ㅁ Sad! Many mice have died while visiting our well-heated home. I put out traps for them. They might find some kitchen crumbs. But the traps have appealing snacks. Snap! I think: "I'm a lousy Buddhist."
– a reverse nonnet.
Category: Nonnet
Caveat: Poem #2858 “Mexican bus dream”
ㅁ There's a certain type of dream I have: it visits me regularly. I call it "Mexican Bus." When I was young, I'd take the bus all over through Mexico. Now I dream bus trips, dazed.
– a nonnet.
Caveat: Poem #2857 “Jagged”
ㅁ Sleep. Jet-lagged, overwhelmed by work's routine, I've been sleeping lots: twilight through dawn's efforts. Normally I'm up at 5, but lately I sleep much later. I wake up already exhausted.
– a reverse nonnet.
Caveat: Poem #2856 “Without resolution”
ㅁ In the end, my travels depressed me. Revisiting things left behind, I had to confront losses. Decisions were taken that ended old ways. In this new life, set apart, the past rots.
– a nonnet.
Caveat: Poem #2855 “Planning ahead”
ㅁ with enthusiastic diagrams I'm planning out my senescence targeted losses of things a whole, long catalog abstract memories fine procedures old journeys new thoughts plans
– a nonnet.
Caveat: Poem #2854 “The tasks”
ㅁ I had a lucid dream this morning all composed of raw emotion. I knew that I was dreaming so I set myself some tasks: experience fear; cry in despair; fall in love; know joy; die.
– a nonnet.
Caveat: Poem #2853 “Inspection tour
ㅁ Back at home: I went off to inspect trees, the various ones I've planted in the ground at spots around my domain: the oak, three maples, cherry, fir these are alive. Others, not so much.
– a reverse nonnet.
Caveat: Poem #2852 “Crossing the Pacific”
ㅁ Bands of purple line the sky up here beside our flight; below, Japan. We'll leave the sun behind us, and now insert ourselves, stealthy, like angels, into the east and darkness and then dawn. Well, somewhere just south of Kamchatka, I opted to boldly declare a new, liminal approach: an opposition to exaggerations of sentience, and instead, exist. So. Later, over the Aleutian chain, there arose feelings of regret. Baroque significations unfurled their abstractions. Inaccessible, meanings were lost; nothing left, I sought sleep.
– a poem made of 3 nonnets enchained.
Caveat: Poem #2851 “Return”
ㅁ I actually feel less tired - I mean... compared to my expectations. Visiting my friends, perhaps - these friends I'd abandoned - recharged me a bit, left me engaged with living... and with dreams.
– a nonnet.
Caveat: Poem #2850 “Awake with a start”
ㅁ Then I was so tired on the airplane. I'd doze, immediately dream, enchain strange mental symbols, overdetermined signs, archeologies of lost cities, but not real... just dust, light
– a nonnet.
Caveat: Poem #2849 “The drive down from Atherton to Cairns”
ㅁ the tropic rain made downward gestures reaching wildly from bold gray clouds to caress my car's windshield and dodge the slow wipers while the strong trees leaned and cows waited patiently in green fields
– a nonnet.
Caveat: Poem #2848 “Arboreal visitations”
ㅁ A flash of green, high up in the tree. Lorikeets sometimes visit, here. It seems an exotic thing, now that I live up north, up in Alaska. Eucalyptus leaves wave; a bird flies.
– a nonnet.
Caveat: Poem #2847 “Down in Atherton”
ㅁ "You're just wanting to lock me away," my mother said to me, leaving. At the home for the aged, we'd discussed with the staff various aspects of living there. I told mom, "it's your choice."
– a nonnet.
Caveat: Poem #2846 “Night sky”
ㅁ Guilt lingers, manifests, and taking form, breeds defensiveness, and thus leads to anger. You can't really solve this thing. Instead, just try to ignore it. Let it fade away like dusk's edges.
– a reverse nonnet.
Caveat: Poem #2845 “As skeletons will do”
ㅁ while entire surging seas are crossed over, something's left behind; the affective anchor lies abandoned alongside so many aimless skeletons trudging around and murmuring dreams
– a reverse nonnet.
Caveat: Poem #2844 “Geologic time”
ㅁ looking down from the zooming airplane we note each cloud casts its shadow perfectly against landscapes rumpled by the passage of a time so slow whole continents have drifted like swans past
– a nonnet.
