As a woman, and in the service of my Lord the Emperor Wu, my life is governed by his command. At twenty I was summoned to this life at court and have made of it what I can, within the limitations of the courtesan I am supposed to be, and the poet I have now become. Unlike my male counterparts, some of whom have lately found seclusion in the wilderness of rivers and mountains, I have only my personal court of three rooms and its tiny garden and ornamental pond. But I live close to the surrounding walls of the Zu-lin Gardens with its astronomical observatories and bold attempts at recreating illusions of celebrated locations in the Tai mountains. There, walking with my cat Xi-Lu in the afternoons, I imagine a solitary life, a life suffused with the emptiness I crave.
 
In the hot, dry summer days my maid Mei-Lim and I have sought a temporary retreat in the pine forests above Lingzhi. Carried in a litter up the mountain paths we are left in a commodious hut, its open walls making those simple pleasures of drinking, eating and sleeping more acute, intense. For a few precious days I rest and meditate, breathe the mountain air and the resinous scents of the trees. I escape the daily commerce of the court and belong to a world that for the rest of the year I have to imagine, the world of the recluse. To gain the status of the recluse, open to my male counterparts, is forbidden to women of the court. I am woman first, a poet and calligrapher second. My brother, should he so wish, could present a petition to revoke his position as a man of letters, an official commentator on the affairs of state. But he is not so inclined. He has already achieved notoriety and influence through his writing on the social conditions of town and city. He revels in a world of chatter, gossip and intrigue; he appears to fear the wilderness life.  
 
I must be thankful that my own life is maintained on the periphery. I am physically distant from the hub of daily ceremonial. I only participate at my Lord’s express command. I regularly feign illness and fatigue to avoid petty conflict and difficulty. Yet I receive commissions I cannot waver: to honour a departed official; to celebrate a son’s birth to the Second Wife; to fulfil in verse my Lord’s curious need to know about the intimate sorrows of his young concubines, their loneliness and heartache.
 
Occasionally a Rhapsody is requested for an important visitor. The Emperor Wu is proud to present as welcome gifts such poetic creations executed in fine calligraphy, and from a woman of his court. Surely a sign of enlightment and progress he boasts! Yet in these creations my observations are parochial: early morning frost on the cabbage leaves in my garden; the sound of geese on their late afternoon flight to Star Lake; the disposition of the heavens on an Autumn night. I live by the Tao of Lao-Tzu, perceiving the whole world from my doorstep.
 
But I long for the reclusive life, to leave this court for my family’s estate in the valley my peasant mother lived as a child. At fourteen she was chosen to sustain the Emperor’s annual wish for young girls to be groomed for concubinage. Like her daughter she is tall, though not as plain as I; she put her past behind her and conceded her adolescence to the training required by the court. At twenty she was recommended to my father, the court archivist, as second wife. When she first met this quiet, dedicated man on the day before her marriage she closed her eyes in blessing. My father taught her the arts of the library and schooled her well. From her I have received keen eyes of jade green and a prestigious memory, a memory developed she said from my father’s joy of reading to her in their private hours, and before she could read herself. Each morning he would examine her to discover what she had remembered of the text read the night before. When I was a little child she would quote to me the Confucian texts on which she had been ****** schooled, and she then would tell me of her childhood home. She primed my imagination and my poetic world with descriptions of a domestic rural life.
 
Sometimes in the arms of my Lord I have freely rhapsodized in chusi metre these delicate word paintings of my mother’s home. She would say ‘We will walk now to the ruined tower beside the lake. Listen to the carolling birds. As the sparse clouds move across the sky the warm sun strokes the winter grass. Across the deep lake the forests are empty. Now we are climbing the narrow steps to the platform from which you and I will look towards the sun setting in the west. See the shadows are lengthening and the air becomes colder. The blackbird’s solitary song heralds the evening.  Look, an owl glides silently beneath us.’
 
My Lord will then quote from Hsieh Ling-yun,.
 
‘I meet sky, unable to soar among clouds,
face a lake, call those depths beyond me.’
 
And I will match this quotation, as he will expect.
 
‘Too simple-minded to perfect Integrity,
and too feeble to plough fields in seclusion.’
 
He will then gaze into my eyes in wonder that this obscure poem rests in my memory and that I will decode the minimal grammar of these early characters with such poetry. His characters: Sky – Bird – Cloud – Lake – Depth. My characters: Fool – Truth – Child – Winter field – Isolation.
 
Our combined invention seems to take him out of his Emperor-self. He is for a while the poet-scholar-sage he imagines he would like to be, and I his foot-sore companion following his wilderness journey. And then we turn our attention to our bodies, and I surprise him with my admonitions to gentleness, to patience, to arousing my pleasure. After such poetry he is all pleasure, sensitive to the slightest touch, and I have my pleasure in knowing I can control this powerful man with words and the stroke of my fingertips rather than by delicate youthful beauty or the guile and perverse ingenuity of an ****** act. He is still learning to recognise the nature and particularness of my desires. I am not as his other women: who confuse pleasure with pain.
 
Thoughts of my mother. Without my dear father, dead ten years, she is a boat without a rudder sailing on a distant lake. She greets each day as a gift she must honour with good humour despite the pain of her limbs, the difficulty of walking, of sitting, of eating, even talking. Such is the hurt that governs her ageing. She has always understood that my position has forbidden marriage and children, though the latter might be a possibility I have not wished it and made it known to my Lord that it must not be. My mother remains in limbo, neither son or daughter seeking to further her lineage, she has returned to her sister’s home in the distant village of her birth, a thatched house of twenty rooms,
 
‘Elms and willows shading the eaves at the back,
and, in front,  peach and plum spread wide.
 
