They invaded her mind 
called it talent

In print she says every
    thing
In life she’s contrite

She could not keep track of
        the secrets

Alone in her room 
      she dreams of dying 
for a cause

she believes in 
Absolute Otherness 

The T.V. looked so real
The barbeques of 
    summer

Pregnant pause
Pregnant cause

The significant deficits 
             revealed 
on her son’s tests

His red baseball cap 
red and blue striped shirt

Hot day partly cloudy 
gentle mist gathering from 
    the south

Future misery part of 
    the chart
A past that never happened

Mother and son stop 
at a roadside restaurant

Martha and the Vandellas 
in the backdrop

Purple iridescent Coors 
    clock says
twenty to seven

1 “Epicritic (Pertaining to Cutaneous Sensitivity)”                                                               (42:30)


So they we was flyngin goatcoal migs
  lips a-shred cigs doilying flups and caterwolfs
                               joy akuzas meander thralls toot thats
              splattern meaguer theser toxinsural timers
                 orthid octs parapraxic patamastrices
                                                                       mish trees affal balloom
                                                      no whatter thems tremble in the site of multívalence
                                                                                    lymph in the fearosphor
                                                             ligids i’ the B-plam
                      the frester apothetizers their are writher rue the ghoul pose
conchorto mangiolahand astomish mirtue 
                                      mengine of the gooberatchet
        the sleever of mindiot dearth nackertia
          craftal hoem the vergy emergy we via felloat 
                                         from clobberminted gonorrhalgics to and scorpials
                        stedgeholers to encryptleens that’s woes off than inservordunant

            calmumny reprayal mortuwary pronged as cure one
                   thendeville allegeslate stammergod hammerglot
                                  givenal iljugutal larvit preencomium cripes
           what the sheep shat
                                            what the shitshine addaubs to
                            dazzerbanjo noir somefing a talk a i wanna lose my time to get it

tempo pismo beach dairy
                                   ridem academeanta 
                                                          corvents of zazzaphrenes
                  dasual ligit erritorian tympanelles and chantarones capsoftery deblight 
                                thatter wed the hostauce 
                                         Al Fatenya yer can do i what of ya
                          recent axes deplorablize the near vitable tersenry of hack you tool
   intolatry paws the risary flaplaughabel leverals unsheared off
                                 sure hat some remove
                                                  he blurt ofter shoust
                                 fecality fecality fecality croned the fauxtografite
                 yedded junda chemp tring
                                                 bibble! tand! prites! 
                          sexual colonieze fragment-me-nuts spited with tungem 
                    a granamortized crutchsured grabule of clowt
                                        beg winds annausentia 
                       your dual and end them
                      that would flave a seeble fatib
                                     omarada drawling yoneh pout
                              who’ll haul your ules
                                       hoof hovely hell
                                  shovenly mired nares of blunds bluents 
   andly floatsy nambia Brabria Rossa 
                        bony fine dullass

                                               sweck furtain cowhiles
                                  symbol bas dovedience
                                                  rum dole police
                   slig mortif
                              scall waneture the oldest finiest unto

<track 2>                                                    (10:48)

Quellsian marsque with scrubba tansk
  zeal-bes shawarm theminy striangers fronds the like
                         caress the pon safting the tendiggles of knead
                  mucical muckusment
                                   shtow the suffy theo door
      shoosheen the ricoshay derver’s stealth
                     we’re pro-feedural heers and sheites
                           usfule theyimicists semblites tall
                                                         asshamackle in junghurry hall

               we pretexen a sharèdly 
                                      da hoc mortimerch disuary sigli moanch tweary yined
                            off to minds we arny sewls 



2 “Peduncle (The Support of an Inflorescence)”                                                                   (43:32)


