mean:
the sometimes dull
collision of words
rolling around
void of success or even
the temptation of. Sometimes
I sing a sentence out loud,
then wonder if anything has escaped
my mouth. Today somehow
felt like the middle of something.
The roads gleamed up from the ground
and remained in the eye long after
they had been left behind. I rarely
hold anything in the mind
the way I held those roads.
Strangers waved
happily.
Neighbors looked up, as if
expecting just one traveler that day,
and as if that traveler was me. Even
the cardinals and yellow finches
and flowers paused
in those windless moments. As I pass
through the house in the night,
I feel like an unwelcome stranger,
a traveler on the other side of the world,
a place no one looks up from,
where the insects
mistrust movement from a mile away.
It’s startling how one’s perspective
of self can morph
moment-by-moment into
another self altogether. The news
remains what it is,
the type of living only night can explain.
And as for framework?
We think of beginnings, like crawling
or rolling over into
the light. Sometimes my voice
boards the airplane before me,
exists free of the weight we all eventually
learn to regret and forget.
An attempt at weather borders the window,
the window allows one’s life
to pass more slowly than it should.
Like a horse track free of horses,
these days are a simple type of worry:
without a pause, we notice nothing. Without
nothing, the pauses precede
the notions we have of ourselves.
I speak
and then as if I’ve spoken,
you speak
and the walls echo the sound
back. I didn’t mean to look down
on the seasons and their sense
of reality. Nothing could make
more sense than returning to boredom
like these moments.
Tomorrow scatters the wind
like a destructive force
of front matter. Our neighbors
move elsewhere—the sun
manages forgiveness
of the sky
or at least that’s what its color
might suggest if a notion
could be accurate.
There’s a pause
in imagining a thought
we have free
of each other.
If we can’t sleep,
then why not?
If we can’t allow the moments
to scare us back into our skin,
then what point is the skin,
its translucent vision?
I rattle off a date as if my memory
never went bad, as if the days return
the dust to myself in a saddlebag
of noise and revelry. These days
the flags stay
at half-mast. Why bother lowering
and raising the exasperating quotient?
I allow this beginning
as if there’s a point
on the train platform in which none
of us will be able to
stay any longer. Some days
might feel like the strangest
song imaginable. No one’s going
anywhere, but there’s
a bit of joy hidden in inaction: like
laughing for the sake
of sadness. Or like swimming
in a river with no sense
of upstream. The weather takes
a turn for winter
deep into spring. I could see
my hand in front of my face,
and now I can’t.
Somewhere another siren
in the night, another bed
unmade.
It’s too easy to think of shapes
in an abstract
sense of the world:
soon all words
will evade definition,
sense-worthy or not. The days
are worth waiting for,
a bite to eat, a meal to rush through.
Surely some moments of speech
burn upwards
in response to the sky, like sense
existing free of those who pause
long enough to notice it. Often
we don’t imagine how or why
the world could be presenting
itself in such a fragmented manner.
I’ve lived here a long time, much
longer than two years. It’s amazing
how the body can be so many places
at once. No one says I want to grow
up to stand on that train platform
on a Monday shortly before my
thirty-fifth birthday.
It’s good no one
talks like that. To think of each
day as a peculiar one
would be lawful, merciful, holy,
inexact. There’s something
to be said for perfection:
like a couplet, it’s symmetrical
and certain. I’ve heard talk
of the sky outside today—it exceeds
even disastrous expectations. It’s over-taught,
over-considered. Its unfurling
becomes costly in these calmly
shredded moments. The trees manage
kindness toward one another. One along
Broadway and Third
was split open. Penny
asks what happened to it,
then asks
if we can live
inside of its broken trunk. I suppose
any question one might ask
could be surrounded or surprised
by the innocence implicit in it.
Strangely enough,
solitude can be a kind of currency,
like the way the clouds
disrupt the sky with their tiny
rafts void of color,
soundlessly. At times when
driving through the countryside,
I’m amazed at how few
flowers I can name. And then
I think of the trees as if I’m not the only one
passing through this world,
no words
fit for my mouth. As if tornados
only exist in August, you wonder
what month it might be right now.
