#89

Along the day of nothing. In lit il lit le livre. Proust and Freud and comic books. A sky that contemplates its rain. I scribble in my notebook, write Hyeju in Korea. Buzz, brlkk, and clamor. And learn, from Jeehyun at quarter to ten, that Will is Japanese. Begin to fill his page.

What's the line? "Isolation is the first principle of artistic economy." Not much to circulate there. But it's Tuesday. I go round and back, each other day, in circles. $2.00 for produce. $3.00 for a loaf of bread. Forwards to describe yourself. I'm lying on (the) couch.

#88

7th to South to 10th to Pine. To 12th to Walnut. And over the bridge. Thick white fog that muffles.

Malice aforethought again. The masterwork, the masterpiece, the Magister that flirts (cf. Nanette Endel). My right hand ringed but limp in bed. The hand with which I write. St=Art1/Sq=Art2. Naked under blankets. The two positions poised in words (and flesh makes one). By which I mean (and the afternoon confirms)... Welcome to the novel! When you visit, look for your image in the art above Square's bed.

#87

Coffee and the hint of milk that's soured. Cold morning. Old home, night-image: I stood at the bottom of steps and departed. Mothers. Sarah has one, but does Stephen? He has his father's name. Picture him, before the door to Seventh Street, the still radiator (painted white) on his right.

Otherwise, the dull art of learning remains tedious in company. Adrian drops his glasses. I write Vicki a letter, but save it as a draft. And DC's chirming din of students, locust-like in rapt attention. "Baudry's Placid Apparatus" (only Terry Johnson laughs).

E E Cummings, Shock Headed Peters. Jamie (oh Jamie) O'Neil. Would one call that knowledge? Close in distance. Smells in dimness. Print to txt, and analogue... We follow the route that's marked, L-gray or Jmzy green. A schedule is a gathering. Or a promise, accident?

The clear blue exigencies of language. Neveremind the nose of Jeff, who has a blog. The hidden workings of language. One month and nine days ago. "The Love That Dare Not Speak It's Name." Dedicate, si Lucas Chiamarsi.

#86

Wordsworth. "Books! 'tis a dull and endless strife." Yet I imagined, snug in gloves and jacket at the 8th Street laundromat, a catalogue (the epic sort) of what Stephen has read. Matched and countered by his Cranly's musical selection. The reader's aural visions; the hearer's florid phrases. There needn't be a preference. Each figure (DC calls them mere effects of prose) a cutting transplant. And the Asian woman at the bank of dryers? She pressed her hand aginst one of the machines' glass doors, and sounded (in complaint? surprise? communion?), not WaRM eNough.

Other ideas over coffee. Flaky brown croissant. Characters. Someone whose name is Goodman. And another, very fair. Andy calls her Polly, but her name is Lora. On Fairmount Ave? Remember: Ricki. A flyer from my radio show nabbed and hung abover her bed. Ample flesh, and not pretty. (Maybe call her Alexine?). But poetry fills her spacious room, and Titania calls in the evening. She can hear things said in Spenser. Pansies in her garden, so much love-in-idleness. Cats and strays that come.

Remember, to square means quarrel. And Cage, if read in sunlight, can be quite boring. I wonder... are we artists or are we men? There's that store: THE GOLDEN DOUGHNUT. And that other: NUTS TO YOU. I have socks upon the radiator drying after the wash. I have photographs from Erica's party, much too grainy on the screen. And I have a line from MND, taken out of context: "Bless thee, Bottom, bless thee. Thou art translated."

#85

And on the seventh day... Turn from causal to casual. Take a rest. Margreta says, by way of example: "The human form looks dignified and serious if it is erect." That's what I note, February's National Geographic hidden under spirals. I've been listening to Boulez. Balance too, but that is death. My dissertation's afterward: "Teenage Lighting" or maybe epigram. Perhaps I'll take a bath.

Butcher-shop sign at 7th and Dickenson: KOSHER AND GENTILE KILLING. Green package from the post. Sarah. Gold Chinese box, the fabric shining crimson when tilted under light. Inside is a dish of red ink. Rouge? No, a stamping pad; with dragon-topped marble column aside: GREG. Stamp-worthy? Stephen at the store is undercharged: fifteen comic books for 26.47 (and he has twenty two-cent stamps in the inside pocket of his jacket). He means to read them, or to use them later.

