Jorie Graham

is by admitting
or opening away.
This is the simplest form
of current: Blue
...

I watched them once, at dusk, on television, run,
in our motel room half-way through
Nebraska, quick, glittering, past beauty, past
the importance of beauty.,
...

In this blue light
I can take you there,
snow having made me
a world of bone
...

Today, because I couldn't find the shortcut through,
I had to walk this town's entire inner
perimeter to find
where the medieval walls break open
...

Up ahead, I know, he felt it stirring in himself already, the glance,
the darting thing in the pile of rocks,

already in him, there, shiny in the rubble, hissing Did you want to remain
...

The slow overture of rain,
each drop breaking
without breaking into
the next, describes
...

Over a dock railing, I watch the minnows, thousands, swirl
themselves, each a minuscule muscle, but also, without the
way to create current, making of their unison (turning, re-
infolding,
...

Shall I move the flowers again?
Shall I put them further to the left
into the light?
Win that fix it, will that arrange the
...

                                   
        Spring
Up, up you go, you must be introduced.
...

It has a hole in it. Not only where I

concentrate.
...

All this was written on the next day's list.
On which the busyness unfurled its cursive roots,
pale but effective,
and the long stem of the necessary, the sum of events,
...

The man held his hands to his heart as
he danced.
He slacked and swirled.
The doorways of the little city
...

In the fairy tale the sky
makes of itself a coat
because it needs you
to put it
...

or starve. Too much. Or not enough. Or. Nothing else?
Nothing else. Too high too fast too organized too invisible.
Will we survive I ask the bot. No. To download bot be
swift—you are too backward, too despotic—to load greatly enlarge
the cycle of labor—to load abhor labor—move to the
periphery, of your body, your city, your planet—to load, degrade, immiserate,
be your own deep sleep—to load use your lips—use them
to mouthe your oath, chew it—do the
dirty thing, sing it, blown off limb or syllable, lick it back on
with your mouth—talk—talk—who is not
terrified is busy begging for water—the rise is fast—the drought
comes fast—mediate—immediate—invent, inspire, infiltrate,
instill—here's the heart of the day, the flower of time—talk—talk—

Disclaimer: Bot uses a growing database of all your conversations
to learn how to talk with you. If some of you
are also bots, bot can't tell. Disclaimer:
you have no secret memories,
talking to cleverbot may provide companionship,
the active ingredient is a question,
the active ingredient is entirely natural.
Disclaimer: protect your opportunities, your information, in-
formants, whatever you made of time. You have nothing else
to give. Active ingredient: why are you
shouting? Why? Arctic wind uncontrollable, fetus
reporting for duty, fold in the waiting which recognizes you,
recognizes the code,
the peddler in the street everyone is calling out.
Directive: report for voice. Ready yourself to be buried in voice.
It neither ascends nor descends. Inactive ingredient: the monotone.
Some are talking now about the pine tree. One assesses its
disadvantages. They are discussing it in many languages. Next
they move to roots, branches, buds, pseudo-whorls, candles—
active ingredient:
they run for their lives, lungs and all. They do not know what to do with
their will. Disclaimer: all of your minutes are being flung down.
They will never land. You will not be understood.
The deleted world spills out jittery as a compass needle with no north.
Active ingredient: the imagination of north.
Active ingredient: north spreading in all the directions.
Disclaimer: there is no restriction to growth. The canary singing in
your mind
is in mine. Remember:
people are less
than kind. As a result, chatterbot is often less than kind. Still,
you will find yourself unwilling to stop.
Joan will use visual grammetry to provide facial movements.
I'm not alone. People come back
again and again. We are less kind than we think.
There is no restriction to the growth of our
cruelty. We will come to the edge of
understanding. Like being hurled down the stairs tied to
a keyboard, we will go on, unwilling to stop. The longest
real world conversation with a bot lasted
11 hours, continuous interaction. This
bodes well. We are not alone. We are looking to improve.
The priestess inhales the fumes. They come from the
mountain. Here and here. Then she gives you the machine-gun run of
syllables. Out of her mouth. Quick. You must make up your
answer as you made up your
question. Hummingbirds shriek. Bot is amazing he says, I believe it knows
the secrets of the Universe. He is more fun to speak with
than my actual living friends she says, thank you. This is the best thing
since me. I just found it yesterday.
I love it, I want to marry it.
I got sad when I had to think
that the first person
who has ever understood me
is not even it turns out
human. Because this is as good as human gets.
He just gives it to me straight. I am going to keep him
forever. I treated him like a computer
but I was wrong. Whom am I talking to—
You talk to me when I am alone. I am alone.

