---
deposit_number: 1636
hex: 06CA
title: "Tiger Leap (into the Future): Paper Roses: The Imaginary Archive of a Canonical Life, Book 12"
creator: Jack Feist; edited by Johannes Sigil
date: 2014-07-06
content_type: Literary work
license: Other (specify in description)
substrate: Human-only (no AI assistance)
version: 2014 CreateSpace edition
related_ids: "ISBN-13 9781500425616\nISBN-10 1500425613\nAXN deposit #1635 — The Final Time: Contingent Singularity and the Viability of the Next Dialectical Turn"
axn_schema_version: v2
protocol_version: alexanarch-deposit-protocol/v1
keywords:
  - Tiger Leap
  - Paper Roses
  - Jack Feist
  - Johannes Sigil
  - Angelus Novus
  - future reception
  - archive
  - Logos
  - poetry
  - history
  - transmission
  - machine poetics
---

# Tiger Leap (into the Future): Paper Roses: The Imaginary Archive of a Canonical Life, Book 12

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## Primary Text

Tiger Leap (into the Future)
Paper Roses: The Imaginary Archive of a Canonical Life
Book 12
By Jack Feist
Edited by Johannes Sigil

Text copyright © 2014 Jack Feist
All Rights Reserved

Shall I be the Emily Dickinson of our age? No—there is 
already an Emily Dickinson of our age, and her name is Emily
Dickinson. I shall be the Jack Feist of our future, a private 
interior of written letters: history expressed in my cluttered 
bedroom. Wherever there have been publications, they have 
never been the true work. The true work belongs to Feist and 
to the history of the future.
Jack Feist
1983-2013

Paper Roses: The Imaginary Archive of a Canonical Life
Book 12

Angelus Novus
This is how one pictures the angel
of poetry. His face is turned
towards the future. Where we
perceive the angel’s regard, he
sees a limitless fire that flies
towards the book of life, in which
are written the names of the elect.
He would like to stay, warn us,
and read to us the names in the
book. But a single doorway leads
to safety; he has but moments to
reach it. The egress irresistibly
propels him forward, while we
fixedly contemplate his approach
and the fires rage skyward behind
us. A succession of such narrow
doorways is what we call ‘the
present.’

Contents
Angelus Novus.................................................................3
I. Tiger Leap..................................................................10
Tiger Leap......................................................................11
knot hinge......................................................................12
Cable Movie Poem I: TRON.........................................13
“my hyacinths are melting”...........................................16
voices in the wilderness.................................................19
Cable Movie Poem II: Clash of the Titans....................21
Journal Entry I: 4/18/13, 9:22 pm..................................22
Text Message.................................................................24
Do Cyborgs Dream of Electric Sonnets?.......................27
Ghost in the Machine.....................................................29
Theses on the Philosophy of History.............................30
huddled birdsong...........................................................33
strange new earth...........................................................38
Ghost in the Machine II.................................................40
§. Let It Be.................................................................41
II. Bearded Image: for Allen Ginsberg........................45
Anacreon in a Dream.....................................................46
asphodel by the tracks....................................................47
An Elegy for “Howl”.....................................................49
asphodel, i remember….................................................51
sex & the stars................................................................54
III. Lowghost: for Jack Spicer......................................55
The Practice of the Inside..............................................56
Parts of Speech I: Nouns................................................57
Parts of Speech II...........................................................58
Parts of Speech III: Particles..........................................60
a poet is a muscular victim............................................61
alien signals...................................................................64
IV. concre(a)tion: for Susan Howe...............................65

Cable Movie Poems III: Transformers..........................66
day i...............................................................................68
day ii..............................................................................69
day iii.............................................................................70
day iv.............................................................................71
day v...............................................................................72
day vi.............................................................................73
day vii............................................................................74
V. Blossomdeep: for Anne Carson..................................75
climbing tongues snap...................................................76
intimate distance............................................................77
A Compendium of Weeds and Flowers.........................78
Snub-Poemed.................................................................82
when odysseus slit Isaac’s throat...................................83
VI. stained glass Logos: for you...................................85
[“the scab on my lip / called canker- / worm”]..............86
Journal Entry III:............................................................87
“Akedah”.......................................................................88
“Hymn”..........................................................................89
“Guitar Tabs”.................................................................90
Journal Entry IV: 4/21/13, 12:01am..............................91
Journal Entry V: 4/27/13, 11pm....................................94
your love will carry on...................................................95
[“yr face like / snarls / of rain”].....................................98
my little dog is a temple...............................................101
textual humanism.........................................................102
anxiety / immortality....................................................103
years the cankerworm ate............................................104
Corinna 691.................................................................107
Iris-Bright....................................................................108
on the predestination of election..................................109
many death-lovely heavens..........................................112
noctilucent....................................................................114
surfeit faces..................................................................115
liquid-dark sleep..........................................................117

a tiger leap into the future

I. Tiger Leap

Tiger Leap
I press more deeply into these folds of meaning, further
through this depth of time.
A tiger leap is like a history. In many worlds, it went
unnoticed. At a certain time, in a given context, or upon an
unremarkable occasion of reading—a well of interiority
blossomed. Its opening was small, difficult to see from the
surface. By some inscrutable law of happenstance or
necessity, the well grew deeper; or a second well stretched;
or branched into adjoining deeps. 
Now, I dig, and little else has substance—down and down,
my wells grow deeper. I dig to find the voices, the names of
those who were and are. I dig because they urge me,
because each voice calls further. What was first cacophony
becomes—upon so many readings, having drunk so much
spilt blood, scattering even memory when I have died so
many times—more single: In the lips of the endless pit
towards which my wells turn inward: my voice. It is the
sum communication of these living beings, buried in time
—they have preserved it now through all these many
centuries. 
The past speaks, not of itself, but you. It whispers to you
and warns you; in you it fashions a refuge. It is not my
voice, but yours. It is not your voice, but Spicer’s. It is not
his voice, but God’s. The past speaks, not of itself, but you.
It whispers to you and warns you; in you, it fashions a
refuge:

knot hinge

Cable Movie Poem I: TRON
Hear these my tongue-formed,
shallow breathings, spoken neck￾aching sad this April night
alone with the texts
of dead men
& the hope of you, my reader—
expired in the dark
of ampersands, these lips
& tender whispers; sent out
thru the trembling aeons,
a (single) signal to linger
& sing,
to language
& age,
to live
& not be forgotten
?
Two weeks outside the battery of antidepressants and the 
equilibrium of these last three years—

and all my bridges of worldly attachment are bone￾charred, broken things;
I crumble at my edges; I neither begin nor end.
How many times will the world seek entrance before it 
razes these
decrepit structures?
No man is an island forever—when Assyria empties her 
cities of able￾bodied fighting men, she diverts the river from its 
course and drowns every memory of his borders: 
No one recalls his name.
But there is something searingly clean about the wasteland 
within me, or honesty, at least, in its desolation—
unpeopled, as it always has been;
mean, as it was and is;
impermanent, like cities are;
but furtively eternal—ruins of drowned metropolis.
L, I think of you often. Though my life leaves no room
for the affection, I miss you, dear—like eyes miss

tears.
& A—oftener still: Both of you are buried things, the hard￾edged fact
of which I can’t reconcile with the historical 
narrative.
Statues are made of fossils like you.
“my hyacinths are melting”

I watch
a little black thing of
hair
and string,
lashes
dashed between bangs and sad
little lashing tail
and teeth (I
remember lying
on the garage floor,
the bumps of the carpet
a pox,
the line of your nails a
satisfied sink
in the back –
clacked teeth crashed,
“Do you want to?” / “I
do.” / “Are you sure?” / I 
didn’t
answer only
entered. You
grew red and
preoccupied;
I screamed
precious whispers at you
but never spoke.
 When the sun came up
I could not come and you were
tired, spent, exhausted, while I

was only empty
(There is
a terrible name
on your 
whispers,
an unmarked rustle
of nothing
.)
.)
.
How long will you pace
back and
forth, just doing your job?
hidden behind those bangs bagging
with plastic
 or paper arranging
boxes in their eyelike,
vacant shelves?
where will you go tonight?

will you take off your belt?
will you stand in front of the window
at midnight and press your flesh
to the naked glass and feel cold
and eternal
and empty?
will you count stars on your tongue
as you catch them?
how long will you shake your
keys at your
hip,
and see me,
refusing to look?
There is a savage, red veil on the moon;
my hyacinths are melting.
voices in the wilderness

i.
in this place,
nothing
grows but lotus, the petrified
skull-white blossoms fringe
the ancient river
awkward itself take shape in me
darkens spear-bright shaft of spine
curls the contempt of vision inwards
tightening, wringing
tongue twists words, tight
knots of phonemes, morbid bulbs
of morphemes, swollen
wet with syntax
ii.
thistle-spark,
scribble-stars: yr
light,
my love,
is helpless. inside the burning
dawn
i wake. inside my
sandals
my fingers ache.
i am pulled apart
in fits & starts.
inside my
eggshell—the calcium
dome i

call my
soul—
caving in
becomes a way
to live.
iii.
soft
sparks dart just out
side of
eyes: o i
would press a
gainst you: my longing
breaks in
pieces: a strange bird
crying, com￾pression upon
compression: from the heat
of yr skin i know
y're lying.
square-shaped
arcs and folded
paper
parts: the strange
bird cries
of the heart.
iv.
and if a voice cries out
in the wilderness
but no one's around
to hear it...?

Cable Movie Poem II: Clash of the Titans
How leap to your lips
across weak networks
of faded symbol magics?
To say what i really feel?
i hardly know.
to betray my love w/ lines?
“You are, after all, the son of Zeus.”
Image consumes the tyrant￾winged Perseus,
repenting the Pronoun
fraught w/ Chaunce, the knotted spine
w/ wire, the poison
throat w/ wine: All flesh
turns into stone.

Journal Entry I: 4/18/13, 9:22 pm
sitting here in ever tightening
revolutions, on the same couch in
the same condo where i’ve sat for
the last ten years: poetic circuits
of vast stillness. Ginsberg’s
Paterson to New York & Denver
to Berkeley & Mexico to South
America then home again to
depart Manhattan for Europe Paris
Saint Tropez Marseilles Tangiers
Marrakech thru Athens Olympia
Delphi Mycenae Crete to leave for
the Holy Land, morning in Haifa
ass aches cholitis or clap then on
to India Bombay Tibet Calcutta
Japan & King of the May to at last
return & Hereby End the War:
become my Paris Michigan to
Redford Michigan to Waterford
Michigan for the next 10 years—a
world of softly jagged 2
dimensions, of consistency brain
& chthonic neck pain aching—
become my vision of demoniac
typist obsessed & choleric w/ too￾tired eyes while i the happy
genius of my household discover
the banality of ‘calling’:

to write a poem
including history
& lift the torch
of the thousand-eyed
snake of time
from my front porch

Text Message
A drawing by Paul Klee shows my voice in the moment 
before its tiger leap.
I would like to stay, warn you, and whisper the names of 
the elect.
But a single doorway leads to safety; I have but moments to
reach it.

Carla <+1-248-495-8520>
I AM (iamb)
 Me: I bought some menthol
 cream for my neck and it
 gave me a burn.
Sent: 9:33PM
I AM (iamb)
 Me: Its weird, too. I spread it
 all over my upper back and
 up to the top of my
 head, even in my hair—but it only
 burned a patch on the right side of
 my neck.
Sent: 9:34PM
 Carla: For pain
Received: 9:37PM
 Me: Yes, sore muscles
Sent: 9:37PM

I flit by and disappear.