That’s right horn comblemmed stamigma
at treble stancth ablock deadth and brebth
   the dreathèdfuls
                        these are blankinsons enfermille
              sodjourn wreckophone
                                   idiophanous trillery
   that’s darken they are darker than they are
              waveslew sluige gorlge 
scaldric corroddery spanser is the does they dazzert
                         hausa rune transvermal lific wrestlate
          taser lake suplash purital gongssiere thwactal vinditch 
              segregirly femance talonscoot halant shivler
                                  coalhaust grinamen fórdive encher
  spec on pheradural mountumen croupediance showel
              gris scrowled mity tectones aggleum pyry purplative
                         envyone’s a senakeor 
                                  meaty rights coladded in treaty tights?
   ferampup pervadenture                     my sands what stars arth
forciles in the labrial traptids        gonging mia viamioose as’d thoughngt
                              swoe me is allahs and all-lackatooey
                                                            sodliers secrounted kaffiry kilimentine
              the doughter moot the juictic the plec stir innum
                                   smortherner towarth rapatuier denim rungtiled chonkey
brayhewal azmenuth perpavore the polypso fornce denalwies comfs strued

            there was a long that way a nake appining floor to filuel
                          whomed defile 
                                lexeauze in áccrux geminy
                                                                            licks mergs oncotensilly
                        offgone libriquiem for a hod squander
                                               lumpenruptus vaticover
                                 rapatatatuial sile seater dennyslant
                              race and hair blued belialative crossmancy

                                                         these are the very digs
                               theirs the voluntary atsoundishmings
                                                                        that oxify the carbine jooters
           and the monkeel axaxines
            the frommentery         geal afoot          tombrent instegument
                             greckonal dunes gaffeted kaslunk glike ’t orn’t acknowled
gno men glue churnsey way
                     achooer inmeant              accreant sclerient
                 drizzle drimes a druse zen prie tsarginct
dour wing of velvetution 
                              invalvable striatamates we aye o amover i louie ya
                                                idon ever lieu ye
       slow stead fast
                                     so i can each you
                           tudge       carse       lipple       flond       havn

giddabel smudjurement rinds as flonse
            rilly rever rankstens the cawbons devaluing teencèd wail
                        waynems the macen jarry
                                                 rite yuri’s ulbu twout messide
                                           stemplodder boogie donc
                  siccup crowd veneer
                                      vanerial pureein 
                          thasms of flesh ma ’nd blook no asthms
                                                    say ter say ial say ary
              stay error
                            i’d’a voya idago pote bacchal ear
                                                   topends too
quay not, queue-eyened jumpsticks
                                                 the laverls the folksblend ladely hodes twaint



3 “Logozo Scampers (Tortoise)”                                                                                           (42:07)


Glocken shpilgas gunts the mortem
       and well goddamnify am not flyowning
               skeeger rustics platten forsts tuffual
                                                                                         what’sn’ts idenscent
                                                                          purgeal nialers
                                                                                           kilns ache ferment stound
                                    grin stent bwiled        convercial truents        baled eavers

                             curfuciacles that’s originens annuncy feraliede 
                                     sad gazatte of farragonal quant
                                                     fiddly mendier sterxes
                sugurantial copenstakes mensdark mowillow flicker stemt
                                   sags the slongue cheece twong
        diggerelles of insanity of swondles dealite
                              wiccan corpe cooeen
                     manxwild the culingdar fepples de plage
                                            beacherday flounted perm thirst yay tampler

              sotto clockturinal i gnow where my kindser and sophercue too
       orlue jackened laundren chorer shawl shender blenneton board
                                    this juice tin
                                                that swale fork
                                  breather spartan time
                                    glunder grails and broil your helid hearlets
          swinksa voramoosh mogged earens 
               demisamokoan silends 

                                              burdenal phorists fell reint the dunes tanks-belowed
            that was deathings in scrows and scarrens
                                                         plain pantings and unwounds
        nonsical earlings scrattling to the sheen a sing of emits 
                     choruds malagasian fangasies 
               gamma sadcar murals striant of stranglen fruiteries  
                  vivalotion neary fleerite the undane and mondostruous
                                                  collocations in eightyeights news speciels

                          what a coin of kinliness the atclimb’s
                                  blittle mitteny streach out from voresona
           prescionantal bedouate preshan number of hide anguine wiles
                                       heart’s vaginance
                      thrown stowlen truling vanitage thrievering prickapique
                               pocketcopter capitule moantaindy maintones
                         middleminded malagers cruelwhile parry on
                  fronting they don’t know the names of whom &
                                            why did that make too much sense

                              the fedural gynornament foreposhed a wordensome longed then
    drisual bestractive uncureable axiomas of struth
               they cannot face this musicular daredo sexas cogeplows 
                           opearences unceive 

