If Ever I Loved you then No Doubt I Gave you a Book


I’ll wait for you in the library,
any library… every library.
(Peter Greenaway – The Pillow Book)

Part I
(asleep at the foot of my desk)

A leaf captured and pressed
in some 1940 edition of someone
to be removed decades later
at a lonely desk and twirled
between the fingers – momentarily
on a raft on the slow rolling
dark waves of emotive memory –
sweetness and nostalgia
I remember you.
You have taken your place here in the libraries of time bound symbol
amid equations and formulae
music and architecture
your face and the facade of a cathedral
and the motion of fine aristocratic fingers
lightly on piano keys
color washes and the scent of fall
sloshing together in my head as I
roll over slow in a dream sweat
awakening briefly to a space with
too many dimensions. I reach for
a glass of water
and clear the syllables of your name
from my throat like a
rumbling cough.

Laying back and rotating my hips
I reach over my head and
twist my shoulders to stretch my spine,
this gesture is ancient.
I think that I did it
when I was a cat.

In bed with a beloved, or
the idea of a beloved
such a stretch stops time
turning and twisting so we become
wisps of smoke intertwining
and the world outside the window
stops when I slide over your haunch
and up your side, counting
your ribs reaching up
and cradling the back of your skull in my
hand and
pulling firmly down your neck.

The world outside my window stops.

This is one component of
the seizure of my heart that
first day when your image passed into me,
this is one component:
that deep within my whispering insides
a voice said that you could stop time. So
I hung about in the doorway. I lurked
and looked at you darkly. I
painted a picture of spring
the violence of flowers opening. I’ll bet
the nape of her neck
smells like
cinnamon.

That it would be you is deep in the punch cards
of recognition and pheromone
85 years ago no doubt
you would have taken my grandfather down.
I sat in his living room when I was a boy and
leafed through his high school year book
“Who’s that?” I asked, stopping on the
senior portrait of a lovely dark haired girl with mocking eyes.
“That,” he answered “was my first love.”

We are sitting atop the sliding plates of patterns
which unfold over centuries – neither you nor I are necessary
but our meeting was
and this is the terror of the blood
which rushed to my face
when I first greeted you and smiled. I may
walk down a street and turn left or right as I choose
but 10,000 years of endocrine pressure
sounded in my ears to remind me that
I am only an instance of a continuum, that the pieces
of which I am thrown together
contain truths of a different order
than that part of me which sorts and names truths.

So that, as best I guess
is what was occupying my mind
the first tenth of a second
that I knew you.

Pulling back into a ball from my stretch,
I sit up in bed in my
night darkened room
and look at the glowing digital display
of my alarm clock.
My lighter is where I habitually leave it –
its sparking reflects off
a thousand pieces of metal, plastic and glass
on my desk, floor and shelves.
The flame shows me a blurry hint
of the shapes of my belongings
and finally the cigarettes orange
cherry hangs in the blackness.

Your smell is still faint in my sheets
(or maybe a shirt left, or
a brush of your perfume on my coat)
and it rises and combines with
the warm nutty drag of tobacco.
(what year is this?)

From the death quiet blackness
I can hear the lilting range of your voice
singing and spontaneous.
Your infectious enthusiasm, your perspectives
and analyses all so different from my own.

I wince inwardly at the memory of some
shockingly stupid thing you said – and plot
how I can cajole you out of a hated counterposition.

I sort out the dreams I have made for us
from the ones we have made together,
how unlikely that any of them will be fulfilled
amid all this striving
to remain awake and alive – do you know
how fast time eclipses dreams?

I put out my hand
for you to pull me from this tangled mass
of seaweed, history, shame
I take a draught of your imagined voice
as a palliative for my
failure of vision.

There are days when you command me
to be more than myself, when
I see the gulf between us and
it speaks to all of my inner resources
all those powers I have never tried. On
these days the doors to the vaults of the world
are thrown open and I feel certain
that there is nothing which could not be accomplished.

I accept the ludicrous oversimplification
of the biographies of great men. I know
it all was vision and faith
and how is it possible that follow through
wouldn’t just explode out of such a focused intention.

There are days when you command me
to be more than myself, when
it seems likely that dream will triumph
over sleep, that the keys are in my pocket,
the combinations in my memory. There
are days when it seems there is more for me
than stale conversation within dingy walls,
that there is more to travel than
railway station bars than
slumping between slaughterhouses of time.

There are days when you make me believe
I am hanging on for something, not just
hanging on to hang on. Listening for a whisper
of the magic of your voice
I extinguish my cigarette.