Villages lost across mist-haze distances,
Kitchen smoke drifting wide-open country,
 
Dogs bark deep among the back roads out here
And cockerels crow from mulberry treetops.
 
My esteemed colleague T’ao Ch’ien made this poetry. After a distinguished career in government service he returned to the life of a recluse-farmer on his family farm. Living alone in a three-roomed hut he lives out his life as a recluse and has endured considerable poverty. One poem I know tells of him begging for food. His world is fields-and-gardens in contrast to Hsieh Ling-yin who is rivers-and-mountains. Ch’ien’s commitment to the recluse life has brought forth words that confront death and the reality of human experience without delusion.
 
‘At home here in what lasts, I wait out life.’
 
Thus my mother waits out her life, frail, crumbling more with each turning year.
 
To live beyond the need to organise daily commitments due to others, to step out into my garden and only consider the dew glistening on the loropetalum. My mind is forever full of what is to be done, what must be completed, what has to be said to this visitor who will today come to my court at the Wu hour. Only at my desk does this incessant chattering in the mind cease, as I move my brush to shape a character, or as the needle enters the cloth, all is stilled, the world retreats; there is the inner silence I crave.
 
I long to see with my own eyes those scenes my mother painted for me with her words. I only know them in my mind’s eye having travelled so little these past fifteen years. I look out from this still dark room onto my small garden to see the morning gathering its light above the rooftops. My camellia bush is in flower though a thin frost covers the garden stones.
 
And so I must imagine how it might be, how I might live the recluse life. How much can I jettison? These fine clothes, this silken nightgown beneath the furs I wrap myself in against the early morning air. My maid is sleeping. Who will make my tea? Minister to me when I take to my bed? What would become of my cat, my books, the choice-haired brushes? Like T’ao Ch’ien could I leave the court wearing a single robe and with one bag over my shoulders? Could I walk for ten days into the mountains? I would disguise myself as a man perhaps. I am tall for a woman, and though my body flows in broad curves there are ways this might be assuaged, enough perhaps to survive unmolested on the road.
 
Such dreams! My Lord would see me returned within hours and send a servant to remain at my gate thereafter. I will compose a rhapsody about a concubine of standing, who has even occupied the purple chamber, but now seeks to relinquish her privileged life, who coverts the uncertainty of nature, who would endure pain and privation in a hut on some distant mountain, who will sleep on a mat on its earth floor. Perhaps this will excite my Lord, light a fire in his imagination. As though in preparation for this task I remove my furs, I loose the knot of my silk gown. Naked, I reach for an old under shift letting it fall around my still-slender body and imagine myself tying the lacings myself in the open air, imagine making my toilet alone as the sun appears from behind a distant mountain on a new day. My mind occupies itself with the tiny detail of living thus: bare feet on cold earth, a walk to nearby stream, the gathering of berries and mountain herbs, the making of fire, the washing of my few clothes, imagining. Imagining. To live alone will see every moment filled with the tasks of keeping alive. I will become in tune with my surroundings. I will take only what I need and rely on no one. Dreaming will end and reality will be the slug on my mat, the bone-chilling incessant mists of winter, the thorn in the foot, the wild winds of autumn. My hands will become stained and rough, my long limbs tanned and scratched, my delicate complexion freckled and wind-pocked, my hair tied roughly back. I will become an animal foraging on a dank hillside. Such thoughts fill me with deep longing and a ****** desire to be tzu-jan  - with what surrounds me, ablaze with ****** self.
 
It is not thought the custom of a woman to hold such desires. We are creatures of order and comfort. We do not live on the edge of things, but crave security and well-being. We learn to endure the privations of being at the behest of others. Husbands, children, lovers, our relatives take our bodies to them as places of comfort, rest and desire. We work at maintaining an ordered flow of existence. Whatever our station, mistress or servant we compliment, we keep things in order, whether that is the common hearth or the accounts of our husband’s court. Now my rhapsody begins:
 
A Rhapsody on a woman wishing to live as a recluse
 
As a lady of my Emperor’s court I am bound in service.
My court is not my own, I have the barest of means.
My rooms are full of gifts I am forced barter for bread.
Though the artefacts of my hands and mind
Are valued and widely renown,
Their commissioning is an expectation of my station,
With no direct reward attached.
To dress appropriately for my Lord’s convocations and assemblies
I am forced to negotiate with chamberlains and treasurers.
A bolt of silk, gold thread, the services of a needlewoman
Require formal entreaties and may lie dormant for weeks
Before acknowledgement and release.
 
I was chosen for my literary skills, my prestigious memory,
Not for my ****** beauty, though I have been called
‘Lady of the most gracious movement’ and
My speaking voice has clarity and is capable of many colours.
I sing, but plainly and without passion
Lest I interfere with the truth of music’s message.
 
Since I was a child in my father’s library
I have sought out the works of those whose words
Paint visions of a world that as a woman
I may never see, the world of the wilderness,
Of rivers and mountains,
Of fields and gardens.
Yet I am denied by my *** and my station
To experience passing amongst these wonders
Except as contrived imitations in the palace gardens.
 
Each day I struggle to tease from the small corner
Of my enclosed eye-space some enrichment
Some elemental thing to colour meaning:
To extend the bounds of my home
Across the walls of this palace
Into the world beyond.
 
