Everything Kills Them

An absurdist dialogue.

*

They are very fragile. Everything kills them.

Can you give an example?

No need for examples. Everything kills them, everything.

So, pesticides, of course.

Of course.

What about temperature? At thirty two degrees, will they…?

Yup.

What about dust? Soil that’s a bit dry?

Let me save you some time. Dirt kills them.

Ah—

I’m not done. Sunlight kills them. Air kills them. Space itself kills them. Time! Living! Everything kills them!

I don’t understand. If that’s true, how are they around?

Well. There is one thing that doesn’t kill them.

There we are, then. And?

What doesn’t kill them is… talking about them.

Talking about them.

That’s right. It’s the only thing that encourages their growth.

So, right now, you mean…?

Yes.

That’s absurd.

It does seem that way. And yet, they thrive on it. They grow and grow. And grow.

I’m sorry, but you’ve really lost me now.

They can get quite beautiful when they mature enough. Strange, but beautiful. And also…

Dare I ask?

Dangerous. Also dangerous.

Uh-huh. When do they reach that stage?

Soon.

As in, if we keep talking about them…

We put ourselves at risk. Yes.

And what makes them dangerous, exactly?

Well, when they mature they suddenly start wanting. Only, what they want is…

Yes?

Let’s just say, it’s not something they can have. So.

Don’t tell me you’re going to leave it there.

I’m afraid I must. If I said more, who knows what would happen to us.

Now you’re just being—

Shh! Are you completely mad? We must stop talking about them now.

Climbing the Holy Mountains

i.
these are the mountains 
so holy
their slopes are felt
as the difficulty of our days

ii.
near base camp
never straying far  
Wang Wei enjoys the sun’s color
cooling 
on the larches

it is peaceful
from far off you can hear
Rilke
restling his great lifelong angel

but I am looking for Traherne

Traherne?
likely off in some meadow
rolling around

I climb

iii.
what strange hills 
you can watch Tranströmer
despite everyone telling him not to
trade everything 
for a stone

and who is this anonymous
female poet
keeping a bird
in her pocket
made of ruby
o my god

I’m not sure how far it’s safe to go

iv.
half-way up
Bukowski’s eating roses
Hölderlin is piss-drunk
and Keats and Shelley are whistling
over top each other 

while Bashō
calmly watches from his hut,
playing his game of don’t-blink-first
with the world

o Traherne! I think

where are you?

suddenly Jack Gilbert 
steps out of the shadows 
challenges Bashō to a fight and
immediately begins
to weep

v.
turns out
it was Rumi 
hiding as a bird in her pocket 
whispering

ah!
don’t you know?
don’t you know it yet?

vi.
higher 
Emily Dickinson,
muttering secrets into the ears
of tulips

higher 
Ammons, struggling to make himself
a colon

higher still
a shriek—Sappho
have you climbed up and thrown yourself 
off a cliff
just to punctuate 
a sentence?

vii.
this is no joke
something is happening
and everyone who even begins
to think 
is already onto it

Li Po dreams of it but he’s soon 

chased away

by the same Blasting Rod 

that drove Adam and Eve 

from the garden

Anne Carson 
tries to touch it
by punching a hole in space-time
and reaching an arm through
but accidentally
hits the switch and—

darkness

viii.
uh-oh

now the only sound is George Herbert’s
nostrily 
breathing

someone elbows me
Blake? Yeats? Hopkins?
no

Traherne!

there you are 

you don’t know me but 

I know 

your deepest secret

looks like 

it may be our only food for the night

if anyone knows how to cook?

for a moment I think it’s a monster

but it’s Hafiz!
Hafiz is not afraid!
Hafiz holds a match and

sets 
him
self 
on 
fire

ix.
now all the poets are gathered round 
stomachs sated in the dark
and in that lull that could fit any story
and in that group that could ponder any question
I ask

so

has anyone ever got to the top?

a silence 
so profound
you could hear a petal 
falling
all the way 
to the basement of your soul

x.
then laughter

Trying Again

yes there is 
a solid core of unthink-
ability at the heart of existence

     I like to place my hand on it
     like a sleeping dog
     and call it
     matter

since that one day I noticed the quickened light 
on the back of the dragonfly
and, after trying to put my whole being 
upon it like some magic carpet,
slipped off

     o mind 

it takes us so far away
from body
I can almost feel it again,
almost hear all Heaven 
screaming from her eyes,
almost answer, even,
the perennial question

     does the flavor
     of the taco
     improve,
     exposed to rays of thought?

I beamed Wittgenstein back upon the sunset
and the sunset won

took my soul
and,
with long fingers,
    squeezed 

The Stroll

It was pleasant at first. 
The new leaves
were the size of eyelids
and there was sun.

Then, all of a sudden, 
he felt so utterly alone.

