Everything must go

I’m sorry for the afternoon,
which was late and now won’t ever

be coming back. And I’m sorry
for this fibrous heart I’ll tear

from the tree before it’s ripe,
that I’ll pull apart at the kitchen

sink. Here’s the knife I was given
and which I’ll use to hack time’s

signature green fibers into shreds
—For I was trained to use all

parts delivered into my hands:
from the woody rind to the pulp

to the seed’s thin sheath; and
at last the seed itself.

 

In response to Via Negativa: Dictator.

Meeting

Up by break of day, and got to Brampton by three o’clock, where my father and mother overjoyed to see me, my mother, ready to weepe every time she looked upon me. After dinner my father and I to the Court, and there did all our business to my mind, as I have set down in a paper particularly expressing our proceedings at this court. So home, where W. Joyce full of talk and pleased with his journey, and after supper I to bed and left my father, mother, and him laughing.

over all
our paper proceedings
his full laugh


Erasure haiku derived from The Diary of Samuel Pepys, Friday 14 October 1664.

Harvester

After being at the office all the morning, I home and dined, and taking leave of my wife with my mind not a little troubled how she would look after herself or house in my absence, especially, too, leaving a considerable sum of money in the office, I by coach to the Red Lyon in Aldersgate Street, and there, by agreement, met W. Joyce and Tom Trice, and mounted, I upon a very fine mare that Sir W. Warren helps me to, and so very merrily rode till it was very darke, I leading the way through the darke to Welling, and there, not being very weary, to supper and to bed. But very bad accommodation at the Swan.
In this day’s journey I met with Mr. White, Cromwell’s chaplin that was, and had a great deale of discourse with him. Among others, he tells me that Richard is, and hath long been, in France, and is now going into Italy. He owns publiquely that he do correspond, and return him all his money. That Richard hath been in some straits at the beginning; but relieved by his friends. That he goes by another name, but do not disguise himself, nor deny himself to any man that challenges him. He tells me, for certain, that offers had been made to the old man, of marriage between the King and his daughter, to have obliged him, but he would not. He thinks (with me) that it never was in his power to bring in the King with the consent of any of his officers about him; and that he scorned to bring him in as Monk did, to secure himself and deliver every body else. When I told him of what I found writ in a French book of one Monsieur Sorbiere, that gives an account of his observations herein England; among other things he says, that it is reported that Cromwell did, in his life-time, transpose many of the bodies of the Kings of England from one grave to another, and that by that means it is not known certainly whether the head that is now set up upon a post be that of Cromwell, or of one of the Kings; Mr. White tells me that he believes he never had so poor a low thought in him to trouble himself about it. He says the hand of God is much to be seen; that all his children are in good condition enough as to estate, and that their relations that betrayed their family are all now either hanged or very miserable.

an absence of red in the war
is a white lie

thin as corn
the bodies of the poor


Erasure poem derived from The Diary of Samuel Pepys, Thursday 13 October 1664.

Forbearance

When the rain stops at last so many skins
cover the drenched ground, though small

unripened fruit still cling
high on the tree— as if difficulty

never changes the heart of things.
I learned that lesson late and now am wary,

though the light that rings the world
when the sun returns allows me to forget

from time to time how I labor, how we
aren’t spared— How the fire, when it comes,

and the winds, will pass like twin flames from one
mouth absorbed only by its own shimmering.

There was a man who held his wife in his arms
in the water, in the deepest part of the pool,

hoping the two of them together would make
an alloy to survive that bright

encroaching. I know how hard it is
to give up the habit of persistence—

We want to pray and not surrender,
we want to trace a wide alchemical circle

inside of which sorrow might find
the strength to abandon itself.

 

In response to an entry from the Morning Porch.

Winter

When the caldera breaks open
again, everything will telescope

to the immensity of our fears
then scale back so that we might know

intensely, the truths of the world
we refused to see at last— In that

precise instant, before our shared
oblivion, the soft but sharp edges

of jasmine opened by heat; and the emerald
currents our bodies never completely

surrendered to, though our souls were thirstier
than fish. In a dream I saw the air

waterfall with the most transparent dying
of orchids, with the scales of a rare

white python uncoiling from the roof
of the world. It didn’t rain

anymore; and there were no more winds
or wildfires. There was a road

shiny as foil on which we lay
side by side, looking for the moon.

By then it didn’t matter if we forged
our travel documents or if our feet

were unclean. By then the word
insurance ceased to matter.

By then we would have— should have—
bent to kiss like a beloved child

every bone wearing shackles
stacked in the ditch.

