tread upon,
these floors
leak little phrases
of baritone
whale-song
…
warm-
haze-
ward

instill or
unspool, just
be my guest,
ellipsoid
pause

A   L   L  

H   E   A   R   T 

F   I   L   L 

D   I   R   T 

Fleshy Occlusion-Abstraction

my friend imagined "a machine
that machine'd"

& I thought: "unhand me,
flywheel!"

[that which] made you is [that

which] keeps you
still / slant-wise

in wreathed boom-bap / some

certified clean idle

overlayed with mulch & shade
or uplift / to wit,

see: onsets & rimes,
self-correcting edition

better yet: pet tornado: nature's 

fury in the palm of your hand

RWE Manifests, in 1837

Instead of the sublime and beautiful, the near, the low, the common...That, which had been negligently trodden under foot by those who were harnessing and provisioning themselves for long journeys into far countries, is suddenly found to be richer than all foreign parts. 

The literature of the poor, the feelings of the child, the philosophy of the street, the meaning of household life, are the topics of the time. It is a great stride. It is a sign, — is it not? of new vigor, when the extremities are made active, when currents of warm life run into the hands and the feet. 

I ask not for the great, the remote, the romantic...I embrace the common, I explore and sit at the feet of the familiar, the low. Give me insight into to-day, and you may have the antique and future worlds. 

What would we really know the meaning of? The meal in the firkin; the milk in the pan; the ballad in the street; the news of the boat; the glance of the eye; the form and the gait of the body; — 

show me the ultimate reason of these matters; show me the sublime presence of the highest spiritual cause lurking, as always it does lurk, in these suburbs and extremities of nature; 

let me see every trifle bristling with the polarity that ranges it...and the shop, the plough, and the ledger, referred to the like cause by which light undulates and poets sing...

the world lies no longer a dull miscellany and lumber-room...
there is no trifle; there is no puzzle...


--from Emerson's "The American Scholar" address

Whithering

broke betoken slips

his slurred gestures
bemoan demeanor dis-

composed awningworks
repaired to the site
whence sprang
welcome adam-

antine clints-&-grykes
put on notice:

pitch-&-yaw parade,
our sluggish grey ferry
swayed, forced

perspective wanted
more play in the joints

magpie alit, we found
the sound parts, held
to / worked from
ravens along the cliff's
edge, o and sparrows

roaming the terminal

The press of footsteps 

was as thick here; 

and the same consideration 

of the suffering he had had, 

perplexed and terrified him. 

He began to fear that all this 

intricacy in his brain would 

drive him mad; and that his 

thoughts already lost coherence 

as the footprints did, 

and were pieced on 

to one another, 

with the same trackless 

involutions, and varieties 

of indistinct shapes.

(D&S, Ch. 59)

Chaucer's House of Tidings, c. 1384

'Then why are you here?' he asked.

'I will tell you,' I said. 'To learn something new, I know not what, tidings of this or that, of love or maybe of some other happiness. For certainly, he who brought me said I would see and hear some wonderful things in this place. But these things I have heard cannot be what he meant.'

'No?' he said. And I answered, 'No, by God! For I have known since I was a little child that people desire praise and a lasting name, although I had no idea how or indeed where fame was achieved until now.'

'I know well the things you want to hear,' he said. Come with me and have no fear, for I shall lead you to where you will hear many things.' Then I went with him out of the palace. And standing in a nearby valley I saw a building so strange that the house of Daedalus, that was called the Labyrinth, could not have been so wonderful to look at nor so curiously constructed. For constantly, as swiftly as thought, this outlandish house turned about and was never still. And there came from it a noise that was for all the world like the roaring of a stone when it is propelled through the air from a siege engine.

And this house was made of withies and wicker, like the material men make into cages, panniers and baskets; and in addition to the rushing noise of a stone, and the wickerwork, this house was full of things hurrying, with loud creakings and many other movements, and it had as many entrances as there are leaves on the trees during the summer and on the roof could be seen many thousands of holes to let out the sound. And throughout the day and night these doors were left wide open; there was no porter to admit or bar the passage of conversation and there was no rest in that place nor any time at all when it was not brimful of news – news of wars, of peace, of marriages, of journeys, of delays, of death, of life, of love, of hate; and lo! this house of which I write, let me make it absolutely clear, was not small, for it was sixty miles in length and although the timber was of no strength it was built to last! – to last for as long as Fortune, who is as much the mother of events as the sea is of wells and springs, is pleased to see it last. And it was shaped like a cage.