We lie on the grass
and consider the sky
from a low vantage point.
Now I pause,
think the news is unbelievable
and it is:
doors opened where
might we say we were when it
all unfolded?
Soon it’s raining when
it ought not to be:
the clouds grit their teeth,
the newspaper ends up
down the street, in a drainage
ditch. The aisles we follow
blur into blue.
And what else is meant
aside from the exploding pops of sky
reflected in the eye of a child?
I wish a sonnet could contain
any day in its perfect grip.
I marvel at the joy of containment—
what won’t fit simply ceases to exist.
Idealized or boiled down to a simple nod
toward the dark side-street
of whatever town you happen
to find yourself in. It’s a small life
we have on our own, some think. Others don’t
bother processing even the dull fact of morning.
Where do you
fit in? Like an outdated catalogue,
a season reaching past its climb?
For weeks, it seems, you’ve
memorized the patterns of each day,
as if the act
might remove you from the passivity
of supposing, not enough
cloud-cover
for the daylight hours left. Like our bodies
closer to each other, merging
into a single voice, the parting
puzzles us even more. Language
never transparent enough for me:
hidden by syntax, the meaning
of a word lost,
tucked into the folds
of the earth. I spent
hours interrogating
the sentences I thought
before I spoke them. Inside my head,
there’s a lack of sense,
which I know
you already know,
but saying it makes it as real
as the headlights cutting
through a bedroom night.
Who could believe or stand by
what ideas
they promise? In birth,
we’re assuring a future
worth existing in and for.
The doors lock
surely. The thought
of a cloud,
maybe some grass washed
down into the sewers. We don’t
care what the city
might think. In fact,
we don’t
think a city
exists, like borders
and their organization
is fumbling enough for a day
we remember, forget again.
Like a song from another time,
we are free of ourselves,
of what our arms
trace and retrace. If my sense
of love is worth a life outside
my own, then
these moments are worth
themselves or more.
Growing tired,
the days yawn toward us,
wonder how long we’ll persist
recalling one single thing;
I recall another memory
altogether. Would the melding
of the two somehow be reality
exacted, as if our memories
are two separate sentences snaking
through each other? There’s little
to say in observing consumption:
we might as well
not be there.
The sky can seem insanely unreal
so we laugh until
the inside of our laugh is a deep mistrust
of the disturbing things
we do.
Are you okay
with missing a meal
for the sake of the rocks and their calling?
What are you outrunning?
Now the light grows less casual,
more ominous. Patchy frost
in the forecast is such a minor
disturbance, the memory of where
one might have stood,
the way the grass was cut
it might have been a painting. The dullness
of perfection at times is desirable:
just imagine a cup of tea
or bourbon or coffee,
and it’s there in your hands
so suddenly that your awareness
almost makes you spill it. And the
dirt holds
more than you’d like
to think, or that’s what the glance
of a stranger might suggest:
the sky an inkblot of nonsense:
most holidays
are forgivable long enough
if they disappear for even longer
than the time they take. It’s easy
to imagine another outcome
running recklessly through
the night, and soon
there’s a mirror for each
thought. An object
looked at this way:
does it depend
on the point in which it enters?
In which it forgets it was
seen? The grass green:
I know the rain won’t
last, the long summer
isn’t far off. But
I try to capture it
like an idiot, like
bait lost in the waves,
but further back
into the land, the river crosses
and past a city of questions:
the skies earn their color,
the quilt you made floats off
into the air.
When you think of a piano,
I know you think of a swamp
meant for holding back the land: the dry
skin, the lamplight
from your bedside table,
there’s a desirable blurring
and a blurring that boredom
slips its knot through. The only residents
here are upstaged
by the soil: recollection
becomes a fragment of itself:
likeable, laughable,
hindsight from the back of a horse
looking toward the straight line the horizon
promises. And what
then? What will music maintain
when language cannot? Sometimes
I imagine departing
for that stretch of trees,
a single book
or two could be enough.