I have let it be known that I welcome interviews
With officials from distant courts to hear of their journeying,
To gather word images if only at second-hand.
Only yesterday an emissary recounted
His travels to Stone Lake in the far South-West,
Beyond the gorges of the Yang-tze.
With his eyes I have seen the mountains of Suchan:
With his ears I have heard the oars crackling
Like shattering jade in the freezing water.
Images and sounds from a thousand miles
Of travel are extract from this man’s memory.
 
Such a sharing of experience leaves me
Excited but dismayed: that I shall never
Visit this vast expanse of water and hear
Its wild cranes sing from their floating nests
In the summer moonlight.
 
I seek to disappear into a distant landscape
Where the self and its constructions of the world may
Dissolve away until nothing remains but the no-mind.
My thoughts are full of the practicalities of journeying
Of an imagined location, that lonely place
Where I may be at one with myself.
Where I may delight in the everyday Way,
Myself among mist and vine, rock and cave.
Not this lady of many parts and purposes whose poems must
Speak of lives, sorrow and joy, pleasure and pain
Set amongst personal conflict and intrigue
That in containing these things, bring order to disorder;
Salve the conscience, bathe hurt, soothe sleight.

"The question should not be in what ways writing and utterance trope each other, but how both are involved with number. Without relating the technology of writing to number (as opposed to sound or drawing), it is impossible to discuss it meaningfully as an aspect of versecraft."

          Courage to write and courage to not write. Read
          The great poets and highly accomplished letters
          Of leaders. Yet the war and the book have lives
          Of their own. Vacuum house, analyze mankind.
          His idea of himself. Ideas subsumed by
          Better ones unite people in melting pots.
          I watch from my little bowl of nuts. Watch
          The one red squirrel and the many gray.
          Watch the nuthatch pair, platoon of chickadees.
          Here is what I say: When we can go
          From planet to planet on nothing but air,
          Leaving behind a drop of water,
          No burger bags blowin’ in the sun,
          I’ll love my sons, and my dogs will be happy.

"What is needed is a way to pry apart the polar, mimetic fiction that undergirds discussions (even sympathetic ones) of writing and versification, and see how we can relate writing to measure. Roy Harris’ investigations into the origin of writing make this connection possible."

          Electronic millennium. A long silence
          Wouldn’t hurt. Not that the national debate
          Should cease, it should proceed, passionate
          And furious. Those who have studied the matter
          And have something to say should write cogent
          Opinion pieces on the totalitarian
          Tendencies of minaret Islamists,
          The terminal contradiction of advancing
          Democracy with the unitary military.
          George Washington would not have approved
          And even Lincoln vacillated between
          The practicalities of preserving union
          And the ideal of freeing slaves. The president
          Carries his burden of matter, the physics
          Of existence cannot change our aloneness
          Or the butterfly’s importance, the very
          Last insects at the screens of August.
          It is life we face and death we meet.

"He argues that the origin of writing did not lie in the drawing of figures, or attempts to imitate speech, but in the recording of number. According to Harris, the oldest ‘writing’ that we have, like that on the 11, 000-year-old Ishango bone, is in ‘lines.’ The surface is scored with rows of short, parallel strokes, which probably served a numerical function. We still use such scoring systems today on occasion."

          OK, different strokes. But reading North’s poems
          And his predecessors’ in which noun and verb
          Are so far separated by modifiers,
          Post-positioned prepositions, diversions
          Into ditches, gardens, heavens, I don’t know
          What to do laugh or put the book down and eat
          Several cookies. In other words, anything goes,
          There truth resides. 1/3 life in suburbs,
          1/3 on the subway, and the last third
          On the mountain. A fourth hallucinating
          In heaven. That’s how it goes. You get what you believe.
          Bones in mud. It’s always possible I suppose
          That for nine months analogous or symmetrical
          With gestation our souls wander call it limbo,
          Doing the limbo and harassing the living
          With unanswerable questions, finally accepting
          Free molecular rent in a cubic meter
          Of interstellar space, a rose hip.
         
"Harris speculates about counting by scoring:"
'What is relevant for our present purposes is the fact that counting is associated in many cultures with primitive forms of recording which have a graphically isomorphic basis... The iconic origin of such recording systems is hardly open to doubt: the notch or stroke corresponds to the human finger...'

          Partridgeberry, mugwort, mats of raspberry,
          Cranberry, bearberry, autumn eleagnus,
          Autumn Nocturne, Autumn Leaves, the changes
          To the tunes and the scientific names.
          When it doesn’t matter what you do
          You’re probably doing something new.
          That’s a woodpecker. That’s a moth. I’m bounded
          By my surroundings, I feel at home.
          Could be Schenectady. Could be Troy.
          One of many small cities in which to
          Await my anonymity. Be specific.
          Not asphalt but impermeable surface.
          Not trees but mature stems. Quercus rubrus—
          Quality veneer. Into such a garden
          Have a victor and a fool penetrated.

'In short, the rows of strokes are graphically isomorphic with just that subpart of the recorder’s oral language which comprises the corresponding words used for counting. It makes no difference whether we ‘read’ the sign pictorially as standing for so many fingers held up, or scriptorially as standing for a certain numeral.'

