Saturday, November 28, 2015

holidays are for ghosts

what we call now the holidays were holy days once,
i suppose, dangerous days
when the harvest was in and the fruit of time
was ripe on the hearths

a heart full of time knows invisible things
time being the first

and out of time my grandparents accost me
after all, I am living in their former home
am I not
and do I know their invisible selves
I did not, I do not

I think I would like them to approve
of these holiday meals, for instance
but what kind of shape is that for a memory
a sort of mummery wrap
what is frightening of the past is when things not living
move with your own animation
like taking down old photographs to make them dance
Poe could do something with that, do something
with their eyes, have them give
commands

when you die, what is left?
is is what time took out of you
like this house it took out of my grandfathers arms
pulling nails from his blows for affixing studs
pulling the slop from plaster until it hardened over seams

and more it took from my grandmother
children, meals, washing, laughter
and all her fears
where is that house, did it square up or harden
into father, uncles, aunts
houses cannot be found in houses, there is no it
where you say look here
for the invisible thing

it is just a heart full of time that knows
how to look, like my grandmother in her last days
in her dementia
or drug-induced dreams
speaking to me with all the time that was not mine
knowing me as three persons or more
i told her, as any number of them,
what I knew of her that was my own, very little it seemed
just gatherings in this house, at this table
it moved her without knowing my name for more than five minutes
at a time, the animation was from somewhere else
and it could carry no judgement with it at all
since that is the sort of thing that time carries you away from
and leaves in the lumber and scrapes across the seams

if there are ghosts living in holy days
do they wish you had known, could remember what they had been
or are they themselves because they are invisible
in what is left being from time?


Thursday, November 26, 2015

and there was 2pm, first thanksgiving

the leaves
in the cranny by the loading dock
at the back of the warehouse
where freight sometimes rolls in across
semi trailer decks
are clenched like old fists
flit fast as sparrows in the fitful gust
winds gentle folded by brick walls
into cyclones, hurricanes in scale to the fish-eyed puddle
they brood, they hover over.

I say sometimes,
in the autumn, if not in other seasons,
to myself to bide--
after gales the air hangs free
what fists in crannies clung
no longer are alive when one's breathing shallows
things known as true vie with little else
in dry time and cold,
and yet clench afternoons by truck-fulls
and shake and shake their trust
to scale--to scale like needle heads
on which to shake.

so? dignity should
empty trees, stand naked through the snows
believe or not believe
earth's command subtle as sap
"make green" and
cunning creep, flying fly
fruit bear within it seed

know down to your bones
to cleave like flesh.
or should I say instead
forsake thy time and time and time?
for what faces you, scale to scale
help fold into
help






Thursday, November 05, 2015

A clarification

The question is what exactly it is that we are up to. The answer is clearly that we do not know. That we do not know precisely is most easily followed by that we do not care--we don't care in the sense that it is not an emotional or intellectual necessity to know. In fact, it seems quite reasonable to suppose that not knowing what we are up to facilitates being up to it. It's like the story of Peter on the water.

But in every smaller sense, knowing what we are up to is much better for being up to it. Well, that's not quite true. Knowing you are becoming friends does not help you become friends, knowing you are falling in love does not help you fall in love. Knowing you are doing well leading a group of people does not help you lead them well. It might even break the spell and let you down into the water.

It might, or it might not. But knowing you are trying to repair drywall helps you go about it. Knowing you need to target a certain market helps you do so. Knowing that you need to increase sales might help you target a new market. Knowing a team is relying on you not to blow it is closer to the tipping point of not being helpful, depending on your personality. Looking into whether it will be beneficial to society as a whole if your company increases sales is helpful only in very special cases relative to increasing sales, and in other special cases relative to other things. Looking into why anyone would get up to the business of doing what you are doing in the first place...the answer is clearly that we do not know.

Well...we do not know. But what is the difference between knowing and not knowing? I don't mean what is the difference, when faced with 2+2=, of knowing 4 or not knowing 4. I don't even mean the difference between not knowing 4 and not knowing "+" or "=" or even "2." There are always many things we could learn.

I mean what is different when you approach ultimate questions, as in the example about sales. Your questions are on a trajectory in that example. They move from requiring knowledge of fewer things to eventually require knowledge of all things. The question is approaching an infinite point: why does everything in the universe and any other universes do just as it does? As you move along this trajectory, there is a subtle shift in the nature of what an answer could be. It is subtle because of the remarkably fine gradation. We seem to use the same word for the thing you would know in answer to the question: truth.

In the same sort of way, a scientist could study an organism, the organism is part of an ecosystem, eventually you can get to something like the Gaia theory where the planet can be seen as an organism. Presumably you could go on from there. The nature of being is graduated out until it too becomes a universal.

This is what I mean in earlier posts when I put truth and being as sort of points in a grid or points from which other things move.