On this day, May 17, in 1973, the Watergate investigations began.

Li Bloom over at *abolone* had some very kind words to say about *fait accompli*- and me!
Li Bloom, I tried to send my thanks for this to you by email but the message bounced back! By the way, I am enjoying your weblog abolone very much- blog lovers, check it out!

*fait accompli* will miss *little shirley bean*

Send us a postcard, o.k.? (At least about your readings.)

Other things too!

bye, Little Shirley Bean

3/20/76

This has been a fruitful day and I never
set pen to paper. I suffered for awhile
but when I spoke aloud I broke the spell and
thought about getting my tape recorder and
speaking directly into it instead of writing.
My handwriting is not conducive to work nor
is the typewriter. I see also the great
value of time alone. I will never fear it
that way again because of its great
value in centering.

Last night I read some of Rilke's letters.
That was very valuable- I have learned the
immense value of "distance." I may have
had it confused with coldness.

Stop thinking always in terms of loss and
gain. What is the advantage of "advantage"?

In class Osvaldo talked about the
"upper hand" in acting. I have a more
complex view of that than I thought.

I must be more careful about disclosures.
I have been learning that. Also, reading
Jung teaches me more about the complexities of
projection- a view of that that includes
not only the defensive aspeect but the
context as well.

I also placed the talismen in the talisman box. Valery- "hide your god."

Learning to center myself- sensing how much about that I have learned.

SP called last night and talked about
Godel's masterpiece of ordering. I am
moving towards a more rich and complex ordering.
How? By relaxing and observing what it *is* in
me- by letting the pieces fall.

A thought today- to some extent I have
lived unconsciously with a great taste for
"high" moments. This involves some, or a great
deal of sentimental romanticism. Such an
attitude developed to too fine a pitch can
screen out important nuances of experience.
The answer- to become more aware of this
attitude. I think of A- the relaxed
acceptance. What was (or is) my anger
towards him all about?

Thinking a lot about QR. I noticed
how much I project onto him- particularly
regarding what I imagine to be his rejection
of me. That ambivalent attitude. I talked to
JL about this. Her wisdom.

3/9/76

Need the "distance" for beauty. She is
leaving. Took the plants off the shelf.
In a way it will be a relief. I guess
it's true that I'm not ready to live with
someone. But I'm also not going to allow
anyone to trample on me with constant anger.
Or be manipulated constantly. If it's another
failure- but it will be much emptier then
before for awhile and I probably will blame
myself too. See it as a repetition and will
become afraid. But the point is I won't
be made to "bend" in her sense of the word.
And I learned something too about
what happened beween me and T. It
will take much longer-but- at least I'm
taking care of myself.

3/7/76

Red- anger
Green-jealousy
Black-envy

I was so lonely. He was angry.
Washer winder washer window
What happened. Quite a shock.
feeling the distance. See her objectively.
I have Vito in mind. The waves.
I’m not interested in most of the above
language. Then why am I writing it?
Trying to understand something- see something.
Figure something out is what I was thinking.
Start living at the point of accepting yourself.
Tedium of writing is the failures at concentration.
Part of the energy not available for it. Look at
the above. Single word images- as a beginning.
But what’s going on here (between me and J.)
As a “subplot.” Her constant anger.
She’s been exploding at me quite a bit. Alternates
then with affection- but she’s feeling very
ambivalent and I pick up on it. Failure of
trust- that kind of trust I seem to have
a very different perspective of now. So I can
enjoy it more for what it is. And then help her to
enjoy it. Then I can work. Point is to plot out
the work- map it, diagram it. This is the
great discovery of Vito and Smithson-you can
map out your art. Well, maybe not great discovery
by them. That might be bullshit. You can do what
you do with a story- plan it- but it needn’t
follow conventional lines.

The way I did that poem with “your body is a
map”- unfocussed images (mind) as a body of
images. That related to the process of communication.
You related that to the process of communication.
But not necessarily around the reading. The
sorrow I feel that we had such a powerful moment.
But the point is I wasn’t working when I wasn’t
loving- it would have gone on and on. I guess it
would have been better, tonight, is the point.
But for me life is a succession of moments.
Don’t like the cliché phrase. Of course you regress to
The adolescent image of love (Pavese)
Reread earlier diary note. Give me $68 dollars
And promises half the rent. But then doesn’t go to
work.

