Psalm Unknown: Last Night I Did Not Go Walking

Last Night, I Did Not Go Walking

Last night, I did not
go walking,

but sat, quietly,
on a curb.

Two calls, in two days,
had made clear

insufficiencies,
on my part.

Worrying, now, my
fingers found

loose threads at my sleeve.
More edges

unraveling.  Some
thing to catch

I am sure.  Alone,
I spoke soft,

but did not find words
to finish.

* * *

Later, inside, I
wrote a bit.

I did not write words
of value.

What is there to say?
I am not

a sewer of clothes.
I have no

talent with needles,
nor fingers

hardened by effort
and calloused.

"And yet," one might say,
"your coat sleeves

need mending.  They will
not be sewn

themselves."  I know this
is some truth.

* * *

I think, on some nights,
of a man:

hands full of small seeds,
and walking

between furrows of
rich, soft dirt.

With authority,
he scatters,

but never looks where
his seeds go.

"There are so many,"
he must think--

"What are a lost few,
here and there?"

* * *

I am no sower
of small seeds.

I have no talent,
or green thumb.

But at the end of
my sleeves, threads

are coming undone.
Who else sees

what the crows will take
but--now--me?

Last night, I did not
go walking.

I sat on a curb,
to think or

pray.  Then my fingers
found edges,

coming unraveled--
or unsewn.


KMC 4/7/14

Psalm 51:On Drost's Batsheba met de brief van koning David

On Drost's Batsheba met de brief van koning David

The sound
of fire
in the brazier
wakes me,
and I know,
now,
what I have long
heard:
flames lick,
sputter,
consume,
and leave
not ash,
but
something
spent,
and old.

I have seen him,
tonight,
and I'm sorry;
running,
in your charges,
as I
have imagined them:
before bronze
and wood
penetrating
deeply,
and drawing
red, and
precious,
blood.

What kind
price
was this?
Paid
in blood-guiltiness:
yours, first;
and also
mine.

You age me,
king.
The lines
are appearing,
in the corners
of my eyes,
and my mouth;
between
the stretched skin
of my jaw,
and shoulder:
battlements,
overlooking,
a no man's
land.
I will not remain
as new.

And what price
then?

You age me,
king.
Your eyes
wander,
and are weighed.
Your lust
for me
burns,
and consumes,
and I
am not
ash--
but sold.

KMC 1/15/14

Psalm 51: Miserere

Miserere

It is my bouyancy, this quiet evil:
drawing me upwards, in this sea, this rest.
Resisting (as if it could not) the pull
of each of my hands, strained in deeping water.
Measures earned are measures surrendered.
The hard-beating of my muscles is fought
by air I hold in my own lungs, tendered
as a miser holds his coin: clutched, stored, caught.
My sin is ever before me, felt and
known by the shape of it, its sharp edges
pressing out, thinning skin, to rip, to tear.
My sin is ever before me: these hands
red from swimming, this face a grim rictus
breaking surface tension, gasping for air.

KMC 1/8/14

Paterson: Book II, Chapter 1, p. 45--(so close are we to ruin every day!) II

(so close are we to ruin everyday!)

Graham:
you can have
my leg-skin
(when I die),
if you want it.


KMC 10/29/13

Paterson, Book II, Chapter 1, p. 55-56

Capital of Call and Response

Let me

say again:

the present

is never present.

Yes, I know:

a pun.

The implication, of

course, is our gifts

are behind us:

signifying old feelings

through old money

and at times

celebrating the

ongoing nature

of things.

But of course,

none of us can wait

to open them.

How could we?

Another call

and response.

A confirmation

of existence

a moment ago

and a moment

ago;

a string of pearls

run backwards

to ourselves.

Words!

Sing!

Song!

Thing!

But this sermon

is tired;

 and I am

spent.

More sense,

borrowed from sense;

more pretense

borrowed from tense.

So much giving back,

so much taking—

and then

taking—

but always, like
sound, like
light, in
waves...

My words, and

your words;
my words, and
your words
are currency.

KMC 10/18/13

Paterson, Book II, Chapter I, p. 59

Desire and the Evangelist (from the ten minute imagist)

sweaty bodies stick skin to skin, roll over onto a remote

the channel changes

yelling forth from the screen goes unnoticed

Paterson: Book II, Chapter I, p. 61

To Be Good Dogs; or, the Need for Resistance of Memory

I.

Listen: we see seconds of our futures.

It’s true: two Stanford doctors proved it.

Their experiment involved a woman

watching a computer screen as images

flickered past every two seconds or so.

Some were cheerful: puppies, rainbows, ice cream. 

Others were horrible: just death, death, death.

What happened next surprised everybody

except the two doctors: the woman’s brain,

monitored from another room, began

to flicker—once before the horrors, not

at all before the joys.  She had sensed them
more than two seconds before they were seen.

II.

Conclusions, for the doctors, are easy,

but less so for us.  What does it mean, that

we can see two seconds of our futures? 

Not long enough to hit the brakes; not far

enough to stay away from the rotten

branch, the alley, the sophisticated

lover and his Gauloises.  Not fast

enough to keep us from wishing to go

backward, dreaming of different outcomes,

and the steps that would have arrived at them. 

These two seconds have never arrested

the accumulation of our singular

story, drop by drop, a cave formation

of ourselves, out of ourselves, from ourselves.

III.

We are seeing in the wrong direction.

Let me know what has been, singularly.

Do not let us see ourselves as desired.

Arrest not time, but my thinking of it.

What, then, is the truth of those few seconds?

Time, as if it were a mother, places

its hands on our cheeks, turns our faces

away from our first and our truest love:

the want of keeping, want of memory.

We, like bad children, pull away, hide

our faces, avoid contact with her eyes,

and refuse to see; instead, only sense—

and those few seconds, in ones and twos, lose

out, and are delayed.  They are resisted.

KMC 4/19/13

Paterson: Book II, Chapter 1, p. 45--(so close are we to ruin every day!)

(so close are we to ruin every day)

the waves begin so forcefully

and move so rapidly light flecks from them

in urgent bursts

of unbelievable whiteness.

Windows break, as bodies also break,

and thousands of eyes collect, signal, and transmit

a thing not yet filtered, understood, or seen.

...

Death pushes me from death.

The spectacle adds distance

in years, thoughts, and means:

I cannot die like this.

I know your secret, my betrothed:
you are not a ghost,
you are a lover.  Like a lover,

I know you less for your body,

and I make you exotic.  

I cannot die

Like this.

I will sleep in. 

...

8 minutes ago,

the sun erupted

 like a million

Hiroshimas;

plasma flared

one hundred thousand miles

into empty space;

and light explodes

across the foot of my bed

like a bomb.

KMC 4/16/13