Seth 69
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Heliopause
A Perfect Catastrophe
To have stood midfield among the vast and livid green
and never heard the grasses take their vow of silence
is experience, not evidence, and meanwhile clouds descend
and buffer light. When did I arrive? I recall it came on
slowly as a fever as a poem is a communicable please.
What’s in charge here is the scattered light all over
and how it pulls my very blood into my hands
until they graph a fat what the sun likes holding
and some dumb mutter good and nails me to the bone.
Disintegration Loop 1.1
▪ for William Basinski
In seeking to resolve a conflict
between two parties
one can assume
each believes it is acting
in good faith
just as the hopeful
gravel waits for your rough step
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The only way to be truly alone
is for there to be nothing
not even myself
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In looping you rephrase after listening
to what the person has to say
what the person had to say
and having the new words affirmed
you wait and listen again
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Myself the eager magnet
for another to address
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Maybe I should think this a spiral
a loop that gets closer
a loop that will not close
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To make nothing
draw a circle
around what isn’t there
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I found a note I left in the corner
of a part of the poem we rarely used
If you ever feel trapped
it said
this is where to escape
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But legally I owe you nothing
I owe you at least that much
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Like being haunted by the spirit of the letter
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I remember my teacher’s story
of two teenagers who died in a blizzard
trying to stay warm
and the tailpipe
blocked with snow
so I always check
but it still happens
just yesterday
a man’s young son in what the paper
called one awful story
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The light switch has a beautiful feeling
when a person reaches out to make it change
and the warm quadrangles of sun
on the carpet are beautiful too
and red berries on the gray bush
and the mail as long as it lasts
and beauty is what beauty does to you
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Like trying to say a seagull
inscribing a circle
over what land
the day has thought
to provide
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to enter into agreement with yourself
to lie but only out of love
for the verblessness of buildings
They do not rise except once
and then nothing
how being is nothing
and if there were a word after
it would be a slow decay
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I will love across any distance
you think this has made to occur
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Nothing so ruthless as a life
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The day hangs low overhead
and soon enough the new grass will emerge
through
