Your Source for 'Ff'lo

let feelings through after all and
the mindful aesthetic shrinks, words like
mother, father, even you are so big
all the words around them must be small,
forget love, don't even consider names
of seasons, times of day, qualities of light,
for to say almost anything with those is to say
so too much
as to mean nearly nothing,
compared to what's said by the nameless


It makes me want to collect poems about what isn't said, can't be said, refuses articulation.

It's the day after the weekend of our spring chorus performances.  I'm tired.  It was quite a ride.  Among other flurries, the flurry of prep and the heightened-sense thing of "Showtime!"s leaves one afterwards in a sort of daze, stunned to be in what seems a sudden emptiness (lack, minus) of that biz.

Show biz, I guess, is what biz that biz is.  But not the kind in which you make money.  The busy + ness kind of business of show.

Lorne's left town (book fair weekend) without me seeing his face.  Says he and LA will be coming through in a month.  I pause to see what I feel about that, and don't pick up much.  [ --- Hey, that means it's also that day.  The Monday after.  Wow.  I interrupt with this oh-hey upon reading over these lines, and shall go back into the prime powers mentioned below under the influence of it. ]

Was thinking walking into the office this morn, though, of my current knee troubles making it hurt (these past few days) to take long steps with the other leg, cuzza something that happens when the compromised knee then has to do some certain angle to bring that leg forward from behind me.  An incident involving that difficulty and a friend's performative-looking impatience this weekend brought up some decades-old pain, from being a teenager, recovering from ankle surgery, and experiencing something similar enough as to be close to the same, in some internal/emotional way.  I didn't get the connection right away, but I got it eventually.  The incident itself pissed me off, and was a case of somebody being a jerk, but I think it took it having extra sting for me even to realize that much.  Even to notice that it wasn't okay.  And even that may not have happened had I not already been in a vulnerable place for other reasons.

Back now to, let's see, a theorem of Prachar involving prime powers.

Hello, Now.  Here we are.  Hi, Here.

Spent a lot of time with you two
through the years.  Constant
companions.  Yet I flirt with
the others just about all the time.
I struggle to give you my complete
attention.  K-Mart shoppers

hahahahahahaha

a line is a unit of attention

my Now poem breaks out!  my Now
poem says this is what I'm doing Now!
--- but ---uh-oh---  The flash interrupts:
I have new games that can be played.

So I'll curl up & get lost in that for a spell
and in a really sick doubly distant way
be connecting where the connecting is not
otherwise Now,
            or even Nowabouts

My feet are cold.  My knee is old.
I have a bird I like to hold,
but for the bird part.  Now is the time
for all quick brown foxes to jump,
might as well jump, back against the record machine,
if you see what I meander along doing, all this
coming from the noggin, unbidden, and I was just
a moment ago taking stock of Now sensations.

Hi, Now.  Hey.  Here.  How's it goin'.

"...to a parent, lover, sibling, child, teacher, roommate, best friend, mayor, president, corporate CEO, etc."





Oh, but I only know what I'd say because
someday I think I might say it.  Because
I want to, see?  It's like Harold Hill tells Winthrop,
there near the end, after the deep-cut-true question:
I always think there's a band, kid, he says,
because he does, and then in the movie
there is one, because it's a movie,
and in the movies believers
suffer and suffer and suffer and then
there is respite--- then there's sweet respite
before the respite of respites, not sweet.

 
 
 
 
 
Egress Checklist

The exits are marked, and well-lit, with no hinges
Improperly set or located, or stuck;
You won't be obstructed, however you go,
And you’ll opt for the easiest route, with your luck.
The ramp slope is gentle, the path it is clear---
Whether danger is present or not, there's no doubt
The deep fear is bubbling, it’s time to escape,
For this is your way:  Out.

In my winter dream, one by one, I detach
each limb, remove the big bone,
look to the end for the sucking-out place
and extract the puzzle piece of hard marrow,
as if it’s venom, to try, in vain, to save myself, myself,

from the disease it turns out is in the last
of them, the fourth, which I see instantly is bad,
shrunken and black, and bitter.  The cavity
expands as I explore it, and on its wall
are a small aperture of lens, and a sign

telling me to push there to take my picture,
in this secret photo booth of my innerds.
The band-aid box nearby is equipped
with a note:  “If you’re seeing this,
you’re almost surely dead very soon.”

There must be, I then understand, some mechanism
like a postage-paid mailer in there too, and the idea's
to ready a snapshot of my face in farewell,
for sending to loved ones, now that I know, oh
no, this was not a good way to treat my illness.

People's mothers are dying, or one just did and another's soon shall, plus the mothers of others, the others' mothers.  People's mothers are dying, and I think I had a long day.  Part of my long day was about a dying mother.  People's mothers are also having birthdays, and people's dead fathers had this birthday, and it's pushing midnight again, and here I am.  Blew off the maybe-was-gonna, did some hanging instead, just a bit, had some food in there, I dunno, Manny sure is being Mr. Cuddly, and I am old, oh that's right.  The Detroits were down to the Oaklands 2-0 when I put the dog to bed and retired to this chamber.  I do not know whether I will keep any shoes this time.  Goofy footwear is still to come, but the odds are against it, though I find it really appealing, in the pictures, in the pictures in my head, in the picture of the ends of my legs below the knees in my head.

Is it blue or is it green?  Blue and green are hard to tell.  Names for blue, Pantone 292, cultures always name red first, and blue no not blue so soon, blue last,  what, all of them?, yes, wikip linguistic relativity and the color naming debate, but hey, many languages don't have separate words for green and blue, and when they do it's often fuzzy and maybe they switch around what color that is, and it's always that hunk of the spectrum with respect to which people argue with me about whether for inst a turquoise is blue (I'm saying yes) or whether my car is purple (I say no).  Bert suggests a gendered biological aspect.  Beth and I talk of Tracy's "sage" having leaned it green, cuz that's a plant.  They do not match, but they go, says Shelly, not Percy Bysshe, he had another e anyway, no I mean our Shelly, not roller derby bowling Shelly, not Silverstein, you know.  Shelly of the daytime family that Jesus is along with the gig and its renumerations so much of the world to me, lifeline, that kind of thing, s.t. I don't even like to think about what if not.

A point of reference, in other matters, I seem to have come up with out of my well no let's not say my ass let's say thin air, though it's not thin air, is Denise, or rather the aftermath of Denise.  Not about color.  Not about Leos with manes born on August 21, mothers or not, not dying and having birthdays.  And then there's how it's hurting me, or is it, am I acclimating, I sort of am acclimating, becoming acclimatized, here in my old age, okay not to that, hunh wtf, my left armpit itches.  It's time to tend to my fake-world airplanes.  And then lie down.  And then lie down.

When I close my eyes, what I will see, will it be those semi-taut curves on the top of the head, mostly I smelled those, felt the tickle on my nose and lips, I think no you know why cuz it will be, or already is, them kids crossing the street, Liberty in front of me, smack-dab midday, the first 35 in bouquets of pajama pants under their coats, and 2 grown women playing along, then dozens a little older in mostly jeans, which are blue, blue jeans, they go back to the old west but can't be that old, since they're blue.  All those kids, so far from dying, so far from knowing of so much.  In their pairs and clusters, having their downtown day.  And you are not lying down, Lisa.  You are sitting up, Lisa.  Earth to Lisa.  Lisa to Lisa.  Lisa.