the last days of queen anne

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horse flood

(dayton, oh : april, 17 1978)

here there is a standing gravestone with nothing more than my name inlayed upon it : this past saturday i sat with a doctor who recorded my blood pressure & then inquired, are you certain that you are alive...right now? : holy holy holy is a home blessed with the arrival of a new life : & handsome handsome are the eager spring dogwoods now flowering : the others, the cherry blossoms, are quicker to turn to shit before summer : several months ago, while driving through a north seattle neighborhood with _____, we both confessed our immaculate dream of a domestic mysticism : we pictured our separate lives within the walls of each house passed : but i knew the face of the woman with me, just behind the doors, both of us sitting at the inherited dining room tables & the ones in the kitchens, crafted from antique woods that i reclaimed from rotting farmland barns over the course of several consecutive sundays : she would walk during these days : take the $1,200 baby stroller for a walk : wheels taller than any baby : at 6 i will still suck my thumb : at 14 i will break it : 4 years later i'll write a bad check to fill my nose : i'll lick the collected dust from the backside of a toilet bowl and not feel my face for hours : each of the world's flowers is made with more purpose than i (st.) : the heart knows no warning signal (m. de chazal) : every so often my brain begins bouncing off the inside walls of my cranium before finally settling again :

a capacious oak tree began to fill my belly at a most fragile age : & now a capricious horse bellies up to its trunk seeking shade : those first days had long since squeezed my mind's eye dry : i'm now left with only these two-- snow-blind & listing far across a black prairie :

a sea, bordered by blue windows

(seattle, april 2011)

a true story: 2 priests walked into the bar last night : the tall one was from miles city, montana, & he told me his fantastical story-- the story of how his family arrived there & continued, steinbeck-style, as migrant farmers, to the pacific northwest : i told him a tired 33 year long tale, van winkle-style, of my arrival in seattle & he proclaimed my path unbelievable-- untenable at best : i asked him, worried-like, how one might go about making up a life & the conversation ended :

outside, down the street, a red fox squirreled around a collection of greening trees & leafed eastward : home, perhaps :

(seattle, april 2011)

she dreams of, & paints, fruits & vegetables from different parts of the country : a georgia squash resting on a california lettuce of acrylic : maybe a north dakota carrot nearby : & all of washington's onions rolling toward the ocean across a pale dirt :

when without paints she cuts up & pastes collages of the same sort : i once witnessed her place a pear floating in the sky among some painted clouds : it was raining seeds : & that was the last of the collages :

(seattle, march 2011)

in the morning she wakes up thinking of all the empty busses rounding the city at night, when no one is looking : when she breathes in, the street lights flicker and cut out : when she opens her eyes the quiet busses fill with wanton babies caught in conversations of paramount concern : will living always seem a rhetorical act of incompletion? asks one, while looking out the window : must we teethe? says another : & finally, in chorus, why not flowers all year round? :

(seattle, march 2011)

dear whoever is listening : i'm not too frightened of now or where my mind might take me tomorrow, but i'm terrified of you not noticing : oh, & whenever i see a pit-bull my body does exactly what it's not supposed to do : i tense up & my heart starts doing kart-wheels, which makes pit-bulls a bit wary of me : but as for us, next time you see me looking out toward the boats, or up to the trees, or alone, looking to the floor on a bus-- let's take special notice of each other : & make this our secret :

rounding the cape

(not february, but march entering april)

last night i let another woman into my bed who spun me epileptic through the rain & left me loveless this morning : now the cathartic streaming of intestines stretches straight backwards through my mouth stringing me south, toward the pole : all of the mind's ideas have long been scraped inside-out and left humorless to the galley's scoff : over and over along the red ice at dusk, they say either do it, or leave me with my own skin shrinking past history : I have no longer the desire to caress anymore the day's pleasures, nor drive them all mad with being : Amundsen bellows catastrophic from behind us: Much lay between that moment and the next time we should see her. The mighty ocean on one side, and the unknown region of ice on the other; so many things might happen. Her flag floats out, waves us a last adieu, and disappears. We are on our way to the South. :

& in the street, all the children run, mocking the midnight procession of pigs, shouting, cassoulet! cassoulet!

the buttressed self: an essay in frames by B. A. Bertrand (for c.l.y.)

Septet, 1964-- Merce Cunningham coursed into his 45th year as I settled into my 12th. 31 years later he articulates his 76th by quietly stating, I like to make steps. Even when walking I notice the periods dropping to ground. One foot remains briefly still while the other is pushed forward by either momentum or will. & Nijinsky some years prior: I merely leap & pause.

While growing up in Camaret-sur-Mer, in the nearest home to that of my family, lived a woman who endured to the suspected age of 112 years old. (It was never necessary to explore the reality of her exact years, as truth rests best outside of accuracy.) She maintained an intimacy of face despite the years. Every ten a new wrinkle would appear.

The dead were pushing this.

I have but 2 wishes & a cache of insignificance. Dance is an art in space & time. The object of the dancer is to obliterate that. Merce, I didn't understand, then.

For several thousand years the earth stood still in a state of silence. Copernicus revised the silence set unflinching by Ptolemy-- Galileo saw all as only pause in time and set the universe stepping. He proclaimed the earth leaping...in circles. And yet, it moves.

The best thing is to be able to continue. A dialogue that only follows in fragment. A woman thrust to light from citrus & razor wire. A foot perfect in place. Two feet as even keel.

Our time is as loving as a thought left. If I knew one as certain, the Earth might move.

He is animalistic...spotlighting pedestrian & mundane movements of day/life...stripping & de-sexing the often-times sexed-up, windward leaning, & dramatic big-moon choreography of Diaghilev who believed that art is a process that results in finality.

Bullocks.

As a rejection of George Balanchine, in which there is nothing Modern. 1953. Black Mountain. Charles Olsen. The energy transfer from connection to production to apprehension by audience. Merce: Dance doesn't follow a story line.

My sister/ my sister/

my new sisters:

but only one

rises in the horizon

red like fire

fierce for flame

The one is pulled by orange peels, and more awake than the hundred others.

It is her predicament to feel. & to do this alone for a while.

& feel & feel & feels.

Alone, an unlikely keel supporting the whole. A scaffold stretching out electric across grey water.

as a darkness now/ I could have destroy me/ the dictionaries of the world/ & still not know how--

We both found a way to move impossible for our selves/ crying in a Volvo/ we chose to speak/ inexplicable.

37,455 sans terre