Saint: From the latin sanctus, 'holy', the name
applied initially to all Christians...JCJ Metford, Dictionary of Christian Lore and Legend
the grace of the moment
or the necessity
to live each minute
as i was taught always
to catch it
the real ride is the present tide
pulls you out
mark the me's
mar or are the sub
stance or text of
a life.
so that even this vocabulary
changes with the pull of present
words entering the ear or eye
their current's currency
carries them
into the unmapped reaches of your future
poem
'let's not bring that up'
'i'm too tired to discuss it'
'there's certain things we never mention'
'you show good form when you don't talk about it'
like politics or
the subjective voice or
all the awkward feet that don't fit
the antholegiac voice of the poetry biz
the feverish alliteration of the fake fucks
no st. algia here
just the bare longing of the moment lingers
mo' me(a)nt (or in the instant 'Means')
the tense switches
(that fast) i can never fix it
donkey tricks
i wear this language
like a bag of feed
a dictionary
dangling from a stick
the damn nouns & verbs
let's just say i love you
digestion
(consumed by desire by
time) 'i feel a poem coming on'
like a song or
attack of gas
fuels your flight from past
into the dizzying present of the future
moment & airy in st ant's perception
'I'd equate it thus - X + Y
- present's plus
pre-sentiment we see it clearly
minus any consciousness of the heart's toll
i know we flee into the endless nattering of soul-
searching' evade the moment
(imprecision of the term
in which the verb 'to write' is served)
absolute absolute
a brief soliloquy on lute
'music in the moment'
precision of the notion second
first time never is observed
head flashing back on itself like a record
a record of itself flashing back like a head
'i thot it was the heart with which we were concerned'
Donna
dead of cancer October 21st, 1983
cousin born the same year as me
carried my dead sister's name
death brackets endlessly
being ing be finally that aside
that drop in voice
notated in
death's presence
the dread flicks past
all light & motion
a film by Renoir
a painting or
a building
if Wren were still alive
saint
one you roll over
gather this moss or leave them
two: the daily rise & fall of hierarchies
dog days
we carry the red ribbons mark us for death
the blood of being flooding out or
leeched
brief bright ribbon we wrap the present in
this human grace
saint saint
's ain't nothin' but what it is
tongue of consciousness upon the face
licked awake
dream world sank t' us
sunken world we walk thru
at land is the lost level of our lives
the 'easilly gotten mystery image' any life assumes
longing for distant surfaces
forgotten coasts & harbours
lovers in some other room
the lips & limbs articulated
made whole, holy in that sense,
sanctus sanctuary
hidden within the bright tangles of the body
bright, praise,
how these initials craze us
dog our feet
give us the right to raise our voices
speak
's a peak the tongue reaches
beyond because
the tongue exceeds the grasp
rasps against the flesh &
we shudder
down
what good do they do?
these words to mourn the death of others?
this talk of love?
you take the in door st. ant
sunk
opening we thunk as hope
the dead dead
cancer worms & time tormented or
rapturous carried briefly beyond
into a something
marked as cliché
we mourn nonetheless
thrust into insistence by the pressure of a life
a death
miss you/miss you/miss you
cannot stop this insistent act
of breath
of speech
each line a life
everything resides in
we are lief
unlucky
cast up on this shore
the new found land another age longed for
taken as familiar
granted
the given returns
taunts us
a taste on the tongue
undone by the momentary pleasures of the flesh
give in dig
est ion or any other particle or question
just ation
a jest or
je saint
that same vari
very minor note
daily or sailyent point a ship reaches
vinland or
inland dreams of oceans too wide to cross
lost in the turn & toss
the beloved's body
catalogues
(dogalogues)
di in the very tac God takes
against the windy breath of
these songs
becalmed in the vast reaches of the world
to find belief & a way back home away
(too wakeful to sleep
y to wake
lines run
from the mind to
the pen
the tongue
say love or
plunge
into a bitter world of beasts
demons or
a moral
stance assumed
can i take it too
sing that 'wake me when the damned show up' tune?
or me?
locate the pro
noun my life becomes
work my life assumes?)
it is all personal
all person &
per the son that dies
still born or
the son you never were but wore
caught in th' e
lips is life... lived, as it were,
out of tune
two 'n one or
in one door & out the other
voices speaking
that this suffering is born in language
that that is true & that that is true
two true or
wholly to be believed but
who'll y' find to
believe it?
leave it
this pain words wear
carry within them like a spine
involves the very line its
twists & turns
we say it burns
it hurts
the body aches
the heart breaks
we are dumbed or numb
inarticulate in the face of it
rhyme badly
search for metaphors
when what it is is the world
that noun that thing
upon which (within)
this singing is a small instance of a being
holy alive
& holey
wholly here
we all want the same thing which is always different the 'other'
escape this flesh &
lose ourselves or loose
even as we stepped outside our parents' bodies
as our daughters step
even as the walls become waltz become
'wish i knew that two-step too'
into one makes one makes
three me's & three i's &
three we's we're not alone
living in a mystery
echoey shadowy
mi fa
mily so -
these difficult musics
the muse sticks to
s makes the comic cosmic
heaven sheaven
drunk on the i's dea of paradise
i deal
shuffle off this mortal coil
(double helix or hex -
reverse conjunctions where a life's made
mad ('s cream
(milk it for all its worth)))
the problem's to connect in the first place, establish how the flux creates the fax, that if our experience of 'now' is (essentially) illusory - an amalgam of light particles & a variable ability to anticipate a sequence of future activities - then these flix of consciousness fix it accurately: what Wittgenstein saw (hence his use of the file card); Stein's insistent insistence (tracking the way the syntax flexes); McLuhan's sense of the thot probe -
'Appreciation, however, lags behind, partly owing to the inherent nature of this art. People read instead of looking; paradoxically, because letters are so familiar people do not know what they really look like.'
[Nicolette Gay in The Painted Inscriptions of David Jones]
tone
t' one ton e carries on its
tongu life
that old BLUES moan
dedicates the real weight of speech
'he weighs every word'
'he's accurate to the letter'
'he's always prompt with his letters'
'answer that letter or you're out of work'
now now now now now
stammering accurate speech
occupies the present
's past
a spa st's go to
last blessings
last writes
death tracks the very life he rites
writ large
that letter of
the law waltz
just you
& the language too
this business of process
nothing more than
the moment's grace
October 1983 thru January 1984