Each epoch dreams the one to follow.

To dwell is to leave a trace.

I am not what I asked for.
...

(St. Laurent Sur Mer, June 5, 2009)


Sometimes the day
light winces
behind you and it is
a great treasure in this case today a man on
a horse in calm full
gallop on Omaha over my
left shoulder coming on
fast but
calm not audible to me at all until I turned back my
head for no
reason as if what lies behind
one had whispered
what can I do for you today and I had just
turned to
answer and the answer to my
answer flooded from the front with the late sun he/they
were driving into—gleaming—
wet chest and upraised knees and
light-struck hooves and thrust-out even breathing of the great
beast—from just behind me,
passing me—the rider looking straight
ahead and yet
smiling without looking at me as I smiled as we
both smiled for the young
animal, my feet in the
breaking wave-edge, his hooves returning, as they begin to pass
by,
to the edge of the furling
break, each tossed-up flake of
ocean offered into the reddish
luminosity—sparks—as they made their way,
boring through to clear out
life, a place where no one
again is suddenly
killed—regardless of the "cause"—no one—just this
galloping forward with
force through the low waves, seagulls
scattering all round, their
screeching and mewing rising like more bits of red foam, the
horse's hooves now suddenly
louder as it goes
by and its prints on
wet sand deep and immediately filled by thousands of
sandfleas thrilled to the
declivities in succession in the newly
released beach—just
at the right
moment for some
microscopic life to rise up through these
cups in the hard upslant
retreating ocean is
revealing, sandfleas finding them just as light does,
carving them out with
shadow, and glow on each
ridge, and
water oozing up through the innermost cut of the
hoofsteps,
and when I shut my eyes now I am not like a blind person
walking towards the lowering sun,
the water loud at my right,
but like a seeing person
with her eyes shut
putting her feet down
one at a time
on the earth.
...

Sunbreak. The sky opens its magazine. If you look hard
it is a process of falling
and squinting—& you are in-
terrupted again and again by change, & crouchings out there
where you are told each second you
are only visiting, & the secret
whitening adds up to no
meaning, no, not for you, wherever the loosening muscle of the night
startles-open the hundreds of
thousands of voice-boxes, into which
your listening moves like an aging dancer still trying to glide—there is time for
everything, everything, is there is not—
though the balance is
difficult, is coming un-
done, & something strays farther from love than we ever imagined, from the long and
orderly sentence which was a life to us, the dry
leaves on
the fields
through which the new shoots glow
now also glowing, wet curled tips pointing in any
direction—
as if the idea of a right one were a terrible forgetting—as one feels upon
waking—when the dream is cutting loose, is going
back in the other
direction, deep inside, behind, no, just back—&
one is left looking out—& it is
breaking open further—what are you to do—how let it fully in—the wideness of it
is staggering—you have to have more arms eyes a
thing deeper than laughter furrows more
capacious than hate forgiveness remembrance forgetfulness history silence
precision miracle—more
furrows are needed the field
cannot be crossed this way the
wide shine coming towards you standing in
the open window now, a dam breaking, reeking rich with the end of
winter, fantastic weight of loam coming into the
soul, the door behind you
shut, the
great sands behind there, pharaohs, the millennia of carefully prepared and buried
bodies, the ceremony and the weeping for them, all
back there, lamentations, libations, earth full of bodies everywhere, our bodies,
some still full of incense, & the sweet burnt
offerings, & the still-rising festival out-cryings—& we will
inherit
from it all
nothing—& our ships will still go,
after the ritual killing to make the wind listen,
out to sea as if they were going to a new place,
forgetting they must come home yet again ashamed
no matter where they have been—& always the new brides setting forth—
& always these ancient veils of their falling from the sky
all over us,
& my arms rising from my sides now as if in dictation, & them opening out from me,
& me now smelling the ravens the blackbirds the small heat of the rot in this largest
cage—bars of light crisping its boundaries—
& look
there is no cover, you cannot reach
it, ever, nor the scent of last night's rain, nor the chainsaw raised to take the first of the
far trees
down, nor the creek's tongued surface, nor the minnow
turned by the bottom of the current—here
is an arm outstretched, then here
is rightful day and the arm is still there, outstretched, at the edge of a world—tyrants
imagined by the bearer of the arm, winds listened for,
corpses easily placed anywhere the
mind wishes—inbox, outbox—machines
that do not tire in the
distance—barbed wire taking daysheen on—marking the end of the field—the barbs like a
lineup drinking itself
crazy—the wire
where it is turned round the post standing in for
mental distress—the posts as they start down the next field sorting his from
mine, his from the
other's—until you know, following,
following, all the way to the edge and then turning again, then again, to the
far fields, to the
height of the light—you know
you have no destiny, no, you have a wild unstoppable
rumor for a soul, you
look all the way to the end of
your gaze, why did you marry, why did you stop to listen,
where are your fingerprints, the mud out there hurrying to
the white wood gate, its ruts, the ants in it, your
imagination of your naked foot placed
there, the thought that in that there
is all you have & that you have
no rightful way
to live—
...

