VizPoem Play by JKD (new)

NEW: the language that surrounds us by amanda deutch

the language that surrounds us


optional. in your home.

plant walk

building walk

use the answer to listen

smudge way before

if you cannot speak,

silence

silence

silence

answer

“To garble Greta Garbo a bit, I want to be at home”

NEW: Insomniac Night Poem # 2 ambien

by Amanda Deutch

Night Poem # 2

Dance in the wooden alley of mirrors in the house

There amber stage lights above us. I am in a purple mumu

Day’s heat cooling. I try to share kisses on the phone

Pack 20 or so words in around the word 'kiss' so as to seem less vulnerable.

As I am vulnerable very soft

Convulse volcanos explode. Well that’s what we get.

--NYC, summer 2009 some hour in the middle of the night

Dunvegan, translated from the English by sean s

after Dunvegan by Sue Chenette

The ideal of all in Dunvegan's heart,
like a home of clapped baked stones, the gate
fashioned per the avenue's limit, an apparition
risen from raw and distant property,
its feet quicklimed in dark and permafrost.

Her libations on our heads, then clambering steps
in the child night. Sleep tumbles us a hall's width,
an unadorned bed, a facecloth and bowl,
as plain as the spiritless, bodiless weather.

Morning and the light stroke of an oak's twig
submerges the daylight's plane against your window.

Backtracking by JKD

After Sean S's Threadjacker.

There are tunnels under skycliffs
and old bottles,
decades of cobbled raft crossings
mysteries of spindly winesacks and marriage

vows drunk in a labyrinthine corner,
yellowjackets threading
a pathway through matter,
scratching useless to get out.

The dulcet clatter of loose history
is like the rest of us,
awakened over cracked shells
pressed, listening, to hear no echo

where feet splice, bleed
maroon over volcanic sands
markers as unnoticed as trails:
there is no roaming back, or tide.

threadjacker by sean s

after JKD's To Be Read, Perhaps, In Reverse

These are tunnels under the sky
because sky is earth
and earth is where we go when we die.

Cliffs and old bottles tell
elsewhere tell the decades of battles and treaties
a cobbled raft crossing history's
spindly winesacks and marriages.

Vows knotted arms drunk in a corner of our labyrinth.
Threadjackers.
You, for example, whispering under

shelled yellowjackets, curled on a stone step.
Betrayed by a chemical, a pathway through matter.
Hospitals under your fingernails

where scratching is useless.
The dulcet clatter of loose change in my pocket
a history like the rest of us.

To be read, perhaps, in reverse by JKD

After Lisa Pasold's Whoops-a-daisy..., Jon Wonham's In life the rampant mind has limbs and Tall Tale of Short Hours by Amy Hollowell

Clinging onto the rampant limbs
because these were things we would not do
not see not be part of not parting
being the thing passing through or
bygone

nights not anymore
risking time and pinned-together boulevards
the intertwined life of its own mind
when the red and yellow fall
in an orange nightscape

inverted constructs rattle and sliver
unseen along the scenic drive

elsewhere cliffs and ruins of old tunnels
tell me about the centuries of battles and treaties
of a cobbled route up which someone drove us
of myths and unknowns
this was haunting if we could be there

but in this small car on this wide and vacant road
there are only elevated furrows
extended courtyards
barriers penning in a preordained timeline
telling us how what was was

you, for example, whispering
words syllables clicked consonants left underground

so when I was there, later, I could unearth
remnants because things
like cut glass, painted pottery, bronze blades,
gas masks, spittoons, an ivory comb, dictionaries
that are left adrift never came back

because there were things we would not do
anymore, to hear me listening, to be
in the enunciation or simply riding
round and round on Bay Street, arms interlinked,
until everyone would clamor awake
dawn overbright in the joyous crowding