That I would spend $35 on x. Really
angry at her now. Like X she lives off men.
Then she got angry at me- but she does know
that. I guess I’m really wondering. Well,
what alternatives. Can always tell her to go.
This “niceness” has a hostile edge- because she’s
holding on to her rage. Borderline all right.
Fuck but so is everybody else- and I hate
the safe ones. Shit. Well, maybe better tomorrow.

: Friday, May 16, 2003 ::

Truthfully, I haven't had a single interesting thought for about three days.

--
:: John 1:00 PM [+] ::


John Erhardt of *The Skeptic* is now officially a nominee for the *fait accompli* Oxymoron of the Year award. Personal disclosures being almost always interesting on a blog, this statement technically qualifies.
Bill Marsh is the other nominee with his statement on *SDPG* that he is "trying to survive as a writer without actually being one."


4.18.2003

Press Release: SDPG Nominated for Award

SDPG has been nominated for the prestigious "Best Blogged Oxymoron of the Year Award" for a statement issued earlier this week.

The announcement came on the morning of Wednesday, April 16. Fait Accompli, an organization dedicated to "spellbound speculations" and "time travel," offered the nomination in response to the following statement, which appeared in the April 15 edition of the SDPG blog:

"I'm trying to survive as a writer without actually being one. Perhaps that's the best way to put it."

SDPG accepted the nomination, but according to an anonymous spokesperson, the Group is cautious about its prospects.

"We're hopeful, but then again, there's so much oxymoron out there you never know who's going to walk away with the award," the spokesperson said.

SDPG also promised more oxymorons in the near future. "We'll do what we can for as long as the luck holds out."

However, SDPG denied allegations that the oxymoron was deliberately planted in the April 15 blog in order to win back disgruntled fans lost in the wake of the Group's unexplained name change.

"We don't operate like that," the spokesperson said. "All of our oxymorons are free to come and go as they please."

Nonetheless, SDPG is grateful for the nomination and plans to attend the award ceremony, scheduled for later this year.
bill marsh | link



4.15.2003

5/17/76
While I am remembering something,
something else occurs.
In one space every movement is vast,
in that movement I am a whole world.
After each feeling I look back. That
world no longer exists. It's only a
moment and its already changed. I
(made up) told a story and I expected to
correct it later.
(Later)
I got drunk on my anger, etc.

(turns up)


Many pictures emerge, repeat in a series:
Every moment has duration, a
presentiment, a disclosure, a destiny
and a specific quality all its own.The
predicted, the genuinely experienced presentiment
of the future can be a blindfold because it
excludes the moments between, the gaps between
the shared events.That is your private
world. Its lines trace its thoughts back
to words.
Images don't correspond to moments.
Someone is caressing the sand, someone
the sea itself, developing some pictures.
Someone said "you should think before you
act" and someone said "give it a few
more weeks." That's not a person though.
A person is more like "though" not
meaning or wishing a specific definition
of anything (least of all a sequence of words).
Unmemorable.

I can (build up) arrange my collage like this each piece random and unalterable, but
instantly changeable into its opposite or placeable on some
other edge or ending, some
vein reaching out for some other
vein.

I want to decipher the collage.
It is a language like thought
unconnected to objects, undistracted by
objects, impervious to the illusion that
an idea might exist in such an attachment.
I spell it by cutting out
and arranging the pictures in a
hieroglyphic series:

if that's how you were I just forgot, etc.

Just as forgetting has a neutral
scent, like a long breath of air into
the mind, the mind exhales what it
draws to itself.The sea is ungrateful for my attention

same bones washed up on the beach
are my bones, same mistakes

Its meaning is clear, the words opaque,
the gestures are visible, the text
transparent

The amazing red dawn
gulls going by that morning on this
morning present past
during, not before
thinking of those colors
and the big gulls descending ( they ? descend, etc

would this abrupt sound scare her away?
The heat suddenly overcomes a man and he
feels detached.Slowly, so infinitely slowly
he notices the sea. It seems to take such a
long time. Anticipation of surprise shows
on his face.

What speaks clear dies in its expression. The inexpressive
silence that began the day was not completely
resolved in its masked absence. No person is
composed of a series of altered signs. Make him speak in
symbolic characters,make his words
untranslateable figures,hieroglyphic
signposts preceding language. It isn't
only silent when it negates itself, it is
silent in its act of observing its own
transitions.

