RE

RE
Copyright Jack Galmitz (2014)
Impress
New York, New York





































RE







Jack Galmitz



























Me on Morton for Philip



It was a murky yellow, blue water. maybe a remembrance of the
yellow star of david worn by the jews to identify them. maybe it
was a requiem for the millions under the cobblestone streets of
europe in the tones written for one.
off-key, of course, it must be, for the world was not on course
correctly. and one had changed his name, to hide, to deny, out of
shame. perhaps, some say. but the big old man felt sorrow for the
shamed and put it into the ears of the hall that had no people in it
to hear the highest notes of the flute that challenged the cantor's
throaty singing to the most high.
no, now it was all gray and yellow. as featureless as an abstract
canvas. no humans. left.
but all the parts played orchestral extended for it took a long time
to make changes to an old world in its last stages. The water of
the rain moved liked dripped paint. the whole world moved like
dripped paint. control was not in it, though control was its intent.
how could one be a social realist. it was not real. or was it. but not
the predictable scenes of a painting, the depth of field, the
vanishing point of horizon. it was illness, distorted, bodies
bulldozed skeletal into unmarked graves in thousands...could a
man paint abstractions, could red and black be identified as the
horrors.
thou shall not be so certain of others. what they do is their
manifestation of encumbrance. the outstanding smell was urine.
and shit when they hung them. who says the caped figures he
painted were his aggressors and that to escape them he became
them. who says the caped figures that kept returning were the
faceless and he among them. who says god and high art are
substitutes for the touch of hands on earth, some food passed
through barbed wire, a bit of bread saved and given to one
starving.
we know one mourned him. it is not in the dedication but the
notes of surrender, the clash of flat keys and squeaking breath of
flutes played in a great hall with no listeners.
the composition like the paintings were attempts to draw
something from it, to make an order. it had to be comical. a
bodiless head with one eye on a hillock. the hand one what was
once a god in cathedral reduced to a feeble old hand drawing a
line in the sand. who obeyed orders. who remembered the stone
written with his orders.
it is gray now. just that. first a flirtation with a lyric. then a pause.
then a listening. then a line of lyric. then the flat sound of flats on
a piano. so, the man turned to cartoonish art. what of it. it had
dimension. the man was sleeping. or was he dead with his eyes
open.
one for many. for millions. why not bad art. who said it was bad
art. and one would never speak to him again for giving up
abstractions. perhaps the lightning bolts of the strikes of the
panzer in that moment.
is that piping in a grand music hall of a flute the blowing of the
ram's horn, the shofar. where was the law, the torah. where the
minion. the congregation. cartoons prepare children for the
future; violence begets no harm in a world of its own rules and
making.
it behooves you to know this if you listen to the memorial music
to a people in one man's body laid in the ground for five hours.
can you sit still, not fidget, respect the dead, the brutally killed,
the standup comedian, the painter of beautiful kitsch.
if not leave us. wander the world yourself. find your own identity.
do not judge his.
the big man. the composer. loved him.
there is a gong, high-pitched, that rises to the ceiling. there is a
melodrama to all this. it might just be the musical score to a t.v.
series. it doesn't recognize high art or low art or art or that. it is
music, sound ordered, and commandeered.
it is no longer water. it is gray but stone. it is in grids. gravestones
for each. for rocks to be placed there. it is a cemetery. be
respectful. laugh. the cartoon painter, the standup comedian, are
manic-depressives, they wipe their noses with their sleeves. but it
doesn't mean they're not crying a world full of tears.
there's a sound that's unrecognizable. what is it. it's percussive
but so soft softer than any skin. is it the lampshades. who
collected them. it is the same chord. again. again. higher up the
scale of keys that could be bones of elephants or men.
so orderly the extension of the flute, the banged piano, it will
never end. should it. in judaism there is no end. people go on
learning forever. and did he. was it a sign of resignation, passive
acquiescence to having no identity in the world that led him to
paint a figure over and over with a hood over his head. the symbol
is the dream of a man, not of men. it speaks to him to him and not
of them. the theyself stood uniformed striking down the dead,
bayonets ready to run through a woman round wombed with
living. to break the hands of a man with a vice until the bones
could be eaten like long cooked pig's feet.
there is red mixed in with the gray. did someone cut their hand
cooking. did someone run over a stray cat while. were men lined
up against the city walls and shot by a firing squad. did they really
destroy germany. did they bring on its shame. were they not
germans, too, instead.
the thread of the composition seems to go on without end. it is
expanding like the cosmos it's said. it will not burst in the end. it's
darker than nicht without air in the head.
so the argument goes, a man who paints figuratively is not a man.
he is in league with those who had burned books and subjected
deviant abstraction to a rejection displayed to be spat upon by
the friends of the volk the friends.
the music reproduces itself. it must. it is music is not. it does not
mean and yet it is not mean. it must. it is a narration of sounds...a
trailing off, a return that is different from the start.
so the painter gave up the beauty of color to color and instead
refused the beautiful in favor of the brut, to caricature, to the bad,
to address again the social world of evil and of thrust. be
grotesque if you must. be childlike. be childlike. as the music must
repeat itself to speak it all up.
the composer is complete. simple. a smile a retreat. the artist
smiled with the grotesque. how else. the hooded figures are
ubiquitous. everywhere distress. body parts like stitches in their
hooded heads.
all that remained was a head. a witness to the end. helpless.
watching the dismemberment of man himself.
the composer would not give up on him. would mourn the living
and the dead. would be a score that added up to zero. an end
without an end.
think of it. the big man. the smoker of cigarettes loved the smoker
of cigarettes in a bodiless head.
neither is dead. though both are dead. buried yes. but not dead.
death is repetitious. the same without end. here differences are
slight, but there nevertheless. on the dirge of flute and piano and
xylophone in a music hall of consumers who are at the mall and
do not hear the harmony of the spheres only a human can hear.
and make.
in medias re there is a harmony of instruments some would say. a
sweet sound then flatness do obey.
1970. the friendship of a lifetime ended. the composer was no
longer admitted to the painter's studio. two who had first shared
their works together. two jews of immigrants from russia trying to
make sense of america. the world was violent and destruction was
the way of loving of talking. a style of painting had separated two
friends of a lifetime. the monumental homage of five hours is a
lament to that loss never spoken of. it breaks into harmony after
two-and-a-half hours. chimes to the god/godless hours of the loss
of a fellow traveler. of a friend.
harmony reached. harmony sought after. the flute, the piano, the
percussions come together.
in the end, it rises so high you can see an eagle reach the perched
nest of its chicks on a mountain cliff and drop off shredded meat
besides its folded wing spread and then decline



















































