as it falls apart

afternoon grey in afternoon sounding
you petals leaves and leaves you
what are my clothes worth what
free scattering no return falling free
epochs are rustling by
today sounds are better than all that
in floridas and gulfs
and when its time is come
because of this I am almost a man

and washes the leaves into the sea
empty glasses
syllables you almost understand
rat bones, black and white
the dissolving skin
we are all making works, I hear
at our shoulders
visited by crows
lights light

situate

"Everything that exists is situated. ..."

Max Jacob, in preface to Le cornet à dés, 1916.

blink

off screen thresholds
become
blind sky

spaces

the arrangement of
air the
arrangement

of paper what
you see
and

want to see
words order
lines

space
- -
- ( ) -

arranging

"The arrangement, which is the life of a poem, includes music and meaning, the immediately experienced and the relations of ideas. The process of arrangement, or creation, is an essential and subtle one."

Muriel Rukeyser, The Life of Poetry, Paris Press, 1996.

observations

what is the defence
of things
blown at gates
the ugly roses
smoking
half-wild with light

self/other/self/as

'Poetry seems often a talking to self as well as other as well as self as other, a simultaneity that recognizes the elusive multiplicity of what is called "identity." '

Michael Palmer, "Autobiography, Memory and Mechanisms of Concealment", in Bob Perleman, ed. Writing / Talks, Southern Illinois University Press, 1985.