"You took my dreams from me
when I first found you.

I kept them with me, babe.
I packed them with my own.
Can't make it all alone;
I've built my dreams around you."

Kirsty MacColl died seven years ago yesterday. (I was reading an article about the controversy over the BBC's threat to fade out "slut" and "faggot". Then a tickling in the back of the brain reminded me that Kirsty died just before Christmas--as did Joe Strummer, who died five years ago this coming Saturday. Not are the two of them linked in their association with the Pogues but also "Fairy Tale of New York" & "Straight to Hell" (w/ the line beginning "When it's Christmas out in Ho Chi Minh City...") are two of the songs I use to help me through the season.

Peace to Kirsty.
Health to you all.

I couldn't help but notice that the roof was caving in.
It wasn't a dream.
It was neither here nor there and it was here and there.
Ashes were in the air.
The cows were in the meadow lying fast asleep
in another century.
A tissue, a tissue we all get up again before flying
into less than ourselves.
& you call this a community? Of what, solipsists &
blind men? Or worse?

I need to spend more time with poetry. Period.
& not just because of what you said in my dream last night.

Limitations are defining; that is, deafening.
On and on
And then it's over.
*
Spiderthreads make taut patterns that collapse in rain.
Piano keys in a pattern we play patterns on. Language likewise.
The anniversary passed with little notice. Nostalgia is easy in fall. Harder elsetime.
Spiders go to work in the wee hours and are kings of new kingdoms by morning.
We watched it all. Kept records. Annotated the photographs which we will pass along to our children's children whose strange nonexistence is pure mockery come to think of it.
*
Having a haven is heaven.
More than a quota of birthrights.
Expectations and entitlements broach no nuance.
We've all wanted to live in the bosom of knowing and safety before tragedy.
Come, come now admit it!
It'll lose you in itself. And that's one way of getting along.
One place to call one's habitat.
A fall all year long beside a summer at the beach.
Abby knows where it's snowing and darking out. It happens everyday.
See you there!

Eons have passed and you don't look a day.
*
The Bumptious Bump of Gloucester Paramilitary Politics Reached the Public News Media
*
She said she was feeding animals. Later she said they all had hands.
*
Never forget: the hate us for our freedom.
*
Princesses always help their moms & the castle is working.
*
Today I will set about poking out the eyes of every rock dove I've ever written. But not until the children are asleep.
*
A funnel spider emerging from his dark cylindrical web amidst a stack of red bricks is something to see. For an instant you are no bigger than the bug he wants to snare. An instant later you've forgotten all about him & so head unknowlingly into the darkness of the alluring narrow passageway.
*
My dreams? Rotten beams holding up the first floor. Ceilings buckling, heavy with water. Rat's nest electrical wiring sending off sparks. And then I'm cast off. I'd be happier if the lonesome whistle would blow.

Discussions of interest:

A commons or a market?
*****

Poet as folk-artist: here (July 10, 11, 12) and here and here and here (July 11) and here and so on.

Oh, okay, here I am. This looks familiar.
"That door."
I point.
"Yes, that one. Walk in. And shut the door behind you."
Locked. Only one way out now.
***
This summer I've read _Wide Sargasso Sea_ (immediate entry into my personal cannon, grazing in that part of my mind's country also inhabited by _Under the Volcano_ and _Ulysses_ and her _Good Morning, Midnight_ one hill over from Emily Dickinson's poems), _Magic Lies Outside_ (thanks Gerrit), Eagleton's _How to Read a Poem_ (a tedious waste...though I like _Ideology_ and _Literary Theory_), A Book of Propehcies (a link between the lyrical and the de/arranged in Wieners work (thanks to Jack for the link; order this from Bootstrap Productions), Derek Fenner and Ryan Gallagher's new chapbooks, and I should finish _Jane Eyre_ today (taking longer than expected...how do I find it? humorously predictable, a bit tedious, well-observed (w/ the ring of truth), cleverly constructed...WSS haunts the book for me, and I'm pleased that I read it first...my sympathies lie w/ Ms. Rhys; the moralizing narrative rhetoric repels me...I choose the unruly overgrowth over the mastery of the English garden...with my machete I'll cut back enough to get to where I'd like to go but that's all...at least that's who I hope I am...my Weymouth-founding ancestors, of course, laugh at the thought.
***
After _Magic Lies Outside_ I've been noticing telephone poles and lines lately. Does anyone else remember the lines along the train in Paul Blackburn's _The Cities_. I need to re-read this book.
***
Time to go home. I found a key. There are now two ways out.