Antenym 6 Table of Contents part two Norman Fischer: "The Double...Again" Spencer Selby: "The Following" Kit Robinson: "Transmission" Jeff Conant: "Rocks" Eric Selland: "Cantus" Nico Vassilakis: "My Margins" George Albon: "[Some Climb Aboard while Others Disembark.] W.B. Keckler: "Angelic Rush" Hoa Nguyen: "As I Was Falling I Was Watching Things Falling" George Albon: [Bees, Sheep, Water, and Trees.] Elizabeth Robinson: "Talk Scroll" Gary Sullivan: "Refusal of the Real" Spencer Selby: "Close" John Byrum: [unt] Jeff Conant: from *Book X* Kit Robinson: "Sensation" * * * * * THE DOUBLE...AGAIN I'm surprised. Like a contract I never signed. Like a sled going uphill. Something up my sleeve. Not that I intended it- whatever I intended wasn't it, was what? That the people who arrived never really arrived, only appeared to arrive, mingled probably with one another so it wasn't clear whether anyone arrived or if anyone which of them separately. All of it came out of books. Peeping sheepishly into the books, into the leaves, under the covers, under cover of. Fractured, as if we didn't understand each other. Spliced, as if we were stuck together unnaturally. Driven, as if we had to go there. So we found ourselves in the book, strains of an ancient music- which swelled- crested- broke- over us- we were overwhelmed- deeply moved- drenched- entranced audibly and entrenched- only we didn't know that- couldn't feel that, understand that, hear that. And we could scarcely recognize ourselves there- to be reorganized- put up into such systems- all our passions- unnamed- forbidden- scary. So the people who arrived seemed then like the only ones who they themselves could ever have been although they were in fact mixed up with the very many others. And sang sumptuously, deliriously, their language plain, round, connected. It was that the hedge was clipped perfectly flat perfectly level framing the garden perfectly squarely perfectly beautifully. A sense that that- and everything- stood for something else- on and on backwards into the book: just that: backing infinitely into the book like a parade in reverse slow motion. Various animals that were disappearing, the people that arrived somehow mixed in together in a blur always had the illusion that they were alone, that they were the only ones there, when of course there were the many already, already so many, and already mixed, blended, also backwards, in their own parades, with banners and streamers, twirling batons, stepping high, riding on horses, waving to the assembled crowds from floats and open cars. Nothing written on the banners, only a complexity of color. No one intended it, someone intended it, it was nothing but intention, which covered everything altogether intended, but scattered somewhat, like gypsies, so it was hard to make definition of the intention as apart from anything else and this was the source of the spectacle, which was a confusion although colorful. Gypsies wandered in all those countries, they came on horseback, carrying bundles, they had bundles tied to horses. I heard about their intentions, their colorful costumes, their objectionable customs, their powerful voices, they had a sense of the movement and drift, but not the meanings, only voices, and their horses with their separate and uninviting bundles. They arrived in the various towns they came to, thinking they were the only ones who had come, had arrived in those places, speaking a language no one would speak, so couldn't understand them or say anything to them, and had different intentions, were weary, felt as if they were arriving again at the same place, only this time backwards. Ordinary people- all of them were ordinary- looking out the window of the wagon- of all my experiences of the world- sailing by in that decaying swaying decrepit way- I am what I'm saying- my own intention- to travel with my uninviting bundle, like the gypsies. I'm going around- not arriving as I thought I would- gasping probably- looking way way down- into the silences between their uninviting bundles- making some suggestions to them about their intention to keep on with what they were doing before they or anyone else seemed to have arrived- before the book had been opened. Still the horses kept on. And I said to him, Suppose you were to stop where you were and go backwards, or go, anyway, just go in another direction, the opposite one, then you would have any kind of idea where you were going. He became annoyed at this because of where he was, near the table, on which there's an amber bottle or a clear glass bottle filled with amber liquid, it's impossible to tell which. The very idea of it was astonishing, that you couldn't tell which, and yet he was annoyed by this in a primary way and it explained all of what was to follow. I was very tired and that is why I could not keep