Gypsy cold care. Rows of tables manned by an Asian family. Green-flecked lemons, jewelled cherries, shameful peaches with torn leaves. I have four dollars - no, three in my pocket. Coffee (but does it stain?). Make this a studious day. Adolescent Histories. Came up with that. Or revision: feminine writing without the father. In my lecture book, I wrote: "Stalling devices / stalling de-vices / walling devices." My voice a little rough from the winter weather. Rain.

A sudden shift of style. Reasons? Admonitions, possibly. Cage's quick retort. Or the fact of Vicki's leaving - so much in repetition now, it sounds a sound I can hear. My parents taught me that, and someday I'll be grateful. Home in on silence. Or the word that all men know. I think that's how Joyce put it. But what is that word's timbre? David said it, in confusion. And I hear con (Italian for "with"); I hear "fusion." The tenor of that, my throat will catch it too. God, what language can do when it tries.

And Azazel, the best of teraphim, with me loyal and familiar.

#84

#83

Learn to love delay. On floors, or desks, or phones that hum and buzz. Traveille. A pun. Charles remembers. The added coat hook. "A stake in the heart of professionalism." Together, sound incorporated. Not substance, but relation. Theory, no: sensation. To my left Francois, who rambles master-ly. And on my right, soft Paige, who notes on unlined paper. Listen to Margreta: "Comedies don't end in death." The Latin root of passive.

In the mailroom, my name has moved. And nothing to receive. Oh, one's amusement, private. Is the artist ever hailed? A dab of paint they hear as red on white, but why? Ideas in the interim. Forget them. Stephen writes, "They putter on and study truth, / but never mess their hands with art." Names and aliases. Twins in image, deed. Across the table, a Greg in blonde and youth, who spots me. Fledge. Our ears in imitation tremble towards who's called. And David, cool in black with cigarette, a different David from who comes. The Latin root of passion.

Oh, listen to the stereo. A song by Korgis, Beck. The sun through windows, bright reflection in the windows cross the street. All days are nights to see till I see thee. That doubling through a space of hours. I wash my hair, I shave the stubble from my face. It will grow again. And tongues that touch and treasure: we will call their language silence. All will sound it in my classroom. And shuffle, that's the way. The Latin root of patience.

#82 (Audit)

Quiet now. And drink your tea. Observe. When the phone rings, Damian means it to surprise. The radio tells him, rain. "Endicott's evening BOCES classes cancelled." Roads on which we left, at once. My space, he says, is a little space, and laughs. The disconnected mountain range, abrupt. Music is duration, no?

A comedy of airs. There's green, there's blue, there is one sees a spattering of hues. Ask Sarah: is it class or coffee? Her fingers ivory bound. FBH-401. The white descent of stairs. Classical, classical poise. And sights in cold or rosey grey, the forth-floor windows bear. The champagne colored sky of winter. Soft sonata, chance. Or song, Vanessa Carlton, sing. Our laughter like a modern score? Or night, the vertical stripes of brown / off-white / and tan that cross the mattress. Image. David. Text. I am student still at bedtime.

#81

Note each day the weather. Today, Friday: a thick white mist, obscure. Muffled sounds from the highway across the river bed. Passersby, their brows damp, and squinting eyes. Margreta in red jacket observes: "Oh! It's rained." But no it hasn't. A walk through fog, she pushes her bicycle by hand. The slow, clicking pur of its wheels. There upon the sloping bridge, we are closest to the sky. The solid path, cement, reflects the thin grey light at every angle, and the air in repetition glows. "116:" she smiles. "Deforestation, I've learned, was a real concern in England. So the relationship of bark to tree..."

Hear, I told Cat, em-bark. She nodded (and a strand of blonde fell from her forehead to her ear), though I know it takes time to hear such things. To hear them sing, I mean. "But time," I pointed toward the poem's sea, "alters differently than space." Sonnets numbered 47, 61, 93, and 90. Stefan, will you read them? Well. Time's compass, see: the space words need to travel. Not what it is, but where.

That's it, this evening, asks. Celebrity, question, pause. Silent jaws, knives across plates. Erica's iPod to 6" speakers: the sound of Django Reinhardt tinny and embarassed. "Drink," she'll say, her hand extended, and even Adrian will falter. A sea, a drain, the weather, travel. Reveries of days gone by, the old chords signal. And the weather, if one sees it, different now and always changing. Still walls, thick carpet. Dark but for one tiny desk lamp. Perhaps a cup of tea that steams.

