heavy beach poem

dry grass stalks, wind goes to sea. objects drawn out from land returned. dunes are only shapes, man. rolling shapes, like a sine wave waving waves of time through the medium of sand. the glaring silver sunlight on the metal parts of hot roofs as seen from suddenly above. try to imagine the world, and when you imagine the world, try to imagine all the moving parts (us, everything) moving. but the most important thing right now I guess is the thing about the dunes, hold on to the thing about the dunes being waves, and the waves (ocean waves) being waves. wherever you are on planet earth, there are beach processes going on and barrier islands just out of sight, “move like curtains in a breeze.”

# 9 (in the yellow night)

it is impossible to forget
the sound of the water as it moves under the rocks
and over the rocks
past low hanging trees
bowing down to dip their branches in
and be cooled

all of this remains,
but it is like
himitsu-bako,
or a burr puzzle
and it is harder to find space
for such large pieces

#8 (of the Avatamsaka Sutra)

Working at night, alone
we are all together

# 7 (tessellation)

sleep inertia, coupled with
mechanical phosphenes
between the thin mattress
and the down comforter

on my back, two-thirty.
watching the changes,
the prisoner’s cinema

heinrich klüver reckoned
four types of things, we
all of us, see: lattices,
cobwebs, tunnels, and spirals.

I am awake, but only just
and the honestly cold night
comes in through the window
from the city, glowing, outside

there are no gaps in this
admixture – it has slowly
become, as a nest or riverbed,
our great concatenation

we are all connected by:
these several layers of stone

& when we are alone,
in darkness not afforded here
even then, we are.

#6 (gasping and shipwrecked)

there is a David Ruffin song for
each & every variety of heartache
and I fold like when hinged, inward
gasping and shipwrecked
sick in my stomach
shivering on the floor,
on my brothers futon, two-thirds soft

#5 (on urban heat island)

at night, walking through a city entirely indoors,
a long hallway, & everything is distributed
for maximum effect in one continuous
effort of effortless, concrete parataxis
so that this street is homogenous.

at each node it intersects two other streets,
and this is a recursive process, continuing
until there is nothing but streets, and all
is perfectly perpendicular, & the landscape is
only the manifestation of a single 90º angle
which we have gladly allowed to multiply,
by feeding it daily labor and stone.

all around this city
even the parks are square.

# 4 (for Joseph Wright of Derby, for this place)

I will edge out the pastoral,
excise the solemnity
& discard, repeat, discard
what is bark and brass

this new, vertical place
with it’s sedimentary
skyline, a crenellation
like stone teeth, irregular

I am the bird inside
the globe, time is
the pump, & soon
the air will be gone.