for the niedecker in neidecker or neither

iwrites inideograms
blocker safeblocks
homesettlehome
mortar pistol
blockshot shot the block
club it for its clues
don't set don't sell
it's all pellmellhell

kurt schwitters ursonate

you cannot tell what is coming to the foreground and what is receding into the background

all is waste reserved preserved and then re-embraced or embraced as if for the first time, a patch of fabric can show traces of a forgotten personal history or a feather that is disintegrating

the rubbage builds up upon itself, creating its own history

"merz" = commerce = an intersection of public space, an overlapping

as viewers, we try to rescue the objects we see when we try to put them into context (and now i think about nick dorsky's films, andy goldsworthy, and anselm keifer)

the object pieces and sculptures appear to be mechanical waste, but when assembled, they become some unknown purpose. and so, the question appears-- does a gathering of objects give a purpose? if form, is there automatic purpose

pieces of humanity abandoned or orphaned bits given a temporary home, yet there is struggle to be recognized, heard here, at least at first, due to so much overlapping (or burial), and then perhaps also because of time which peels away at these pieces, causing some to pop forward

if you do not look closely enough, you will miss the nature, the traces of humanity-- here is a feather lingering in the darkness of color of muddled rubbage; do not mistake it for being trash or as pieces that have been purposely distorted like the painted piece of record (that incidentally also looks like a feather)

there are a lot of tickets here, giving you the right to traverse, to pass through, or passage when there is none allowed

how carefully did he choose to reveal his words? how many words are accidentally revealed over time?

he continued to attempt to bring words and images together just as he continued to bring paste and paint or to marry other materials together. how well did he know the materials? how well did he know the words?

ursonate, you are an extended sound poem that bridges literary, musical, and speech systems

henry cowell, you influenced john cage, and schwitters worked with you, too

"elements of poetry are letters, syllables, words, sentences. poetry arises from the interaction of these elements and plays sense against nonsense." -- k. s.

a book is one hand in the fire

hear now cecilia vicuna, zumbar, kon kon, remembering that all is interconnected
hear now etel adnan, in the heart of the heart of another country, william gass, city lights bookstore, when i shelved poets there like lorine neidecker (who's name was misspelled on her own headstone) and muriel rukeyser (who has an fbi file-- perhaps tipped off by paul zukofsky?) for the first time and true reading connections between poets and other artists and thinkers began to shake goldsworthy hands with the place that is material that is alight and sounded vicuna's hum or tongue within tongue for me. and now tracing back is hearing forward and nowness or scalapino's new time, for here we all are.
hear now kurt schwitters, ursonate sound poem to bridge literary, musical, and speech systems
hear now john cage, echolocation of the beating heart chamber
hear now silverfish banned bookstore in kuala lumpur, malaysia, seoul selection bookstore in seoul, south korea
hear now emily dickenson, transferral of a gardened self
hear now edmond jabes, the book that is our pain is our home and is nowhere
hear now susan sontag, regarding the pain of others
hear now henry david thoreau, faith in a seed
hear now mei-mei bursenbrugge
hear now susan howe
hear now alice notley
hear now bernadette mayer
hear now hear now hear now hear now now nownownow hearhearhearearearear new ear
now, come closer, a near ear nearer to our ear

fog isolates and wind incorporates
aloners inear

to the right, a moon in a morning sky

our turning sets it

on the horizon of an apartment building

in the middle, cloudless and a blueness dimmed by a leftness

of a settling storm front before a sun

our turning raises it

morning is set upon what lies behind

is what is unknown waste? if a book of words, known only to a few, waits, is it being forgotten, buried? does time make what little is known of something be less known until it recedes into the unknown altogether? if a book of words is buried by time is it waste? if a book of words is known by many is it merely appropriated? if something has been appropriated, has it been taken up, gathered, saved? if a book of words has been saved, was it in danger of being lost before? is a book of poetry appropriated waste?

pendulum pulses not mechanical now electrical tiny bottled hidden currents

this now is time

time fires off as nothing other than a dying star now

and so the pendulum is imperfect in its swinging

and the eye feels this imbalance in a shadow on the wall

or time's shadows are made timely by clouds moving in moving out

or the sun cuts through clouds calling shadows to my eye

turning into time attention

12:51

he says it is mirror time

so, time is aware of itself as having self?

well, time reflects itself

no, time is folding in on itself

while reading about the origins of pac man this morning, my poetic mind dropped its jaw. iwatani created a game knowing that we tend to chase ghosts of our former selves around, mirroring a kind of labyrinth of selfdom. however, if we just stood still, these ghosts, although put in motion by our momentum, would continue on like an object in space with no gravity to yield them, save a corner or a wall that they might happen to encounter which will only serve to bounce them into another direction, and any direction at that. how strange to think that these former selves, these ghosts, are seemingly autonomous, that they need no direction and take no real direction from us. the connection we have with them is an illusion, reflected or made manifest in the corners and walls of the maze of selfdom we have constructed. iwatani, thank you for reminding me that it is i who has been in hot pursuit of some ghostly mazed-in self, if, for nothing else, the sheer cyber encounter of it all.

a true treeear

revels in compresseding of stillness

amidst the cuttings, how

and, who could truly fell this ear?

Saturday, noon

a fearful flight is one made in search of sea and sky when one is sailing through it all already as a ship that bows to any body of water and then offers its stern to surrounding air to sigh

Saturday, 1:14 p.m.

first morning in a drop of rain rests

always there, the rest

the restfulness of all the rest of our nights

so, here lies all the rest of our light

in a stardom skydom, dawning in dearness, now uponing

comes dawning our yearful of ear

Sunday, 9:11 a.m.

if the night,

then the morning, a brightening sea

now, believe night into what is lost

then hope to lose sight of it

if morning dawns,

then the white sails of our eyes, a brightening

Sunday, 12:00 a.m.

Drifting shadowcloud of a minutehand

rolls over wood fibers, startles my sight

into the first object bought in a country

not my own, but stayed for years

in this clock.

Can it show the ticking of a year,

of years coming lately back?

The hand of a minute now

absorbs this country.

How a minute hand carries

with it no shadow at all.

Community is too syllabic for us to remember.

Our memory helps us forget within the word what we share after

and then our sense of belonging at first

a book on a roof

now

only the wind reads

it

the pages know when

turns

perhaps a name

whitewashed, open, turning over

a history

not mine, its, ours

in the wake of some quake

will we stay the sunset

or sail the sunrise?

when i break a word open it is to keep from being alone

though there is no home in one word alone

a little summer comes late too early

what ear hears

to the ground

cherries are lanterning

what word seeds itself

if neither bird nor soil wants it?

what language grows

ripe above ground

less silence

for the speaking, only