#80

There are 7 days for every story. And a year for every day. The artistry of distraction, perhaps. Or as Square said, from the thin grey lines of rain, "Often, but un poco at a time, like Swann." The rolled cuffs of his jeans, the denim darker, blue. The refrain at corner lights of boots in puddles. "To impede the sky its replication." Thunder's grumble.

In desks on days at first week's end, let's say let's teach of structured things. 4, 4, 4, then 2. The students' eyes that dart or drift, hold perhaps, a stream of words to see. Sonnet number 129. Give it a letter: M. A couplet that dissuades from coupling. See then see and see: from now to know. This is what poetry can do. Notebooks flap and cringe at phrases inked in blue and black, that tell. But let me not to minds admit impediment. Let them learn it in an hour.

Oh, but for the letter to be long and winding, river walkways washed by storm and slide. The auditors with skin and hands to warm. Square's breath that steams, each word the winter's illustration. I'd tell them: feel, err. And what. Unearth but here. Leave, but linger. Let's say let's sound aloud with lovers' lips. That nothing proven can be worth the task. Hands that push through doors for skies that spit and drool. 4/4 3/4 2/3. Sustain. One day, a year, to lightning they will ask to sing along. A chapter, every song.

#79

#78

Warmth of white spaces. Students still in rows, a slight incline. From my vantage point, the window and the world it frames. Spring-like light to me, distraction. Scott is seated to my right. Margreta's words: "vagrant," "impersonate," "primogeniture." The last, the first to clean. Rooms still fresh with paint and spotless floor. The first mark to be made on board, a scrawl.

Repeat that, these intimate faces, each left to find their way. The small talk of hallways, sidewalks, hear as specks that make the silence sing. In the mailroom, my slot the single space of nothing: no name to label what is mine. Yes, there are words that erase themselves. Surrender, learn to listen, flow.

And start again, light coats, the grain of underneath. Rewrite but don't discard. Recede, and then let grow. I sleep away the afternoon, so as to say, no more yet. And objects, they concur. Hold themselves as though were held. Think: passing sights to music, retread without retreat. My word games. Reservations: uncertanties, am I sure? For there are rooms to borrow, future spaces to secure. Or seats on trains that move you seated, forth.

#77

Four o'clock sun sets. Finish.

What Baudelaire wrote somewhere of glass perspectives. Matt types, "High rise. Raid the bar. Together." A week apart. But their eyes, in the mirror, always sought his frame. The gray to my black and white. Readiness to my reflection. Seconds passing for the quieter smile. And Blake, who stood before him. Ricky and Kenny and Shera early: double syllables each, the final softer, silent. Signal winter changes. Let them go with a turn of the lock. The windows draped in paper brown, opaque.

Five o'clock twilight. Begin.

An open hand. A transfer of words to the Library. David says, "Let me ask you a question." Clean. Holidays on holidays, and more. The streets, white-lit with errands to pursue. Laundered shirts and shower curtains. Trash bags for what's passed. And signs: "FREE STUFF" for the parting. Miguel and Michael serve coffee over cards. Kendra, Denny: a couplet still. Chapstick. Trust the trips breath takes for breath. Brandon, as he sits, well-travelled, likewise. Or for eyes, one stands exposed. Candidly. Ask.

#76

The sound of sun, diagonal, upon reading chair and carpet. That poem I wrote, "Curtain Lecture." Words? Music? No: it's what's behind. Subjective tinnitus, here and there, between. Bed-ridden cup of coffee steaming. A glass of wine, pitched high and sparkling in lamplight. A wave hello, goodbye, the crests and valleys again, again, again, like the scene in a slanted mirror.

And avidly pursuing. My tongue that maunders from lips to ear, and says... In darkness, rain. The Klanglink of radiator. One hand on another, down. The soft sounds of head on pillow, blankets pulled or thrown, and breath as it quickens then breaks. There might be many objects circumscribed, each a single speaker singing. But the silence at their center loudest. There might be a rhythm to the train of touching, but catch it like a synaesthesia, schizophonia. Record it with the swell of lungs.

Tinnitus, yes. The words of Steve Harley. Lryics for the action man. Raise the bar. Listen. Tinny February, thick July: I want to know how you sound.