536 Philosophy poems

1 Likely as not a ruined head gasket Spitting at every power stroke, if not a crank shaft Bearing knocking at the roots of the thing like a pile-driver: A machine involved with itself, a concentrated Hot lump of a machine Geared in the loose mechanics of the world with the valves jumping And the heavy frenzy of the pistons. When the thing stops, Is stopped, with the last slow cough In the manifold, the flywheel blundering Against compression, stopping, finally Stopped, compression leaking From the idle cylinders will one imagine Then because he can imagine That squeezed from the cooling steel There hovers in that moment, wraith-like and like a plume of steam, an aftermath, A still and quiet angel of knowledge and of comprehension. 2 Endlessly, endlessly, The definition of mortality The image of the engine That stops. We cannot live on that. I know that no one would live out Thirty years, fifty years if the world were ending With his life. The machine stares out, Stares out With all its eyes Thru the glass With the ripple in it, past the sill Which is dusty—If there is someone In the garden! Outside, and so beautiful. 3 What ends Is that. Even companionship Ending. ‘I want to ask if you remember When we were happy! As tho all travels Ended untold, all embarkations Foundered. 4 On that water Grey with morning The gull will fold its wings And sit. And with its two eyes There as much as anything Can watch a ship and all its hallways And all companions sink. 5 Also he has set the world In their hearts.

Imaginary book on Imaginary paper in Imaginary hands Imaginary dance on Imaginary floor in Imaginary lands Imaginary phone and Imaginary car Imaginary raising of Imaginary bar Imaginary kid Imaginary tree Imaginary you makes Imaginary three Imaginary soul Imaginary death Imaginary line Imaginary breath Imaginary neighbors with Imaginary friends Imaginary road with Imaginary bends Imaginary pot Imaginary beer Imaginary death Imaginary fear Imaginary love that stops you dead Imaginary bullet of Imaginary lead Imaginary day and Imaginary night Imaginary wind Imaginary kite Imaginary heat and Imaginary ice Imaginary toppings on Imaginary slice Imaginary Emerson meet Imaginary Poe Imaginary poet Imaginary crow 1-9-16

Now, in a breath, we’ll burst those gates of gold, And ransack heaven before our moment fails. Now, in a breath, before we, too, grow old, We’ll mount and sing and spread immortal sails. It is not time that makes eternity. Love and an hour may quite out-span the years, And give us more to hear and more to see Than life can wash away with all its tears. Dear, when we part, at last, that sunset sky Shall not be touched with deeper hues than this; But we shall ride the lightning ere we die And seize our brief infinitude of bliss, With time to spare for all that heaven can tell, While eyes meet eyes, and look their last farewell.

Miss Bliss, once I thought I was endless since father was perpetual in his grade school of seedlings in cups, the overly loved pets, and recess while mother was the lipsticked dancing girl on the Steel Pier who would outstep Hitler. I was insufferable when I rolled the Volkswagen bus two times and lived with the snow chains like costumed jewels slung over me and the spare rolled away as in a folktale. The pact I made in the spinning instant said in my language of American boy, Put up or shut up, to God, the State Trooper who was kind and spoke of service and punishment and giving yourself away. Now, I’m alive through the agency of iron and contract work and appeals to the fallen—angel and dusk— but wet-winged and still without you, Miss Bliss, who took me inside where there was an ocean before which we were children. That calm, that fear, that witness of the two-thirds of everything else.

Now and again I am here now And now is when I’m here again

I propose turning the key useless to conceal from you that strange things take place it used to ring of its own accord chair by the window and the door closed saw the curtain detach falling when I weary of looking, something is bound to appear walking backwards she is frightened by the sound but cannot describe it the face vanishes, the hands remain white arms beneath fearful drapery looking out, over the hill I burn it, it distills a dark mucus curtain wrenched away a gossamer veil, as it seems resembling, yet most unlike her armless chair, handless cup sloping downwards to the base of the hill momentary grasp around her ankle an old-fashioned house a narrow lane on a declivity

Think thou and act; to-morrow thou shalt die Outstretch'd in the sun's warmth upon the shore, Thou say'st: "Man's measur'd path is all gone o'er: Up all his years, steeply, with strain and sigh, Man clomb until he touch'd the truth; and I, Even I, am he whom it was destin'd for." How should this be? Art thou then so much more Than they who sow'd, that thou shouldst reap thereby? Nay, come up hither. From this wave-wash'd mound Unto the furthest flood-brim look with me; Then reach on with thy thought till it be drown'd. Miles and miles distant though the last line be, And though thy soul sail leagues and leagues beyond,— Still, leagues beyond those leagues, there is more sea.

1. between the object and the floor the couch is a pedestal and a shawl and just woke up her hair. she never ever leaves the floating other house but through some stories they call. later that was her name the collaborator of things shine in the picture. hand flew off her early hair though held by flowers. later her name was grete. her hair feels angles by flowers that before her name was shori the penetrator in the history of no décor. the station agent intimate with tight spaces refuse to hit back or be carried. later her name was danielle goldman and his serene highness thierry henry. her head is cut off by a shadow of primary folded streets she harrass with enjoyment. later her name is piet. she come from cubie with the whole club economy in her hand. when she reclines her head is lifted by a turn, someone’s arm they left there. later her name was elouise. watch her move into the story she still move 2. and tear shit up. always a pleasure the banned deep brown of faces in the otherwise whack. the cruel disposed won’t stand still. apparatus tear shit up and always. you see they can’t get off when they get off. some stateless folks spurn the pleasure they are driven to be and strive against. man, hit me again.

You are carrying me, full consciousness, god that has desires, all through the world. Here, in this third sea, I almost hear your voice: your voice, the wind, filling entirely all movements; eternal colors and eternal lights, sea colors and sea lights. Your voice full of white fire in the universe of water, the ship, the sky, marking out the roads with delight, engraving for me with a blazing light my firm orbit: a black body with the glowing diamond in its center.

1. If that someone who’s me yet not me yet who judges me is always with me, as he is, shouldn’t he have been there when I said so long ago that thing I said? If he who rakes me with such not trivial shame for minor sins now were there then, shouldn’t he have warned me he’d even now devastate me for my unpardonable affront? I’m a child then, yet already I’ve composed this conscience-beast, who harries me: is there anything else I can say with certainty about who I was, except that I, that he, could already draw from infinitesimal transgressions complex chords of remorse, and orchestrate ever undiminishing retribution from the hapless rest of myself? 2 The son of some friends of my parents has died, and my parents, paying their call, take me along, and I’m sent out with the dead boy’s brother and some others to play. We’re joking around, and some words come to my mind, which to my amazement are said. How do you know when you can laugh when somebody dies, your brother dies? is what’s said, and the others go quiet, the backyard goes quiet, everyone stares, and I want to know now why that someone in me who’s me yet not me let me say it. Shouldn’t he have told me the contrition cycle would from then be ever upon me, it didn’t matter that I’d really only wanted to know how grief ends, and when? 3 I could hear the boy’s mother sobbing inside, then stopping, sobbing then stopping. Was the end of her grief already there? Had her someone in her told her it would end? Was her someone in her kinder to her, not tearing at her, as mine did, still does, me, for guessing grief someday ends? Is that why her sobbing stopped sometimes? She didn’t laugh, though, or I never heard her.How do you know when you can laugh? Why couldn’t someone have been there in me not just to accuse me, but to explain? The kids were playing again, I was playing, I didn’t hear anything more from inside. The way now sometimes what’s in me is silent, too, and sometimes, though never really, forgets.