jotted a few notes


a repeated image of a gray and white-bellied cat flying out of a
purple bag- with letters on it that can't be made out- and then
being pulled under and into the reflection of the bag again and
then flying out again. it's not the same cat. can't be. might be
similar or the same in repetition, but not the same exact cat. so
there's music accompanying it that repeats, drawn in and like a
broken accordion blown out, and there's a piano that's constant
like the cat, but even though it is playing a melody or something
like a melody in a few notes the notes are never the same notes
but may be like them, the same in return, but not the exact same.
There is a distortion of the window's venetian blinds opened a
crack and their reflection where the cat first falls out of the bag,
flies really, although not at its volition, since it is rising out of the
bag on its side.
there is a purple floorboard along the wall behind and its
reflection. it's hard to tell it's a reflection it looks so alike the
original. the piano is only playing three notes and when it reaches
the last of the three there is an echo like sound of strings- which
are made from horse hair- of a violin or lower a cello or maybe a
viola.
they sound off key, but they're not off key. it's the key they were
composed in. they are like the sirens of myth but they couldn't
allure any sailor unless he was drunk from shore leave and had
had a taste of a woman and was easily aroused.
the gray and white cat is still flying out of the maroon bag and
being sucked up into what would be its opening reflected on the
floor. the music is sad. it is sad that the cat keeps falling from the
bag. it is the notes that sound sad. then suddenly there is a scale
of a kind. not a whole scale mind you, but maybe a partial scale.
then the squeezing of air out of the stringed instruments that
sound like an accordion. imagine bagpipers playing a dirge for the
honored dead.
this will give you an idea of the sound the music produces or was
produced to do. just a few notes repeated over and over the cat
falling flying from the lavendar bag of paper then being sucked or
maybe like dragged by a moving ground into the opening of the
bag again all to start over again. it is rare but occasionally all the
instruments sound together, huffing and puffing, dragged out at a
dying pace, not flying out, sombrous, oh sombrous. like
Wordsworth's sombrous pine. the strings are like the chorus in a
tragedy. they sadly tell us what the piano and the cat cannot
know, but what the audience should know. low stringed notes.
high piano notes. a contrast as sharp as black and white or maybe
gray and white like the cat related.
the audience falls asleep. a great music hall filled with people
dressed formally all sleeping, their heads nodding in their chins, or
else reclining accidentally on the shoulder of the person next to
them. silent as a submarine averting discovery. the whine that is,
not the huff and puff of an accordion. it is a whine more or less.
the composer is not present. he is not afraid. he would be
delighted that everyone fell asleep. it is good for them. it slows all
the vital processes down and gives them revival later on.
the composition has no beginning, middle, and end to speak of. it
was not written with this in mind. it is not imitative of classics.
although its repetitiousness is real, if only in the playing and what
other real could there be for it.the viola squeezes and the piano
churns out sorrow in three notes. it is not going anywhere. it is
not meant to. the cats flying. sucked up in to fly again. over and
over. that is why it is.



