                                                      sensile fractals at tips of brawnules
                                         scaldfinger godflingular manions
                               thery musi heoretics 
                                                           the world played plain
                                              these
                                                   thenscythicals to obey
                                    thosens the bad t’s t’ abbey
                  what Ida Bleefer’d air and diddoes 
                             maestrally syzygantly as a forest fever 
                               hat shoes coat diz or like
                                         the xith side of everystreet yuza
                                   gwongs a folk usses
                                             speweaken whirrs
                                 reworsenals to the nary
                                             the haggles in a breath
              copencare scopenscare denialmurk denailhead
                   unhedgeable piano
                         no blasé in glory
                           so blazed a anvil answer a stiruppelodial
          the mindle ear forth



4 “Owele Standing (Small Bird)”                                                                                          (46:16)


What’s the happen wow
              gene broom teehassle omniquoscient inventery
          staken yelds galash lankuid squalid den plasmsest
tina’s burroque queel ashremble 
                       derivilliant of mirr
                         straggle dounce of longesse stave aloe, Hope Allergiance
     toggle glowgle oggule irremissual dwindle thrall
                                                                           hellrole, Gene Whiskey
                                     am i aspire corrightly, Cleft Boozom
               miso profulous feelicks forelike edgeminder
                                          sconding two ones fiddled with entity cared
           glove scan kaffirms
                                 gigant lames an heegase zymen claturatura
                         aria rouge tad imple xensuous tacturge 
                                                          nib by neb by nob and knob nub
                      newel bronze at steeple prikes
               hello and harpty Girdsdy what’ll you be
                                                                       bridchawlers splayonimus
how cog a q, vince cockwater
                               how suet dizzound
                    wadded echo       dronian proofed against 
oddthangle brayer seraing rexcuse a sigh recause ilovery une plicks theyen spluckdumb

slong, tader spoot, hops’ll turnock dual yeeedles of antocifrix 
                          sail on, Ienne Ressknot
                                   the my people i remede heal lex came
                the very toes i had steep to teas
                                                                    howdy refer hodi else
                       sway willy elkity habber zapama
          swing verdiations swing
                                          max me a max
                                             crotch me a scorch
                 soaky icon vertz the viso
                                    revice the gratchels
                                                                     porator the grabbed age of taleverts
                             envery tip hocracketed to the covenence hover clingant
                      thwacks the airwades sober eith
                                             todays chinase turn
                                    myzeneen the ditherane slitheroons
                                                      per beechuck bill iaint but naryin ideer boust nuttin
      so sing inner angles quore and whygirled knot
            poof addler suggendle vie wists
                                   vastromony suedes me juffingly
                                                          prut streen and rocka coozerdoo
           assay sad bove
                               foreign dinch sedimine
                 clamical scriance plore bipaths devoluved at thence deprece
                        scorn then say sashayer do tell?
   crackle by boons, yuban hlads and cussard chuns
                           gas that converts everyone
             day grease in the eye
                                                spackle hues inhearted
                         Ida Cobble deedin’
            endiff ’t is my name stillette’s stilged asseny
                                 bremace emblemshaed ebbility, squant dabbler

          like the boidesque
                                   what if someone listened
                 tend to hume dies’s pique
                      the tardy tomb i’m pradling
                                             the redurned domicidal
          foecourse these are quettings
                                                    doughy loo lie wanebearings
      as jag karaoke oncèd



5 “Pineal (Black Dot)”                                                                                                           (41:35)