          In a crowded world every action results
          In an equal and overwrought reaction.
          Yet, all the energy recycles
          And there is not one thermal unit more or less
          When all is said and won. Even when the tribes
          Were isolated behind mountain ranges
          And rushing rivers, they sought each other out
          For trading and for taking. Humanity
          Is lonely. Humor is the only remedy
          And going to your daily discipline
          The only way past Monday. Join the torrential
          Flow of words, emotion, wit and erudition.
          It is embarrassing to see a good writer
          Work himself into a lather, having
          Something to say. A system of beliefs
          To illustrate, characters dressed accordingly.
          Gardens and wilderness in which to wander.
          A cave with a view. The plumbing problem never
          Resolves. But we will do what we can and
          Some things we shouldn't because that is human.

"Along with other evidence, this leads him to argue that the invention of writing–or the division of writing and drawing into separate functions–occurred when the graphic representation of number shifted from the token-iterative system that appears on the Ishango bone, to type-slotting."

          Electricity is occult enough for me.
          Excessive classifying could be fascist!
          Yet how else can one organize people
          Into contexts. By their associations.
          Family, work, habits, each assigned
          A day of the week, moon of the month.
          Poets rhyme, jazz musicians count time.
          There is more than one way to make war. By
          Declaration, by punishing offenses
          Against the law of nations, by granting letters
          Of mark and reprisal, by making rules
          Concerning captures on land and water, by
          Suppressing insurrections and repelling invasions,
          Erecting forts, magazines, arsenals,
          Dock yards and other needful buildings. Today
          I face the blank page between the finished pages.

"Harris gives the following example of what he means:"
'The progression from recording sixty sheep by means of one ‘sheep’ sign followed by sixty strokes to recording the same information by means of one ‘sheep’ sign followed by a second sign indicating ‘sixty’ is a progression which has already crossed the boundary between pictorial and scriptorial signs.'

          When my grandmother considered it favorable
          That I would be a writer, she had in mind
          Clear commentary from which many people
          Would derive meaning. No such luck. My writings
          Are like the flicking tail of that flycatcher,
          And I am the flycatcher, weighing but an ounce.
          My grandfather’s rough-hewn peasant chairs
          Are well known by my sons though they never knew him
          And the chairs were not hewn, just owned by him.
          One is in a corner of the room and two
          Are scrimmaged around a computer screen.
          Computers post-date him and cars post-date
          His father and so on. If the grid collapses,
          The crops fail and the roads close, some will be forced
          Across boundaries among boulders, naming snakes
          And stars according to memory.
          They will be hungry, mortal and strong.

'A token-iterative sign-system is in effect equivalent to a verbal sublanguage which is restricted to messages of the form ‘sheep, sheep, sheep, sheep...’, or ‘sheep, another, another, another...’, whereas an emblem-slotting system is equivalent to a sublanguage which can handle messages of the form ‘sheep, sixty’.Token-iterative lists are, in principle, lists as long as the number of individual items recorded. With a slot list, on the other hand, we get no information simply by counting the number of marks it contains.'
"When this change occurred it opened ‘a gap between the pictorial and scriptorial function of the emblematic sign’, which had been previously inseparable in the counting represented by rows of slashes."

          No book I know tells if blue cohosh
          Caulophyllum thalictroides—a barberry—
          Is edible. Other barberries are
          But that blue berry looks risky to me.
          And May-apple—Podophyllum—other
          Than the fruit itself which is definitely
          Sweet. So I read, not sure of myself.
          There is a patience with which to wait out anger,
          And a patience with which to endure ignorance.
          The job is everything. It is freedom
          And purpose and religion. It is acceptance
          And shelter and sustenance. Last night
          We were watching Tweet’s show: groveling before
          The rich pharisee’s judgements. I said no
          Amount of money could make me grovel
          Before that guy. His toupe’s gayer than his lisp.
          But who am I? You think bullets won’t ****?
          I’m the guy they put before a wall and shoot
          Then eat lunch. But that feeling passed quickly.

"This semiological gap, made writing possible because it meant that signs could be manipulated to ‘slot’, or identify, anything whatsoever. The open-ended quality of the scriptorial sign was a necessary precondition for the development of writing systems."

          Lately I’ve been copying wholesale
          From the great poems, lines and ideas not my own
          Or owned by all? It’s ok, I can be ignored
          Or appreciated in a future city,
          By a future shore. The honest man can
          Only recognize what he loves and point to it.
          That Borges poem called In Praise of Darkness.
          Emerson and snow. A meditation
          That bumps serenely, with acceptance,
          Between things and thoughts. It is said one should
          Know for whom, to whom one is writing.
          These are letters to those who love letter writing.

"As Harris points out, no writing system is accurately phonetic. Even the alphabet only highlights certain phenomena in the speech stream. The reason for this is that alphabetic writing did not begin as a simpler or more accurate way to record speech than other writing systems, but as an easier way to write."

          A possible cancer had taken me
          To the edge of my endurance. Pokeweed,
          Poisonous, became attractive. Red stems
          And juicy black berries. I had packed warm clothes
          And pain killers. Why the warm clothes if this
          Was to be my last walk? To die in comfort
          Without a fly’s buzz. Overlooking a ravine,
          Sea of mountains, dawn. But it proved a false alarm.
          Now Sunday will be a holy day of plant
          Identification. Nothing better
          Than lying in leaf litter, skin drying
          To a taut drum. Ravens stay away!
          Until cougar’s had his fill! Instead
          I showed the boys pokeweed growing among blackberries
          And taught them the differences and uses.

"Through a radical reduction in the number of signs, the alphabet simplified the scriptorial system in and of itself. The evolution of writing therefore may look like this: simple forms of counting preceded the complications of pictorial representation, which in turn led to simplification of the writing system in cultures that adopted the alphabet."

