give me a web

to reject another tired hero’s story

Yes, I see those stories, too, all around me. The location and abundance of which some will exclaim, “are everywhere!” 

No matter where I go, the one that interests me most is not a story, for it is made of what would not be recognized as such. It tends to feature a non-hero whose non-feats go unnoticed by being what they are–– more constant labors, and no less common than the fact of the web appearing between the branches of the fig tree overnight. 

Many of those who  proclaim most loudly that stories are everywhere! are in fact looking for the same story––as anyone armed with hammers for hands, might learn to see only nails. This much-sought-after tale is another version of the hero with his labors, slaying or banging on whatever he can’t pick up. 

Lately I have grown very tired of its droning echo, and I do not think I am alone. This one, I think, has gone far enough. Give me more spider, more web, more patience, less noise. 

Lately, I think, give me no more of these old stories, only quiet tending: of the careful meal, the clean floor, fresh sheets, attentive care. 

It is possible I live at the beginning of the end of the age of an old story. As someone still alive inside it, I lack the perspective I would need to confirm or refute this suspicion with any presumption of accuracy.  

Finding the ability to make those quiet and non-storied, daily events happen is the only narrative I can find valuable right now. This is partially because I could use some help with these things and also because I have grown very tired of that other clamor. 

I am also weary of those who make, as a habit, a racket to entertain. These are different from those who make an entertaining noise for reasons they have not intended. I am weary of those who throw plastic affirmations when it is clear that all their expression can do is reproduce the old pain. 

The makers of these pseudo-joys, in an effort to to capitalize on the coin of the realm, regularly add to daily misery by their steadfast commitment to cellophane-wrapped optimisms. 

Meanwhile, so many dead. And also, so many able but unwilling bodies, who have made their non-decisions with brilliant sheens of glamour, who feel justified in their non-decisions to leave unwashed those dirty sheets, who unprepare the careful meal whether or not they will eat it, or to remember what hour of what day it is, now.

tour of the interior

wear galoshes

Enter anywhere you like. Doors line trick walls, retracting roofs, fallaway floors. Aerial pads, underground tunnels—each in some state of readiness for guests.

The place is under perpetual construction, crowded and damp. Leaks drip from every seam, so bring galoshes, not dress shoes. No formal affairs here. And though it’s wet, you’ll still need extra water for the heat.

Why come at all? Many arrive tired, unsure they can continue out there. Stay as long as you like. Art and music are scattered everywhere: prayer cards, crayon drawings, kitsch beside relics.

Characters roam—escaped saints with haunted eyes and wild humor if you get them talking. Leave them alone, and they seem freshly returned from some dark night of the soul.

You’ll find huddled masses here, but also divas—ancient figures with jeweled hair and hand-stitched clothes—who survey the chaos and sigh. Couldn’t we sweep, add lights, host a proper feast now and then?

The real joy comes from otters, birds, and babies: downy hatchlings, tiny hands slapping water, the gleam of a pup riding its mother’s belly. Cats, too, offer wry humor and disdain for our grievances.

One wing belongs to Klee’s angels. Walter Benjamin mutters through his notes while others drift in and out—some long dead, some not yet born. Lists of names dissolve as fast as they’re written.

In a far corner, unnoticed creatures nap: a dingy unicorn, withered lion, small dragon, chimera. A harpy perches nearby, cracking bawdy jokes around an unlit cigar.

The gift shop is closed. The food court changes with mood and season. No ID, no admission fees, no security.

Resentments fester like gangrene, fur and hair matted in corners. I mean to clean, but it’s tiring—feeding all these guests who never leave.

horse & rider

a tribute to the moment, and this place

Yes child, maybe one day,
in another world, the horse arrives,
its rider gallant and able. But now
is not that world

and this is not that time. Now he
spins, having lost both horse and will
to ride–– and besides, has never learned.

You are alone–– yet, look around.
Find the company of everyone before
you who has ever learned the same.

There is no more now
to do than there was before, only
less illusion. Carry on. Chin up.

