Running to the City

As a child

I did many innocent

And vague things

Worthy of poetry

But now,

In my urgent age,

I just pretend

1. Scribbled secret notebooks, and wild typewritten pages, for yr own joy
2. Submissive to everything, open, listening
3. Try never get drunk outside yr own house
4. Be in love with yr life
5. Something that you feel will find its own form
6. Be crazy dumbsaint of the mind
7. Blow as deep as you want to blow
8. Write what you want bottomless from bottom of the mind
9. The unspeakable visions of the individual
10. No time for poetry but exactly what is
11. Visionary tics shivering in the chest
12. In tranced fixation dreaming upon object before you
13. Remove literary, grammatical and syntactical inhibition
14. Like Proust be an old teahead of time
15. Telling the true story of the world in interior monolog
16. The jewel center of interest is the eye within the eye
17. Write in recollection and amazement for yourself
18. Work from pithy middle eye out, swimming in language sea
19. Accept loss forever
20. Believe in the holy contour of life
21. Struggle to sketch the flow that already exists intact in mind
22. Dont think of words when you stop but to see picture better
23. Keep track of every day the date emblazoned in yr morning
24. No fear or shame in the dignity of yr experience, language & knowledge
25. Write for the world to read and see yr exact pictures of it
26. Bookmovie is the movie in words, the visual American form
27. In praise of Character in the Bleak inhuman Loneliness
28. Composing wild, undisciplined, pure, coming in from under, crazier the better
29. You're a Genius all the time
30. Writer-Director of Earthly movies Sponsored & Angeled in Heaven

-Jack Kerouac

Flash Thud

the indecisiveness of the storm

is disconcerting to the belief of a master plan

the weathers got me wanting love more tangible

-Connor Orberst

The smallest of the small

A man said to the universe:

"Sir, I exist!"

"However," replied the universe,

"The fact has not created in me

"A sense of obligation."

-Stephen Crane

a bellyful of beauty

chopping onions

in the rain

I am constantly born

Not Supposed To

Stars

are the campfires

of exiles.

Language exists

to pull things

close.

-Rae Armantrout

…After all

It doesn’t matter where it hits

Just the sound of a splash

And knowledge

Of billowing ripples

In the night

Sunset Through the Blinds

and there we stayed without moving
listening to the river
and I wondered whether
it might be a dream
whether you might be a dream
whether we both were a dream
in which neither of us moved

-W.S. Merwin

Today, much like every other day, will not hold.

(the jerking of muscles and greedy eyes.

movement undefined)

breath and a fear of death

little more than posturing

In Pedro Arrupe’s book on Japan I find useful comments on shooting with a bow. A Japanese man instructs a missionary:

Holy Father, you must not think about the target, the target has no meaning here. And you must not worry about hitting it. Above all you must strive to become one with the target, and only then do you calmly release the arrow. The arrow will fly straight to the target. But if you tighten your nerves instead of the string, you may be sure that it will never reach the goal.

This advice comes in handy in many situations. Since the goal is reached only in passing.

-ANNA KAMIENSKA

Long Time Running

There is no fierceness in sleep

No sign of passion

Just evidence of its bustling pass

Just two bodies interlocked

And away

The horizon’s flashing fastens tight,

sealing the blue hills with vermilion.

Moss dyes a squirrel’s skull green.

The cemetery expands its borders—

little milky crosses grow like teeth.

How kind time is, altering space

so nothing stays wrong; and light,

more new light, always arrives

-SPENCER REECE9