finally it has all come to this which is no way to begin at the beginning takes a specific knowledge of what is involved & what is not is what we've come here to discuss why else would you be here no one else is who you think you are special unique which cannot be more or less but a simple state like concepts in a row that help people understand the transitions between things there is a long flat space that is where we are nothing grows nothing improves with age it just gets old men are always looking for control there is no helping it work through the hole is round and will engulf the entire struggle if allowed

We begin talking when left alone.

We talk about the burden of talking & about how our talking is different from other talking.

Other talking is mere talking. Our talking is an experience. Our talking is Whiteheadian in method. Our talking is free jazz. Our talking consumes its own metaphors. What has their talking ever done? Now that I think of it what has your talking ever done? So I should say my talking is different from other talking. My talking consumes its own metaphors.

But secretly my talking is middlebrow & so recycles. My talking, I admit, is mostly self-help. My talking is your high school English teacher, a metaphor I resemble & have failed to consume. My talking fails to consume its metaphors & is not very different from your talking after all.

Not very different, but different nevertheless. Six-percent different? One out of every, say, seventeen utterances (give or take) is more politically committed or more poetically challenging or more rhetorically charged. One out of every seventeen isn't so bad.

Others, with a higher percentage, are the poets and writers and bloggers and emailers and letter writers to the editor whom I admire. I want to become them. I want to grow my percentage of difference. I want my annual rate of growth in different talking to exceed any increase in my overall appetite for talking.

I want new words for you. Words to give you. New ways of putting them together to say new things. New talking for you. (Do you hear the you narrowing?) & I want new ways of talking with you. New ways of words being between us. I want our talking to be different from other talking. I confess, your talking has done great things. Your talking made me forsake all other talking. There is no talking other than your talking which has to do with your words sure but then there's your voice too. A voice & a body go hand-in-hand, an unconsumed metaphor. Your voice & body go hand-in-hand while I'm over here just talking. Just talking & losing the sense of your talking. Your voice as a voice being heard but not talking. Your voice then a body outside your body but that is inside my body. That's were your voice goes eventually. So where does the talking go. The talking stays inbetween.

At the beginning I imagined that I was talking. I imagined talking while left alone with you but then I started writing instead -- writing while imagining talking. & then I imagined the talking itself but I was writing all the while not talking. I thought I was talking but I was writing. & then I finally imagined you. & at this point I realized I was writing not talking & I stopped hearing voice. Before I realized I was writing not talking, I heard voices. Voices that were talking & that became writing. Then I realized I was writing & I was alone with the idea of you but you were gone & I was writing about the idea of talking but the talking was gone. Now I'm left with all this writing.

The notebooks are skinnydipping on the web.
The notebooks want to confess. To you.
The notebooks want to be read & they want to disavow their contents. The notebooks want it both ways.
The notebooks are plugs & outlets.
The notebooks will not keep their mouths (i.e. covers) shut.
The notebooks insult your intelligence.
The notebooks could fall into the wrong hands. You'd love that. Wouldn't you? Admit it. Come on, admit it.
The notebooks are desperate to fall into the wrong hands. The notebooks are on your side. The notebooks will be on the traitors list. My traitors list if I had a traitors list. Do I believe in a traitors list? Do you believe in a traitors list?
We were innocent without hands.
I now look differently at the word intelligence. Know what I mean? Go look it up for yourself.
The notebooks, finally, are a fiction. Go back to what you were doing. It was, no doubt, more important than this.

{Revised}
I jotted down all but a few lines of the following lines during interstices in yesterday's Joe Torra/Jim Dunn reading outside Toast in the Aspen shade of Union Square, Somerville. When I got to school this morning I found out a former student (one I know well) was in a bad car accident over the weekend...

Carland Torture

so much potential death
& then it happens
wha'ppen?
Bars & sutures
Keepin wha thegither?
wha frum m'self?
Y'cannae ta'it wi'yeh.

Sad torture.
Yr eyes stuck open
'til they dry.
Growth on yr throat.
Y'cannae coff i'owt.

Agonychrist-w/-us:

Ghosts steal lost keys
Ghost's steel: lost, missed.
Finger keys. Lingers there.
Mist: the pavement haze:
[unintelligible]
What happened?

Themes in Literature

No, really it's true. That wasn't just to say so.
*
Go ahead. Come on... Just this once. It's all I ask. Do you really have anything better to do?
*
You've got two choices: laugh or cry. O.K. three: laugh and/or cry.
*
here
then
gone
*
& in the end
*
"What is this quintessence of dust?"
*
It's what dust does between the parentheses.
*
"The rest is silence."