'In all my years,' I said, 'I have never seen such a house as this.' And as I pondered over this, I became aware that my eagle was perched high upon a stone nearby, and I went over to him and said: 'Let me stay a little longer, I pray you, and for God's love, let me see what wonderful things lie in this house, for yet, perhaps, I might learn something from it, or something that I will like, before I go.'

(Excerpted from a prose translation of "The House of Fame": http://www.eleusinianm.co.uk/ScotMS/sm11houseoffame.html)

Mr. Toots (fr. Dombey & Son)

cited for bent
afterfeel

here we
go again

caught hell fell
on hard

times all day

graced by glancing
blows no

one saw savor
but don't save

those sweet glassy
notes that

careworn duct

object-oriented
slant-wise

such a forth-
right flannelmouth

oughtn't / owing

to circum-
stance, over-
sight, or timing
conflicts---

be given to
devilish mis-
con-

structions
[things amiss]

motes / mites

"let finish
come to
a haze"

Whether he looked to one side of the road,
or to the other—over distant landscape,

with its smooth undulations, wind-mills, corn, grass, bean fields, wild-flowers, farm-yards, hayricks, and the spire among the wood—

or upwards in the sunny air, where butterflies were sporting round his head, and birds were pouring out their songs—

or downward, where the shadows of the branches interlaced, and made a trembling carpet on the road—

or onward, where the overhanging trees formed aisles and arches, dim with the softened light that steeped through leaves—

one corner of his eye was ever
on the formal head of Mr Dombey,
addressed towards him, and the feather
in the bonnet, drooping so neglectfully
and scornfully between them;

much as he had seen the haughty eyelids
droop; not least so, when the face
met that now fronting it.

(Dombey & Son, Ch. 27)

'We are dreadfully
real, Mr Carker,'
said Mrs Skewton;
'are we not?' 
...
Mr Dombey
in the meantime
stood bolt
upright in the carriage
like a highly
respectable ghost,
looking on too;

while Cleopatra
and the Major dallied
as two ancient
doves might do.

(from Dombey & Son, Ch. 27)

"Houses were knocked down; streets broken
through and stopped; deep pits and trenches
dug in the ground; enormous heaps of earth
and clay thrown up; buildings that were
undermined and shaking,
propped by great beams of wood.

Here, a chaos of carts, overthrown and jumbled together,
lay topsy- turvy at the bottom of a steep unnatural hill;
there, confused treasures of iron soaked and rusted
in something that had accidentally become a pond.

Everywhere were bridges that led nowhere;
thoroughfares that were wholly impassable;

Babel towers of chimneys, wanting half their height;
temporary wooden houses and enclosures, in the most unlikely
situations; carcases of ragged tenements, and fragments
of unfinished walls and arches, and piles of scaffolding,
and wildernesses of bricks, and giant forms
of cranes, and tripods straddling above nothing.

There were a hundred thousand shapes and substances
of incompleteness, wildly mingled out of their places, upside down,
burrowing in the earth, aspiring in the air, mouldering
in the water, and unintelligible as any dream.

Hot springs and fiery eruptions, the usual attendants upon
earthquakes, lent their contributions of confusion to the scene.

Boiling water hissed and heaved within dilapidated walls;
whence, also, the glare and roar of flames came issuing forth;
and mounds of ashes blocked up rights of way,
and wholly changed the law and custom of the neighbourhood."

(Charles Dickens, Dombey & Son)

Thus, clinging
fast to that slight
spar within
her arms,

the mother drifted
out upon the dark
and unknown sea

that rolls
round all
the world.

(Dickens, Dombey & Son)

“Man is an inveterate and incorrigible meddler, never content to leave anything as he finds it, always seeking to alter and – as he sees it – to improve.” -- Christopher Lever