I picked up the scissors and cut a
black and white photograph of a plain wood
building (an obviously deserted army barracks) out of
a magazine.I cut out another picture of a rainy day. three people singing
in front of a small church, cut it
down to one person and half the other,
attach, it to the left side of the wood building.

etc. to > "obejcts of thought"

Words are abstract, close disorders of
thought not fit for remembering. Or thought
grows away at its words, seems to

pause without pausing, excitement for
nothing. A bone and fruit, side by side.

they went- etc.

Every time I write the date I speak your name.
And I retrieve it from the dust of its origin.

A poem has an imperfect face.- noplace
to let it fall- outside more inside-
rhythm is memory- nothing precedes-
nothing more

The rain looked white on the windows
and felt like ashes on my fingers.

In silence
In a dim language
without reference
to the inner counterpart

the small acts of pleasure, etc

it' like a big skip in the fabric of time
a particularly tough weave in the wholecloth of our association

Somewhere around St Thomas
I found something red
which reminds me of you

and I know you know
this is my only way to keep silent
and listen
to transform my thoughts
according to specific memories
we hare

the birds around here
have to sing into the ever-increasing density
of the implosion my silence draws into me
an empty universe inside an even emptier order of memories

No, I don't know
No, no in a dream
the text's a chance
no bets
the professor is quiet
out to the bar- games-
an accurate phrase out of phase
Listen in light of what comes next
not what came before that
but what's next as what's coming before

How else to express it than in
symbolic characters, words returning away
from representations into abstract forms,
untranslateable figures thrown out of the
mind like formless masses of spacial design,
suggestive perhaps of the mind's langujage
before words, the cacaphony and squawks
of feeling- of anger and laugter, delight and
fear, terror and awe.

May 8, 1976

Every time I write the date I speak your name. (There is no ambiguity about which year it is. The words before are symbols for the very specific fact that this year is separate, specific. When I forgot how to write I could read almost any sign before or after the sign (Does this shuttling avoid emotions that are subsequent to an absence of the corresponding words- the disclosure of a secret message behind the words that contains everything? I hold back the response, and loaded with language I can change the pitch. Where do I get the colors from, then, the form of the things described. Does everything have to remain previous to the disclosure, restraining myself before I write the symbol that corresponds to its object? Reverie and confusion. When the world seems to be conspiring for me I feel it is conspiring against me. Also, I see in this a desire for freedom. Love believes very strongly in its opposite. The thing in us most strongly bound wants to get bound in order to get even more strongly bound in order to get the strength to break free. The relativity of my feelings in relation to yours makes this whole game seem ridiculous. After all that struggle I only found out that the feelings existed only for themselves. Only for themselves! And the ambiguity never changes. It is our only real surprise.

I wrote this on May 2, 1976.

The Museum Factory

Smoking
No smoking
Order as the desire for order...the body
is light.
No smokiing I take it there as the
arrangement prefigured there
Smoking I make the symbols attach
simultaneously alone and not alone in term of my awareness of a person.
No smoking the pronoun seems to have a decision and can be copied.
Smoking for one instance
What has absence
of what is absence
No smoking bent the selected word has an apparent vocabulary. to increase the extent of this vocabulary, at a certain intensity, the raised voice has a certain distinction.
In the absence of smoking, the absence of reference- a colored crayon, for instance- the particular shape of a moral choice.
Smoking it seems to have an ascent. One single noise could erase all this. I am at the point of noticing the inception of preventing something from emerging, the said desire. I can illustrate it's all inflamed- imflamed or inflamed. The order of a calligram as the suggestion of a symbol. No, so I stop mself. This stopping has its own paper. I scribble out the thoughts on the erasable pad. And just forget.
Just as forgetting has a neutral scent, like a long breath of air into the mind, to setting down to naming the inanimate parts of the smell. the mind refuses what is drawn towards yourself. No smoking no smoking no smoking. Or, you can uncover new forms of smell and write it all backwards, drawing it on the back page and now and again referring to it. Smoking, it is the answer of those words referring to another complete language. No smoking creates the immediate urgency of no smell. No words for one person. Presented as an inanimate being in the transition of signs, the denial of symbolizing transfers the effort to the back-up position: no smoking. Eventually I will be obliged to negate the value of the image, the pictorial command in my brain that directs me to the objects those thoughts represent.

(this fades out as the argument loses its force)

Again, the signifier has been defeated. The history recorded here seems to lack certain details. True, it returns, it repeats itself centering on the same old patterns, positive and negative, prohibition and freedom, the text does seem spare. Or maybe just not spare enough.The whole atmosphere of immediate danger alludes to change. Its texture suggests a puzze.