Half-life

“…to tell someone that you lived,
and this is how it was.” ~ Sean Thomas Dougherty

If I count the time I’ve spent
living in this body minus the years
spent trying to summon the fragments
it left behind, I wind up with string
the color of smoke, a plume dark
as a dream of birds rowing the air,
silvering the night with their cries—
What kind of promise is it to say
everything’s made beautiful and sleek
by effort, though it never arrives?
My desire is also perpetually disheveled
by desire. Yet if I count the morsels
of bread and meat that touched my tongue,
they would only be proof of my shame—
Who can tell what the gods throw
in the water for sport, and how to fashion
a net to bring it back? How could I thrive
in this body while my other body, my heart,
rocked itself to sleep in a silent house?

All-American drug

This morning all the morning at my office ordering things against my journey to-morrow. At noon to the Coffeehouse, where very good discourse.
For newes, all say De Ruyter is gone to Guinny before us. Sir J. Lawson is come to Portsmouth; and our fleete is hastening all speed: I mean this new fleete. Prince Rupert with his is got into the Downes.
At home dined with me W. Joyce and a friend of his. W. Joyce will go with me to Brampton. After dinner I out to Mr. Bridges, the linnen draper, and evened with (him) for 100 pieces of callico, and did give him 208l. 18s., which I now trust the King for, but hope both to save the King money and to get a little by it to boot.
Thence by water up and down all the timber yards to look out some Dram timber, but can find none for our turne at the price I would have; and so I home, and there at my office late doing business against my journey to clear my hands of every thing for two days.
So home and to supper and bed.

coffee is our new speed
joy in 100 pieces

but none at the price of a journey
to a thin bed


Erasure poem derived from The Diary of Samuel Pepys, Wednesday 12 October 1664.

Dictator

Up and to the office, where we sat all the morning. My wife this morning went, being invited, to my Lady Sandwich, and I alone at home at dinner, till by and by Luellin comes and dines with me. He tells me what a bawdy loose play this “Parson’s Wedding” is, that is acted by nothing but women at the King’s house, and I am glad of it. Thence to the Fishery in Thames Street, and there several good discourses about the letting of the Lotterys, and, among others, one Sir Thomas Clifford, whom yet I knew not, do speak very well and neatly.
Thence I to my cozen Will Joyce to get him to go to Brampton with me this week, but I think he will not, and I am not a whit sorry for it, for his company both chargeable and troublesome.
So home and to my office, and then to supper and then to my office again till late, and so home, with my head and heart full of business, and so to bed.
My wife tells me the sad news of my Lady Castlemayne’s being now become so decayed, that one would not know her; at least far from a beauty, which I am sorry for.
This day with great joy Captain Titus told us the particulars of the French’s expedition against Gigery upon the Barbary Coast, in the Straights, with 6,000 chosen men. They have taken the Fort of Gigery, wherein were five men and three guns, which makes the whole story of the King of France’s policy and power to be laughed at.

not good about letting others speak
I am sorry for the ice in my head
and heart full of decay

I am sorry for this gun
which makes the hole of power


Erasure poem derived from The Diary of Samuel Pepys, Tuesday 11 October 1664.

What is the shape of this problem

~ After Louise Bourgeois (1999)

There is an outline in chalk on the pavement.

At the intersection, a car with its engine still running.

A pool of red matches the red of an overturned plastic chair.

There is a cardboard sign crudely lettered.

The hands of the freshly dead are silver with tape.

Two holes in the spine, two through the forehead, one through the heart.

Mangy dogs sniffing through mangled grass.

Nothing but the smell of darkness and dying.

Wakes held beneath the street lights’ yellow flares.

Sorrow and dread pick through a wreck of roadways.

Rain falling through a rusted basketball hoop.

The silence of thousands on thousands of graves.

And death not yet done riding through the countryside.

“To unravel a torment you must begin somewhere”

~ after Louise Bourgeois, “What is the shape of this problem” (1999)

Anything can be a thread: fossil

of a seahorse entombed in an earring
box, safety pin festooned
with four wrinkled cords.

A friend tells me
her daughter once confided:
I want a life
different from yours.

I’ve been there,
and also been that wish.

What could one do
with the moon’s floodlights
burning a hole in the sky?

I wanted to stand
in the aperture and be
seen—

and what I’ve wanted
may have come true
or not. I lay down
and let a body

press into mine, undo
the chaste buttons of red silk.
Afterwards, even the rain

could feel oracular. But what if
it’s part of our nature
to want to leave
more than a trace?

Even the moon doesn’t want to return
the comb stuck in its cheek.

The metal teeth bend
toward the river swells. Small
white wings paper the sides of a lamp—
Beautiful and unerring, whatever fate
singes with fire.

Out of the cold current I lift
and stack stones. I rub sticks together.
There are some things I can do.
There are some things I can’t take back.