Even ceteris partybus isn’cht surplotted when they’re not
freak sakes viender trillial swives comparsion’s mittel gnarm in swames
   barometer reddens per-thus cronch crounch caroonth
                     thigh lather sterocle blamdish colondraint
                searpent yeak skeiners off goaded
                                     hello ploidy doidy polish foiced flunguider
                  slurpots of cantive sadthirst gonismy
                                                     the stery suffar sithits
                        zeal fare       tropangulic syrumph       coma torch
         deve aya sutster de overdy re-everence
                               ingdel igginled parastammeter-psyted end suttested
                      wheredy lesions gloo to whisper in a ilosh
                                                    cocation lolation egg wasian mood fucket
   spriglative purslane vooture tawng in a coelclamp
                                        coella feasued nazpania yorsted
              what a duzzelast betraster ovanation gheegleeing fuñuels
        wakedown trellis colock desearthly blovens gath-a-wee abstrudeal
                                             antsermoma tiered sappert 
                   do verative evilate laxly ornts seculude ivical zundrance
                         sparsions dijestus
                                          merecy spawnital others eat
                             gwan flaunch pestile bianonal sab mourds drougged into reglock
           sone ripe stremminberry wasical succulines alsavus moanjuicity
              vray chinners nouns endower wreets righks
                       why enknot the brittiest versus wervered sea
                                                    (wanklean tarot eggon)
                   edgerny cursus cottons on dadada
               plexus leapsticked sterene atyred to wallowpe spewmell
                                      fraultid ictamony di-eyears i handser gawken tunother
          andzy bradenter oopsies quansile bee
             ping of lunge abscessant falsuant 
                                     glase ath-horn kneedle at all
                                   soundimenstrual churlingy
                             clonying splastics whadeye nottle ya
               whetten up the wagerheightches sooeyana
                                piges of tongs sweevillets of rison
                      planellates potaint furome
                                                       swims of wimmages durueling one’s natuve senzes
                   zualty agrints zealth frighders feelonking untheir weigh du motstice
                                  wall i wanshed for was moisturice remotstruances

This Time Immemorial Jerk of a Romantic

A Deep & Abiding Frequency

Plot Lines #1 thru #5

If Philip Whalen is crowded by beauty as the title of David Schneider’s biography, Crowded By Beauty, The Life And Zen of Poet Philip Whalen (University of California Press, 2015) suggests, he is also beset by irony. Crowded By Beauty traces the life arc of the most remarkable American poet of the latter half of the 20^th century. The irony is that he is practically unknown in the world of American letters.

As Schneider, himself a Zen priest and archaya in the Shambala lineage, points out in his introduction, “Whatever Philip Whalen’s accomplishments, when it came out in ordinary conversation that I was writing his biography, the response was very often a blank look and an uncomfortable silence. To furnish identification I might say “poet,” then “Zen master,” and finally “one of the Beat poets.” This inevitably led to a list of three of the most famous: Jack Kerouac, Allen Ginsberg and Gary Snyder. For those who don’t know Philip Whalen, it seemed initially necessary to name these names, though they constitute a very incomplete list both of Beat poets and of Whalen’s friends.”

In some ways, Philip Whalen was an anachronism, a throwback to an era when writing was done with a pen and music was made in a parlor. Though seemingly out of his time, he was very much of his time when he came into his own in the latter half of the 20^th Century, tuned in to jazz and modern art, sharpening his contemplative skills on the whetstone of poetry. He may have come across as an old fashioned guy who admired Samuel Johnson as much as the ancient Chinese masters, a real fuddy-duddy by all accounts, an old school autodidact (think Kenneth Rexroth) yet his was a radically modern turn of mind as reflected in his approach to poetry.

“A continuous fabric (nerve movie?) exactly as wide as these lines” is how Whalen explains what he was attempting with his poetry,“continuous” within a certain time-limit, say a few hours of total attention and pleasure: to move smoothly past the reader’s eyes, across his brain: the moving sheet has shaped holes in it which trip the synapse finger-levers of reader’s brain causing great sections of his nervous system—distant galaxies hitherto unsuspected (now added into International Galactic Catalog)—to LIGHT UP. Bring out new masses, maps old happy memory.” Elsewhere, Whalen likens his poetry to “a picture or a graph of a mind moving, which is a world body being here and now which is history. . . and you.” Reading Whalen’s poetry is to partake of a continuous stream of consciousness monologue/dialogue dream nerve movie echoing Heraclitus in that the poem, as framed sentience, is a shape shifting undulation which one can step in and out of in the process of being.

Schneider’s approach to his biography of Philip Whalen, a Zen pioneer in the West who was also an extraordinary American poet, is to present a base of testimonials from the afore-mentioned literary figures of Ginsberg, Kerouac, and Snyder as well as from Lew Welch, Joanne Kyger, and Michael McClure among other literary sources. Gleaned from letters, interviews and anecdotal material, Whalen’s accomplishments as an important American poet is described through his close relationship with his contemporaries to assure that he is not dismissed as merely some ancillary fixture to the Beat phenomenon. The literary material is followed by the biographical tracing of Whalen’s eventual commitment to Buddhism. Whalen’s literary aspect looms larger because it is richer in documentation (notebooks, letters, interviews, lectures) as well as a body of work, The Collected Poems Of Philip Whalen (Wesleyan, 2007).