Giddy-up. You are the horse
and the rider. Go on.

the weight of the line

gone fishing to find it

to explain this absence,
let’s say i’ve been fishing
because what other phrase
will fit? that i have been feeling
the line to test the weight
of the line and what it will carry
when the noise wears my ears
stopped full of it now,
when eye breaks
from will to look
where do senses go?

and sense

when the organs will no
longer play to the unwilling
mind?

vegetable mineral

animal sounds

I arrive in middle age at a beginning, so now I write and speak. I do these acts to correct some learned habits of believing I must know where I will end before I open my mouth to say anything. Such learned habits, I see now, have conditioned my seeming docility. 

Fortunately, I have no ends. Better yet, I see this now. So here is as good a place as any, to begin.

This is a small act of defiance, against the idea that the purpose of saying anything is to make a point and that the point is to mean something. Some perspective is afforded now, from witness. To the urgency of the kings of the world, to end this life. (To be clear, some make the point more subtly than others, but to be a prize is a kind of end, and it is possible to spend a life chasing this state, only to learn to see it for the burial it is.)

This affords some confidence to say that one approach that many take when confronted with the impossible fact of a life, is to bring it to a point. Some end to justify the means and all of that. Very Machiavellian. Such notions are rampant now.  Knowing this moves me, too.

Nothing I mean to say is so abstract that it may be extracted, like oil from my flesh. Oil, biologically speaking, is the accumulation of bodies under pressure over time. I am nowhere near the age of oil, as I am still alive. The fact of being so is what I mean to value now. 

Also, my connection to the dead. This, I treasure. How would I continue, I wonder, without their excellent company? The dead have always been around me, speaking. These and the not yet born have much to say, and little of their ripe and blooming abundance has anything to do with points. The dead, as you may imagine, often have a sense of humor when it comes to ends, as this affords their carrying on. The not-yet-born are young enough to laugh with full bellies of air, at the absurdity, of aiming for a point in the midst of all of this.

Zeno’s moon

notes from where the tortoise wins

Moon, don’t go. I have been too much in the sun with the golden people smiling fun. Listen, moon. I know what I am and I consent to this distance. If it connects me to you, let me trace the pads of my fingers along its lines. For nearly as long as I can remember, I have been reminded by the golden summer titans that my movement, whatever it was, failed to count as well as Time’s. The jolly clock-faced father-god. Time, they told me, bowing as they shushed my complaint against their rush, was fast and I had to keep up.  I did, blaspheming. 

Zeno had point about the arrow. If at any moment it was at rest in one position, in a time made of moments, how can it ever move? No, Achilles does not catch the tortoise. To do this he would have to reach where the tortoise began, by which time the tortoise would have moved on.

Fortunately, after this pause, the golden people have all gone to chase the sun, and it’s just us again, with the tortoise, stitching moments with no roundly sure clock face in sight.  I’m glad you’re here, moon. I know you won’t be, always. But I won’t go chasing all those not-yets, not while I’m drunk on the wave of your fragmentary diamond lights, winking into seas to kiss the shore, and me.

To Earth. . .

on your beginnings

This week’s vibe is one of disequilibrium. The return to school is, to put it mildly, a bit chaotic this year. I have spent the last few days feeling severed from the best parts of my mind. To be clear, there is nothing unusual or traumatic occurring in my life at this moment other than confrontation with the noise of the hour at hand in its current institutional form (as sites absorbing what feels increasingly like the engineered chaos it is, designed to destroy the concept of a public good).

So, for now I will share something that I just noticed was published in Stone Poetry Quarterly, as I try to recover. Titled “To Earth, on Your Beginnings,” this piece, like many from recent years, emerged from ideas that I first explored here. Thank you for being with me in this space. I look forward to returning, soon. I am glad to find this one today. Reading it helps me to remember what I mean to return to. With love.

devotion

study in shade

hear these minor tones, dissonant echoes, nocturnal murmurs
whisper of hellhound behind, tremble sound haunting hollow
taste of revenant ash in throat, beneath each note this velvet
dissonance—

here where sea pushes into land: roaring liquid love, thunder
crashing at the lip of the last wave—and the next.

where Pollock pours black enamel over raw canvas, painting
like a man already buried. Here is love freed from time.

here are the rites of the bull cults, the fetid silence
of hardened blood, evicted angel beating one wing
over trembled flame—

no longer showing but shown through.
no longer singing, but sung into—

by jagged notes, passing through
the charmed demon winding sand
ripping the sails that carried you
and when the sails are gone––

all sea
all sound.

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