apology the first

it's hard to know what to say about things. sunshine told me the other day of a girl who said she had no interest in doing things she could not write about. there are obvious problems with this (living as performance, being one) but i find myself a little envious of someone who expects that calibre of experience, always.

as one who writes i find myself seriously perturbed by this shortcoming on my part.

for example, i saw a halloween cat this morning running across the street. it was black and bright orange, had a white underbelly, and wore a black studded collar. i was struck by its timeliness (a halloween cat making itself apparent just one day before halloween!), amused by its silly tabby looks. i stopped and leaned on an old gate and watched it lick itself. but that's really all i can say. my problem must be that the experience is sufficient unto itself -- i can't extrapolate broader meaning or harken back to my childhood when there was another odd looking cat and then make a quiet but profound statement about childhood and small animals.

instead, i watch a cat lick itself on the other side of a gate.

to love is to remove the face
so that you can walk with me always
in unequaled waves
their spherical paths
my love thou art
whole cities turned to dust
forms of travelling
you count and the counting is
everything breathed
swallows plowing through the sky
before their faces

the gate of the face has been
a ghost, the warning
the need to make up a story
unravelling globe
"Oh love of my life
be full of hands
opening onto the street
and the silence runs forwards
there is light that never lands

(all text taken & rearranged from Cole Swenson's Numen)

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new england is beautiful and colored my weekend with all its reds and yellows. i rode in a red truck through vermont and new hampshire and looked at leaves and people with firewood. i fell in love without having ever fallen out and the scenery was good too.

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i'd like to say the poet now is tightroping between surrealism and romanticism. through the ecstatic expression of a lone voice and the realization that there is no voice, only vocal moments. i'd like to say that but i can't yet.

i read today of a jacket that mr. dali built and covered with shot glasses full of milk. what about all the milkless hungry children, one man protested. he was ejected from the surrealist movement but i find myself wondering this a lot. what about the milkless hungry children, what about the freaking cows?
there's a fine line between celebrating and disolving right then and there into your very own celebrated nothingness. don't get me wrong though: i'm still throwing confetti. but if i see a man wearing a jacket covered with shot glasses full of milk, i'm going to milk him like a cow and spank him till he moos. i'm not kidding either. if he's a stranger i'll use a paddle.