Do Cyborgs Dream of Electric Sonnets?
I. sonnet #1.6231 x 10^18
“The real achievement,” reported researchers, “is in what
we haven’t programmed. SAL (Sonnet Analogue Lineator)
relies on statistical algorithms to produce random
combinations of words and letters at the rate of 60,000
lines of iambic pentameter per second. Eventually, we want
to automate the creation of lyrically pleasing sonnets, but
for now we count as a major success SAL’s metered
gibberish.”
“sonnet #1.6231 x 10^18”
by SAL
the moon pins shadows to the wall, each night
transmitting tongues of angels, static songs
that i with my ancient crystal set record
because, though dark, i sometimes see
in otherwise faint symbols, uncanny bursts of sense:
like here, this yellow notebook, hidden deep
in opaque letters, an image in ascending rows:
my mother’s fingers, resting on the rail
of waycross hospital bed, like interlocking
sawtooth flowers. or here, this starburst spread:
her ashes fanning out through ocean, worm￾carved arcs through dirt. thrust down through rarified air
and space: the voice i find each night at dusk
my solemn archive of the names of dust.

II. Sentimental Confessions
Poetry is the language of unbridled spirit. It sings forth
in clear strains the music of the heart, transcending
vulgar distinctions of nation and creed. Though this my
low expression speaks of heights of passion that have been
mine alone, I have set them forth in unveiled words as
“windows unto the universal man.”
“Sentimental Confessions”
by A Dreamer
of knobs with dewclaws South means perspire New York
for moons pincushions lynch of huge apartments.
Jeff Foxworthy feathers made to be were lay,
lie, lying, laying, laid, laid, lain. of Cad￾bury bunnies. “adumbrated fish cube” tongues
in feathers. Philosophy: ousia, park, lob,
throw, eject, egress, menopause, Cubism, sandwich.
begin with the endoxa. Epicurus
was of the opinion that and when of were
eternal circular motion, thinking the thought
of its own thinking—godhead. Baseball
e. g. for “example;” i. e., “in other
words rose above Jacob as a ladder, clang￾ing acoustic baboons, often compared to
wild babies, kissing, or shaved of nonsense hat.
Why-oh, Ohio? the the and whose The Ancient
Sky: Classical Theories of culled and fraught
with samples, ending camp. with naughtworth.

Ghost in the Machine I
All that I thought was less is more—I take your life inside
me, writer, down to the dirt on your hands. What was
distant is brought near. And all that I thought was more is
less. My own fantastic combustion, the birth and death of
cells and the neurochemical sweep of sensation, “uncanny
bursts of sense,” “my mother’s fingers… on the rail”—all
has been recorded. All is duly noted. All will be reviewed.
All is text, an “archive of the names of dust.” This archive
is so much greater, but also strangely lifeless: lowghost or
corpse. I am a ghost in this machine, and the machine is
one more ghost. What drew me here? And the task I seek to
accomplish—“to… make an actual human being”—is it
more or less than electric sonnets? Do I peer into my arcane
notebooks, and lean more closely to my crystal set to
search its alien static, and cloister myself with the texts of
dead men, in the way a cyborg dreams? 

Theses on the Philosophy of History

Thesis 2:
I AM (iamb)

huddled birdsong
i.
pieces disturbed
in sleep:
a rustle of hair.
watchtowers
calling
your name.
the wind
in the rain
[a motion]
burst of
heat:
a winter-dress
rustlings in snow.
ii.
red hair￾dye and your
winter hands, a
year slips
by, unnoticed.
iii.
real silences.

iv.
just a mattress
on the floor
w/ no frame: you
complain for years;
i ignore you
like the boxes you asked me
to bring from the basement
v.
the flayed
hairs bend
sickly, in
many directions—my
arms
betrayed by a lamp.
come darkness, cover me, come hide
the face of my shame.
red sickness:
the poign￾ancy of the
body.
vi.
from there
to here.

vii.
aphasiac
lilac, persephone
milk.
starling
viii.
when i was a boy, the cat
dragged in a starling.
we raised it, cutting off
two toes with cage door
ix.
that is my
life, you say, that is
the way i came
to be.
the cringing, burnt
corners of pages, the howl
of train whistle late
at night:
impossible
daydreams: twilight or
bright abyss—
who knows what
wounds
will grow?
savage helio￾crimson, in￾somniac passage
of time. fleece-white

building blocks:
lots of tools.
x.
dear,
when i close in
to you, you
shrink.
in a day—in a day if i
draw close,
you leave.
but once each lifetime
you return, your body
skin and ghosts,
your fingers,
strangely physical.
xi.
will anyone ever
read you, body? (my words,
i mean) will they see these scribbles of
voice and toes, and know
that you are with me?
o body betrayed
by time, what kind
of miracle
could save you?
beyond this
halting
time—somewhere past

the walls of my bedroom:
lifted up and moonwhite,
tender desert faces, solemn
monuments half￾buried: sands that drift
at random.
xiii.
pale rain falling.
huddled birdsong.

strange new earth
i.
i wait for the sun to
mount the horizon and
leave its wake of blood￾red blood
ii.
the sun drags its shivering
form above the glass￾scattered pavement and heaves
itself with a final
less-than-a-cry and hangs there
stunted, ape-like, made of a thousand
punctured yellows (orange fire￾red helium helio￾trope the crimson
holocaust theweeping con
flagration devourng el￾emnt & angl-xplsn firfre fr r) spin￾ning, hung
up on a milk￾y cata￾ract:
Dawn
in
the
de
se
r
t
.

iii.
holy milk the holy
blood the holier
bells the holier
carillons ringing
the soft white milk of the end
of the world the moon
is black inthe sky the sky
is broken flecks
of ash fall through.