string quartet


the video camera is focused sometimes. it repeatedly takes the
same picture of an unknown person climbing steel stairs in a
hallway. the walls are of red brick, which is rare, as bricks are
usually reserved for the exterior of a building. the doors are steel
painted what once must have been yellow. there are doorbells
that are not rung. then there are close ups of the stairs or corners
of the stairs, which blur the image. all the while a 1979 string
quartet plays. it may be morton feldman's judging from the length
and the repetitions and the alterations in the repetitions. it is the
kind of music that might accompany a movie thriller, the sounds
you hear just before a door swings open, or a hand reaches out.
but, nothing happens but the continuous video taping of climbing
the same stairs and showing the same walls, corners of walls,
doors, buzzers. when the music slows to a drip, so do the images.
they appear as mere flashes of light. then black. then the camera
swings across the steps and there is a redness about them and it
seems like you are walking across one step rather than climbing
stairs. it all turns white. then the blur of might be stairs or might
be boxes of light and shade. you might notice for the first time
with the music that there is a symmetry of the lines of the mortar,
the stairs, the swinging of the camera, the steel yellowish door,
the brown textured welcome mat before the door. there is a
plucking of the strings, no longer a drawing of a bow across their
tautness. it is all turning in a circle, like a gyre, as is the music.
there is a center to it, but it's hard to hold with the constancy of
movement. the strings are also symmetrical with the bricks, their
mortar, the stairs, the doors, only the light splashes. for a moment
there were legs in dungarees and boots. no more. then they were
gone. the music moves to a crescendo, but stops. then the steel
door is open, but it is only a hallway lit by sunlight. and for the
first time overhead lights are shown on the ceiling. then it is black.
then white. a black cat comes out of the steel doorway and walks
in the vestibule. then the climbing of stairs. the cat is gone. the
camera points out the side of the window for a brief instant and
there is a window and a streetlamp. then darkness and out of
darkness the slow materialization of form, red, streaks of gray,
stairs faded to gray steel, slowing down of the music and ascent
and circling of the stairway, then a man standing in the open steel
yellow doorway, then blackness, then the emphasis of the
wooden sidings of the staircase for the first time with steel bolts
holding them in place, then the blur of the door, a close-up of the
peep-hole, a turning of the tune and the stairs. the walls are
joined to the floor, the stairs are joined to the floor and so to the
walls, the steel yellow door is joined to the brick walls, we see this,
we see outside, then inside, the music seems stuck but it is only
repeating a few notes, then a drawing of bow, then a change of
pitch, then the stairs upside down, different but similar, we are
getting somewhere, but then it is black again, then patches of red
as the focus resumes, we are turning in a vortex, we must be
getting somewhere, the music says so in its language, it slows, it
slows, it creeps, so does the movement up the same staircase, up
the same staircase, it speeds up against the drag of the video, we
will never arrive, it all goes white, we want it to go somewhere, it
won't, why should it, the brick walls, the steel steps, the light from
the windows, camera turning in a circle, that's it, that's all it is,
and it's enough. There are cars in the building's driveway. That's
something new.
The music stops. Just stops





































