a. This thing I’m doing with the one long line and the couplet below.
Not to make you feel confined but to offer a pinhole, a place
in which you can safely take it all like any deposed ruler.
b. We were kind to small, helpless things. We tolerated the neighbors’ noisy yard children.
The dross of spiderweb falls invisibly over me as I step
onto the deck with a bag of garbage. Almost summer.
c. I receive instruction on boxing from clouds.
Hoist the heavy bag to its hook. The pugilist works in
the basement. The entire weight of the house upon him.
d. There are people for whom the senses, by losing one, are heightened.
The nonbeliever is checking himself into a corner.
Here’s one: Allow me as you do this leaf, to settle.
6a. This thing I’m doing1 with the one long line and the couplet below2.
Not to make you feel confined but to offer a pinhole7,
a place in which you can safely take it all like any deposed ruler8.
I am being self-referential. We can only know the self through the multiple selves we are. We must see each clearly. When we see ourselves, it is in reference to the others, including the others we are. They are mirrors. Those we love have the most influence over our thoughts and self-perception, filtered through the true self, the origin, the creator. I am also that which I am not. But it is nothing next to what lay at the center, which is being or the field or mode, a key played on all instruments at once. What I’m doing1 is admitting that this is the mechanism under the form of this poem, and being open about this does not contradict the form. We agree that it is artifice4. But like incantation, the repetition of the form begins to be so self-referential, a self begins to emerge from the fun house mirrors. The references are lifted into vortex5. All pieces of the personality must emerge, and so too all the pieces within those pieces. The pinhole7 represents breaking through the veil, membrane of reality wherein we are fractured, not whole. Pinholes as stars in a dark sky, representing a larger field beyond, out of which we and everything are born. Also, Whitman’s Leaves of Grass, in which the field is being and each blade is a part, even “the unkempt hair of the dead.” The words we use to describe our lives outlive us. They cannot be false. Nothing must be hidden from the self, nor can they remain hidden by anyone who is honest. What we hide is ignored. It is ignorance. The long line is filtered reality. The couplet is commentary upon it, an interior monologue. A speculation that is no less real for its being a meditation.
2the couplet below: is the inner commentary on the previous long line, the philosophical field3 opening itself to sometimes absurd (di)visions, representing being.
3Robert Duncan interviewed by Rodger Kamenetz in the Southern Review, 1985: “The fiat lux6 excludes the possibility of referentiality… Because in creating something, you don’t refer to it…If God says ‘OR’ (which is “light” in Hebrew), the word actually makes light. The words are conceived as being the same as the thing created.” By being a reference to my text and his, this cannot be the thing itself.
4artifice “We all know that art is not truth. Art is a lie that makes us realize truth”—Picasso
5vortex: a tornado, all things swirl within a single thing that composes the self, but the feeling of it is being.
6fiat lux: Let there be light.
7The pinhole test is used in eye exams, a plastic puck on a stick is placed over the open eye to filter scattered, refracted light, can clarify the image to some degree by eliminating noise, several tunnels produce a singular image.
8deposed rulers: are everywhere these days. Also as a contradiction to safety. The egomaniac always believes who he thinks he is. He never questions his actions or decisions. He does not know or will not admit that he is actually many within a larger idea of self and therefore, he has no regret. He is missing a human gene for calling the nonbeliever9 a monster.
9nonbeliever: the other
6b. We were kind to small, helpless things1. We tolerated the neighbors’ noisy yard children2.
The dross of spiderweb4 falls invisibly over me5 as I step
onto the deck with a bag of garbage. Almost summer.
The current mode of political expression undermining secular societies, such as was our own, is conspiracy3. It is mistrust and the willful perpetuation of this ignorance. Ignorance is god now and certainly more valued than wisdom or at least without some critical lens. But what is the conspiracy that spreads once ignorance reigns? It’s that unspoken silvery web4 that connects us to the authentic. It acknowledges the condition and contradicts it. It’s not only the recognition and perpetuation of truth that pushes back against ignorance, it’s the rise of love, creativity, poetry, and revelation. Things seem overwhelming right now, impossible, but the truth does not change. Like a blow to the head, we have forgotten what unifies as we have forgotten the earlier myths6 that imply the beauty of the human spirit. Our religions have become clubs. Our wars have become ideas. But in dark times, we are, each of us, curators of the truth7. We have become stifled and yet there is an enormous museum inside of us. We have responsibility, purpose, office. The conspiracy in a time of ignorance is that invisible forces will conspire to move us back to the light of reason, empathy, community, respect, dignity. Compare the following by Lincoln to any that Trump may give: “With malice toward none with charity for all … let us strive on to finish the work we are in to bind up the nation’s wounds…to do all which may achieve and cherish a just and lasting peace among ourselves and with all nations.” The rumor during the occupation by the brutes8 is the secret whispered by the underdog seeking justice and fairness. To hear it can be revolutionary, transformative.
1kind to small, helpless things: though it is not exclusive to the human, it is sadly rare across the animal kingdom.
2noisy yard children: our inability to successfully reproduce creates bias in the public domain. While I can’t say I despise actual individual children, I have hardened my mind against the domain of children, the idea of them. A survival technique.
5over me: breaking the veil, entering into a new dimension. We have not planned for the revelation. It comes as surprise. We are beckoned. This is us, finally. We are comfortable with this self. We always knew we were out there, like the opposite of some conspiracy3, that means our great improvement.
6myths: the Greek goddess Pheme (or Ossa) represented rumor and fame. She had multiple eyes, ears and tongues covered by plumage. Gossip was a tool used by the underclass to influence power.
