In Defense of Nothing: Selected Poems, 1987–2011

Blue Peter

B L U E P E T E R a f t e r j a s p e r j o h n s To describe a logic of sight pull the surface onto target and arrive at zero aperture. Then fluctuate to a face, reproduced in serial format, superimposed upon marginal pedestrians, traversing a polarity of earth. The axis here is askew, perhaps unsettling, the way physical equilibrium slides into multiple perspective. This place where sight informs the eye as gate to phenomenon, a bridge to impulse the imaginary. Simply she was feeding bread to pigeons in the park. So begin this sentence with rain and square the surrounding flat with common traffic. I 6 move through, to get here. If you want me, you will find me in the garden of vestiges, next to the sweet water cistern. Where the old port remains, a water mark on granite, abutted with grass and a stone path leading to other places that for the moment I am not interested in, as I take serious your claim to provoke you. And I will follow your instructions, however silly, however sublime, until you have found me, indistinguishable from what you call your self. The way I wear you about my mouth, as a crease, deepening every time I smile to look at you. Look at me. I’m serious, I must find the way, to say, we have arrived. For it is you who instruct me in the laws of perspective, these many converging lines, drawn to perception. So that I have become only a star or an asterisk or a compass rose. Signifying 7 location, this possibility of place. True. It’s been said that the burial of the dead is the beginning of culture, as we know, no other. And I remain raw. Vapor digit tapping at my wrist, the talon, the dorsal fin and the panther claw. The value of negative space and the rationale of talisman does not parse, will not parry from this dearth. As emotions surround the edge of the planet adjusted to actual people we meet. What could the difference of this construction intend in a world of moments, merely fragments provided to express conversation or random noise signaling gray space, to be inserted within an imported structure? Birds migrate over cityscape and arrive in my backyard to a mutiny of peaceful dawn. Then a description of equality is scored, as a rhetorical flourish is installed for testimony. I flag. I stammer. A banner to the burden that all things that are, must not be, in me. Only, will you not smile when I wave? 8 ...