          I was running uphill, parallel to
          The Taconics extending northward into
          Vermont (I find Vermonters in their jalopies
          Annoying but admire them for planning
          To arrest the president for war crimes) when
          I happened upon a flock of cedar waxwings—
          Said to be a gentle and politic bird—
          Sharing—very orderly—dried frozen grapes
          On the vine. (Rose hips, buckthorn, ash, pokeweed.)
          I tried one, too, the two seeds in my mouth
          Keeping me company down the mountain.
          I see no downside whatsoever
          To compensating for global warming,
          Constructing the green energy economy.
          New inventions may facilitate
          Our transportation to other planets.
          Yesterday a young man, Barack Obama,
          Won Iowa. I’m hopeful he will
          Articulate an international vision,
          A world order in which each neighborhood’s
          Good as another. I have no particular
          Love for writers; they’re a dime a dozen.
          But so are chickadees and I love them!

"Discussing the power of inscriptions of number, Harris points out:"
'Counting is in its very essence magical, if any human practice at all is. For numbers are things no one has ever seen or heard or touched. Yet somehow they exist, and their existence can be confirmed in quite everyday terms by all kinds of humdrum procedures which allow mere mortals to agree beyond any shadow of a doubt as to ‘how many’ eggs there are in a basket or ‘how many’ loaves of bread on the table.'

          True, nature would be a stern, unforgiving
          Mistress too, and man is but her right hand
          Acting on her command. How cold! How hot!
          The individual doing what he loves or not.
          Trees and cities. Herons, hawks. What we fail
          To govern in ourselves, nature will.
          We caught the killer and his gorillas,
          Now let’s go home, let the “innocent” choose
          Up sides. A good thing was done but the tyrant
          Should’ve been undone through global governance.
          Writing is divination using rhymes
          And estimations. Words like mammals
          Come near your sleeping head. Last night I emerged
          From the hum of our refrigerator
          Under a hazy, phaseless moon. The peepers
          Were an exact expression of my happiness.

"Or, one might add, for how many stanzas there are in a poem, or lines in a stanza, or stresses, feet, or syllables in a line, or occurrences of particular syntactical or grammatical patterns, and so on. As every serious student of versification has always understood, versification is about counting language."

          5:30-6 write poetry,
          6-7 ****, shave and shower, stretch
          Then get dressed, 7-7:30
          Clean house, 7:30-8 drive to work
          8-6 work (except Monday and Friday
          Work 8-4, basketball 4-6)
          6-7 drive home, shop, help make dinner
          7-8 eat dinner, read paper,
          Watch McNeil-Lehrer News Hour,
          8-9 play trumpet, study plants, type poems
          9-10 watch TV Mon: Murphy, Cybil,
          Tues: Frazier, Grace, Wed: Roseanne, Ellen,
          Thurs: Seinfeld, Friends, Fri: go out to dinner,
          10-11 read, except Tues watch
          NYPD Blue, Fri: Friday Night Lights,
          11 sleep. I could send this to the networks,
          Get a gizmo in my box. I hope my
          Schedule won't be interrupted for war.
          My dentist asked had I seen this morning’s
          Press conference, didn’t it just scare the ****
          Out of you. I said your bill is what scares
          The **** out of me. But here I am, writing
          And the sphere’s still turning. Or should I say
          Burning. As long as you write one poem per day
          You’ve left a little litter in the world.

"The reason to write verse is less to score the voice than to imbue words with the magical quality of counting. That is why meter, or measure, is at the heart of debates over all verse forms, including free verse."

          Vigorous wind, voracious ocean,
          Many merciless hard frosts, hurricanes.
          The bed of a human, its smell and warmth
          36 teeth, 46 chromosomes, 2 feet, a loose dime,
          61 summers, some soot, some sand,
          Thunderstorms. I wake up to a lightning strike
          And my dream incinerates. When they say
          Life is but a dream, that’s what they mean.
          The writer working hard, telling the story
          Of what happened yesterday or yesteryear,
          A man’s born to a country not his choosing,
          Let labor flow like capital, of mere being!
          Pomegranate juice, broccoli, arugula,
          Brussel sprouts, cabbage, cauliflower,
          Collard greens, kale, radishes, turnips,
          Garlic, leeks, scallions, onions, 2 lbs
          Swordfish, tomatoes (8 medium),
          3 cups almonds, carrots, a sweet potato,
          Winter squash, cantaloupe, mangoes, watermelon.
          2 daily writing exercises,
          50 words on any subject: complaint, headache.
          The imagination applies a
          Countervailing pressure to reality.
          Writing badly is the best revenge.

"Number is one of the creative grounds of poetry, and the idea that writing grew out of counting is the missing link in studies of the graphic in versification. It is almost uncanny that lines of verse look exactly like the most primitive ways of counting–parallel scorings that can be numbered."

          What you do to one side of the equation
          You gotta do to the other. Isolate
          The variable. Combine like terms. Metaphors
          And analogs are reduced to least common
          Denominators. Multiply through (parentheses).
          Write a new equation after each operation.
          Inscribe neatly. Check your work. Imagine
          That if you’re wrong, the astronauts burn.
          Change the signs which will avoid going
          The wrong way down the number line. Zero
          Is the middle of your universe.
          There it is, calm, comfortable as an egg
          On a spoon. That is, before possibilities
          Become probabilities. This is just
          Another equation manipulated
          With opposable digits. For at the ends
          Of your guns is the earliest calculator
          A magical machine which converts
          Numbers to words and words to numbers,
          Measures the mists, frequency and wavelength,
          Of the material penumbra.

