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All day I think about it, then at night I say it. Where did I come from, and what am I supposed to be doing? I have no idea. My soul is from elsewhere, I’m sure of that, and I intend to end up there.
We have a huge barrel of wine, but no cups. That’s fine with us. Every morning we glow and in the evening we glow again.
Drunks fear the police, but the police are drunk too.
BE MELTING SNOW Totally conscious, and apropos of nothing, you come to see me. Is someone here? I ask. The moon. The full moon is inside your house. My friends and I go running out into the street. I’m in here, comes a voice from the house, but we aren’t listening. We’re looking up at the sky. My pet nightingale sobs like a drunk in the garden. Ringdoves scatter with small cries, Where, Where. It’s midnight. The whole neighborhood is up and out in the street thinking, The cat burglar has come back. The actual thief is there too, saying out loud, Yes, the cat burglar is somewhere in this crowd.
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Try and be a sheet of paper with nothing on it. Be a spot of ground where nothing is growing, where something might be planted, a seed, possibly, from the Absolute.
Do you think I know what I’m doing? That for one breath or half-breath I belong to myself? As much as a pen knows what it’s writing, or the ball can guess where it’s going next.
Language and music are possible only because we’re empty, hollow, and separated from the source. All language is a longing for home.
want this music and this dawn and the warmth of your cheek against mine. The grief-armies assemble, but I’m not going with them. This is how it always is when I finish a poem. A great silence overcomes me, and I wonder why I ever thought to use language.
There is a way between voice and presence where information flows. In disciplined silence it opens. With wandering talk it closes.
