Monday, October 18, 2021

The Grit of a Damp Trowel Explores My Mouth


Yesterday in mocowoods, lots of fall foliage photos upcoming provided I'm not shot by deer hunters, more details below the links I owe you
My new car, or: The Most Privileged and Complicit Motherfucker Ever
Poster Child of motherfucking Democrats
Nazi roots of the neoliberal state
US elites' corruption compares to Opium War?
The problem with America's semi-rich
Why we can't have nice things
Maggie's weekly links
Avedon Carol's occasional links
Attitudes toward the locals
Bicycle ride with Kate Bush song
{ feuilleton }'s weekly links
Tomorrow we Kensington to Frederick to Hancock to Breezewood to Toledo to Ann Arbor to Grass Lake to Munith to the same AirBNB four miles from the house three of the crackers who plotted to kidnap and kill the Michigan governor live, it's peak fall there (and will be peak fall on Pennsylvania Turnpike over and through the Laurel Highlands), if I have to go to Michigan to see my daughter I'm giving myself two springs and two falls
Planet buying us neon orange hats and vests today, every trail on public land in Michigan is open for hunting, hikers get shot all the time, hunters not held responsible, hikers accept the risk, I'll let you know if I'm shot but only if I survive




TO TELL OF BODIES CHANGED

Jana Prikryl

Having desired little
more than the

arrival of the little more
that arrives,

outside our window a cypress
of model proportions.
Its patience seems to widen
the nights we sleep in Rome.

Warm flags draw a tortoise,
it scrapes too near.
Our friends hurry over when they hear,
exclaiming over its mute
resolute
distinctness and helpless slow efforts to flee.

Density pours into swallows and shadows:
spilled with abandon each morning,
begins then the slow work
of receding.

The joints announce their new allegiances.
Metaphors swarm the surfaces of things.

Night broken into, it's the sub rosa
singling out
I ought to have expected
from Fra Angelico's small panel
among others,
the souped-up full-spectrum wings
combined with a mood of reverent submission
in both figures
warning of experience
yet to come.

Starting now she'll reason with herself
deliberately
(imagine bulbs expecting stars
for effort!), aware of being always overheard,
subject to unprecedented measures
of integrity, like an author.

While a substance of landscape, mineral,
leaches into blood vessels
quietly steadily, meaning in this case
nothing is damaged;
extravagance of umbrella pines
propping their fingers under the bonus horizons
of the hills, redundancies
boosting the city's resemblance to itself.

A painter once squared himself against a difficult question
and said no one could just create
a landscape,
but isn't it true
that expectation builds a neighborhood
and there is nowhere else that you can live.

It was possession, turns out, by a force whose intention
touched the first body alone, a body changed
again precisely to its own form,
a very special intention.
 
Alloyed
discretion, the grit of a damp trowel
explores my mouth, at leisure
determining
the candor that cavity
is good for.

2 comments:

  1. speaking of automobiles

    1/i note that consumer reports gives the subaru impreza a 'recommended' checkmark and a 'green choice' leaf - whereas my own aspirational next car if any gets a checkmark, but not a leaf - there's still a while until that buying decision needs to be finalized


    1.5/of the handful of cars i've bought, i've gotten only one sedan - the other were hatchbacks or equivalent


    2/i wrote this decades ago

    Zen, 6th century C.E.

    1. A special transmission outside of the scriptures.
    2. No dependence upon words or letters.
    3. Direct pointing at the soul of man.
    4. Seeing into one’s own nature and the attainment of Buddhahood.

    Volkswagen, 20th century C.E.

    1. A standard transmission underneath the chassis.
    2. Strong dependence upon gasoline.
    3. Goes where it’s pointed.
    4. Seeing out through the windshield and the attainment of Buddhahood.

    ReplyDelete