"Verses are countable in exactly the way that token-iterative digits are countable, from either end of the sequence. Each one indicates only its singularity, not a number. Every poem in lines effaces, or predates, the distinction between writing and drawing in the same way as the lines on the Ishango bone."

I am dying
Because I am running out of yarn
But I don't mean this literally
Of course not
Laugh near me
But don't laugh with me.
What if all of our lives
Are woven into a tapestry
Called fate?
And I'm dying because I'm running out of yarn.
No knitting for the knitter
Girl
The artist is out of supplies
Full of ideas
But where are the practicalities
In ideas without the supplies?
No one knows
So here's me
Wanting yarn
More scarves, more hats
More happy faces
That I can give them smiles
And I am dying
Without happiness

my thoughts, to prosaic
for poetry today.

to many minute,
details in play.

too many red *****,
to be kept in the air.

that i must speak,
my words plainly
without, any flair.

today i must,
just plod
ever forward
with out, any fuss

and if by dint
of hard work and despair
i make the end
of the job list,
i get myself there.

only then i suppose
i may sit on my laurels
and begin to compose

but until then,
shoulder to boulder
and grinder to nose.

my thoughts to far prosaic
for frivelous and
self satisfied
wordplay, today.
to this course, i have chosen
true, i must stay....

Set aside the formalities                      
Put behind your brutalities                    
Forget about the finalities                      
Throw away all moralities
Come hide from your realities
Forgive me for my irrationalities
I plea not for practicalities
I know of the abnormalities
Do you know of the totalities
Just listen to the modalities

It's becoming a lethality

undeniably facetious obstacle
that's what you are to me
something I must overcome
well you have alienated me so much
you might as well call me an extraterrestrial
yet you are the one who abducted me
not the other way around
but practicalities are useless with you
at least there is life on other planets
so I will get into my spaceship
and blast as far away from you as I can

She walks on water as the stars reflect
their shining brightness only lightening
her paradisiacal face and unclothed body
beauty may have it's layers, hers always
more than skin deep in the selfless benevolence she
gives forth in every interaction she herself
engages herself within,

In my years of wandering, I have never found
a soul I feel so compelled toward, frightening even
myself with my augmenting attachment and need
to hear her voice, feel her soul, listen to her heartbeat
to see her smile, and know her stories and tales from
the days that passed between the time we last spoke
my heart skipping beats,

An internal battle brings forth, an ever forging narrative
of realistic practicalities and the contrasting drifting
dream lands, entwined with fantasy and longing,
fears and hearts, left on the line, of a blurring demise
restore my heart, set me free, allow me to love,
let me
be
hers.

© Sia Jane
---

“The most beautiful people we have known are those who have known defeat, known suffering, known struggle, known loss, and have found their way out of the depths. These persons have an appreciation, a sensitivity, and an understanding of life that fills them with compassion, gentleness, and a deep loving concern. Beautiful people do not just happen.”
Elisabeth Kübler-Ross

Says King Kong to Ann Darrow
the blonde who screams like no other:
Mmmm….we got to talk

What? says Ann Darrow

about practicalities…real things…
…things that matter…
says King Kong

Like a pre-nuptial contract you mean?

No, says King Kong…
I mean like real things…things we have…
things that make me male,
things that make you woman…

OK, we can have a shared bank account,
says Ann Darrow


King Kong can feel it in his marrow
he’s got to be clear and narrow:
Look, Ann…
I can’t be too explicit;
my upbringing at Devil’s Island
is high on modesty;
still
I think things can be too big
and some too small,
if you know what I mean

OK, says Ann Darrow
we’ll live in Colorado;
build me a small shed in the deserts
and you can have the wide open plains

Oh, Monkey God!
says King Kong
Are you a dumb blonde or what?
I mean, Ann Darrow…
Oh, never mind…

Ah, ah…says Ann Darrow
Never hide things, King Kong
You always must bring them out
into the open!

Oh, Ann Darrow;
You speak more truth than you know –
It’s I who have things in the open
and it’s you who hide them!


I love you, says Ann Marrow
with a shrug
and gives King Kong a hug

I love you too, says King Kong
wondering how he’ll ever get through

One leaf falls
holographic illusion
across time the Terminator travels
to shape Sarah Connors' destiny.
Heart attack
a common enough destiny
as common as young men discussing girls' ****.
The Constitution
is the document we refer to, the lodestone
to correct course and not go crazily astray.
Lose all purpose beyond ******, child *** and food hording.
Illuminated manuscripts
in a dark age, tape decks remind us of our voice
our communal voice
Supremes and Fred Astaire
the silken wail.

I lie alone in the night
its sensuality makes the best sense
it does or does not clarify the day
of classes or clients or chain saws
whatever fever may have infected me at the moment
a fever to achieve access to foreign films while living in the
      mountain community of Schroon Lake
the fever to instruct the American people how to apply ideals
      and practicalities of Constitution to international
      relationships
the fever not to die today, to maintain consciousness just one
      more season (and one more after that).

Anyway, what is being discussed -
the finiteness of one life -
or perhaps existence continues in another dimension, on
      another frequency
no owl hoots
but other purpler and indigo occurrences
with other purposes
as incomprehensible and wonderful as these purposes
to choke on a cherry pit or nuclear bomb
to wail our wail together
each individual identifiable hoot and wail, loud laugh and
      suppressed scream
one orbicular chant, humanity, from India to Indiana
complete, one sing.