Misreadings of Hamlet are preferable to an oral history in which a mother is proud of her sons for fighting in Iraq, fighting to avenge the attacks of 9/11. I get angry at & on behalf of ignorance. Mother has nightmares about her sons. I've had nightmares about my brother. My brother, in one dream, returns from Iraq only to be stabbed in a poolhall in Ohio. His attacker later appears at a family picnic. I look at my dad and other brother. I know what I have to do. I wander the streets of Cleveland {I've never been} looking for the attacker, another Marine. Over the phone I half hear {from who?} that my brother has died or he's walked out of the hospital before his time. Either way before-his-time. I look & look. Down alleys. Through cold cross winds. All the buildings shuttered. Another brother shows up -- like he's always been there -- then he goes. I fade out; it's an off-white, pale scene.

My work is a bubble burst long ago.
My work doesn't.
My work begins at 7:30 but I arrive between half six and seven.
My work es mi trabajo.
My work es mis obras maestras.
My work coughs and sputters like the malfuctioning automaton in all those sci-fi shows I watched evenings and weekends as a kid.
My work is a body. The body is over seven feet tall. This allows me extra space to work on the body. I'm a klutz.
My work is plagiarized but new.
My work never ends but deadens.
My work is here. I am home now.
My work knows where you live. Read that as a threat but know in your heart-of-hearts that we'd prefer a heartfelt letter or heartrending email. Anything but silence.
My work knows the rest is silence.
My work keeps me up nights.
My work pays. My work spends. My work is in debt.
My work likes your work and would like to get together for drinks.
My work would prefer to drink on the job.

imagine my surprise what have you been up to and then the stampede the going over the coming under the several instances of heartbreak and failure to recognize the circumstances the blossoms the blossoms the blossoms are not what we wanted them to be so hold on to exterior signs as subterranean currents turn awry the name is action the pale cast of thought includes the guy from the movie the actress from the film where have you been i've been waiting

For Love Mutation

It wishes they would come untrue.

Echo of only up yours: stumble

into the confessional. They're mind-

less to say anything. It's all reruns.


Speaking of the devil, caustic

drivel repairs its own love. Wooden

ether not the moon but pretentious.

Finally, what is it can't stand


alone. Stadium pain. Minor repairs

in the infrastructure that it had to

but just couldn't transplant. Company

man better creep. Tag, you're it.

CHANGES INSIDE STARS

With complete attention he *took hold of* C.R.'s question. He rolled it over. Looked at the belly of it. Considered it. Then answered. The answer was more sincere than it needed to be. The question was loaded, had an agenda. (What question doesn't? How gullible do you think we are?) He knew the question had an agenda but answered through it. Not in spite of it. But *by way of* it. The answer was not of tremendous use. Not really. But the seriousness of the answer confirmed the agenda *as* a stance towards language and the world but not as a focus of attention. The answer -- the answer w/in the answer -- was get on w/ it. Get down to it. So we did.

I had been reading his Collected Poems. I would soon be reading his correspondence with C.O. I was an apprentice. I am an apprentice.

People are having fun with poems but I'm not.
People are fighting with weapons and without but I'm not.
People are dead or are near death but I'm not.
People are investigating the phrase "near death" but I'm not.
People are making things happen in a proactive manner but I'm not.
People are getting their shit together but I'm not.
People are fed up but I'm not.
People are thinking before speaking but I'm not.
People are seeing then believing but I'm not.
People are getting an education but I'm not.
People are planning to do something about it but I'm not.
People are buying now and paying later but I'm not.
People are working hard for the money but I'm not.
People are stealing from Peter to give to Paul but I'm not.
People are willing to go to jail to stand up for what they believe in but I'm not.
People are neither here nor there but I'm not.

The rest of this...
The rest of this was over before it began.
The rest of this is from the part of the dream you forgot.
The rest of this is incommensurate with your exqusite taste in word play.
The rest of this has a curfew.
The rest of this is taking Friday off to shop at the Mall of America.
The rest of this aspires to be the Mall of America.
The rest of this suddenly cries for no particular reason.
The rest of this is anti-corporate despite appearances. No, really.
The rest of this has been suspected of having the "Irish flu".
The rest of this will be just like that which came before only more so.
The rest of this would like to collaborate with you.
The rest of this is the rest of this.

In case you were wondering...
Two sick adults, one healthy baby.
The Grave of Fireflies is a sad film.
Garden State is a bad film.
If one of the two sick adults becomes unsick that one hopes to join the protest on the Commons tomorrow...I love walking down the middle of streets but I do not like people shouting things I do not agree with in a human parade in which I'm a participant. But I do like shouting. If it's imaginative.
Van Lear Rose is a good album.
Woman King is a good e.p.
Thinking in terms of x is y is a relief when fighting headaches.
"You should be ashamed of yourself for removing 'I think" from the 'x is y' equation."
I am.
If you have them handy or can go get them, read Alice Notely's poems "The Two Cities Contrasted", "Constantinople", and "The City Drifting" instead of reading the rest of this. I am tempted to re-read them instead of writing the rest of this. I will succomb to temptation.