Ezra Pound #2

"Men do not understand books until they have a certain amount of life, or at any rate no man understands a deep book, until he has seen and lived at least part of its contents."

Abisko

Dec 2008

Refrain

Circa Winter 2010

Refrain from speaking the Thing.

Speak around it.

This is the epilogue

of three hundred and fifty seven days

gone slowly into the dark.

three hundred and fifty seven days

bearing what must only be continually born

and if the next year is better

things will not be erased

we do not shed the past

we only bury it

or drink it into pacification

or fuck it into silence

or swim it into temporal oblivion

There is no undoing what is done

Nor changing what will be

it is math

We are responsible for it

Numerals acting upon each other

With precision

messy, irreversible precision

One can face

One accepts

but one does not heal or grow stronger

When the Thing passes redemption

When the Thing passes the point of salvage

What then

One can only triage the dying

to the quiet silent rooms

where they will not disturb that which might survive

I am disturbed brother

by that which is dying in the other room

For it will not pass quietly

And I much desire to speak with you.

Camogli

Circa Spring 2010

Götland #1

WWII era bunker & friends on the coast of Götland
Summer 2010

Road from Lyseboten

Windward

Circa Nov 2009

There is rot in the crib

Tar and sludge

it sticks upon the hands

it gums up the gears...

We sailed 

three long months after the storm

listing heavily to port

tattered but made well.

even if it leaked

we kept that thing afloat

but the rice sacks bulge in the hold

and the rats scurry in the scuppers

and though the wind is fair

and the sky bright

we could still crack up and go down
were a wave to catch us crossways

Fragile, these beams

Young but weathered

We'd have known kindness this fall

selfless kindness

and tolerance

and trust

open trust

not the suffocating, squeezing kind

but open and free

and it has kept us afloat

and that has been good

but it is dark and lonely just now

excruciatingly so

The only mercy we ever truly know

is the mercy we learn to show ourselves

and that is the hardest thing we can grant ourselves

whether in the eye of the storm

or in irons.

Black Lake

16Feb2010

I remember that cold winter
when the lake was absolutely still.
Cold, deep cold, slowing it like molasses or syrup
so that even the slow rockings ceased
and it looked like a silver placid mirror under gray heaven
Not a wave. Not a ripple.
And overnight, in that perfect stillness, it froze
untouched by wind, too small to be turned by the lunar tidal force
So that in the morning, and the day after, and the day after
it froze deeper and harder
like folded steel
or plate glass.
Absolutely still.

I remember how we went out on it, at night
shuffling along on the blackness. Pure, unadulterated blackness
without crack or frozen ripple, without bumps or imperfections
In places, sometimes so smooth you could see the stars reflected on it.
I remember we all moved apart
to experience it alone
and I stood over my dark little piece and stared down
down and down
trying to see the bottom
trying to see anything
and I realized I was staring up
at reflected space
millions of lightyears of time and dust
bouncing off that perfect ice and up into my eyes
How I squatted down
limiting my vision
so that neither the shoreline nor the island nor any of the lights could interfere in my peripherals.
Still
just a pure, smooth blackness reflecting the stars
Vertigo struck
 strongly
I felt weak, and turned
revolved
as though trapped on some outer edge of the expanding cosmos.
as though I must hang on to the Earth herself or be thrown, to skid
I leaned my body against the invisible threat
staring, unblinking down into that ice
staring
wheeling
staring
until the magic passed
and the moment was done
and we all shuffled silently back towards home.

All this I remember
on that vast black nowhere place
between the shoreline
and eternity.

Visby

Circa Summer 2010

Paulo Coelho #1

"Be brave. Take risks. Nothing can substitute experience."

Uppsala

Circa Fall 2009

Choke on it

15Feb2010

Swallowed words
the unending reroute
made habitus
Like a lightning rod
channelling all that power
into something earthy
where it can vanish
So then has the tongue become
bolted fast
and in silence perishes
all the fatal kilowatts
The unnatural made routine
because strength is not always for display
but often deeply silent
only then can it be personal
when it needs no validation other than its own execution
day in and day out
in silence
and no herald or compliment
and there will be no need
soon
not immediate
but soon
for this inhumane martyrdom
is on its last legs
and we will breathe again
So
Smile back. and swallow.
because only a fool puts on more canvas
waiting in the eye of the storm.
The good sailor checks the hatches,
pumps the bilge
and prays.
Now
Odysseus tied himself to the mast
to burn and twist in agony for the Sirens Song
while the lesser men rowed
ears plugged against the danger
Was it wise? Advisable? Did it accomplish anything?
Questions of opinion and speculation
but in the end
it is for Odysseus alone to know
whether survival was worth the pain.
Silently
teeters the calf
in the face of facts
facts quantifiable and known
logical simple facts
your hands do not tremble to grip the ropes
your muscles tense to pull
and so poised do we find the scene frozen
the moment between empty faithless starvation-hope
and the cold, comfortless hope-less facts
Swallow
in the hot desert sun
one last time
before we pull down another god
for smelting into anonymity
and close our hearts a little more
against that all religious dogma
Love