Bright Lights


He was a borscht belt comedian who had so much rouge and
powder on his face that he looked almost as wooden as the
dummy sitting in his lap. A friend of a friend had set him up for a
short gig at one of the smaller hotels in Atlantic City. He was
booked for one week. He was nearly broke after a lifetime in
vaudeville, early television, and even one spot in a movie that he
had nearly gotten on his hands and knees to a old friend to help
him get work.
The audience was thin, mostly composed of the few older visitors
to Atlantic City, some of whom had seen the ventriloquist when
he was younger, a rising star.
"He looks so old," a woman with pink hair whispered to her
traveling companion. "I remember when it was almost impossible
to get a ticket to see one of his shows." "Aye, the pity of it," the
other answered.
The ventriloquist and the dummy were dressed alike, in ill-fitting,
loud checkered suits, the kind that hadn't been seen in decades.
They both wore white shirts, loose about the neck, with black bow
ties.
"So, how does it feel to be in Atlantic City?" the ventriloquist
asked the dummy.
"Better than that dump you call an apartment on the Lower East
Side." Then, he addressed the audience, "do you know he keeps
me in a suitcase in a closet when we're not working. Someone
should call the police and have him arrested for unlawful restraint.
You think because I'm made of wood that I don't have feelings?"
With that a few in the audience guffawed.
"You're not supposed to share our secrets," the man said.
"You don't know the half of it," the dummy answered. "He's a
pervert if you ask me."
"How can you say that?" the ventriloquist asked. "I'm Jewish. We
call it mashuga. It's not serious as all that."
"Look, buddy, I know your most inner thoughts. Did you forget
that? Mashuga my eye. They'd put you away if they knew what
went through your mind."
A few people, particularly the women, began to move about in
their seats, a bit uncomfortable with the direction the
conversation had taken.
"What about that young aspiring model that moved across the
hall?" asked the dummy. Do you think it's normal for a man your
age to want her to ream you? How do you know she has the
tools?"
With that all the old men burst into fitful laughter.
"And your playing with yourself while on the internet?"
"What's wrong with playing by myself. Nearly everyone I knew is
dead. There's no one left to play with but myself."
Again, the men laughed out loud, joined in a titter from some of
the bolder women.
"So, how does it feel being a has-been? You know, it doesn't
reflect well on me that I'm the dummy of a has-been. I should be
on display at MGM studios or something. You know in a glass case
for having been the dummy of the once famous ventriloquist. It's
embarrassing still having to hang on. Look at our clothes, for
God's sake. Couldn't you at least bought some new clothes for
tonight's performance?"
"Well, I thought of that, but then I thought people would want to
see us as they remember us. Wasn't that a good idea?"
"About as good an idea as Roy Rogers stuffing Trigger. Now if he
had stuffed Dale Evans that would have made more sense."
The men burst into laughter. Those with wives got elbows in their
ribs.
"Speaking of taxidermy, I'm thinking of having you stuffed when
you finally die," he dummy said. "I'll keep you looking out the
barred windows in your apartment and that way I won't get
thrown out of the rent controlled apartment. Or worse. Do you
know what they do to dummies of forgotten ventriloquists?"
"No, what do they do with them?"
"It's not a pretty sight, let me tell you. The indignity of one of
those large dumpsters in the alley. Just think of it. After
entertaining people for over half a century ending up in a
dumpster, maybe with a dead body or something."
The old man suddenly began to cry. He didn't make a sound, so no
one in the audience knew he was crying. The tears were lost in
the bright stage lights. Only the dummy knew he was crying and
he had lost sympathy for the old man many years before.
In the silence, the small orchestra picked up with a drum banging
and when that didn't work, an MC came out and asked the
audience for a big hand of applause for the well-known
ventriloquist, which they obliged him with.




















































