The Once Invisible Conclusion

Acknowledgments

noreply@blogger.com (Scott) — Sat, 23 Jun 2007 02:45:00 +0000

Thanks to the editors of the following publications in which some of the poems in this blogbook first appeared:

Dirigible : “Chorus of Wild / Flowers behind Eyes” and “Blue Sun / Set the Boundaries Never”

Gestalten : “Erect Tongue / Muffled Church”

Rio : “Phoenix Records”

Shattered Wig Review : "Translated into a Finger on the Lips”

Tight : "Dawn Overflows Some Distance From Here”, “The Once Invisible Conclusion” and “Light Dies in the Eyes”

Ugly Duckling : "One Infinity at a Time” and "A Long Way From All Comes One”

A Note on the Poems

noreply@blogger.com (Scott) — Sat, 23 Jun 2007 02:42:00 +0000

The pieces gathered here were made in 1996 under the influence, particularly, of John Ashbery's The Tennis Court Oath, Kenneth Rexroth's early poems (such as "Into the Shandy Westerness" and "Easy Lessons in Geography") Rexroth's translations of Pierre Reverdy, Joseph Ceravolo's selected poems, whatever I was able to get my hands on by Tristan Tzara, and a poetics perhaps best summed up by the editors of Dirigible as “a phenomenological lyricism which recreates the texture and logic of interior experience.”

June 2007

noreply@blogger.com (Scott) — Sat, 23 Jun 2007 02:36:00 +0000

Then there is a time in life when you just take a walk
and you walk in your own landscape.

—Willem De Kooning

The Once Invisible Conclusion

noreply@blogger.com (Scott) — Sat, 23 Jun 2007 02:35:00 +0000

when even the dawn’s fingers are blue
fruits without stems
the rubber seeds of revelation
near a glass of water on the kitchen counter
breathing like a plastic bag in the wind
my obelisk has reached into
the blue horizon’s ripping clouds again
however gnarled the grass may be
the opium of creation
and every year waiting for correspondence
when I feel gory heaven I feel as if
awakened under chain or fork
can only grunt as Rocky Balboa would
the swampy streets send up
cigarette butts misunderstandings dark glass
whatever constitutes my soul today
through walls of collapsing
the fruit blue on the window sill
carry the mirror with both hands
through a cave like the future
a lichen of blood on my shadow
dice rattling overhead
I pace to exterminate nostalgia’s gray carpet
eyes barbecued to a temple
gathered only a prehistoric amusement
grace found in bridges of laughable news
a blue spot growing on my belly

Light Dies in the Eyes

noreply@blogger.com (Scott) — Sat, 23 Jun 2007 02:34:00 +0000

gypsy tune of the evening’s eyelashes
over the lush creeping hills
a black strand of hair on a paper plate
algebraic shadows of solemn trees
bedspring breaths in the trenches
of both fountains of the present
I throw my crayons at the moon
the sky as affectionate as any canvas
a suicide window opens into
the way an empty suitcase looks
and all the rivers desire young lovers
for a chorus to fool around with
a garden of half-erased words
the dogs on the horizon come good-byes
as lightning laughs all down my arm
I am the undercurrent and compass
of the tune blue in the face of absence

Dawn Overflows Some Distance From Here

noreply@blogger.com (Scott) — Sat, 23 Jun 2007 02:33:00 +0000

a dog’s bark from the bow of day
the wine has left a bloody variable on my t-shirt
I keep a pebble tucked in my change pocket
maybe dead plums are my passion
and what is in me burns like a billion years
library of automatic pain
stairs under orris and anesthesia
the sand is green the moon
umbrellas and various other angels
on winds that deny the female sky
eyes throat and nose on fire it’s lithium season
I snarve and the horizon smiles
always bound and crowded the body’s child
a pair of upright eggs mind and object jump
together in the house where the noise is always real
there’s no mirror like a dirty pebble
the pathos of bongos because it is yesterday
already my angel is asking me to
but I can’t even landscape the epiphany
from windows and dreams breath lingers longest
I’d like to locate each small wing
lose it from above or below and begin my special effects
pressing the right keys and turning
myself into writing a poem at the moment I die
to be bewildered Siddhartha Gautama