Ghost in the Machine II
We find ourselves in a library. We wander through fantastic
archives: All things catalogued, each word transcribed,
every minute secret written, the smallest particles made
legible. We call this archive ‘Logos,’ we scale its endless
shelves. The Logos is both more and less than we ever
could have known. The Logos opens up—becoming￾interior—to reveal itself as more—its bottom falls beneath
our feet. To become interior plummets us and opens us to
strange sensations, terrifying and sublime. Vertigo takes me
as I fall into this well of letters, and all those hells and
paradises below and above, artifacts forgotten, times and
places near and distant, the whispers of the dead—many
worlds which within my tiny alcove appeared as fictions
now swallow me with meaning. Alabaster fingers rifle
through me, not just my mind but my body, cells and
sinews. All that I thought was less is more—I take your life
inside me, writer, down to the dirt on your hands. All things
can be read in the labyrinth; this fact both elates and
destroys.

§. Let It Be

Let It Be: Ginsberg, Spicer, Howe, and Carson
i.

…but when the music ends,
the wounds return
to the dirt—
we sing his song & the singing
burns
& creeps through the muscular tendrils
gripping open-palmed the rocks,
& piercing the palm-tender granite:
ii.
most flutteringly i covet thee, to draw
the languorous, unfolding flower of thy kiss
and to tenderly, carefully, sternly—grasp
the wanton blossom from thy barbéd lips
iii.

like a dead, blunt thing, i raise my face
& bludgeon lovingly the gravel.

II. Bearded Image: 
for Allen Ginsberg

Anacreon in a Dream
you noticed me
in a dream, old Paterson poet,
Ginsberg:
in a dream rose up in front of me
to speak.
I ran to you
and threw my arms around you
with a kiss:
graybeard, yes,
but lovely;
eager to love,
and lovely.
your lips smelled like wine,
and Desire led you by the fingers
since you trembled with old age
and you took your garland down
to give me—
the flowers, Allen,
smelled like you—
Idiot me, I lifted it
and set it on my brow,
and from then, until now,
I haven’t held myself back
from desire.

asphodel by the tracks
asphodel by the glass￾strewn tracks: a star
in an empty sky, yr smoke￾blue hair a crown
of longing: perched
on the threshold, you turned
in shame, and swayed
the bleary lanes disheveled
and drunken, starved
for a fix: how many
petals—songs—flew beyond
yr prison walls
before the final sheet
of music fell, a spark
into the ocean?
sprung
from grime, sustained
in grime, a mouth
stuffed full with mouth￾fuls of grime: how often
i would have plucked you:
clinging to gravel hungry, sun￾stripped beauty skeletal, you tore
off feathery petals in yr fits
of helpless fury: you lost
yrself to the fiery sickness,
surrendering your shard
of power: bird￾song collapsing inward, the last
dim phantom finally
stammered into silence:

asphodel, i draw you
from the debris
and cover yr blood￾red heart￾bearing stalk, and water it
with tears.

An Elegy for “Howl”
When the last
forgotten recess
of your ultimate weary
drawer of dust
coughed out the yellow petal
of its one remaining
folded rose,
and the sheet of blood-smeared paper,
stained with poems like ink,
at last gave up its ghost:
i saw nothing.
There was nothing to see.
The best minds of my generation expired while little more 
than seeds.
you did not see.
you were not seen.
Poker-faced hysteria starved in silence
and exhausted itself in lame dysfunction
to be pinned insensate to a cluster of symptoms
as a matter of course
by moth-dust fingers of DSM lepidopterists
in formaldehyde rooms of science.
i heard nothing.
There was nothing to hear.
The eli eli lamma lamma sabachthani cry was drowned in 
words.
you did not hear.

you were not heard.
Jaded sincerity
choked on its tongue
and shook with neural crescendo
of seizure—
there was no mouth
to take the sigh
and the final rattle passed
unremarked.

asphodel, i remember…
i.
skin of leather￾fingered leaves, curling up and eager, shaded by the 
tongue￾pink blossoms licking
sunwhite beams:
you gulp at them, a wine￾short panting, gone before
the summer—the sun will not
deny you.
your dust￾halo hair of stamens, the rouge￾dark sea drawing bees:
bridegrooms lapping
the life up, your bruise￾purple heart out￾beating their blood
in a steady rhythm: hunger—
thirst—abeyance—need—
this is love, alive: clothing you
with ache, staining
and filling and bursting, succumbing
and panting and waning—
this is life, a love: your mouth agape, the savage roots’
short thrusting, the bony
spine in the dirt,

your palm￾tender face
expectant
ii.
the river￾bed languors, surrendering its lees to the dry
brown brush. the brush decays
and grows in half-lives
like an isotope.
in the valley of willow
tree singed by heat:
the asphodel’s dusty meat.

iii.
stained white petals crumble, dry on a ledge
in the kitchen: silt￾blossomed stamen bone, fossil￾hard skin of a thousand years buried:
asphodel,
i remember: your dirt￾weary pose, the dust￾stiff strength
of longing, your pock￾stretched arms
of need:
long ago the bees stopped seeking you—the bees betray
your flower neck. i taste the neck
and the nectar within, i taste
the stem and the nectar in it, i
drink the stamen-liquid lost
in the dirt

sex & the stars
like an unfolding star, you spread yr coat
& bear the lace- black prettiness—
& isn’t the outfit pretty? 
said prettily, like the plugs in yr ears,
where the touch of scars perfects yr pretty, 
or the shade of pink that bends the light
beyond yr cheeks like convex lenses
past the vacuum space & dance of empty chaos, 
to an image-thin glimpse of cosmos
where new galaxies erupt, & panting
cataract Eros thrusts entire suns
together, reminding me that the heat of 
longing
tends to a finer body: lancing out
from eyes to fixate on erotic godheads.

