( Post 11.14.09. Illustrations. )

BIGGER THAN you could heft in two arms, this gray ball, concrete, embossed with the silhouette of the contintents — through this ball passes a boundary that is hard to see but real enough see how these people this country call themselves after the equator. And it tears me apart how I am spreadlegged over the mystery, tugged where I am so south and tugged north an invisible string she tugs at me stop please continue.

other lines of note :

The ten foot length of a red-tailed boa which Rodrigo and I spread between us my end drooping it was that heavy.

The resolute forearm, paw curved, fried, unconnected to anything else was a guinea pig now an imaginary boundary on the table between my father and I and I have crossed it.

NA TO SA PI (Sun the Elder, Blackfoot)

“The final two syllables of the name mean grey or white hair of an old man. But they also aesthetically imply ‘to see’, as in to gain insight.” His bright rifle at his cheek nearly he brought down the sun he blinked it away he could see inside precisely what medicine I need.

WHAT PIECES of work, while I am whiling, pining in the spruce, these beavers. Sawing willow they moan to themselves. There is this other sound, though. Swatting the black pond THWACK and in answer the whole skim of ice swings on its hinge attached as it is to the bank.

THE CHILDREN’S children. We had a week in the city with which to consider the arts along side the children from the neighborhood. We made both bugs and people, jumped up and down on the carpet. We did not use our inside-voices. Then we wondered aloud where do children come from.

ADDENDUM to an essay on cosmogony. In the desert how does one divine eggs? How does everyone fit inside?

VERY MUCH like a vessel in which you have two choices. Spread a length of baling wire and, hands rust-striped, sew your seat back up. Or follow the instructions. Then, of a sudden, everything turns into instruction. Do you put the seat cushion to your chest and clasp forearms through the elastic straps provided? And if the plastic bag does not inflate, is the oxygen still sweet smelling? Have I left my head between my knees? Langurs (languorous) hang from the rhododendron trees, their fixed black lips bulging with instruction. At the falls, pedalboats in the concrete lake (rebar showing, rebar always showing, in case we need to add a second story) turn only circles. And the tiny tinny music, out the tired speakers, rings off the concrete; you recognize the words but the grammar gyres up with the spray from the falls, lit by the sun, and falls apart.

TWO suggestions concerning hair.

HOW it is. We find, here, that we are moved by a general power of description.

IN THIS singspiel they walk through a pyramid of fire and then a pyramid of water and then marry. The natural man is a birdcatcher, one of People’s one hundred sexiest. Pyramids do not concern him. Fig cake, some reasonable drink, a little wife — What else can you buy with birds?

Can you buy a birdheaded boat full of boys full of suggestions, ready to toss petals when called for? That’s what we want to know.

TO : EB ; love : the people.

TO : MOUSE; from : the people.

A COMIC

THE PILLS : Assuming you have felt like gray pastry, filled with gray jelly, poorly-filled, and look how you ooze on your friends.

Or like you are trapped in a gallery with an indifferent coyote.

Or like a gray coyote asleep among newsprint and trashy pastries.

THE STORY IN WHICH : A pale phlebotomist picks his way down a gray alley, and a squirrel half run over once twitches his tail more like a keychain now, and would such a keychain be lucky? He is young and he sucks blood. He is young and wishes he could love, as he walks down the street, everything. A sparrow might alight on his open palm, peck a crumb of cookie from lunch. Instead of sparrows : rain. Instead of love : a warm feeling, where he remembered his scarf this morning because winter is coming and it should be colder. A scarf makes a big difference.

For one thing, his boyhood was by and large scarfless. The weather would not permit it. This new place, its scarved denizens parading around the brick downtown, calls out for them. Don’t forget yours. Maybe a sign of musical taste or time spent in another country or maturity or the semblance of maturity. The man in the public library, polo-shirt and suitcoat, white hair wild, who stood up to the payphone then sat back down, up again, back to his seat, he was with-scarf. Even as he accosted the nurse’s son on his way to the children’s reading corner—“We pay a different dividend, don’t we son, you and I?”—even as he gestured, his scarf tails flapped significantly out of his lapels. The nurse smiled, grabbed his son’s little hand tighter, their hands set off by the bright leaves through the window. A scarf would not have looked good with his scrubs, he made a good choice that afternoon. But he probably owned one anyway.

The phlebotomist wonders if there are more squirrels by the public library or if it only seems so. The leaves in the library parking lot are always restless, a trailing silhouette always bounces across the bare limbs reaching for the raingutters, and does squirrel-love count, because that is easy to muster on account of the fur on their faces, the depthless eyeballs shining through. When it is winter, actually, the river through town will be that color, until it fully freezes. Then it will look more like the skin of clients who sell too much blood, tired college students, barely emerged from their hooded sweatshirts. But it is impossible to give every drop, impossible to collect it. He pierces a lot of people everyday and it isn’t surprise he feels staring at the small stain, tiny mistake, darkening his shoe.

BRAZEN : “Drifting occurs whenever I do not respect the whole, and whenever, by dint of seeming driven about . . . like a cork on the waves, I remain motionless, pivoting on the intractable bliss that binds me to the text (to the world).”

“One stands up, sits down. The great way is none other than that.”

“I think the American people understand these descriptions of gardens.”

The diagram I wanted to show you.