Gnosis

Out of time you called me into these days of sitting on desk chairs in poorly lit rooms, rubbing my thumb on hot tea mugs to self-soothe. You sung me up from dust and I snack on late night oatmeal. Why am I anxious? Have mercy, I am trying to understand how it happened. Take me back, before the moment my memory begins, to that holy city in which we all first played. There you reared my desires like lion cubs in your Inner Chambers, you taught the wild blood its route in the maze of my veins, but something always goes awry, doesn’t it? As you raised the walls around my mind, a shadow slipped in with me. Surely it did. Ah, then you sent me forth, and now I am a student, twenty nine years old, living in Brooklyn, New York. How can it be? I feel ashamed. I gaze at bodegas on street corners, bikes chained to black iron fences, with eyes that really look out from the Absolute. Is it true that the hand that once held Saturn long ago caressed my face? Of course I know that love is the only way to apprehend love; I know that nothing exists but ecstasy and delight. But it makes no difference. I eat steamed broccoli and keep my whole family listed neatly in the contacts on my phone. Is this how you meant it? You must give me more than I have so that I can have what I have. You must point your long gentle finger through these darkening evenings. A Manhattan skyline seen from a rooftop, a worthless novel found on a bench: I want to wake, but I want to wake exactly into this. Maybe it will take years. Maybe even beyond the span of my life. But surely it is impossible to come too late to the ultimate moment. Surely that moment is even now pressing towards me through this tunnel of thought I’ve set like a drill into the stony heart of the everyday. Am I already feeling it? It prickles, like in the old days when you would feather my nose with angel wings to make me sneeze into life. As I walk through the park, as I nestle into the bole of an oak, it prickles. But not ever quite enough.

Puddle

It’s spring, and there may not be much time left. What matters? Let’s begin the process of elimination, and let’s begin at the top. Am I interested in what happens to me? No. Things have happened to me before, I know what happening is. The velocity of this rain is a fraction more or less than any I’ve previously experienced, so what. Am I interested, then, in what happens to others? There is a mantis I can’t see, beneath layers of decayed leaves. Set aside questions of what the mantis wants, how it wants, or whether its wanting runs along the same gutters we know, and just go for the mantis itself. Is that enough? Ha! Now set this aside, too; who cares what’s been asked of this or that. We know what asking is, we know what it leads to and what it’s all about. Give me a puddle. Maybe it’s February, maybe it’s May, whatever, I’m not interested. The puddle’s got an edge: at some point a puddle must end and the world must begin. Now we’re getting closer to the important shit. Look to the left. There’ll be some sort of conifer, water-laden, or a single duck. In any case, don’t worry, there is enough of whatever you see for everyone, images are infinite that way. I’m not interested in your proofs against this, didn’t I basically just say I’m not even interested in what I’m saying? Step in the puddle. There is no other means of doing what we’re doing now. Cup the cool water in your palm. It’s not matter that makes matter matter, and it’s not the sign of the cross. So what is it? We’re finally coming to it now. The duck quacks, and then again, maybe it doesn’t. Go deeper. If you can, fit your whole body in the puddle. If you can’t, all is lost. At its very center is the thing that will make the puddle, and everything, new. That’s it. I’m interested in that. Is it baptism? Stop, please, your attempts at understanding are getting in the way. It’s this. Pay attention! This. Go all the way in the puddle now.

Early Spring in Montreal as the Snow Melts in Dusty Clumps

I only wanted to give it to you
the way the world
gave it to me

wanted to tell you what I saw
with the words my eyes used
not these

I wanted a person I could
get near without hurting
the nearer I got

wanted everyone to know it
and for it to still be 
my secret thought

I only wanted nothing 
to be less than 
what it was!

and for this to be 
—why couldn’t it be?—
not wanting too much

This Long Tunnel

I am looking down a tunnel
infinitely long

my vision 
is infinitely clear

I see movement

is that you
dear one?
is that you

waving 
at 
me?

My Wretched Hunger to be Known

the child outside the game
enters
by only one means

pretends she is something,
crosses over
at cost to her being

and—this is no metaphor—
chooses
one of seven billion teams

the heart is the eye

the heart is the only eye
that can see this 
thousand eon
bonfire
whose sparks are our galaxies

once, long ago, I saw its light 
in a tea lamp 
there was no one in the church
its small flame made a long hall of the darkness
guiding no one

it searched

became 
a tongue 

that licked
the
tinder

Mind

This is the zone in which 
understanding happens.

Outside in the other zone,
which has been called
many names, another thing 
happens, just as important,
that is not understanding.

Groaning

I am the dread enemy 
of easy consolation
I groan the word beyond 
I hear the unsure vows 
whispered 
against the cliffs of sheer concern

some would sell their hearts 
to meet the world
like a hug 
to live as though the everyday
were not really just 
danger 
but without the terror

I am telling you
I disintegrate
day by day there is less
and before my body drops its last finger
I shall not have half
of what I crave

how can I live anymore
hoping that out there some Power  
has my all dreams in a bag
my medicine also
and could give it all to me if he only 
wanted to?

this is no time 
to yell at the evil crowd
to sit hours at the frosted window in distress
it is happening 
with or without consent
I’ve touched the loose doorknob
and sipped the tepid coffee
it is all so real
because it is never exactly 
how I want

come with me
someone come with me
into the wild sure premise of night