The fireflies refuse
this late season:
abandoned pockets
and the curtains drawn
against the breeze
and the way it floods
an acre.
The way a sentence can fall apart
in your hands is a wonderful thing.
There’s more than one way
to take the world apart:
either way, outcomes
believe in our actions: the blackbirds
all fly away but one:
the morning remains well
through the afternoon,
and the flags are nowhere
near half-past: they catch the birds
in their unfolding,
they release them to the sky.
And what worth assigned to the stars
in the blue of day?
Were we to part the trees
and find an ocean,
would we be more surprised
than we find ourselves
now? We drive toward
a point on the map
and the time takes
us too—slowly, there’s
a beginning at play.
You are the entire state,
a hand. No one knows
the source of illumination,
but we accept the light in the same way
we accept each day: with weariness and worry.
The salvaged detonators ended up
elsewhere. But what if they had stayed
in the same place? Would anyone have feigned
surprise? Thunder struck, and Penny
thought it was a volcano, though
it was a miracle
it wasn’t. I hear the lakes
are still frozen in Minnesota,
and the mosquitos in Louisiana
block out your vision when they fly by.
It makes sense
when repetition doesn’t. It won’t be long
before the streetlights
become a luxury,
a gallon of water how many times
a day? The gutted apartment
buildings unnerve me enough
but it’s momentary
and not before sleep. What
last night kept you awake
or has your memory
been eclipsed by the exhaustion
of the dandelions? You don’t
need to be hill-bound to know
how a city can empty
out slowly until it’s mistaken
for heaven. Before the days
are built, they’re before us:
a party that no one’s
invited to. And like lights
we fumble toward are forgotten
more easily than recollection: rain,
no rain, steampipes filled
with steam. After a while everyone’s
wearing a suit and the doors
seem to open by themselves. Boredom
like a black bird
roosts heavily on the branches
of this tree.
You get your haircut
in your sleep: the rain runs backward
to the sky, and the rivers
mirror constantly. I suppose
we could visit some faraway
place, see the inside of a temple,
avoid the civil war happening
at that moment.
Noise
I do not understand, but I’m trying
to. And as for other explanations
of nonsense, we close
our eyes to the clouds,
but they remain there: the rain, though
is elsewhere and our minds
go there too. I love
how even
free of retribution we wonder
if we should
give thanks to something or someone
for the endless ebb
and slowness of days.
Here in the bluegrass,
I’d like to catch a train to downtown
Versailles and sit outside on a street corner
and wait for you
in that blue dress
to walk by. I guess most everything
is the translation of something else:
I keep track of words,
ideas, without knowing origin.
Why bother with notations meant for skywriting?
Remember the parade that happened
for no-good-reason? Remember the stars
that seem to hang below the sky? We kept
going for walks, not meaning to. The walks
took us with them
and with enough silence,
the ants ceased
noticing us. I suppose
there are words
for what this feels like:
a life never-to-be. I’d be lying
outside if I had enough sense,
but my dreams have mistaken
me for someone else. I’d like
to plant a seed in the ground
and stay awake to watch
it grow up through the soil
and bloom
into something worth remembering.
Sure we sleep well
for a few hours, dodging
night the only way
we know. What
did you say you loved
before the grass growing
along the edge of that hill over there?
The impression
I was under was that it would
be less sudden, more like water
rising slowly up to the backdoor
over the course of a dozen years
or so while you watch out front
for any sign of change. Some days
I walk away from words
and when I return,
it’s strange to think
where the mind’s gone:
the humidity no longer
hides in the full trees;
it triggers the memory
of a stranger’s face or the solitude
of a morning stolen away
or forgotten just long enough.
There’s probably
a reason the way we imagine
ourselves will dissolve slowly.
In these days
grace doesn’t really have a home:
look how clumsily I unload
the dishwasher, mop the floors,
take the trash out through the mud.
Fireworks in March
for no good reason, though
maybe my mind
has mixed the months:
it’s all one day happening.