One Infinity at a Time

noreply@blogger.com (Scott) — Sat, 23 Jun 2007 02:32:00 +0000

no shadow falls the sun is parsley
in passing there is one tough
I always feel for all the marbles
snatch up the lamentations
clams in my eyes so candles oozed
faded into the banks of the sky
the footsteps smell like gutters
are no longer forgotten
a bonfire running across the floor with away
converging into shame
is etched in the candelabra of my mind
large spattered extenuations
along with sunflowers and my need
filled with money some squashed worms
my dreams might be purified
I believe a butterfly
above anxious paperdews
in the university squares in early ideas
such winds are to be expected
another moment before death
no wider than a salt shaker
and I must both come and go
clouds lap the horizon
blue landscapes are my cells today
the women inside me paint my penitentiary
cellophane for the sad moon
and random fruits
like arms flailing in the distance
the boats will be all
into the grain of each overwhelming
with no living grass
the holes of words instead of worms
and birds that rejoice in eating the stars

Like Smoke I Drag

noreply@blogger.com (Scott) — Sat, 23 Jun 2007 02:31:00 +0000

the use of birds is not metaphorical
cobwebs and a doorknob
out there the wind hurts the leaves to the ground
I see words in the night after tomorrow
two tomatoes and a cabbage
pale smoke lofting over the clergyman of my youth
I’m not even half a century old
who says the window’s clean and the cast is
in ecstasy if I could swallow
my testicles and a reflection from a medusan garden
I trade my free will in elevators
which is why I live for the week ends
scarecrow in the apple tree
a red and white table cloth stretched into constellations
the birds come back and I can tell
they are sparrows or cardinals or maple leaves or crows
about the shoe repairs of the world
as it grows in the backrooms of my intuition
the music almost unnoticeably fading out
like a row of streetlights at dawn
the ceramic spanish-dancer in a flourish
just walking down I pass through
orgasms like a glowworm in the shadows of the freeway

A Long Way From All Comes One

noreply@blogger.com (Scott) — Sat, 23 Jun 2007 02:30:00 +0000

chance is the mother of the poets
the grass is a solifidian dance
fish are movie cameras behind black
windows of supine elegance
my heart is beating from inside the glass
of water blue in smoke-filtered sunlight
I am not furloughed not thinking like
stems or bones there is a stalk of celery
that is all I have of heavenly sound
to measure the limbs of my hand
I can only guess which shelter
makes me tired after and after some
times I can feel the wrinkled bark
of the dogs meaning on the horizon
tomorrow has been purplish all the day
to know that petals fall like lucifer
disappear into the innocent approached
abstract as the hooker in outer space
and some door opening for me
I enter as a bridge from the silent
every utensil on every table
longing for iridescence because redolence
like an often scarred buttocks
is philosophical and dazed at length
or a photo I want only one face
the forgotten face that can never
ever be seen even if the sky is laminated
with come or grass or gills
any memory of lean tender meat
sound of a leaf scratching the sternum
to want all the world’s mail
in a backpack in a matchbox car
the black trees sending up their filaments
jack is not looking to score
only to sell his cash for some seeds The Situation of Gnats as Sparks of Something
hives and the pavement and under summer porches
to lie down on the sidewalk and feign death
mosquitoes
the nuances of any given cuticle
to pray the dead will not die that I am breathing in
my ancestors in the kitchen still
singing in the dog’s mouth a tennis ball
the carnation in the garbage
I don’t know what to do with my hands
in the shower of waiting the forests of northern
africa
the body drinks the water of the city
left on the night stand next to the false teeth
for joy I moan and walk away
who must receive my order by december first
to ensure delivery
draw me a circle please and leave some heart within it
chronologically
a sponge drying on the window sill
I open to an empty room
dream of lipstick on the sky and crawl into bed
at dawn I am the one who is finished
and there is a nervousness about
I at least have this poem

