before the stone had splintered the
skull, I knew I’d gone too far. I
adore these tiny flowers, but
no one owns them, and then the great
detective, all those fine speeches,
reversals, triple meanings. No
wonder most only stand and wait
by the fire gulping down amber
Then in a moment it’s resolved
and all that tension as the speech
slowly built its trap and found its
treasure as it ever did and
then tea and cakes and time and in
some time, time, flowers, a stone, and
Tag: tea
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-
In February
IIIII
I sat on the couch with a little dog pressed against me as she sighed and licked and twitched and ran and slept and stretched. I can hear the clanking of the ships in the marina in my memory. I feel like I’m going in three directions and locked in place. I am enjoying a small glass of dragon well. I am trying to log out of certain sites as a means of slowing the waste. I hear the wind and check the weather app. I want to be honest, to a point. I want to play Skyrim rather than read The Satyricon. I see the Canterbury Tales hasn’t moved. I love a Sailor nib. I have checked my email, even though I didn’t want to. I think there are things I’d like to say to you that I’d instantly regret. I instantly regret and then again and again throughout eternity and back and back. I think I need more projects or fewer projects or different projects. I enjoy the afternoon light unless I’m trying to watch TV. I can hardly bear the profundity of my many sagacious remarks. I was listening for it for a long time. I am pleased that that anger has so far not consumed me as it seemed it might. I may give up trying to find the right word. I feel a sensation like warm jelly gently jiggling as it cools near this chakra. I’m surprised by how terrible and beautiful my handwriting can be. I suppose that goes for most things. I suppose I should do something about it. I think it feels accurate and like a cheat. I wonder if this project has reached its conclusion. I wonder if it will ever find its true and needed form. I was thinking of calling it I, ai ai, but thought that might either seem silly or pretentious, but we’ll see. I wouldn’t say yes, even if she found a way to be nice about it. I know I’m to blame as well but I won’t say that publicly right now. I am prepared to go without for much longer than you would guess. I got used to having no one and now I feel suspicious of every face. I don’t know how much longer I can. I am sure I’ve said this before. I’m running out of steam, and enriched uranium, but I have plenty of dark matter. I wanted to buy that Hello Kitty fountain pen, but I cannot understand why. I suppose the minutiae of one life could be enough to build some kind of something or whatever. I think the dog only wanted some company this morning. I wonder if I’m just writing down my stray thoughts rather than building a poem. I was thinking of the Lords of Death and how they triumph and how the twins defeat them. I suppose we will never know since all those priceless works were destroyed by our idiot ancestors. I imagine they will say the same thing of us in a few hundred thousand years if we run into some very good luck.
afternoon, Canterbury, couch, dog, dragon well, february, fountain pen, Hello Kitty, Lords of Death, marina, memory, nib, Sailor, Satyricon, ships, Skyrim, tea, weather, wind
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In February
III
I am afraid I have missed my shot. I’m thinking of whiskey or maybe mezcal. I admire the white jellyfish on the nib when I pause. I wonder if this is any better than what I was writing in high school. I find the tea too bitter and nearly cold. I try to wait as long as I can before the evening entertainments. I think about looking for a proper job with a 401(k) and all that and feel the concrete coconut slip and grate farther down my gut. I find it harder and harder to imagine a future in which I want to participate though I know my imagination is part of the problem. I wonder how many minutes the dog spends licking various parts on average during an average day. I wonder what I will make for lunch since disposing of the suspicious stir-fry leftovers. I wonder how many days I should do this. I’m aiming for Midwinter Lite rather than Maximus Junior. I find it slightly irritating how the paper slightly curls when I try to write in this notebook on top of this notebook on top of a pillow that rests on my lap. I do like the size of this notebook, the paper one, which is more or less the size of ones I used in college but much thinner. I don’t know why any of that seemed relevant. I’m not really sure how to judge. I’m concerned this may start to sound too similar to itself. I want to add fire. I just watched the episode of The X-Files called Fire which starred an actor I almost didn’t recognize because he was so young. I remember him from an episode of Firefly and Doctor Who as well. I have been enjoying The X-Files and Twin Peaks and Farscape. I worry that I’m falling into the poison idiot quicksand of nostalgia. I desperately want new toys. I wonder if I worry too much or not enough. I just sent the wife a picture of the pooch. I tried to record her snoring, but the beauty was far too subtle for these coarse machines. I wonder when the delivery will get here. I worry about my wife when she goes out to meet friends and the weather is less than perfect, which is how I was raised. I think my parents must have made themselves sick with my sister and then my own rebellions. I think I must be a late bloomer, but perhaps my sister is just faster than me with certain things. I can dish it out but I can’t take it. I remember finding a bit of poop on the carpet that was swirled with green and brown and red. I mean the carpet. I feel as though I was eating a sloppy joe and a pellet of joe slipped out and that is when I discovered the poop and why I never liked sloppy joes. I’m not sure if this is conflating two memories. I’m pretty sure it happened. I can see certain aspects of the home in my memory, but it swirls and is liable to be unstable. I think of the poetics of space and maybe I should try to read that again. I remember enjoying what I read, but it’s something you have to approach with plenty of time and patience. I already feel quite hungry and it’s only a quarter past ten. I recall the line time is an illusion lunchtime doubly so, but have to look it up to get it right.
