Time in Space
We need to talk
about time
& to talk with Time
eventually
instead of scheming
how to use it
to make the most
to have a good one
to have the best
to name its price
as with any commodity
any resource
as opposed to Source
to spend instead
recklessly &
listening for language
& other creatures
is to be folded inside
embraced by layered
fabrics of Time & their
attendant creatures
in
immersive intimacies
of waters, skies
where each breath
comes to carry the
next, yet uncaught.
but again
to be a husk
returned to soil
by way of river
over falls
& under bed.
what good
is this? someone
asks & one
answer is another
voice, yes
what good
is this.
& resonance
why not make a map of us, then––?
all reflection & non-linear equations,
light upon light to play on a practice
of not sleeping but holding
as marrowed minerals in bones
whisper another kind of living
light only the trembling know.
& sun flares in atmosphere
I am supposed to get to the point
––apparently, by the logic
of the algorithm
but I am
only ever able to teach
at an angle, on a curve, following
an penumbra’s long arc across unwritten skies.
whale music
to know
to be able to
to taste
to feel
only this how
i am because we are
& need know only this
& how machine will disagree
does not make it less true
but only more like the living
and less like the thing
whose badge of being
is of efficiency
& departure from
the dirt & blood
& flow of living
earth as she
remains
still
here
an offering
beyond product
or production
in echo
beyond
any other sound
however loud however
bleeding it leaves us in our ears
where we swim deep underwater & still here & here & here to hear us––
tho bleeding it leaves us in our ears however loud
however any other sound beyond in echo
still our offering here remaining
in dirt & bloodied waters
beneath you
ideas for an educational panel of inquiry
Here’s a talk i am going to give
in theory anyway called
teach like an animal
& its genesis is in understanding
that i failed in my intention
of becoming someone who
knew things well enough
to tell them with authority
the more i look the more
convinced i become that
there is a lie at the center
of the whole idea of knowing
and it is congenital with the myth
of the preeminence of self, and
i want my panel to include
shapeshifting nature &
the pride of ancestors refusing
to be erased, whose voices echo
in the shimmering electric currents
coursing though the cells which
make my body of my mother’s
and the mothers before her.
I grew up reading a single
line about an all-knowing God
on loop, and even this God
said only i am that i am
in response to demands for
explanation but knew how to
show up–for the stutterers
and the dispossessed, the wretched
and the women, who consistently
challenged the important somebodies
when asked for announcements, when
asked to show face, who turned to sashay
away revealing only the back parts
in graceful admonishment of the
asking mouth’s presumption
of being filled in a single
gulp of word and then
done.
in flight
Hello, i
am still here
flying through sky
into riverbed, into body in river
in bed into ocean ––either way
disinclined to make points, only pointing,
ever to erosion and becoming and I tend
to erode the best intentions of anyone who tries
to name me as a fixed point & sometimes when
i take this skin shirt out for air i am reminded
to dress in layers after going into places
where so many are so eager to use
their ready points as points
of contact when these
only make me bleed
& then I am back
to being current––
again
as an invalid premise for the work of supporting life
to the question of how one is being
Now i riverbed, now ocean &
either way am disinclined to point,
tending to erode those points
aimed to find me taking
this skin shirt out for air.
i learn to dress in layers for those
places where everyone seems
eager to use their ready points
& these only make me bleed so
now i am back to being current
again to answer that question
re: the I that I seem, being @
the end of am. I can only say:
I am currently.
Maybe you know this way
& why we never lack for
company, streaming as we
do through here, hearing
communions all day long.
and the mass of a wait
sometimes it goes like this:
with should on one side, screaming
and on another, want––a solemn mass
bearing down until
one day, when the weight of it gives all
and then it’s time to hear the quiet part
now loud