Erect Tongue / Muffled Church

noreply@blogger.com (Scott) — Sat, 23 Jun 2007 02:29:00 +0000

the way a locust latches itself to vegetation
for what the shells of the day are traded
I once tattooed a stone with my penis
to juggle the words until azure puckers up
the wind is swift as a sunlit lover’s lasting kiss
a penny loafer of syncopated Platonism
the dew is yellow with breath I feel
a wheel in the flesh burning through
around the earth in a hand the umbilicus
silver ashes stirring in primavera caves
red as purgatory as a caustic light
the living room of intelligence is rubber
another frigid morning in the eggshell
of this chilling b-movie my awkward
gulls in the moonlit limousine of history
even now I am scuffing this continuum
of embracing the dead in the living
I get caught up in the sorrow of centipedes
contemplation cancels the unnameable
between grins when talismans stay chance
I might be a mystic every time I breathe
the angel is a marble of sustenance
always too the silence of predators
I go where only the dirt passes for blue
the metabolism of fire like the embrace
of a frying pan colors while it fights
against the painful appreciation of smoke
like a mirror might breaking up slowly
the face of heaven the face of hell

My Will Sharpened and Blunted

noreply@blogger.com (Scott) — Sat, 23 Jun 2007 02:28:00 +0000

my will to break the heart of the world with a shrug
my sight is a sock with holes in it
among all those violent heckles and boos
worms are the stars inside
water is boiling on the stove under the six
the surface reflex and corners
begin what is the jaded bird in the sacred bulb
suffering the human pastiche the gone
mystique already I can smell the moss growing
circles please come carve with me
in time become plural
as if the gendered body hides nearer to god’s in the hinges
down batterson drive I grow up
with my whimpers’ eyes in the shadows crust
again my psyche’s lost without
on a bench with the surgeon general’s warnings wrapped
the delicate strife that ticktocks my spine
starred with benevolent gingivitis
as such a song is made of
the sun beyond the dream of sunlight or
there is no need like the future
I am ready to fall up out of myself as if all I wanted to return
the wind removes the raindrop west
follow the muskrat of that body’s sky blue skin in the paint
of my very own invisible rooms
always from a mousehole
between my teeth I hold the pencap but no pen

Lullaby Sentence

noreply@blogger.com (Scott) — Sat, 23 Jun 2007 02:26:00 +0000

the dew from the silk all gendered the wine spilling from
the cork to shoulders rain or shine
as a bluejay skittles before the pines sleeping
baby on a bearskin rug
my eyes offer the body a planet to hold onto
words can’t only make me the air
traversing feather I fondle
myself to know the price in dollars and sense of
les fleurs du mal shows a little flame
my eyes fit for a frame of glass
more or less fluff the heart longs for a photograph
and the rings there dark and light
the lights there rigged to enlist the object of the past
an eye a throat a square root
dna
licked open and three blue cats curl out
in the journal of silence and immaculate conceptions
is a child in an empty bottle
clouds make hand-puppet angels wherever that one body goes
the many my god oh what
my eyes see this through the arrow of my tongue
silence honest as stone
and the lost jokes of the neanderthals
I recall everything in terms of my experience with magnets
bone after bone hits dirt too soon
a few barbules slashed
enough
already the gum in the head being as volatile nailing
my nerves to a song to a dilapidated wall

Translated into a Finger on the Lips

noreply@blogger.com (Scott) — Sat, 23 Jun 2007 02:24:00 +0000

I break down all seven doors in the house
of what I believe I pose as a lake
grab the day by its eggs the bad angels
that any common sewer rat could snatch
a gas pump or garbage can nippled orange
windows are sawdust is goodbye now
bone-whipping hairs in the nostrils
up in a sitcom perceives meridian bared
the laughing saint in the limousine
go with Vietnam to the dialectical ball
pencils ashes blue glasses of water
and a wind blows me out of my branches
edges of tapedecks edges of adolescence
and what is in me bellies like a drunk
a monk a lover a rock a pocketful of sand
when that old pawn shop opens up
in midstroke where I resemble a handkerchief
stuffed deep into the bottom drawer