In the early chapters of Crowded By Beauty Whalen’s friendship with Jack Kerouac is shown to be of a genuine sort. Theirs was a fraternal camaraderie in which Whalen served as the older brother who also functioned as a kindly mentor and adult sensibility. In their correspondence, Kerouac and Whalen make clear the respect and brotherly esteem they had for each other. And that Allen Ginsberg’s friendship with Whalen elicited a lifelong proprietary concern and mutual respect as well as a free ride on the ‘G Train’ even though Ginsberg is quoted as saying he didn’t really “get” Whalen’s poetry. Over the long years of their friendship, Allen Ginsberg looked after Philip Whalen’s interests, including him in land deals in the Sierra foothills and regularly inviting him to lecture during the heady early days of the Naropa University Jack Kerouac School of Disembodied Poetics. As well the relationship with Gary Snyder and Lew Welch, Whalen’s Reed College cohorts in Portland, is given close attention. It was Gary Snyder who often provided his older friend with shelter from the storms of unemployment and uncertainty. And it was due to Snyder’s efforts that Whalen found employment in Japan teaching English which afforded the poet his greatest peace of mind and creative stability. Lew Welch and Whalen were running buddies, an honest affection formed while they were undergrads at Reed, searchers, similar to maverick young intellectuals everywhere, unaffiliated yet with a certain sense of personal destiny. They both loved Stein and Williams, Dickinson, too, and based their aesthetic on the irregularities of spoken language.

The surprising portrait in this biography is that of Michael McClure, depicted as Whalen’s Frisco chum, a family guy with wife and kid, someone with the common sense and empathy to check in on an indigent poet at loose ends, to let him sleep on the couch, and feed him when he was hungry. Phil Whalen and Mike McClure were the odd couple, the handsome young poet and the older pear-shaped walking encyclopedia. McClure’s iconoclasm served as a counterbalance to Whalen’s scholarly reserve. Joanne Kyger, an exceptionally talented young poet in the Bay Area literary scene of the late fifties, was introduced to Whalen in the early days of her relationship with Gary Snyder, a fortuitous meeting that led to a lifetime of friendship and devoted affection. Of all the poets, Joanne Kyger’s and Philip Whalen’s poetry reflect similar concerns and approaches to the making of their art.

The picture of Whalen that emerges from the biography is of an intellect preoccupied with the practice of poetry. Much as the mendicant monks of old, he believed that because he was a poet the world would provide as it always did for holy men. If there were a soundtrack for this section, it would be Joe Cocker singing With A Little Help From My Friends. This is not to suggest that all is sweetness and light in the literary milieu. Jack Spicer despised Whalen’s poetry and once offered to pay Whalen not to read his poems in public. Robert Duncan resented the Northwestern backwoodsmen’s intrusion into his domain, especially after one of them ran off with the princess. Charles Olson found Whalen an exasperation, and called him “a great big vegetable.” Even today Whalen is often conveniently overlooked in anthologies representative of American poetry.

Crowded By Beauty gathers a narrative out of the literary specific biographical material that clearly illustrates the importance of Whalen as a significant poet in the American canon. Primary among that designation are three American poets who have opened the door to the adjacent possible for a unique native prosody. Walt Whitman turned ancient praise songs briefly glimpsed in the Bhagavad Gita on himself as a view into the luminous self. William Carlos Williams abolished the past (goodbye ubi sunt) with the immediacy of the moment in the lightening flash of perception. Philip Whalen graphs the remembered present as pictures of the mind moving against a field of attentiveness and cerebration.

To appreciate Whalen and his poetry one must first understand his place in relation to the rest of AmLit and the maverick lineage of Whitman, Dickinson, Stein, and Carlos Williams. His is an intrinsic understanding of musing and amusement, of how a savvy sense of music composition (Bach, Schopenhauer, Jazz ) combined with an intuitive comprehension of the modern can be recorded as the lyricism of being in the world attentively. There is never any doubt that his poems are shaped by an artist.