No one in his right mind would have troubled to be worred about a concept of vertical and horizontal to the extent that this worry would replace the value of a postive sign for absence. Still at the first onset of a delay the explanation would be almost randomly juxtaposed. Afraid, accused of rhetoric, I back away from the elusiveness of the signifier. I am filled with a happy disgust because I feel relieved of being trapped by the sensuality of the image. I am inevitably drawn to smoking, to conversation. Smoking I am conveniently avoiding the terrifying question of purpose. Only with absence, and denial, I am truly affirming the signifier. I am relieved of naming the name.
"I've looked at words from both sides now from win or lose from up and down, it's words' allusions I recall I really don't know words at all."

The conversation is recorded as a catalogue of relics. Memories forcibly retracted. Expropriated- or, taken from private ownership for public use. Insofar as I can say, I was really relieved at first that the density of the signification decreased in value to me as much as it increased- the effects of these two values invariably cancelled each other out- the essential "no smoking" and "smoking" might be too conventional. In the brown leather carpeted train car I add the sign: "Smoking sometimes." Not exactly a masterpiece of situational melodrama, but linguistically it is suggestive. No smoking, definately no smoking.

(A locale emerges)

Teste: "I don't even think anymore, having the presentiment, as soon as an idea arises, that an immense system gets started an enormous toil is called for, and that I shall never go as far as I know it is necessary to go."

(Abbreviation- think more about what that is used for. I say goodbye with a reminder.)

(May 2, 1976)

And then they all went down to the seaside.

Density, what's in that? I don't know another word for what I'm thinking. If it is too close it burns. Words burn. Somebody might say hot shit, planets, the earth doesn't fall apart, it's firm. Who goes in there. Back up, make a poem, not everybody has to believe in me. For example, would Frank O'Hara say that. I could check that out thoroughly. Dictionaries can tell you something but nobody really needs a dictator. Dictionaries may say things.

How much distance does someone need to accurately describe a toothbrush, for example, or create a definition for love. I was waiting a long time for that. Glad it's understood.

If you don't look close you can see the Eiffel Tower. If you look you can see it. I read magazines and discover all poems take place in galleries for example. I wonder how you would say that in French.

You can still see the Eiffel Tower. Pain lasts long no matter how long it is. I wonder how that would be spoken in Chinese. If you spoke to me in Chinese softly I would understand a great deal more of what you're saying. Got that? PLanets proceed on their courses, love isn't accurate, pleasure, after a after a after a after a word.

And what defines the grammar of density, the coefficients of communication, the minute meaningless gestures of obliqueness. A somewhat long pause could surprise the action of dictionary definitions, the monotonous frontline descriptions of chance, church liturgies are filled with such rituals that are constructed to contain the elaborate rhythms of mental speech. Orders of incantation are boring. But sometimes boredom brings such wonderful colorless explanations, smells and just plain astonishing emptiness. Ah the bells and the bells' voices are wonderful, they're appearing to hum a hieroglyphic diagram of word concepts.
(3/13/76)

Later

I got drunk on my anger.
I sang my song to you without words first.
But later I spoke in anger.
I don't remember now what I was saying.

Maybe you were thinking of seagulls or the
dead earth welcoming a flower.
Maybe you were tired and resonant
like wood drums out of your heartbeat.
I promise I was listening.

I crept towards what I felt to be later
and later when I caught myself speaking
again about me and some stupid notion
of respect I was also watching you and trying hard to understand.

Sometimes I kept silent. I was wondering
what you were gathering in your corner
of small secret objects.
I'll say I invented a color for you for today-
I had to do it...the ocean, I have
it all figured out. It is arranged in the form of
a sign and not a name. Later things
will remember their given names.

So goodbye to the seed of the poem.
The fruit is already
here and it will be eaten
or die, rotting.
The rotting will be beautiful.
It creates a strong perfume
that lingers.

(3/13/76)

1976

Type up sections that will be read as/ they are and rewrite later / a unity will emerge

Collage pieces-"in this collage...the domain of thought"
collage piece- "I am planning a collage"
Why did I have to find the collage piece and make that connection?
I think of Bernadette writing- this is no collage
the reading a (personal) narrative parly of the past several years since average thought-
as I was going thru the work I thought of /alluding to things I have written-
the poem of involuntary memory springing from an object- quickly reading through them as I arrange the writing- *thinking of the reading as a symphony*- so that the parts will flow from each other musically and the feelings will vary as in life-
John- "French like a violin." me- /(English like an orchestra-) the opening phrases-introductory-/then- the main theme stated
(5/16/76)

vacuumed, mopped bath and kitchen. Jan saw Jeff. She came home upset. I got angry. Crazy stuff about lovemaking and me feeling she is silly. Blown away from the table. But someone is here. Before, during and after- 3 notebooks.
(5/17/76)

the deepest part of a poem is brought into being by its profoundest hearing.