Caveat: Poem #2843 “Unmooring”
ㅁ there's a detachment that arises when traveling to old places - once willfully forgotten - they're now resurrected like shadow kingdoms and there's nothing different... faded... lost...
– a nonnet.
Caveat: Poem #2842 “Amistad”
ㅁ I have this one friend in Korea who often speaks Spanish with me - that's how we met long ago. That language is rare here. We met in Suwon, one cold winter, and we talked... became friends.
– a nonnet.
Caveat: Poem #2841 “Solvitur ambulando”
ㅁ I'm walking, trying to do magic. If I follow these well-known paths, that I walked in times before... somehow I'll reconnect my current being with some past self who knew things: what to do.
– a nonnet.
Caveat: Poem #2840 “Following lay lines”
ㅁ I crossed the geomantic ocean to visit an old, green country inhabited by those ghosts that no one remembers; but they have projects, undertakings: they make us feed them dreams
– a nonnet.
Caveat: Poem #2836 “A declaration on the matter of the poet’s dialect”
ㅁ It's hard to write a poem about poems because the word 'poem' is awkward. We're told it's two syllables. But frankly, as I speak, it's only got one. When I write it, metric doubts rise up: "poem."
– a reverse nonnet. To be clear, “poem” rhymes with “home,” for me.
Caveat: Poem #2835 “Stories on the rocky beach”
ㅁ Tides refute the shore's rocks, expose secrets, and as the sea goes, so the kelp and starfish must surrender to ravens who pick at the bright detritus while confabulating noisy tales
– a reverse nonnet.
Caveat: Poem #2834 “An intervention”
ㅁ So. Let's talk. To explain reverse nonnets, you should understand that since they start narrow, with curt words and ellipses, you're left with the vague impression that you're starting an intervention.
– a reverse nonnet.
Caveat: Poem #2833 “Vaguely definitional”
ㅁ A nonnet can break monotonies of a neverending word-stream. Its waning rhythms lull you, hint at finality, suggest some closure, reductively. It's in fact only rules.
– a nonnet.
Caveat: Poem #2832 “Detour”
ㅁ While I was sleeping I tried to think. But that's hard when dreams interrupt. Here you are, thinking along, and suddenly you see... a desert landscape, former students on buses singing songs.
– a nonnet.
Caveat: Poem #2831 “The ongoing war”
ㅁ The days stretch out like empires of light, encroaching on night's defenses, and the night's rearguard actions, sniping at dawn's edges, fail to slow the tide; aggressive beams of sunlight push through, win.
– a nonnet.
Caveat: Poem #2823 “Risk assessment”
ㅁ Let's consider this proposition that he says: "It's never so good, that it couldn't be better." It's my uncle's mantra... quite pessimistic, a performance to forestall risky joy.
– a nonnet.
Caveat: Poem #2822 “A selection”
ㅁ I hang some sentences in a row, like the tanned pelts of animals. You can wander among them, hoping to find nice ones, but each is less fine than previous, and at last they're just dumb.
– a nonnet.
Caveat: Poem #2821 “The ebbs and flows of retail”
ㅁ Dead. Dull days. I'm alone - no customers - in the store all day. So I have a theory: people have paid their taxes, now they don't have any money to spend in retail establishments.
– a reverse nonnet.
Caveat: Poem #2820 “Night activities”
ㅁ I photographed our bright galaxy, while I wandered as a chilled ghost through the paths of our forest, noting, but not fearing, a bestiary of creatures: bears, deer, otters... in my dream.
– a nonnet.
Caveat: Poem #2814 “Unheeded advice”
ㅁ You have something you meant to achieve? Then life introduced obstacles? You just procrastinated? Consider that all past. Disregard failures. Instead, live, now: contemplate random things.
– a nonnet.
Caveat: Poem #2810 “An evaluation”
ㅁ Two ducks swam to the mouth of the creek. One duck was cleaning its damp wings. The other stood and walked out. It looked around the beach: gravel strewn with stones. Quite unimpressed, it turned back, swimming north.
– a nonnet.
Caveat: Poem #2809 “Keeping watch”
ㅁ It was important to confront it: this morass of uncertainty, a density of fierce doubts so unprecedented that I no longer bothered to sleep but instead vigiled nights...
– a nonnet.