track of the papers. Was driven there in a car The sun coming up over the edge of the world like one big eye opening startled or in shock at the world at some few secret unintended things in colors in the world and spreading out more light in bands over the water of the world. Cutting the edges of the water- I must mean words- closely- so that coming into view were many small but delicate things that otherwise couldn't be said to be there. My work, my contribution, recognition; my erudition, contrition, contention, elation, distribution; my distention, detention, dentition, intention, abstraction; my ordinary inescapable conclusion, shape, the color of me, the single road I'd traveled though I'd lost the map, forgotten the arriving, lost the taste for the meaning or the choice. The horses pissing into the floor of the very cool night. Little bugs, crickets, making a lot of calming noise into the warm night. Listless animals, an owl, a fox, three mule deer, aimlessly moving up and down in the night, against the sky with its brambles of interrelated stars. I intended- I forget which- which of my steps I'd intended to take first- it was''t correct- I'd needed to retrace my steps, to keep track of sightings, couldn't speak- didn't know whether I'd arrived- but not mechanically- the way it had been before- running late- some other related life- so level, beautifully, perfectly, many of them coming now into the room, startling me with recognition. I had to rid myself of such notions. So he said, I do know where I am going I am going from here to there but it is difficult to see in the night and I fall down when I trip on my spurs. He said, In any case if I roll over onto my back then I am unable to arise afterward. He said, I'm not sure of any of the colors, the ones I want and the ones I don't want; when I consider what I actually do want I can't answer my own questions, can't make a cry, voice won't, fox, maybe owl, does it for me in the distinct night. He said, The grasses are far too tall; I hadn't counted on that. I replied, rear back on all fours; don't bark though just take a gasping breath. Is it for mere survival? he asked. Or can I expect pay and benefits? Only tie up your bundles and go, I replied. * * * * * THE FOLLWING *for S.E.* 1. I suppose I understand at best throughout work based on a root respect for word method combinations. Beginning of the above immediately divides into fear and cause result. Could be temerity between the city circle squared with resultant stasis. What follows fruition ended by boldness at the corner verging on next step daylight made out to be black. A cloudy darkness gathering falling crystalline bed, equally sleeping and childbirth behung. Suspended or resurrected hue of man, both lunatic and essence in every poem. I read this as a microcosm within the larger noon-day transmuted into gold, an implication that will last as long as it is voicing prophet telling token to keep moving through the one thing common we now have. 2. Context stream shows an alertness to shifts implicit in language. Nothing more final than abiding hands on a quest within relational and attending sets of myth. Numen sequences extended into flux of later lushness being proposed. Divinity in a word, unfolding gnosis seeing itself in action that involves restoring sense to a phantom. 3. Inter-locking passage employed without immediate margins. Take off from precisely that point in a difficult perception. Hermetic flower which absents an ethos of likewise crossing. Lips, hair and cylinders going on a telling yet gathered. 4. Energies here are contentious surface, lyric aspect, fulfillment light ascensions not for the sake of beauty alone. Their primacy is to actualize potencies that inhere within matter, sounding language commensurate with weight. Referents strike primary as purpose bind, phase of being able joining desire that evokes and engages the world. A kind of marriage reveals exactly those forms bursting back into syntax, tells meaning I believe is real world other. Not simply a twin but a substantive third by which the work makes intersections and multiple naming that opens itself across the barriers of fluent speech, scoring music stuck along the lines of what's intended as a whole. * * * * * TRANSMISSION Under all the symbols -- going out to eat, letters, punctuation, full-motion video -- there is life -- indescribable, not to be denied. And under life -- nothing. The gaps wake us. Our only response is practice, placing one provisional step in front of the other. Other- wise, there's weather. The hints sound like popping rain. But no formula conveys it; only tone does, a way no logic sounds right that stiffens the back, a back- ground noise determined at some point deep in the ground. I guess you could say, "We're working on it." * * * * * ROCKS So