"...the fertile/Thought- associations that until now come/ So easily, appear no more, or rarely./...receiving/dreams and inspirations on an unassigned/Frequency/...withdraw that hand,/offer it no longer as shield of a greeting, Francesco:/...an invitation/Never mailed, the "it was all a dream"/Syndrome.../...and the ache/of this waking dream can never drown out/the diagram still sketched on the wind,/Chosen, meant for mel.../once feels too confined"
Self-Portrait In A Convex Mirror
(5/18/76)

Now she keeps interrogating me. "Why are you angry at me," etc. That I'm not talking about.
(5/21/76)

My rage. And then I read tonight and it was boring. Osvaldo said- if you read like that you'll put them to sleep. And John talked about young professors reading their papers. In his 40's- they started listening to Mallarme. Because they never listened- does this mean I didn't say it? C felt nothing.

J- I'm too intellectual.

But I'm trying to crack the code of the universe.

And Jennifer- barraged with images. I feel so hopeless. Like it was all a waste. And I felt driven all along.
You people someday who pore over this- these diamonds- I am so angry- know that I am 33 and still suffering in silence. Only P is listening. And now a few more. So remember- only P listened and read what he said. Also for history- I am so angry- I almost died trying to crack the code and now it's cracked. It is only a few pages- 20 pages now and no title and 25 poems. But nobody has done better, of this I'm sure. If someone bothers to unravel it- sound out the music and listen- it is very beautiful. I feel crazy tonight. Really crazy. But I wrote the 17-20 pages and I did that. It took me so long.
(5/26/76)

Read interview with Paul Newman. He was saying that nothing is happening in the theater because there is no new vision following Williams. The other day in the shower I thought a characteristic of this age would be the age of autonomy. Sort of where the Williams play ended. What happens to Jim then? You hear the image of a Kerouak-finally back with his mother- so the idea of a person struggling to achieve autonomy not in relation (only) to others- but within. He also talked about emotions. The Jung distinction. It's true people are not interested in politics. He described all the old stuff as "Kitchen drama." Mary Hartmann- meaning- centering in the family.

You see the autonomy constantly in Antonioni. Of course a theory of drama is a prime requisite for a new artistic vision- otherwise the perspective is fragmentary. Nothing wrong with fragments- but fragments cannot hold the attention of a mind that is not particularly creative. And art is not just meant for creative minds. Novels, t.v., movies, record, all in a vacuum because there is no unifying vision.

Stillness, repose(Lacan- feminine)/ Waiting for Godot-/End of the idea of "development"/w/o "story"-no ":plot"/w/o "plot" - no drama/Actors Studiio-still-evocations of "lower class" emotions- Williams, Inge/now "emotions" are flattened out- t.v./a person *alone*- to reverse the/old hollywood romantic notion-/romanticize autonomy (Antonioni's long walks)- also the dream- / the person alone uncovering/significance-the/"private eye" wakes up and makes his own correspondances and formulates his own values- also the appeal of such a person- he operates alone and discusses his plans with no one- is thereby free from the mother symbol-

Now uncovering significances- value in relation to a self-/ The value of the class is practice in emotional recall- exactly what I couldn't learn from A- I'm practicing there-/Finding a media for the communication of my energies-/All the bullshit about human potential. One of the things wrong with psychoanalysis. A new vision of drama wd be a new psychology upon which to base *actions*/A. Why do you have to stay angry for so long?

You're never going to change./A' s giving *up*on people.

Interesting- the class is on *Tuesday*
(5/30/76

Two books I was thrilled to receive in the past two days:

Bob Harrison, *Chorrera* (Bronze Skull Press, 2542 N.Bremen, #2, Milwaukee ,WI 53212, bohar@earthlink.net)

Eileen R. Tabios, *Reproductions of the Empty Flagple* (Marsh Hawk Press, PO Box 220 Stuyvescent Station, NY, NY 100098 ($12.95), www.marshhawkpress.org

They rolled back the fare hike.
Jordan - 5:03 PM

I'm pleased about the fare being rolled back, but I am even happier about finding out about it on a weblog, in this case that of Jordan Davis.

