It’s the usual rhetorical question. Don’t begin to
Understand yet, the poem hasn’t quite begun. Quiet. The
Only sound that of words on paper. Still: the
Only movement that of the past, history if
You will. The reading contract (not the writing contract)
Is that you understand that you will feel
Or think something. What the land forms in you
In your mind. This relates to the history
Of reading poetry, and to that of writing it
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Money is part of it, take
A step further, killing is part of
It
__
We know that
____________
It could probably be seen from the moon if
Anyone was there (up, down, across), watching. The moon’s
A whole other concept
Of land, related to space programs and other exercises
In propaganda, imagination and syntax. We are
In view of it as the sun and stars
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Everything seen is implicated. Everything heard and said. Are
You an unbeliever? Or are you the one who
Understands, without reading, my love? Ok, that’s ok
You will never know I asked. The fragmentation
Is complete. So
Is the building. Now the poem can begin
Oh. I am tingling. The wind is
In the ruins. But the sound is not
A message. There is residue
In my teeth, teeth that
Ache for the ground, that
Are part ground. Try to hear what is not
An effect. What makes sense? Not writing. But
It’s the only challenge I want, not when
Or whether people began to see a God, when
That changed, how. If you carry a blue
& white flag that says
Your name’s James Joyce, it makes sense
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You come to the city because
You want to show it to your dog
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You can’t stay in a hotel so
You sleep nearby. The social seems
Only to be between you. No local sees you
__________________________________
There is nothing ‘going on’. If we step
Outside we feel the mood, while others try to
Escape the mood. A café is not a verb
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There are realities. There are things we stopped believing
In when we were seven that haunt
Us forty years later if we make
It like guardian angels
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Adopted northern structures. The spines of the
Oak trees reach though power lines. The power lines
Run through the trees. Gold pours into the houses
& other places mining for human feeling, boring holes
In the world. Magazines flap against newspapers. Everything
I thought all day was untrue. Time
Especially. Alarms push themselves out into the air
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A poem can’t begin with so much action