I feel this way
searching for my place among you
childless, but a child among children
obeying or not obeying the speed limit
as my hormones permit
everywhere among brothers, the sisters among sisters
the races together exterminating the last rhinoceros and
      preserving its genes at the zoological society
my species attacking entire rain forests, temperate forests
      and boreal forests
like the engraver beetle in the red pine's inner bark.
Thus, I occasionally cheer the Terminator
cheer the machine and neutron bomb
even in the face of individual heroics, the male and female face
their physical love, tender and violent
I don't know what I want.

It could be simple
as this headache.
Not to despair
just to care enough to think clearly and accept 10,000 years
      of history.
Not to hate those in authority
humor is the only remedy
yellow ape teeth chimping in the glass death face
and ritual is remedy
a death song
and one for planting
and one for the beginning of loving.

I try to be strong in action and words  every day
Every morning I open my Bible and start to I pray
Whispers of imagined blessings  in the starts
Positivity, I have learned that, is a farce

I try to hold up ideals that I have broken before
In the hope that I can redeem myself the next time
The distant bell chimes calling out my death
I ignore the knell in an immortal hope sublime

I follow distant shadows on indistinct walls
My insecurities grace the surface and slither and crawls
I scoff at the reptilian camouflage of self-sufficiency
Knowing it is the pain carrying me on.

I am a ******* that would rather feel than be distant
I feel without expression when all I should do is cope
But instead what I do is hopelessly hope
My obsession with dreams makes me repentant.

Sometimes, on lonely nights, I can't be strong anymore
I reach out for a strong shoulder to cradle my sobs
But they often melt away in my tears and shape my fears
I shiver in my feigned self-sufficiency that calls out to emptiness

Maybe I let my imaginations run wild, wild horses fraying into the night
Maybe I need to let go of impossibilities and accept the practicalities
But I would rather lose myself in eyes I have never peered in
My paradise lurking beneath unseen memories.

(c) Anavah 2018

He has little sense of sorrow,
He thinks of fond tomorrows.
He’s a fabulist, a dreamer.
Not quite a true schemer
That would be too hard.
More like a half-awake bard
Making up poetic outcomes
For a reality that never comes.
Mostly he’s a ***.

He’s a moonbeamer,
Sliding down colorless rainbows
That he paints himself daily
Proclaiming about how gaily
The emptiness of his canvas
Has so sadly missed us
And somehow we are to blame
For not managing to be the same
As he is by appreciating
That which is not there.
He has daydreams to spare.

He shares his hopeful possibilities
That are not always practicalities
Made of unborn actualities
And fanciful surrealities
Painted over his shortcomings
Hoping nobody will see them
And talk too badly against them
Ahem-ing and coughing phlegm
When he orates and pontificates
On his latest boilerplate stories
Of his imagined future glories.
Lost in his own thought stream,
He’s a totally hopeless dreamer.

Something’s happening, let’s call it sunrise, for now,
and summer vacation in Geneva, in umm.. 10 hours.
My heart-beat is spiking, like a flag or kite flying.
I’m leaving an empty room - making one last pass with a broom.

I’m stuffing my bag, with the last few things, for escape on aluminum wings.
My dreams, woven in bright, butterfly tapestries, are rolled and folded -
packed between urgent fantasies and harsh, time-sensitive practicalities.

I know you’re there, a quarter-world away, good news, pegasus awaits,
to streak gulf-stream high, over choppy oceans wide with mechanical fire,
its ice-cycle crystal contrail will point, like cherub cupid's arrow, toward you.

Forget pixels, tech instruments, remote lifeline connections,
and prayer-like whispers over thin, criss-crossed wires.
I’m making my move, coming compass-needle true,
to press up close, reintroduce, extemporize and ******.
.
.
music for this:
Someday by Sugar Ray
sunburn by almost monday
This Charming Man by The Smiths
Heaven by Los Lonely Boys

As it makes its way down my throat
My eyes instinctively close as if by default
Maybe it’s to savor the “sweetness” in its entirety.
These are the few times my fidelity to tea
Is put to the test and subsequently waylaid.
This casts aspersions on my throat’s integrity
Needless to say my day’s made
And as the day’s itinerary of events deftly
Unfolds, bliss’s unmistakably apparent.
My consciousness is re-acquainted with the elusive
Notion of an existence that’s pleasant
Occasionally, sparingly free from dismal mentally abusive
Modern day realities and practicalities
Try this elixir with some delectable munchies.

Utopian visions
Idea collisions
Thought revisions
Change decisions

Impossible possibilities
Nonsensical sensibilities
Impractical practicalities
AIEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE

The plans for your construction are precise
The design and engineering are true
The foundations solid, the drains are laid
In mathematics pure, infallible

The offices are bright with light, well-aired
The flow of work geometrically set
The shops and stores convenient to the staff
In tactical practicalities placed

But do you wonder, at night beneath your lamp -
Why are you building a concentration camp?

i'm so alone
the sun is this big orb and the moon is a big bore
take your peer-pressured practicalities into the closet
and lie awake thinking why you never go out alone
we're all clining to each other because we are afraid
the other side is probbaly a long list of forms
and we're here hoping that it holds everything that will make things right with ourselves
we're so afraid
it's because we don't know how to live
we don't know how to love
we tear each other apart trying to figure out what's inside ourselves
but when the sun goes down
and the stars glare at us
from what is a delayed constellation of graveyards
we forget our names
and our lives become black and white photographs in the attic
we feel forgotten if we don't hear our flaws on someone else's lips
we are so alone
because  we do't know how to be together
we scream and hold and ****
but what we want is to have enough silence in our heads to feel peace
we want to be free
but skip into prisons of our own making
we're so broken
we're so imperfect
but light candles for gods that promise they'll love us into the next life,
perhaps hoping they'll remember us when no one else will
remember me