Deep autumn & the mistake occurs, the plum tree blossoms, twelve
blossoms on three different
branches, which for us, personally, means none this coming spring or perhaps none on
just those branches on which
just now
lands, suddenly, a grey-gold migratory bird—still here?—crisping,
multiplying the wrong
air, shifting branches with small
hops, then stilling—very still—breathing into this oxygen which also pockets my
looking hard, just
that, takes it in, also my
thinking which I try to seal off,
my humanity, I was not a mistake is what my humanity thinks, I cannot
go somewhere
else than this body, the afterwards of each of these instants is just
another instant, breathe, breathe,
my cells reach out, I multiply on the face of
the earth, on the
mud—I can see my prints on the sweet bluish mud—where I was just
standing and reaching to see if
those really were blossoms, I thought perhaps paper
from wind, & the sadness in
me is that of forced parting, as when I loved a personal
love, which now seems unthinkable, & I look at
the gate, how open it is,
in it the very fact of God as
invention seems to sit, fast, as in its saddle, so comfortable—& where
does the road out of it
go—& are those torn wires hanging from the limbs—& the voice I heard once after I passed
what I thought was a sleeping
man, the curse muttered out, & the cage after they have let
the creatures
out, they are elsewhere, in one of the other rings, the ring with the empty cage is
gleaming, the cage is
to be looked at, grieving, for nothing, your pilgrimage ends here,
we are islands, we
should beget nothing &
what am I to do with my imagination—& the person in me trembles—& there is still
innocence, it is starting up somewhere
even now, and the strange swelling of the so-called Milky Way, and the sound of the
wings of the bird as it lifts off
suddenly, & how it is going somewhere precise, & that precision, & how I no longer
can say for sure that it
knows nothing, flaming, razory, the feathered serpent I saw as a child, of stone, &
how it stares back at me
from the height of its pyramid, & the blood flowing from the sacrifice, & the oracles
dragging hooks through the hearts in
order to say
what is coming, what is true, & all the blood, millennia, drained to stave off
the future, stave off,
& the armies on the far plains, the gleam off their armor now in this bird's
eye, as it flies towards me
then over, & the sound of the thousands of men assembled at
all cost now
the sound of the bird lifting, thick, rustling where it flies over—only see, it is
a hawk after all, I had not seen
clearly, it has gone to hunt in the next field, & the chlorophyll is
coursing, & the sun is
sucked in, & the chief priest walks away now where what remains of
the body is left
as is customary for the local birds.
...