An interesting point of literary taxonomy is briefly raised in that, with the exception of Kerouac and Ginsberg, most of the poets of Whalen’s orbit are mislabeled. They are lumped in with the Beat writers largely through their association with Ginsberg and Kerouac, the historic Six Gallery’s reading, in which Whalen and Snyder participated, and the recreation of that event in Kerouac’s The Dharma Bums. These poets, along with Welch, McClure, Kyger among many others of that and subsequent generations, are in fact better served by being viewed as Pacific Rim writers. The Pacific, as Rexroth pointed out, like the steppes, joins as well as separates. There is natural empathy, a curiosity for cross water Eastern cultures. The sensibilities of the East inform these writers and it should be of no surprise when they embrace aspects of that enculturation as the result of the post-war occupation of Japan. Whalen and Snyder work the most complete synthesis by rigorously following the path to Buddhism.

In contrast to Gary Snyder’s stature as a major contributor to American poetry, his old college pal, Philip Whalen, suffers the ignominy of being known as a poet’s poet, too good (and too difficult) for the hoi-polloi which serves to damn him with those who think poetry is too obscure to begin with. Yet Whalen’s poetry is the most brilliant expression of personal awareness ever set down (appreciated) by the modern mind. In the vast field of the epic length poem Scenes From Life At The Capital written while living in Kyoto, the picture of a mind moving comes together as a full length neural feature. Although the breadth of Whalen’s poetry is consistently brilliant from the beginning, it is in work from his time in Japan that his poetry reaches the apex of excellence.

Whalen’s entry into the dharma life is a different story and as such begins with his birth. Whalen was born in 1923 and raised in eastern Oregon, a creative young man with a penchant for drama and music. He was bookish in the parlance of those days. Drafted into the Army Air Corps toward the end of the Second World War, he later attended Reed College in Portland, most likely on the GI Bill. San Francisco acted like a big culture magnet on Whalen and his cohorts, Welch and Snyder, and drew them to a sense of place amenable to their pan-Pacific sensibilities. Gary Snyder’s commitment to Zen was mirrored, though less rigorously, in Whalen’s intermittent attempts and profound intellectual struggle with what Zen entailed, a negation of that illusory mental property. Whalen’s sojourn in Japan as a teacher of English reinforced certain conclusions and intuitions about the practice of Buddhism. Subsequently Baker Roshi offered Whalen sanctuary at the San Francisco Zen Center. The poet, then in his fiftieth year with no likely prospects of employment, accepted the succor. For the next thirty years Philip Whalen, who finally accepted the transmission and became known as Zenshin, lived his life as a Buddhist monk of the Soto Zen lineage, primarily in San Francisco, ending his days as the abbot at the Hartford Street Zen Center. He achieved personal entropy in June of 2002.

As a contemplative, Whalen finally found a job that he liked, one that suited him. The self comfort of contemplation was an increment above the relentless cerebration of self consciousness. He no longer had anything to complain about (not that he ever stopped complaining) and so the poems stopped. The complaints were taken care of in the practice of meditation. As he said in an interview (Beneath a Single Moon, 1991), “A far as meditation is concerned I’m a professional. I’ve been a professional since 1973. And that’s my job. Maybe that’s where poetry comes into all this, that it has to be an articulation of my practice and an encouragement to you to enter into Buddhist practice.” And you have to take him at his word.

If there is a lesson in the life and Zen of poet Philip Whalen, it is about comportment and humility, about the value of being a poet, of practice over product and self-aggrandizement. Here modern Western Buddhism is served on the plate (or bowl) of what Donald Allen termed “the new American poetry” as exemplified by Philip Whalen. In his later life, the dharma path subsumes the egocentricity of the poet in allowing him a way out of the world of red dust.

Commenting on the Collected Poems of Frank O’Hara when it was first published in 1971, Whalen compared the tome to a tombstone. Perhaps the 550 plus pages seemed a trifle excessive at the time, yet Whalen’s own posthumous collection of poems weighs in at a hefty 900 pages. In an elegiac vein Crowded By Beauty might be viewed as an eulogy, touching on the associations, the milieu, and the context of Whalen’s scholarship and writing. It serves as a reminder that among all the celebrity and cachet of rebelliously prescient intellects, the one most radical in his approach to American poetry has been overlooked. With Crowded By Beauty providing a time line and anecdotal reference on the one hand, and the chronological arrangement of the poems in the Collected Poems Of Philip Whalen supplying the corpus on the other, perhaps now the real work of appreciation and acknowledgement can begin.