Part II
(Renunciation)

Somewhere between the apperception
of your image by my eye
and the extension of my hand
I always manage to become confused
as to the nature
of space.

A child before a delicate menagerie
in a display case I push my hand
through the invisible barrier
get cut to fuck and knock
the fragile objects to the floor.

At home with the play of light and reflection
I run consistently afoul of the apparently simple
(or at least common) laws
of manipulation and property.

A bull in a china shop
the best strategy in the world for me would be
to sit very still and be tense the
nervous twitching of my tail
could do damage enough here

not to mention
my huge thick skull
and obscene top heavy defenses.

Drinking you in makes me want to talk fast
and a lot.
To keep you I have to keep my pace,
to stay shy of head spinning
closing on you fast
speaking a foreign language
but I don’t want to keep you.

I want to light you up
with the fire that you started in me.
I want to dance with you in a dervish dance
and kick everything clear to hell – the tables and chairs
and doors and walls
to stamp everything into kindling, light it on fire
and make love to you in a field.

You don’t want me to control you,
or you want to control me,
and I don’t even want to control myself.

I think we’re looking for different things here
or think we’re looking for different things
or everything got really complex all the sudden
or I never noticed how complex it all was to begin with
and please turn around
that’s not what I meant
that’s not what I meant at all.

I met starlight in the Midwest
when they kill the lights of the carnival tents
and we can sit on a hay bale
with a bottle of bourbon and
some imagination

I meant starlight and imagination and a trek
wide away from the smooth rolling lawns
and evenly spaced streetlights
of the suburbs.

Not the obvious tragedy of the suburbs of the city
but the suburbs of the mind –
our expectations.
The death ground in your head
between what you think you want
and what you think I want.

Let me make this really clear
so I can break out of this
made from television Disney special you think
I’m living in –
I’m not looking to marry my high school sweetheart.
I don’t need my opinions echoed or confirmed.
I don’t think any person is shallow or simple enough
to be described as half of another person
better or worse.

I want to wake up.

Some mornings, I want to wake up next to you.
Can you tell me
how to capture the cheese
without tripping the trap? Is there
anything other than our freedom we can put on the line
for comfort and inspiration?
Does this have to be about power, control
and fear?

Let’s turn from looking at each other
and push this circuit’s light (circus light)
on the world.
Right now
There are more interesting things to do
than thinking about what each other are thinking.
Weather we love enough
or too much.

I renounce my proprietary concerns in you – please
you there,
feel free to feel whatever you feel.

I don’t want anything that isn’t already there
and I don’t care if it’s on the way. I want to play
but not marbles, and not monopoly.

Let’s renounce romance. It was old
in High School – sex is great
but the cult that sprouted around it
needs some revisionary theory.

Acolytes of the primary current need to divest themselves
of Hollywood, of Middleton
of protectionist tariffs and provincial vision.
Two voids seeking fulfillment in each other
is a good sit-com
but Married with Children might be
a boring life.

I renounce being concerned with your needs. You’re a grown up
take care of that shit yourself.

At some point everyone has to choose
between the passionate exploration of phenomena
and the pleasure of torturing everyone around them
with their childhood insecurities.
This is called self-actualization.

I renounce love as a dodge from self-actualization.

Yes, Jocasta
I am sorry. But I feel no shock
nor even disgust.
I just didn’t know it was you, I
will not put out my own eyes.

There are, after all, other women.

I renounce shame.

Part III
(Literature)

Aphrodite is Hephaestus’s wife. Not
enough is made of this – that love
is the bride of the fusion of fire and work –
that the goddess of beauty is the bride
of the god of the forge.

Language is as plastic as metal
and the houses of the Gods,
which, we are told,
were built by Hephaestus,
are obviously built of words.

Where else did you discover them?

If ever I fell in love with you,
then no doubt I gave you a book.

It is in the pages of books that I come to know people,
because it is in the pages of books that I have come to know myself.

There is no greater experience than
the timeless empire of the inward. Thousands of people,
thousands of years of conversation most of it
having nothing to do
with television or sports.

The hardening and blistering work of language
is the work of my heart. This is the furnace and
the golden light I was born for. Everything you have given me
or ever will give me
is reduced and refined here.

Everything that is lasting and meaningful
that I will ever give to you
will come from here.

