Words from the Blank Nude

An Essay in the Form
of a Sequence of Poems
and Journal Entries
against Genre

The Jigsaw of my life
and art

Why would anyone seek
political information from me?
How do my views touch
the worlds I visit?
Don’t expect consistency.
Making up a life.

or

boundless restraint

journal poeisis
making the day daily
the personal
the world
looking in
focus on ‘the news’
behaviour
getting out
the tao of contrast
and lack of relation
roosters and eagles
biography, fiction, imagination
-- the coherence of experience

oppen zuk no michael palmer
into orthography
pronounced zook
days after rakosi
‘Tho I had hoped to arrive
at an actuality’
in the morning
I lie in mere reference
flipping pages
‘Past near the curve of the heavens.’
In flight—the shadow of Icarus
thundering down to the terrain
a voice where we sing
‘It is customary to rave about poetry.
Why don’t you?’
within a darkness of mind
open in the ridge
above the falls
and dr williams’ typewriter
it all leads to
thankful silence

in sense we are always beginning
and cut by fact of morning
air too cool to let us sleep in the day.

and for Stanzas and Periods and Diehards
every phrase is rich with another poem
unspoken, except in the unspeaking mind
of the reader
things beyond clarity in the definite
mixed density, the richness of the sound
that fails to reach meaning

turning back to the pink notebook

outside the scene
outside the lens blacklip
its vision too much in focus
beyond delight, detail
horses turning away from voice
without withdrawal, denial
a chance for affirmation
in the protest of the day
the tangled hair, the beginning
without beginning without containing
lesser distinctions
before and afterward
holding its right to intrude
to make a scene
fragment what you do not know

then…

Budget Motel

preface

Thank you for taking me to
San Bruno’s Budget Motel
where the handicapped bathroom
is almost as spacious
as the rest of the room itself

twenty minutes later
the first train went by
just as I found a re-run I liked on tv

It took me another half hour
to get the bottle cap off
the bottle of water

parfait
no spoon
nothing in the drawers

sounds like a list
of complaints,
instead of thanks

Budget Motel II

Every hall has an image in it
The ringing in my ears is my brain
more crackers today a new package
I paid 5.00 dollars for a signed first edition
on a book with price tags on its cover
of ‘our price 1 99’ and ‘clearance $22.99’

I hear other intonations
in my ear
I see the image I forget
to see
The room silence
so heavy
I miss the radiators
at home
second thoughts


like
a broken train
the switch off

a necessary hesitancy
I borrow from
a voice I never heard
off course
distant distinct different
waiting
for the silence to cease
a double meaning
on returning from retreat
whose voice is it
when I make it mine?
whose shallow in the pool
the rain disturbs
returns the image of the waterfall
on the way
up to the Old Man?
your turn to speak:
the telling of the moment
interrupted by
the second alarm
of my cell phone
telling me to wake up.

Budget Motel III

I’ve had another year

After creeping around
near death
measured restrained almost rigid
now
the card in my book
of boundaries
says: I love to turn you on
the voice I hear
besides my own
while I am listening
to the highway
sounds washing by
and waiting
not about --- for
Palmer, who I only met once,
to greet
before they went off:
Palmer, Davidson and Jerry.
Is it because naming…is in itself unstable?
in perceived space,
the prose of fact,
you are no different

but Kevin Brown left three x’s on the canvas
at Live Worms

after

We can share your dreams if
we break off part way to
the pain before moving
the phone and the eyeglass
case I keep my pens in ---there’s
another airplane going by.
empirically verifiable
but not the product
of logic
yours or The Philosopher’s
walking around in his garden
too far off the track

a couple nights and days
like the old days
in motel and my son’s house
where there’s no comfort
where there’s no disturbance

The distance she
and she and she
each their own distance
without a distance
a dull, vivid separate life
from frazzled to out of contact
not picking up in their business

meanwhile my body aches
in new places
across the shoulders
the pit of my back
the head
an instability has become the biggest surprise

coda

It is so hard
when you tell me
what I say is wrong
so often
to believe in
you or to believe
in myself–
believe, believe in.

An August poem 2011
Peter Sherburn-Zimmer

Edited 3 time(s). Last edit at 08/29/2011 01:41AM by petersz.

There is much to ponder here, Peter. I will come back to this and decide eventually what parts I prefer, or which lines I feel compelled to talk about.

Les

Les,

That's ok, it took me two -three days to write it. My hope is that the work as a whole can be taken in somehow without too much focus on this or that detail or phrase ... but that is 'author's intent.'

amo,

Peter