ㅁ Before leaving for work I walked there - down by the treehouse, by the sea. I check on it every day. So far it hasn't moved. Sometimes I worry. I imagine going there, finding doom.
Category: Nonnet
Caveat: Poem #2012 “Title”
ㅁ the poem starts out with energy full of ambition and big plans but then as the lines proceed concepts are forgotten syllables cut off words are unused things get terse shorter stop
Caveat: Poem #2011 “Detail”
ㅁ space and time unfolding operating not quite like clockwork more like a blind person reading out each moment's steps in a tactile way across knots tied in tiny strings made of ether
Caveat: Poem #2010 “Swonk”
ㅁ Swonk! Some snow tumbled down out of a tree as the falling flakes shifted back to cold rain transforming all the landscape into a tableau of churned slush mostly quiet except for the dripping.
Caveat: Poem #2009 “Into that good night”
ㅁ I spend my time around old people people who nurture their anger and their fears and resentments they craft conspiracies to frighten themselves insult objects dread yet crave gentle death
Caveat: Poem #1979 “Cartographer’s pause”
ㅁ The map is sometimes quite neglected. I abandon ideas, plans, and I can't decide what's next. But the past is still there, Rendered in bold lines, true diagrams of unreal places dreamed.
Caveat: Poem #1978 “Nature’s handiwork”
ㅁ Rain. It came: to coat snow with some slick slush; to make walking hard so you have to shuffle; to sculpt incongruous clouds that lurk around at ground level, laced with dirt and stones and dog's urine.
Caveat: Poem #1977 “The climate is different, a few miles inland”
ㅁ The town is out on a point of land. It's always a bit windy there. Going home, I drive inland, following the sea's arm, the snow gets deeper, the wind dies down, the trees calm, a mist hangs.
Caveat: Poem #1976 “Driven”
ㅁ A few fresh inches of snow appeared for yesterday morning's commute. But I'm getting used to it. I zig-zag down the road like a blue bobsled armed with four wheels crunching snow tasting ice.
Caveat: Poem #1975 “Snuffled”
ㅁ There was a mouse, down under the snow. It hid in its small burrow, there. A dog came along the road. The dog's nose sought this mouse. She pawed at the snow. She snuffled close. Still no mouse. Paws clawed. Snort!
Caveat: Poem #1974 “Self-actualization”
ㅁ The city contemplated its form: There were passages of water; people came and made houses; roads were cut in the land; factories appeared; highways evolved; trains laid tracks; parks grew. Done.
Caveat: Poem #1973 “Borne home, unmoved”
ㅁ Recent years, I haven't traveled much. So Minnesota came to me. First, a hefty dose of snow, then clear skies and chill air and a dry coldness that makes the snow underfoot loudly crunch.
Caveat: Poem #1912 “And that made me think of the poet Labordeta”
ㅁ I dreamed yet another vivid dream: a kafkaesque replay of when I had gone off to grad school. In this version, I stalled, avoided meeting the professors till at last they found me. The woman was quite pleasant to me. She showed me these small clay figures, instructed me to describe each one in fine detail. One was a strange thing: a fire-breathing trolleybus with green eyes.
Caveat: Poem #1910 “Could have happened somewhere in Mexico but it didn’t”
ㅁ I awoke from an unpleasant dream. There was a very long bus trip. I was sleeping on the bus. But then I was startled. A woman stood there, told me, "Get off." I asked why. She said, "No."
Caveat: Poem #1908 “Steps forward, steps back”
ㅁ work can seem a road to futility or just passing through some tedious labor that's already frustrating only to realize it's wasted as you must now reverse what you'd done.
Caveat: Poem #1907 “The fourth dimension strikes again”
ㅁ time wobbles spins along marches forward takes a little break counts down various things crashes into folds of space makes small matters salient renders important things meaningless
Caveat: Poem #1904 “On looking down”
ㅁ I'm up high, perched there in my treehouse. See, a mistake needs reversing. I've got to get one screw loose. Being so high is hard. I don't enjoy it. Still, I'm trying. "Don't look down." I say. Oops.
Caveat: Poem #1903 “Inverted triangle”
ㅁ Nonnets can start with syllable-hills, sequipedalianally, with well-entrained thoughts and words, but then metamorphize, into something tight and narrower difficult, gnomic, closed.
Caveat: Poem #1895 “Someone else’s commute”
ㅁ Lights pass by bound for town in the predawn dodging the potholes plonking along loudly dispelling small bits of mist noticing reflective droplets suspended like shattered glass from leaves
Caveat: Poem #1888 “The wind”
ㅁ Wind will blow to arrange all the clouds. Wind will tug at the trees' branches. Wind rests among the mountains. Wind tests all the windows. Wind makes mournful sounds Wind speaks cliches of cold air; and rain blows.
Caveat: Poem #1886 “Frames”
ㅁ Frames enclose images and suggest ways of looking at things, new angles, perspectives, on the same old world's contents, but it's all just a mental trick, a simple reframing, so to speak.
Caveat: Poem #1875 “Narratology”
ㅁ It's in the nature of narrative to ensnare imagination and launch brief detours of mind conjuring mental scenes vague speculations memories too more solid concrete thoughts
Caveat: Poem #1874 “My jawbone”
ㅁ The radiation weakened some bones. So the teeth on my lower jaw... well, they have difficulties. That's what the dentist said. She confirmed for me that which I knew already about bones.
Caveat: Poem #1873 “Loss, enforced”
ㅁ I lay in bed like a cold statue I had aged more than usual but sleep was still failing me the old pains nagged at me the scars in my mouth and down my neck ache often enforce loss
Caveat: Poem #1872 “Map boy”
ㅁ Maps - conjured, imagined - and stored, abstract, as all ones and zeros, then rendered upon request, sent streaming through the internet and displayed as vast, complex portraits.
Caveat: Poem #1862 “The rain came”
ㅁ Just in case we were having a drought... well, we were not having a drought. The rain came and moistened leaves. The rain came to wash roads. The rain came and pooled. The rain fell down. The rain hung. The rain came.
Caveat: Poem #1859 “Nevermind”
ㅁ Nah. Won't work. Why would it? Be nice to have. But I don't know how. I keep learning new things. Still, there's always more out there. And I sometimes get overwhelmed. So you'll have to patient for now.
Caveat: Poem #1858 “Orbis tertia”
ㅁ Mash the keys and with time a world is made, order emerges, influences spread out, conquering all time and space, like a net capturing some fish, but even then it's not really real.
Caveat: Poem #1857 “Canvas”
ㅁ I look out the window at the fog. It's pleasant and calming to see: a blank slate where I can dwell. There's no mountain, no sea. I draft my own world. That works quite well. A bird calls. Fish jump. Splork.
Caveat: Poem #1856 “No GPS, either”
ㅁ If you look at the map, carefully, maybe you will learn where you are. But what if the map and world are not on the same page? What if you're dreaming imagined things and the map isn't real?
Caveat: Poem #1855 “The monkey mind”
ㅁ some things lurk and wait and can cause stress and ask the mind to test its doubts no ghost can dodge this mind's work but nor do they bow down they just furl their souls drift through loose time leave their signs on stones dark
Caveat: Poem #1854 “The”
ㅁ The world, the places, the sky and sea, the people in it, the words they tend to use, the most common expressions, the scattered semantic fragments, the ever-flowing meaninglessness, the
Caveat: Poem #1853 “Primeval”
ㅁ First: nothing. Unholy. The road's imposed, the trees forced to yield, the small streams surmounted, and the rocks are crushed and spread. But below, the absences wait. The potholes are older than the road.