Sleeping through coffee feels
like a conundrum
of a dream, the engine
falling right out of a car.
Should listening take the place
of movement, the wind
will evolve into an elsewhere.
Daily, there’s a self-imposed
exile, but it’s never been clear
what you’re separating yourself
from. Like the route you drive
each day could make a difference.
Life a bicycle is different from
a car. Like running into a thunderstorm,
sand and glass blowing into your
eyes would deliver
you from deliverance.
At some point
syntax falls away from the idea
it once attempted to contain.
There was a time before
we said much of anything
worth much,
but it was a quality
in one another
we both admired gravely
that we continued on
so as to remain
idealized in the minds
of one another
and those who happened
to stumble into
our patient unfolding.
Over time, this silence
became its own
type of language. I paid
attention to detail
in such a debilitating
way that the world
would not disappear—
nothing could
cease its existence, even
if my memory of the object
died in the night.
I told you these things
and more,
certain words
come as easy as breathing,
and breathing complicates
the living we do between.
Each one
I’ve known has opened
over time—refusing
to do so would simply
mean a disconnection
of sorts. The river makes the trees
sway and the swaying
is a type of forgetting. Suppose
toying with memory
is all life really is?
It’s amazing
how even the most basic
thought can paralyze
a day, the bats
flying overhead at dusk,
and we have faith
in their return,
all the stops
and starts of day as if the days
provide some kind of logical
notion of night. Some days,
the flowers descend from the sky
around us; their desire
to touch the ground might
be masterful if it wasn’t
so terrifying: we blink
and something else is gone,
something else arrives. I walk
out into the front yard, bourbon
in hand, and find silence
in each footprint of grass,
fire prepared but never lit.
My daughter set a tiny table
for dinner; I sat crowded in a seat
meant for her, wondering what
had happened up until that moment
to bring me there. The nights are filled
with apples: I take one from the fridge
when I can’t sleep, pace between
the rooms slowly, looking for something,
though I know deep down inside
there’s nothing I’m really looking for;
I miss the child in my arms,
the birds insane
with beauty.
Tomorrow’s Decoration Day
and in silence we mourn
more than we wish to:
the birds that don’t return,
the airplane that skitters
the runway, the ocean
retreating from itself. How a room
can change depending
on light isn’t a conversation
worth having.
Or should we
gather up sticks, build
a fire, and hope to
see ourselves in it? It should
be easier to define the days
by the lack of light, the silence
of the streets in the morning
on a holiday, nowhere
for breakfast, nowhere open
to patch a flat tire or patch
the sky
into a quilt worth
remembering. This town
exists without fire
escapes, without fires
most of the time,
though sometimes the sunrise
is as catastrophic
as catastrophe can be. I don’t
want to mistake
the news
for the news,
but blame me from whatever
perspective you’d like to
take. Plate covers
off the light switches,
the paint drying slowly
in the dull heat of late-May.
My mistakes could
be anyone’s but who among
us has a guide
that’s not filled with drastic
measures, moon-heavy phrases?
One has to pause at the end
of anything and wonder
to keep from losing the mind.
The doors do not lock
or are not locked,
as certain as uncertainty:
the paragraph is too tidy
to contain the mess left
behind: continue
grouping, organizing,
remembering,
and forgetting, should we?
Or should we devise a new path
through a familiar place of
forgetting,
one you knew in dreams
well enough? Words aren’t
enough. A phrase isn’t
either, but the space
a body holds in any moment
is a marker of something greater
than ourselves.
The streets we take
all point westward,
and there’s an allowance
I’m getting used to,
accepting, and slowly
learning I won’t understand.
In the day
we can reinvent
sound with such ease
that the world becomes
curtained,
riverbanks filled
with songs and sand.
Another bridge
falls into another river, yet
Goldenrods and Scissor-tailed Flycatchers
along the peripheral vision
of a child:
no words yet for the things
she sees, but the images
maintain their own heaviness:
a cemetery filled with golden
light, the flowers
growing less sure
of themselves in the wind,
the rain, and the sun setting,
rising in a city collecting noise.