lucid dancing scattered

an orchestra leaves

whipped pasted wet

against ambition

faltering flagrant attempts

he said

consume or be

wasted return over time petals fall

over his tone marking time

one leaf or

another

lift lament red petals against

horns sound the dramatic finish

fall scattered dances where

otherwise would waste

intention carefully

orchestrated until such time

minus attention

muted shades

falter

or

cling

rapid

an arc of orange

cleverly layers a wild

union

of sorts dangling

just before

array

misplaced

a road map of any

state

curls over layers

colored

blank

a voice solid

deep

in a memory

still happening

arc among

wild blades

hue

pasted

clever

orange

before

voice (mis)heard

that once

winding off the map

flames

behind ever having

announced

union

curls

solid

clever

a blade leans

await

past reflected

here

intonation

sound of

a greek myth

set to

voice

kickin

a new tale

recitation

against lyric

flow

make each word

stand slam

consonant

sliding

assonance

alliterate

characters

quenching

kickin

beat this

barely

listen

off

the

page

Gertrude Stein

more from the Geographical History

Now you take anything that is written and you read it as a whole it is not interesting it begins as if it is interesting but it is not interesting because if it is going to have a beginning and middle and ending it has to do with remembering and forgetting and remembering and forgetting is not interesting it is occupying but it is not interesting.
And so that is not writing.
Writing is neither remembering nor forgetting neither beginning or ending.
Being dead is not ending it is being dead and being dead is something. Think of any crime of course being dead is something.
Now and that is a great American contribution only any flat country has and can be there that being dead is actually something.
Americans are like that.
No Europeans and so no European can ever invent a religion, they have too much remembering and forgetting too much to know that human nature is anything.
But it is not because it is not interesting no not any more interesting than being drunk. Well who has to listen to anything. Any European but not any American.

Gertrude Stein

from The Geographical History of America or the relation of Human Nature to the Human Mind


Part IV

The question of identity


A Play

I am I because my little dog knows me.
Which is he.
No which ishe.
Say it with tears, no which is he.
I am I why.
So there.
I am I where.


Act I Scene III

I am I because my little dog knows me.


Act I Scene I

Now that is the way I had played that play.
But not at all not as one is one.


Act I Scene I

Which one is there I am I or another one.
Who is one and one or one is one.
I like a play of acting so and so.
Leho Leho.
Leho is a name of a Breton.
But we in America are not displaced by a dog oh no no not at all not at all at all displaced by a dog.

The Clem 2

The Clem 1

eclogue

in order to reciprocate

we were talking about concrete

details

an urban setting

history in the present

(he was shot for appearing just

so)

respond to each line

with a new image

oatmeal

butterflies

the problem with

trash

in the city

musical quality

of poems

about garbage

political demonstrations

give something back

when even words

sounding through spaces

keep us in relation

Ed Roberson from City Eclogue

Height and Deep Song


Pulled by the full disaster's view of thrown
upward to the look-out's level
crying

from that ledge the song of what it comes
down to
but unable to jump strapped in

with the wonder the words can come up with
stripped in the scramble of birth spill--
the speechless

cover binding
the know this
on the spine

the body arrives screaming written
all over it

what breath is
then writing

more of

each hot fuss pink kills

the lyric tangled goodbye

she wrote crisp turning

trees in wind step

in time instrumental montage

speeding a beat bodies float in sync

outside of

the abstract quality of

clear paper sliding across sand

a display of chaos

wind screeching across years

of misunderstood

she curls half underneath the covers

and I think

trains passing through the dark

sound less violent

fading instead

like images without photos

that disappear over distance

the imagined

the almost

the near

potential

an arc of voice

carried distant fades

splashing shades sing along

roaring flames

a coral touch

of leaf

crumbling under

constructed words sculpted

into shapes sleeping

unsent

only as close as parallel

lines on the horizon