Conversation will always mean more than sex.
The act of writing is a passionate action –
the curves of the letters are the same
as the curves of your lips
this is why I write longhand. The sheets of paper
but more, the spaces within the paper (between
the letters) are the free play of the mind
opening into emptiness.
The fluidity, the graceful flow of energy
like a limber dancers gestures. Our world
is not constructed of language, but
that which constructs language, constructs our world – so
all the uncanny parallel structures
how thoughts can seem to speak of things
(thoughts and things both being
children of the mind, you see.)

If ever I fell in love with you
then no doubt I gave you a book. That
was an invitation to explore things too vast
to intense
for simple exchanges over coffee. People have carried on so
for millennia.

The Vedas, The Bhramanas, The Upanisads and the forest texts. The Torah and the Talmud, The Greeks and The Romans and The Church Fathers, philosophers and natural philosophers, there is no room to be glib here.

These forms come to us as well handled tools
designed by master craftsmen. They are
holy objects to be handled
with reverence.

If ever I fell in love with you,
no doubt I gave you a book.

And don’t think I can give you anything better.

I gave you a book to learn something of you. To see if we could dance
the sacred dances of a thousand peoples calling down and praising
foreign gods.

Neither crush nor marriage. I am working along a different axis here (which is why I know that I’ll surprise you
when you finally see me.)

I am searching for something called intimacy – a meeting between
individual and context a call and response
between points of view. A sharing with a breathing human
that engages me with
the warmth and purpose of the surface of my desk.

Can you come to me with intention?

I’m not fucking around here.

There is so much to be done
for people with open hearts and imagination,
there are worlds to be forged
from the fires we carry in our spine.
I am hungry for an exchange of energy
I am starving for an active vision –

Have you ever really wandered through a library?
There is a whole section on Marine Biology! Marine Biology!
There is History and Governance
and Medicine and Mathematics. There are people who spend
their whole lives building bridges. There are hundreds of languages,
there are billions of
others.

What would be the possibility if love were brought to bear on this?

What if the awakening I feel on beholding you
were awakening me to this? If we built of desire
a compound lens for
the focusing of aspiration
for the clarification and magnification
of vision?

Can you be for me a refiner’s fire, a purifying passage for my soul?
Can we make from our bodies a love
like the love of a saint
for God?

This warrant – I ask your trust.
Trust that I am saying something here,
that I am doing more than warming empty air because I’m lonely
or bored.
Trust that I have seen something of you
and that I am speaking to this. That somehow
amid all this tension
there is something to us that seeks more than mere survival
that seeks shared meaning
communication.

Part IV

(Dance)

Architecture, Music, and Sculpture
we come together here
dissipative structures of bloodlust
a shared inwardness.

While the food is growing
and the bombs are falling
we come together in a listening and an ordering
an ordering and a re-ordering.
Like this we sing,
like this we love. From the swirling flood
we have gathered these sticks and carved them
so there will be something for our children
and time will hold the shape of our passing.

There are cultures with three counting numbers
one, two, many. I have seen the coastline
to this continent. That the love of the other
is the anvil on which
civilization is wrought by will.

I cannot humble myself before God.
That seems to imply
some kind of effort is involved.
When on the beach at night I stood
and tried to wrap my mind around
the immensity of stars, and the distances between them
and a voice spoke in my ear saying
“Only a teaspoon of an ocean.”

I fell to my knees.

I fell.

Like this, humble.

I do not have faith in the ground.
That implies a lack of experience.
I stand on the ground.
It is the ground that it is, and on it are places where I stumble.

Like this, faith.

Also like this: Love.

I know this is a very dangerous concept
I’ve watched you struggle with it for years
but let’s play a game
let’s open to each other
as if we already knew
let’s open as if
everything were at stake
and there was nothing to lose
no lip service
no compromise
only the fate of the world
and you
as if something – anything (everything)
depended on our

(lights)
(camera)

*action*

The Barge and the Language of Currents

Life is a war
between love and freedom
and freedom always wins.

In the path of nature where telos
is chance and endurance
the cumshot always divulges
greater structures who float and dissolve yielding
greater structures who float and dissolve yielding.

And so in darkling golden light
barefoot
I make my way again to the waters edge
where a barge floats
on which leans assembled the
awkward structure of desire
dream and memory and the
twining hallways and
dark colors of paint, chipped
and tables with dusty legs
and rooms smoked with incense
and all in all a thousand faces
comments promises hopes and failures.

People are running out of my
nose and ears and finding
their cabins among the
shantytowns the garbage cities
the stitched together architecture
of waste and disappointment
which lures me in so often
when I am just walking in
an afternoon rain striving
to be more than myself.

They are laughing and winking
over their shoulders as they run
"I loved you as much as I could!"
I stall with sadness
"I also as I could loved you!"

