Consciousness


Consciousness

BY JOANIE MACKOWSKI
"How it is fickle, leaving one alone to wander


the halls of the skull with the fluorescents
softly flickering. It rests on the head


like a bird nest, woven of twigs and tinsel
and awkward as soon as one stops to look.
That pile of fallen leaves drifting from


the brain to the fingertip burned on the stove,


to the grooves in that man’s voice
as he coos to his dog, blowing into the leaves


of books with moonlit opossums
and Chevrolets easing down the roads
of one’s bones. And now it plucks a single


tulip from the pixelated blizzard: yet


itself is a swarm, a pulse with no
indigenous form, the brain’s lunar halo.


Our compacted galaxy, its constellations
trembling like flies caught in a spider web,
until we die, and then the flies


buzz away—while another accidental


coherence counts to three to pass the time
or notes the berries on the bittersweet vine


strewn in the spruces, red pebbles dropped
in the brain’s gray pool. How it folds itself
like a map to fit in a pocket, how it unfolds


a fraying map from the pocket of the day."
Source: Poetry (February 2012).

Never Again...




Masao Yamamoto


Never Again Would Bird's Song Be the Same


He would declare and could himself believe
That the birds there in all the garden round
From having heard the daylong voice of Eve
Had added to their own an oversound,
Her tone of meaning but without the words.
Admittedly an eloquence so soft
Could only have had an influence on birds
When call or laughter carried it aloft.
Be that as may be, she was in their song.
Moreover her voice upon their voices crossed
Had now persisted in the woods so long
That probably it never would be lost.
Never again would birds' song be the same.
And to do that to birds was why she came.


Robert Frost 

Milton's ghost / garden sense






GARDENSENSIBILITIES


"the names are written on signs/the growth is tall and thick in
the garden everything finds its name/full with held breath
and rustling


what shall I say in a garden where everything has a name
nothing?


*


yet another question: what
can I say?


justice requires imagination/requires
ornament/profusion/poetry/not
exposure/thus truth becomes profusion/it merely states what is there


once more and nothing else


*


in a garden where everything has a name nothing
is possible/but


does everything have a name?/does that garden exist?


in a garden where some things have names and some do not everything is


possible/everything humanly possible


in such a garden


nothing nothing human is foreign to it here is precisely


namedrowning/nameless


*


inside the fence/what can I say?


nametangled


*


I give


buttons, fringes, umbels, leaves, bulbs, and pods their names to
enjoy them all the more and hear them rustle as the


buttons, fringes, umbels, leaves, bulbs, pods,
and berries


they are/and let them banish my dejection


*


a garden where I have called everything by its proper name


where I can give things their names/only at night at night is
enough/it is sudden salvation


here I will quench my namethirst


*


here I will rest armtangled


*


where I have called by its proper name/all that should be called


by name
and let the rest be


a waiting rustling place/what does it wait for? what does it wait for?


to speak of things that have no names


yet/which are so small/or to think of things so evil they no longer
have a name/with held breath/not
allowed to have a name anymore


should nothing
human be foreign to me? I hope so or else


I hope not


*


the profusion is always there/even when it is a 
profusion that no one seems to need


*


everything may have a name but
I could come up with new ones for the lot if I wanted because
I am awake alone so


green fans red beads blue/veils and reveals/healthy and unhealthy
night with steeplehigh lightning


and even universal laws feel voluntary/now
small tortoiseshell/dwell in my tiny tortoise


shell


now


*


gardens seem more humane than
humans/with all their costumes


the special order


*


neither too much freedom nor too little


to speak is so human it is like the
avenue of sphinxes/speechless faces/stoneheavy meaning not one
word over the lips/while all forms/the trees the houses flowers and windows


and the neighbors’ curtains and the living rooms behind them maybe they are quiet
quiet living rooms


no one is innocent but some are pure and many
many do have wings


*


but the costumes


reality/which is why the unadorned is sphinx-like/like a thing without a name


*


the garden grows thicker and thicker


more and more hanging/full/dry


nametangled/is all that just ornament? it is
profusion/excess/ornament if ornament is inevitable/what can I say?


goodnightshades
goodnightshades


the garden is quiet before fruiting/tonight the names set


sail"


© 2010, Ursula Andkjær Olsen
From: Have og helvede
Publisher: Gylendal, Copenhagen, 2010


© Translation: 2010, Thom Saterlee
Publisher: First published on PIW, 2010





Duane Michals - Photographer



"This photograph is my proof. There was that afternoon, when things were still good between us, and she embraced me, and we were so happy. It did happen, she did love me. Look see for yourself."

"I was lucky because I never went to photography school and I didn't learn the photography rules," he says. "And in not learning the rules, I was free. I always say, you're either defined by the medium or you redefine the medium in terms of your needs."  - Duane Michals



Dr. Heisenberg’s Magic Mirror of Uncertainty







2 days, in bed with a phone





Comes a time when a girl just has to pull herself out of a bed of thought.
God forbid it's almost noon.




It's not like you're going to get a second glance or even a whisper,
I mean, who do you think you are?




Who's going to see you anyway, for all they know?
Maybe it would be good enough to live for the sake of living,
to put your big girl panties on and suck it up!.



images #1 by Elena Kovaleva
           #2 by Peter Lindbergh
           #3 by Stefan De Lay

nameless


nameless and faceless is how you found me and nameless and faceless is how I will remain
 you will never use me again!

sometimes a friend takes your hand in the dark...




Song for Connie

BY BILL BERKSON
The sun met the moon at the corner
           noon in thin air
Commotion you later
           choose to notice
Love shapes the heart
           that once was pieces
You take in hand
           the heart in mind
Your fate’s consistent
           alongside mine
Unless a mess
           your best guess
That is right, thanks, the intimate
           fact that you elect it
At corners, dressed or naked, with lips taste        
           full body, time thick or thin, fixated
Love, take heart
           as heart takes shape
And recognition
           ceases to be obscure
One line down the center
           another flying outward enters
Bill Berkson, "Song for Connie" from Portrait and Dream: New and Selected Poems. Copyright © 2009 by Bill Berkson.  Reprinted by permission of Coffee House Press.