During the Trojan War (Homer), she fanned the flames of conflict.
7curators of the truth: I know that others feel this, enact it, will it and themselves into being.
8the brutes: the rise in the U.S. in 2024 of the oligarchy perpetuated conspiracies among the ignorant, including that the previous election was rigged and victory stolen from them. Their power marked the end of democracy.
6c. I receive instruction on boxing from clouds1.
Hoist the heavy2 bag to its hook. The pugilist works in
the basement3. The entire weight of the house upon him.
The heavy bag is a larger, cylindrical bag, used by boxers for practicing powerful body shots or to harden soft hands. It never recoils with the force of my battery. It always laughs at me, even though it is actually the dead. It says, you will never beat me, even as I am pounding it, and it is correct in its indifference—the fucking heavy. The pugilist, the self, works (writing, punching his opponent from abdomen to bread box) against the body, rising out of frustration. I conspire to be alone, isolated in the basement, taking out my hatred, expressing, exorcizing. To see one’s limitations and flaws5 and to go on living with them. Convention perpetuates even when we know it’s just a story that demands behaviors that keep us in our places. In a world of limitations, it offers the (de/i)llusion of ultimate forgiveness. I am attracted to changing my brain, my state of mind, because, if left unattended on the linear plane, an illogical but menacing panic awaits. I have had at least three major panic attacks in my life, none which were obviously triggered by an event or memory or fear. The last I had was sitting on the beach in Kill Devil Hills, North Carolina, the Outer Banks6. It was in the middle of a short summer vacation I took with my wife. There was no agenda. I might have had a drink, a smoke, maybe some marijuana in my head, but though I sat, completely at ease in my beach chair, I began to be extracted from my body. I was dying very quickly, pulled under the waves and the sand. Obliterated. I did not fear death. I feared nothingness. Unbeing. The beloved brought me back, saved me. Death alighted and flew.
1clouds: smoking a cigar can stop time, meditation.
2the heavy: in conflicts among groups, the central antagonist, the figure that is most threatening, also what I sometimes call The Large, agoraphobia—fear of wide-open spaces
3in the basement: Bachelard’s Poetics of Space, the place of bad memories, haunting dreams, irresolute visions/imag(e)ination. Also, hell. Mine is the Greek realm, not of actual physical pain and suffering, but residing in a deathless psychological insouciance, where we can see ourselves as we were.
The part that we cannot throw away4.
4the part that we cannot throw away: the indelible, references Tom Waits’ song The Part You Throw Away—‘In a Portuguese Saloon / A fly is circling around the room / You’ll soon forget the tune that you play / For that is the part you throw away.’“
5limitations and flaws: I met a successful novelist at a birthday party for a child. I had been reading “The Anxiety of Influence” by Harold Bloom. So I asked him who he felt were his main influences, to which he replied, “No one.” I knew then that I would never make a living writing. My ego could never be that big. Also, I was influenced by everything. I did not prioritize.
6Outer Banks: barrier Islands
6d. There are people for whom the senses, by losing one, are heightened1.
The nonbeliever3 is checking4 himself into a corner.
Here’s one: Allow me as you do this leaf6, to settle.
1I lost the majority of my vision suddenly. I awoke and it was missing. The funny thing about that: how do you really know how much you’ve lost when what is lost is unseen? Vision has so much to do with my sense of existence that when it diminished, I shifted. When I find myself around strangers, I feel like a freak2, but in some ways, my blindness has restored my appreciation for my fellow. I sometimes travel alone, for work, and I am amazed how often a stranger has approached me and offered assistance, which, mostly, I don’t refuse. I am led and I follow, and we talk along the way. I think I will always remember these small, beautiful interactions. I’ll let others worry over the soul. It is enough for me, this thing called the self. I was following my wife one day into the checkout line5 at the grocery. She was approached by a woman who, spotting me using a stick, told us she worked for an institution that provided outings for those with disabilities. My wife was pissed. Most of it was that the woman addressed her alone and I was standing right there. But I think the other part was that the woman turned me into an incapable, completely dependent obligation my wife couldn’t escape. 3Not believed as lover then but a pitiable responsibility, even if it wasn’t true, though it was to some degree. It was a forgivable mistake, though the delivery could have been better. It’s important to laugh about certain truths, so I have taken to telling her that I am her blind boy8. No one knew how much we loved each other before and after blindness. I wanted to keep it a secret, for what is seen may disappear.
2freak: Photographer Diane Arbus on choice of subjects: “Freaks were born with their trauma. They’ve already passed their test in life.
They’re aristocrats.”
4checking: hockey term. Exiting a locker room once, my blindness ran me into a much smaller man. I began laughing as I do when I am embarrassed. I tried to explain. He was terrified. I could not resolve.
5checkout line: How much of our lives have we spent waiting?
6as you do this leaf: indicating fall settling into the stillness of winter, death. The previous stanza (6b) referenced the end of spring. This stanza references the end of fall7, just before the winter. Spring is filled with slushy anticipation and the end of it signals defeated aspiration. The summer is a mode of boring, sober consistency.
Autumn is favored by existential loneliness. Wolves rise in winter.
7end of fall: Sometimes it is the magnitude that terrifies. Sometimes it is the ever-diminishing. Consider that outside of becoming a curled leaf, you could move into the tree from which it fell, rooted in darkness. Where we must all go at once like a quick forgetting. Until we are consumed plainly by The Large.
8blind boy: references the Blind Boys of Alabama, a gospel group that has won six Grammys.