rocks arrive in all shapes, from the peculiar to the messianic. Roads not paved with rocks are paved with rocks smoothed over with petroleum, the blood of dinosaurs extracted before the stone age saw its glory days. We'll bomb YOU back to the stone age. Rocks, the building blocks of life. A Hindu child wonders if he'll be born again as stone. He will. Rocks block the tunnel to the inner ear, where the balance is. Rocks make mountains make mountains make rocks. When the mountains were young, before you were born gifted with intelligence, they were pebbles rolling in dough. They rolled so hard they covered half the globe. The other half was coveted by pirates who called rocks loot and stole it when they could. The baddest pirates were called conquistadores, who stole whole continents of rocks and turned them molten with their faith. Molten rock build little hills on the sea floor like islands in chasms where ignorant armies clash by night. Men melt rock to make steel, giving all of Pittsburgh a paycheck every week. Rocks! Rocks glazed and ground make glass to see your loved one through, mirror of a thousand lonely nights. The crystal rocks of Arkansas are sacred to the kids of California. Rocks get around. Quartz crystals can hear voices from Andromeda, a big rock we believe in but are never sure it's really there. Sun on rock a chemical reaction making daylight more coveted than gold (though only barely so). You gotta eat a ton of rocks before you die. This season pray for rocks. Rocks make everywhere their home. * * * * * CANTUS Underneath the house The tree's roots swelter Tremble And a word that is not mine Occasionally shows through A distant voice The sound of steps of those not here Evening imperceptibly moves Inside the liquid tunnel of the heart Heart's heart Words unnecessary The soul doesn't recognize the transparent trees The word grows Bearing a green branch There is power in time He does not see the city Only a line Where the book recedes ----------------------------------- Winter came into the house At the term's neck The woods lead to something Behind the house There is a song hidden Seams tucked in to protect The tender edges A life beyond self ----------------------------------- *for Donald Philippi* *1930-1993* He arrives at a station of likeness The empty room The crossing of barriers into night Of the murmuring of voices in the library No mention of sadness now *Inner infinitude breaks into the open And finds repose; life is intensely principled* Translation leads to and from translation A surface of language whose referent Has passed away and is to be found The burden of the sentence *Quite spontaneously I realized That I had been born in the wrong place* Soon everything will be over The circle complete I have seen The tree rising >From an arctic lake Singing Singing the song that plants sing For the lady Who gives me the plant and the drum And my own song That I may return *As if stricken by memory* * * * * * MY MARGINS A boat is my name afloat - for days seeking an edge My boats traverse a water of heads one feature of travel is buoyancy aware of the next beladen with leaving moving toward open we look to live a possibility If you plan to deceive do it in a way that makes sense The Vacuum Poems... ...like publishing A word carries the burden of information. during a word the prefix provides more information. The word meets with resistance - a discrepancy between the traveler toward location and location itself A torn note and fractal soup (w)hol(e)ding an umbrella - entering the city I decline the point, I decline the angle I decline the hill itself a riddle seeks to solve solar equations Anyone speaking against logic is considered irresponsible. Nothingness remains inaccessible to science. The person who wishes to speak about nothing must by necessity become unscientific. Philosophy never rises out of science. To speak of nothing will always remain a horror and an absurdity for science. But aside from the philosopher, the poet can do so, because the spirit of poetry is essentially superior to the spirit that prevails in all mere sciences. The poet speaks as though the essent (the whole) were being expressed and invoked for the first time. - Introduction to Metaphysics- The address he addresses the headdresses blotting out the sun And even this becomes dislodged drifting into chaos Insect-death-winter or bibliotherapy The sacred tree, in fact, does not perish its visibility weakens A person's arm raised - of all the ones it is the whole that looks better from a distance A rooster staring - of all the days it is the year that looks better in the mirror Polished malachite - of all the points it is the line that looks best in the end At the head of a stream encased in your head you head out like the pursuit of fire feeding on sources mouthing obstacles