120. Quel Bel Pachelbel del Mel

Therefore, contemplating.

Where it cannot begin it begins,
taking the form of unrecognizable beings, shapes
morphing into others, the edge of anything
indistinct and vaporous as a thought.

Taking one just before I go to bed,
my veins run clear, my dreams filled with fragments
of my own life, the terrors so great I force myself
awake each morning.

I believe it is the sound
of a field of brown wheat
just before the harvest.

Every man for himself, every woman
also for him. It is hard to tell anymore,
every saying folds into the next.

Therefore, extenuating.

Heartless, changeless, a slip of
music out of place. Two hands on the piano,
two songs slipping forth. Keith,
not jarring but slipping.

Living in time, experiencing time
as sound. How time breaks out
everywhere.

Interminable, the light moving forth,
and back at the table the light is gone.

The stiff flat leaves of the iris, and everything
they see and abandon. Wrinkled leaves
of chard, my fingers after a long hot soak
in the bathtub. A lingering scent of skunk.

It is not quite New Jersey, but
it is something quite like it.

After what sun I could hold in my hand,
I could remember when you were right here.

Therefore, debilitating.

Gerund, present participle, adjective,
the difference is lucrative.

Broadly sleeping, I
fail to appreciate the actions
of my body. In turn, this leads
to my sleeping less. Only
consciousness allows for
conscience, one of
the hard sciences,
I’m told.

She is always sleeping
when I am writing words away
to others. So her sleep (her
unconsciousness) allows these words
for me to make for you.

Take, for existence, this word.

Therefore, draping.

I consider sunlight a liquid
that soaks my sheer curtains each morning
and drips to the floor.

The example most often used
is that of the elephant that cannot
be distinguished from itself.

To ensure that, he wore a trim suit
and his beard trimmed. Or I did.

I’d id, she wished.
Ego ergo ego.
Super ergo sad.

It has come to the attention
of the management of this poem
that a certain archivist may wonder
what the deffil this means.

We exist in interlocking sequences
of action and thought through which
every bit of us is woven, and we cannot
escape this garment of our lives, and not always
does it seem to mean clearly what
it means,

and at those times it is
exactly what it is.

I should have read this at a literary lunch.

The applause is loud but no longer live
and comes at the end of the music
guiding these words.

Therefore, exterminating.