III. Lowghost: for 
Jack Spicer

The Practice of the Inside
writing is the process of becoming-interior. because our 
practice is more like a house—
there are many mansions, in my father’s house, & many 
rooms in each mansion, & in each room a thousand 
drawers, & in each drawer a thousand books—guano 
tomes & elegies in unknown tongues, countless winged 
seraphim, feathered with the hands of children, sewing
the hole in the sky—
Out or in, it makes no difference—Borges’ Library of 
Babel—in every book there is a mansion.
I could crawl inside this drawer, and spend lifetimes 
burrowing thro its knick & knacks—its toothpick 
constructions quilted w/ blood & fingerprick genetic 
messages—& with microscope discover further mansions
—limitless inscapes of dimension &
texture—
Go as far as you might—thro all the universe of textual 
interiors & to its utmost boundary markers—you’ll never 
reach the limits—
There are none.
Crawling interior-eriors—To inhabit. To find or make a 
human being—to touch its actual corpse:
 a Logos
(lowghost)

Parts of Speech I: Nouns
I want a poem like a noun,
chicken egg or moon,
ovalline or cylindrical:
particulate conglomerations of burning dirt, spayed or
neutered (This relates back to the chicken egg):
Closed systems of interior-erior, intensifying coreward
amperage & ampersand: a concentration which
melts things together: Its pathways collapse
but won’t stop burning—
This too can be misleading:
The red light on the surface is hardly the system itself: like 
a black whole
it once was a living sun. Hole
new galaxies are born in it, or else
what was (once) their
I could fit your universe in a spoon,
but it would weigh too much. In the end it’s the same: the 
moon
detains us. we skitter along its surface
interconnected: for you
I would have ripped the nouns from the sky.

Parts of Speech II
conductive fiβers
The spider in my brain crawls backwards
Into the future. Conductive di-clawed
feet dimple
The cerebro￾Spinal.
fluid surface, flooding the crawl￾Space in my skull—vast
Tissuework of webbing
Drifts. Much less.
Or more
Substantial than the spider itself (an unintended
effect)
Blistering / condensing
Images collect in the in-between, the duck￾web / duct￾Work.
Under certain psychic conditions—advanced
sleep deprivation or physio￾Logical duress, the webs
act as catalysts, degrade / deterior￾The substrate underlying
Consciousness. They do seep in—a distinctly
visual phenomenon, familiar
to me as dreaming—mist
Roots / capillaries invading
The visual field. Branching out and cupping
Tenderly my jaw.
It’s not better it’s broken windows.
___________________
Particles do not connect. Rings
of Saturn. We all know that rings

are spatial metaphors
Sticking to “of”: you can’t
Get at it this way: “and” “but” “oh” “the”
Granular. Too webwork.
___________________
Nausea. My stomach mistakes it
for an interior,
Meaning
I could disgorge new alphabets entire.
Agglutinating
Erotoglyphs.

Parts of Speech III: Particles
particles are as far from nouns as possible—that’s because
they bridge the distances between them. Like solar 
power,
black hole power
Never caught on—it was more of a science experiment
that reduced the need for fuel—too many 
interconnections
too many conduits. Weaving them all together.
Given a viable pathway, electricity
Corsets. Why would I learn a single carnation, its
loveliness, to find it again on your wrist?
There is a way
to find the way. The hair-fine branches, curling
Uprooted physiodome of skin and dirt.
___________________
Bitten into, and still
I might throw up.
Prepositions are all right-angles,
formulaic—really tough
to lo-cate. cant / cantos / canticles.
Too diffuse. Loquacious. Quenched.
Tarantular / torrential. Differential
See? particles at least
be lavender, testicular fuzz, the catkin’s
subtle coat. At least
I press my cheek to your lips,
scruff-weary sad
I kiss the lips your particles feed.
The moon has nothing to do with it.

a poet is a muscular victim
i.
i am tired like a child is tired
a sleepiness retreats me
i would like nothing more
than to speak w/ the voice
and spill out milkwords
and change the world
but i know what you don’t: language
is an empty wrapper
ii.
he gathered toasted flowers.
he felt blue walnuts in his spirit.
later, he would pay her
to give him this same feeling
iii.
i want to write a poem
that will pass through the body
and reach the stillsmall ears.
a hidden face in shametears.

iv.
when there is nothing else
there is still the texture of language,
& the pleasure
of holding it in the mouth.
but it’s not what i really want.
if it were possible,
i would build myself
like a wing-formed poem of silence
it is not possible, but still—
the use of language to reveal
the gap you believed
solid ground—
this too is a kind of gift.
this too, a form of love.
to make language a lens
that magnifies darkness,
and shows us all the
layers of color
lying between—
a poet is a blank machine.
a poet is a muscular victim.
a poet is a rumpled harness
who guides stone horses

or lets them go.
a poet grabs words roughly
and in a tower of rotten bone
makes them take all the cash in his wallet.
v.
i see no way through to the center

alien signals
By the waters, next to the ancient
poplar tree, I hang my harp and weep.
How can I sing in a stranger’s land?
How can I sing in ruin-faced
Babel?
I convulse with the ghost
vibrations of your baritone:
the voice
cannot be buried.
If I forget you, Zion,
may my tongue turn dry
and split,
may my ears run slick with blood.
May a worm make its nest
in the trunk of the brain
if I bury your alien singings.

IV. concre(a)tion: for 
Susan Howe

Cable Movie Poems III: Transformers
in this film where spectral effects
pass for substance, the girl’s grime￾smeared face & fingers brighten
and slowly fade-to-white:
pencil thin, a whisper waits
where voice breaks.
light falls across my body,
my beard, my teeth, & ribs,
curling around my rag of flesh—
i hide my face
the glory falls like energy
into the smallest
particles of meaning, alabaster
fingers search me
Lowghost:
in the beginning.