(This piece first appeared on The New Black Bart Poetry Society website. Our thanks for giving permission to reprint.)

68

point of view of a child    >
 WRITING TO BE : to share this chapter
i don’t want @ this point >

                                                   wouldn’t it be nice i ask     dismembered  / taken seriously

the devoted muslim sitting in front of the mosque
if there were a total end to materiality :   MUSIC >  welfare diners  - 
            throwing the water into the pool  / scholars  /  63 hour interviews
   one on one analysis of the plot/theme  identity development
              young adult related - writing apologies -  medication
passion - bi-polarization - narrative symptoms  -  awareness of problems
               identity      i dentity    identity  analyzing identity 
my own development  related to other people’s objectives  my own development
             past heroes  free delivery from ongoing conversations >
WHY i prefer not to be called a writer  / interesting i am a righter writing wrongs
     like a barber > barbershops > the barber shops & finds the HUMAN CONDITION
        the mind / BREEZE   saturday afternoon trapped in someone else’s discussion
                                   (what is the human condition)
                       brain  / birds talking to each other . finding resolutions
                                     gender electronics / pride in one’s hot sauce     membrane-eous –

i’ve been thru much more than some but not as much as others
                    nocturne blue / sleep walker / 
i don’t know what it is that seems to be seeping thru my shoe
                    it is as if i am bleeding water
            we are all after all 90pluspercentwater
it’s humid – so this is not impossible if i am wounded

GIFT

Who’ll give me quiet
demands the inquisitive man
nameless silence
serious as a heart attack
authentic and definitive
And above all won’t play the bad guy
certainly not motorbikes and rag pickers
grating silence
heavy as fog you can cut with a knife
paper fog
And also who’ll follow that fellow
who left to go cry in the desert
at least he’ll know enough to stay quiet
Quiet please
and even if you don’t please
silence for the dead and for the living
for those trying to sleep
deeply
Quiet for those who love silence
white as snow
blue as the moon
eternal as the firmament
A silence I live breathe forget
Silence must live
like flourishing plants
and their flowers who keep mum
even as they suffer
Silence like the smile of the beloved
when she forgets I love her



PLENTY OF TIME

Time passing
time that doesn’t
the time I kill
time it takes to count to ten
time I don’t have
the time that has to do
time to be lonely
time to dream
a time of agony
a time to love
a time to lose
cherry blossom time
bad times
and good and beautiful
and cold and hot times
time to go back
a time for goodbyes
time that’s about time
time that isn’t
a time to blink
relative time
time for a drink
time to bide
time to tie one on
immeasurable time
a time that shouts look out
dead time
and then eternity

JESSICA IS


Jessica    is 
Yiska      iss
Yiska      issa
doll         isssa
Vuh         is
Yiska       iss
dahsh       issa
being       issac
the           issau
mourner's        es
laymen             ess
tayshaun            esa
not                       esau
having     is
a              ish
father's    ishma
blessing   ishmael
is              shma
common  Yisroel
is                   had
custom            hadad
when                  hadada            
playing                 hadaddy
with                        hadatees
name                           hades

Bird beak point
(250 x 300 mm)

Night catch
(250 x 300 mm)

Drying rack and pipe
(250 x 300 mm)

Cypress
(250 x 300 mm)

Last light
(250 x 300 mm)

Night light
(250 x 300 mm)


All works are oil on canvas, and all are dated 2015.

"This body of work charts a more private endeavour fusing imagined site and actual places (temporary wasteland spaces) with notions of success and failure, un/healthy competition, survival. Strange walls of foliage become barriers, confidence courses appear militaristic and unsafe, golf flags testify to more territorial intent than a Sunday game, & looming overpasses forfeit notions of arrival in their incomplete states. The unexplained but palpable political/ environmental content is submerged in a painted language that flops between figuration and abstraction. Motifs arise, morph and come undone through repetition."