--William Carlos Williams

The best advice always comes from Jeannette, the Unassuming:

"Why do you talk about yourself so much?" 

I'm slayed. 

But then, more: "Just say what you mean."

And I'm trying to pick up all my pieces, completely slayed.

On repeat, every day. The perfect poem to wash the dishes to.

Peter Gizzi's "A Panic That Can Still Come Upon Me"

OUTSIDE MY WINDOW


November 23rd

On a balcony across the street a toddler is so excited running in place holding onto the bars yelling HOLA to another toddler on this side of the street on a balcony again and again it’s all they can say I gather it sounds like a complete conversation though hidden in

hello.


.

November 21st

Among other things

you can tell
which are the immigrants

by those who spit
in the street.

This is our new home.


.

November 18th

cobblele cobble
cobble cobble
stone cobble
cobble
stone



.

November 17th

The old man across the street as usual

opens the door and
looks up at the sky

rain?

holds his hand
out

up


.

November 16th

sitting
on the porch

keys inside
me locked
out
in my slippers

and misery
for hours

.

November 15th

between


a lady
poops


two cars

Here you have some notes from Lorca's theory on the duende, which shake me:

“But intelligence is often the enemy of poetry, because it limits too much, and it elevates the poet to a sharp-edged throne where he forgets that ants could eat him or that a great arsenic lobster could fall on his head—things against which the muses that live in monocles and in the lukewarm lacquered roses of tiny salons are quite helpless."

“And reject the angel, and give the muse a kick in the seat of the pants, and conquer our fear of the smile of violets exhaled by eighteenth-century poetry and of the great telescope in whose lens the muse, sickened by limits, is sleeping."

“…not forms but the marrow of forms, pure music with a body so lean it could stay in the air.”

…”[T[he duende loves the rim of the wound….[H[e draws near places where the forms fuse together into a yearning superior to their visible expression.”

SOME CARLSBAD POEMS


1

This is a place.

People are
born and die
all the time

involved
in its history
and their creation
re-creation
of it.

Thus one’s place
in it is nothing but

the center.

You see
an old man
with a Bible

with a sign

“For here we do not have an enduring city, but we are
looking for the city that is to come” (Hebrews 13:14, NIV)

downtown
spreading

outwards.

You do not agree
with this sign.

You love
your place

which makes
it difficult
to hate
it.


2


Gold’s Gym
turned

into Extreme Fitness
then turned

into American Muscle—

And I have

nothing

to say


3


To know that they’re lanterns
and not just lights
leading you down the path
along the Pecos River

really does
make a difference

4

Driving down
Canal Street
my little brother exclaims

“This place
is a ghost town!”

Well then that
must make you
a ghost I say


5


Mom smokes

Pappaw smokes

Aunt Karen smokes

This
the reason
for endless drought

All there is
is smoke

Everywhere

reeks
of cigarettes

Theirs are the only
clouds


6


"In Carlsbad it's tough.
You make the wrong
people mad and sometimes
they go after you.
In the coaching profession
we make people mad all the time.
Sometimes in a small town
it's tough to fight all of that.
I've obviously upset
some parents. Sometimes
you make people mad and
they just won't quit
until they get you."


7


Just as Jeremiah
lamented his city

I prepare
my eyes.

Of course he speaks
of the city as an individual
or is it vice versa ?

I am
a complex
of sections and aching
centers
which move
workers to other sections

of my city.

.

“She is a filthy thing
among men”

She is more like
a haggard man
you have seen
on the streets
he is ruined
but he is so
because he
has ruined
himself

a life filled
with consumption

over-consumption

.

“my bile
is poured out
on the ground

because of the destruction of my people”

Jeremiah writes
and I nod

Yes your bile
is everywhere

but simply because of
how you gorge

“See, O Lord, how distressed
I am;
my stomach churns,”

.

In the newspaper
I read about how

a giant sinkhole
waits to swallow
him

“Three decades of pumping
freshwater into a salt layer
about 400 feet below the surface,
and then its extraction to help
with oil well drilling,
have already caused
two sinkholes to open up last year.

I churn

“State officials now say
the ground around the city
is heaving in some areas
while other parts are sinking.”

I churn

“Is this the city that was called
the perfection of beauty,
the joy of al the earth?” No

that was Jerusalem. This
is Carlsbad.

Here the Lord
did nothing and

he did not let
any wrath go
anywhere

.

“For these things
I weep my eyes

flow

with tears”

"I have had to learn the simplest things
last. Which made for difficulties."

--Charles Olson, "Maximus, to himself"