Wings of Desire

From Dana Levin's poem "Working Methods"

LISTENING

I was falling asleep, wondering how to describe a poet’s studio, when a voice said, “You have to be your own absence, with fifty percent deity.”

woke up with: I false—into arrangement; am out of it—deranged—

woke up with: hurry up is flamboyant and resolutional—

woke up with: as the ask progresses to a tiny new yes—

My friend Dan says: Listen—Record—Orchestrate.

Wednesday Top Ten

1. Little dog stretching his middle for easy grasping.
2. Gazebo and brown leaves.
3. Preternatural toddlers.
4. Diagonal geese.
5. Some kids running and yelling in a field, forming different patterns as they moved about.
6. Red chard, sweet potatoes, and etc.
7. Duende.
8. Discussions: Small prose and the realistic surreal; Walpole and canes.
9. How branches organize the mind.
10. Anticipatory breathing.

Ingrid

Andy Goldsworthy

Bon Iver weather

Postcard to a Better Place

(for Christian)

Even though my grandfather said, Don't talk about doing something, just do the thing, I will tell you that I was excited to come home and put on socks. I came home and put on socks after I spoke at length to an honors student. I talked and talked. I talked about "the Other." I talked about the difference between the word affect and the word effect. I told her, Affect can also be a noun. She had a very flat affect, and I tried to make my face look blank. The student looked at me. Then I talked some more. Before I came home and put on socks, I stopped for wine. I stopped for yogurt. I got to my apartment and washed my hands, then checked Facebook. I followed a link that led me to a slideshow of 15 ugly celebrity men who date out of their league. Jack White I understand. Kid Rock I do not. Several others I wasn't familiar with. Once, years ago, I had a dream in which I stood in front of a screen onto which images were being projected, and I performed a monologue that brought all the pieces together but that also let them keep sliding around like ice floes. I am thinking now that it may actually be possible to pray without ceasing. All of life is a meditation, the man said. What are you meditating on? I am meditating on my iPhone and the messages it might bring me. I'd like some good news. In the meantime, there is this photo of the mother of one of my brother's high school friends. The woman is pictured on her birthday. I have never met her. Whatever has brought her to this point, in this photo, at least, she looks happy.

Strasbourg

I only know its outsized bow was treacherous upon the mind.

Little boots of leather. Bootie things with bitten toes.

All that gathered taffeta and ribbon.

Who would buy a twelve year-old such a thing knowing

she desires it. Clay faced pallor and deadpan eyes

the power of such a bow, such a girl and little boots.

Another Side of Bob Dylan

(Thanks, Annmarie.)

Trinh Minh-Ha

It is probably difficult for a "normal," probing mind to recognize that to seek is to lose, for seeking presupposes a separation between the seeker and the sought, the continuing me and the changes it undergoes. --Trinh T. Minh-Ha, Woman, Native, Other

Doug as Joseph B.

(for Doug Steward)

I guess you're in your airplane now, having chosen a ritual leather helmet and a bearskin rug for ceremonial reverb. You crash you in the steppes and your hooded tribespeople rush out in fur days later to retrieve you. Sometimes it is minutes and sometimes it is days. I don't want to rush you, but I blow gently from far away, a near stranger's pursed lips, and all your friends blowing red candles into flame in imaginary chapels everywhere. We float you and you heal you. It's all you. Your voice telling me things in my kitchen, conversational, before I remember. You've wandered out beyond us, your brother's rib a thread tied to your rib. We'll see you when you're back. No one is alone.

Weekend Top Ten

1. Twelve-hour "nap." (Is it morning or night?)
2. Japanese food.
3. Robert Thurman talk.
4. Staying in the gaze.
5. Kind words from friends about poems.
6. A friend who can respond to his name! and talk! A friend who can walk up stairs!
7. Brooklyn walk. Skeletons and stuff.
8. When my brother thinks something's really funny, his laugh sounds just like it did when he was five.
9. Getting reading done on the subway.
10. Shark week. Costumes optional.

Babylon

Some days I wake up blessed but go to sleep
far from grace. Other days, the opposite.

The crazy guy in the courtyard doing his crazy
laugh. What’s that about? Babylon.

There’s so much I don’t know.
I don’t sit on my fire escape. I like a nice bench

now and again. A view of the water. Where
is my life. By the rivers of Babylon

the US military lay down camp Alpha
rolling over everything.

What have I learned or forgotten?
Doing what I can for the people.

If I knew the words for music,
I would make some.

Nancy Spero

("The Bomb." Image from artcritical.com)

This is from her NY Times obituary:

Kiki Smith, one of the many younger artists influenced by Ms. Spero, once said in an interview: “When I first saw Nancy Spero’s work, I thought, ‘You are going to get killed making things like that; it’s too vulnerable. You’ll just be dismissed immediately.’ ”

---

Good journey, Nancy.

Oh, Robert. Oh, Duncan.

He's all like, "My Mother Would Be a Falconress."

("Poems about Birds.")

Wise Up

Always good advice.

Pank

Check out Karen Dietrich's poems. Also, I like the way this guy says the word "smoke."

Wednesday at the Met

Fall poem

[poem was here]

Do You Smell Smoke?

Apply this soothing gel made from roots and branches
to your forearms when you wake up warrior style
and run fist-first to the kitchen in your sleep.
I'll buy you almond croissants and hum
to you in my pretty good pitch. You are falling asleep
and chuckling sweetly when you think of me
I'm taking pictures of you sleeping and posting
them on Facebook. I know you don't mind
so I break into your house while you're out
and teach myself the bass.
Don't worry about that smoke smell
it's just my gentleness you're loving.