a knowledge-eating machine "a word is a microcosm of human consciousness" "the next phase will be holophrastic" she said "what?" I pondered "is holophrastic?" a time of single-word utterance X Of the several I assume I become with but one and that is you irrefutable light A bright condition flourishes by what light we evoke it contains the very sound by which we gauge the world All the while the coils sit in darkness awaiting the life of magnets knowing electricity, before ever pronouncing it The pink tongue lets speech into an ear to hear - - by having the simplest communication understood by devising consecutive patterns by conveying a desire by expressing the need to be heard by placing a consonant before the vowel sound and sign make brain make speech A sudden portable neologism How simple and in sync your kiss becomes X As the paper is the body, the book is elsewhere You learn by observing a superior performance by throwing darts at a target 12 inches under water Attention is accompanied by a failure to attend hermes, god of poets & apollo, god of poetry The pointed focus dissolves * * * * * *Some Climb Aboard while Others Disembark.* *A Sound Rope for the Ready.* *"I've Been There"* I'd premiere the work-ride as a constructing a usable cinch inside metals, above wheels Verbs in the riding Spectate and Do A sun comes out to reveal stationary clouds with a passenger's hair orange as a dark orange We are climbing because it has to climb to be lost is not always a directional site as if the real book were somewhere in the real map The 180o didn't oddly enough describe an arc what the mood pointed to was not forethought there are signs and there is the burning of sign To exhale, to pass a deviant foraging impression * * * * * ANGELIC RUSH Each eddy known DO NOT LEAVE WATCHES HERE After the extinction of desire, the dragonfly still followed each river's silver. We stopped using nouns in our language. Time became a physical morphing we could watch happen. Nature was revealed, a sexual mosaic. I worked with a tricky group of individuals as a repairer of syntax. I liked my job. Once, however, I saw the swollen appearance of myself from the other side, and could not bear my own soul's disparity. That abalone sheen A gift from my lover * * * * * AS I WAS FALLING I WAS WATCHING THINGS FALLING lying on the floor to be closer to the ground which is 3 floors down. the bus also lurches. poured into a wine glass coffee may separate which reminds one of shifting. never mind. look at the sunset. out of whom went 7 demons. an obstruction. a crescent which is a scar which is discolored by exposure. it turns it purple. the color of some vague memory. or the nails driven in. his heart-shaped face. you tell him the shirt he is wearing is the color of wisdom. burn it. or describe his forearm into your hand. 3 floors down the band has just started. a bass of vibrations felt in your pelvis. at the bus stop on the corner a man muses transfers. his coffee grown cold. look at it from a different angle and it loses its meaning. a mark on the body as a sign of divinity. you look up stigmata. as with the self it is in the plural. there you go. the process not immediate thus making it mysterious. tilt yourself as far as you can. it doesn't describe it accurately. you can feel it slipping. * * * * * *Bees, Sheep, Water, and Trees.* *Ink, Hills, and Numbers.* *Land and Factory* It may be true that my will is spent in the sky A vantage really outward, like half-heard testimony Lacks of authority or shape, only ceiling to take it in to fix you in a hazarding pattern as when the orange falls to brown in a late West and salvation lateral through my urban valley Hunkering down to live in the unformed claim where any moment imagines the same dips, same rises To plan redemption is false curve for the terrestrial -- atilt, explaining his lost details to strangers -- The pulse point set on taut condition of a province my enactment will be as though torn from misses. A genesis appears as stations of dailiness. I get in line, I survey the sly infiltrating ground * * * * * TALK SCROLL Circles pecked in crosses instruct to make ourselves pyramidal Recall a box of faces, this is misunderstanding of origin, a booby trap which releases aromatic smoke And then the way the skin of the drum is hit, differentially, we smack its tune into one streetlike intersection and only slightly revealed changes in color dampen the plaster, mostly red Return the meaning, clayed, that seemed only to accompany this, neutral, gem's face We are scattered among many basins, and unattended Their unknown source of light, cones and goddesses highly polished * * * * * REFUSAL OF THE REAL for Daniel Davidson The world must be mediated by art--fat Inklings, cruelty to admire, & tears Falling into lines of human habitation. Why is the