Gallery window of an otherwise empty gallery and I'm surprised not to find my reflection in the glass with the cars parked on the street. I was sure I saw myself feeling buried alive by whatever process left the body cast off for me like this. "I am inside it," I try not to think.
***
from The First Book of Urizen:
7. From the caverns of his jointed Spine,
Down sunk with fright a red
Round globe hot burning deep
Deep down into the Abyss:
Panting: Conglobing, Trembling
Shooting out ten thousand branches
Around his solid bones.
And a second Age passed over,
And a state of dismal woe.
8. In harrowing fear rolling round;
His nervous brain shot branches
Round the branches of his heart.
On high into two little orbs
And fixed in two little caves
Hiding carefully from the wind,
His Eyes beheld the deep,
And a third Age passed over:
And a state of dismal woe.
***
Los in a panic makes form, forms body, while Urizen sleeps. Skull first, then spine, heart, veins, nerves (from the nervous brain), and finally eyes gazing out from caves in a cave.
**
Six of disks, C. After crisis, milk and honey.
***
[full of woe]
Wednesday's child. Not as they say. Full, yes, but of good reasons to let go of details that otherwise keep me up at night. Responded to four emails if that and made a phone call between sessions no one answered. The rest, full of books--Blake, O'Hara, The Four Quartets--and conversation, all day. Howard and I sat in the sun to talk about student poems. Mary took part of the office squeeze toy with her--part of its pretty yellow insides--which was like sending her off with a creation story of some sort. The one where the poet lets go of long work and makes something else. Or looks at the sun. Urizen perplexed all of us but I love the poem and loved attempting to give it to them. And they showed up, and showed up ready for anything. Even to say "I'm lost" or "why are you looking at me, I don't know." They are unafraid, they laugh a lot, and from that point I almost believe I can show them anything. I can say I don't know either.
***
The Drummer
Baraban! baraban! this is a quick
stiletto bounced tight in tin casket!
The devil you say! Wicked the way
my aunt had to tell me after uncle
rolled over and over inside the locomotive
bellowing like a walrus's guffaw!
Baraban! Tighten till it pricks through
keen as a blonde feather, the saint!
the rib-tickler! oh!oh! the dromedary
sharp-tooth, swaying its all-muscle belly,
has all the luck. What a whale! it careens
over the tracks, dropping bison cakes.
That's the way it was on the prairies,
with a baraban! every two minutes and
the red man knocking us off like turkeys.
Oh uncle, you died in a roadster coupe
fighting the Pawnees and Banshees, you did,
and I'll drum you over the hill, bumpily,
my drum strongly galumphing, kangaroos
on all sides yelping baraban! for you.
~Frank O'Hara
***
A student sent this. My father goes by Charlie.
WATCH THIS MOVIE
***
