"Taking Thought" #11

PIXELS

         (for Tom Raworth)

Never nothing wasted really

in our blithe approach

to the horns on the rabbit

put there in the picture

by the way any joke keeps going

toward what could one night

light up life-like life to entertain

a tired brain, how all this stems

from back then when those pixies tried

what people once called thought

and got turned into pixels.

"Taking Thought" #10

 

ARM

         (for Fingers, Goose, Trevor, & Ignatz)

At the end, the arm

is game for anything--

throwing the game, even,

in a final inning blown

by a toss at a cat or a cop

that the neighborhood lost to government forces,

just to get out from under the thought

that the head’s top is what’s tops

and into the motion any mouth tenders

when its words silently figure

(with a turn of the page)

where that brick came from.

"Taking Thought" #9

 

THERE’S

         (for East Ontario summer days)

Garden nap pops open

into weird light, bright

and tensely alive. Waiting

for raindrops from stone dark

grey cloud cover, each flower

strains forward into

wet thick air, hot

with the moment; each thing,

composed of color alone,

shows what’s there’s not there

but there’s dreaming in it still.

"Taking Thought" #8

 

TOO

         (for the roses)

The roses’ soft peach shades

the eye sees at night

across a room lit only by streetlight light

may come as much from their green apple scent

and a package deal the mind knows

as from this moment, though

they may be there tomorrow too.

"Taking Thought" #7

 

MERGE

         (for the road)

When you merge, you know you have to fit

into an empty space, and the mind

must see it there beside you on the road, moving,

until you find yourself in it and it’s gone.

This seems true, even though all the while

the mind is full of thoughts about the day’s work

ahead of you in the rooms where you will try

to teach some people something.

Someone else drops back and helps with the one task

while you, in that other move, slide toward

the thought of all that might help with learning

just because you really can’t help it; can you?

"Taking Thought" #6

 

SAME

         (for the rivers of Montana)

Stones under water moving; you

step in to try and walk on them,

and those shapes let go color and take on

forms bare feet feel thru squint-wince cold.

"Taking Thought" #5

 

MAP

         (for Paul D.)

Go back over what

you think you heard,

and fold flip-flop what

you’re told into

where to turn or

notice; between us,

we map the to do.

Telling tests what no

teacher taught; we built it

from words together.

"Taking Thought" #4

 

JUMP

(for Creeley)

Cocked tail towhee kicks, spooks

squirrel who got too close.

One red eye provides

quicker pecking than

that rodent’s nose does,

but it’s his ass is what

better get a move on;

you see.

"Taking Thought" #3

BIRD

(for Jill because she took the picture)

Some times you see

in what you see

what you see it through:

a smudge of memory,

a ghost, a word, someone,

yourself maybe,

hovering there before you,

as small as something

you once heard.

"Taking Thought" #2

 

OF

         (for Emily wherever I may find her)

Spoke what the dream said

it came back around to

embracing this “to”

as “in” and/or “of”

sad furious light

broken into by birds.

"Taking Thought" #1

 

moT

     (for me)

Word: opposite

of glass, not

see-thru nor

container, go-gets

thing-like thing,

puts you

in mind

of it

according

to pattern, not

breakable.

Prelim

This site will present the blogbook Post Language, a three-part collection of poems incorporating pictures, accompanied by an essayistic attempt at a statement of their poetics. The three parts are titled with familiar phrases: "Taking Thought," poems of perception; "Trouble in Mind," poems of social contract; and "Get the Picture," poems of image vocabulary. The guiding concept in the poetics is a use of the word "illustrativity" to extend beyond and around the term "illustration." This is developed through the way that the suffix "-ative" forms an adjective describing "the habit of performing an action" rather than the simple noun form of an action ("illustration" as a thing which "illustrates"), and then becomes a descriptive noun through the suffix "-ity" expressing state or condition. That is to say: the state and condition of a habitual sense of comprehending illustration, i.e. "illustrativity," is what is being worked with here. Hopefully, this will appear through the relations of words to pics to thot.

Each poem/picture here was posted first on FaceBook. It was the procedure there by which you "Add Photo" and then "say something about this photo" that led to the creation of these works. Thus, "Post Language" as their title. They were all posts already before they got posted here. The urge to be "illustrative" has a longer history explicated somewhat in the essay posted between books two and three.