In Defense of Nothing: Selected Poems, 1987–2011

Modern Adventures at Sea

M O D E R N A D V E N T U R E S AT S E A Say it then or sing it out. These voyages, waves. The bluing of all I see. Sing it with a harp or tambourine. With a drum and fiddle. These notes and its staff, the lines’ tracery blooming horizon. These figures insisting. Their laws. I embrace accident. I accidentally become a self in sun in the middle of day. Where are you? Cloud, what shadow speaks for me. I wonder. Is there an end to plastic. Is 216 217 yesterday the new tomorrow. And is that a future? Do we get to touch it and be content here before we go. That the signs won’t remain untranslatable in the end. And that I may learn this language. That there could be a language say with a dolphin, a dog, a cattle herder and slaughterhouse, a lumberyard and big redwood. That someone could say to the crude. Stay there. And don’t be drawn into this tired game. I wonder if the poem 218 gets tired. If the song is worn like sea glass. I wonder if I am up to this light. These ideas of order and all I feel walking down the avenue. I see the sap weeping on the cars. See the wrack about my feet. Its state of decay. To see that decay as the best of all worlds before me. It’s transformation not transportation that’s needed. Here. It’s embracing the soft matter running my engine. My guff. And fright. This piss and vinegar. And tears. 219 That I won’t commit violence to myself in mind. Or to others with cruel words. That I may break this chain-link ism of bigger than smaller than why feel bigger than anyone feeling smaller. Can I transform this body I steward. This my bio mass. My accident. When lost at sea I found a voice, alive and cresting, crashing, falling and rising. To drift, digress, to dream of the voice. Its grain. To feel its vibrations. Pitch. Its plural noises. 220 To be upheld in it, to love. Whose book lying on that table? And where does the voice come from? What life was attached to its lift, to its feint, its gift of sight. To understand oneself. Without oneself. How to live. What to do. ...