Their passing is like a trill of greeting
only more hollow -- being followed by a silence
by a peace that lets an echo ring
(which by its nature means ending
or continuing)
They are all on the barge now
a toy at my feet.

I lay my right foot against the stern
and gently push
"Goodbye! Goodbye!"
and the raft of spirits is drawn
by the current
into the language of currents
"Goodbye! Goodbye!"
and it follows its own path
to oblivion while I stand
at the shore awash in reminiscence
until the image follows the
gold over the edge of the world
and I stand alone
in a peace of silence and
love of duration
facing the black black sea.

So a freind of mine and I are collecting fucked up and hostile ideas for tshirts. So far my favorite one is

"Fuck you wannabe" -- in trendy script -- like Massimo. I am open for other suggestions.

The Instrument Makers Shop

Through a sequence of almost invisible gestures
I have garnered a measure of respect
at the instrument makers shop.

I take 4 times as long as anyone else
in setting up the workpeice
dimensioning to an order of magnitude more precise than is required
(when possible.)

I wipe and oil the bench tools before and after use
and replace the chucks, collets and bits in order
often reordering others careless leavings.

For 8 months or so my coworkers teased me
about being too careful and everyone commented
that I seemed to take too long with things.

I never drove a cutting edge
into the vice or clamping table.

I never left shavings on the floor
or in the gears of the mill and lathe.

In two years time I broke a single bit.

Now, the instrument maker never looks over my shoulder.
I have access without asking to the better tools (the best are reserved
for him and I do not presume their use is my right
yet.)

And my clients frequently give me work saying
“I held this piece back for you
because it is important that it be done accurately.”

Acknowledgement was unspoken,
people just started treating me differently
in exactly the opposite manner
to what occurred
when I was drinking.

I saw the answer.

I was with a girl, but I don't know who it was. We were working together to resolve something, but I'm not sure what it was. We were in a neighborhood that reminded me of the neighborhood where I grew up. I remembered something - a network of rooms and tunnels from a dream when I was young, and I found the current building (the one which had evolved from the youthful dream). It had walls which were overgrown with vines and plants, and towered in the air. It was spread out wide kind of like a temple and kind of like an apartment complex. I left the girl in the residential neighborhood, and went to investigate the temple. An old slender Asian man, who was simultaneously a fat Asian madam or concierge was at the door, and we had an ambiguous interaction from which I was able to determine that there were rooms available in the complex. I knew that the room we would be renting (because I was aware that I was somehow renting it for the girl) was not the room from my childhood dream, but I also knew that I would be able to explore the complex more fully if I lived there, and that the tunnels and passageways were in fact in the complex. I could see several old wooden doors that suggested places to begin exploring. I went back to the neighborhood to get the girl. From the neighborhood we saw a fireworks display which might have been a small holiday celebration, and might have been the end of the world, and then we went back through the gardens and walls to the complex. When we arrived there, we saw people walking through the hallways - they were all old, and the man/woman concierge was nowhere to be seen.

The architecture of the complex was a combination of old mission architecture, and Japanese temple architecture. Everything was very lush - lots of living things. Lots of dirt and mud, but in a friendly way - not in an obnoxious way. There were many little gardens and ponds. There was a view of the surrounding countryside, which looked like a lightly settled township - still lots of green and open space, but with lots of people moving around nonetheless. The place seemed old in centuries, but meant to last for millenniums - it had a very intricate texture of paint and plaster and dirt and mold, but the structure seemed firm and safe. The sun was shining, and the air was about 70 degrees.

Spring

I can not even describe to you how happy my roses make me. Every one of them is different, and I behold them (there is no other word) when I stand before them and I contemplate and take inwards their branching and their color and the textures of their leaves and they become individual to me. When they reach out with new growth I am happy, and when they suffer rust and aphids and worms and thoughtless breakage I am angry and hurt. Their shapes live inside me like the shapes of my friends. I greet them each with silent names, recognition of each plants individuality. Each plant is an individual, as much as I am an individual. Each of my roses has a destiny which has intertwined with mine as much as a person might – I know them as well (and often times better) than I might know a co-worker or a lover. I consider their well-being at night before I sleep. I wonder how they will do in the world without me when I die. I anticipate their experience of spring with a clenching in my heart that takes me in the direction of tears. Spring – the original referent for resurrection. The season of the continuance of life, and the continuity of life. Spring is not a metaphor for celebration, it is the original celebration – we are festive in imitation of it. The blooming of the roses in spring is pure – it is life exulting in itself.