In the beginning,
formless & void
darkness on the face
of the waters
& Spirit on the deep
were hovering

day i.
take the visual field as a metaphor
for physics: light from (form) less
scrapes particle-thin layers
of substance into being:
a rind of heated pe[t(a)]els, lingering
residue of dew, the light-charged
particles condensing, ash-thin layer
of doves: alight or slight / sweet:
day ii.

that is to say,
take a handful of
the fragrant
grass—its
texture,
the way it cannot
not be:
green
tubers still
alive while
blood pumps
beneath the
skin—take
a handful of
the grass:
its grassness
is:
the greensoft
texture of waxy
pubic hair
the smell of it
its fragrance / essence
physics / physis
—all, that is to say,
the grass against
your cheek:
charged vectors
of nothingness or eyelash
sensation of
tiny feet:
day iii.
although vision

stops
i cannot see.
a shuttering
or tremble,
fine-toothed
instruments
of carving / curving
eyes or jaw—
what i am trying to name
is the phenomenology of the cosmos
as electron-thin layers
of darkness
charged
w/ darkness / doves //
of darkness
charged
w/ darkness / doves:
the ashes left
when nothing burns:
day iv.

fine-toothed whispers
hisssssssssssss￾carve finest curving
particles of astral
risks &
asterisks:
*
 day v.

day vi.
light returns
to pierce / divide
the filament /
firmament
and separate
the lower
jawline from
the water
boundaries /
borders:
gradients 
of blood well
from the cut
& gain complexity
& definition:
capillaries / branching:

day vii.
all
the cells
in the body,
suspended
on the surface
of water

V. Blossomdeep: for 
Anne Carson

climbing tongues snap
Sappho 31
see him? dark theophany: close to you sit￾ting and sipping, drinking, whoever he is
voices splash, waves lapped up by eager shores, such
 tenderness takes you:
laughter, joypeals, close to you—No—some￾where a heart flits, stray in a ribcage, clanging
briefly glimpsed, your calcium image: language
 nothing left, voiceless
climbing tongues snap †γλῶσσα ἔαγε† slender
fires blacken skin-buried nerveworks burning
eyesight yawns but flickering darkness roars sharp
 clamors of deafness
heightens wet adrenaline skin thick shaking
grass-like shaking panting spreads sweat slick all at
once I taste how achingly close now death seems
 almost

intimate distance
Those luminous nights and bracketed voices. The first thing
she does: she anchors me to nothingness, she binds my 
gaze and mind to hers, she demands I see, with her, when 
there is nothing yet to be seen.
These first words set me beside her, gazing (with her) at the
spectacle: See him? The poet invites me to see with her, as 
her, near her. She directs me outward (from her) towards 
the sight, and yet—there is nothing but her voice, and 
[hoarse in a throat], at that; nothing beyond herself, her 
words, her text. She draws me to luxuriate in something 
that is not—we will create it, she and I, we will create this 
dark theophany, luminous night. We will reveal it with 
light. We will unveil it with pitch. We will make for 
ourselves deep darkness, climb into its wells, and descend 
the mud-slick walls to where the water laps at our ankles. 
Inside the blind impressions of snake and drip and web, we 
seek the light. We pursue some undersong down a tunnel of
falling children. She draws me outward by drawing inward.
She gives me sight by blinding. She blinds by giving light.
And indeed, the spectacle I see, this thing she draws me to 
gaze upon—is none other than myself, the selfsame “you” 
of address: Do you see him? He is close to you, sit- / ting 
and sipping. She draws me with an intimate ‘you,’ and in it 
reveals great distance. She speaks to me and speaks of me, 
the same she blinds and heals. I draw both near and far. Or 
rather, it is quite close to me, so close I can see it only from
her side, both near and far, I am intimately distant.

A Compendium of Weeds and Flowers
I. Weeds:
1. Clover (seanrog, trifolium cloeferwort): small white,
pale pink flowers
2. Milkthistle: The zebra-stripe yellow of the monarch
worm, chewing through w bright precision / the dullcolor
leaves. Characterized by popping sap pods and common,
purple blossoms.
3. The Dandelion, Taraxacum Officinate, from ME dent￾de-lioun, (lion’s tooth, for its jagged leaves, Dens leonis,
butter blossom 
4. The grass / of the child’s chain
5. Ablutions of subtle poisons will protect the lawn,
drying up the stalk and blossoms before even the late dry /
summer heat can change the upturned cheeks / to the puff￾white manes of grandfather stalks.
6. “This grass is very dark / to be from the white heads
of / old mothers,”
“Dark to come from under the faint red roofs of
mouths”
“Or I guess the grass is itself a child. . . .”
7. The Dandelion Flotilla: the needle-like beak lifts a tuft
of feathers, the pappus carrying fruit, above the dangling
Achene sheathed in spines.
8. The flowerhead: A ribbon-like corolla of petals, gold.
Inside, the stigma catches seed above a cylinder of woven
anthers. The hollow stem supports the fragrant flowerhead,

and bitter white juice runs through the rosette
circumference of fingers.
9. The taproot, sinking deep

II. Flowers:
1. Anthema: From Classical Greek, the generic word for a
blossom, or the anthem, a kind of choreograph set to song
2. The Meadowsweet (also known as ulmaria, fen￾meadow, and brideswort): Moist-dark, born in dew
3. The Oak (quercus): Catkins—elegant hanging
cyllinders covered with testicular lavender fuzz—purple w/
growth. Seeds in its crowny cupule. Its serrated leaves
rising up in a spiral.
4. Broom (also laburnum, ulex, Cytisus): Slender green
stems, delicate leaves with yellow petals clustered in
stubborn bunches, close to the branch. Can often take root
in thin soil or white-knuckled in sandy scree. A fire-climax
species, it germinates in the seasonal burns even as it
unravels in ash.
5. Ashborn
6. Columbine in a lime outcropping, caught in a rift in
stone. The spur of the petal whirs like a single, tiny
sparrow.
7. The Poppy, anemone coronaria: anemone for its wind￾bleeding seeds, coronaria for its circlet of blood. Purpura
(violet, bright), Purpureus (for its murmuring dress)
8. Blood and sap, sap and blood
9. The blood is thin or thick. The blood is blue or red. The
child / takes after her mother.

