? Mathematics

     Mathematics

Mathematics is also like this
To start from plié
To connect the tendu
To do jumps in the evenings
Push-ups in the mornings
To cry before exams

Mathematics is also something
your eyes grow into or out of
A tour assemblé

Mathematics is a friend
That is waiting for me
a decade, a century
in the books on my shelf

When I call her name
Only a rail track responds
That we once traversed

onomatopoeia

       onomatopoeia

some words -- call out:
round, loud
or screeching traction
or precise, pertinent
or subtle, evanescent
or in the end
awe

calls coming to shake and point
in the direction
like swallowing a throw

sounds only hiss
shushing
isn't silence



--- [updated July 9, 2019 with G.'s help]

falling asleep

falling asleep

How to pass from this world to another world?
The numb blankness whose weight sinks into the pillow.
Untie the dark blanket and let it fall down the spar,
get the rig running. Then, carefully, pull yourself up
and tip-toe to the mast, descend the Jacob's ladder
to the main course, and balance out,
and once it is safe, jump into the blue ocean.
The splashing, at a loss of nautical,
and swim disarmingly back
to the brown keel.
And climb the wooden castle,
and once the kite has settled,
mount on the stone castle steps.
The steady stone bed,
the hot day blows noise
from a distant crowded market.

the future of poetry

the future of poetry

"For now we see through a glass, darkly; but then face to face:
now I know in part; but then shall I know even as also I am known."

We only believe what we see with our fingers.
Will the children of ours need words trembling
and resembling nothing but the cold wind,
the whisper of the night?
Today, poetry is the quiet when the wind gives
to the dawn. You sit in a sleeping gown,
poetry is staring at the brushes
through the gray blue, the first blush of the light.
Today's poetry is this silent exchange of caresses.
But the future of poetry is disquieting.

Words are voices of a well rehearsed dance
or of stumbling in a role. Today we stage language
with puppets, overwhelmed with half a dozen
that we draw by strings, taking turns. We insist,
poetry belongs to the sets and stage lights.
I dread of letting you in, because everything exists
on the outside, in the light.

The dramatis personæ of future poetry
are a theater of the inside. Imagine
that all of the earthly space is the surface
of a sweater, that an angel pulls off
inside-out, revealing the myriad of dimensions.

celebrate

celebrate

Celebrating requires composure.
Love compresses the chest
like a roller coaster
but the routine of life makes a hero.
Cerebral the permutations:
the factorial describes an algorithm
of going through all,
from an insight and long effort
till all systems check.
Celebrate the factorial, celebrate
the liftoff of understanding of the atmosphere of Mars.
Cybernetic the logarithm of chance.
The bright exhaust,
cherish the new eyes
and bow to maintain composure.
The glowing ring,
the widening field,
the contribution space.


--- [updated July 3, 2019]

[circle of light]

***

within a little circle of light
a stack of books
dark leaves of a plant
a keyboard

within me
a little circle of light


---
from around 1997? Probably later, I don't remember.

notebook

notebook

What does a twelve-years-old have in his notebook --
Three sketches of trees,
a tall tree by the road,
a broad tree by the river,
and a trunk with insides burnt out.
The first half-page of a would-be novel
that takes place on Mars.
Drawings of rockets.
A panel for a role playing adventure
laying out the menus, and a smallish
viewing pane, for immersion
and because smaller pictures to draw.
A couple of pages of the immense task
to provide the map of an ancient world.
In the navy blue cover -- a spare pen,
and in the side pockets
empty microscope slides,
a couple of specimen,
a folded note.
There is also something
between the cover and the copybook.
A love letter to a fictitious recipient
explaining that it does not matter.
There are many blank pages left
of the grid paper's Cartesian coordinates.





---9 III 2020
Minor edit (simplified and moved a reference to geometry to the last line).