A latchkey kid, I came home to a silent house, Threw coat and bag to the floor. The cockatoo squawked and settled. The cat slunk under the couch. The grandfather clock struck four. I wandered from room to room_ Nothing but framed faces on tables, A note from the housekeeper to Mom. But you were always there for me, Always waiting. I touched the knob Before I turned you on_ A moment of grace and remembrance. //TELEVISION_3//
You can’t think of morality as a luxury. You can’t. You can’t. You can’t.
Say something, Selfie, I can’t say_ Tell them how I stood, surefooted, on the bowsprit of life.
“What is the meaning of freedom when all of your choices lead back to the same place? The freedom to choose exactly what is is mere justification—a spiritual sleight of hand.”
Jake Wilson Whitlow, 2011
I quoted myself then changed the name, Sat back, and watched it fade. This is how I feel_ how I hold it together.
Drop a stone into the sea, It sinks. Sooner you drop it, deeper It sinks. Times, a stone sinks so deep It settles. Upon the sea bed It settles. Look back_down through Layers of light, Down to the mottled mosaic, The pebbled bed. You can’t find the stone. It’s become Part of the mosaic, Part of the sea itself. //Khalil Gibran//
Either or either, Neither or neither, How do you say either and neither? I don’t know, But my heart says either And your eyes say neither.
Ibn al-Haytam (Alhazem, b. 965, Basra) mathematician and optical theorist, argued that roughness produced beauty, and for that reason the goldsmith’s works became more lovely by having their surfaces roughened and textured.
Similarly, the interjection of a bad odor in perfume or a sour taste, however slight, in a dish, gives the perfume or the dish deliciousness. Why? Scents and tastes are inclined to go quickly from freshness to foulness. One could say that they are most delicious not at the height of freshness, but just after it, at the point of first descent.
Could it be that beauty is a matter of this subtle tipping from life into death? That what is beautiful for us is not the eternal, but the transitory? That all beauty contains that hint of death, that point of first descent?
CHAPTER I All on a dirt joke once Rachel McCree Donned that whalebone corset— The logger’s wife suckin in Center stage that Kentuck cabin, All while Sam Nead’s wife hid her crooked grin. The wasp-waisted lady Who lost her vay-lise at Sterlin Station Could ne’er imagine The odd fate of her precious intimate— Strung like rack o’er barreled body Til dainty baleen snapped and Loosey flesh oozed like blubber ‘Tween all them rippin seams. They heard a long, loud crackin— Like the fell of a far-off timber. The corset broke in two. Left that Rachel nekked. Squattin Over hard-packed floor, nethers bearlike, Breasts but bladders long-gone flat. Sam Nead’s wife forgot her crooked grin. Then, a long off silence. As after the mill’narian tree falls, And the woodsmen stand round That stump musing over the thing they killed— Over all the fear hidin in the hollows of malice. CHAPTER II Can’t tell you, after all, the mind Of John McCree come in from that Frigid wood, hands numb from swangin, Just to find his wife of thirty earthen years Standin in gingham over his supper stew. Cryin. //TALE OF A KENTUCK CORSET//
It’s hard toward the end, Not knowing if you’ve done enough. There’s no finish line, no tape to cross_ You just decide, some point, to stop.