New York Times is over if you want it!

Look at this beautiful poem Sandra Simonds wrote (lucky me!)


A Poem for Nick Piombino

I pretend to love what I cannot
pretend to
do. The maze in the poor man's throat
was multiplying like a wild
cell. Any given situation
has its own set of premises but these ones keep
changing so it's impossible
to base
your conclusions on any one specific set
of terms.
the mathematicians know not to look
at the equations directly
in the eye
this is the finite logic of dreams
he says "my dream of the sea is no worse
than my dream of the earth"

What to do? Read Shampoo

With Open Arms


Writing poetry is an incessant and proud pursuit of the impossible and the improbable.

Poetry is a graceful disaster.

Poetry is accepting that its own idea is beyond help, or hope.

Poetry is a balloon losing air.

Poetry must pretend to do what it cannot do, it must do it anyway.

Poetry loses itself in itself. It loses what it finds—it hides its finding from itself, finds its losses.

Poetry refuses to be what everything else is. It lives here not the way most other things do.

Poetry wants to be alone, around everybody.

Poetry contradicts its own discoveries. In refusing to categorize, or allow categories for what it finds, it conceals from itself what it already knows, in order to discover, again and again, what it already knows.

Poetry, in being pure motivation, has no motivation. It is motivation.

Poetry is beyond what it is.

In singing it speaks, in speaking sings, poetry is voice with no voice.

Nothing could be softer than poetry. No part of its form comes from hardness.

Poetry won’t congeal. Poetry refuses order, thus burdens itself with new orders.

Poetry, in trying to say what is thought before it understands, attempts to say things honestly.

Poetry in trying to say what is not yet understood, risks confusion, unintelligibility.

Because it is honest, poetry is prophetic. It admits what is usually masked by artful lies.

Poetry is seductive in its gestures, reductive in its arguments, conductive in its strategies, productive in its tenacity and durability, and inductive in its rhythms.

Poetry is a trapdoor out of conformity.

Poetry is selfish in its goals, but exceptionally generous in its scope.

Poetry is an invitation to slip away and fondle thought.

There is never any time for poetry. It must be stolen. In this sense it teaches the weakly accommodating the art of throwing off chains.

Poetry, in making something out of nothing remains suspect, so it is considered worthless.

Poetry burns with flow, wets with fire.

Poetry in being composed of change, moves without motivation forever. In having nowhere to go, just goes.

Poetry is so fast it can’t be caught. So you can never be completely sure if you had it, have it, could have it, should have it. You can never be sure if you’ve caught it. As soon as you look again, it isn’t what it was.

Poetry remains the monarch of the first time, and of all time.

Poetry comes only when it wants to, like a cat. It does not want to be held, though sometimes it wants to be stroked.

Poetry is never satisfied, so it never satisfies. Poetry provokes and will not relent. But it won’t intrude either.

Poetry is a chameleon. Poetry changes form faster than perception can follow, so poetry can enlarge perception.

Poetry never refuses but it will not submit.

Poetry and time are not compatible. Poets can change what time is, so time does not like it.

Poetry denounces authority because it can be created by any category of persons. Category and poetry are not compatible because poetry dissolves category.

What tries to contain it, poetry dissolves. This is why it is threatening.

Poetry is mercurial—it melts, but remains globular.

Poetry reminds thought how to wander, and gives new breath - and breadth- to the heart. This is why it likes love and lovers like it. But unlike love, poetry cannot be directed. Poetry can cloak, even conceal, but it cannot be encompassed.

Freedom escapes the poverty of slavery through poetry. Even in the land of the unfettered tyrant, poetry finds a place to hide and offers sanctuary to the oppressed.

Freedom is a kind of poetry and poetry a kind of freedom. Over time, each escapes to the other because eventually each has been hounded from everywhere else.

Poetry is one third costume, one third make-up, one third voice desperately searching for air.

Poetry, in searching out a place to breathe, discovers where the air is to be found.

Poetry hides nothing, so anything can find a place to hide within it.

Poetry holds with open arms.

(published in *Kenning* #10- Spring 2001; thanks to Patrick F.Durgin)

Ah ha!  Billy Batson is the secret identity of Captain Marvel in the old Shazam comic books.  Not that that really explains anything.
 
 
posted by Kasey 10:31 PM

Sheez, Kasey, I guess this Batson business on Well Nourished Moon is deep. And I thought the whole thing was a joke!