Phoenix Records

noreply@blogger.com (Scott) — Sat, 23 Jun 2007 02:23:00 +0000

the immortal bird is vague yet feverish as decades
and to the dervish of leaves
there is a mirror blackened white
eye by eye by eye as if I were rubble
what stony rattle of fear
on the flowers of quiet tongues
for the rain on asian mountains
I am my own flaxen ruins
then in a lurching shadow seems
there is no shall in the nodding of leaves
I come to in the hedges of night
if only I could make my water weather
how the shuddering bones of the haunted
angels to toilets a reflection of love
mudbanks the earth’s alligator rags I am
for a stoop of deciduous laughter
to the darkest goldenrod in the world
the lightning and ash bird of my language leaves
to scratch a shadow its silence
appears from shore to shore the way
there is an ocean in every bit of flesh
only a few confetti caves
making every channel shriek in purple
dust in the whispers of room
that’s for me a mud and feather home
leaves wings trunk and jewel of fire
smoke cannot explain my records are metaphors
beyond mirror and mantelpiece
and the correspondence of stones or twigs
to the dark air in every lit ear
or the dead bird in every living

Have Hands Will Rust I Must Confess

noreply@blogger.com (Scott) — Sat, 23 Jun 2007 02:22:00 +0000

the rust will shine through any war and through
these echoes growing in my cupped hands
the lovers in my guts light up cigarettes of meaning
among velvet paintings and yellow dust
nights deathly light as honey smooth the nerves like wasps
their speckled asses facing front
plus the purple breath of the sleeping times the dead
erasers over the caress of every surface
a bit of red-raw feeling removed
which leaves or leaves perfectly nothing behind
the body always wanting but to replace periods with dashes
far along the perishing of pages
the sun and oblivion becomes a trifle
burnt out the days fog
poems on the self-same streets of another century
indeed the close-fisted blows of the moon
pound and resound through the gentle slop
of the atmosphere of our words of our circulatory system
my cuticles grow toward you and only you
it’s implied (see figure 1.1)
such flowers claw toward lightness

To the Fierce Laughter of the Mountains

noreply@blogger.com (Scott) — Sat, 23 Jun 2007 02:14:00 +0000

the wind crawls through me through the slopes
only my water is blue with sky light
the shell howls carefully where the brain
flip for the fifty-fifty night the offertory shield
but the wind crawls through the bedrock to sing
we are all obscurity’s fires trembling
sleep is almost reluctant to return
almost nobody ever splits it open
is a honeycomb cell of silence in the west
far beyond the sparkling atoms
the philosophical web of December trees
light is conducting two hush wants
with the venomous pretend motions through me
a toddler of wind crawls through the skyscraper
two buttonholes waiting like dry sponges
concentric fields swelling dusty chords
of this chasm I am wandering are awakened
the foghorn rooted in waves like tomorrow
the madness blossoms mouth a swamp

Chorus of Wild / Flowers behind Eyes

noreply@blogger.com (Scott) — Sat, 23 Jun 2007 02:12:00 +0000

to suck the burning sand of hope
the body sucks like sadness
through exhaust determination empties me
of the bright delicate lumber
out and in as if I had to forfeit just
and love without the cartouche of autumn leaves
the balcony mind conjures its poets slowly
and I gibbering through the pipes
of a melted crow a hundred sudden
questionmarks of scattered ashes
thirst warms up overhead white-haired
I get stood up by the hyacinth night-journey
am a fjord in beauty’s nation
the plants of ravages of childhood
to run screaming to their inflammation
the drops just can’t break through
how doves fucked me in the dark
and under the earth I overheat waiting
like an immortal clock for numbers
to discover the pieces buried in cows
in the night these flowers it’s ink
gouty white gunshots of the conflagration
every hum hurts like granite
every cuticle falls to the final home of hot rain
every look begins in a shell
ends slicking over the open wounds of hope

Blue Sun / Set the Boundaries Never Mind

noreply@blogger.com (Scott) — Sat, 23 Jun 2007 02:10:00 +0000

disappears I could
swooping across the percussion
books of clouds open
a constellation of nails all
in closed thermometer sky
I color in the walls
sun shifts my greens
sparrows fly out of the stone mouths
of wallowing in the music of America
become animal blisters on my hands
from the first moment I heard the bell
of this narrative on television seeing
I am weathered by a primitive song
called wind the length of the dragon’s jaw
the translucent limestone maze writhing
as I string handkerchiefs through
my flame is bow-legged and rootless
drunk in a winter skull
where the elements are stapling
the window is still shattering
and it has broken another branch
and the perpetual back of hello and goodbye