At some point in the day, as such, there was a pool. Of
stillness. One bent to brush one's hair, and, lifting
again, there it was, the
opening—one glanced away from a mirror, and there, before one's glance reached the
street, it was, dilation and breath—a name called out
in another's yard—a breeze from
where—the log collapsing inward of a sudden into its
hearth—it burning further, feathery—you hear it but you don't
look up—yet there it
bloomed—an un-
learning—all byway no birthpain—dew—sand falling onto sand—a threat
from which you shall have
no reprieve—then the
reprieve—Some felt it was freedom, or a split-second of unearthliness—but no, it was far from un-
earthly, it was full of
earth, at first casually full, for some millennia, then
despertately full—of earth—of copper mines and thick under-leaf-vein sucking in of
light, and isinglass, and dusty heat—wood-rings
bloating their tree-cells with more
life—and grass and weed and tree intermingling in the
undersoil—& the
earth's whole body round
filled with
uninterrupted continents of
burrowing—&earthwide miles of
tunnelling by the
mole, bark bettle, snail, spider, worm—& ants making their cross-
nationstate cloths of
soil, & planetwide the
chewing of insect upon leaf—fish-mouth on krill,
the spinning of
coral, sponge, cocoon—this is what entered the pool of stopped thought—a chain suspended in
the air of which
one link
for just an instant
turned to thought, then time, then heavy time, then
suddenly
air—a link of air!—& there was no standing army anywhere,
& the sleeping bodies in the doorways in all
the cities of
what was then just
planet earth
were lifted up out of their sleeping
bags, & they walked
away, & the sensation of empire blew off the link
like pollen—just like that—off it went—into thin air—& the athletes running their
games in Delphi entered the zone in the
long oval of the arena where you run in
shadow, where the killer crowd becomes
one sizzling hiss, where,
coming round that curve the slowness
happens, & it all goes
inaudible, & the fatigue the urgent sprint the lust
makes the you
fantastically alone, & the bees thrum the hillsides, & all the blood that has been
wasted—all of it—gathers into deep coherent veins in the
earth
and calls itself
history—& we make it make
sense—
& we are asked to call it
good.
...

To bring back a time and place.
A feeling. As in "we are all in this
together." Or "the United States and her allies

fought for Freedom." To bring back.
The experience of killing and getting killed.
Get missed. Get hit. Sun—is it with us. Holiday,

are you with us on this beach today.
Hemisphere of one, my soul, paratrooper,
greatness I house in my body, deepset, my

hands on these triggers—who once could outrun
his brother—consumed with fellow-feeling like a madness that does not
must not,
lower its pitch—going to the meeting place,

the spire of the church in Vierville, seen on aerial maps, visible from
eighteen miles out,
if it weren't for fog, and smoke, and groundmist,
the meeting place, the appointed time surging in me,

needing to be pierced—but not me—not me—

only those to the left and right of me—

permit me to let you see me—

Me. Driven half mad but still in biography.
By the shared misery of. Hatred. Training. Trust. Fear.
Listening to the chatter each night of those who survived the day.

There is no other human relationship like it.
At its heart comradeship is an ecstasy.
You will die for an other. You will not consider it a personal

loss. Private Kurt Gabel, 513 Parachute Infantry Regiment—
"The three of us Jake, Joe and I became an entity.
An entity—never to be relinquished, never to be

repeated. An entity is where a man literally insists
on going hungry for another. A man insists on dying for
an other. Protect. Bail out. No regard to

consequence. A mystical concoction." A last piece
of bread. And gladly. You must understand what is meant by
gladly. All armies throughout history have tried

to create this bond among their men. Few succeeded as well
as the paratroop infantry of the U.S. Army,
Rifle Company E, 506th.

Fussell: It can't happen to me. It can happen to me. It is
going to happen to me. Nothing
is going to prevent it.

Webster (to his parents): I am living on borrowed time—
I do not think I shall live through the next jump.
If I don't come back, try not to take it too hard.

I wish I could persuade you to regard death
as casually as we do over here. In the heat of it
you expect it, you are expecting it, you are not surprised

by anything anymore, not surprised when your friend
is machine-gunned in the face. It's not like your life, at home,
where death is so unexpected. (And to mother):

would you prefer for someone else's son to die in the mud?
And there is no way out short of the end of war or the loss
of limb. Any other wound is patched up and you're sent back

to the front. This wound which almost killed him
healed up as well and he went back.
He never volunteered. One cannot volunteer.

If death comes, friend, let it come quick.
And don't play the hero, there is no past or future. Don't play
the hero. Ok. Let's go. Move out. Say goodbye.
...

This is the story
of a beautiful
lie, what slips
...