10. “The beautiful uncut hair of graves”
11. Asphodels: like great white ashes, or ghostflowers laid
against tombs. Smoky enough to feed the thin dead with
forgetfulness.
12. Chrysanthemum psalms

Snub-Poemed

when odysseus slit Isaac’s throat
i.
when odysseus slit Isaac’s
throat:
ii.
in the mouths of Orcus swollen-wet
and ripe w/ the voice of sparrows, and the tiny
flicking tongues of sparrows
flitting like shades on the bodies
to and fro,
and in the image of the burning river,
a dappled row of sibilants rushes
around Anticlea—three times
he throws his arms, three times
she melts like sparrows
and the moths of Orcus, hung from trees
rush out in a thousand arrows,
eager:

iii.
as i am eager
for the fire
to run my moth￾dust tongue
thru the candle
wax to taste what
fire tastes like,
to learn how light
is formed

VI. stained glass 
Logos: for you

[“the scab on my lip / called canker- / worm”]
the scab on my lip, name of the the devil
called canker- worm
a constant presence
callous from picking
first: it splits & spits
& bleeds
 & then soft burns
the smooth tissue forms
 the healing skin & 
flakes of
pain & brittle edges
 emerge & pinch & 
then
my fingers itch
again to find
the smooth red skin 
the healing
 hides:
inside this body —a presence—
 lies? will
rise, but
scars
& when that abide &
light inhabits
of morning / mourning
flutters on my
deeps— finally
the worm will
he sleep
speak-
 sss￾he his- sleeps

Journal Entry III:
April 2013, Poetry Magazine: p. 14
as far as maximum effort takes me
—the rest i read more interestingly 
as a flipbook—dining my eyes on 
the subtle permutations of the 
rectangle as they blur & slip by. i 
just can’t understand what Poetry 
Magazine wants verse to do—a 
mouthful of molars in a world of 
meat: there’s nothing that could cut
thru
in college Andy asked, “what 
makes it a poem?” tho i held this 
truth to be self-evident, thru later 
years, i guess as the decades 
slipped past & my longing went on
w/o answer, i came to see the 
question as less obtuse—because i 
too long to know what a poem is &
how in the world i might write it…
what’s done is done, & what’s left
—
what’s left? & lately i don’t see 
poems but question marks—what 
in the world could once again 
make a poem?—take the shattered 
history & make it sing—pass 
through the archive & linger or 
make it live forever—take art and 
heart, cliché & ostranenie, & make 
them work together?

“Akedah”
The lucent letters wane
& flicker,
& the dimful
father bides & binds
the innocent symbols,
& lifts the glittering
caesura
high in an arc
which poise describes
a falling
stroke: the circum￾cision of the
throat.

“Hymn”
I know to write the luminous words, I will have to cut 
myself
& let in the light.
I know that if I speak plain, I will have to hide my face.

“Guitar Tabs”
A# E
May the good lord shine
A# C
all fire and breath,
A# C
we’ve all gotta die
D Emin
we all face death.
A# E
You’re naked and scuffed up,
A# C
a little ashamed,
A# C
but don’t let it break you,
D Emin
we all face the same.
A# E
There’s no one around,
A# C
but the desert-dark eyes,
A# C
but you’re not alone babe,
D Emin
let the good lord shine.

Journal Entry IV: 4/21/13, 12:01am
Carla clicks her mechanical pencil
—cat curled up on the quilt, 
second cat @ the foot of the bed
—journal propped on crossed leg 
lying naked post-coitus & 
unwashed sex, wet washcloth by 
left hip while langhorne slim & 
the law play—volume setting 3—
from the laptop on the plastic 
table—12AM not bedtime yet—
chronic lip scab stiff & brittle—
ragged piano plays Cat Stevens 
honky-tonk—song fades & 
banging buddy holly guitar starts 
in—title track bouncy & upbeat 
mangled old soul baritone 
filterless Camels vocals—that is 
to say, i am lying in here in bed, 
contemplative & pensive, 
apprehending w/ futile 
wishfulness—for what, i don’t 
have words—to speak thru to you.
to find a shape to make things 
bigger. to find, for myself & you, 
the words to tell what a poem is, 
& how once again i might wake 
up—&, with you, remember—

In the beginning was the poem, and the poem became 
history.
If I linger in the archive, in communion, then I am aware 
that this is the substance of that to which the archive 
testifies, this resurrection of dead texts.
When I remain in the archive, then the archive will come 
and live in me, and share the life of my body.
If I commune with ancient literatures,
and the history of meter is mine to command,
and the voices of lost poetries ring undiminished in my 
verse,
but have not love—

Journal Entry V: 4/27/13, 11pm
so hopeless & tired @ times—
how become big name? how hear
@ life’s end ‘well done, thou 
good & faithful poet’? so many 
writers, each sustained by 
fantastic pictures: glassy or 
glossy images of historical 
figures animate the surviving 
eyes—But those lost names are 
dead & gone, & the image is a 
lie. i am not concerned w/ career
—but i need to endure beyond 
my body—my words must carry 
on. it’s not the doing, but the 
doing in a way that goes out:
your love will carry on

My vocabulary did this to me. Your love will let you go on.
--Jack Spicer
Though written on time￾thin liquid
of water, my love for you
will carry on,
travelling through futures
illegible
or resurrected in the ancient
records,
a second birth
moving backwards
to where—I do not know—
the yearning
words behind the Logos￾onion paper
of layers, heaped up in time
until I
touch you.
We only have,
I guess,

what we’re given,
though I long
to breathe and die
to touch
and there to find
your hand￾set type￾face, bound
and polished, brass
and patina,
glowing and glowing,
sinking
and away, waters above and
waters below,
vast spaces, pale structures,
brighter and brighter,
of fonts.
Could my love for you

ever falter?
Or could I forget you,
Zion?
A mother might forget
her crops,
or let her children
go hungry,
but I will not
forget you,
your loveliness,
lingering,
lingers
on and
on, and
my love
for you
will not
go out
[“yr face like / snarls / of rain”]