The Subplot


The three directors had set up an interview for extras who would
be in the sub-plot of their first film. They had an office on Henry
Street and advertised the auditions or interviews - actually they
were both - through local means: signs posted on streetlamps,
flyers put up in store windows, smaller postings on bulletin boards
in the local college. Since they wanted as great a scope of
performers to see, they also advertised in the Village Voice and
DNA info.NY. The line of would-be performers stretched three
times around the square block and it was only 9 A.M.
The number of people attending was not daunting to the directors.
In fact, they were positively ecstatic. They had not yet made up
their minds if they were going to settle on a narrative film or not,
so the introduction of a subplot to a plotless film was all the more
important - it would act as a grid for the unwoven threads of
filmed locations and interactions they were sketching in their
minds. They expected the auditioners to provide a subplot that
would be so compelling that it would either become the plot or at
least be interesting enough to hold an audience's attention. They
considered multiple sub-plots, so the more people interviewed
the better.
Outside it was raining. No one on line spoke to anyone else. Their
lips were sealed; they would not expose their stories, less
someone with a lesser story steal it. People trying to exit their
building to go to work were beginning to argue with those on line
blocking their way, and soon a number of fist fights had broken
out. The police were not called, although some of the extras were
police who had called in sick that morning. The directors, working
on a shoestring budget, had no secretary. They ushered in the
actors one at a time and they were speaking with the very first
man in line. He had emigrated from Iraq just after 2003. He was
one of those who had shown their new prosthetic hands on
national television to convince the population that the leader of
Iraq deserved whatever he got and look how munificent the USA
was to the hapless and harmed. The man had a heavy Arab accent
and this posed something of a problem to the director
interviewing him.
"Do you think you can speak clearly enough so that when there is
a microphone above you you will be understood by an audience?"
"Yes, sir. I can do that. Yes, sir."
The director was thinking perhaps he would have this man writing
the film within the film with a prosthetic arm that he barely could
maneuver. This would lend credence to the film and also a center
that came from outside the center of the culture. A good
perspective, he thought. He also thought, if we don't go that way,
we can use him anyway. He's already been in front of a camera
and knew when to smile and show dogged appreciation for his
liberators.
They had many people to see, so they took down the man's name
and information and told him they would get back to him.
As the man left, in walked a squat Mexican woman with her long
black hair in a braid down her back. She had a child in a make-shift
cloth pouch strapped around her neck with the child hanging at
her stomach. She introduced herself as Juanita and told the
directors that she was an illegal. She lived with her boyfriend in
Corona, N.Y. and she sold charcoal cooked corn and prepared
tortillas from a supermarket wagon on the streets. "My story
could be used by you," she said, "but you couldn't use my real
name."
The directors discussed the possibilities. They could use her in her
neighborhood, going to the local bodega regularly, with coke
addicts going there regularly, too, buying cocaine bags hidden in
chewing gum packets. The owner knew who was who by those
who knew to give him five dollars when they asked for gum. He
pointed out the right package. The directors thought the constant
reshooting at the bodega would be a perfect repetition to a
random film- in the randomness of the city, there were the rituals
and compulsions people devised to create a sense of order for
themselves, whatever form it took. They took her name and cell
phone number as a strong candidate.
By lunchtime, the three directors had seen hundreds of people
and taken down the names and information from a few more of
them. They had liked two auditioners who had moderate to
severe alzheimer's disease, since their short term memory might
serve as a perfect vehicle by which to show a narrativeless film.
Also, should these potential actors get lost, this would lead the
camera wherever they went and interacted with. They were
beginning to believe in their venture.
While they conducted interviews, television teams had arrived as
spurts of violence had broken out near the end of the line. Fearing
they would not be seen, these people had started chanting anti-
capitalist slogans and even setting a few cars on fire. The police
were present, as was the fire department and the reporter was
just then discussing the situation, which was getting out of hand,
with a police lieutenant.
By 2:00 P.M., the directors were feeling beat. They had taken
down the information pertaining to two blind auditioners, one
who managed with a cane alone, the other with a cane and a
seeing-eye dog. They thought it would be an intriguing insight into
humanity to have the film seen by watching the comings and
goings of one or both of these blind men, neither who had met
the other before.
There were many veterans of recent deployments interviewed
and the directors took some of their names and numbers, thinking
readjustment to civilian life after lengthy periods spent in combat
zones might prove an interesting way to tell a non-story. Besides,
being directors did not make them automatically unpatriotic. They
felt for the difficulties soldiers were having finding work and
otherwise acclimating themselves to their former lives.
By 3:00 P.M., the directors had seen nearly a thousand people
and discussed the intimacies of their lives. It was becoming
tedious and overwhelming. They were going to have to end the
auditions, no matter what happened outside. The line was still
three times around the block and was swelling to considerably
greater numbers. They decided to go down the back staircase and
exit in the alley. No one knew what they looked like, so they
would be safe from attacks from would-be actors.
They had not made up their minds yet, but they were leaning
towards having the Iraqi immigrant be filmed writing the movie
with his prosthetic arm; they would bring in the Mexican woman
and her neighborhood, certainly include at least one of the
alzheimer's patients, one of the blind men, if not both, and some
of the ex-soldiers could at least be extras, if they couldn't think of
a more prominent role for them.
No one knew it, but they had no budget to work with yet,
although one of their parents' were wealthy, so they could expect
an initial investment for film and a camera and lighting equipment.
Anyway, the impression they received from most of the people
they spoke with was that they wanted to be heard or seen or
acknowledged more than anything else. Outside, there were
millions of strangers, each with their own story which they were
the star in.
