I think about how I was grasping at straws when you found me,
Desperate to be wanted and loved
I think about how you grounded me
How you’re solid and real
How I don’t wish for you to be anyone but yourself
I don’t dream of idealistic when it comes to you
You bring everything to the table
In your honesty and truth
I think about how you’re good
Truly good
How sometimes looking at you
Being around you
Is like staring at the sun too long
Or being too close to a bonfire
And it’s all too wondrous to fully comprehend
There isn’t a sense of unworthiness
Or insecurities
You’re golden and free
A garden blooming in plenty
And I am there beside you
You make others feel strong
Happy, adored, important
There is no fear, no rejection
You are full; close to overflowing in everything you are
A constant energy
Lavender and sunshine
You’re every small summer miracle
Pollen coated windows that cast patterns upon the floor
Sun shining through lace curtains
Rain falling in the glow of a street light
You’re waves crashing
And crickets chirping
And the haze of dusk
You’re magic, in all its practicalities  
You found me when I was lost
And you brought me back

I once heard that a good writer takes something that makes them feel and with that makes others feel,
I want to make you feel what I felt,
all the pain all the insecurities,
not to hurt you but just so that you may understand,
When we were little we all had ridiculous dreams fantasies of princesses and dragons,
and our knight in shining armor,
But quite honestly our practicalities have not changed,
Getting ready for school on this day I left to fight another dragon hoping my prince would come and save me.

I realized just today
that we can never be real
that we must stay
imaginary

for inside my head there are no problems
within us
or in
our imaginary world
I only hear our laughter, see our smiles
in place of anger and tears

inside my head I'm never scared
for you or me, you and me
everything is flawless
we talk, and then we see

the truth
each other
everything clear

and in the real world, well
there are sharp edges on which we will trip
knives that we will create and use to cut ourselves
practicalities
of my fear and shame

things that would never exist inside my head

so thus, with a heavy heart
I must keep us imaginary
so that we
can
never
be

real

As far as these children are concerned,
It is the sky itself that is ringing;
Not knowing how on a very still day such as this,
The moraines and drumlins
Will play catch with the sound of the bells
Emanating from the tiny old church over in Peruville
(Indeed, they are likely unaware the chapel’s existence)
Nor would they give the matter a second thought,
For they have mounted their bicycles,
Pointing spoke-wheeled steeds
Toward the small single-block downtown of their hamlet,
A journey of epic proportions requiring all due haste
(Though, unlike in our day, there is no long hair
Flying unkempt in the breeze,
As we have imposed the sensibilities of helmets upon them)
Though we know it to be a half-mile, at best,
As the crow flies, covered in three, perhaps four minutes,
But they are not concerned in the least
With the mechanics of straight line measurement,
The vagaries of acoustics, the minutiae of glacial residue,
For they have not accumulated the wisdom of the elders,
The practicalities of the sciences,
The ability to construct elaborate boxes of equations
Or any of the other bright, shining theoretical bracelets
Which fit, albeit a tad snugly, on our wrists and ankles.

The downfall of ******* my spirit......
.
.
.
Brilliant but ignorant.
.
.
.
Lost intertwining with the practicalities of earth.
.
.
A shadow watching you from a far.

Idealistic standards set him apart from practicalities
Yet struggles to break free of norms are ongoing efforts
By the Gandhiites if there are any left
Life is a tall order when your goals are taller
Yet a willful soul can make it seem effortless
With the sheer tenacity of the indomitable will

Lawrence Hall
[email protected]
Dispatches for the Colonial Office

A repost from March, 2018


                     Yes, Yes, But They Need Jobs in the Real World


                   “Forward Electronics, your victory’s achieved!
                    In all communication, progress is our creed!
                    Ignorance is darkness, technology is light!
                    Radio, our watchword; radio, our might!”

          -Komsomol youth singing in “For the Good of the Cause,”
           Solzhenitsyn, 1963


The plans for your construction are precise
The design and engineering are true
The foundations solid, the drains are laid
In mathematics pure, infallible

The offices are bright with light, well-aired
The flow of work geometrically set
The shops and stores convenient to the staff
In tactical practicalities placed

But do you wonder, at night, beneath your lamp -
Why are you building a concentration camp?

I give my all.
No less.
But my all
is far from best.

I take nothing.
No more!
Because nothing
is near the worst
of practicalities.
That is my reality.

STANDARDS DOUBLE

DIFFERENT CONTRARY  ANGLES N PERSPECTIVES  OF THE SAME PEOPLE.

Realities, practicalities are different very, from our ideals n thoughts;

This is the very reason,  with these standards  double, our society rots.

Today  compulsory are masks due to covid; understandable this situation is;

But what about those masked people; whose masks see we can't, how do we deal with these?

People say one should have a priceless heart, which  is worth more than solid gold;

But in reality prefer people those who are rich; talkative, powerful and bold.

People with hearts of gold,  taken are for granted; and often  neglected

Whereas the rich, powerful ones, the pampered, spoilt ones are selected

Speeches loud are given against practises evil; but sadly limited it is; used  only to be preached.

Wonder I often,  why these standards double? Where have we actually reached?

Happen rapes n sins other,  almost daily, condemned by the people who are in it involved.

Have you thought, how, why and from when,  have these standards double evolved ???

Armin Dutia Motashaw