alogical physics

laying framework floor for the poem house

i am drawing, now,

a chalk circle on the ground around us

a chalk circle with its own alogical and autonomous physics,

histories, ecosystems & natural laws.

like varo’s soul in the world of velocity

the backyard volcano, the crocodile skull

isn’t it possible to live a life totally inside a Chalk Circle Poem where anything goes?

these are the things i wonder.

i say yes. that’s why i’m writing to you now but

you may not agree.

but i cannot hear you right now.

i wish i could.

there are two things i want to tell you.

1) i am not always truth-telling

I keep asking poets where the line is between privacy and openness in Work. Nobody has been able to satisfy me with their answers. 

I don’t think about other people!!! CA said. But that’s not what I was asking.

Maybe there is no answer because there is no line. No distinction between privacy and openness in poetry because it is, like a close friend of mine likes to say, a secret third thing. Can you be open in a truth? Private in a lie? Are there lines in semi-fiction? 

How do you keep track of a line's privateness when it keeps shifting between solid and abstract? You can't hold its body. You can't name it.

We find ourselves with the impulse to ask --is this true! 

Truth is it doesn't matter so much the "is this" part of that question, maybe it matters more the "what if this is true?" Et si? Et si? 

Let’s pretend it’s true. And now what?

sometimes i lean so close to a truth’s face that it becomes a lie, and vice versa.

like how if you stare at the face of a person you love for too long, something changes.

2) i am trying to create from the voice of the body

starting with important words of a fresh birdlike poet-friend of mine:

“i have been thinking lately about why writing is such a big deal at all, what is the point when so much art is so much more animal.

in varo's la creación de las aves, which probably is the best and most orgiastic allegory for writing even though there are six modes of artistic expression on display and none of them are writing and also there is no orgy, the owl uses her right hand to paint and her left hand to reflect moonlight”

I’ve been thinking about this too. I recently came back from an orbit where poetry was more about embodying the poem. It was about standing inside of the poem and sharing it from the inside. Letting people, almost voyeauristically, watch what you look like inside of the poem. Which allows for an approximation to understanding each other.

You have to be fairly naked to show people a poem through the body. Nearly translucent.

I typically struggle with sharing. I am writing all the time from the body. But I didn’t know how to share from the body. That dissonance from the way it was created to the way of sharing was impossible for me to stomach.

But lately, I’ve started trying to connect these loose threads, closing the gap between the way that I communicate with people and the way that I write. Which feels a little bit like slipping into an alter ego. But in reality, it’s the truest self.

With my communication being more aligned with my poetic voice, I feel both closer and farther from people. Closer when it’s reciprocated. And farther when it’s not.

I don’t trust that it will be reciprocated. And sitting in front of someone, animalbodied, while they are not is such a humbling experience. Sometimes I feel that I will say something and only get a blink back.

Now that you've put it so perfectly, I want to feel meticulous like the owl in the orgy. Scientific, siphoning moonlight, pulling music out from the chest, animalbodied with steadied hands feet and face. I have this desperate desire for this.