52. The Father of Granite

a spiral in motion | moving from here | to hear | les destins du bal | the structures form

intricacies of differentiation | alors | my music comes from emptying | the body of

its sound | the mind of its reticulation | en la ultima vez sin verguenza | avec plaisir

I lose myself | in the voice of speaking | la ultima voz | last breath for the pirate of words

visual complication | oral simplicity | the voice is breath | the page is ink | we see

only so far | but farther still | we twirl within it | we escape through it | if Ingres had

his violin | we would play her all day | and not mind the tedium you can remember

that piece | memory turned to embers | turned to ash in nomine di Padri | the music still

returns | the music of it | but in pieces | here a vowel roll down the hill | here it rests

broken and busted | the last squirt of sound from the saxophone | what passes for

passing for something | the integrity of integers relaxed | locus the focus yet we are all

placeless and stateless | exigencies require additional exigencies | and yet we cannot

make it | so we fall | we plummet | we perish | losing grip with the sheer cliff | falling

not flailing | past granite and chert | wondering if the magic of ACME will save us before

death rushes up to catch us | the gasp of breath before breathlessness | lungs laid low

and motionless | yet | just | another intake of air and the body | recovers | the voice

returns | hoping for that last | or preantepenultimate | chance to regain footing | feel

the Coltrane saxophone | at its saxiest | to believe in the possibility of possibility

strange how we forget | what we remember | yet forget everything else | the bassoon

such a clown | give us the whiteface makeup of the clown | tears rolling down the face

 

heterogenous language matter | the drum of the voice | the whine | the vibrato warbling

just before the heart bursts | and the contralto | dies with the last breath of her voice

yet the singing doesn’t die with the voice | but the ear | the poet is a replacement for

that small person | cornered in darkness | who listens to the words erupting | and takes

them in | to inhabit their own body | corporeal yet celestial | human yet post-human

a mind that manages the words | without managing their meaning | this subterfuge is

(indeed) | the ninth and final archon | of a dying society | a culture without words

one without meaning | we read the sky for signs | the sky is cloudless textless wordless

yet we await | perception | neither of eye nor ear | but beating heart and breathing chest

leave me in the pulpit of the contraries | and I will make the meaning for you | though

you must make your own | what sense of sound does the sight of that work make of you?

if I had a million vermilions to choose from | I could not find one to match your tenor

the deep tension of the voice | the tender slippings of the whisper | the tense fear

of remaking the unmade | the malleable | the motion towards a sense of diversion from

an everyday life where words | carry no meaning not rote | yet there is the rose of

the voice rising to meet | the sound slipping to pleat | the ear straining to complete

a sense | or the sound | or the meaning | (a caption?) | the breath that radiates the

whatever it is that we mean in the huffing of breath out of our frail bodies in the air

evaporating around us into less that the | oxygen that maintains us | the heaving that

sustains us | just long | enough | extended across time just enough | to allow us a small

 

a romantic upsurge of | the memory of a moment | the lost corpuscle of a forgottenness

the urge to expand | to populate | the terror at the failure | inadequate movements

toward dance | the word into | some form of movement | to move the eye | the ear

the deadened heart | the irascibility of hope | all splurge no wait | lost in the maze of

its inability to believe | in itself | we cling to the rockface only | to keep from dying

the heart beats hard as a rock | the head aches for what the head aches | the breath we

take is the breath | we take away from | the earth | swinging through dark nothingness

holding us down | from flying away | giving us a perch | purchase in the hard rock

awaiting the chance to allow us to fall | down and away | down and away | a note of

music | as we begin our descent | there may be no forest floor but we will hit it hard

clarity in the fact of failure | our distraught personalities | each one the same one

we perceive ourselves as | multiplicities of unity | not random generators of responses

“this is a | good meal” | “thank you for | the good company and the virtue of my peers”

our loss is our only gain | for we have no natural gainsway | no rubber to hit the road

with | we simply exist | as automatic progenitors of purpose | without intent | we run

in order to find the perfect | place to sit | motion is the best replacement for inactivity

breathe without saying a word | think without hearing a word | be without a word

the articulation of a thought | necessitates the reception of an articulation therefor

believe in the meaning of what you say | and you will disappear into a cloud of thought

it is a statement | honestly asserted | that you have the time you need | to be yourself