highway straight? The easier To carry battle-goods across the Rock- Ies. Day breaks through this thin lens, >From our mouth to yours, the taste of a Piece with the style. There are only two Kinds of people in this world: Those Herding animals & those of us clinging To buses, sweet noise wrapped around Our every neck. Waking up a thousand Times a day, we just move along, fists Full of beer, bees, whatever. Rattling Light, the mouth a birdcage, words birdshot through this stable world of mostly solid objects, always jumping out of Hand. Head spinning down the spine--& what else can you do? It's not about accumulation, & it's really nothing like Love; It's about change drilling up through the earth, flower noise, intense levels of energy below particularities on a Shelf fanning out by itself. Are we willing to accept any situation--however false--and make it true? Any piece of writing Patterned to the effect that everyone is everywhere in bondage, this substitution of language. But where will we go to- Night? You were watched as you took this upstairs to your room, if that gives you any idea; the brightness of a forgotten Sun is placed gratis at our disposal. Countless are the beauties of land & sea we've already seen, shining brilliantly in the Light of our eyes. Take a little sun, & make love when you want to make love, however long it's kept. Pool ideas into Mail, literally, & grow vague. The stone's poisonous vapors are as yet unspent, and bees & moths lay dead in such Heaps that we cannot see the color of the earth beneath. We don't have to get every detail. Do we? To the sides of the Road, the country is flat, the soil dry & rectangular. We are, as far as we know, the only ones here. The only thing the Matter with this is that, when we leave, "it" will still be here. Its direction. What separates men is not a question, but Water, smiles against each evened shore. Someone to stand with for a distance. Someone twisting through every previous Example. Dreams & memory on the stairs, other windows facing it--yet this still fails to explain *how* objects fly through Air, burst into flame: that is, fails to ex- Plain (a) anything, and/or (b) what, if Anything, we can do about it. To insist, On anything, whoever's driving, who- Ever's giving signals, we laugh with our Teeth, veer earthward toward its feeble Salute. Back on our back, the battle echo- Ing overhead near the exit. The waters Part; a belch shakes you; a lot of talk Follows. Silence is convincing, a bond. The infinite trembling of stars mocking Emptiness, indifferent to our beseeching Hands, careless of the consequences of What could never, will never take place. [Editor's note: the original manuscript of this poem lays it out in the shape of a cross] * * * * * CLOSE be held close in an ordinary piece of raindrops inside the shadow exact course to one another that looked like vertical menacing caught on a stone-faced word deserted line may surface if a better critic talks about what happened safe as it appears but in reality has another origin deeper than their lives accurate to present prophecy strike benefit through glass justified in assuming false promises will not be able to change direction look close endangered earth mass stop halfway payment foolish boundary authentic imaginary dead flower shape and sequence entered a point in the story of head downward examination all over play faculty to itself deceptive wrong for believing a world in love with that * * * * * u n t r a n s l a t a b l e p a s s a g e * * * * * from *POEM X* (k) The human being is divided into three equal parts: the still landscape of wet human parts the vexing oily joints (release of sobs) and the civil guard. After removing the stomach further inspected the paved roadway at 32 degrees celsius unearthing moist glyphs shattered of bones equal parts: the still landscape of wet and the sexual membrane stimulating "small, firm horrors". The entry wound The entry wound The entry wound <> bearing territorial markings and a musky scent whose venerable antecedents raised a red flag of prehistoric muttering (d) The body is moved to tears by the bodies surrounding it. In the nervous web of the festival (s)he is like a tree in transit, gathering feathers towards the dissonance of an autumn; flexing ducts about the eyes are a little death in society. (m) map flat, compass round until the earth gets old and the people go away * * * * * SENSATION "The world" *is* metaphor. I aim my frame at one desire after another finding satisfaction in matters of time. The particulars are or are not interesting later but that's another story. In plain, the street carries its weight in abstract beauty, the sun parts a day, and silver knives play the spine, ordering our imagination. On the third call, answer just like on the first, and you will see reality clearly. 21