coconut, Doctor Who, dog, Farscape, february, friends, imagination, lunch, Maximus, mexcal, midwinter, poop, sloppy joe, tea, Twin Peaks, whisky, wife, X-Files
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In February
II
I am still tired and hungry and thinking about the sea. I mean tea. I am coming and going. I’m thinking of buying that pen. I am scratching my head. I was thinking about the dog who wandered into our yard and stayed two days four decades ago and we bought canned food and a box of Milk-Bones. I was writing about the past before. I was trying to put the jigsaw puzzle together in the dark with my hands battered and tender. I’m making up a few things and being honest about others, but that hardly matters. I’m thinking of Canterbury again, though we’re not a week into February. I wonder if it’s too late to bake a sweet potato. I watch the dog’s little rise and sink rise and sink the sun shading one side on the blanket her new toy by her head. I was thinking of a friend who used to live nearby. I hear the wind tour the chimney and out around the yard and back and watch the bare limbs of the locust try to scratch where they can’t quite reach. I’m thinking of Neil Gaiman again and I want to read the Vulture article and at the same time I’ve already heard too much and someone said can we expect the guy who writes creepy stories not to be creepy. I wonder if he thought of it as a kind of bastard research or as oh why bother with this. I really liked the few things I read and don’t know if I’ll ever read what I haven’t. I am tired of news like this and at the same time pleased people are speaking up whether or not folks I like get flushed. I thought of that song towards the end of Joe’s Garage he was such a nice boy he used to cut my grass or something like that. I fear I am falling into prose. I feel a certain energy rarely. I see shadows out of the corner of my eye wriggle and escape. I am second cousin to snow and icicle. I am half of what I once was and twice as something as I may have been or something. I think I should delete my Facebook account. I want to be familiar with GBV’s entire catalog but I’m already 50 and I’m not sure if I have the time. I am dissolving in abstraction and thinking of graham crackers and chunky peanut butter and maybe I’ll do more stretching, but maybe first more tea. I feel as though I’m hypnotizing myself. I wonder if that dream machine works. I think a somnolent mind might be somewhat more prone to an hallucinatory stimulus. I think that line sounds best in a quite post accent. I would like to rest my hand. I am worried that I won’t be able to something in the morning. I wonder why we never swim in the ocean. I would love to feel the enthusiasm I once felt for a variety of people, places, and miscellaneous whatnot. I would like to remember in a clear way unimpeded by the meddling mind unmolested by ego. I would write it down in a little book, once edited. I think it could be the inverse of Pandora’s jar. I hope you look it up. I will continue and try to say good.
Canterbury, february, icicle, Joe’s Garage, Milk-Bones, ocean, Pandora, peanut butter, sea, snow, tea, Vulture
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In February
I
I am a little tired. I am halfway through this cup of tea as the next one cools. I am falling into daydreams. I am mad. I am really pissed off sometimes. I am searching the past. I am looking away from the future. I am already tired of this idea. I enjoy thinking myself an explorer of inner worlds. I have always been blue-black and green and orange and sometimes purple and largely red though in a small way. I used to think it might be with those folks and then sometimes the opposite. I am tickled and transformed by Ovid as always. I am gulping tea and moving on to cup two. I am feeling a pain in my back. I am pleased after only a quarter of a page this old pen feels like my finger leaking purple ink. I am a servant of the Secret Fire. I’m not sure if I mentioned that. I hear the wife open the fridge on the floor below and maybe I’ll call her Persephone but then who am I painting myself as. I thought I could be Hermes once, and yes we all know how intelligent you are and yes, you mentioned memory for trivia isn’t the same as intelligence and yes, you said trivia originally meant a crossroads and is associated with the various gods who loiter there blessed be their comings and goings. I’m looking up trivia on Wikipedia. I feel a pain in my toe and hear the neighbors on creaky stairs. I am trying. I am trying to remember what else I wanted to write. I am a wet fart. I am a defective salamander. I am a failed alchemist a ruined poet a lazy fuck a terrible true singer a reluctant pervert a secret squirrel enthusiast a sad sesquipedalian solipsist a collector of pens and tea bowls and bad memories. I am running out of steam. I am losing faith except in my time running out. I am really impressed with the ink capacity. Waterman really knew how to make beautiful simple precise pens 100 or so years ago and what was that. I am hoping you will excuse my handwriting. I got a second idea halfway through a word and bred involuntary monsters. I’m sure that’s none of my business. I am too small to succeed. I am the stone in the maze beneath your heel. I am singing in the shower, but so softly. I’m thinking about the nymph and the passionate shepherd. I wonder if it really was a nymph or if I misremembered. I’m grateful that I picked up a pen today and practiced drawing by copying one of Timm’s Cat Girls and a naked Vampira or is it Vampirella. I will look it up later. I hope to find things to celebrate. I hope I can drop maybe five more pounds. I hope I can buy less liquor in the future. I hope that I will find my people once again. I will try to wrap this up. I am glad the wind has died down. I’m thinking of Bernadette Mayer on this day one day after Groundhog Day in the year of the wood snake in the year of our great confusion 2025.