Adagio

From the first note I begin to cry like poured wine
that overflows its vat; the gutters run with dark blood
downhill. The one note holds me there - - a statue in the rain of a
cavalry soldier or a great man. And as it holds it holds in its grasp
the gasping men subjected to mustard gas in the trenches
vomiting their lungs on the collapsing ground,
fouled by those who couldnt hold it in. No blame. No shame. I
would have done the same. Lined up in front of doctors, the
slightest sound sets them into an uncontrollable shaking of the
ague; its surprising they dont fall down. The bombs shook the
earth so hard. The one note gives way to a chord of strings
moving, solemn, slow that form a phrase
drenched as it is in the sorrow of the enslaved or those lost in the
black plague, or a child of a meagre worker dying from cholera.
The music is simple: three notes up, three notes up,
then again only higher and again a stop. A copying starts in the
deeper violas repeating the pattern As it all gets richer and sadder
and higher and deeper. If youre hearing it in a thirty year old
powder blue Ford with its shift on the steering column on a tape
recorder, you begin to cry within for every farm house in the far
distance, for every face looking forward in the cars that pass yours
without turning.
Its contagious this sorrow, as if it passed from the seas salt
in the blood to all who have shared the earth. The window washer
whose harness broke and fell twenty stories
to the earth and all the survivors, the commonest pain,
even so small as a sewing needle sticking your finger.
The musical pattern is repeated three times and then
the two versions overlap and then we reach that first
note again. Its chilling. Your skin bumps with the cellular
knowledge of the kill, of the does eyes looking over its shoulder
at the trees, the sky falling between to the hunter. And the hunter
in his plaid jacket sadder than the death he inflicted however he
crashes through the dried sticks and second growth of green
things. Then the music is just four notes, then cut in two as we
cannot bear more emotion. And then we hear that first note for a
split second, a resolution where the sorrow started. The music is
sculpted sorrow. It was played at the funeral of Franklin Delano
Roosevelt, John Fitzgerald Kennedy, and for Leonard Bernstein.
When I heard Ryuichi Sakamoto play it with the cover a photo of
the Peace Bridge- how my mouth rumbled and a cataract of crying
started for those who will follow and all who dont yet know it.























































Her Hands


driving. her hands on the wheel as if they were built in by Honda.
focusing on the big picture. not what is directly in front of her.
frequently checks her side view and rear mirrors. knows whats
around. Indulges herself with a CD. autechre. depresses the gas
hesitantly. as if it were a live thing. we begin to climb the
mountain road. I trust her enough to look out the window. or I
dont care if we die. were together. chassis and wheels. the
door locks open and close by the remote on her car keys. were
like that. only we each have the keys. were both the door locks.
I ask her to have the car painted. orange. or green. but only the
shades BMW once made. this is one thing she wont give in to.
the rock ledges on the passengers side. deep colors. fissures.
fractures. a sense of intimacy. her face has diminutive features.
sunken cheekbones. long free hair. she says wait till we reach the
peak and park. well find a private place with deep undergrowth.
do it like wolverines. this time.













Man on a Country Road


rails. the yellow dog. the length of the road. dry. leaves. mulch.
the mans odd smell. maybe death. the family gives thanks for
what it is about to receive. the yellow dog. rails. the odd smell.
sunset. property. human skin. mulch. maybe death. The earth
wet. green sprouts of no one knows what yet. the yellow dog.
property. line. the strangers smell. other towns. odd. rails. the
smell. hay. wells. wagon wheels. please pass the potatoes. the
peas. god. the odd smell. the mans black suit. hat. shoes. may
have made the sign of the cross. many foreheads. maybe
released from jail. the yellow dog. trails. reaches the soy field.
acres. acres. acres. wide leaves. sprinklers. maybe a clerical
collar. maybe killed a man. grace. homemade peach cobbler.



















































How Quiet the Noise

at a pace like falling. are we? falling? to the grave. pleasure.
pulsations. ours. what we have. all that we really have. to give.
without permits. willingly. discretion. of course. discretion. it is
night, anyway. we are the sole witnesses. witnessing. ourselves
witnessing. ourselves. if we dont count the grass. the bay. the
bridge looming. the rocks. the water rats. but they participate.
are the chamber. our sound is only real with them there.
atmosphere. they make it original. authentic. otherwise. it
could be memory. or retelling. did you feel that? did you feel the
earth? move? does that happen? anytime. between any two.
or is it love? something special. your face is everything. moon
white. hair extends to long grass. your breasts are soft. wool.
meant to be moved about. the slosh of the tide on the rocks.
quiet as the movement of the rats. is there a sky? I havent
looked up. you are a small fire. warm. where I retain life. I am a
stick. I keep your fire burning. warming. us. our life.