Kelp chorus
They are all throat in the night—they say the word spirit with ease
They are the drifting, violet gowns of the throat
They are all night in the throat—they are all ease in the all
They say the words blue and baleen and sailing and seas
Perhaps they have the relationship of the throat determined and so are all it
Or, they have the slick violet gown of the throat and they are the luster of the gown
slipping over the fragile, wet word of the spirit
Or, perhaps the word spirit with ease is the same as the throat
Or, the naked "they" is the same as "they say"
Then we want it divulged, what they have, or had, or seem to have in ease,
a sea of violet gowns washed up in small pathetic heaps,
they are all heaped in the white, coughed up on salt-encrusted sand,
iridescent froth sticking or popping against them
At the touch of the bubble, an acid hurt
Then we are all them, and not without ease
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Experiment with seven hearts
Try your heaven in the attic
your taxidermic static
cloud
Let in starlings, let in publics,
see what they do
The presences impart
heavens anew
Try your heaven automatic
Try your condemned lace work
heaps of heaven
your emphatic
trying
presence in my seven hearts
Try now seven seasons static
in the streets
Let eleven teenage, walking, wearing headphones
Let in deafen,
amp and prison, see what they do
Take your heaven from the attic
Let in missile and fanatics
Let in starlings pecking sunflower hearts
Let in failure, pushing
carts
The presences impart
presences anew
Try seven routes up and up past ancient attic
heavens, past removal and transaction,
past the papers
creased
with fold, protecting
news: beheadings, keeping it news
Try your starlings flying, erratic
Let infusing voices climb the
ladder
to a barely-light
seven-heart
quiet, see what they do
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Empty Lot
to be read by 2 alternating voices with some pause between
a. b.
We had a field
full of weeds
teaching presence.
The presence
of the weeds
signaled absence
of our hands.
Oblivious seeds,
strategic thorn.
We had a field
full of accidental lace
demanding presence;
The presence
of the war put
more prices on
our hands.
Oblivious seeds,
strategic thorn.
Look at our hands,
cracked with clearing!
A bouquet
of leaves
and stems, already limp.
It's from the field
full of weeds
teaching presence.
The hands are tired
from pulling
octopi roots,
larger than flowers,
already spent.
Oblivious seeds,
strategic thorn.
Torn thistle,
news, glove,
You are too absent
then too present.
Oblivious seeds,
strategic thorn.
_____________________________________________________________________
They are all throat in the night—they say the word spirit with ease.
they say the words deploy
and coding and spirit and cease
they say the words forests
and porous and humvee and cede
as if all the same
all the same light
as if all the same
fighting through leaf
morse code and night
light at the center
missions and moats
courses of battles courses of choruses
notorious light
tight in the throat
as if all the same as if all the same
[might be the throat
coding the night
might be the forest
porous the voice
coursing the quiet
light pulping through]
they say the words mulching
and marching and missile and through
[who were you then?
coughing off light
might be the forest
might be the chorus]
you were of course I am
stemming from this
might be the missile
missing the night
you were of course I'm not
stemming from this
[forcing light quiet
might be the forest
rescuing leaf]
_____________________________________________________________________
Dreamed Thoreau
I dreamed Thoreau drew frogs all night
on pale paper,
some numbered thousands
of frogs Think it was a good dream
Say I had bad or good dreams
Getting at something
what I wanted to say and what it seemed
seeming good.
I dreamed Henry David Thoreau drew
some number
down to the ones
I can't remember Not the frogs themselves
but the fact of his attention to them
however blotched or poison blue
I had no faith
In our yard, an old sink with wet envelopes in it
The sky is a boy in
purplish rags singing
Thoreau is tied to the frogs, Thoreau is tied to the frogs,
and the frogs
are singing from the sink:
make it good, try hard
_____________________________________________________________________
City
The city is a child's top
the spinning saves it from collapse.
It's spinning now, it's spinning—look!
—but each restart a lapse.
_____________________________________________________________________
Pine
[Caught, centuries,
identifying
pine needles]
[rinds dropped
among pine needles]
[blood drying
in pine needles]
[buck, bird, or man]
[branches misaligned
in their curvatures
cupping and
cracking, amongst or
between needles]
[among or between us,
needles rusting]
[Whitebark, Winter,
Western White]
[point upon point upon
point]
[line up, line up!]
___________________________________________________________________________
The poems appearing here are from a recent book manuscript, "Chorus Interstice," written during a time of intense public noise and considering that. The manuscript begins with the following epigraph quoted from the World Health Organization: "Physically, there is no difference between sound and noise. Sound is a sensory perception and the complex pattern of sound waves is labeled noise, music, speech, etc. Noise is thus defined as unwanted sound."