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In January the tea on
my thin undusted desk as my
neighbor again starts to exercise
looked so stomp thud woozy stomp I
wanted to run to some mountainbut instead retreated upstairs
to a cool toilet and sat where
from the open window from the
courtyard come echos melodiessplash ring soar sink bouncing off white tile
on all sides of this cave to remind
but the dream broke when the crow saidit reminded him of a lost draft of
my novel destined for obscurity
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despite our poorly thought out plan
for the ancestral garden gnomes
I can even without glasses
see what’s coming on this muddy
trail as we bear the insistenceof another infection a
brief pollen starscape as we stop for tea
any future tortures could have baguettes
bagels brioche bialys andbaskets of buns though we see our
most-ignored manifesto won’t
help to fill the syringe beforethe eggs from that red insect we forgot
about hatch and we lose more than our eyes
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Fragment 23
I want to take a break and I think that helps. One thing that’s been irritating me this week is a case of cracked lips.
why do you ask oh I see well yes that’s fair maybe that should be my catchphrase but in that tree no that one over there you’ll see the bird that stole a jewel from your hair you assumed you’d never see him again but that tiny hat is unmistakeable unless things have taken another strange turn in the woods I suppose nothing would be too surprising these days but you’re right we should pretend not to see him we don’t want any trouble this forenoon so here we come to the stone ruin the information plaque is badly faded
I think they got chapped or maybe sunburned? I can trace it to when we were eating outside at Valencia last weekend. I had the sun on my face for the whole meal. I don’t know if that’s what did it but that was the last time I remember not
but we can make out a date from the last century and something about a fire and a great experiment that’s mostly the story of all of our lives isn’t it if only there were something steady to stand on instead of these slimy rocks but then beneath they work day and night perfecting pestos and symphonies guarding eggs and their tender young they scatter when the rock is lifted though I know we won’t do anything quite so cruel today will we I can see that glint in your eye when you’ve had your last cup of tea and
the dog is curled up snoring beside you when the world seems a word of calm between breaths and pick up your book while we wait for the apocalypse that is taking its sweet time think of that person whose death will give you wings but if we don’t find that inspiring perhaps we can review the correct pronunciations of the latest drugs and open that box they asked us to keep safe and sealed what’s the worst that could happen of course it’s just a slight song from the dinky walnut deep inside your brain or deep inside the
forest which is the analogy we’ll use for your mind brain included at no cost though skip the extended warranty if you oh you have money to burn well burn away who am I to stop you I just feel so tired so unable to there comes a time when you think perhaps the rotten floorboards should be replaced before we lose another guest in a sudden collapse and have to clean the carpets yet again I know we should have dealt with it centuries ago but time being what it is and our hands what they are the moment
having a problem with my lips. I’ve tried to use some lip balm a few times but I don’t know how much that really helps.
[And click here if you’d like to take the plunge.]
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Sonnet
but what we got was some sequel
made for the merchandising rights
so let’s instead unpack this strange
light after a summer storm near
evening with its light bouquet of
back pain—in those glowing clouds you
could believe the benevolent
aliens might pop down for tea
and cake and perhaps slip you a
few space-time secrets but they fail
to arrive again so climb to
bed and nudge the little dog from
her pillow throne and sink and sigh
chest collapsed but eyes on the sky
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Sonnet
what prize did you hope to hold in those smooth
hands for the plan sketched in cloud and unbuilt—
what melody might have flown forth if you
freed yourself from petty politics of
the boardroom and tested those scrawny wings—
but you sat with a job safe as socks and
a single number near the cold solsticenow in the damp the aches where you bend while
those black glacier teeth topple in tepid
tea you mumble to the cat it wasn’t
all bad these bloody feet could still march this
hand salute the lurking shadow who smiles
at the coughing cubicle dwellers soon
to be churned into cheap fertilizer
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a fish through the hands will write a list of future accomplishments gulp the last tepid tea and remember I’m somehow the narrator though my training is in watch repair once a thriving industry in days when many people were killed by and these days you don’t know who to believe when you take your pants off but that’s the way it’s always been at least when you climb that tree to look at the moon you can just remember the sound of the first sparrow through her curls
other animals 