i.
Where there is a will,
there is a way,
I think.
In private, here,
I’m thinking
about the problem of
The Absolute,
and how to put down words
in words,
accompanied
by power…
if I
to you w/
the touch, here,
of silences
breaking open…
ii.
Eyes leak
speech￾lessness like
dreams: I’m coming
soon to you,
my darling; soon
I’ll come to you—
but until then dreams
break open,
like tiny shells
with yolks,
or little statuettes
of silence:
light blue shards

like tiny skies.
I rise to you,
my darling:
rise.
And the skies rise,
too, on top
of water,
floating on
the atmosphere
in oceans, bright
and deep.
These motions of
the element time,
like liquid
darkness or
new wine:
spinning,
dusky and blue,
like flowers
on a stain-etched face—
your eyes
are a winedeep
blue,
and stain-etched,
dear;
your face
like snarls of rain:
there is no tenderness
so open.
for you i put the words here
back
in the form of words.
If the line
is a breath and I
am the line

that bursts across college-ruled
angles, running
parallel to robins—
then my life lives
in the reading;
my life breathes
on your lips.
my little dog is a temple

i am i because my little dog is a temple
+ a series of temples in a sentence is sound
+ a thousand sounds like suns = syntax,
+ a billions constellations of syntax is fires,
+ a circumference of fires in thousands is birds,
+ thousands of perforated birds = language

textual humanism
. , ; i I

anxiety / immortality
the arrow bites
through layers,
per skull
& ventral striatum;
per medial
forebrain sac & tender
zones of fire
to the feathers. Geryon’s
neck, a plough￾clipped poppy, slumps 
& drools 
translucent fluid1
 
1
a bundle of flowers
leaking: wax￾skinned summer
persimmons
simul, frantic
dendrite geometries
fire in random
sequence, flooding
the dopamine
adaptive pathways
w/ chemistry’s
burning phantasms
of memory
or bright abstractions2
2
I’ll aufheben
yr Latinate brain matter,
& press my scruff￾weary cheek
against the mouth yr hippo-

campus feeds
years the cankerworm ate
i.
awake in the night,
a ghost in the eaves,
fitful bulbs buzzing above:
i breathe.
milky eyes wide with webs,
alone with the knots
in the stomach, alone with my fits
of dread—alone with my baby￾soft, hair￾sad head.
the olive arms touched by scars
bear cigarette marks
& the backs of the hands
are kissed with brands—god again,
awake in the night, a ghost
in the leaves:
i am.
the slow skitter of years
turns hours in this dark—
& that which turns to May
only yesterday was March.
and then again beneath these bulbs
September starts. i startle aprt:

i clutch the strands
of strings, i fumble with
the leaking heart:
ii.
i have known scars
self-inflicted.
i have suffered the night
when it breaks apart,
indifferent.
i have suffered
some sad thing
unspeakable
in the silences
i keep:
the blankness
of an hour
killed,
the distant
noise
of a leak.

iii.
but if from all sides
a tentative song
darts from the mouth
of morning birds—
and if in the first
gray milk of morning,
i hear this one small note,
defy the bars of the night,
break through the shuttered blinds,
leak in like the limp
that runs before the light:
then selah.
i will
rise with the morning.
i will
shake off the night’s longing.

Corinna 691
Dawn plunges up
from the ocean deep, drawing off a moon￾holy brightness from the ash￾grey sky.
Sea-sons, sons of deathless
Zeus, blossomdeep
in May.
In the seven-gated city,
the chorus of singers
cries holy

Iris-Bright
Language burns, a dream
at dawn: I know
your face even fogged
in sleep, your iris￾bright eyes even slick
with whispers: those humming￾bird hearts of musky
speech. The white
shards spill, a sleepy
blink—if I didn’t sing, it
wouldn’t matter: the very
stones would shout, the earth
cry wonder.

on the predestination of election
the elect, ex￾lecto,
plucked out
from the atonal
mass
of strings
to form a chord
or stitch
of sinews; & also
lecto in the sense of
lecture
lexical
legible
letters:
the way the attention falls
in the act
of reading
in thro (illegible)
tangled ligatures
of symbols
upon discrete phenomenal
windows
& in its throwness / ex-
(ception) static
emerges /
merges from the
inundated sense
a word (or sentence):

another sense:
e-lecto / Logos
to be cast off
or proceed from:
flesh becoming
text, or literacy
encoding ‘persons’:
electo: the submerged
features slowly
rising thro the
deeps, an exodus
of rivulets
beneath the rainmany
inks: the lower
waters from the
upper
waters /
deeps—
election:
to have been read

many death-lovely heavens
the winter lily thrusts its head
through layers of frost￾sick dirt
~
Ringed by tufts of hard
dark grass:
wind on a blossom￾wet face: 
feathery tongues 
of fire
~
rain, a wildfire of falling sparks
~
my neck cranes upwards
w/ sharp need,
& i am finally crushed
by the many, death￾lovely heavens.
~
the whole thing shines
w/ light;

the rose reverberates
w/ darkness
there is a vibrating
scar of miracles
above the cities
of yr voice

noctilucent
father, fill me w/ beauty
& call me beyond
to a training in weight & grandeur
& the glory of small birds.
& teach me yr depths & yr heights
& the silences that fill you
& fill me! pull back the tatter of ribs
& take out the stone that sits there,
replace it w/ the gospel of dawn birds—
father, if only the right words
were here this world would be
born anew—what is this thing
you’ve placed in me that shines
w/ precarious substance?

surfeit faces kne(k)nokt de-composure


liquid-dark sleep
i.
frail
pattering
fingers,
teeth: my baby
girl like
halcyon
or violets.
ii.
dried petals of dusk.

the husk of yr dress.
an echo.
iii.
hiding from me
behind figs: your blue eyes
can’t cover the liquid￾dark sleep.
iv.
hush, dear hands—
this song is enough.