June Run
6 15-97
an impossible text.
Just try it. coming on like that.
A dictation from an absentee
mindlord leaving
his tracks
on the mindfields of his
strained amenuensis
***
Without a camp
on money’s
margins
where number
dwindles
into another
capacity of measure—
You cannot critique money, without
having a go at
the Mind of money.
(The mind of money thinks a world. . .or: only money
explains money)
A Revolution
through
the Possible:
what IS
issues the moment of Might Be—
sustains it proffers the Possible AS possible
NOT “it just might be possible” but
Possible Because It Is (old Robert Kelly text on this)
the Voice
will be distracted
from its stance
just this amount:
you can hear the inward talking
but you are unnerved by it, don’t
know how to pick it up
or let it out
of your problematical serenity
let it sound
and respond in kind.
Someone is walking outside the room
tweeking the lighting.
When she decides to come in here
this poem is done.
6-16-97
We are only
pretending
to write
this poem. Beyond
the scene
another operation
emanates causations.
The Crystal
Palace packaged with
“commodities” –[versus] packed
in an in-
con-
spicuous
dark
wet
mom and pop
shop in some
creole district
prof’ring rutebagas and other roots
“people eat rocks and stones
with the dirt left on them”
The aura
of course
has passed
from the magically charged and
enigmatical emblemality of an
epoch
long gone by (the pigs have won
What have I left behind here?
Shall I go back
and pick it up?—
go back
to the top of the page
and find the gaps
and fill them up
with thoughts I want to
propagate just now—
Ideas bleed across stillness—silent, still themselves.
Suddenly
a face lights up
in the center of the sunflower
Suddenly a fact
lights up
as a mind alights
upon it
a butterfly
floats down
on the bough
6-17-97
at night
the mind
that wants
to sing
brings
sleep along with it
—sounds of plaster peeling from old walls
find their way among the neural tissues
People in this culture talk to God [or the god]
in tough situations. Ask:
Must I do this or that, that or not?
And give their reasons
And God or the god replies
with a rattling of oak leaves
in the mind, that is,
in body’s subtle waftings, torrents, lights
Don’t just drift: Cut!
And start up new—
the railroad train in the night
ariving, passing
down by the ancient river
also behaving like that—
Something else is always going on
beside the delirium
of commodities—the names
things suffer themselves
to be buoyed up by—
the woodchuck cannot conceive it, nor can Midnight
our cat Midnight
operates
in non-conceptual eruptions
elegant
without anticipation
in spite of the seemingly limited ensemble of behaviors,
to her species general—
She likes the scent of roses now abloom
on the bush that merges with her bush—and sits for hours
imbuing herself with their fumes
What’s the point?
It’s there—YOU find it. I
have other things to do with
what awakeness is left to me
than fish out and make explicit
the thematic of my images and instances
marked in words and phrases now gone by.
What for instance?
something oblique to commodity
occult in the business of things—You go back there
6-18-97
tired enough
and the language
starts to tumble
toss and bite
finally
down on the meager eruptions
twinkling in the brain
down on concrete things:
a cup
on a desk’s
black blotter, a door key
without memory
placed by a dented
spoon
the cup—Chinese
with broken handle—broken off, that is
it has no handle
A key to a door
I’ve opened before
surely
but now
I do not know
what the key is for
I wish I had that trove of ancient keys
I bought from Stan the day I also purchased
clock parts in a big jug that tinkled
in a distinctive way when I jiggled it
and Stan
from the back of the store
heard the little sound
and new what it was
The concrete
according to Karl Marx
is the result of many
determinations
If you know what just this something is—
if you can say it, if you can give
more and more detail about it
that is because the thing itself is the focus
of many histories—here
a lot of thinking comes home to roost
What it hatches
is
your mind
its particular instances
but the concrete is
a wonder too [the instance of a not-so-readily-
discriminable thaumaturgy]
Fall to the bottom
of just what comes to mind or comes to hand –go with your attention—
don’t change anything
don’t try to know
anything
Allow just what wants to come up
liberally to do so
Don’t choose
Don’t solicit
Do not name
[try this as a counter methodology—another praxis to speculate the real]
only, on your part, be there, in your place
for whatever arises, with whatever determinations
and you will see, pace Marx, there are none…no determinations
***
the bastards.
Just that. The ratchets
have them
and so they’d
ratchet
Me. But my words
urge
away.
To another venue.