with a note on Lunar Chandelier
Collective
It is not enough to remember
R.K. –The Loom
There’s more to memory than the
branches
there is more than the clearing
such as only a clearing could
conceal
I forgot to turn the mirror off
hence the propaedeutic blonde
spider
of Le Pendu comes to mind
suffering offering frightening
at the gates of childhood
ready to reverse the Bar Mitzvah
a spider blonde enough to try
to match a verb beyond
the thresholds of the sentence
he guards as a premonition
of my lover’s presence.
I hold the spider in my hands
and watch it grow lovelier.
It is not enough to remember.
One must assume the posture and
features
to view the behavior
assume peculiar management
one must remember nothing
the leaves of a tree that isn’t
there
opportunistic goals
that back down when you stare
a persistence and not a presence
but in this absence a presence
as if leaves were only a
presentiment
awkward answers I hold close
it is not enough to remember
without that willful release
where the winds of the heart blow
in the absence of memory
down its footholds, not for us
but to us
the lover yearns through and
beyond love
a revery sheds its leaves
in undivided purposiveness
I remember nothing
in the absence of memory the
leaves flash.
Arc
1.
The
sun paused
for successive
nights of pleasure.
Pleasure
dominates time.
Time’s
provenance
in
dalliance lingers.
2.
An
Egyptian goddess
I
can’t remember who
climbs
up the stairs
it’s
all in the cup
the
balance of her
everything
we touch knows that.
3.
Allergens
waft in
at
night. The house
opens
against me.
I open
against me.
Remember
this
when I
come to your door.
4.
An oil
smooth
as stone
as
wild
storms
from the wood.
5.
I
chase sunlight
across
the room
the
way water seeks a level.
Any
law is preferable to reason:
release
your facts into the wild.
6.
Don’t
know what’s next.
Get
rid of logic
the
fortune telling
those gorgios
still believe in.
7.
I
sleep, but never
at
night. This small
sun of
prayer.
8.
Pull
the light out
one
ray at a time.
This is
the crown of thorns,
radiance
of self-control
owls
love to land on.
9.
Water
flows through
the
air, white noise
whispers
from the sides
of its
palette:
between,
between,
the
salmon up their ladder leap.
10.
Expect
what
you can’t accept.
Rain. And
more rain. And more.
11.
Matter
is everything that says yes
accrues
qualities
theories,
gods.
So it
is a body
like
ours that cannot lie.
12.
I will
tell you less
than
you have ever known.
13.
Blue
birds make a harpsichord.
The golden
leaves
have
returned.
The
golden leaves
do not
fall.
14.
If you
lie
but
you’re not sure why
then
it’s not a lie.
15.
Chamomile
and ambergris.
Rare
fragrance over
from
the shore of sleep,
roses
bred for smell
that
cannot be seen.
16.
Morning
rushes to meet
the
smallest bird
impulse
that will press
the
pen or hex,
morning
as various demons
built
to suit.
Technology
is their language.
17.
Ask
what it knows
and it
will see you, and you will see
others
who want to be seen.
Perseus
I sat
on the
stone and left
sore,
thinking of gorgons,
the
enemy is already within.
18.
Reading
to yourself
so I
can hear.
19.
Cricket
drone
without
saliva
without
the white blooms of water.
Insects
guard the door to the vowel’s flowers
treasure
too soft to touch.
20.
I bob
in the salt bath
evenly
with the invisible.
21.
Language
can’t forget.
A
trail of hungry ghosts.
22.
Try to
notice nothing
tame
the nameless ones.
23.
The animal
cures
as
mesmerists showed,
down
through Reich.
Break
up the family,
release
the gods.
24.
Waves
of letters
in the
fluid pull of spelling
I
follow in a glamor
run
with cats and dogs
down
the narrow street.
The
doctor who was also a zombie.
25.
You
write this
when I
hear you listen.
26.
Green
arrogance green
scepter
of the Hidden Hand
that
sends concept
to
steer my thought.
Syncretism
is free labor.
27.
Fragments
are the creation
thrashing
of the dead
who lead
us in the dance.
28.
Never
asserted but reasserted.
Listen
and it gets louder.
29.
Structure
shorn of its resemblance,
a
haunted cave of thought
amid
the sea of resemblance.
30.
Die
Farbenlehre, Color Theory
impracticable
principles
that cannot
not be true.
Science
as ritual.
31.
In our
old-timey daliance
we’d
watch the waves of magnetism
undulant
machine to which
spirits
and such as ourselves are drawn.
Be
very very quiet, and
something
always comes.
32.
What
you notice
makes you
visible.
Mind
and seeming.
33.
The
poem admires symmetries
alchemy
believes in them.
34.
An arc
of days, deer, years,
some
counted and some not.
An
apartment building
its
rooms tuned
as
Lamont Young pointed out.
I lose
the object and
gladly
mingle
hearts
and rooms and guests, caress,
lustrous
for others.
[EDITOR’S
NOTE. To point out that the poetry,
while sufficient in itself, is of interest too for the circumstances of its coming
publication, under the auspices of Lunar Chandelier
Collective
(LCC), a self-defined community of younger poets largely quartered in the
Hudson valley of New York & with close ties to Robert Kelly and others of
his generation & mine among those sharing publication. Writes Panitz, as co-founder of the
collective and the press: “LCC is a living entity that represents to some
extent a work in common, a work brought about by individual labors that reports
something ‘outside’ of us, that we praise together, steal from, return to. My
work with LCC is a matter of working with what I consider to be viable paths of
inquiry. I suppose I have not been able to shake a certain Renaissance penchant
for truth. I’m always after it, though my vision of it is totally and
purposefully subjective, and I don’t find it necessary to believe myself.”
The realization thereby of a “work in
common” answers the ambition of many of us over the decades & with some
hope too for the times to come. (J.R.)]
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